Last weekend a band was recording at our place (photo above), and one of the guys gave everyone a printed copy of a quote from Martha Graham. Martha Graham was a dancer and choreographer who lived throughout most of the 20th century.

I loved it so much I thought I’d share it with you here:

There is a vitality,
a life force, an energy,
a quickening that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all of time,
this expression is unique.

And if you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium
and it will be lost.
The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is
nor how valuable
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep yourself open and aware
to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction,
a blessed unrest
that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others.

I like so many parts of this, I don’t really want to highlight any one. I think the band last weekend were looking particularly at the bit about divine dissatisfaction… it is easy during recording to keep wanting to add things and fix things up endlessly, to the point where everyone is exhausted and the project is dulled.

The “no satisfaction at any time” seems at first glance to be at odds with my outlook—I’d say there is satisfaction to be had in following our unique expression, and part of doing that is to live with dissatisfactions with imperfections in our projects.

I do think that whatever our artform is, whether it’s music, visual arts, writing, blogging, business, politics, law, sport, teaching, healing, science, you name it… the trick is to “keep the channel open”. Which makes us more alive.

Akemi Gaines from over at Yes To Me has a new eBook out, Lightworker’s Guide To Self-Employment. You might like to head over to her blog and grab yourself a copy—it’s free!

One nugget I found was in the section ‘Embrace your crazy idea’…

Yes, I said it. If you have a crazy idea that you are afraid to tell even your close friends and family about, you are in luck. No, I didn’t say just run with it. You may need to modify certain aspects of that idea.

The thing is that your crazy idea says something important about you.

And remember, a lot of businesses that have proven to be successful started with crazy ideas.

I like this very much, and I think it ties in very nicely with what Martha has said.

What do you think?
More posts, a random selection:

• Birds Returning, Returning Birds
• This Blogging Thing
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• Plenty For Everyone
• An Eventful Month

Shirley Strachan of Skyhooks singing Ego Is Not A Dirty Word

Ego is not a dirty word
Ego is not a dirty word
Ego is not a dirty word
Don’t you believe what you’ve seen or you’ve heard

This is from the 1975 song Ego Is Not A Dirty Word, by popular Australian band Skyhooks.

I agree… I don’t think “ego” is a dirty word.

The healthy ego

If I did not have an ego I would not be here tonight
If I did not have an ego I might not think that I was right
If you did not have an ego you might not care the way you dressed
If you did not have an ego you’d just be like the rest

I think it takes a strong ego to contribute anything much to the world. When we suggest, or make, improvements to situations, we are saying “I know a better way”. It takes a strong ego to do that.

And we can’t make our unique contribution to the world if we don’t develop our skills and talents, so we can express them.

When we say some group endeavour goes well because there are “no egos”, maybe we really mean the egos are operating well. After all, if there were “no egos” in a band, no-one would be able to play their instruments!

When egos go wrong

To me, people who are “full of ego” or “egotistical” have a well-developed ego, but are not following inner guidance for some reason. They don’t know themselves and are scared.

A person with an under-developed ego is also in pain, if they resist growth. They might think they are doing the right thing because they spend a lot of time helping other people instead of doing their own work, but things never seem to work out until they focus on developing their own unique gifts—and ironically for them, when they do, they become more useful to others.

Both groups look outside themselves for definition, and begin identifying with this definition. Both are putting their ego in charge.

A person who lacks confidence in themselves can be prone to boasting, for example. Or starting wars.

If Jesus had an ego he’d still be alive today
And if Nixon had no ego he might not be in decay
If you did not have an ego you might not care too much who won
If I did not have an ego I might just use a gun

Well… I think the Jesus line is very interesting, and the Nixon one is too convoluted for me. I like the point about the gun.

Being healthy

I really do think that getting in touch with our life purpose is one of the magic key ingredients to being healthy, and satisfied and fulfilled in life. Doing this involves strengthening our ego, if it’s under-developed, or if it’s already good and strong, using it to carry out whatever instructions are coming from the Source via our intuition.

