M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 106

Positivity: You Set the Tone

I get to set the tone for my day.

Will it be a good day? Will it be a bad day? Will it be a productive day? Will it be a day of total time mismanagement? It’s entirely up to me.

It can be really easy to forget that we are in control of our emotions. Yes, things happen that trigger an emotional response in us, but we get to make the choice about how we are going to feel.

Often this begins with how we feel upon getting out of bed in the morning. We have a chance to set a tone for our day. What do you choose?

Despite whether you climb out of bed stiff and sore or rested and refreshed, you still have a choice as to how you fill face your day. Will you begin with distress, annoyance and negativity, or will you choose peace, patience and positivity? You get to set the tone, you get to choose how you will approach the day ahead.

I know that this seems ludicrous to some people. You feel what you feel.   But that’s not the truth. I know there are things that cause us to feel a certain way, but the choice about whether to let those feelings linger or to move on to different feelings rests with us. We have the power to make a choice, even when we don’t believe that’s true.

Take for example why I started this Monday Positivity thing in the first place. Rather than be inundated by various post on social media griping about the start of the work week, political and economic extremes and awful things happening across the globe, I wanted to find something positive to look at. Why let all that negativity set the tone for my day when I can choose instead to find positivity?

I know that I don’t like to feel aggravated, annoyed, angry or disempowered. Do you? So instead of letting all those negative posts set the tone for my day, I choose to offer a positive post, and let that set my tone. It certainly beats finding fault and problems to latch onto and thus energize further.

Everyone has bad days. We all face situations that are not going to be negative, some of which are the result of our environment and outside influences and are thus largely out of our control. But for the things that we can get a handle on, we are all far better served when we make that effort in order to find more peace, more happiness, more contentment.

New day, new opportunity. Positive or negative? The tone of the coming day is yours to choose.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that I can choose the tone for my day, it is wholly up to me whether I expect a good and positive day or a bad and negative day. You can use this opportunity to set a tone for the day ahead that will empower you. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the seventy-seventh entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

Pathwalking 185

Dreams are not just an involuntary act of the unconscious mind during sleep.

Dreams are bigger than that. Dreams are far more powerful. Dreams are the reason to be awake and aware and to choose to walk your own path.

I have frequently commented about my lack of dreaming during sleep. Yes, I am aware that scientifically EVERYBODY dreams during sleep. I almost never recall my dreams, whereas many of my friends can vividly recall what they dreamt of in the night. I have learned to interpret other peoples’ sleep-time dreams through my inability to remember my own.

But that is not all that dreams are. Dreams are also the stuff that gets us going. Dreams are the fuel that ignites our passions and sets us on different paths to build bigger, better, more fun and exciting lives.

When we are aware of ourselves, when we are awake and consciously creating we are in point of fact making our dreams real. We all have desires, wants beyond simple needs, and we all want to find things in life that bring us happiness and joy. These are things we might not have yet, but would like to discover in our lives. These are dreams.

Abundance, prosperity, peace, love, happiness, joy, wonder, creativity, fun. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t desire to have more of these. These are dreams. Worthwhile dreams that we all have the power to consciously create for ourselves.

The stumbling blocks we encounter in this process are often the product of outside influences, but not always. We work jobs that do not fulfil us, we read about the economic issues around the globe and complain about the price of things like food and gas for our cars and such. What we call reality we often blame for our inability to realize our dreams.

If consciousness creates reality – and time and again I express my utter certainty that it does – then this so-called reality was of our own making. This means that those outside influences we are allowing to interfere with the dreams we want to realize are our own undoing.

This means that the real stumbling blocks we face are ourselves. Our doubts, our feelings of insufficiency and unworthiness, our beliefs in how the world works. We have manifested the world as we live in it already, whether we recognize this for what it is or no.

Hold on a moment. I didn’t ask for my car to break down or my rent to be increased or to break my toe on the steps. How could I possibly be responsible for that? While consciousness creates reality, so too does unconscious thought create reality. This is the part a lot of people cannot reconcile because “life happens” and a myriad of other mundane outside reasons. This is the hard part to accept about this concept, this is the part many people dismiss as bull.

