I love feeling how Abraham said I’d feel, eager, creating reality from the comfort of my own bed, feeling the having off all my desire, happy and at ease.
It’s glorious feeling this way, open and free, integrating nonphysical, physical and my desires in the now, and feeling thought tones consistent with fulfilled desires while not pushing against them. Then, following impulses received from that feeling place, taking action, then feeling satisfaction as desire fulfill themselves. I love this life way. I love how easy life is. I love feeling my way to fulfilled desires.
It feels like fun
It feels easy
It feels like clarity
It feels like knowing
It feels like of course
It feels like joy
It feels like confidence
It feels like I feel in the dream state: invincible
An editor working with me on an anthology essay I wrote wanted a better headline. The original didn’t pop, she said.
Knowing what I know, I set my intention so Universe would do the work. In some life areas though, old habits are just that: moments later, I scribbled several ideas on my note app, trying to coax Universe into giving me some ideas:
Essay Titles I created while “efforting”. Ugh they suck!
That’s the hard way. And it felt hard. So I wrote back to my editor. I told her I’d get back to her. Take some time, She wrote back.
Days later, I Pre-Paved a future probable reality wherein I’d receive what I asked for: a wonderful headline, one my editor would love. One that would pop.
A couple days after that, I re-read my essay. It’s so good. It’s a true story about an adventure a Transamorous Network client and I experienced. While reading it “Life IS Joy” popped out of the essay. I sent that to my editor, even though I didn’t like it all that much.
My feeble attempt. 😂
That not liking all that much was a clue…
My editor didn’t like it either. She suggested something catchier, something with a play on words:
Not so good response…
Nothing came up when I focused, so I just let go. I figured my Personal Trinity would bring me a perfect headline.
That’s what happened
Last night I watched a favorite James Bond movie for the umpteenth time. A Quantum of Solace it’s called. I enjoyed watching it. I enjoy the luxury Bond enjoys surrounding himself in. People in the movie are pleasant to watch too. 😊
Then I went to bed, blissful in positive focus.
The next morning (the day I’m writing this), the phrase “A Universal Solace” came to mind. My immediate reaction was: hey that’s kinda good. Then I poo-pooed it as too obvious a play on “Quantum of Solace”.
But then I thought “wait a minute! This is what I asked for!”
Tentatively, I looked up the word “Solace”. It perfectly fit what happens in the essay. My Personal Trinity scored a direct hit!
I sent it to my editor. Here’s what she said.
Booyaaah!
I created a future probable reality, then let my Personal Trinity handle the rest. I noticed how hard it was trying to do what I wanted through action alone. I trusted my feelings instead. Look what happened!
What happened next: even better
Weeks ago I got an impulse that my essay could become a full-length book and/or a movie. I wanted to send my editor a note about that, but held off.
After getting her email above, I sent her two more emails, one replying to her acknowledging the new headline:
and another offering to work together on more projects:
Here’s what she wrote back:
Universe stands ready to do the work for you.
I marvel at this because I love writing. I always have. I love telling stories through various ways; through illustrations, film/video, through speeches and presentations and of course through words.
My life as a story is worthy of being told. And here is my editor urging me in this direction, just as an angel of the Universe would.
This path unfolding before me, filled with so much of what I’m wanting, feels ecstatic. All of it is unfolding aligned with talents and passions I already have, not something I learned in school, but something inherently me.
It’s all coming from my inner knowing, tied to my authentic self. I tell my clients their authenticity is from where their prosperity and joy emerges. My life offers living proof. Universe loves me.
It loves you too.
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Why was I in a funk then? After all, yesterday I received the a great big manifestation, one I expected for years.
I know the answer: Manifestation satisfaction flashes like lightning. In its flash my Broader Perspective expands. Fail to keep up with that and my connection with Broader Perspective diminishes.
All manifestations mark the path of my eternal, expansionary life experience. They’re like mile markers. Staying too long reveling in the manifestation, I feel the gap grow between me and my expansion. Because I’m not keeping up with it. What does “feel the gap” feel like?
It feels like malaise, slump, stagnancy. Rather than continued eager expectation I feel when focusing forward along my expanding path, I feel diminishment.
All manifestations create this experience. That’s why I know manifestations mark paths, they don’t signify the end goal. The end goal comes when I feel delight along the path.
