Sometimes the universe hits you with some home truths – like today when I was watching a video on youtube and I noticed this video by Alan Watts on the side with “Recommended for you” written on it! I know how Youtube works and I have recently posted a video of Alan Watts on my post ‘Why I became a digital marketer‘ Â so ‘it’ knows that I have watched his videos.The internet in general is getting much more sophisticated and knows what you are interested in and will ‘sell’ you things accordingly. Your whole online experience is becoming more and more specifically tailored to you as an individual. However this one struck a chord with me and it felt particularly insightful and meaningful to me at this point in my life. It also reminded me of a scene in the film Fight Club.
We are all guilty to some extent of trying to control our lives to one degree or another but what I am talking about here is getting so caught up in ‘control’ that you stop allowing things to happen. You ‘get in your own way’ so to speak and become obsessed with the details to such an extent that you forget that the results are turning up already! Your mind becomes fearful that you will make a mistake or lose ground somehow and you get so busy with ‘goal setting’ and ‘list making’ that you miss the main event – your life as a whole. Endless neurotic thinking and planning is fruitless if it is tinged with fear and panic. It only reaffirms those inner states of fear and panic – telling the universe “I want more of this”. The universe doesn’t think in terms of lists – it responds to your feelings so you need to ask with your feelings.
I have become caught up in the goal setting so much so that writing out the goals and making lists has become the goal in itself! It’s easy to forget how far you have come and what you have already achieved in life and often we forget to acknowledge and give thanks for those things we wanted long ago which have actually manifested already. We are only here a short time on this planet and how much of it do you really want to spend planning, worrying and stressing about things that are often out of our control?
The universe is always giving you that which you think and feel about. We are perpetually thinking and can forget to enjoy the fruits of our labors. As my Aikido instructor used to say during the warm up meditation “Thank the universe for the help and guidance it has given you up to now and will be giving you from now“. He used to say it each class and it became a bit of a mantra for me as I tried to understand its importance.
I am understanding it more and more as I read and learn about the law of attraction. Gratitude is always a major factor and a way of ‘siding’ with the universe. It is ultimately what we are all seeking when we look to achieve something which we want. The end result we aspire to is something which we think will make us feel amazing. We will be grateful. But instead of practicing ‘feeling’ this way (by doing what makes us feel good) we often go about things in a very backwards fashion doing things which make us feel awful in order to have the things which we believe will make us feel amazing!
‘Thank the universe (gratitude), for the help and guidance it has given me up to now and will be giving me (expectation), from now’. The understanding that the universe gives us feedback into our beliefs and thought processes is a magical realization. It empowers us to change. Not to change the outer world, as such, which we see as real but our own inner world of thoughts, beliefs and attitudes which is the secret creator of our experiences.
There’s something to be said for trusting in the universe – for letting go of having to endlessly monitor things in order to get your own way. It can be exhausting and there is never any peace when you try to do so.