We are energy. At our absolute core we are nothing but a ball of energy. Energy vibrates at a frequency, and like frequencies attract like frequencies. As such, when we consciously create we are aware of and focused on making our dreams into reality. But we also have numerous unconscious thoughts, and many of these are negative or self-deprecating or otherwise uncomplimentary. These also attract reality, and can do us harm and bring in negativity.

Yes, from time to time things are going to happen to us. This is all part of the life experience. And we have a choice as to how we will react to them. Will we get angry and stomp and shout? Will we get depressed and mope? Will we use the experience to grow and to learn and to build better dreams?

We tend to let a lot of things just happen in our lives. This is where choosing to walk your own path takes this back, and puts us in the driver’s seat, so to speak. The more we choose to be awake and aware of how and what we are thinking the more the consciousness gets control and the unconscious thoughts are shunted into the background.

This takes patience, and practice, and self-esteem. If you think you are unworthy or undeserving you need to realize that you DO deserve to have your dreams made into reality. You are worthwhile of love, peace, happiness, joy and all other positive emotions.

An important caveat in regards to making dreams into reality. It’s not that there are limitations, per se, but there are paths from point to point in the creation of reality. If, for example, you want to go to the moon, you can’t just expect to make that happen unless either you take steps like joining the military or being a scientist or engineer that might be needed by NASA or a billionaire who books a flight on one of the yet-unfinished private options. There is a logical progression and aspect of the reality of your previous and current life choices that have to be taken into consideration.

A new book I have been listening to recently describes this as fantasy versus dreaming. Dreaming is possible. You can realize dreams with conscious reality creation. Fantasy, while not impossible, is impractical. I choose to write fantasy, which is how I live it for myself. But I digress.

Dreams are the reality we wish to consciously create. They are important to our growth, our creation of bigger and better things, and making our lives more interesting, more fun and exciting and full. We should pay them more heed, and we should work with them to empower ourselves and help us to see what all we are truly capable of. This is Pathwalking.

What do you dream of?

 

This is the one-hundred eighty fifth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my personal desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog and share.  Thank you for joining me.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available in print and for your Kindle.

Vortex Pilgrimage Thoughts

I think everyone at one time or another goes through the process of finding themselves.

On more than one occasion I have taken that journey. In fact, as evidenced by my weekly blog posts, I am still in the process of such a journey now – and since we change frequently, I will likely always be on this particular trek.

There are numerous works of non-fiction in what gets lumped as “self-help”. Some are extremely practical and organizational, while some are more spiritual and metaphysical. People turn to these works in order to better understand themselves, and to live happier healthier lives for the most part.

There are in addition to the non-fiction writings out there works of fiction that also inspire and expand on the journey to create a life that excites us. A prime example, and the inspiration for my own such work, is Paulo Coelho.

I was introduced to The Alchemist a number of years ago now. I have re-read it a couple times, and listened to it as read by Jeremy Irons more than once. Its story of a boy following his “personal legend” is very much in line with my own concept of Pathwalking, and partially inspired my work on this notion. It has been on the New York Times’ Best Seller’s list now for 361 weeks and counting.

While some of Mr. Coelho’s works have been autobiographical or semi-autobiographical, he writes a new book pretty much annually. I have read over a half dozen of them, probably more. His ability to blend reality and fiction intrigues me. So much so that I used the goal of National Novel Writer’s Month several years back to write a story in the same vein.

Vortex Pilgrimage began with multiple trips I have made hiking through the energy vortexes of Sedona and takes the incredible sensations I experienced therein and embellishes them. While I’ve experienced a deeper level of meditation in these places than anywhere else, the journey my alter ego takes in this story is far more expansive and detailed.

This has become a labor of love. Not my normal style or genre, I still felt such deep affection for this story that I edited and published it. It is my hope that others will appreciate the experience my character has, and maybe relate it to their own journeys of self discovery.

Vortex Pilgrimage will be formally available on Amazon as of next Tuesday, 7/21. I will share the links here on that date.

Thank you for your continued support!

Positivity: You Are Amazing

You are an amazing individual.