The road ahead that is your life is being designed by you. What reality are you going to create for you and the world? (Photo: Yoal Desurmont)
It’s simple math
I’m always on the way to another manifestation. When manifestations happen, they always create more desire, thus more potential, future manifestations. Manifestations birth more manifestations, in other words.
I must “travel” manifestation-to-manifestation, because I am eternal. Doing the math 😊, throughout my eternity, I am always on the way to more manifestations. I spend more life, therefore, “on the way to” and comparatively less life “experiencing” manifestations.
Slumps come when I forget this simple math.
I like knowing and feeling the difference between pre-manifestation expectation, which feels wonderful and unlimited, and post-manifestation euphoria expiration, which feels like a slump or a funk.
Even in a slump, though, I know my path draws to me more manifestations. My job now: catch up with that which I expanded into, meaning, progressing along the path.
Resistance doesn’t have to be part of the process, but usually is. I know my Broader Perspective leads me along my path of least resistance to desired manifestations. So when I feel a funk or a slump, I know, in this moment, cooling my jets, relaxing, slowing down, being more attentive to the now, keeps me on track.
That can be hard
What’s interesting about that guidance, as accurate as it is, is that everyday life experience of Common Mortals does not encourage such behavior.
But I know looking crazy, living outside social norms, living the way animals, plants, planets, the wind, water and everything else in the Universe lives, is the path to all I want. Even as most Common Mortals live life differently.
I know following my Broader Perspective brings everything that I want. “Trying”, “making things happen” feels comparatively hard because it is. I prefer looking like a crazy person, a lazy person, a person with their head in the sand, or in a cloud.
My life looks crazy, scary even, but if feels wonderful. And I know in this moment, the moment I’m writing this, as I sit in my slump, in this moment I appreciate my path because “wonderful” tells me my path is true.
Resisting the slump by trying to get out of it, trying to change it into something else, veers me off course.
Instead, I lay low and enjoy the slumpiness for what indicates: “on-the-path” and more desired manifestations.
And in doing that, the slump and its slumpiness disappear. I know because as I write this, “slumpiness” is transforming. It’s transforming into knowing, appreciation, and happiness.
I turn slumps into opportunity by doing what most Common Mortals will not. So I live the Charmed Life. Where life feels good. And that tells me my life is getting better.
I stopped using alarm clocks….I can’t remember when. These days I lightly intend the next day, the day before. Rather than plan a to-do list, things I want to check off tomorrow, I tune my vibration, my feeling tone, my Moment of Becoming so that tomorrow feels fun and adventuresome.
All That Is then gets to work, setting my agenda for me, including dreams and their messages. Including what time I wake.
When I do wake, it’s effortless, easy and delightful. Impulses I receive inspire my action. By the end of the day, the day completes itself. Full of fun and creation, I end each day, these days, happy and ready for another dream state adventure and another wake state day after that. Life is a dream, adventuresome, joyful.
All That Is does my to-dos
This week I noticed my food stores running low. Over the last few days I compiled a list of things I’d enjoy eating. That list included ripening tomatoes and kale from my garden. All That Is, over this week, inspired other list items while also inspiring when where and how these items would fill my fridge. This morning I’m playful and eager, rather than head-down and determined, as I would be were I still in the 9-to-5 grind.
My Heirloom Tomatoes Ripening
My Mini Tomatoes doing the same.
So much life richness happens every moment since I chose living Positively Focused, which means living life’s dream, living on purpose, putting spirituality first and foremost. Describing that richness in words dries it out like turning juicy, mouthwatering beef into tough, dry jerky. Life’s beautiful, joyful experience wherein I play with myself (All That Is) in wonder-filled Co-creation defies description.
My diligent clients gradually get this. When their life gets this good, this fun and when love gets this constant and unwavering, none of them want to go back living and loving the way they once did.
I know the feeling.
The work-focused, American Dream lifestyle, lived on clock time with most of the day spent in jobs worked for money and vacuous sleep states where the sleeper sleeps oblivious to nonphysical’s grandeur, interests me not.
What I live now makes that life an absurdity, an abomination, a Christian’s hell right here on earthly heaven.
