Visualisation, Positive Thoughts & The Car We Drive

Here are some extracts from a longer message written by someone called Ralph Marston about Positive Thoughts:

• you’re immersed in a universe of limitless, growing abundance.
• accept that your life is destined for meaningful and unique fulfillment.
• see yourself as a powerful agent of the positive possibilities.
• stop and remind yourself how powerful you are.
• whatever you most consistently think, is where your life will surely and steadily go.

The other day whilst I was driving I watched the people next to me in their car.  It was a family.  They were driving a beaten up old Toyota and they were laughing and looked like they were happy and having fun.  And I thought two thoughts:

1. Yes, these people are happy with their lot in life.  They expect no more and are happy with where they are and their situation of being relatively poor.  And in this acceptance, and not expecting any more in their lives, i.e. greater wealth, they are happy.  Good for them.
2. But – they could expect more.  They are entitled to more, why not?!  Everyone on the planet is entitled to more, and everyone can have more, because the Universe has limitless abundance which is available for everyone.  It is not that we deserve this, because we have been good or any similar type of condition, it is a simple matter of this abundance being available to everyone and it is also the right of everyone to have it.  The Universe makes no distinction, every single person on the planet, irrespective of age, colour, gender, or creed is equal.  And therefore we may all have this limitless abundance in our lives.

So why don’t these people, and everyone on the planet, have it?

      Another insight that I’d had a few weeks ago, was that I need to “raise the level” of everything that I do.  I was applying this to a few things, physical type stuff, like eating junk food, spending too much time at my computer, exercise, dressing smarter, having a haircut etc.  But it didn’t really sink in properly until this weekend.
      
      Here’s a story to illustrate the revelation that I’ve had on this point.  I used to be a reasonable cricketer and I used to play with Peter Kirsten, who was a good friend of mine, the captain of the club team that I played in, plus he was captain of Western Province (now called the Cobras) as well as the SA side (now called the Proteas).  Towards the end of my career I started to come into my own as a batsman, batted no 3 for the team, and was lucky enough to bat with Kirsy a few times.  I made quite a few 50’s and even a few 80’s – but I never made a 100.  I asked Kirsy one day what the thinking was behind making a hundred; how did I need to think and behave, and what did I need to do to get myself beyond the 50’s and 80’s and make a 100.  His answer was – I can’t tell you what to think or what it feels like, it is something that you will only feel and understand once you get there one day.  I never did score a hundred.
          
      I realised this weekend that this is exactly the problem that I have had, and the people in the Toyota, and many, many other people have, when it comes to visualization.  We pretend to visualize and see ourself out there in this advanced state, or with this abundance, or whatever our visualization is – but we don’t actually believe it.  Because we’ve never been there!  We don’t know what it’s like to actually be where it is that we are visualising, so we don’t believe that it will happen; we pretend that we know, and we pretend that we believe, and we hope, but we prepare for the worst, and we don’t believe it, and it doesn’t happen.

It doesn't always turn out the way you expect, or want, it to!

A FAIRY TALE

Once upon a time,

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in a land far away,

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a beautiful, independent,

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self-assured princess

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happened upon a Frog as she sat,

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contemplating ecological issues

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on the shores of an unpolluted pond

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in a verdant meadow near her castle.

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The Frog hopped into the princess' lap

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and said: Elegant Lady,

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I was once a handsome prince,

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until an evil witch cast a spell upon me.

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One kiss from you, however,

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and I will turn back

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into the dapper, young prince that I am

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and then, my sweet, we can marry

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and setup housekeeping in your castle

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with my mother,

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where you can prepare my meals,

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clean my clothes, bear my children,

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and forever

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feel grateful and happy doing so.

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That night,

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as the princess dined sumptuously

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on a repast of lightly sautéed Frog legs

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seasoned in a white wine

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and onion cream sauce,

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she chuckled and thought to herself:

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I don't fucking think so.

Man's Best Friend?

