A Period of Growth

I’ve been gone a while.  But what a while it was, a roller coater ride of emotion and manifestation that merely strengthened my understanding of the Law of Attraction.

Life is cyclic, but only if we allow the cycles to occur.  We have our ups and downs but only because we believe and accept it.

After my last post, I found myself in one of those incredible lows.  I found myself in a depressed state in a relationship, at my work and in my business.  I found myself believing reality and forgetting that I, like everyone else, am a creative creature with the ability to influence “reality”.

There are times in our lives when the past catches up with us.  It is the manifestation of our previous thoughts and emotions.  Our thoughts and emotions are, in fact, one because the two are inexorably linked.  Our thoughts create our emotions and our emotions color our thoughts.  I wondered if one can exist without the other but I find no evidence of that in human beings.

I allowed myself to feel the negative pole of emotion and paid the price.  I allowed myself to fall into a pit of despair.

I know better.  But that doesn’t mean I always do the right thing.  Just like all, I make my mistakes and learn from them.

I am an introverted intuitive and I have a strong sense of others’ feelings.  While it allows me to relate to others, I oftentimes absorb others’ negative emotions as well.  Then, in a continuous feed back loop, my negative state reinforces the negative state of others after which they, in turn, reinforce my own negative state.  It is a dangerous spiral that leads to destructive depression.

It took effort to turn things around. 

I began to focus on the positive outcomes I really wanted <i>regardless of what happened outside</i>.  I detached from the “how” and just focused on the end result.  That is the true lesson of “detachment” as preached in religious and spiritual disciplines.  Detachment allows the Universe, Source, to choose the best way to provide the result with us still be open to receive the gift.

It’s like my asking a Philanthropist for one million dollars but only if I can pick it up as a money order at the corner 7-11 (that’s attachment)!  We focus on specifics without realizing that there are better, easier ways for manifestation to occur.  Meanwhile, the Philanthropist has a million dollars waiting for me to pick up in one of a thousand banks at my convenience, with a limosine waiting for me at my house while I wait in line at the 7-11.

We try to impose our own wisdom on Source.  The skin cell tries to tell the quarterback how to throw a touchdown!

I started to realize that Source was like me.  I watch over my kids’ bank accounts (both in school) to make sure they have enough money for their needs.  They don’t even need to ask.  I just watch and provide.  My kids don’t have to think of how the money gets there.  They don’t have the resources for that while I do!

If I can do that with my limited resources and wisdom, how much more can Source with Infinite Resources.  What makes it so hard to believe that I will get what I ask for?  If Bill Gates can spare me $10,000 without blinking, how much more Infinite Source?

It comes down to this – what we ask for we get but we have to actually extend our hand and be at the right place to receive it.  We have be open to many possibilities because we are in a chess board where we, the chess piece, can only see left, right, front and back while Source, the player, sees not only up and down but all the pieces on board as well.  Then, getting from point A to point B is it’s only a matter of time and a series of chess movements.

We are responsible for receptive thought.  But even more important, we are responsible for receptive feeling.

We create the <i>feeling</i> of the end result and the Universe creates the whole drama to get there.

It’s almost like watching a movie from the inside-out knowing that in the end, everything will resolve itself to our satisfaction.

 

Debugging Life – Looking Through the Mirror of Reality

I’ve gone through some debugging lately. That’s what programmers do when their software does not do what they want it to do. They write the program and watch what it does on the screen. When what they see on the screen isn’t right, they “debug” their code, finding and correcting errors until what they see on the screen is exactly what they want.

The term “debugging” came from the early days of computers when computers where large electrical machines that used switches to run binary calculations. One time, engineers were getting errors in their results but couldn’t find anything wrong in their program. They then checked their switches and found a bug squashed in one of their relays. The squashed bug caused the switch to fail resulting in the error.

Life also has software.

It’s our belief system.

Reality, our outer world, is the monitor through which we determine if our software is giving us what we want. The outer Reality is our computer monitor.

What really drives life is not the conscious beliefs we have. It’s the really deep, ingrained beliefs that are the result of social, religious, work and peer programming.

These are the beliefs we don’t even realize we have because they have become part of our nature. These took years of reinforcement with line after line of code embedded within our subconscious with each emotional experience. It becomes who we are and determines our actions and motivations.

It is the core of our magnetic experience.

