Let’s make a bet.
I bet I can ask you one question that will activate a spark in you and call you to your path; as a honey jar calls to Winnie the Pooh, you will have no choice but to answer. I know this because once this error of thinking is illuminated, grace can enter, and life flows.
Within this bet, I will talk about three things that relate to you and your life purpose:
- I will discuss “the want in the corner” that derails mastery.
- Peace, happiness, and joy are not things but states of being and modes of travel.
- Living your lip service is the only way to make a difference truly. In my new novel, G.O.D., it’s called demonstrating.
No matter how much good you do in the world, if you don’t practice what you preach, somewhere, you’re also doing harm, if only in the confusion you cause in others. Live your lip service.
You already know there’s more to life on this planet than what’s been sold to you as important. Success? It isn’t the latest car, newest fashion, or biggest house. You’ve spent your life unraveling the mistruths delivered as “the way it is.” Now you’re ready to put it all together, step up and make the difference you are here on this planet to make. It may include the finest things, but it is not for the need of them.
Deep inside your body, there’s an inkling; it is more than an inkling; it is a pure essence untouched by man’s teachings. Its only contact with anything outside of itself is with the frequencies and tones, which are the very foundation of nature, the essence of life itself. My wish for you is to deepen your contact with the guidance it brings forth. To help you achieve this, I am shining a light on one nefarious belief that only hurts you.
Simply put, it is the belief that your beliefs will change how it is. I call it “the want in the corner.” It’s wanting things to be how you want them to be so badly that you cannot see things as they are.
The want in the corner keeps you hoping things will be different, secretly praying that this or that will change ~ all without you doing things differently. The want in the corner keeps you petitioning invisible forces for the outer world to align with your shoulds (it should be like this) instead of getting how it is and taking action to bring your shoulds into existence.
Let’s say you are on Main St. and need to get to Taft Ave. You wouldn’t ask for directions from Ocean St. to Taft Ave. No. This wouldn’t help you. You need directions from where you are. It’s simple. You must know where you are to get where you want to go. You must see what you have, what you need, and who can help.
The want in the corner knows all about how it “should” be. And not so much about how it is.
The want in the corner is resistance masquerading as truth. It’s “if only” thinking. Is your life an exercise in acceptance or resistance? It’s a combination of both! Look around; you’ll be surprised at what you find. See the difference between the places where you resist and the places where you accept. This recognition can change your angle and reframe your thinking, which is what you need to do to have a different life. Change your criteria, change your life. But you have to know what you’ve got before you can see what you need.
There are important distinctions for understanding when your beliefs can change the way things are and when they cannot. This brings me to the Universal Laws.
Your beliefs cannot sway the laws that operate nature. You are not that powerful! The Universal Laws are not directives telling you how to behave on Earth. They are the structure within which nature operates, the architecture of this cosmos.
All you need to do is open your eyes and look around you, and you will see the immutable universal laws in action. Look at food: a seed produces a plant, which makes another seed, and the scraps from the plants compost together to fertilize the next round of growth. Bodies live and take in air, nutrients, and blood pumps through the heart day in and day out; your thoughts have nothing to do with it.
Nature is. Life is. Your thoughts do not have any bearing on nature, life, or the structure of how the world works. You may discover more laws, but the fact that you are just discovering them does not make the law new; it just means you have opened your eyes.
Take the law of resonance, for example. This law is often mistaken as the law of attraction, but it differs. The Secret will try to get you to believe that like attracts like, but all you have to do is see how magnets behave in nature, and you will know at your core that opposites attract, not likes. Wholeness includes light and dark.
Now let’s look at vibrations and resonance – if you were to play a violin in a room full of violins, all the violins would tune to the note you played. That’s resonance, not attraction. It doesn’t matter if the violin is the same quality as another; the vibration aligns. Your beliefs cannot make positive poles attract, or violins stop attuning to each other. Your beliefs cannot make the natural cycle of life interact with us any differently. Life is and has a structure. Our bodies are part of that structure. But our minds are a whole ‘nother story.