Here In Heaven
A housemate asked what I do for income. I gave an insincere, dishonest answer about about my projects. I don’t do my projects for money. I don’t do anything for money anymore. I create heaven; life fills in around that.
I live my life according to the great masters, finding glory in creating reality, glorifying All That Is as an integral component of creating life. It’s fun, living Positively Focused. There I find joy and satisfaction nearly moment-by-moment, heaven lived right here, where spiritual and material stand synonymous with one another. There, money comes as everything else: my creation, to the degree I’m ready, not because of something I do.
I “do” consistent with what I “be”. Then I “have” consistent with that. I be a spiritual being, sharing my love of living, of physical and nonphysical, with others so they may leave behind their alarm clocks.
I have life consistent with that. Being, doing then having. That’s the formula.
Most people live the other way around. They can’t be what they want until they have what they want. And they believe they can’t have what they want until they do something to get it.
I know better.
I could write it wasn’t easy getting here. But it was easy. My Positively Focused perspective transforms once hard moments into joyful adventures and fun times. As I change my present moment experiences through being Positively Focused, past and future change too. “Hard” becomes easy and fun, life gets easy.
Same with my relationship to money. I stopped pursuing it. It now pursues me, All That Is in a body on Earth, expressing freedom that is All That Is, for the fun, the expansion of that, and the joy inherent in it. I’m happy. Happy as a flower.
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I love what I know. I love how I feel. How I feel gets better with every breath. I love knowing the more I love how I feel, the more lovely feels become who I be.
And in that being, so must all my desires be. So they are. And the being I be expands my awareness so those fulfilled desires be in my beingness. In other words: life experience fills with fulfilled desires.
That’s good because it must be. And all that bes is good.
As I stand in my blessedness and worthiness I eagerly anticipate more evidence of my blessedness and worthiness. I know, I feel, I be. I be I do I have. And that includes my fulfilled desire.
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Walking home this afternoon after collecting footage slated for an upcoming film, my own consciousness struck me. On the way home strolling through an old growth treed park, I realized…I’m free.
No job. No boss. No income I depend on. Instead, money comes through alignment. Soon, as my Inner Being alignment grows more consistent, and legacy resistance subsides, more money, more opportunity, more of everything will show up.
I know this as sure as I know the Earth spins consistently in her orbit.
Be, do, have. Hearing that the first time, I loved it. Learning about it, I thought “Gee, wouldn’t it be great were it true?” Now, evidence I produce tells me it is true. And so I know. I understand the meaning and function of “Be, Do Have”.
Be. Do. Have.
I think most think it’s “Do, Be, Have”. That’s the way I wrote it here first. That’s also the way I practiced it. I once did things someone who has what I want does. In time, goes the instruction, I would feel (be) the way that person feels. Then, eventually, the Universe would bring me those things I wanted, things that person has now.
I know now that can work. Problem is, most likely someone trying to “do” first, will struggle. In the struggle, they’ll entertain thoughts consistent with what they don’t want, not what they want.
For example, someone who wants to have a racing career might start out being a go cart racer. She might not be that good at first though. She might get negative feedback, then take that feedback to heart. She might believe it. Then she might think thoughts consistent with the feedback. “I’m not as good as I think.” Or, “I took that corner so badly.” Or, “I’m not as good as so-and-so.”
Such thoughts are self-perpetuating and reality-creating. Her driving behavior will increasingly reflect her beliefs. Her driving behavior is early-stage manifestation born of earlier-stage manifestation: her beliefs.
If “Do” comes first a pitfall accompanies it: If I haven’t first practiced thoughts consistent with what I want, then thoughts consistent with what I don’t want dominate, eventually creating realities consistent with them.
“Be” first means tuning into thoughts and cultivating beliefs consistent with what I want. I be first. Do comes naturally from that because when I tune to thoughts consistent with what I want, my Broader Perspective guides or suggests behavior to take and, when I act, since my thoughts and beliefs already point in the “right direction” (towards the reality I want), they don’t contradict my behavior. Instead they amplify it.
My behavior is keen too. More refined. I don’t focus on the result. Instead, I play (DO). I have fun. Results take care of themselves. Including results that look like films or experiences I want or sustainable money flows.
