“A loving heart is the key to contentment.” - Betsy Otter Thompson
“There is a way whereby we are able to rid ourselves of sin, sickness, poverty, and the results of wars and economic changes. This way is the exchanging of our material sense of existence for the understanding and consciousness (awareness) of life as spiritual.” These words, including the title, are from the teachings of Joel S. Goldsmith, one of America's great Christian Mystics. Even though his writings are from the 20th Century, by Grace I can personally speak to their authenticity in our present times.
As evidenced by the current challenges that this country faces, we have created a world filled with dis-ease, wars, violence, and racial unrest at all levels, as well any heinous crime known to man. However, there is also a world available to us that knows only wellness, harmony, peace among nations as well as an overall state of wellbeing, and the one that impacts our lives is the one that we give our attention to. When our attention is outwardly focused, we experience the former, however when we live from within we experience the latter, and there is no overlap between the two. Moreover, there is nothing that we need to do or even can do to enjoy this experience as a way of life, but there are some things that we must know, and are as follows. To create lives according to our design we must understand how our thoughts and feelings, in conjunction with The Law of Attraction work together to format our life experiences, and because of their indispensable role in the process, we will start with our feelings.
While most of us are aware of the incessant thoughts that keep the wars going on in our heads the idea of feeling is typically lost on the masses and here is why that is problematic. Although little known (and seldom realized), feeling is THE secret to happiness, and when we think about it, it makes perfect sense. We have been programmed to believe that happiness is a ‘thing’ that must be found somewhere out there, and nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is happiness not a ‘thing’ it is in fact, and obvious when we think about it, a feeling. Therefore, even if happiness did show up in our lives, which it always does, were it not for our feelings how else would we recognize it, and then we move on to our thoughts.
Just as feelings are the secret to our happiness, thoughts are the secret to our suffering. According to Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, human thoughts are 98% useless and repetitive. Furthermore, because of the correlation between our thoughts and feelings, they also have the potential to be harmful. When we think a thought; the highest concentration of which is in our head, it comes with a corresponding vibration (feeling) that can be felt in the solar plexus, the area behind the navel that is often referred to as the ‘pit of the stomach. Therefore, when we think negative, low vibrational thoughts we feel bad. On the other hand when we think positive, high vibrational thoughts we feel good, and here is where the Law of Attraction comes in. Being the guiding principle of the Universe this Law says, “That which is like unto itself is drawn”. In simple terms, this means that we get what we think about, therefore if we want it, think about it. If we do not want it, then do not think about it. Once we understand the correlation between what we think and what we manifest in our experience; which will become evident with practice, we will become a lot more selective with the thoughts that we choose to think. Moreover, as we continue to observe our thoughts (and this is huge), we will come to realize that every problem; without exception, begins and ends with a thought. Release the thought that created the problem in the first place, and the problem, of its’ own accord, disappears along with the thought.
To bring this point home in a rather phenomenal way, I will leave you with a link; at the bottom of this page, to a discussion by Dr. Wayne Dyer entitled “This is the only problem you have” that fully supports, as well as add another dimension to this conversation. The understanding and practice of the above information will guarantee a life free from suffering, but what you do with it is up to you, and finally, the teachings of Joel Goldsmith, together with the Law of Attraction, demonstrate how religion and science (Spirituality) come together and will be the subject of my next blog.