No, really. I might not know you in the slightest, but I can honestly tell you that you are an amazing person. We may disagree about any number of topics, we may have totally different and diametrically opposed backgrounds, but I can still tell you that you are an amazing individual.

We tend to not give ourselves enough credit. We look for our faults, we work on the things about ourselves that are flawed…but this is backwards. Working from the negative does not help to build more positive.

American culture in particular stresses how inadequate our lives are. We need the better car, bigger home, fitter body and so on. We look to all of our flaws, our shortcomings and the things that are lacking, and we give that a tremendous amount of energy and thought, feeling and even action.

Negativity begets further negativity. When you are looking for the imperfections, the problems and the flaws – you will constantly find more. Does this strike you as backwards as it strikes me? Why give the energy to negativity when what we in fact want is positivity?

We all find ourselves alone from time to time. When we are alone, we tend to look at the problems we have faced, the hardships, the issues that need to be repaired and worked on. But what we really should focus on is our abilities, our skills, good things we do for ourselves and our friends and loved ones. We should put that energy not towards all the negative things we find in ourselves, but rather to the positive. Focus on what an amazing individual you are, all that you are capable of doing and achieving, and don’t give that energy to your perceived shortcomings.

The trap that we often fall into is the feeling of selfishness. We have become so self-conscious about things we do being perceived as selfish that we take selflessness to a place where we often do, in fact, lose track of the self. We get so concerned with how others might perceive us that we instead look for the imperfections and flaws in ourselves so that we can actively avoid anything that might come across as selfish.

Consciousness creates reality. I cannot stress that point enough. When you look for and give power to negative perceptions of the self, you actually get even more of those. It is time to step back, and recognize ourselves for all the amazing things we have to offer. This is not an act of bragging or selfishness, it is an act of recognizing the positive, giving that more energy and attention so that we can drive out negativity and feel good. Because when all is said and done isn’t this what we most want? Don’t we prefer to feel good, to feel happy? Are these positive or negative feelings?

Please take a moment not to look at the money you need to find, the weight you need to lose or anything else negative about your life, but instead recognize, acknowledge and give energy to the amazing individual you are. Your talents, your creativity, your strengths, your ability to love and be loved. Explore the positive about yourself and energize that rather than the negative.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that you are an amazing person, you can build off of that premise. Examine your strengths, your talents, your abilities, your capacity to do everything you can do and more to empower yourself. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the seventy-sixth entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

Pathwalking 184

How do you apply Pathwalking to your life every day? How do you consciously create your own reality and make your choices for the destiny you desire to create?

There is, unsurprisingly, no one method for this process. Different things will work for different people. There are some generalities, though, that can be tweaked to work for just about anyone.

Be aware of what follows the words I AM. You would be amazed just how easy it is to sabotage your intention with the words I AM. When you are feeling sad or down or otherwise not in the best head space, following I AM with negative statements such as a loser or broke or hurting or in pain or a failure or unloved or whatever else you might use can become a reality creator. Consciousness may create reality, but when you allow your unconscious mind to have control it can also create, and usually this will not be a creation you want. This also will bring your thought process to the conscious process, and as such put you in control of it.

Ask yourself questions. Don’t know how you are feeling? Ask. Unsure what to do? Ask. Don’t know what you are thinking? Ask. It amazes me how often I just let me thoughts and emotions run wild, and as such I cannot get ahold of them. Simply asking myself questions causes me to focus, and when I focus I gain control over my thoughts and feelings. As such I can better equip myself to walk the paths of my choice.

Express gratitude frequently. Everybody appreciates being thanked for the things they do. We all love the feeling of appreciation when someone says thank you. We also know when it is being done by rote, and there is no feeling or emotion behind it. Having gratitude for the things we have already, feeling and saying thank you is one of the most powerful ways to gain control over conscious reality creation. Gratitude, not just saying but feeling gratitude, puts you in a place where you can be more clear on what you have and at the same time the things you might want for yourself.

When we are not grateful for what we already have and for the little things life gives us, it is exponentially harder to gain new and better things for ourselves. Thinking, feeling and saying THANK YOU is an astoundingly powerful creator, and is ultimately harmful to none. Gratitude is a key step to conscious reality creation.

