bleeping intention

I have somehow come to be the co-founder of a study group for the movie, “What the Do We Know!?” — really, my friend, Ansur (aka the Lord of Truly Atrocious Puns), is the true founder, as all I’ve contributed is the name of the group (Bippety-Bobbity-Bleep) and my presence at a handful of meetings. I’ve been thinking this morning about one of the comments made in our Saturday afternoon meeting, about how so many people move through their days on automatic pilot.

I’m wondering if this stems from a general, comfortable numbness to the mundane affairs of our everyday lives. For too many people, life hasn’t turned out to be anything remotely similar to the grand adventures we imagined for ourselves as children, and perhaps we now choose to “tune out” from sheer disappointment, or even pain. Our lives lack excitement, and much of our adult life experience is devoid of conscious investment. We go from day to day, paycheck to paycheck, job to job, focused more on supporting our own existence than encouraging growth and joy. So much of our precious time is wasted in mindless and even escapist activities — from “getting through” the daily commute to “vegging out” in front of the television — with so many opportunities for true engagement just passing us by.

Of course, this is hardly news to anyone.

But it got me to thinking about a particular segment in the movie, “What the Do We Know!?”, in which Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about how he “creates his day”:

I wake up in the morning and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen. Now sometimes, because my mind is examining all the things that I need to get done, it takes me a little bit to settle down and get to the point of where I’m actually intentionally creating my day. But here’s the thing: When I create my day and out of nowhere little things happen that are so unexplainable, I know that they are the process or the result of my creation. And the more I do that, the more I build a neural net in my brain that I accept that that’s possible. (This) gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day.
[source: What the Do We Know!?]

The transcript of this interview is available here.

I first tried a similar exercise back in the early nineties, when I felt trapped in a dead-end, low-paying job in a bad economy, where my true skills and talents weren’t even being touched on. I had been given a new age book about angels, and there was a section in there about creating future experience through present gratitude — in other words, be grateful now for already having what it is that you wish to manifest. The specific exercise involved sitting down each evening and imagining that it is really the end of the next day (e.g., sit down on Sunday night and imagine that it is Monday night). Then go through a mental inventory of the anticipated day, imagining everything going smoothly according to plan, with some nice surprises and serendipitous connections blended in. And very simply be grateful for the beauty and prosperity of that day. The idea is that with practice, you end up creating the day exactly to your own specifications. I didn’t stick with it long enough to develop that level of manifestation, but the exercise at least helped me to understand that I had greater power over my own destiny than I’d been allowing myself.

We absolutely create our own realities, and our own experiences of the world. We create our own lives according to our individual beliefs, and our life experiences will be just as open or just as limiting as our personal assumptions. Each one of us creates the universe. That power is awesome, and it is too often unrecognized, taken for granted, or simply thrown away.

I am also reminded of Wayne Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-Create Your World Your Way, and the accompanying hours-long PBS special that is routinely aired during pledge drives. I first read this book in the winter of 2003-2004, and it was especially helpful as I was preparing my house for sale, and clearing out everything inside of it, in order to relocate from Virginia to Oregon. While most intention-seekers won’t find this to be a particularly ground-breaking work, Dyer’s efforts to bring intentional living more into the mainstream are heartening.

I am always encouraged to see people taking a more active role in their own lives, effectively creating “real magic in the real world.” That’s not a bad summation of my own efforts these days, and it’s good to have these reminders every now and again to help keep me on-track in the thicker-thinking western paradigm of distraction.

What do you do to create your day and your world? You have, within the confines of your deepest self, true magic. If you could make any change you wanted to in the outside world (because, indeed, you can), what would it be? What is your fairytale?