Another Simple Visualization Lesson

I work in a store that sells a lot of high dollar items. One day a watch came up missing. A watch that costed thousands of dollars. It was a one of a kind, literally. I, along with the two other people who worked with me, were immediately under investigation. One of the co-workers and I got a chance to take a look at video camera footage of the day in question. Lo and behold, the video revealed that the co-worker I was watching the "movie" with had stuffed it in a garbage bag and thrown it in the trash.
I was really concerned. Although my co-worker was the person to physically dispose of the box containing the watch, I had handled the box a couple of times and never fully opened it to examine its contents, which no doubt would have helped. I knew that some sort of consequence was going to have to come from losing a watch that expensive. We'd already been questioned individually in a room the size of a broom closet with two other people who ever so often during the conversation would discreetly say "So. . . Did you take the watch?"

We empty our trash into these huge dumpsters that are picked up every couple of months. Luckily for us, our dumpster was going to be picked up and emptied the next day. Someone was going to have to go to the landfill where it was emptied and hope for the best. Somehow, I ended up being the one to ride to the landfill with my manager to see about it.

I spent the whole night before preparing myself. At first, I went through the worst cases. Losing a job was the most damaging thing that could happen to me at the time, so I went through those motions. Then, I prepared to go into a wasteland of garbage and rats to look for a small watch. This only made me depressed. I got myself so worked up that finally, out of desperation, I came up with something else to do with all of the energy I was creating. I started putting my thoughts toward seeing a positive outcome. I imagined my manager and I being in a storage area, as opposed to a large plot of land/garbage. I imagined our dumpster being emptied in an area to itself that wasn't just completely swamped in trash. I imagined the garbage streaming from the back of the dumpster as the truck tilted it, to reveal that the box with the watch in it was laying right on top of the pile. I imagined us fishing it down with a stick and wiping it off, rejoicing as we left. I concentrated on this sequence of events until I went to sleep.

The next morning I met up with my manager at the store so we could follow the truck. The land fill was a good distance away, so I had plenty of time to do some last minute visualizing. I was working off of pure nervous energy. It was still energy, nonetheless. When the dump truck made a final turn into the land fill, I was surpised (and kind of not) to find that it was not at all a huge heap of garbage, but a series of warehouses. My manager parked the car while I walked into the warehouse where our dumpster would be emptied. Sure enough, the truck was in a space to itself, awaiting our arrival before dumping. Once my manager and a few other employees of the land fill were around, the dumping commenced. A warm happy feeling poured over me as I noticed a clear bag with a UPS box in it land directly on top of the pile. I didn't see an address or anything, I just kind of knew. I grabbed a pole that had a point at one end and stabbed the garbage bag, pulling the box out in the process. As predicted, my manager opened the box, celebrating as he pulled the vintage watch out to make sure it was intact.

That day, I learned about energy and visualization. I figured out that you create energy inside of you that can be turned in any direction. Often we turn it in directions that are detrimental to us, as I initially did when I paniced. Once I turned that same energy towards what I wanted, I saw an immediate improvement. The energy itself was not negative or positive, my perspective dictated that.

A small lesson

One day, I made a small "vision board". A "vision board" is a slab of cardboard or paper containing all of one's hopes and dreams, needing only for one to focus on it to make it's contents appear(per "The Secret"). I made it small so that I could look at it discreetly at work. I headed off to my place of employment, ready to make headway on my "visions".

I went about my day with glee, often pulling out my little "vision" board. Sometimes, I would sneak peeks at it while I was going about the routine of my daily duties. I almost lost track of time staring at that little piece of "visions" I had so ingeniously constructed. I left work really feeling like I had somehow made headway on all that I wanted.

The next day, I returned to work to be immediately confronted with a costly mistake I'd made that cost the representative involved and the company a considerable chunk of money. My work area was out of sorts and unorganized. To top that off, when I reached into my pocket to seek some solace in my "visions", I found that it was not in my back pocket, as it had been last time I checked (which was right before I got off the train to come to work). It seemed that my hopes and dreams had been my downfall for that day, and it had rippled into the next also.

