Most everything I write about here, in The Connecticut Cruise News and post on my FB Positively Speaking page has to do with the power we have in determining our experiences, outcomes, and events of life in general. It has always been a curious topic, perhaps even controversial. Most of us can’t fathom how we would be instrumental in creating experiences and conditions that cause us pain or grief. I do believe in the philosophy wholeheartedly, but at times find it difficult to master, and even more complicated to explain, and justify.

There is not a doubt in my mind that negative thoughts, focus and expectation results in negative experiences, and the opposite also an immutable truth. This being said we can interpret this theory to mean each of us has caused our own reality. Conversely, we must conclude that we each could have also avoided it.

These past months I have fallen victim to circumstances around me. My mind has been clearly focused on the pain, grief, suffering and outrage that we all see around us. This has caused me pain emotionally and to some degree suffering. So how can I as an advocate of taking responsibility for our own situations, reconcile this truth when it has hit me as hard as anyone? The answer is that I am fully aware that my mind has fixed on all that I wish to avoid, thereby opening the door and welcoming it in.

Allow me to offer a brief example:

You as an individual have never owned, nor have any friends or family owned a Subaru Impreza.  When asked, you can honestly say that you have no idea what one looks like, could not pick one out of a group of cars and probably have never seen one. When the dealer shows you one, you also say that you have never seen one before. You buy it. All of a sudden, Impreza’s are everywhere. It seems as though 90% of the cars on the road are Impreza’s.  This is how this works. It is obvious that you did not create a world of them. The people who own them have had them for a while. But they were never a fact in your life. The only reason they are such a BIG part of your experience now  is the attention and focus you have on their existence. “ What we think about expands”. Take this example and apply it to EVERYTHING. 

Imagine a few million people sharing the same thoughts, spreading them, highlighting them, examining each and every nuance and paying all of their attention to them.  Result; Global Pandemic, unilateral civil disobedience, anxiety, depression, outrage and chaos. What did we expect?  Stinking thinking is destroying the world again.

I am not saying any one of us could have prevented this, but the continued focus, attention and sharing of negativity made the recent months a reality. I cannot control the actions of others, but I could have refused to feed the fire with my attention and gone about my business unscathed. Each one of us can only control our own minds, but the less of us “PAYING” attention to conditions that cause grief; the less likely that grief is to reach critical mass. The optimal word here is “paying”. The most valuable currency we have is not dollars, bit coin, crypto-currency, gold, silver or gems. The most valuable asset we have is our attention. Regardless what other resource comes into play, our attention to ANYTHING makes it real.

 None of us goes into a store and spend our hard earned money on things we DON”T want. Likewise, we will not donate to causes we don’t believe in (except the federal gov’t since we have no choice). So why do we PAY ATTENTION to conditions that do not nurture us and support our highest good?

Start spending wisely. Only PAY Attention to what feeds your soul. One by one we can fix our world. If we don’t, we can at least find peace in it.

THE JOURNEY IS THE DESTINATION