Some people keep their egos in a bottom drawer
A fridge full of Leonard Cohen
Have to get drunk just to walk out the door
Stay drunk to keep on goin’
So if you got an ego
You better keep it in good shape
Exercise it daily
And get it down on tape

I believe that due to the natural expansiveness of life, we lose our vitality and eventually our life if we resist progress, and for many people this involves strengthening their ego. Of course, healthy progress can involve slowing down and learning to just “be”. The key is to be able to tune into our intuition—this will lead us on the right path for us. Then we will come to know ourselves.

The guided ego

Here’s a passage spoken by the Source, in the book Vision
(Ken Carey), that looks back from a possible future to see how things may well have turned out for us by then. I think it’s very relevant to a discussion on ego…

In organic union, in Holy Communion, I blended with each one. Every human spirit knew it’s source in me. Each enjoyed being me as a distinct individual, fulfilling a creative design that no-one else could fulfill with the same artistry or effectiveness.

Each one enjoyed the distinctions of others, much as humans had always enjoyed distinctions; but more so now, for the distinctions became simultaneously less and greater. In form, the distinctions became greater than they had ever been in the Fallen state, but in Spirit, the distinctions dissolved altogether.

One Holy Spirit. One wonderful terrestrial body.

In a twist that is amusing for me, the person who wrote Ego Is Not A Dirty Word—a member of the band—is into physical immortality. Or at least he said he was in an interview in The Age newspaper in the mid-nineties, a clipping of which I have kept for all these years—I’ve no idea whether he still is.

To finish, here’s a video of Skyhooks performing Ego Is Not A Dirty Word, in 1975:

Immortality news

I received an email 2 days ago about a social network for immortals! It’s very new, it looks fun and fresh, and it’s called Spiritual Purification Media Project. You can click around it freely—you might like to check it out!

I came across an article in The Washington Times during the past week: Why stop at 100? Life spans may extend dramatically. I think it makes interesting reading.

I’d be interested to hear your views on all this. What do you think about the ol’ ego?
More posts, a random selection:

• 5-Year Plan For This Blog
• Moments
• Blogger Meet-Up!
• How To Be A Man And A Woman Both At The Same Time
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Saturn, the planet of manifestation through constriction, in astrology. Image from NASA.

Sometimes there are things we just can’t do. Not right now, anyway.

I’m all for unlimited thinking and believing we can do anything, but I also think we can choose to see the limitations we are stuck with right now as helping us.

When I was about 21, I went skiing for the first time. I was hopeless! I liked the idea of it, but the bit where you had to stand up after falling over while wearing boots that didn’t bend at the ankles didn’t quite work for me. I persevered, mainly because as a young school teacher I lived not too far from a ski field, and we used to go skiing on Saturday afternoons (the kids used to wizz past – “Hi Miss!”)

I even had six days skiing in Austria, but I wasn’t very good—one day I actually rode down the chairlift!

I have also tried netball, softball, basketball, volleyball, squash, tennis, horse riding and jogging, all with a high degree of failure (I’m not a bad swimmer).

I could have said “I can practise a lot and change my limiting thoughts and become a really good skier/sportsperson”, or I could do what I basically did, and sort of stop. I just wasn’t cut out for it—why struggle and go against the flow?

Perhaps there were better things to do with my time, that would be more satisfying for me than sport. I began to focus more on things like music and sound engineering… this has turned out to be a great direction for me.

Making it happen

I think it’s interesting that in astrology, Saturn is the planet of constrictions, and it’s also the planet of manifestation, or of making things concrete. It represents the energy of manifestation through limitations, or boundaries… which “shapes” things, or defines them.

It is unlike Jupiter, which in astrology represents the expansive “oh yeah I can do anything” energy… which as we know, can be great, but it’s quite possible that not much of substance happens.

