God

Egos and The Great Unknown

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1051-relax-and-succeed-dont-look-for-me-in-human-shapeMy students/clients see me for one of two reasons; for psychological struggles and for spiritual growth. Part of the problem is that everyone gets taught to see our spiritual selves as separate from our psychological selves. In truth one is a product of the other, as ego is to soul.

They’ve recently been doing a lot of brain research and after all of these years they are now finally serious conversations by neuroscientists regarding the idea that our consciousness may not be a product of our brain but rather it may be a separate entity, as-yet undefined by science, that has a relationship with the brain but is not the brain itself. You’ll often see me referring to the electricity in your brain as being separate from your brain and I mean the same thing. The trick is there’s no words for some of these things and in a way we don’t want any.

Words are symbols and can be assembled into narrative stories that lead us to have emotional responses, but those responses are not reality, rather reality allows you to see your actions as both being from an individual, and the actions would exist within some kind of logical framework.

1051-relax-and-succeed-the-moment-i-am-awareYour spirit is a strange thing that is both small and immense at the same time. The reason that can be true is that it is simultaneously you and yet you are just one tentacle of the Universal Octopus; a beam of light from the Great Universal Mirror Ball. Everyone thinks that’s what they want: Enlightenment. But it’s not, trust me. Even if you get it you’ll immediately know you don’t want to stay there. Can you imagine it’s boring in a way?

Imagine feeling like God. That’s Enlightenment. But that all-powerful feeling that goes with that all-powerful energy in that all-powerful non-space is doing everything, and everything at once is like trying to watch every channel at once. Lots of it can be amazing but it’s not very enjoyable.

The individual seemingly linear lives that we lead are just the universe weaving paths through itself. You take the sense of infinity and you filter it into a world using some base concepts which also live within infinity. Once applied, they become like the six formulas that essentially describe our entire universe. That’s our “space” as humans. That’s our realm. That’s somewhere we can build a narrative track. We can appreciate our three dimensions but others we can only prove; we can’t experience them directly.

1051-relax-and-succeed-we-are-the-witness-through-whichThe problem has been that you want to control your character through the TV and you can’t do that. You can’t deal with a post-thought world and expect to accomplish anything except for when your ego happens to go the way you wished it would. But even that’s fine because the ego-world is where there’s up and down and winners and losers; that is like the playing field and those formulas are the rules and from there we’re free to roam, but it’s important to keep in mind you’re the actor not the role.

You’re not actually on TV, that’s a character. You’re the actor back in a studio performing that character. The rest is a transmission, reception and interpretation. Any good actor is fully invested in their role, so in relation to the other characters in this play called life, you can all take the words in the script literally. But once a performance is over it’s important for the actor to drop character and just be themselves, lest they go crazy.

You don’t have to figure everything out. You can’t. It’s too huge. Relax more. Just observe. Others. You. Just observe the game. Trust me, you’re part of the Great Void as well. You have unimaginable wisdom within you if only you’d quiet your thoughts so that you could hear the universe.

Go ahead. Genuinely try to win your life-games. But do not mistake that for your larger journey, for that would be like taking the entire life of an actor and reducing it down to a single role. You’re much bigger than that. Have a great day.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.

Your Internal Guidance System

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You implore the universe to help you. You beg it, beseech it and are left bereft when it does not. But maybe it answered before you were even asking. Maybe it knew what you would need and it made sure you had it. Maybe the thing you thought was making you sick is the same thing that can make you healthy…..

819 Relax and Succeed - Everybody is youI’ve written about it before and it’s important enough that it gets its own section in my latest book. You have to stop seeing your life as this event that is happening to you personally and you have to start seeing the signals you’re getting as being human. Those were put within you because the universe knew you would need them.

Like the Dalai Lama recently said about the world, “We cannot solve this problem through only prayers. I am a Buddhist and I believe in praying. But humans have created this problem, and now we are asking God to solve it. It is illogical. God would say, solve it yourself because you created it in the first place.” Indeed. Wanting is an ego-based activity. Action is the nature of the universe. But we keep mistaking its guidance for its results.