Your beliefs affect your mind, but your body is subject to the laws of nature. Many of you will want to challenge me with statements like, “Yes, but if you believe that eating whole grains and vegetables is good for you, it affects your body because you eat better.” Sorry, but this is terrible logic.
The laws of nature do not change whether or not you eat whole grains; whole foods and vegetables are healthier for everyone, dietary illnesses noted, not just a select few. It is not your beliefs that make processed foods bad for you; it is the ingredients.
Let’s take a look at nature. How about electricity? Sticking your finger into a socket will shock you no matter your beliefs. If you flip the switch, the light will go on; you do not have to believe in anything.
Gravity, your beliefs do not change it! An apple will fall to the ground whether or not you believe it will fly!
If you eat enough of something poisonous, it will kill you, no matter how much you believe it won’t. No matter how much you want to believe your body isn’t allergic to a food, nuts, or substance and that your thinking can change it, you probably want to have remedies available when you test your hypothesis.
The want in the corner keeps you from mastery because it silently uses criteria that keep you on a wheel of trying to make it in a world where, by design, arriving gets you nowhere.
The want in the corner keeps you believing that if you say just the right affirmation the correct number of times, the sky will open up to you, and you will have everything you want. All you have to do is believe Peter Pan!
As David Zucker joked, “There is no “there” there. But there will be a pool.”
Is your thinking that doesn’t service you starting to identify itself? Is your want in the corner starting to rear its ugly head? Believe me, once it feels threatened, it will tighten its grip to keep you in line. You are strong enough to get through it. Just remember, it’s not real. It’s the want in the corner. The beliefs you have taken on to help you make sense of this crazy world, beliefs that no longer serve you.
As I mentioned, there are times when your beliefs matter and times when they don’t. Here are times when what you believe matters.
Information sources are a dime a dozen. You cannot throw a rock without hitting someone offering something you can’t live without to have a better life. It could be a prescription medication, a jar of night cream or a fabulous breast enhancement. News and advertising are being broadcast in your face 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from all directions. When the chatter in your head is advertising slogans, you know you have been overexposed to civilization! Christ, I still remember Winston tastes good like a cigarette should from when I was around ten years old!
What you choose to let into your brain is of vital importance. If you focus your attention on killing, violence and hatred, it will be a different life than if you focus on compassion, service, and love. If you read Zen texts daily, you will sail through life calmer than if you spent your time filling your head with war news, advertising and learning about all the possible diseases you could get.
Be vigilant about what you allow into the holes in your body for your own good—eyes, ears, nose, mouth and genitals. Monitoring your holes is a secret to staying healthy. Please pay attention to what goes into and what comes out of them.
Take a moment now and picture yourself making conscious choices about the images you allow before your eyes, the words you listen to and read, and the food you allow to pass through your mouth. What you rub into your skin, etc., by doing so, you have a better chance of remaining healthy – even in our toxic world. By tending to your digestive tract – through natural means, you will be ahead of the pharmaceutical-crazed, pill-popping world we live in.
The big question is how can you be aware of what’s happening and what needs changing, not be swayed by misinformation, and simultaneously hold the space of peace?
You cannot run around with your head in the sand preaching love and healing. It is easy to preach love at a love-in. Are you putting your principles, the ones you preach to others, into action in your own life? Is your lip service from experience? I ask myself the same question every day.
This whole piece of writing started with a bet. Here it is.
I’ll bet that once you identify the “want in the corner” and the secret beliefs that derail your true common sense, accept how things are and start acting from there, listening to yourself and implementing your ideas into your own life, your life will change and so will everyone around you. What is your want in the corner?
You see, we are all connected; you create ripples. Figure out how to be happier and be happier! Let it ripple out from you, not Pollyanna thinking, fundamental, honest-to-goodness understanding.