I think the Saturn principle (of manifestation by constriction) works in two ways…
1. By not being able to do certain things, we are forced in a different direction from what we initially would have liked or thought of, and this direction turns out to be just right for us, in the long run (like in my unsporty-to-music example).
2. By forcing us to hone our skills and push through barriers, we end up with something really concrete.

Just for fun, I’ve put up the cover of my Saturn book, over on the right. I wouldn’t have begun writing books if I hadn’t been short of money at that time—a state which was rather on the constricting side. Now I am very glad it’s something I did—and the steady income from my 58 children’s books is very welcome.

I also thought I may as well amuse myself by setting up an Amazon store with some of my books for sale. It’s here.

High definition people

Physical immortality is about becoming more highly defined… physically, and in the things we do.

It’s about coming more into our physical body, instead of being airy-fairy and not quite there, so that our body, personality and creative output develop greater definition. As we come right into our body, we transform it and the reality we experience—and we are expressing more of our real self. We are “grounded”.

But if we are always lingering just outside our physical reality—escaping in some way—nothing really changes much, and we eventually drift away (die physically).

Our dreams

I think we need to feel good about our existence… to believe that anything is possible, and that we can dream and make the things we want come true. The question is how to achieve our dreams—how to best get from here to there. When we are going for some concrete manifestation, maybe the limitations we have right now can be our allies.

Immortality news

Blogs with a physical immortality focus are coming thick and fast. I found another one during the past week… it’s called Amritayana Buddhism, and the post of the moment is Practical Physical Immortality. I really like what the author, Will, is saying, and though it is a new blog, there is activity in the comments section—and Will replies to comments.

Leonard Orr is now publishing a series of physical immortality articles in blog format, here: Leonard Orr’s Official Blog. I would recommend Leonard’s writing to anyone wishing to explore the concept of physical immortality.

And just in case you missed my last post, Kathy Dobson’s new blog Physically Immortal is now up and running. She tells the story of her “awakening” to physical immortality in her second post: My Immortal Story. Her comments section is definitely open for business.

What do you think about all this? Have you had limitations that have led to growth or creativity that would not have happened otherwise?
More posts, a random selection:

• Blogger Meet-Up!
• Easter Sunday
• What If? The Movie – Clip 4
• Ice And Global Warming
• Ego Is Not A Dirty Word

A couple of weeks ago Janni Lloyd wrote the following in a comment on this blog…

The more we open our hearts to each other, embrace our differences and, in so doing, love all aspects of ourself, the more aliveness our physical body has.

Thank you Janni for leaving these beautiful words! I’d like to explore this concept further, and this is how I see it…

Life is expansive

Many people say they don’t want to live forever, that at some point they may want to explore more than “this world”, or else start a new life on Earth with new adventures. They refer to dying as though it is just a matter of slipping away… no big deal.

The thing is, life is naturally expansive. The more we love, the more we live! Aging and dying don’t just happen—we kill ourselves off with all our crappy angers and resentments and guilts and fears. We shut ourselves down!

Then, because we live in a loving universe, we are given another chance at incarnation so we can learn to love and not wipe ourselves out. Chance after chance, actually, until we get it right.

The world is our mirror

How can we “get it right”? One way is to choose to see everything around us as a reflection of our inner condition… we can only be upset by the people who inhabit our world if they are showing us something about ourselves.

If we work through an issue “pushing our buttons”, we find that the love and connection that is naturally there anyway can shine through—our hearts open, and the differences between us become inconsequential. We are accepting a part of ourselves we had been denying. We feel different—we feel more… alive.

And we know deep down when we need to clear something up—I’m not suggesting we should all go and make friends with the local crooks!

Endless aliveness

If we keep opening to love, our aliveness will keep blossoming. Why should this ever end?

A note: Many loving people have died, of course. The way I reconcile this with the sentiments above is by knowing that our sub-conscious minds hold fears and false beliefs—by definition we don’t even know what they are. By becoming more conscious we can clear these out, but not everyone has had the chance to do this.