The universe will be bountiful and generous but you must go out and meet it in all its forms. Nature, other people, art, culture etc. will not come to you–you must be active in the creation of your more positive, emotionally successful life. You must recognize the signs that God or the universe provides you and you must use them to your advantage. Not so that you can undermine other aspects of nature or the universe, but so that you can become alive within your own life.

819 Relax and Succeed - loneliness is a requestYou can actively choose to move away from suffering and toward something better. And that’s important because getting to that place is not nearly as important as the personal effort to get there. That’s where you derive your satisfaction from living–from your movement. You are an aspect of the universe. Where you are dormant the universe is dormant.

Look at how brilliant you are: Loneliness is a request for connection. Anger is a request for safety. Frustration is a request for assistance. Sadness is a request for fun and Love is a request for more love. Nothing happens if you look at the emotion and say, Look what God brought me! God didn’t bring that.

God or the universe created everything. Including all of the smart cells that make you up. Including the ones that produce the chemistry for your brain. All you need to do is stop seeing your emotions as the end result and instead see them as the universe speaking to you. You’re not a spectator. You’re a participant.

819 Relax and Succeed - Everything you do is based on the choices you makeYour emotions are not meant to be destroyed they’re meant to be employed. Don’t add to them by complaining about them. They are requests for action. You can’t sit in your home every night alone and then complain that your life is bad. It’s not bad. You’re not living it. Every day you get delivered tons of information about what would help you but you keep waiting for life to arrive rather than understanding that it is an action.

Start listening to your emotions. Use them to motivate your life. Use them to move you towards love and away from indifference. There is nothing greater that you could do for the universe than simply manifesting your greatest self. Ready? Of course you are. You were born ready.

Let’s go! s

Scott McPherson is a writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and nonprofit organizations around the world.

Losing Your Cool

Scott McPherson1 Comment

I acted like an asshole. It happens. I took a negative situation and instead of converting into a stronger, better connection with the other person, I lost the moment and I ended up compounding the complexity of the issue with too much thinking. I regret it, but I’m okay with it–if that makes sense.

764 Relax and Succeed - Show respect even to people who don't deserve itI have a church near my home that’s used by a few different groups and one rather ironic congregation in particular is pretty famous in the neighbourhood for disrespecting the neighbours (and really, each other too). They’ll park blocking the road, or they’ll block the alley almost every week and they’ve even been so bold as to park on a neighbour’s driveway, trapping him in his garage for two hours. This always feels decided un-Samaritan-like.

This group experienced a lot politeness from the bolder neighbours initially, although the quieter group was calling tow trucks so maybe those two forces cancelled each other out. In the end it’s never really changed. When I got home after running errands the other morning I saw the contractor down the street having to back his trailer all the way down the alley. The more convenient exit that I was coming in through was blocked enough on my side that he wouldn’t fit.

I rolled down my window and spoke to the young couple who was now blocking the other side of the lane too. I politely let them know that a neighbour would surely call the city if they left their vehicle there. The husband indicated he would move it (as many often claim they will and then don’t). And sure enough, when I walked back he hadn’t. Now the fact that I walked back already shows I was lost.

764 Relax and Succeed - It may look as if the situationWhy did I walk back? Why did I personally feel the need to police the situation? The truth: I hadn’t had enough sleep and I was grumpy. It had nothing to do with these parkers. I was out very late at a friend’s wedding and I was operating on a few hours sleep and it probably didn’t help that I hadn’t had my morning coffee. I’ll usually catch myself being a bit short and I can usually settle myself immediately by just dropping any internal conversation and/or any attachments. Today I chose not to lose the attachment. Today I let the conversation in my head roll.