I try to write out three to five things daily that I am grateful for. When I write this out I also work on FEELING the gratitude, and I say aloud THANK YOU. This is a simple yet incredibly powerful tool to Pathwalking.

Journaling. Pathwalking began when I set out a New Year’s action to blog weekly. I chose a day, and on Wednesday January 4, 2012 Pathwalking came into being. Before then I would post to my blog sporadically with no frequency. Three and a half years later I look forward to coming up with new topics every week as I continue to walk my own path, and share ideas to help you in walking upon yours.

Journaling is an amazingly powerful tool that people neglect to apply. Whether you are doing a public or private blog with LiveJournal or Tumblr or WordPress or something else – or writing in a diary or other blank book – putting thoughts on screen or to paper is a powerful creator.

It can be empowering and grounding to write down your thoughts, your feelings, your ideas, your intentions and your plans of action. Journaling, as such, is a great way to consciously create reality through combined thought, feeling and action.

Study. Read. Learn. Seek out different sources of information, look for wisdom that speaks to you. I doubt that everything that I write here resonates with every one of your who reads this. My ideas and thoughts on conscious creation of reality may only be a starting point for you, or it may even seem frequently crazy and overblown. Whatever the case, there are numerous authors, texts, blogs and other resources that you can turn to and read or listen to (I am VERY fond of audio books) for guidance, ideas and even direction.

I am constantly seeking new interpretations of this idea. My concept, Pathwalking, is how I have put together many different ideas, philosophies and abstract concepts into a way to consciously create a reality I would most desire to have. It is an ongoing process, and I am frequently amazed by both the simplicity and complexity this notion represents.

There is always something new to learn. That is one of the most exciting facts of life, and how we are capable of change like no other animal on this planet.

Take Intentional Actions. It is insufficient to apply just thought and feeling, you need to take actions. Not just random actions, not just distracted actions in order to create motion. You need to take actions full of intent to consciously create reality. Intentional action is action with purpose. If I do ‘x’ I will achieve ‘y’. Even when it is not wholly clear what ‘y’ is, the power of intentional action is an astounding creator.

These are a few suggestions for ways to apply Pathwalking to your life every day. The more you practice Pathwalking, the more you work with the conscious creation of your reality, the more empowerment you gain. This will let you have control over your thoughts, your feelings and your destiny.

I am working on putting this into practice more frequently. What practices do you like to use for the conscious creation of YOUR reality?

 

This is the one-hundred eighty fourth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my personal desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog and share.  Thank you for joining me.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available in print and for your Kindle.

Coming Soon – Vortex Pilgrimage

I know that people are waiting for me to complete the editing of Finder – The Source Chronicles Book II. I am still on target to release the sequel to my first fantasy novel in November, so never fear.

I am, however, a writer who dabbles in multiple genres. For the most part I stick to the root of sci-fi and fantasy, though I consider The Source Chronicles to be a viable YA (Young Adult) series, and while Steampunk is its own genre, my Vapor Rogues series mixes in some sci-fi AND fantasy. I have done journalistic pieces and business writing professionally…and from time to time I play with other genres.

More than once I have used National Novel Writer’s Month (NaNoWriMo) to work outside of my ‘comfort zone’. Some of the results of this can be viewed on my website. A humorous narrative/memoir about the reason WHY I am the ‘Titanium Don’, a technothriller, and a modern fable akin to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.

Vortex Pilgrimage was inspired not only by The Alchemist, but by The Valkyries and Aleph and probably every other work composed by Paulo Coelho I have read. I follow him on Twitter, and I find him deeply inspirational overall.

If you regularly read my blog, you can probably see that I am a somewhat spiritual man. I see a world of potential and possibility, and I try to share what I see. I strive to practice regular meditation and I learned the energy healing modality Reiki. I firmly believe that Consciousness Creates Reality, and I wrote a fable that gives that very emotional journey a fantastical play to alight.

From the back cover of Vortex Pilgrimage:

What lengths will we go to in order to find ourselves?

