Right Thought

I used to think I could cork the energy drains of my life by focussing on what I have that is good and right in my life. Although this skill has been very important in helping me feel good on a day-to-day basis, and it has helped me change my entire outlook on life, and probably my brain chemistry as well… there is more to it than that. Focussing on what is going well certainly helps invite other things to go well, but there’s a whole lot to be said for underlying beliefs about oneself and one’s life - things that lie so deep you might not even be aware that they exist.

I have been taking stock of a couple of different aspects of my life. First, work has not gone the way that I had planned. I had gotten pretty far along with the plan and then it got derailed. The derailment makes no sense and came out of the blue and has left me wondering what I did to make that happen. It is likely that I did nothing. It seems quite likely that there’s still something I need to deal with - that I am not quite ready to have what I want - that obtaining what I have worked toward would create a rift between who I think I am / what I think I am capable of and who I really am / what I am really capable of. I sense that I am holding myself back, but I can’t quite see the mechanism by which I do it. My emotional reactions in a couple of situations have certainly governed my behaviour, so this is a good place to start in terms of figuring out what is going on.

Next, it has become very clear to me that is has no been safe for me to be who I am and to express my true self in my family. That is probably why I was so eager to get away when I was younger. There is nothing like the freedom of a new context to become a new person. So, here I am, many years later, and I have realized that the context I have created for myself is really good. I have adopted new people as my family, been equally adopted by them and I have build a context of love and support that I have sought for a very long time. It is still a work in progress, but there are no fundamental flaws in what I have.

Finally, my relationship is certainly not flawless, but I have someone who seems very responsive to me. The clearer I get with myself about what I want the more she comes to embody those characteristics or support me. I haven’t even said much out loud because there are things I am not ready to deal with in my current state of mind, but things are going well. There is a direct relationship between the life I am choosing and the changes occurring at home. It’s interesting to watch.

I am very aware that the entire realm of possibility exists right now and that I choose what will exist by how I think. There are some things I need to deal with but to do so now, with the wrong focus, would most likely bring the wrong outcome. There is more to it than the “power of positive thinking”; that’s a very superficial way of looking at it. A lot of mindfulness is required in order to identify and address the subtle. I can concoct all positive thoughts I want, but if I feel like crap and am preoccupied or worried about things, it’s the preoccupations and worries that will manifest. I have experienced the Buddhist concept of right thought, it a whole new light.