So I walked back to see if the future I wanted to live in had come true. Remember, I tell you that wanting is an ego-pursuit because it is. My ego wanted that guy to respect that contractor. I used to be a contractor and so I connected him to me, and I imagined him as a decent hard-working guy who was respectful and yet he was being forced to do something difficult for no good reason. Those thoughts added to my negative brain chemistry, which made it more likely that I would convert even more neutral experiences into negative thoughts.

I got attached to them moving the vehicle; I thought I needed it to be happy. And so when I saw their truck unmoved I was actually happy to see the wife returning to get her wallet, which she’d forgotten. I still quite politely told her about the contractor’s trailer and tried to contextualise that it wasn’t a petty request; it really was a big hassle for the guy to have to back out.

764 Relax and Succeed - Choose and direct yourselfI’m not sure, maybe my tone sounded sharp or maybe I had bad body language or maybe she’d been up late at a wedding too and maybe she was just as grumpy as me. She’s entitled. Either way, her reaction to my explanation was, “It’s only for two hours on a Sunday. You must hate God.”

What?!?! My reaction to that statement was far too rapid. My immediate calculation was that she had deflected their personal responsibility onto us, and worse she had justified it by suggesting my very kind and decent neighbours were only asking because we hated God. That lack of personal responsibility and that debasement of God really struck me inside and a feeling came over me that leads to bad news every time.

It’s a little rise. That’s how I feel it. Up until that point I can recoil my thinking quite effectively. After that it races forward and I get a shot of adrenaline and it invariable pushes out words that will be sarcastic and condescending. That kind of arrogance inspires me to want to stab someone with words that will reduce their confidence in that arrogance. And so I said something I deeply regret.

764 Relax and Succeed - When you judge anotherMy terrible and intentionally hurtful reaction to “you must hate God” was a lie. I said, “no, my family was just intelligent enough that they didn’t raise me to absolve myself of being an asshole with my car by conveniently believing in an invisible man in the sky.” That statement suggests that I’m against people believing in God or that I don’t believe in what could be called a sense of God when that’s not true. I have no issue with God. But I pretended to so I could stab her with some science. She scowled and was off and I was left with the sort of ugly feeling that really motivates you not to repeat the action that lead to it.

With no positive course of mind to pursue I simply walked away, but as I did I was already well aware that I’d gotten lost in my thoughts. I immediately began to introspect. My ego wanted. It wanted that vehicle moved and it didn’t like someone turning God into a lame excuse for behaviour that defied the story of the Good Samaritan. I acted superior. My response was to really focus on how much I did not like that feeling and I used that to motivate me to learn from the experience.

By the time I’d walked the few hundred feet home I had settled. I went through what happened to look for where my thinking took over. I realised that I should have noticed the first unsettled sense when I was motivated to walk back. From there it was the attachment to the car being moved, and then my thoughts tying this one experience to all of the previous ones–which of course she’s not responsible for. And finally my ego’s distaste for people using a positive symbol to justify negative behaviour did not help. I’m bad with hypocrisy.

764 Relax and Succeed - Your best teacherI deeply regret what happened but I can’t go back in time so I’ll take it as a lesson. I’m human and I allow for mistakes. But maybe from now on, on the nights where I know I’m going to get very little sleep, I can leave myself a note for when I wake up. Something that reminds me that I might be inclined to be grumpy and to keep an eye out. I think today that would have been enough to do it because when the negative thoughts showed up I could have contextualised them relative to me rather than to her. Lesson learned.

The reason I can’t regret it too much is that this is the yin and yang of life. We need these little moments to remind us where the path is. You can’t have a path without there being not-path. The path I’m usually on feels very warm and pleasant. This did not. It reminds me why I endeavour to stay as mindful as I can each day and so I am grateful for having had the experience.

If the lady I spoke to just happens to be reading this: you have my wholehearted apology. That wasn’t a nice way to speak to you. It’s wonderful you’re enjoying your two hours of holiness. My desire for my neighbour to avoid some unnecessary frustration and the expense of a late-charge on a rental was pointless if I was going to add that negativity to your day. Again, I’m sorry I was unable to be a better person at that time. Thank you.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.