I may want to have a million dollars but if I believe deeply and unconsciously that I don’t deserve the money, I will either never get the million, or if I did, I would blow the million in a few months as my “software” corrects the “anomalous” reality. The belief may have been caused by advise from authority figures, from religious teachings, or even from a childhood full of lost dreams.

While I have many beliefs in my system that need to be replaced by more beneficial beliefs, I have lately been struggling with this one particular belief.

That is that belief that what happens to me in life is because of either fate or because of things outside my control. (This sounds strange coming from someone who writes about the Law of Attraction. But it is this ingrained belief that drives me to search for the path to freedom.)

It is based on years of believing I was a victim! I was a victim of an angry and judging God! It was my parent’s fault that I am so introverted. It was my grandfather’s fault that I’m not good at business. It is my company’s fault that they don’t need my particular skills. It is always somebody’s fault.

This is a very troubling belief because, by believing I am a victim of fate and outside influence, I endanger my own happiness. By embracing a victim mentality, I continue to make myself a victim and invite others to victimize me as well.

But, at the same time, I have had many empowering experiences and during those experiences, I felt completely in control.

The belief comes up when I encounter something new and risky – like a business venture!

I make excuses why I’m so bad at business. I’m like my grandfather who was a great politician but a terrible business person. I have to work full-time. I’m an introvert and I don’t like socializing. I don’t like economics. I don’t think of money a lot. I’m a mental person not a hardware person. I don’t like to delve in details. I want to do something creative, not just make money!

It’s just a whole bunch of excuses other than one true thing – that I’m scared of losing a steady income on a risky venture. I have bought into the statistic that most businesses fail! Even before I started, I had expected to fail.

I recently reinforced this belief by finding out that I am an INFJ in the Meyers-Briggs personality type list, one of the worst personality types when it comes to business. This is one of the personalities with the “victim” mentality. By buying into the Meyers-Briggs personality category, I just reinforced this particular line of code.

I find rules, follow them blindly, and justify my actions based on those rules. I read articles in the internet and take them as “fact”. (Everything in the internet has to be true, right?) I subscribe to “rules” of marketing, networking, blogging, grammar, relationships, work and even compensation.

My whole life has been governed by rules and I’m, frankly, tired of it.

Rules have done nothing more than make me conform and accept an internal programming that has been written and debugged by someone else for their benefit. By my accepting their internal software, I accept a whole bunch of bugs as well because they just ain’t me! (Yes, I said ain’t).

It’s like running Apple software in a Microsoft computer! Software run in the wrong hardware comes with a million bugs!

So I’m debugging.

I will follow the rules that make sense for me and I’ll make my own if need be.

I’ve only just begun. I have a whole lifetime worth of debugging to do. It is never too late.

The nice thing is, when I fix a bug, I expect to see the change instantly on the screen of life. Life is my monitor. If life is right, then the bug is fixed. If life is not quite right, then there is a switch that needs a little bit of cleaning.

I guess I’ll be talking about cleaning a few more switches in the future.

The Magic of Expectation

Darren Brown is my favorite mentalist.

In one of his television shows, he embarked on an experiment on the subject of luck. In this particular experiment, he found a small town and he spread a rumor about a statue of a dog that is considered “lucky”. He did this by soliciting the help of a journalist friend who started the rumor by asking the residents of the small town about their “lucky” dog statue.

Over a period of three months, they traced the effect of this rumor seeding on the rapid growth of the rumor and how it affected the luck of the people in the town.

The results were a wonderful validation of the Law of Attraction.

To those who considered themselves already lucky, their “luck” tended to increase. People started winning lotteries, gaining more business opportunities, and improving their health. These lucky streaks were attributed to patting the lucky dog statue.

It is a tangible validation of the Law of Attraction. Whatever we expect, tends to happen. What happens in our world depends on what we entertain in our minds.What was interesting in this show was the focus on one person who considered himself truly unlucky. Darren Brown then wanted to see if the subject was truly unlucky, or if he was just missing opportunities. Derren proceeded to create “lucky” situations for the subject to see if the subject would take advantage of such opportunities.

The first opportunity was a rigged lottery ticket that was mixed in with the subject’s mail. The ticket was a guaranteed win. By merely playing the ticket (it was a scratcher), the subject would win a television set.

The subject never played the ticket.

Strike one!

The next opportunity was a fake market survey in which the interviewees were asked to name at least five cuts of meat. With the subject being a butcher, this would have been an easy win. Several interviewees were shown successfully answering the question and receiving money in return. When the subject was asked to participate, he said he had to go with a promised to come back.

