Attitude Awareness

So much reading material is available now that when you are ready to read, how do you select what will occupy your precious time? We certainly do have choices, maybe so many choices that it is a bit confusing; however, that is true of every aspect of life, isn't it? Do you fully recognize how many, many choices we have? God's gift to us is our Free Will and that means that we exist thoroughly by the grace of God, but that we are the captain of our ship. Everything about our life is a choice we make, at varying levels of our consciousness.

Reading material provides an opportunity for us to be entertained, informed about something technical, to be inspired, to push emotional buttons, or to escape into pure fantasy. We invest our thoughts into the reading material and there is a cause and effect manifestation within us, because of what we read.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A man is largely what he thinks about all day long." The master teacher, Jesus said, "As a man thinketh, so is he." Kenneth Thurston Hurst writes: "Thoughts are things. Yes, every thought passing though our mind is a messenger that we emit into the magnetic field surrounding us. We are always projecting thoughtwise, whether we know it or not. We are either projecting passively, like a straw blown about in the wind, or we are transmitting actively, in which we control our thoughts. Most of the time we are merely thinking passively, like receiving service in a game of tennis. But champions who have terrific control of their serve win today's game of tennis, the big game. They control their game thusly, and in turn we can control our game, the game of life, by controlling our serve…that is, our active thoughts."

If you choose to read phenomeNEWS, Edgar Cayce's A Search for God, the Urantia Book, or other inspirational/metaphysical material, what are you seeking? You may think you are open to seeking a specific answer, but are you aware of the attitude you bring to what you read? You have developed the personal software for your brain/computer through your beliefs, and you filter everything you read through that screen.

Have you heard the phrase, "We only hear what we want to hear and we only see what we want to see."? A more accurate statement might be, "We only hear what our personal software, programs us to hear (or see), based on our belief system/attitude. When we increase our awareness, we rewrite our software and we're able to absorb more of what we see and hear, and can evaluate it for our highest good. We are spiritual beings, and increasing our awareness helps us take a step forward in our personal growth along our spiritual path.

I carry a modest collection of small, inspirational clippings around with me every day. They are just tucked away in a pocket of the address book in my purse. Many times I have found comfort in the touching thoughts within the simple words. I sometimes select one to read while I'm waiting in a supermarket line, or in my dentist's office. They have been useful to quote in sympathy notes to friends and family. They helped our family when my uncle was in the last phase of Hospice care.

Place your food on a luncheon size plate, instead of a large dinner plate, so your eyes see a plate filled with food. As you look at your plate and appreciate what you are about to enjoy, visually select two bites of food that you are not going to eat. You are going to leave them on your plate, and discard them at the end of your meal. If this seems wasteful to you, keep them separated and clean, and offer them to a family member. Or you can save the two bites for a treat, two or three hours later. Remember to have fun with this!

Use a luncheon or dessert size fork instead of a dinner fork, and take modest portions of food on the fork. If you have soup (very filling with the liquid that takes up space in your stomach), use a teaspoon instead of a soupspoon. It will take longer for you to eat and give time for your brain to adjust the mechanism that tells you when you're satisfied. Of course, you've been telling yourself how full you are from your first bite. Your marvelous brain/computer doesn't question what you tell it, it just obeys.

Do you ever want to slightly change a word or phrase to make an inspirational piece even more meaningful to you? For example: I love the beautiful American folk hymn by John Newton, Amazing Grace! How Sweet the Sound. For years, I had a hard time singing that song without getting a big lump in my throat. How could I truly believe that I am God's child, and still sing the words, "a wretch like me!"? I know that we aren't wretches; we are all part of God and we're all God's children. So, I change the word wretch to soul, and I can sing the words easily and joyfully when I sing, "a soul like me!" Do you sometimes do things like that too?

The prayer known to many children in church schools around the country, that starts out with the words, "Our Father, who art in heaven? is sometimes altered by saying, "Father/Mother God, who art in heaven". Do you think we may edit these ancient writings, as we choose, to make them more meaningful to ourselves? For many years I recited the above prayer, and one part just never made sense to me. It was the line saying, "Lead us not into temptation" that didn't seem logical. I never believed that God would tempt his/her child. I would never, knowingly tempt one of our children either. That seems so mean spirited to me. God's nature is pure love, and God forgives seventy times seven. God doesn't just love good children, and that is the story of The Prodigal Son. So, I alter the above phrase when I evoke this prayer to read, "Save us in temptation."

The phrase in the commonly called, The Lord's Prayer, that contains either "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" or in some texts, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" was a challenge for me to apply in my life. Without giving personal reasons for not identifying with those words, may I just say that when I started using, "And forgive us our offenses as we forgive our offenders," the prayer became even more precious to me.

You may think I have picked on this one prayer quite enough, but there was just one more phrase that didn't quite resonate with my deeper, possibly increased understanding of our relationship with our Creator/Source. If we think there is anything other than love, then we have created that something else in our mind and that becomes our perception of reality; however, we separate and distance ourselves from our Source with that thought. We are the ones who think that we may have become lost from God, and have to be saved or born again to reunite with God; but God never gives up on us, ever.

I don't think that it is possible for us to get lost and I don't embrace or acknowledge anything other than love as my reality. So instead of praying, "…deliver us from evil." I change that to "…increase our awareness." It looks like this: "Our God, who art in heaven, hollowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on Earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our offenses, as we forgive our offenders. Save us in temptation, and increase our awareness; for Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever."

Your attitude toward anything or anyone may be altered/edited to help you focus in a more loving, positive, appropriate, meaningful way. You have the potential for a wonderful life, and you must write the software for your brain/computer that allows you to embrace every facet of your life with love, because it's your life!

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