The Scientific God

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692 Relax and Succeed - I searched for GodCan I find a place in the universe where someone who believes in God and someone who believes in science could both see the world and each other entirely comfortably? I believe if people were open to it I can. But I have to take them to a very special, very specific place. Paradoxically it is also every place. And that’s what makes it Godly.

Forget the idea of an old guy with a beard who is separate from you and judgmental toward you. I’m not talking to religious people. Very few of them believe in Michelangelo’s metaphor or that anyone flew into the sky for three days. He was a weak translation for what in the original Hebrew was a word something like Is-Be. But most religious people aren’t tortured by a fear of a supernatural God, they’re tortured by their egos just like non-religious people. Scientific people too-often have overly condescending attitudes toward religious people. They assume they’re entirely unscientific when there’s lots of scientists who are also religious. It’s the logical person will make the mistake of believing that the most outrageous newsworthy examples on TV mean that every religious person thinks that their religion’s metaphor’s are to be taken literally.

692 Relax and Succeed - People don't realizeSo starting with a blank slate, with no one judging anyone’s dedications, what would a religious person want God to be? That’s pretty easy. Everything. All-powerful. Nothing happens without God. God is the creator. Okay. So is there a scientific place or thing in the universe where creation begins, somewhere or something that is everything and all-powerful? Ooh. Turns out there is.

There is a moment you’ve heard a lot about. It’s called Now but as much as you might watch the former physicist Eckhart Tolle’s talks and read his books, most people wonder if they’ll ever experience the sensation of living in that moment. But you have felt it. You just didn’t have a way to account for it while you were in that state of mind. No one’s taught you to call that feeling Now. Any time you lose track of time you’ve experienced Now. When you get a great idea out of seemingly nowhere—again, that’s Now. That’s where all those answers are.

You know when you’re with friends and someone says something in a delicate conversation and everyone’s silent reaction is, Oh dude, no. That was not the thing to say. Everyone can feel that the guy shouldn’t have said whatever it was. They know. How? Because they have let themselves be close to God. They have let themselves be close to Now. They know.

692 Relax and Succeed - You are the universeBoth scientists and religious people are quite comfortable with an infinite universe, so clearly our future is infinite. If the future is infinite then how did everyone know the dude shouldn’t have said what he said? He had infinite choices. How can they all be sure that’s the right one? Because in the Now you have the only place in the universe where two things are—the past and the future.

The only place you can find 100% of the universe’s history is Now. Any time before Now and you’re missing some information. And Now is also where you are right on the edge of your infinite future—where you have access to anything. But how can you possibly choose? Fortunately, the world before us chose certain mathematical patterns and we unwittingly chose to live within them. That’s why Fractals exist. We thought math showed us that everything made sense but then modern math and physics started to suggest other universe’s with different rules. So what makes a choice feel right—the reason the friends knew the dude shouldn’t have said what he said—was it’s misalignment with the universe we’re currently living in.

692 Relax and Succeed - The most beautiful thingSo in this strange sense there is no such thing as good and bad as we tend to think of it, but that alignment with the universe still has what Robert Pirsig called Quality, and that definition can easily fit inside most religions. Likewise the science of Now—the place you find this alignment with God—is where creation begins. It is where the waveform of potential collapses into the a particle of existence. Meaning every part of the universe is actively being the universe. Including you.

I’m not sure if that’s completely confusing to you and that it just seems remarkably sensible to me because I already know what it means, but that description feels like a pretty straightforward explanation to me. I’ll let you judge for yourself, but in the end you don’t really want an intellectual understanding of it anyway. You don’t need a description of enlightenment you want enlightenment itself. And so you have to surrender wanting to know. Knowing is a verb, there’s no way or place to go get it.