He never did.

Strike two!

Finally, money was place on a ground directly on the path the subject was taking. The opportunity was there in plain sight.

The subject walked right past it!

Strike three!

What amazed me is that because the subject expected to be unlucky, he completely failed to see all lucky opportunities. Derren proceeded to repeat this test with others with the same results!

I experienced this recently after a very recent purchase.

I recently purchased a metallic blue 2005 Ford Focus. For weeks after the purchase, I began not only to notice other Ford Focus cars, but also other cars of similar size and color. I never realized how many they were. I couldn’t see them because I never looked.

The attraction of what we want must happen all the time. When we don’t pay attention to it in our minds, we fail to tune in to its frequency and we become “blind” to the manifestation of our desires.

Derren Brown’s experiment showed me that what I want is already in front of me. All I have to do, is see it!

You can find this episode in Youtube – “Derren Brown – The Experiments: The Secret of Luck”

Law of Attraction Testimonial – The Problem With Seeing Life Through a Microscope

Sometimes, life turns upside down. Things happen that we don’t particularly want to happen. We start to feel empty and in despair. All that positive thinking you have claimed to be so good at just goes out the window. You feel like a fraud.

If you are particularly sensitive, things are even worse because your emotions are so powerful and focused. Whatever you focus on tends to magnify in your own mind.

Focus is like a microscope. It makes small things look really big.

A mite looks mighty big when viewed through a high magnification microscope. But then, so does a single grain of diamond dust. One is bad and scary, while the other as good and beautiful. Yet, both are small, too small to be seen with the naked eye.

I am a very emotional person and I pick up easily on other people’s emotions. Sometimes, I can’t tell if I’m really feeling something or if I’m just feeling what someone close to me is feeling.

I know one thing. Just as positive emotions can lift me up to incredible heights, negative emotions can plunge me into a dark abyss!

Negative emotions have a tendency to increase my focus. Why? Because I want to find out what’s causing it! Then, I churn the thought over and over again in my mind, taking it apart and putting it back together again, hour after hour, day after day. And with the passing of time, like a black hole, that negative thought keeps attracting more and more negative energy until I find myself neck-deep in muck at the bottom of a mental and emotional abyss.

Positive emotion on the other hand takes much less focus. There is not much to think about. If it feels good, I just let it happen.

I should know better. But then, since when does logic trump emotion?

I recently found myself in such a deep emotional abyss that it drained so much of my energy. I became tired and listless. It took me a lot of time to rest and re-energize before I had the strength to climb out of it. It took a lot of mental and emotional realignment. But, thankfully, it worked!

Just as the negative plunge began with a single thought, so did the rise from the abyss.

I remembered that when I look at a mite through a microscope, I ignore that tremendous amount of clean space around it. When I take the slide from the microscope and gaze at it with my own eyes, the mite is too small to be seen.

I began to realize that I was focusing on the 1% of my life that was negative instead of the 99% that was positive. And, by focusing on the 1% through the microscope of my mind, I was causing it to dominate my perception.

By simply shifting my thoughts to the 99% around the negative aspect, I was able to halt the build-up of negative energy and climb out of the abyss.

It doesn’t happen quickly. Just as time increased the negative energy of my thought, so was time needed to negate the negative energy and build the positive energy.

I offer no details of the circumstances. In fact, such details are not important. It was the feeling around the circumstance that mattered.

I was operating just like a radio – receiving waves of emotion, magnifying them, and then sending them out again. These waves would reach kindred emotions, magnify even more and return to me like a tsunami. It was a vicious cycle.

I had to break the cycle. I had to reverse the frequency from negative to positive. It was incredibly hard work for the mind is such a powerful thing. The first and most important thing was – to STOP THINKING! It was important to just be still. Only when I made the slight turn to positive did I begin the journey to freedom.

Life is vibratory and cyclic. We encounter both good and bad cycles throughout our lives. When we understand this, we can shift our cycles upwards to stay positive. Then, we have the potential of only experiencing good in our life.

The journey to depression starts with the entertainment of a single negative thought. Energy goes with attention and time. A negative thought is a black hole, pulling more and more energy into it the more time we entertain it. But the reverse is just as true. Positive thought is a white bubble, shining powerfully out into the world.

I am fortunate that even in the midst of a depression, I found the way out through thought and knowledge. I am more determined now, more than ever, to forever break the pull of negative thought.