There comes a point in everyone’s life where they want to really get to know their heart, mind and soul. Some of us take journeys of discovery – some literal, some metaphorical. All have the same goal – to better understand who we are and what we are meant to do with our lives.

Sedona, Arizona is known for its unique energy vortexes.   People have had some amazing experiences in these sacred places, and have sought them out to further their own self-understanding and connections to the world around them.

On a pilgrimage to Sedona, a man crosses the gateway at the vortex, entering an alternate reality where he is his idealized self. There he meets masters who take him on a journey of self-discovery through trials and lessons as he works to become a stronger, wiser and better person.

A fictional adventure of the spirit relatable to everyone in the here-and-now, Vortex Pilgrimage is a fable for the modern age.

Vortex Pilgrimage has captured MY imagination for some time, and I think it is worth sharing. The novel will be available in paperback and electronically the week of July 20th. More specifics coming soon!

 

Positivity: Accolades

Everybody likes to get accolades.

Receiving a reward for a job well done certainly generates a lot of positivity.

This does not need to be a grand thing, sometimes it takes nothing more than being told “thank you”.

Accolades are something that everyone appreciates. Even when we do the things we do because it’s simply what we do, being rewarded in some fashion makes it extra special.

As the social creatures that we are, we seek the recognition of our peers, our colleagues, our friends and our family. It doesn’t need to be public, it doesn’t need to be a humongous gesture of some sort – we just are made to feel good when we receive some sort of accolade.

We all experience times when we feel unappreciated, when we feel that our opinions and our work are not properly valued. As such we can appreciate not only when we receive accolades, but when we see our friends rewarded for something they have done.

As much as any of us individually can enjoy accolades, there is something to be said for the joy we can experience when they come to our friends and loved ones. Seeing the people we care about receive a reward of some sort can build an impressive amount of positivity for not only the rewarded, since we can take joy in their happiness.

Certainly there are times we see people rewarded for things we may not agree with. Still, rather than feeling bitter or spiteful we should do our best to share in the positivity the accolade will generate.

Knowing how being rewarded feels to us, we should practice more freely giving accolades. It need not be something large and showy, it can be as simple as expressing gratitude. It can be very surprising how much positivity can be generated by both giving and receiving accolades. Saying “well done” or “congrats” or even “thank you” feels as good as hearing them.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we like to receive accolades in recognition of a thing we have done or are doing, we should take as much joy in giving them as receiving them. Receiving accolades feels good and generates a sense of empowerment, while giving accolades allows us to further empower ourselves. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the seventy-fifth entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

Pathwalking 183

Do you play the blame game?

The trouble with blame is that it assigns responsibility to an outside party for some bad thing, wrong doing or other matter. Often we blame because it is a far easier thing than accountability.

Blame assigns fault away, and does nothing to correct matters. This is where blame is utterly pointless – it offers no solutions.

Things happen to us and around us that are not our fault. We sometimes find ourselves in a situation where our plans get derailed and we certainly did not ask for this. Placing blame in these situations is a pointless activity and a waste of energy.

Consciousness creates reality. Every single one of us has control of our own reality. There are times it does not feel like this is true, and there are moments when it feels like we are spinning our wheels or otherwise scrambling to get things done, but it makes it no less true. We get to choose our reality, we get to make it happen.

I have written frequently about the need to think, feel and act upon creation. It is a conscious action, performed with intent to drive home focus and make the things we want to see in this life. Pathwalking is about not just letting life live me, but taking control of my life and choosing consciously how I want it to be.

Blame is all about giving up control. Blame is passing the buck, giving the responsibility to another party. It is for this reason that blame is a waste of time and energy and should simply be avoided.

Accountability and responsibility are a part of Pathwalking. I am choosing for myself, and I am working to make the life I most want to have. As such, when my paths hit obstacles and roadblocks and any other matters of impediment I have to do what I can to take care of this, because there is no one to blame but me, and blaming myself does not fix problems.

Our society loves to blame. We blame our emotional states on our parents, we blame our financial states on the banks, we blame the big faceless institutions like church and state for any number of woes and issues. Why bother? How does blaming anyone else for any issue in any way resolve that issue? Simple answer – it doesn’t.

