You're Surely Not Saying Improving My Attitude Will Make My Life Better, Are You?

Wealth is so close to you. So are good friends and good times. You can have the desires of your heart, fulfill many of your dreams, nourish your spirit, live a life of emotional prosperity, and strike a big gushing oil well of opportunity, as we’d say in Texas, and it’s easier to do than you might imagine. Interested? Read on.

This is a book about turning defeat into triumph. Although we may not feel like it, how do we affirm this will be a great day for us?

The key is to take the feelings which we associate with "valley consciousness" [depression, lack of energy, anger] and move upward to the mountaintop where the sun glistens through fluffy clouds, view the events below from this upper level perspective, and live from it. The thoughts at the valley level are real enough--at their level--but there are other levels and at those higher dimensions our thoughts in this range are just as real. Plus, the true benefit to us is that we finally realize our heart’s desires, you know, the ones that seemed out of reach for so long.

So although we may not know from whom they may come, how they will arrive, or when, or where, we can affirm serendipitous events today. We refuse to be locked any further into the energy-robbing grip of negativity. We reject our own negativity just as a healthy body rejects a splinter. The splinter I'm speaking about can range from a current job to a relationship or one's own impoverished view of life. We can shift focus from the “awful” to a magnificent picture of “what we may be,” realizing this shift will turn our life around. “Our thoughts, our words, and deeds are the threads of the net which we throw around ourselves,” (Swami Vivekananda).

We CAN affirm great days, great opportunities, great joy and hope are coming our way; we can affirm the people we need to meet will find us, the opportunities we seek and which have eluded us in the past are now seeking us, the money we need to solve problems and enrich our lives will be offered, the place we sought so long as a home will come to us. We ought to begin affirming the positive, just as, in the past, we have affirmed the negative, and then observe the magical transformations that will take place before our astonished eyes. Nothing, we discover, is too good to be true, and it will last! Believe, as I do, the words of author Louise Bogan who wrote, "I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy." Confess these words and watch the external world transform itself to become what you believe true of it. Later on we’ll look at how you can make this happen. What I’m going to tell you isn’t magic, but the results you’ll get will seem magical. So, let’s begin.

“It [the game of life] is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste, but without remorse,” (Huxley, quoted in Elbert Hubbard’s Scrap Book, p. 90).

We live in a “mysterious universe,” one of design and, I believe, purpose. There are “fundamental principles” that bring us love, joy, peace and happiness and there are “ways of living” that do the opposite. Emerson tells us, “A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labours are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong...Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.” And then, this amazing statement, also from Emerson: “Truth is always present; one only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind’s eye to read its oracles.”

INNER TALK:

If we knew everything we said and affirmed would happen exactly as we said it, how many of us would change our vocabulary, would confess victory in the face of apparent defeat, knowing victory will come into the picture? Confess abundance in the face of apparent lack and abundance will begin, as a friend, to embrace you. “As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you in a book or a friend, or, best of all, in your own thoughts--the eternal thought speaking in your thought,” (George MacDonald). Realize you can have what you say, although, frankly, most of us were, for years, saying inwardly what we presently have. And that's why we're stuck, why we get more and more of the same old thing, even though it may appear in different disguises while dogging us wherever we move. Neville, the great mystic writer, once said we must first hear [and see] inwardly what eventually manifests outwardly for us. Why delays, you ask? "We are always doing something, talking reading, listening to the radio, planning what's next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day," (Brenda Ueland). Too easily do we let our attention be distracted and pulled away from our vision. And so, delay results. When unwaveringly committed, Goethe says "A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have believed would have come his way. Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it."

Let me cite you an example of how the energy and vitality that radiates outward from your being influences others. It comes from the writings of the Indian mystic Vivekananda: “The pure man...has the power of bringing it into a certain state of vibration, which can be conveyed to others, arousing in them a similar vibration. You see that in everyday actions. I am talking to you. What am I trying to do? I am, so to say, bringing my mind to a certain state of vibration, and the more I succeed in bringing it to that state, he more you will be affected by what I say. All of you know that the day I am more enthusiastic the more you enjoy the lecture.” That is how a higher truth is communicated to receptive minds.

Don’t be disappointed if others do not understand what you’re doing for yourself. Your husband, children, boss, friends may think you’re bonkers as you pursue your own spiritual destiny. That is not your concern, nor should it be. You must realize, as you seek out your own original design and life pattern, that “No man can see over his own height [just as true for women also]. Let me explain what I mean. You cannot see in another man any more than you have in yourself. Your own level strictly determines the extent to which he comes within your understanding. If your intelligence is unawakened, mental qualities in another, even though they be of the highest kind, will have no effect on you at all...his higher mental qualities will no more exist for you than colours exist for those who cannot see,” (Schopenhauer). The desire to please others and avoid rejection could stop you in your tracks unless you are able to tap into your own inner reserves when others say, “I just don’t get you.” Shrug your shoulders and go on. Schopenhauer’s quote, applied to ourselves, tells us we can easily misjudge others also. “What will people say--in these words there lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the uneven vision of our minds. These four words bear sway everywhere,” (Auerbach).