Being and doing
Next is have. But the having holds a secret: I first must soothe old beliefs I’ve cultivated which oppose what I want. If I believe my skin color makes me inferior in ANY way, which is a common socialization meme, then I feel “insecurity”; an emotion telling me that belief is bullshit.
But if I’ve believed that a long time, then that belief will stand between me and what I want to have. If my belief in what I want to have is strong enough (the DO), then that belief momentum can “break through” that resistance. That’s a bumpy way to create reality though. Very hard to sustain too.
I prefer soothing old beliefs by taking attention from them and putting it on thoughts I’m cultivating into beliefs, beliefs consistent with what I want. Putting my thoughts on what I want is what being is all about.
My primary job: being. My Broader Perspective handles everything else. I be and tune into it.Tuned in I receive its guidance. Only then do I DO. That doing, being more powerful by virtue of Be-momentum, lines me up with outcomes already existing in future probable realities. Those realities become my realities gradually.
Delighting in the process, time becomes irrelevant. Before I know it, I have what I want. Then the having expands.
And that’s the conscious awareness striking me as I write this. I want more than anything freedom as life experience. I have that. It’s significant because as I stand in “being free”, I know that’s the most powerful place. It’s consistent with where my Broader Perspective stands in nonphysical. THat means I’m in tune.
That means everything else I’m wanting is also flowing, just as freedom as life experience now is.
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“This stuff makes no sense,” A client said. “It totally illogical. How do you know this stuff works?”
This client’s frustrated outburst is part of the path. In only six weeks their relationship transformed, they’re feeling more comfortable in their skin, feeling happier and more excited about life. They’re now pursuing dreams of becoming a well-paid musician by taking practical steps in that direction. Their life: better, their mood: more positive, their experience of life experience: more fun.
Why did such a question come up despite all this evidence?
In a word: momentum.
For a while it’s a roller coaster
When clients first start working with Positively Focused, they get excited. They see evidence of their life getting better everywhere. The more they alter their stories and perspectives, the more evidence they see.
At some point though, old stories reassert themselves. These old stories are living things, like everything else. They enjoy life energy they get when a person focuses their way. When a person stops focusing on old stories, they sort of push back. They don’t want to lose attention they once got.
When they push back, clients feel the negative emotion that comes with that. Momentum ensues and, before you know it, they forget evidence they created that excited them just days ago.
This is normal. It’s also why it helps having someone who’s walked the path and knows what to expect. That’s where I come in.
How do I know all this stuff works?
I know this stuff works because it’s working in my life. I know it works because my desires are coming true all around me. I know this stuff works because I feel excited about this work, I feel excited about life, about living, about the evidence happening in my life, both in physical and nonphysical. I’m excited because life feels so freaking great…and that’s because of this work.
In their frustration, this client couldn’t understand how I have insight to All That Is and “nonphysical”. They couldn’t understand how I speak so confidently about how the Universe works, how it’s designed by us to deliver all we want, and that life is supposed to be a positive adventure. They couldn’t understand how I could know something “limited human consciousness can’t possibly know.”
I told him the reason they can’t understand it is because they’re not yet where I am. I told them human consciousness is only limited when the human believes their consciousness is limited. The reason why I speak with such confidence, I told them, is because I’ve changed my stories, and my reality broadened to include awareness of the nonphysical world.
I have a third degree black belt in nine different martial arts. It took me about five years to get to that level. I once trained others in these schools. When I did, I spoke with the same clarity and confidence about that material as I do about “stories create your reality and here’s how.”
My “Menkyo” certifying my 3 black belts in 9 martial arts schools.
In the martial arts field, what separates my opinion from an opinion of a white belt, someone who is just starting or someone who has now experience at all? Experience, practice, knowledge and wisdom that comes from five years of personal experience with the material, with guidance from a 15 degree blackbelt who’s been training in this material over 35 years.
The same is true with this work. While others focus their attention on perhaps finding love, raising families, building careers, wealth and material satisfaction, I’ve focused my attention on epistemology and ontology using empirical methods applied across a wide variety of “spiritual” fields. I’ve been doing this at least since I was six.
Walking the path makes me an expert
So I am clear. I speak with confidence and clarity in this field in the same way I do in martial arts: I know because I’ve walked this path so long, I just know it.