Law of Attraction Testimonial – The Rescue From Oblivion

Be very careful what you ask for. You WILL get it.

In a previous post, I described my quest for corporate success. I applied visualization to get what I wanted but I focused on the trappings and not the essence. I received the trappings – the executive office, the position, the prestige, the salary – but in a work environment and position that was out of tune with the person that I was.

For that mistake, I found myself a virtual prisoner of circumstance. I had left a wonderful engineering position in the West coast for a position I was completely unsuited for in the East coast. I felt out of place. I had burned my bridges. I could not find a way back. The move east alone was traumatic for me and my family, leaving us both emotionally and financially devastated.

I became a troll, alien to my family and grudgingly paying credit card debt that would take decades to clear. I was prone to accidents and experienced hardship after hardship. I hated the snow and the winters. I bought and damaged a brand new car. Misfortune followed me. I was a negativity magnet.
It took another three years before I decided that I had enough.

I made an internal decision, a specific intention, to go back to the West coast where I belonged, where I was happy, in a position that would be emotionally satisfying, while repairing my financially dire situation.

Surprisingly enough, my wife, who was opposed to any more moving (we moved three times in nine years), gladly concurred with the return to the West Coast.
But that that year showed no hope for such a move. There were no job openings at my previous place of employment. No potential employers replied to my resumes and calls. Furthermore, the housing market was such that selling our house at that time would have resulted in a loss, something our finances could not handle.

There was no way back. It was incredibly discouraging.

I resorted to something I had done in the past – journaling.

I bought a small notebook and started to journal as if it were months into the future.

I wrote in longhand. It was personal. I could write without having to worry about spelling. There were no backspaces to make corrections on the fly. It was not important. I just needed to dream happy things. Writing a journal made it feel as if good things had already happened.

I wrote about the joy of leaving the East for a new opportunity in the West. It was warm where I was going. Snow storms were a thing of the past. For a change, a trip to the airport for the move back was like being released from prison, at last.

I wrote about how the sun shone all the time and how my work environment was full of creative and inspiring moments. I was part of a team where I fit in as a designer and analyst, working in conjunction with those who enjoyed putting things together and testing them.

I described the fun my kids had at the park which was a sunny walk away along two lane roads so wide that you could fit three wide body trucks across easily.

I had a vision of a walk path lined by evergreen trees from which I could see the parking lot of my new place of employment.

I did this every day and reveled in the fantasy. When one notebook was done, I destroyed it and started a new notebook. It didn’t matter that the story was the same. It was an enjoyable fantasy. I changed small things but kept the theme the same.

I lost count of how many small notebooks I filled up and destroyed. They were for no one’s eyes except my own. I never even re-read my entries. The writing merely focused my imagination.

All the time, I focused on the journal. I did no job search as I had no inkling of where to go. I did nothing to improve my chances of moving back west. The Internet was not as pervasive then as it is now. I couldn’t tell what the job market was like.

Then, one morning, I received a telephone call. The voice on the other was a very familiar and welcome voice, one that I heard many times in my old company.

I learned that times had changed. I worked for two companies at the West coast and both companies had merged into one.

And, they had a problem. They needed someone with special expertise and familiarity of the product line with a long history. I happened to have that special expertise.

I was especially suited for that position.

The whole journey back to the West coast was like jumping off a plane. There was no resistance, just a series of easy and successful steps.
First, there was the job interview. It was less of a job interview than a welcome home, even before the offer.

Then there was the sale of the house. In that one year, the housing market shifted and our house gained a $100,000 increase in value. The house sold within a month of us buying another house in the West. The equity gained paid for everything, including our credit card debt and put us, for the first time in four years, with extra money in savings.

Then, my salary was maintained even as I rejected offers for management positions.

But there was another development. Shortly after my acceptance, a new position was created within the company that allowed engineers to rise up a different ladder, one similar to management, but focused only technical expertise. Despite being only in the company for a few months, I was one of the first to be promoted to this position. The ceiling over my career had broken.

One day, as I explored the area where I worked, I walked down a pathway with evergreens the overlooked some buildings. I had seen this before- in my own imagination.

I was back!

The same process that cast me into oblivion raised me back to prosperity.

I look back at the valuable lessons learned, earned through emotional and financial distress. I swore never again to pursue things for the sake of money or position.

There is only one true goal for all action – the pursuit of happiness. That is the essence. And it is different for each person. The path of happiness for one may not apply to another. Each one needs to find their path to happiness. The trappings of success will follow close behind.

