Saturday, January 2, 2010

New 2

What happens when we feel these unexpected, ‘out of the blue’, non-rational, positive effects? Are we grateful and appreciative? No, we wonder about them; think they’re a mistake, an aberration that won’t last. The ‘won’t last’ part is true, but the ‘mistake’ part isn’t. The more we learn to get our bloated nothingness out of the way, are grateful and appreciative, the more unexpected positive effects we’ll get. What you dwell on – what you focus your energy on, is what you get – be grateful and you get things to be grateful for. When things happen that you’re not grateful for, it’s OK to be upset, disappointed and annoyed, but get over it and try to be grateful anyhow, then make lemonade from those seeming lemons. If we let the universe be for us, it will be for us.

Another thing that happens when we feel unexpected, non-rational, ‘out of the blue’, positive effects besides wondering, is we get curious about them and want explanations. We’re uncomfortable with ambiguity and mystery, want to know. That’s why we name things. The name doesn’t really explain a whole lot, but it gives our rational, worry- prone consciousness something to hang on to, something it can know. For example, ‘gravity’ – a single word for a huge concept; does the word itself mean anything? No, we learned what it means. Same for ‘evolution’; look at all the baggage that word has. Words are but symbols of symbols, twice removed from experience.

Traditionally, words like, ‘God’ and ‘angels’ have been used to name and explain the unexpected, non-rational, ‘out of the blue’, positive effects we’ve been talking about. Like the word ‘evolution’, the words ‘God’ and ‘angels’ can work for us or against us, it’s our choice – our choice. We can let tradition, culture, religion, family or the dictionary define these words for us – even the dictionary has many definitions for each word, or we can take responsibility for the meanings we assign to them. We can be comfortable with the ambiguity and mystery, and the fact that everyone will not agree with us and that we might be ‘wrong’ – who’s to say - and take responsibility for the words we use and our own experience and its effect on our lives, families and communities.

After all, we’ve got to call these unexpected, non-rational, ‘out of the blue’, positive effects something, right, ‘God’ and ‘angels’ seems just as good as anything. Perhaps even better, because free of their baggage and negative connotations and denotations, these words bring continuity and a deep connection with the best of many religious and spiritual traditions.

So, instead of having the positive effects we want happening unexpectedly, ‘out of the blue,’ I’m going to offer a name to reduce the ambiguity and mystery and offer a semblance of control to enable us to consciously invite the positive effects into our lives. For the next seven days, I’ll be posting an angel affirmation for every day of the week. The idea of these is to consciously invite the positive effects associated with each ‘angel,’ to focus and dwell with that angel for four or five minutes. Do this first thing in the morning, more often if you like, and the positive effects will be with you all day long. Taken as a whole, all together, the seven angels represent the highest and best we would want in our lives.

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