What do you think about this? Comments are welcome.More posts, a random selection:

• Staying Young
• Insects Versus Mother Theresa
• Making The Most Of Life
• This Blogging Life!
• Ten Reasons To Decide To Live Forever

Superb fairy-wrens (aka blue wrens and superb blue-wrens)

These blue wrens are visiting the mirrored small window beside the front door at my mother’s house, in the country.

Normally they flit around all parts of the house, but at this time of year they get very excited by their reflections in the window, and spend all day there.

The blue one has only just turned blue, and as for the brown one, we don’t know whether it is a female or a younger male getting very excited and territorial at the sight of himself.

Whatever is going on, it is very entertaining. They squeak and fluster at themselves and each other, and constantly hop over each other.

Which makes it difficult to photograph them—as soon as I focus the digital camera they hop, and then I get a blur of feathers.

With the one-way window I can get right up close—I can see them but they can’t see me!

They are there from dawn to dusk, and I have been seeing them because I have been at Mum’s house a fair bit lately.

I am going back up there tomorrow for another week or so (it’s about a 2 hour drive away). No doubt I won’t be able to resist taking a few more photos of blue wrens.

Have you read Return of the Bird Tribes, by Ken Carey? I love this book.

It is one of those books that move you into a higher space when you read it—it has stories illustrating Native American spirituality and shows clearly that we are much more than beings designed to live a relatively short life that has a less-than-glorious end.

Here’s a couple of recommendations:

“A stunning, shimmering, joyful experience”
– Wayne Dyer

“A profound and thought-provoking account of many enlightened connections… Let’s hope that it will enlighten many and help thousands to plant a tree of love, peace and understanding”
– Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

Whether or not you consider yourself to be interested in “spiritual” matters, I think this book could speak to you, as long as you can find the time to sink into it.

To those of you who know you are definitely into things spiritual, and perhaps wonder at how one can reconcile physical immortality with knowing we are “more than just this body”, this is a book I would highly recommend.

If you would like to know more, a look through the reviews on the book’s Amazon page, here, could help you out.

Happy flying! – Robin (psst – comments are WELCOME)
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• Guy Finley Followed By An Illustrated Meme.
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Could thinking we are younger make us younger physically and mentally?

This question is discussed in Counterclockwise, a new book by Ellen J. Langer. It’s available now on Amazon, here: Counterclockwise

Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. In 1979, she and 4 graduate students undertook a study where a group of male nursing home residents in their late 70s and early 80s were taken on a week-long retreat, where they were asked to live like it was the year 1959, i.e. 20 years earlier.

The results were startling… the men appeared to become younger.

Langer writes about this and other research in Couterclockwise—I’ll describe this study here because she covers it in chapter one, the only chapter I have read so far. This chapter is available as a pdf from the book’s page on Amazon—here’s a direct link to it: Counterclockwise, chapter one.

The 1979-1959 study

The men stayed in a place done up to look like it was 1959. All magazines, newspapers, films and TV and radio programs dated from that year, and there were daily activities such as discussions of 1959 current affairs, held as though it was the present.

In numerous other ways the men were encouraged to feel it was 1959, such as by having ID photos of themselves from that time, and discussing the work they had been doing then as though it was the present.

The psychologists measured a range of indicators of chronological age (they had to invent them, because there actually are none) before and after the retreat, and found the men had appeared to become younger. The results were compared to ones from another control group of men, who also improved—who wouldn’t, after a holiday from a nursing home, with daily activities?

The changes in the experimental group compared to the control group were significant, however.

They showed greater improvement on joint flexibility, finger length (their arthritis diminished and they were able to straighten their fingers more) and manual dexterity. On intelligence tests, 63 percent of the experimental group improved their scores, compared to only 44 percent of the control group.

The experimental group also showed better improvements in height, weight, gait, and posture. They also looked noticeably younger after the study, compared to the control group, according to impartial observers looking at photos.