Every truly talented fashion designer, architect, musician or industrial designer would know the feeling of Now. That is precisely where they try to hover… not settling on any reality… living with the infinite nature of wave potential until they feel drawn toward something that they will use to convert all of those waves of possibility into a particle of existence within the logic of the universe of our understanding. If it wouldn’t fit our understanding we simply wouldn’t perceive it.

692 Relax and Succeed - We are one speciesOnce a creation exists it immediately becomes a study-able, historical thought (or sometimes eventually even a thing, like a paint colour) that you can revisit and re-analyze and improve. The moment after an artist discovers their creation it becomes a part of the past, locked and solid and unchangeable except to be a wholly new version of itself as a revised draft, in a new Now. So your ego lives in the past and discusses creations and it and tries to wish things turned out differently but that’s crazy. You can’t fix the past. Life is out front in the Now—where creation happens. There you can act to change your life so that your new past can look more like a record of the Nows you were really looking for. But all of those choices—all of those prayers get answered in the Now.

What lies behind you is unimportant. The out-of-sync decisions made from an ego headspace do not hinder the infinite nature of your future. God is all-powerful and has infinite choices available. No matter what has happened any future is possible. You just have to be willing to not-know so that you can feel you way toward knowing. Like a scientist looking for a hypothesis, you need to trust the universe that something of value is out there for you so that you can grab it when you recognize it, and through you it can realize creation.

God is all things. The universe is all things. Everything has its origins. But everything is both from the past as well as being from the infinite future. But the Present Moment is the only place where both sources exist. That is why it’s where creation happens. That is where you use the power of the God-Universe to snap the reality of your choice into existence within the world of your consciousness. And so goes the miracle of your life.

Much Love.

Or, if you’re the scientific type:

Much Dopamine, Oxytocin, Vasopressin and Testosterone. 😉

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and nonprofit organizations around the world.

Original Sin

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Concepts like governments, laws, religions, or education or legal systems all create many ways for people to feel they are wrong. In the case of some religions you were even born wrong and your life is almost a form of apology where you try to make up for your failings to God. So we feel we owe God perfect behaviour, we feel we owe our parents and the system good grades, we feel like we owe it to society to obey laws—even the ones we don’t agree with.

Even the economy itself with its symbolic money means that you can now actually fail at just being alive. Born in Africa in a poverty-stricken war-torn country? Don’t have access to education or health care? Then too bad, you lose, because you won’t have the money to buy the food that you used to get for free from the Earth itself. But now someone invented the concept of ownership and then people needed guns to protect the things they owned and so now those fruits belong to someone else which means they don’t belong to you. A person somewhere else—someone with money—can eat it, but not the guy who picked it. That’s how silly our world is. We’ll actually let the picker die of starvation rather than let him eat. We’ll have the simple inexpensive medicines to save his life, but we won’t give them to him without the money.

Because modern life is loosely based on the rather undefined concept of progress, people will feel like they’re failing even if they’re standing still—because things like advertising or where they are on the bell curve at school will lead them to believe that everyone else is working harder than they are. So progress would be to work harder. And so modern life is set up around wants, which necessitates us starting from a position where we’re lacking, and effort or hard work will make up the difference between us and success.

So advertising or our church or our boss tells us we’re missing something and we need to earn the right to have it, and then we can check off the box that says we can stop beating ourselves up, (which in turn leads us into the habit of beating others up as well). Think about how much 618 Relax and Succeed - What is the waystrife is caused by parents pushing for better grades and think of how incredibly seldom those grades mattered to the quality of life the person ends up leading. There is no relationship between external success and internal happiness, so why are we willing to sacrifice so much of the latter in an attempt to get the former?

So many people feel they are starting behind, and that where they are now can’t possibly be good enough. They tend to manage their lives based on avoiding the pain of failure rather than on cultivating a life that enables our natural satisfaction and appreciation to exist unfettered by thoughts about what’s missing or how we need more. Think about it. What if a God you totally believed in came down, proved his power to you, and then ordered you to be happy because he deemed you perfect. Hey! Good for you! Praise by God! Now what?