The cool thing is, anyone can do what I do. With diligence and focus, anyone can have a life they love filled with everything they want and then show others how to get that. Life is meant to be lived happily. Do that and you’ll have a happy life. The question is, how do you “do that”?
That’s what I know and what I show my clients.
By the end of our time together, this client was back in their usual happy space born from doing the work for 12 weeks. They thanked me as my clients usually do: by telling me they love me.
I understand who and what people are. I relate to them from there. When I do, they feel that. When they feel that, they can’t help but express love for me. I’m loving them after all.
Frustration: that’s part of the path at first. Because I know this, I don’t let doubts about my credibility shake my confidence. I do the work, which is why I know what I know. And that’s why I can help people create lives they love.
This is a Positively Focused client. Like all of Positively Focused clients, he is getting immediate results in creating the relationship he wants. This is why I guarantee the process. It works.
My client is in a relationship with his son’s mother. Their relationship had been very rocky because our client was telling rocky stories about himself, about her and about his relationship. In three sessions, after cleaning up some of his unhelpful stories, his son’s mother started acting different. How? My client stepped into his Moment Of Becoming and created a new version of her.
In this clip, hear him settle into his reality-creation power. He creates people in his reality too, which is why his partner changes as well as his reality.
This client is now on his way to his dreams. He’s excited about the path and finds the work exhilarating, even while recognizing the work, in his words, can be a “blessing and a curse.”
I would say the work puts him where he belongs: at the center of the Universe, ongoingly creating the Universe that surrounds him. There, it does seem like a blessing…when creating the Universe on purpose.
When not creating on purpose, as the client says here, it becomes curse. Or I could say life shows clients how not creating reality on purpose leads to unnecessary turbulence in reality-creation.
The more my clients discover the joy of living in connection with their Broader Perspectives the more they get what they want. Then, living lives in created realities they don’t want feels awful. But that’s good: How else are my clients supposed to know when they’re creating on purpose, or creating through obliviousness?
Nows feel best felt when appreciated. Nows happen asleep as they happen awake. Feelings taken to bed are lenses through which dreams happen. More appreciation brought to sleep state, little-by-little, shows dream state’s wonder.
Indeliberate feelings make dream state chaotic, frightening; invisible too. Apathy, feeling nothing about joyous replenishment that happens while dreaming, creates an empty dream reality: an experience of no dreams, when, actually, everyone dreams.
Appreciation reveals dream state as it is: a wonder, pure joy made manifest, creative bliss.
I enjoy bringing that appreciation focus to conscious wakefulness too. The moment physical reality captures my focus, after a nightly sojourn through creation in nonphysical, after relishing that no-space and no-time in which I experience pure bliss, I turn my appreciation to my dreams’ physical counterparts: the dreams I so far have allowed into my time space reality experience. Knowing physical reality is dream made real, I relish the feels-goodness of it, as every morsel that is life merits my appreciation.
Brought to the fore of consciousness, appreciating my physical nows in early morning moments prepares my daily sojourn just as I prepare my nightly ones.
That is deliberate creation: knowing in every moment asleep or awake I ongoingly make All That Is more. Doing that on purpose feels good. Feeling that on purpose makes life happiness fulfilled.
Three weeks ago I wrote how every negative situation is positive. Well this week brought such a crazy-ass example of that, I shared it with all my clients. Now I want to share it with you.
This story is hilarious. I almost wrote “unflattering”, but you’ll see at the end that this story flatters me in the sense that I saw how this infuriating situation was also a massive blessing.
Summer’s sun, blue skies and Oregon’s hot breezy air called me out again last weekend. I love working outside along the Willamette River shores. I enjoy Ospreys above and salmon jumping skyward likely avoiding sea lions and their chisel like teeth.
I decided I wanted more of that, so I packed my bike. I packed light, my portable chair, my iPad and nothing more. I planned to finish reading Ross Douthat’s The Decadent Society, its insightful take on current reality had my attention for weeks now. I anticipated exploring Douthat’s take while enjoying the Oregon summer.
The usual spot I work from on summer Oregon days…by the Willamette’s beautiful shores…
That’s not what happened though
Oregon’s governor recently eased lockdown mandates. With her decree, all of Oregon made similar plans. I expected a few people riverside, but wasn’t prepared for crowds that showed up.