The book

Langer describes how the study came about, and how it was conducted, in chapter one of the book.

She then says the following:

This study shaped not only my view of aging but also my view of limits in a more general way for the next few decades. Over time I have come to believe less and less that biology is destiny. It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us but rather our mindset about our physical limits. Now I accept none of the medical wisdom regarding the courses our diseases must take as necessarily true.

If a group of elderly adults could produce such dramatic changes in their lives, so too can the rest of us. To begin, we must ask if any of the limits we perceive as real do exist. For example, we largely presume that as we age our vision gets worse, that chronic diseases can’t be reversed, and that there is something wrong with us when the external world no longer “fits” as it did when we were young.

Aah… a woman after my own heart!

Langer concludes this section with the following:

Mindful health is not about how we should eat right, exercise, or follow medical recommendations, nor is it about abandoning these things. It is not about New Age medicine nor traditional understandings of illness. It is about the need to free ourselves from constricting mindsets and the limits they place on our health and well-being, and to appreciate the importance of becoming the guardians of our own health. Learning how to change requires understanding how we go astray. The goal of this book is to convince you to open your mind and take back what is rightfully, sensibly, and importantly yours.

The psychology of possibility

Langer also writes about the psychology of possibility in chapter one… a way for both researchers and the rest of us to approach things by focusing on possibilities, rather than the status quo. She makes the point that psychologists have traditionally studied the “norm”, rather than exceptions that could show possibiliies. She says “Much of my own research is designed to test possibilities, not to find what is descriptively true. If I can make one dog yodel, then we can say that yodeling is possible in dogs.”

She goes on to say:

When faced with disease or infirmity, we may find a way to adjust to what is. In the psychology of possibility, we search for the answer to how to improve, not merely to adjust.

For example, most of us believe that between the ages of forty and fifty, our eyesight will start to decline. If instead we thought that perhaps our eyesight could improve over time—be better than when it was at its best—we might develop ways to make that happen.

Also:

…many psychologists presume memory loss is a natural part of aging. An older person who doesn’t have memory loss is seen as an anomaly instead of becoming a model for how we all might be.

Wrap-up

I enjoyed reading chapter one very much—I think it would be valuable reading for anyone, whether or not they intend to go ahead and read the whole book.

I’ve never been a fan of thinking we are best off expecting and preparing for certain changes that are commonly said to come with being certain ages—I think these expectations become self-fulfilling.

My own reaction to things like eyesight problems, grey hairs and weight gain is to try looking for ways to reverse them, using the mind-body connection. I’m not the only one… I had an email recently telling me of someone who is starting to grow silky, coloured hair in place of grey, after setting the intention to do so (I’m not suggesting that grey hair is a disaster to be corrected, the person is exploring, I gather).

Ellen Langer’s research supports the idea that we create our own biology—as far as I’m concerned, this is a great development.

Too many of us believe the world is to be discovered, rather than a product of our own construction and thus to be invented.
~ Ellen J. Langer

Newsweek article

I’d also suggest if you are interested in any of this you check out Wray Herbert’s article in Newsweek: Just Say No to Aging? He writes about Counterclockwise, and has some interesting things to say.

Relevant links

Ellen Langer’s website and blog
Counterclockwise on Amazon

I’d like to thank Janni Lloyd for letting me know about this book’s arrival. Janni hails from Perth, Australia, and she writes about physical immortality here: Janni Lloyd. Thanks Janni!

Just a quick note regarding my last post… Frank would like me to let you know he very much appreciates the kind comments many of you left for him (and he is doing fine).

Comments about any of this are very welcome! More posts, a random selection:

• Moments Revisited 1
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• Physical Immortality Discussion On Oprah.com
• The Genie That Keeps On Giving
• What If? The Movie – Clip 2

What if? The Movie – Awakening is a must-see, in my opinion. Here’s why…

What if? gently breaks the news that we have unlimited potential. That the way most of us are expressing ourselves in the world today is only a mere shadow of what we are capable of doing and being.

