Soulsong #373 - What and When?

Do I have a habit of pondering worst-case scenarios such as: What if the economy tanks? What if terrorists strike? What if Desperate Housewives goes off the air?

I can turn this torturous habit into a beneficial exercise by asking myself “what if” questions with a new, positive slant. In fact, I can use this drill to help usher in my dreams, for when I deliberately think delightful, good-feeling thoughts, I’ll increasingly manifest the good experiences that, even now, are seeking me.

What if I won a Nobel Prize - or better yet, the lottery?  How would I feel?

What if I could easily afford my dream home? How would it look?

What if I rose to the top of my profession? How would I feel?

What if I could devise a means to significantly help humanity? How could that benefit people?

What if I became healthier, with more vitality, in each passing year? How would I look and feel?

What if I could live a consistently joyful and “charmed” life by taking charge of my thoughts? When could it start?

What if it could be right now?



What if I looked good in a bonnet? That would be great on bad-hair days.

(National Gallery, Washington, DC)

Attitude and mood are everything as I set forth to realize my dreams.

No matter if my IQ rivals that of Stephen Hawking. No matter if I’m willing to start my day earlier than everyone else and end it later. No matter if I’ve got every degree and credential I can garner. No matter if I can project a warm personality and relate to people of all backgrounds.

My moment-by-moment habits of thought determine my fate.

Courtesy of the universal Law of Attraction, that which consistently receives my mental focus will increase in my experience. If I want to thrive, I must practice the art of selective attention.

I can ultimately reduce loads of arduous activity if I discipline myself to think about: my goals and not what stands in my way; people’s strengths and not their annoying traits; what has gone right and not what has gone haywire; my fantasy vacation and not current job stress; safety and not crime; peace rather than war.

This discipline will place me in a consistently good mood, and then good things - even miraculous things - will come calling.

If I stay in a good frame of mind, who knows? Someone might just drop off a surprise bouquet of flowers.
Or, better yet, a Van Gogh painting!

(National Gallery, Washington, DC)

Perhaps I’ve adopted the common belief that one must earn or pay for every good thing -  intangible and tangible - that is received or achieved.

In order to become successful and financially free, I must work diligently.

To be healthy, I must consistently exercise and be nutritionally vigilant.

To be slim, I must forego favorite foods.

To live to a ripe, old age, I must cope with physical/mental deterioration.

To be loved/appreciated, I must serve/please others.

To receive God’s favor or eradicate karma, I must live in ways I would not otherwise choose.

Believing that everything has its price makes for an arduous life and one dramatically opposed to the fun, easy adventure I planned when I entered physical experience.

My desires are designed to come to me not through effort and suffering but through mental focus.

As I go about my routine, I practice turning my attention away from what I don’t like and don’t want and towards what I do like and do want. As I make this my work, all else will seem like play.

Through positive mental focus, financial opportunities will open up. Healing will occur. My body will gradually shift towards my ideal image. Unconditional love will find me. And those burdensome tasks I used to perform will start to feel fun or will leave my experience for good. 

—Soulsong #375 (www.lulu.com/soulsongkaren)

 

I learn to envision what I want instead of fighting my way to it and then feeling too tuckered out to enjoy it.

(Winslow Homer, National Gallery, Washington, DC)

The world seems full of inequality. Some people have many opportunities; some have few. Some people have nurturing families, while others have fractured families. Some people seem to lead a charmed life; others seem almost cursed. What can I do to make this a fairer world for those who are less fortunate?

As I begin to understand how the Universe functions, I stop goading myself to do the impossible. Instead, I’ll share this message:

This is a planet, indeed a cosmos, of total justice. Let’s go over that again: from a broad perspective, there is no unfairness. Everyone is receiving exactly what he/she is asking for vibrationally. There has never been an exception, and that will continue as long as the Law of Attraction orchestrates universal goings-on. 

Everyone’s circumstances are magnetized via his/her habits of thought, plain and simple. Granted, most of us absorb our habits of thought from our families when we are very young, so most of us vibrate in ways similar to those around us and thus manifest similar results. But we each hold ultimate control of what goes on in our own minds and are ever free to change thought patterns - regardless of our environment or our past. 

Before speech develops, infants are thinking. They actually assimilate habits of thought from their mothers before birth. So infants, too, are vibrating and encountering circumstances that match up with their vibrations.

Like many well-intentioned people, I may often want to “jump into” another person’s trauma or drama and make things better. That’s akin to catching a fish for a person and feeding him for a day.