THE ACTIVE VERB:

Cause and Effect exist in the universe. Why, then, be a subject acted upon when you can be the verb acting upon the objects around you? An Hawaiian canoe peddler said, “We know we are creating our own wind, so we don’t want to become angry and send out storms we have to sail through.” Our images, and their intent, form a psychic force that is projected out ahead of us. The key is to affirm, write, and think over and over about your good and how all is now available, how the magical purse of the spirit is open to you, how every good you could ever want is now flowing into your life. Shift focus and place awareness beyond the problem level, valley consciousness, to the solution, to the desired result level [mountaintop consciousness or the "God's eye view" rather than our usual "worm's eye view"]. Every great vision you hold, drenched in feeling, has its appointed time of appearance. Call your vision into existence. "Faith," we are told in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Call into existence what is unseen. Pray and invoke the Higher Powers. See what happens! “If we liberate our souls from our petty selves, wish no ill to others, and become clear as a crystal diamond reflecting the light of truth, what a radiant picture will appear in us mirroring things as they are, without the admixture of burning desires, without the distortion of erroneous illusion, without the agitation of clinging and unrest,” (Buddhism). If we want peace with ourselves, this is a good place to start.

HEADLIGHTS:

We can send our mental headlight beams from the laws that work at the bottom of the valley to the spiritual dimensional laws operative at the peak of the mountain. Here we become aware, "I am an observing center of the moving, changing, immense and eternal flux about me. I am also a creative center and can place awareness, my mental spotlight beam of consciousness where I please. I am not my feelings. I am not my body. I am not my thoughts. I am an observing, creative center of Pure Awareness." As Pure Awareness, I possess the power to be the predominately creative force in my own life.

THE LUCIOUS ICE CREAM CONE:

My thoughts come and go, but I direct awareness. I choose which thoughts remain as houseguests. When we choose our mood, choose more life, and it comes to us plentifully and abundantly. I send out the mood that comes back to me. I send out the love that flows back to me. I send out the opportunities that find their way back to me. I send out the mental energy waves, the higher frequencies that tune into and are tuned into by others. We find what we seek has been seeking us. We find our good overtakes us at long last. The law of Causation says I send out my good and it returns to me multiplied, like a luscious ice cream cone, pressed down, shaken together, running over.

MOUNTAINTOP'S VIEW:

But how can you send out what you feel you do not now possess? It seems ironic that you begin by affirming what is not yet in your possession as though it already were. Read Joel 3:8 and see that this is the meaning of "Let the weak say I am strong." This is "doing within while you're outwardly doing without." Neville refers to the time it takes for the manifestation of your inner vision to appear as "the incubation of the manifestation." Some patience will be required while this work is going on. Your intensity of feeling determines the timeline for its appearing. Stay on beam, however long it takes, and take heart from the words of Meister Eckhart: "When the soul wishes to experience something, she throws an image of the experience out before her and enters into her own image." That's the job description given, in this life, to your soul being. To make all this clear, consider the words of Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces: "For when a heart insists on its destiny, resisting the general blandishments, then the agony is great; so too the danger. Forces, however, will have been set in motion beyond the reckoning of the senses. Sequences of events from the corners of the world will draw gradually together, and miracles of coincidence bring the inevitable to pass." Plus, and there is this angle to consider, “We, ignorant of ourselves, beg often our own harms, which the wise powers deny us for our good; so find we profit by losing of our prayers,” (Shakespeare). Those occasional “No’s,” must be seen as paving the way for your bigger “Yes.” “It is only when we come to view our life as a connected whole,” Schopenhauer wrote, “that our character and capacities show themselves in their true light; that we see how, in particular instances, some happy inspiration, as it were, led us to choose the only true path out of a thousand which might have brought us ruin.”

INSIDE JOB:

So, you do the inner work of affirming--over and over, drenching it in feeling--the truths of opportunity for service, prosperity, health, and other like manifestations appearing and soon they do so. Your inner pictures find ways to outpicture themselves, when we begin to live from that which we desire and not just think about it. The inner vision, in time, becomes the external movie of your life. How things will work out, the sequence, is out of our hands. Only remember the words of the novelist Eudora Welty who wrote, "The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order...the continuous thread of revelation." Leap, and the net will appear! Seeing is believing, but from the mountaintop perspective, believing is seeing!