New possibilities for existence are introduced by asking “what if?” questions, that allow us to consider these possibilities without having to decide right away whether we want to take a deeper interest in them.

In the movie, we are first shown some history of mankind’s outmoded beliefs, and how we have limiting beliefs programmed into our subconscious mind from an early age—and how we can change this programming.

Then it moves onto talk about gene activity being controlled by our minds, people who have healed themselves from within, people who live without eating, overcoming aging and death, and last but not least, finding fulfillment from knowing who we really are and expressing our true nature.

The key is in the cast.

I found the speakers in What if? to be warm and intelligent, and to have the natural assuredness of people who have lived with their ideas and beliefs for a long time, and developed great expertise in their field.

Quite a few of the 30 or so speakers in the movie come from the science and medical professions. Dr Joe Dispenza, a neuroscientist and chiropractor, has great knowledge of the specifics of the mind-body connection, and Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. was a career biochemist whose book The Biology of Belief is about his discoveries about how our beliefs influence our gene activity.

Bernie Siegel, M.D., who has a background as a surgeon and prefers to be called “Bernie”, started Exceptional Cancer Patients, a specific form of individual and group therapy utilizing patients’ drawings, dreams, images and feelings.

Other cast members include Brandon Bays, who I wrote about in my post The Journey, With Brandon Bays (I first heard of her from What if? in January and jumped at the opportunity to go to her workshop when she visited Melbourne in February), Joanna Cherry, founder of Ascension Mastery International, and Dan Brule, breathworker extraordinaire (my description).

And James Sinclair, producer and director of the movie, who speaks very eloquently on camera and in narration, about his thoughts and visions of what is possible.

There are far too many great people in the cast for me to mention them all—there are bios for the What if? cast here, if you wish to explore further.

My take

I found What if? very inspiring… I already knew we are capable of healing ourselves of anything and fulfilling our potential, but seeing this movie gave me an extra boost towards making it happen in my daily physical life. An extra level of confidence. It had something to do with seeing all these intelligent, thoughtful, gracious people so calmly sharing their experiences and knowledge, that made me feel “yes—we can do this”.

I’d also like to say I very much liked the music! I thought it was very moving and enhanced the feel of the movie at the right times, without being intrusive.

I bought the DVD, which has bonus footage of the cast members speaking, and a director’s commentary of almost the whole movie, narrated by, well, the director, James Sinclair. I loved the director’s commentary—I always enjoy getting the inside information, especially when the topic is something I’m rather interested in.

What if? is available as a download (for $4.95) as well as a DVD, from the What if? website.

I’d like to finish with a “what if” question posed by Dr Bernie Siegel—he didn’t ask it in the movie… I found it buried away on the website in the testimonials section and thought it captured the tone of the movie—profound, yet light-hearted—rather well.

He asked:
“What if Jesus was the only normal person to have lived?”

Maybe it might help us to re-define what is “normal”.

Comments are very welcome!

Related posts

What If? The Movie (with a short clip)
Interview with James Sinclair, Director of “What If?” Part I (from Jenny Mannion)
Evelyn Lim’s post My Personal Creed has a short review of What if? at the end.More posts, a random selection:

• What If? The Movie – Clip 4
• Wanting To Look Young
• Moments Revisited 1
• A Magic Trick For Relationships
• Birds Returning, Returning Birds

This is a photo of me when I was little—Mum took it. The relevance to this post will become clear as you read on!

I’d like to share with you a visualisation exercise the group did once at a workshop I attended. I do this exercise now and then in my head when I want to settle myself—I found myself doing it this afternoon because I have been feeling out of sorts and unfocused for a little while now. 

I’m not suggesting it will change everything if you do it, should you feel the need, but you might like to add it to your list of handy tools.

The exercise

We were asked to close our eyes and imagine ourselves 5 years previously, and to notice what we looked like, how we felt, and what we were doing. Then 10 years previously, and make the same observations.