I thought about that situation later and saw the literal lesson I had received: Don't let "visions" replace the present moment. It is only through the present moment that things take place. There was a time and a place for me to focus on my "vision board", and I did not pick my spots wisely. The fault rested with me, not my dreams.

I figure there's a time to visualize, and a time to work. Do one or the other at the wrong time and things don't work out (especially at work).

The Spirit is a Muscle

I was working out the other day when a thought crossed my mind. I started thinking about people who may appear limited physically, but somehow are able to "move mountains". My wife, for example, does not work out regularly, but her job requires her to lift heavy boxes, often. She says that she is able to accomplish her tasks by "using her heart". Where does that strength come from? I don't think she means her physical heart, but her spiritual one.

I also asked a question of myself: Where does the strength come from to believe in, well, anything? We all recognize that it requires a certain "push" to display faith. These questions also compelled me to ask questions about the inverse of faith. What is lacking in a person who appears to have everything but believes in nothing? The key factor in all of these questions is what we call "spirit". It is, essentially, an "invisible muscle" that we can or cannot exercise every day. Practicing Yoga can help you get a glimpse of this "muscle", but most of its work goes on behind the scenes, in the formless realm.

Much like our physical muscles, all of us use our "spiritual muscles" at least a little every day. The question usually lies in what we use them on. Some things enhance our spirits, some things do not. I am speaking mostly on perspective, because any situation, whether judged to be good or bad, can be used for the betterment of our inner selves. This means that one can constantly be strengthening their spirit if they so choose.

I cannot say exactly what spirit feels like, it differs from person to person. I can say that it usually does not withdraw energy, it deposits it. Follow your heart and it will lead you where you need to be. The first step is recognizing that you have a spirit in the first place.

"E", the Visualizer

As a teenager, I had a friend named "E". For the most part, he maintained the persona of a tough guy, with the selling of drugs, carrying guns, and general intimidation. Before recently I never thought of him as someone to learn from(which, in turn, became a lesson in itself, ironically). There was a little quirk about E: At any given time E could describe how a situation was about to take place, even including events that he was not physically involved in! I witnessed this on several occasions. If we were out for the night and a dilemma were to arise, E would be the first to vocalize his ideas to fix things. He would lay out a whole scene, making sure that everything connected to make the outcome that we wanted. Some times there would even be dialog. Most of the time we would be in agreement, and the evening would proceed as foretold. Typing this now, I wonder if it was a combination of his wishes and our agreement that helped. It was infectious. Before we knew it we were all doing it. It kind of made E a sort of spiritual teacher. None of us had ever even heard of the word "visualization", much less known what it entailed.

Today I use it as an example of how consciousness exists even when one is not conscious of it.

The Plight of Semantics

Okay, so I'm riding back to Atlanta with my family and my mother is at the wheel. We get into a discussion about spirituality. I am loosely describing to her where I come from with things of this nature. She is immediately offended. We go back and forth for a while, then I finally get a chance to actually describe what it is that I am talking about. She says "Oh, do you mean ____? That sounds like what you are describing." As always, I concur, and say that we believe in the same thing, we just call it by different names. I call it the "higher self", she calls it the "holy spirit". I call it the universe, she calls it "God". She calls it "sin", I call it "not recoginizing the power within".
I read in a book about logic once that most times we even argue wrong. We do not decide on what the point of contention is, so it ends up being two people debating two completely different points instead of two different perspectives on the same point. If I'm defending "free speech" and you are speaking on "animal rights", there really won't be a place where we will meet with our arguments. This is how most of our disagreements end up, though. On another note, if you both "agree" on a topic to "disagree" on, it no longer becomes a "disagreement", but a discussion on perspective. Going back to the "free speech"-"animal rights" debate, we would probably meet more in agreement than in points we just could not see eye to eye on(which would either dead the argument or make it completely confusing).
Words are pretty much flimsy. It is the steal barriers and barbed intentions behind them that make them dangerous.