A forty minute bike ride turned into an hour while I tried finding suitable, solitary rest stop. I finally decided on a rocky shore devoid of human for lack of any sand. But I had my chair. I didn’t need sand.
I parked my bike, set up my chair then settled into Douthat’s narrative. Thirty minutes later, a couple with two dogs showed up. The young, tattooed Portlanders led their dogs to the water’s edge, unleashed them and threw tennis balls into the river. The larger of the two dogs, a pit-bull, leapt into the water while its smaller puppy companion barked in envy. Then the puppy eased into the water, found it agreeable and went for a swim. I smiled then turned back to Douthat.
Minutes later, the puppy was licking at my bare legs. I’m not a dog person, but I can appreciate a cute pooch. On this day though, I just wanted to read in quiet on a beautiful day. It annoyed me that this dog suddenly was licking my leg. But what annoyed me more was the fact that its owner hadn’t done his legal duty of keeping his dog under control.
I lifted my legs away from the pooch, clearly annoyed, which the owner saw. He came bounding to my rescue, scooped up his dog with an apology and returned to his spot. There, he put it on a leash. His partner too re-leashed the Pit-bull.
All that was nice. But it was too late.
I got hooked in frustration-momentum
Momentum is a powerful thing. Especially negative momentum born of oft-told stories. I’ve harbored negative stories about dog owners who don’t keep their dogs leashed and therefore under control as leash laws mandate. So much so it’s one of my “pet peeves” (oh god! no pun intended!).
Recently when I read about a “Karen” from Central Park Manhattan who made a racist false police report against a fellow New Yorker who politely asked her to leash her dog in an area where a leash law was in force. The fellow New Yorker, a board member of the New York City Audubon Society who happens to be African American, recorded the whole incident. The recording went viral and popular outrage caused the woman to lose her job and her dog. Reportedly, New York is considering banning her permanently from Central Park and the District Attorney is considering pressing charges against her for making a false police report.
This story came to mind as that puppy slimed me. When its owner grabbed it and apologized, I mused whether he also thought about that Central Park incident.
The problem was, I didn’t shake the association, which would have been in my best interest. Comparing my experience to what happened to the Audubon Board Member wasn’t really fair. But old stories about my pet peeve combined with that viral Central Park experience in my head creating momentum that swept me up.
For the next half hour I couldn’t focus on my reading. My mind swirled around the association, my indignation, my annoyance and frustration….
I don’t hate dogs. Dogs love me as much as I love them…sometimes…🤣
What happened next was no surprise
The couple decided to pack up and leave, having I suppose, had enough time at the water’s edge. As they walked to the bike path, I heard the woman say to someone I couldn’t see “Sir, would you mind leashing your dog?”
The irony didn’t escape me. “Cosmic Justice” I thought. Little did I know said justice was just getting started…
I couldn’t hear the what the person she addressed said, but I heard what she was saying. I also got the annoyance in her tone:
“Why aren’t you willing to put your dog on a leash sir?” She asked. I turned, hoping to see who she addressed. I couldn’t see that person. She continued.
“My dog isn’t friendly,” she said. The person said something I didn’t hear.
“How many years have you been around my dog sir?” She replied. “I’m telling you my dog is not friendly.”
Apparently whoever she addressed had done nothing, so she reached down, picked up what looked like a 40 pound pit-bull and scrambled over rocks the rest of the way to the bike path with her male companion in tow.
I was thinking about karmic kickback, wondering how the couple felt now since they themselves hadn’t controlled their (little) dog. Which is why I hadn’t noticed that not seconds later another dog was sniffing at my leg!
It’s my turn…
I turned in surprise, saw the Husky, then darted around looking for the owner. Presumably this was the same person the young woman spoke with earlier. Finally I saw him sitting in a chair he set up behind me on the bike path’s edge.
My indignance increased. “Really?” I thought. “Twice in a row?” What did I expect? I create my reality. Here was the Universe serving me a big pile of pet peeve….a second helping if you will, this time via a Husky and yet another irresponsible owner.
But wait…it gets worse. Or rather, I got worse.
I should have known trying to get the owner to do anything about his scofflaw dog would be futile. After all I saw that play out just seconds ago. Never the less:
“Sir, would you please come get your dog!” I said with force ten annoyance.