Then to keep going back 5 years at a time, until we reached…

20 years old

15 years old

10 years old

5 years old

as young as we could remember, 

…making the same observations for each age.

Then we were asked to notice that although we had changed over the years, the part of us that was observing ourselves has always been the same.

And that this part of us is always in a state of ecstasy.

The observer

I believe that the “observer” part of us is actually our higher selves, the aspect of ourselves that is beyond our personality/body structure. When we are in touch with that part of ourselves, we can see and understand much further. When we are in touch with that part of ourselves, we can feel the ecstasy.

* * *

Comments are very welcome!More posts, a random selection:

• On Overcoming Obstacles
• What If? The Movie, A Review
• My Last Blog Post
• Ice And Global Warming
• Fires In Victoria

image from thesecret.tv

Frank and I finally watched The Secret about 4 weeks ago—we must have been about the last people in the known universe to watch it.

We loved it. 

I’ve been ignoring it for quite a while because I’ve been working with the ideas in it for many years, so didn’t think I’d learn anything new, and because from advertising I’d seen, it appeared it would be a bit “trashy”, with an annoying over-emphasis on obtaining material goods.

Instead I found a warm, human movie that inspired us hugely to get on with attracting more of what we want into our lives. Frank loved it so much he bought the book by the movie’s creator, Rhonda Byrne, and has already read it!

We get what we ask for

The Secret illustrates very clearly how the universe—symbolised by the “genie” in our myths—gives us exactly what we ask for, whether we like it or not, or believe it or not. 

It’s lucky Frank went and bought the book, because now I can quote some of it here!

There’s this from Lisa Nichols, a speaker in the movie:

The law of attraction is really obedient. When you think of the things that you want, and you focus on them with all of your intention, the law of attraction will give you exactly what you want, every time. 

When you focus on the things that you don’t want—”I don’t want to be late, I don’t want to be late”—the law of attraction doesn’t hear that you don’t want it. It manifests the things that you’re thinking of, and it’s going to show up over and over and over again. The law of attraction is not biased to wants or don’t wants. When you focus on something, no matter what it happens to be, you really are calling that into existence.

Rhonda Byrne continues the theme with:

When you focus your thoughts on something you want, and you hold that focus, you are in that moment summoning what you want, with the mightiest power in the Universe. The law of attraction doesn’t compute “don’t” or “not” or “no,” or any other words of negation. 

Rhonda then gives several examples of what the law of attraction is receiving (in italics) when we speak the words of negation. Here are two:

“I don’t want that person to be rude to me”  - “I want that person and more people to be rude to me”

“I don’t want to be delayed”  - “I want delays”

I’d like to put two of my own in here:

“I say NO to child poverty” - “I want child poverty to continue”

“I want to see an end to war and conflict” - “I want war and conflict to continue”

I mean, I believe we can visualise children being happy and healthy, and focus on the peace and intelligence in the world, and have more successful outcomes than the thoughts above would bring.

We are in this together

The various concepts in the movie were illustrated by little scenes where the characters were doing things all wrong, and then doing it right. Something I really liked was that the characters doing it “wrong” (for example, worrying about money) were showed in a warm, human way, rather than in a way that inspired mockery. I think it would be fair to say most of us have been in these places! 

How to create

From Robert Collier (1885-1950):

See the things that you want as already yours. Know that they will come to you at need. Then let them come. Don’t fret and worry about them. Don’t think about your lack of them. Think of them as yours, as belonging to you, as already in your possession.

After seeing the movie Frank and I felt very inspired, and decided we REALLY would like to own our house (we rent it), or another one that is even better. This was also brought about by the fact we recently returned from our 6 days camping at a music festival (we had a wonderful time, by the way), to be greeted by the most humungous, ginormous heatwave ever experienced here in Melbourne, and our house has neither air conditioning nor a stick of insulation. 