If you've come here thinking that you're going to read about a dog - sorry, my mind is on another track, again.
I am referring to men though, because I'm not too sure how this applies to women, and what their reasoning and thinking is behind this one (or anything really, not so chaps :-) )
Us boys do a fair amount of drinking; we have braai's, watch sport on TV at home or with our mates, go to pubs etc. and always we are very keen to imbibe, and I'm going to use beer as the beverage of choice, for simplicity, and because it is quite a favourite.
There are other times in our lives when we also drink, but we drink other things, like coffee, or tea, or a Coke, or maybe even water.  In the pub we will order a beer, and drink it, and usually even before that one is finished we will have ordered our next one.  And we will continue doing this throughout the evening.
Sometimes, with some people, the same applies to coffee and tea.  We drink copious amounts of the stuff, one after the other, throughout the day.  So what?
The thing is -  after I've had my first 500ml of beer I am most certainly no longer thirsty.  We do after all drink stuff because we're thirsty don't we?  So why do I have the second, third, fourth ... ?
Now with my tea addiction an answer to this poser immediately comes to mind - but then I suffer from another condition that not everyone else may do - I live alone.  Often I will wander off in the direction of the kettle and make another cup of tea as a gap filler: a break between some work that I'm doing, because I'm bored and don't know what to do with myself etc.  Many other people also use food as their gap filler, and quite often this gap filler is an emotional one, a sad or depressed one, and out comes the comfort food - for me that's sweets.
Back to the beer.  Clearly we are not thirsty, so there must be another reason why we want a second one.
Maybe we like the fact that we are now on the road to getting pissed and we like it when we are pissed.  We love the way that we get loud, and argumentative, and some guys get aggressive, and we can't stand properly, and start to slur our words, and we struggle to get home, and often do so quite literally taking our life, and the lives of others, in our hands, and the way our body responds with foul breath, bloatedness, belching, farting, unhealthy and fat bodies, hangovers, not being able to get out of bed the next day, feeling sore and uncomfortable, staying in bed while most of the beautiful day outside wastes away ... any other results that I've missed?
And surely the answer to this question has to be - I don't think so!
Okay then, we're getting there, we're not thirsty, we don't really like to get pissed - so why do we do it.
Well imagine standing around in a pub with all your mates talking all sorts of garbage and ogling the chicks all night long, and you have nothing in your hands - what do you do with them?
It's also a bit like me telling my Navy and sporting buddies that I thought that the last rugby test match that I watched which the Boks won and played really well in was "jolly nice" - do me a favour, of course I'd say that I thought it was "effing great".
Then again, I have in the past done the almost unthinkable and spent many weeks going to my local and standing there with a tall glass of lime juice and water in my hands all night long - tough, but doable.
And, like most guys will say, I do enjoy the taste of my first beer and often look forward to it - but then again I might also actually be thirsty then.

And I shall conclude these thoughts by being inconclusive - why then do you do it?

So why is it all there?

The nearest star to our little old planet Earth is called Proxima Centauri, not Alpha Centauri as some might think, they discovered another little fella in the same group that is slightly closer - and don't get clever, apart from the Sun.
This little fella is 4.5 light years away - a light year is actually a measure of distance, not time.
This distance is how far a beam of light, travelling at the speed of light - I suppose light does actually travel at its own speed - will go in one year.  And now I suppose you'd like to know how far that is, okay it's:
9,500,000,000,000 kilometres.
Cool, so if that little star is 4.5 of these away then it is - work it out yourself if you want to.
But obviously we can't travel at anywhere near the speed of light.  Let's then consider something that can - a space shuttle.
You may not know that the space shuttle travels at 28,000 km/hr in order to stay in orbit.  So if we send a space shuttle off to go and visit our neighbour Proxima and it poodles off out there travelling at its usual speed, then it will take how long exactly to get there? - 4,180,111.5 years -not sure who's going to be flying the thing, and can't see anyone hanging around long enough to make it, do you?

So all of this we know.  We also know that apart from our little neighbour, Proxima that we can't even hope to consider getting to, that there are millions of stars out there in our galaxy beyond Proxima.  And there are millions of galaxies out there beyond the Milky Way - that's the name of our galaxy.  And there are millions and millions of stars in all of those galaxies.
We know all this.

What we don't know though is - why is it all there?