But if I want to help the person long-term - if I want to teach him to fish and thus feed him for a lifetime, as the saying goes - then I’ll tell him about Law of Attraction. I’ll share about the magnetic power of thought and let him take it from there.  

I might sometimes feel awash in a sea of societal expectations and people with varied agendas. If I want to be successful, it seems that I must work hard, learn how to click with the movers and shakers, and exert tenacity to painstakingly move towards my goals.

This is actually doing things the hard way if it entails taking action without using the primary method through which I create - my thoughts. If I’m not consistently focusing on my goals but instead letting my attention flop all over the place -  to those things I both love and loathe - I might work my proverbial rump off but still end up nowhere.

I didn’t come to Planet Earth to create my life simply through words and actions. Rather, I came here to create my life primarily through my thoughts - regularly envisioning what I like and want. As a result of laying groundwork in my imagination, I then receive insights and nudges concerning fun and easy courses of action to bring about my desires.

This is not about sitting around on my hands while expecting signs and wonders. It is about regularly pre-paving good things in my mind and then falling into opportunities and synchronicity as a result of that mental focus.

If I consistently take time to think about what I want to occur next year, next week, even this afternoon, my thoughts will go before me to magnetize and shape circumstances into those that I want. Life will begin to go so much more smoothly that it will seem like the difference between driving a car and pushing it (puff-pant) uphill.

—Soulsong #499 (www.lulu.com/soulsongkaren)


Success for both Princess Margaret and Andy Warhol!

(National Gallery, Washington, DC.)

How do I set boundaries with people who don’t always respect my time, privacy, possessions, or my values? And how do I enforce boundaries once I’ve set them?

The best way to set boundaries is to live in such a way that no boundary-setting is needed on my part. The problem with boundaries is that when I try to keep a person or certain behaviors out of my experience, I’m actually begging for more-of-the-same from the Universe, which simply and continually responds to my thoughts. So, via Law of Attraction, I’m likely to receive more-of-the-same from the transgressor or from someone else.

Solution: Instead of focusing on what I don’t want from people and trying to keep it away, I ask myself what I do want from my interactions and use any transgressions as a springboard to ponder and savor those desires. I probably want to receive courtesy, consideration, sensitivity, appreciation for who I am, and respect for my schedule and my values. So, I imagine receiving those things from others. I remember all the good-feeling times I did receive those from others. I begin noticing those things with heightened appreciation when they show up. And I enjoy being the kind of person who exhibits this same courtesy and sensitivity. 

As I make it a habit to think about the ways I want people to interact with me, the boorish, thoughtless ones will turn up infrequently in my experience. And if they do turn up, they’ll treat me better than they treat other people, for I am no longer thinking thoughts that elicit unwanted actions. The Law of Attraction simply won’t allow insensitive people into my experience, or if it does, they’ll be on their very best behavior.

—Soulsong #498 (www.lulu.com/soulsongkaren)



As I focus on what I want in my interactions, odd ducks like this strange woman will fly away.

To know more about this strangeness, please visit

http://switchtokozyshack.com/vote.php?id=223

Jesus and other spiritual icons taught people to love their enemies, to bless their persecutors.

This is good advice. Loving anyone - friend or foe - feels much better than hating anyone. Love is a high-vibrational state-of-being which, by Law of Attraction, beckons loving people into my experience.

But many people try to love their enemies yet can’t sustain it. And they often wallow in guilt for falling short of a spiritual ideal.

If I experience hatred or similar intense negative emotion, I need not compound my pain with guilt. Rather, I simply try to find some thoughts that are, well, a little less hateful than those I’ve been thinking.

I find ways to grudgingly feel thankful that my antagonist isn’t worse. I recall any good times I may have previously shared with this person. I think of ways I’ve grown in wisdom as a result of our conflict. I use humor to secretly parody my antagonist and, if I can, my own reaction to the person. I acknowledge that this person is hurting and unhappy, as revealed by his/her behavior.

Where possible, I kick my enemy - I kick him/her out of my thoughts entirely.
 

Hating anyone will only bring that person - or someone similar - more predominantly into my experience. But it’s asking too much of myself to jump from hatred to love. I simply take it one thought-step at a time - from hatred to animosity, perhaps. From animosity to resentment. From resentment to grumbling tolerance. Sliding back to animosity. (Sigh.) Eventually moving forward again to resentment, tolerance, acceptance, and beyond. 

And in that journey of a thousand steps, I will dramatically change myself and my future for the better.

—Soulsong #497



"I can't quite love those nosy neighbors next door, but I can sure as heck be thankful for the fence."

(National Gallery, Washington, DC)

“You’re too much in your head. You need to live more from your heart.”