Normally we are quite comfy, and can weather the occasional outburst of extreme heat, but this one entailed 4 days of 38, 44, 44, 44.5 C (100-113 F) – it was 99 F inside our house for 3 days! We huddled around a small portable air-conditioner in one room – oh, how we suffered! Actually, many suffered – on the final day one million homes had their power cut during the day, 500,000 more that evening, and the trains stopped altogether (leaving thousands stranded). 

So! In order to own our home (so we can insulate it etc), we are sensing that we already own it, and to help things along we have downloaded and printed out a nice cheque each (from thesecret.tv website), which is now filled out with a large sum of money and put on the wall, where we see it often. This one:

The money is ours—and so is world peace, incidentally.

Physical immortality

I really do think we create our youthfulness and longevity with the law of attraction, the same as in the examples in the The Secret. 

If we believe that all living things die and we will too, one day, then that is what we will get. Conversely, if we believe and feel we will go on indefinitely, enjoying the eternal present moment in increasing health and youthfulness, we’ll get that. 

The wonderful new movie What if? The Movie introduces this very concept—I’ll be writing more about this movie in posts to come.

Life is too short?

What about those statements people commonly make… Life is too short to [insert whatever]?

Their intention in saying it is to affirm they are not engaging in limiting patterns, but I wonder what the Universe hears. That their life is short? 

I personally don’t think it is wise to be putting out statements implying we have a short life—not if we are desirous of a long, happy, healthy life, anyway. When I pointed this out to Frank some time ago, he started replacing those statements with “Life is too long to…” ones. 

Like, say, “Life is too long to be angry at so-and-so”, or whatever. I’m not sure it always translates, but I think it’s pretty cute (and inspired).

Our own genie, the Universe

I whole-heartedly believe the Universe behaves like the genie in our stories and gives us exactly what we ask for. I simply cannot believe we are helpless victims of random circumstances.

I know not all of you, my lovely readers, agree with this. To me, however, it’s the only scenario that makes sense—it’s the most logical and inspiring one there is.

* * *

Comments are very welcome!

Related posts:

The Money-Go-Round  
What If? The MovieMore posts, a random selection:

• What If? The Movie – Clip 3
• On Overcoming Obstacles
• What If? The Movie – Clip 2
• Keeping Body And Soul Together
• Friday The 13th.

It’s now evening on New Year’s Eve, here in Melbourne, and it’s time for me to bring you Clip 4, from What if? The Movie.

This is the last of the 4 promotional clips from this recently released movie I am showcasing. The other 3 are on my posts What If? The Movie, What If? The Movie – Clip 2 and What If? The Movie – Clip 3. I’m very pleased to have been promoting this movie!

In this clip, Virginia Ellen talks about people in the Himalayas who have babies at age 70 and 80, and who are still working at 140. She mentions that they have pure food, and she refers to their lifestyle. Like the other clips from this movie, this one is going outside of what we generally think is possible.

Here it is:

I would love to know more about these communities! I still haven’t seen the whole movie, so I don’t know whether it gives more information. I do find myself wondering what the evidence is for their ages. Perhaps this information is purely anecdotal—it might be hard to prove scientifically. Doesn’t mean it isn’t true!

Food

Virginia isn’t saying food has to be pure for a person to live longer, but I thought this clip was implying it, a little.

I personally think that we can change our health and longevity by working with our intuition, thoughts and emotions, and that we don’t necessarily need to be affected by food impurities, toxins, nasty bacteria and viruses, and the rest. A self-realised immortal being would be able to cope with a few artificial colours and flavours!

I do think a person who is emotionally healthy would tend to be drawn to eating food that serves their body well. But many of us know some elderly relative who smokes like a chimney, or whatever, and lives to a ripe old age.

What do you think?

oh, and… HAPPY NEW YEAR!More posts, a random selection:

• Finding Our True Selves
• Ego Is Not A Dirty Word
• How To Be A Man And A Woman Both At The Same Time
• My Last Blog Post
• What If? The Movie, A Review