DIY Reality!

Before the world was dark with threats of terrorism and worse, constant Bushisms, there was a flowering of consciousness that was quickly labeled the "New Age Movement." And as labels go, this period was quickly labeled and as quickly dismissed by many as a marketing ploy to sell books and dream catchers. Of course this "movement" didn't just disappear but it did submerge under the gravity of the Bush years in much the same way the flowering consciousness of the 1960s' receded during the Nixon years. Many of the books that came out in the 90s' had the theme of "Create your own reality" and this became something of a slogan among many who followed in kind. But there was an over simplification inherent in the slogan itself leading many to a quick disillusionment that soured them on their own creative potential. On it's face it comes off as a false promise, and many people were led to expect something for nothing. But in it's oversimplified form, it is a puzzle, a riddle for us to unfold.

"Create your own reality" sounds like a command or suggestion, as if there is some element of choice over whether or not you will or can do it. The first thing one must discover is that they are creating their reality now, always have been and always will be. Perhaps the only choice we have in the matter is whether we create consciously or unconsciously. This realization sets us on the path of reconciliation and recapitulation with the world, there is so much in our past to reconsider. If one truly wishes to create consciously one must first take full responsibility for everything in their world, and see all of their experiences as their own doing. This is perhaps the most difficult task one can engage in, you never know how much you blame on others until you try to take it all back. It also sets us up for a battle between our mind and our spirit, one must completely rethink the law of "cause and effect" in order to take full responsibility for their experience. And to look at the world through the same lens many serious moral questions arise as one tries to eliminate the "victim" and the "criminal" from the narrative of the daily news.

The process of reconciling one's past experiences with this new conscious responsibility is where we hash out the mechanics of how we create our own realities. It doesn't matter whether you're trying to forgive your older brother for holding your head underwater in the pool when you were 10, or if you're theoretically contemplating how a baby could create it's own death, this victim-less world is a challenge to realize. Needless to say, for those of us who are passionate about equal rights and justice, it can be extremely difficult to reconcile the political world view with this rather uncompromising spiritual world view. It's not easy to ask yourself "How did Africans create their own slavery?" or "How did the indigenous peoples of the world ask to be colonized?" These topics may spur lively debates, but we may never truly know how and why other people, or groups of people create their experiences. Asking ourselves a lot of "what if" questions may or may not be fruitful either because we can only truly discover what is. Each of our own personal experiences are enough to keep us contemplating our creations for an eternity.

There is a simple answer to how we create our own realities, and it brings us to the place where our power truly lies. Our minds are not unlike computers, we run programs consisting of lines and lines of code. And just like computer code our minds use words, characters, and numbers. Whatever we program into our minds begins to create the world around us, but much of it comes to us from the external world. Just like computers our minds are vulnerable to malware, spyware, bugs and glitches, and it's up to us to keep them protected. Sometimes we need to clean house so to speak, go through our code and look for old outdated patterns that no longer serve us or do not align with our higher order. The lines of code in our minds are what we call "Beliefs" and we run them without deliberation the same way a computer unquestioningly obeys it's program. Virtually everything we say, every sentence, is a belief, a line of code that helps to create our reality. Even when we say the opposite of what we believe we use a sarcastic tone so that our belief is still implied.

It is not enough to program a few positive beliefs and expect the world to instantly change, or to change at all, and this is how many people approach this concept. There are many beliefs that must be eliminated before a contrary belief can operate unimpeded. One may want to believe in the positive idea, but when we believe in the negative idea for so long we must build the positive idea to be at least as strong. Our minds are not computers of course, in a way our minds are more like gardens and everything in our garden represents a belief. A well tended garden is one that only grows what is intended, and each item in the garden receives all of the vital nourishment from soil, water, and sunlight. If the garden is over run with weeds one must first remove the weeds before planting the new additions, otherwise they may languish due to lack of sufficient nutrients and space. In this world however, we must stand guard at the garden gate and carefully inspect the seeds that others are pitching us, which may subvert our intentions.

It can be a stressful and dizzying affair to try and tackle each one of these beliefs one by one and determine which must go and which can stay, and which ones just need a little tweaking. It may help to make it a top down affair so that all of the little beliefs can be aligned with one over riding belief, a cornerstone for our whole belief system. Asking one's self to choose a single belief to be the foundation for the rest brings us to the depths of our spiritual capacity to emerge with a key, a guide in our quest for reconciliation. It's not at all necessary that we agree what this belief should be, but I suspect that in essence many of us agree on what this fundamental truth is. So I'm happy to volunteer my personal foundational belief, the one I check all others by and toss out those that are not in harmony: ALL IS ONE. Though many institutions and individuals can say that they do believe this, they also believe a lot of things that contradict it. So to suggest this as a criterion for all other beliefs is subversive to most people, but ultimately leads one to create their dream garden, and reality.