The owner looked down at me, at his dog and said “he’s alright.”
“I’m not!” I said.
The owner said nothing.
At that, I’d had it!
Now I was fully in rage. That’s right, I was so angry, I was shaking. I wanted to strangle that damn dog and murder the owner. But I also knew it wasn’t the dog’s fault. So I directed all my rage (in my mind) at the owner. I wanted to first strangle him, then murder him!
I should mention I had the presence of mind at this moment to see the ironic humor here. A part of me knew what I was doing was ridiculous. It’s just a dog. But the principle folks, and the momentum of my pet peeve had me firm in its grip.
Clearly this guy wasn’t going to do anything about his dog. There was no way I could recover my state of calm at this point, not to mention focusing on Douthat’s prose. I decided then to gather my things and head home in a huff, which took all but a couple minutes.
But I couldn’t let it end that way. Noooo.
As I pushed my bike up to the bike trail, I made my “offender” clearly: white male in his 40s, beer in hand, listening to a transistor radio, minding his own business and cool as a 🥒. Perfect contrast to my seething rage, which at this point, boiled over and out my mouth:
“YOU’RE EXACTLY THE KIND OF PERSON WHO GIVES DOG OWNERS A BAD NAME!” I yelled in his general direction. I hopped on my bike and peeled away on the momentum of my righteous indignation. 😂🤣😊
That wasn’t the end of it.
A half-mile into my return trip, it struck me. What happened here? Why am I letting this situation shape how I feel? How I feel is more important than how I’m treated. In fact, I know by choosing how I interpret what happens in my life, I can create reality. Here I was doing what a noob at all this “you create your reality” business would do…
At this point, I should stop and say I know sometimes I’m going to get pissed. It’s just part of what happens when an eternal being comes into physical reality.
Thinking an enlightened person doesn’t get mad sometimes indicates misunderstanding about how physical reality works. Physical reality intentionally offers variety: things I want and things I don’t want. After all, how am I to know what I want if I don’t know what I don’t want?
How am I to know what thoughts feel better than others, if I don’t have a negative experience every now and then?
That’s what I thought one half mile into my return ride. And that’s when I decided I had the power here. I had choice.
So instead of continuing to seethe, I decided to put my attention on something else. Something more pleasing. So I noticed the blue sky. I noticed the green trees. I noticed how much I like riding my bike, how good the sun felt on my bare legs and arms, how good it feels on a Oregon summer day. In seconds I felt better. My feelings reminded me how wonderful it is working from Oregon’s riversides:
That’s when something amazing happened
The more I thought these thoughts, the better I felt. Then…
Ever had an experience where something happens, you react in a less than ideal way, then, later, you get a thought, an idea, an alternative way you could have responded that might have been more effective?
Well that’s what happened. In my increasing happiness I received an alternative scenario that played out in my mind. Rather than throwing a tantrum at the guy, I saw my self calmly rise, gather my things and my chair, walk up to the guy and set up my chair right next to him. So close our chairs touched side by side. Then I sat down, looked at him and began politely talking his ear off.
That’s when I burst out laughing, a belly laugh so strong it obliterated my anger. I let this alternative reality play through my mind, adding humorous bits here and there – I saw him looking at me surprised, then trying to ignore me, then suddenly packing up his things and stomping off, dog in tow off leash. I imagined him and I actually having a friendly conversation, chatting away like best friends. I imagined him and I sitting there, me chatting away and he trying to ignore my chatting tsunami in quiet annoyance…
And you know what happened next? The entire situation changed for me. No longer did I see him as the idiot epitome of bad dog ownership. Instead he became a shining example of what I could be.
Consider this:
This guy was doing his own thing, oblivious to what others thought and said about him
This guy was in his own reality, enjoying his life with his dog. So was the dog!
This guy had presence of mind, a centeredness so powerful, he appeared unphased by not only one, but two verbal aggressors trying to knock him off his rocker
As much as I want to vilify him, he demonstrated to me vibrational mastery. And at that point he went from villain to teacher.
I want to be like that. I want to be calm in the face of storms.
And, in fact I am, nearly all the time.
Which is another thing he taught me: that I am that nearly all the time. When I’m not, there’s always something great in the experience I learn about myself and about my Positively Focused practice.
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