We don’t need to beat ourselves into doing a good job. If what we’re doing has any kind of value at all then capable, open people will always find a way to invest themselves in that work. People that work in the arts will try to make things that you like or enjoy or approve of or maybe hate. But the true artists among them will just be being themselves whether you like it or not. So there’s a career that at its zenith experiences no social pressure whatsoever. They can do like Klein and paint an entire canvass one shade of blue and still they can have happy lives and 618 Relax and Succeed - Meraki to do something with soulsurvive all the judgment. Because you’re not living a spiritual life if you’re conforming to what everyone else wants. You’re living a spiritual life when you realize with absolute certainty that even if there wasn’t a single rule in the universe, you would still be made of love and your pure self could act like nothing else.

It’s time to stop beating yourself up using your ability to think. You weren’t supposed to tell yourself stories where you’re the villain. Save thinking for remembering directions or traffic rules or something. But don’t apply it like you’re some kind of judge and jury to yourself. There was no crime here. There is nothing wrong with you other than the fact that you keep comparing your perfection to other people’s perfection. Your problem isn’t who you are. Your only problem is who you think you are. So stop all the chatter and just be instead. Because that would be just perfect. 😉

peace. s

2014’s Blog of the Year #5

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582 Relax and Succeed - I searched for God

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Obviously a lot of people loved the winning post, but if people are actively anti-religious it’s one that can sit funny in their head. Because the winner features a God that scientists can actually believe in, and yet if anything it adds to or expands upon the idea of most religious versions. If you read it carefully you see that I am marrying the idea of God with a non-religious, non-judgmental, non-separate entity. It’s like the Frank Lloyd Wright quote, “I believe in God, only I spell it nature.” I suppose it’s fitting that it would win Blog-of-the-Year status right in the midst of celebrations by many different religions. So without further ado, here’s the link to the 5th most popular blog for 2014:

CLICK BELOW TO READ:

2014’s Blog of the Year #5

peace. s

Different Worlds

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One of the most difficult things to surrender for my students is their belief in an objective reality. They’ll give me examples like, just because I didn’t know about it doesn’t mean my partner wasn’t cheating on me! To which I would answer, that would depend on whose reality this cheating was happening in. But that statement can appear to be nonsense until it’s properly explained.

574 Relax and Succeed - I'm only responsibleYou need to understand that our realities are made up of our thinking. Not figuratively. Literally. It’s just you’re very casual about how you define reality. If you’re at a party and an attractive, well built man is telling a story about climbing a mountain, then the three men listening to him can have vastly different experiences. A fellow climber might be impressed, whereas an insecure boyfriend might feel it’s one-upmanship, and a timid person might think the story teller is crazy. When they go home they will describe three different people to their spouses. Such is the nature of separate realities. And you’ll accept that in a case like this. But your idea of reality will change when the stakes are raised.

Let us say that Stella and Ed have been married for 32 years. They’ve successfully raised 3 healthy, happy, successful kids, they never struggled financially and they enjoyed hanging around the same people and doing the same sorts of things. But let us say that after about 20 years of marriage, when he first goes grey and starts to get crows feet, Ed has thoughts that he is getting old and he wonders if his wife will still find him attractive. He thinks that because she recently started going to the gym with the new neighbour and she’s never looked better. While he’s happy for her and the renewed vigor it’s brought to her, still, juxtaposed to his thoughts, the combination leaves him feeling insecure.

