Monday, March 19, 2007

Intetions and creating reality

I've been thinking about how much what I intend and what I focus on are often NOT the same thing. I might intend to create the reality of being in shape, but then I do not focus on exercise; the result of which is the thing I intend does not manifest.

Therefore, it makes sense that your intentions and your focus should be in accord.
Your focus can belie your intentions.... Your focus is where you spend energy and eventually act upon.

How can we align our intentions and focus and actions so that we are actualizing our potential and creating the realities we really want?

I've often been intrigued by people who speak to this.

The first person in my life who really introduced me to this concept was Shakti Gawain.
I was 18 years old, living in San Francisco, and had a weekly habit of spending hours and dollars in City Lights Books, a famous bookstore and literary haven in the Bay Area.
I've seen and heard many famous writers read their works there and give talks and hold open q&a sessions there. Fascinating.

One night, while I was checking out the scene, an interesting woman with perhaps an even more interesting name, Shakti Gawain, was sitting on the floor, in the middle of a circle of people, talking about creating the reality you want.
My ears perked up, I moved into the closest spot I could find, and listened.
It sounded simple: think about the reality you want, and it helps make it so.
"Could it really be that easy", I thought.

She said something that really affected me, and I want to look it up to quote it exactly, but for now, I'll paraphrase:
in order to be happy you have to think happy thoughts. If you feel sad, smile, and it will tell your brain a message of feeling happy. Look at the trees and the sky and be thankful. Tell yourself, I'm thankful for the tree. The sky is beautiful, I feel happy! Repeat it over and over and it will change how you feel!

I bought her book, Creative Visualization, that day, read it, and summarily bought everyone I knew at the time a copy for xmas, telling them, "you must read this book".

Through the years, her Creative Visualization book was like a bible to me. I noticed that when I followed it, I created happy and wonderful things in my life that I thought I wanted. When I didn't follow the guidelines in the book, I noticed my intentions and focus became sloppy and my life manifested things I didn't really enjoy.
Time and again my suffering would remind me to get on track and focus on the reality I wanted to create.

Often, when I was unhappy, I'd repeat the mantra, "notice what you do like, notice what you do like", because I think I often tend to fall to the default position of noticing what I don't like.

This past year, I discovered the book, The Secret. A magical friend, Linda Gates, told me about it, wide-eyed and enthusiastic.
"Do you know The Secret?", she asked, smiling her mystic magic at me.
"Yes, I know the secret.", I answered, smiling back, my heart racing, because I knew she was going to tell me something I might not already know.
"But do you know THE Secret?", she said, winking.
She reached to the bookshelf in her new agey store, and handed me a book, entitled, The Secret!

I snatched it up and read it that night.
Then, I bought the DVD the next day, and have been telling everyone I know about it, because it contains the wisdom that Shakti Gawain shared 25 years ago in her book, Creative Visualization, and it combines her wisdom with other mystics, sages, scholars, and magicians who see that the secret for creating the reality we want is in our hands!

Today, I sit here, reflecting on this, because I have employed these wisdom practices, of creative visualization, focusing on my intentions to make them realities, and I am pausing now, here, today, as I stare out over the rain covered and wind blown garden, to reflect and be thankful.

I am thankful that the reality I now experience today is one that I have built and worked toward, prayed for, visualized, intended, focused upon, and wished for and wanted.

And it is this blessing that makes me feel inspired and ambitious to thrive forth in forging the next realm of reality I wish to dwell in.

What realm of reality do you wish to exist in?
What is your heart's desire?
What do you intend to be your experience in life, and what focus are you giving that?

I leave you with this thought, posted by some friends for inspiration.

Wishing you the best,
Leila

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