The Law of Attraction – Testimonial – Imagineering Disneyland

I have studied the thoughts of both supporters and detractors of the Law of Attraction. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I have no desire whatsoever to argue. I am no preacher, or missionary. I’m simply a person who likes to know how things work, then use that knowledge to make my life better.

I have been the recipient of both positive and negative results of the Law of Attraction which has led to a deeper understanding of the Law.

In this and upcoming posts, I have decided to share the stories of such manifestations, not to teach, preach or shove things down your throat but, maybe, it may inspire you to keep a positive outlook in life. With all the negativity in media, keeping positive can be very hard indeed.

These happened to me in accordance to my own thoughts and beliefs. You will have your own results depending on the make-up of your own mind.

The first thing that always comes to mind when I think of the Law of Attraction is Disneyland.

Disneyland in California is my family’s favorite vacation spot. However, now that we live a thousand miles away, getting to Disneyland is an expensive matter, especially when there are bills to pay and we only have one income source. There was no extra money for vacations.

But I kept getting pummeled from spouse and kids alike for a trip to Disneyland.

I had come across “The Secret” at that time and I found myself relating to the part where we tend to say, “I can’t afford it!” all the time. At that particular time, that was a very true and real statement.

So I decided to change my mind. I kept everything to myself (something which is extremely important!) I merely worked things out in my head. No one had any inkling I was considering it. In fact, because I said nothing, that usually meant “No”!

I went into my imagination daily. I experienced the whole trip. It began with packing the bags, including my obsessive routine with checklists. I visualized driving down our driveway and taking one look back at the house. Then there was the plane trip, the hotel and finally…..Disneyland.
I decided not just to see and hear the trip but to experience the joy of Disneyland. I experience the smiles and my kids laughing and enjoying the rides. I even brought in the hot sun and the joy of drinking ice-cold water while resting our tired feet in the shade. I even included the exhaustion at the end of the day. That was part of Disneyland. You can’t spend a whole day in the park and not get tired. It was a good kind of tired. That made it just as real.

And I added one more feeling – the feeling that the money for the trip did NOT affect my savings account at all. In other words, the money for the trip would come from outside my normal take home pay. It was a relaxed feeling, as if someone else were paying for the trip.

Because I actually had money in my savings account for the trip, I felt no anxiety. I just didn’t want to touch that money. It’s actually quite hard to build up a savings account on a single income basis and blow it in an expensive vacation.

As I continued this “fantasy”, I intended for it to come true, while not being attached to a specific way of it coming to fruition.

I actually had no idea how to make it happen. The hardest part of the whole process was to throw that thought away.

Even then, I was the mind engineer. For me to move in one direction, I knew I had to remove all friction and all opposing forces. Saying, “yes, I go” while simultaneously saying “but, I don’t know how..” creates a resistive force that prevents forward motion. The thought of “how” just had to go!
I was looking towards having the trip during the summer.

My past experience with the Law of Attraction is that solutions usually pop up in unexpected ways.

I made the decision for Disneyland in January. I found a vacation package which included a special plane fare in which the kids flew free! That came out to $2500. Sounds low now, but it was a special package and that was back in the 2005 timeframe when the kids were less than 10 years old.
Around the April – May time frame, something happened.

At work, I was given two awards in recognition for jobs well done. Because of the level of economic prosperity at time, these awards included cash prizes. The total cash prize came out to something like $1500!

At that same time, I received a tax refund of about $1000. The combined total was exactly what I needed for the Disneyland trip.
Only when these monies appeared did I reveal to the family that we would be taking a trip to Disneyland. At no time did I bring up the Law of Attraction. This is a personal thing. It was between me and the Universe, and now I share it with you.

As I look back at the supporters and detractors of the Law of Attraction, and my own studies into the religions of the word, it became apparent to me that the most difficult thing for people is to detach themselves from a specific outcome.

People want a certain something in a certain way and they make specific plans and work those plans with great intensity. That’s because we are told that the harder you work, the more likely you are to achieve your goals. Fun is not part of the picture. The problem comes up when the goal is so specific that only one prize is available to meet the desires of many.

By being too specific, we close our eyes to the potential for other emotionally satisfying ways to achieve our goals.

Yes, it took a few months for the money to appear but (1) I didn’t have to “make” it happen and (2) August was a great month for visiting Disneyland.

I would consider that highly satisfying!