You may be wondering what the title of this blog post means exactly?
Have you ever had an experience in which you put your focus on something such as a goal or a specific life situation, it could be positive or negative, and it either got better because you were focusing on the good or it got worse because you were focusing on the negative?
There is a natural law that states “whatever you focus on you will get more of.”
The part of the brain that makes you more aware of what you focus on is called the reticular activating system. For example, you may have a favourite car that you would like to own, and you may begin to see that car everywhere. It’s not that it wasn’t around before, you just became aware of it. It is because you put your focus on it and the energy of your consciousness became attuned to it and brought it into your awareness more and more. This is like when you buy a new car, you start to notice the exact same model and colour in more and more places.
This can be the same with negative thought patterns that we don’t want.
While you may know that you don’t like or want them, just focusing and your resistance on them will give them more power and space in your conscious awareness. It’s like the attention and storytelling when you actually feed it and make it stronger.
So, how can we deal with such thought patterns?
We all have some negative conditioning from our early life experiences. The trick is to allow those thought patterns to flow through the mind without identifying with them or wanting them removed. By doing this, the energy and perceptions are experienced consciously, and they will just pass through your system.
This isn’t easy because out of nowhere we may feel a range of emotions and thoughts which can truly grip us. Meditation comes in at this point and gives us the tools to observe our minds and emotions.
As you practise meditation, you can gain higher degrees of detachment and notice that you are more aware and more able to respond, rather than just react, to situations and internal feelings, emotions and thoughts.
To start meditating, just sitting in silence with no devices, TVs or phones to connect to can be a good start.
The meditation method I use is called True Meditation by Adyashanti. This process is based not on any technique that results in a specific state of mind but instead letting go all notions and concepts about meditation and what it should be. To sit without “doing” anything. That can be difficult for most people we are always doing rather than being.
In allowing yourself to experience what is here physically mentally and emotionally without resistance, you can begin to experience life in a new way. This greater connection to awareness ( which is who you are) can then reveal to you dimensions of yourself you didn’t know existed.
I choose to focus on the good and life brings more of the good, still being aware of the negative but not getting stuck or identified with it, as much as I can at any given moment. It’s also important not to become identified with the good in life too because of all experience changes; no experience is permanent.
Just remember whatever you focus on, you get more of it, whether you want it or not!
Thanks for reading, please share your comments
Namaste
Marcus Abraham
