Experiencing one tiny sliver of the Infinite at a time
I realized that I have a belief system that is actively working against me quieting my mind.
I used to be big on using down time to do something. On the way to school and then work I would study or read. If I had to wait for someone, I would read. While I was talking on the phone, I would be tidying up whatever was in reach. These sound harmless and maybe even efficient, but this pattern extended past physical activity.
Continue reading “Training the Mind to Not Be Quiet”
On our journey through life, we meet lots of different people, but they mostly fall into two groups: the supporters and the challengers. The supporters are the ones with lanterns who will guide, lift, and inspire us to the next level of growth. The challengers are the ones with sharp sticks who will poke, prod and drive us to the next level. Both types help us reach the next level of development, but we will save ourselves a lot of grief and a lot of heartache if we don’t try to turn challengers into supporters.
The Blue Jays are out in California to play a 4-game series against the Angels. I heard an interesting quote in last night’s game. Mike Trout is an outfielder that many people consider to be the best player in baseball.
I never allow a negative thought to get in my mind. I never think about striking out with the bases loaded. I never thinking about hitting into a double play. Everything that enters my mind is positive.
~~Mike Trout
I’ve had a few experiences this month that have helped me understand the Law of Attraction (LoA) in a slightly new way—my own version of one of the first Abraham Hicks clips I heard. I’ll write about that Abraham video at the end of this post, if you’re interested in reading it, but let me talk about the realization I reached and how I reached it first.
The beliefs we have and passing thoughts we think all have their own unique frequencies. I knew in general that through LoA we create our life experiences, but I added on a new perspective to my understanding now. Those thought/belief frequencies that are active within us can basically act as a key. They make our personal energy field permeable to things within our immediate vicinity that match that frequency.
“How can we practice not yelling when we’re angry if there’s no one around to push our buttons?”
~~from Ruling Your World by Sakyong Mipham
I remember listening to an Abraham Hicks clip on YouTube a few years ago where they said that your Inner Being might sometimes steer you towards unwanted. This really bothered me and made me a bit angry, actually. I remember thinking, “What’s the point of doing all of this inner work and raising my vibration if I’m still going to have to deal with unwanted? I thought I was working towards creating my own reality!”
But I’ve come to see this from a different perspective. Your Inner Being and the Universe won’t randomly throw completely pointless negative events in your path just for giggles. Everything in our experience is there to help us learn and expand. Everything is here to help us reach new heights.
I had a lot of doubts along the way to my new belief system. I still have some, of course, but the interesting and incredibly frustrating thing I noticed was that some of my lingering doubts have to do with things that I am actively experience on a regular basis. Some of my old beliefs were tenaciously standing their ground even as I had experiences over and over again that showed them to be false.
Yesterday I understood at a deeper level than before that life is Spirituality. There truly is no part of life that isn’t. Even though I had read and heard this from different teachers at different times, I still wasn’t getting it. I still separated my day into doing spiritual stuff, doing chores, watching sports, volunteering, etc.
But everything comes back to Spirituality. The ideas that come to me throughout the day, my reactions to different events, my interactions with people, shovelling the driveway are all my Inner World expressing itself in a myriad of ways so that I can experience my innermost self as though it was external events and relationships.
Nothing is actually “outside” of me. Everything in my experience is me — a projection of some facet of myself.
I was very much like a walled city. My thick, solid walls were essential with my old definitions because they made me feel safe and secure. Minor external threats were easily kept at bay, and it was only large threats that caused me any worry. I was safe.
But the problem I see now with my stone wall approach is that while my walls kept out threats they also hindered growth, just like with a city, because I had to make do with the area that the wall encompassed. There was some room to grow by adding on floors to pre-existing buildings, but any new, ground-breaking ideas were outside of the wall and automatically seen as threats. At best, I would have a scornful reaction to any concept too far outside of my comfort zone, if I didn’t reject it outright.
While I’m now busily dismantling my stone wall, I certainly don’t want to swing to the other extreme and have no boundaries. Letting everything in can’t be any healthier than keeping everything out.
“When you know what you don’t want, you know what you do want.”
~~Abraham Hicks
I realized yesterday that most of my life has been spent with one eye constantly fixed on the thing I didn’t want the most. I would identify unwanted and then focus on it. I told myself that this was helpful and practical, and I suppose that in some ways it can be. Identifying what you don’t want can help you clarify what you do want. But I never moved on to focusing on what I did want. What I was doing was spending the vast majority of my time focusingon what I didn’t want, feeling horrible about it, and then trying to avoid it.
“You are all selective about the cars you drive and the clothes you wear, but you are not very selective about the thoughts you think.”
~~Abraham Hicks
When I finally became aware of the endless stream of thoughts going through my head, it was a bit of a shock. And they weren’t particularly useful thoughts. A lot of them are judgements, crtisicms, and endless commentary about trivial things going on around me. “How stupid. Why would you do that?” “Wow. That was inconsiderate of her.” “I hate when people block both sides of the escalator.”
Continue reading “If you don’t have anything positive to think…”