Give and take

Every day when I would leave work, I would pass this old man on crutches asking for assistance. The thing that really struck me about the guy was how cheerful he appeared to be. By looking at him, you could tell he was in a bad way. He was extremely tall, which only made his standing on crutches that much more pronounced. His face was severely sunken in. He only had a few teeth remaining in his mouth. He looked like at one time he had been a big, strong guy but time had gotten the best of him.
I worked for a department store that gave out beverages to pretty much anyone who came in to look around. I usually left with a bottle of water that I would or would not drink depending on how hot of a day it was. I started handing these bottles to the guy on the crutches,whom I had started calling "Sarge" because of the military cap that I always saw him wearing. After a while, it appeared that Sarge was anticipating my daily water delivery. His gratitude was obvious. It felt great to genuinely help. My wife, Madelaine, a giver by nature, began working in the area and began joining me in my "deliveries". It got to a point where we would start bringing things from home to give to him. One Thanksgiving, Madelaine brought him a whole dinner. That wasn't the last time she did that, either. After I had left my job at the department store, we started saving water bottles, cleaning them out, and re-filling them with fresh water in order to try and always have something for him.
There was a joy in providing something for someone for no reason at all. I felt it when I did not have anything for Sarge. It felt like I was supposed to receive something but didn't. Other than on a basic level, I can't say that Sarge felt the strain any more than I did. It made me know that I would be interested in doing more. I had done things like this before, but I never thought too deeply into it. There were times when charity had helped me out, so I tried to return the favor. I never thought about receiving and giving producing the same feelings.
We have created a society that requires payment for everything. It cuts us off from the connection that comes from giving from our hearts. Contributing to charities mandates a tax write-off(which kind of no longer makes it charity, correct?). I was raised in this "everything costs" mind state. I've found that both people who feel they have never given and people who feel they have never really received tend to look at things similarly. The truth is, we should be thankful that we don't always get what we deserve and that sometimes we get things we didn't work for. There are things that fit both descriptions for us all, no matter what we've convinced ourselves of. Give and take are one in the same, in the end.

The Swimming Lesson

My mother made sure that my sister and I knew how to swim. I took lessons from age 7 to age 9. Summer would come, and we would head to the pool at the local Air Force base. It seemed that my lessons would always go the same way: I would start out scared as hell, flailing my hands everywhere in the water, grasping for the edge. By the time the last day of the lessons would come, however, I would be confident, moving through the water with relative ease. Now, realize that even though I would leave sure of myself, the next summer I would return only to go through the same process. It seemed that I had totally forgotten about the esteem I had gathered during the previous lessons! Panic would set in again and I would be back to square uno. I stopped taking lessons when I was 10. I had become a strong enough swimmer to go to the public pool with friends.
Today, I think about the swimming experience and how much it is an anology for our life's journey's. Often times we go through one thing, struggling and gasping for oxygen, and we fight our way through it and come out feeling better about ourselves. This rush of "feeling better" only lasts until we come back "next summer" for our next "swimming lesson", where we start the whole thing all over again, almost completely oblivious to strides that were made previously. The key is to hold on to that feeling of empowerment, even when your not "in the water". Had I done this, I might have been leaping off of the high dive sooner.
Swimming in general is a great analogy for life. When swimming, if you fight against the water, you lose energy and will eventually drown. To swim correctly is to move with the water and to recognize your own buoyancy. The rougher the water, the more you have to move with it. Anyone who has ever swam in the ocean can tell you how futile it is to try and swim against the current. If you look at the word "current" with another meaning(i.e up to date, presently), it points even more to the idea of adapting to the moment. The "current" moment. Treading water is nice, but one can only do this for so long before they run out of energy and go under. This can be likened to stagnation, staying in one place(which is essentially what treading water is). The key is to keep it moving as much as possible until you reach the "shores" or the "edge" of self realization.

Learn to "swim" my friends, and life is a beach!