Blaming myself for my mistakes, for my poor choices, for my errors and missteps is also a waste of energy. Great, I screwed up and I am not where I intended to be – but blaming myself won’t fix the problem. Instead I need to take ownership, be accountable for whatever the situation is and then figure out a solution.

Blame might actually be an unconscious act. We see blame tossed about in public life all across social media, and if the situation for which blame is being thrown effects us we will invariably agree. Now we’ve added our energy to the blame game, and instead of looking for our own solutions we expend energies spinning our wheels in the mud and going nowhere.

The thing to remember here is that we have more control in our lives than we allow ourselves. We have our routines and our responsibilities to be certain, but the truth is that we also have the ability to be more aware and more conscious. When we take responsibility to be more aware of our own lives and feelings and as such become conscious of them we can create a reality we desire to have.

The so-called “big picture” that is our society should not be ignored. However it would do us all a lot more good if we put more of our energy, our intentions and attention to our own awareness, our own consciousness, and really examined what we feel, what we think and further what we do. If we better understand ourselves and the paths we are on, whether we chose them or not, we can all have more of the joy, love and happiness that we all desire to have.

Another very important reason not to blame is because we need to forgive ourselves. We have all done things we wish we had not, we have all made choices that we wish we could take back. When we blame ourselves and we focus on our errors and the things we are not proud of we give our energy to what we do not want. Since consciousness creates reality, what do you think happens when you put your focus and energy on things you’d rather not have? You wind up getting more of those things, and dig yourself further into places you would rather not be.

Pathwalking is about awakening awareness and recognizing the incredible power that consciousness creating reality allows for. We do not need to be slaves to our jobs, our emotions or responsibilities since we can choose what we want to feel. I know that things happen that will create feelings, but we can choose which of those things to hold onto and which to acknowledge and then let go of. I know that on the one hand this seems way too simple to be possible; on the other hand this appears to require a great deal of effort and self-monitoring. But if you would rather consciously create the life of your choosing, isn’t the work it might involve worth it?

Blame is a waste of time, energy and effort. Don’t get caught up in this game, because you can place that wasted energy into things you actually want and desire instead. Don’t find things to place blame on…instead find things you can give praise to. Praise leads to gratitude, and gratitude is a fundamental building block in the conscious creation of reality.

Don’t we all prefer praise over blame?

 

This is the one-hundred eighty third entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my personal desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog and share.  Thank you for joining me.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available in print and for your Kindle.

Positivity: Equality

Equality is a massive expression of Positivity.

What could be more positive than equality between people? No matter our differences in skin color, gender, religion, nationality or sexual orientation we all desire equality, and that is a positive thing.

We live in a universe of abundance. The problem we encounter is that those in power want to horde as much power to themselves as possible. That just does not work, because they miss that in empowering people they actually further empower themselves.

Power and empowerment are all-too-often confused. The people who most desire what they view as “power” really want to feel ultimately empowered. Then, to further that feeling and to emphasize it they proceed to dis-empower everyone else. For some reason they believe that empowerment is limited, but they are mistaken – it is not. Empowerment is something everyone deserves to feel.

Last week gay marriage in the United States became simply marriage. Though some would claim this is a sure sign of doom and gloom, in truth the empowerment of more people in no way lessens anyone else. Why do we seem to feel as if letting other people be empowered dis-empowers anyone else? It really does not.

Everyone is deserving of equal treatment. No one wants to be looked down upon or treated as a second-class citizen despite their job, skin color, religion or sexual orientation. And why should we treat anyone as less than ourselves? Our empowerment should not come at the price of the dis-empowerment of anyone else, so it goes to follow that equality is deserved by all.

That feeling of equality is hugely empowering, which in turn leads to tremendous positivity. When people feel that they have equality and thus empowerment they feel good, and when more people feel good we gain more positivity, and we can build even greater things for everyone from there.

The world needs more equality. No nationality is greater than any other, no gender is superior, no love is more right – all are equal. All are deserved and deserving, and all are empowering. We all deserve that empowerment, and we all deserve equality in all kinds of ways.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we are all equal and all deserving equality, we can enjoy the empowerment this brings. Having equality between people no matter what differences we may attach to, we manage to successfully empower ourselves. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the seventy-fourth entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

Pathwalking 182

Faith is not necessarily a dirty word.