With this suggestion, spiritual teachers might be recommending that people judge and analyze less and simply love more. Good advice. They may also be recommending that people follow their own desires more, giving less attention to what other people and society in general think that they should do. Again, good advice.

But thoughts and feelings are not competing components, and neither one is preferable to the other.

All emotion, without exception, follows some aspect of thought: remembering, observing, contemplating, pondering, ruminating, yes, perhaps analyzing. It’s never an either/or scenario - it’s always thought and then emotion.

Confusion results from the fact that there can be a time lag between thought and emotion - a time in which similar thoughts must first accumulate in order to evoke the resulting emotion. At other times, emotion follows so quickly on the heels of a thought that the time lag between them is indiscernible.

My emotions are my precise guidance system designed to alert me to the nature of the thoughts I’ve been thinking. Feeling emotionally bad means I’ve been thinking thoughts that are not congruent with my happy inner being and my desires. Feeling emotionally good means that my thoughts are generally in harmony with my inner being and my hopes and dreams.

I came here to create the circumstances I want via my habits of thought. My emotional feedback system plays a crucial role in that process.

Head or heart? It’s both: one-after-the-other but hand-in-hand.

—Soulsong #496 (www.lulu.com/soulsongkaren)




Trying to decide between head or heart is like trying to decide between booze or peaches. (OK, bad analogy.)

(National Gallery, Washington, DC)

 

 

Terrorism? Probably. Peace? Probably. Recession? Probably. Prosperity? Probably. Serious new diseases? Probably. Miraculous cures? Probably.

 

The future will be a hodge-podge because people’s thoughts and intentions are drawing to them a variety of experiences. But I can be certain of these points:

 

1)     Well-being is predominant. Despite startling or alarming news reports, the nature of life on this planet is to thrive and expand. At this moment, there are far more people who are doing well than those who are in peril. That will continue to be the case.

 

2)     Drama and trauma will continue to play out. Despite over-all well-being, this will continue to be a planet of great variety where some people who are sufficiently unhappy and disconnected from their inner guidance will behave in destructive ways.

 

3)     I get to decide my fate. If I want to encounter crime, hassles, scams, conflict, accidents, illness and similar experiences, all I need do is give regular attention to those aspects of life. If, on the other hand, I want to manifest success, fulfillment, safety, smooth-sailing, and vibrant health, I habitually place my attention there.

 

I need not fear the future or agonize over the planet’s problems. Nothing is broken. Nothing needs to be fixed. Everyone is getting exactly what he/she is vibrating (thinking about) with perfect precision.

 

I can’t control what the future holds for others, but I can control what it holds for me. I focus on what I like and want and watch the same increasingly turn up for me. 

 

And when people beg for my secret, I joyfully tell them: I’ve stopped looking at problems and started focusing on the wonder in the world. And they can do it, too.

—Soulsong #495 (www.lulu.com/soulsongkaren)
 



OK, right here and now, let's declare that the future will be a breeze.

(National Gallery, Washington, DC)

Many healers - conventional and alternative - are available to help me. It’s wondrous to live in a time of such variety in treatment methods. Which one do I consult for a physical problem? The naturopath, chiropractor, aura reader, medical intuitive, acupuncturist, faith healer, herbalist, Reiki master, Peruvian shaman, past-life regressionist, traditional physician, or (whew!) one of the many others?

The most important thing I can know about healing is that no one can jump into my experience and heal me until I am mentally/vibrationally ready to receive it. And once I’m in that state of being lined-up with what I desire, any healer, any doctor will be the right one.

How, then, do I become mentally/vibrationally receptive to healing? By thinking more about the health I want and less about the problem I have. And, in all areas of life, by thinking more about what I like and want and less about what I don’t like and don’t want. That is the only way to permanently change what shows up for me.

I can take a powerful healing treatment now by relaxing deeply, becoming still. The moment - the very moment - I quiet my mind in this way, the health I’ve sought begins to flow to me, unimpeded. I actually need no one as a catalyst, as nice as that may be.

When I slip my mind into neutral for a while, ceasing to analyze my problem or trying to push it away, I allow my cells, tissues, and organs to spring back into natural balance and harmony. I can envision myself bathed in white or golden light - or any mental picture that I find soothing - but it’s not necessary. All I need do is get the feeling of being passive and receptive. 

It is through my habits of thought that I developed physical symptoms, and it’s through changing my habits of thought that I’ll change my health. Spending some time each day in passive no-thought will serve me very well, too.

—Soulsong #494

Ahhhh. We can paint an idyllic, relaxing scene with our thoughts.
(National Gallery, Washington, DC)