So now imagine that this insecure guy meets the new lawyer in their office and she’s very sweet. And being a bit sensitive she picks up on the fact that he’s a bit down and she spends her lunches talking to him in an effort to cheer him up about his future. She’s pretty and very engaged in their lunches and so he starts to feel appreciated, which is something Stella doesn’t do much of. Not because she doesn’t appreciate him on some level—but that level has become subconscious, so she doesn’t compliment him much anymore, nor does she even pay much attention to his mood anymore except for how it affects her day. It’s all very innocent, but it leaves the new girl looking pretty appealing.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAEventually the entirely innocent new girl has something unfortunate happen and it’s her turn to be low and small and weak. And Ed’s a nice guy—of course he reciprocates the compassionate response she gave him. Soon all of that honest care and support tumbles into embraces, then kissing, and eventually sex. And the second it’s over Ed feels absolutely horrible. He tells the new girl right there and then that he shouldn’t have done it—that it was disrespectful to her and especially to his wife. He feels badly that he placed her in that situation and he leaves and he never cheats again. To the contrary, for the rest of her life Stella gets treated better as Ed works to absolve himself of his guilty feelings.

Now let’s say we’re back up on year 32, and Stella has a stroke while cooking some bacon and she hits the floor and is gone. She’s never learned about the new girl. Then if we interview her after death (just go with me), she’s going to say she had a happy life with a good marriage to a doting husband. Because in all honesty that will have been her reality. Meanwhile Ed was right alongside her, living in a completely separate reality. He knew what had happened. And his guilt made him aware. It made his consciousness alert to opportunities to improve his spouse’s life. And because he was looking for them he saw them and acted on them, which was what improved Stella’s life. So in the end she was better off than she would have been had it never happened.

574 Relax and Succeed - We believe what we tell ourselvesNow I know most of you are still yelling at the page YES BUT HE STILL CHEATED!!! Yeah. That belief right there points directly at your misunderstanding of reality. So instead of arguing with me, if you really want to experience this miracle, then stop telling me what you already believe and at least consider another idea that you could later choose to adopt as a replacement belief.

You are mistaking actions in the physical world as “truth.” I get your point, but modern physicists will tell you that even the physical universe appears to be closer to a thought or density of information than anything else. So even that’s up for grabs. But that’s too abstract for us today—for now just realize that physical events are not what your life is made of. It’s made of experiences, and those are constructed by your thoughts about physical events and other thoughts—yours and other people’s.

Truly. You have to accept this one idea: The only giant Isness that could be known could only be known by the infinite Being that could comprehend the vastness of the entire universe. You’re talking about something resembling a God. But you? You’re like a tentacle of God, or a tentacle of the universe. You’re a filament of consciousness lighting up a unique portion of the universe’s possibilities. And what you see is what you think. And if think you had a great marriage with someone who treated you really well, then in the only reality you can hope to know—you did have that marriage.

Any arguments to the contrary are meaningless and can simply be met with, so how does that affect Stella? Again, Stella can’t be hurt by ideas that aren’t in her head. Pain is a collection of neurochemicals. That chemistry comes from your own body, not from events outside of you (you being your consciousness). That’s the same reason they 574 Relax and Succeed - Reality leaves a lotanesthetize your brain when they do an operation on your leg. Your leg needs to be there for the operation. But as long as your mind isn’t present for it, you’re fine.

This isn’t about cheating. This is about reality. If you really really really disagree with me then you know that this is your place for spiritual growth. Because I’m not saying you shouldn’t or can’t suffer because you got cheated on. I’m saying as far as true reality goes, you haven’t been cheated on until you know or believe you have been cheated on. Because I can also show you a lot of people who live in the false reality that their partner has cheated when they haven’t. It goes both ways.

Think about this. Meditate on it. Start trying to appreciate the differences between your reality and others. Respect those differences. These are the many slices of reality that make up the whole that is the universe and yours is just as valid as anyone else’s. But you also want to maintain an awareness of your ability to control the shape of your reality by being a conscious thinker.

In my reality I feel great and I love a lot of wonderful people. I hope your reality feels something like that too. And if not, don’t worry. That’s what all of this writing is for—to make and keep people aware that they have control over what they experience in life. You can start today. Take some control and focus on how fortunate you are and you are guaranteed to have a great day. Because whatever you entertain in your consciousness will soon become your reality. With a grateful mind will come a grateful heart. Enjoy.

peace. s