This is something I have to remind myself of for a number of reasons.

Faith has nothing to do with religion. Just like morality, spirituality and religion are all separate tenets, faith can be interlinked with or independent of any of these three ideals.

When I know that something is possible, or that something is coming to pass, even when I cannot see or comprehend the how of it, that is where my faith needs to come into play.

I think all too often I allow my skepticism to overrule my faith.

Ruiz’s Fifth Agreement is to Be Skeptical, but learn to listen. Yes, this is an important notion and we should not just take matters on faith alone. But neither should we allow our faith to be shaken simply because we cannot see how this is going to be.

The problem with the notion of faith comes from zealots and fanatics. We hear and read so much nowadays about “faith-based initiatives” and intolerance and bigotry and other negatives in the name of one faith or another. Faith is thrown about as an excuse to deny science and reason. Simply put, this is not true faith.

The true meaning of the notion of faith is about trust. Trusting the universe, trusting your guts and your instincts and your heart and soul and mind is the root of real faith.

The false notions of faith get a lot of attention. We are inundated with stories about blind faith overwhelming logic and reason and people denying realities. Terror acts and ignoring science and avoiding medicine in the name of faith is not at all what faith is about. These examples are corruption of faith, and make it a bad word.

The message we constantly see is that a life without faith isn’t much of a life at all. This is actually to a certain degree true, but not in the sense that faith must involve god or other deities and ideas completely lacking in proof. Faith is not something that should utterly overwhelm sense, but having faith allows us to explore beyond what we already know.

Pathwalking is about controlling my own life, my own destiny. I have made and am making choices about the life I want to lead and the things I want to do with my life. Some of these things have seemed rather far-fetched and the outcome uncertain. Pathwalking, as such, requires faith.

This faith is based on the singular truth I am constantly returning to – consciousness creates reality. This is not always apparent, this is seldom an immediate act. Because consciousness is not merely thoughts but the combination of thought and feeling and action – aligning all three is sometimes a time-consuming process. The conscious creation of reality can be instantaneous, certainly – but sometimes it requires more time and thus faith.

When I was recovering from my severe injuries all those years ago I had no doubt about the totality of my recovery. I knew I could get back to one-hundred percent. Yes, medical science is incredible and I in no way deny the achievements of my many doctors in putting me back together. Yet even they were impressed by both the speed and completeness of my healing since they had predicted permanent complications I overcame. I had absolute faith that I would have nothing less than total recovery.

I’ve written about the situation last year where I needed a car. I didn’t know how I could make this happen, I saw no process to a solution, but I went through the motions and had faith that I could make it happen. I had faith that my consciousness could create my reality…and it did.

True faith does not exist in a vacuum. True faith does not utterly defy logic and reason because true faith is about confidence. This confidence is not from an unseen god or from vast powers beyond our imagination…it is within us. Faith begins with me.

I do not always have faith in myself. I do not always trust that I am choosing well, and as such I can become disillusioned and destressed because the path I am walking becomes unclear. Putting together the thoughts and feelings and actions necessary to consciously create reality requires faith that I know what is best for me, and that I believe in what I am seeking along this path I am choosing.

We need to reclaim faith for and in ourselves. The corrupted notion of faith has become a powerful tool for some less-than-scrupulous people and we need to show them that true faith is a far greater and more worthwhile power. This is because true faith has nothing to do with power but everything to do with empowerment.

When we feel empowered, we become capable of amazing things. Empowerment is the key to self-love, to making sound choices, ultimately to finding and having happiness.

I do not wish to walk the paths others lay out for me. I choose my own way, my own path, and I have faith that these choices allow me to create the reality I most desire. I need to have faith in myself to make this fly. Faith is not a bad thing, true faith is the road to empowerment. Empowerment leads to consciousness, from which we can create better realities.

Do you have faith in yourself?

 

This is the one-hundred eighty second entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my personal desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog and share.  Thank you for joining me.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available in print and for your Kindle.