From Dec 2, 2007

“There is no spoon,” he whispered as he shook a spoon at me.

I recall knowing some people…. I must’ve been twenty years old or younger.  There was a friend of a friend… who insisted that he could manifest a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from thin air.  It was the PBJ theory… that if you wanted something enough, if you believed it enough, that you could think it hard enough, and *poof* there would eventually be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right there, in his hand.

One of the guys we hung out with explained it to me.  I remember lying there in his room, hearing him tell me that quantum theory backed this idea up… that essentially the tiniest bits that make up atoms (quarks) are not really bits at all– they are energy– and that energy is affected by thought.  I remember thinking, man, I wish I had what they’re smoking…

I know many people have theorized, philosophized, thought about this whole concept.  It’s a pretty significant metaphysical belief, really.   It’s the tenant behind The Secret (albeit the more “out there” tenant, but it is a tenant nonetheless).  Thoughts become things.

Now, before you decide this is all hogwash and leave my page, I want to explain.  I want you to give me a moment to tell you how this all will work without you believing in magic or voodoo.  Those things are nice, too, but this is not really about magic.  (Of course, in a totally different vein it is, but that’s not what I’m going for right this minute.)

So, the whole basic thing is this:  What you think about you bring about.  This is very easy to grasp when you begin to change your own focus.  As soon as your focus lies within how much you have you lose focus on the things you don’t have.  Call it mind over matter, if you will.  If you focus on what you have, you change how you feel.  This is the key part of happiness– how you feel.

Now, some of you will throw your shoulders back and laugh because many of you have been taught from the very beginning of your experience that you have no control over your emotions– they are what they are, and we just have to learn to deal with them.  If you’re going about it thinking “I’m going to change how I feel,” yes, you’ll eventually change how you feel, but it’s a far more tedious path than if you decide, “I’m going to change what I’m focused on.”

Still with me?  Okay, so changing what we’re focused on… This means that we begin to focus on what we want from life, rather than what we don’t want.  Some people take this to the far future and paint pictures of what it is they really want their experience to look like.  This is a great habit to get into, but it’s not always about the far future.  Sometimes it’s about tomorrow, or a few hours from now.

So, let’s say there’s something in your experience RIGHT NOW that you don’t like.  As long as you are focusing on whatever it is that you don’t like, you will continue feeling “bad” about it.  I challenge you to change your focus.  You don’t really want to feel bad, after all, do you?   So, let’s find something different to focus on.  It can be something that you’re feeling grateful for… or it can be something you’re excited about in the future… it can be something you intend to change (don’t worry about how) about the current things you don’t like… could be something that just allows you to change your tune about whatever it is that’s not going how you want it at the moment.   Regardless of what you change your focus to, as long as you’re no longer focusing on what you don’t want, you have begun the process of changing in your mind (and, believe it or not, in the “Universe”) what and how you’re experiencing things.

I think the key thing here is that now that you’ve changed your focus, you’re now feeling differently.  And now that you feel differently, you are opening up doors for yourself to have what you want.  In doing so, you gradually eliminate the things you don’t want.  After all, there are only so many things you can place within your attention.

Now that you’ve changed your focus, and you’re feeling better– if not great– you have freed up the energy that you would have otherwise spent frustrated over the things you’re no longer focusing on.  Okay, now, deep breath with me…

Ahhhh.

Now you have more energy into figuring out what you want.  Don’t necessarily fret over the how you’re going to get what you want.  When you’re focused on what you want, and spending energy on having what you want, you will, inevitably, get what you want.  This is the law of the Universe.

So… what do you want?