Friday, March 11, 2011

The Nature of Personal Reality

The Nature of Personal Reality is the title of the 1975 new age book that’s slowly changing my life.

Whether it changes my life for the better I feel deep in my heart to be the inevitable result, but the going in the meanwhile, since I started reading it - was that already one week ago? - has been considerably worse.

To be honest, dear readers, I began studying the concept that we create our own realities through a series of coincidences - or synchronicities - that brought me into possession of Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization. Astoundingly, the methods she described in that book brought everything to fruition that I began to visualize.

It started with an experiment that she suggest. I wrote “$50” on a piece of paper, and then the date ten days later. Lo, through tips and various other happenstance, the money materialized: in ten days, I’d gained a windfall of $75, completely unexpected and from improbably sources: tips, found money. Mostly tips. I work in the service industry.

She recommended The Nature of Personal Reality, and amazon.com readers nearly unanimously gave the book rave reviews; the book had changed their lives.

The idea is that we create our reality. Since the Enlightenment and subsequent Industrial Revolution, man has increasingly distanced himself from nature. This has resulted in a sort of surrender to circumstances we believe are beyond our control. Things happen at us, not to or for us. We are the unwitting pawns in some perverse metaphysical game, where all we can individually do, really, is hang tight, grin, and try to bear it. Watch TV to numb our minds, perhaps.

No! says the book. In reality, we create our own reality. Every belief that we hold, results in the manifestation in physical reality of that belief. In other words, every aspect of our lives is a result of a belief that we hold, within ourselves.

I examine my own beliefs, and begin to change them one by one. I keep a notebook, where I note the things that I want and the goals I want to achieve, and the biggest one is, money.

Money, now, can be infinitely creative. In fact, it’s an astoundingly clever and useful tool for us to maximize our creativity. With money, we can bypass steps in production and directly manifest our means to our own ends. For example, I don’t need to grow hay in order to get horse. I can just buy it. Or something like that.

Artists can purchase paints and brushes. People living in the desert, their means creating programs on computers, can enjoy the fruits of an abundant universe while living in one of the physically most inhospitable ecosystems on the planet - barring tundra.

The past few days I’ve been reading this book, and I realize that there must be some beliefs I harbor that I must overcome to achieve my goals of being wealthy. I’d like to be wealthy, in all honestly. I’m a good person. I’d like to be loving, joyful, happy, generous, kind, wise, and spiritual as well. But I would also like to be able to live independently, in abundance, with leisure to pursue the pleasures that I enjoy and that I believe I was born to do; that I chose, so to speak, this life and this particular body to be the vehicle for.

I have an aversion to the rat race. I don’t like the idea of spending my time in competition, grasping toward paper dollars showering down from some crude, malevolent hands that control the mechanisms for our monetary system. I rather like to think that as I toil, joyfully, contentedly, at what I enjoy doing, abundance will flow to me naturally. Checks arrive in the mail, for work well done.

This leads me to my first discovery in a major belief I hold about the nature of money and of life; money arrives after some hard work.

Naturally, this belief is unfounded. How many readers out there receive money for having done nothing at all? Winnings, inheritances, trust funds, generous relatives, bonuses, or even very easy jobs. This is income that many accept, sans misgivings, and enrich their lives with; perhaps because they believe, it’s very possible to gain abundance in life without working at all.

The nature of the universe is abundance. From a tiny seed, grow all these crazy, tasty tomatoes we can eat. We can even eat rosebuds, if we wanted to. From a tiny seed grow the roses, come the bees, and hence, sweet honey. This is the natural state of energy; potent energy driving all the physical processes we take for granted lie dormant within ourselves. This is the direction I will take my blog. I’d like to document how this new belief I’ve encountered in my life changes it.

Perhaps, dear readers, an astute observer will point out that this entry points to a tendency towards despondency; no wonder the abundance I wait for fails to materialize; I’m clinging. I’m striving. My desires are backed by strongly negative feelings of fear and, admittedly, desperation.

Because I have plenty in my life already; clothes, an internet connection, and food.

I need to stop fearing a failure that hasn’t happened yet, because the failure will wind up materializing, not the success. How to stop this vicious cycle? This is the question. Therein, lies the rub.

Be as a child, though be not immature. Play. Regard this life as one budding blossom of possibility after another, manifested in ever-flowing moments ripe with possibility, pregnant with the possibility of change. Regard each thought as energy, radiating toward the cosmos. The things we think, and the things we believe, are exactly what manifest in our reality.

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