Creating Your Reality

Is reality affected by positive thinking? Do we really create our own “bubble” of reality in which we live, work, sleep and play? In The Psychology of Positive Thinking we see:

“One aspect of thought about which we may be certain is that it is a process that occurs in the brain. Overwhelming scientific evidence points to this, and it is believed that not only thought but life itself ceases to exist for the individual in the absence of this brain activity. When this brain activity ceases to exist for an individual, we say that life ceases to exist for that individual. When life ceases to exist for an individual, we may say that reality ceases to exist for that individual. Therefore, the electrical brain activity that goes along with our thinking is in fact our experience of life and our reality! …we can say our thoughts do affect reality because in fact they are our reality.” (p21)

“Thinking, then, is our reality and we never stop to consider that it is really our own neural representations, our own map of reality that we in fact experience.” (p46) “But that is because our consciousness is our reality. We are floating merrily (or not so merrily!) down our own stream of consciousness.” (p72)

“Of course, there is a reality. Reality has always been there. Our senses—our ability to see, hear, touch and feel, smell, and taste—are our connection with the “outside world.” This outside world, reality itself, is composed of atoms and subatomic particles and waves of energy in something we understand as “space.” But what we experience is really just a slippery concept that starts at our fingertips and other sense gates.

What drives an even greater wedge between our thoughts and objective reality is what we do with reality’s input once it enters our ‘central processing unit’—our brain. Those sense inputs are added to and compared with previous indirect samplings of reality in our memory/data bank. Over the course of one’s life, this memory data bank becomes fuller and more fully established. As this occurs, new samplings of reality are further constrained to fit into the data bank until what is already in the data bank (our memories and thinking patterns) assumes a far greater importance than the new inputs from our
sense gates (reality).

As if this weren’t enough, the brain attends to only a tiny fraction of what the senses present it with in the first place. Our brain is limited in the number of sense inputs it can focus on at one time; it screens out 99 percent of what is presented to it. So we see here that right out of the starting gate, our brain is messing around with the input it gets from reality. As we gather experiences, we begin to confuse our interpretation of reality with reality itself. That is worthy of repeating: As we gather experiences, we begin to confuse our interpretation of reality with reality itself. And we try to change “the territory” (reality) when it would be far more effective to change our “map” (our thought programming) so that it corresponds to reality instead.” (p 24)

So the answer is yes, we do in this way create our own “bubble” of reality; it behooves us to take care of it, groom it and fill it with positive thoughts. Accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative. And watch out for Mr. In Between!

The Bubble of Reality

Your “Bubble” of Reality

The previous blogs about the Neurology of Positive Thinking and about the movie “Madea goes to Jail” suggested that when we hold on to a grudge and fail to forgive others we suffer the consequences ourselves, as if we were in a prison of our own making. Our negative feelings precipitate in our own little corner of the world. Our world becomes negative. We become negative.

The positive corollary is much more appropriate to positive thinking: If we let positive feelings precipitate in our own little corner of the world, our world becomes positive. We become positive. When we forgive others and release our grudges we reap the benefits.

Reality is the proverbial glass half full of water. We have a choice. We can embrace, and surround ourselves in, the fullness of reality. We can fill our bubble of reality from the half that is full, with life, hope, mercy and love. Choose Life!

The Neurology of Positive Thinking

There are one or two hundred Billion neurons in your brain, interconnected in an infinite number of ways. This is the vast storehouse of everything that you have experienced in your life. Your consciousness resides here.

You interact with the outer world through your senses: information comes in to your brain via nerves connected to your sense organs. You filter out most of the information only allow what you focus on to register in your brain. This is where reality starts.

Your reality, then, is dependent upon what you focus on. If you focus on what is positive, your reality becomes positive.

The Lesson of Madea

The Law of Forgiving

The movie, Madea Goes to Jail, is a very funny movie. It has some action, some drama, and a plot that impossibly comes together at the end. But mostly it is a comedy. It is a little bit “slapstick”, but that’s OK because it isn’t really meant to be taken seriously, anyway.

But it has a message that is very serious. We ignore this message at our own peril. And we all ignore the message, and then we suffer as a consequence. The message is that if we don’t forgive others when they sin against us, we will suffer the consequence. (But NOT the person who wronged us in the first place!)

The plot of the story is about a pretty college girl, smart and with a promising future who gets abused during a party by members of the college football team. The girl, feeling betrayed by her boyfriend who put her in the situation to begin with and then left: quits school, turns to drugs and eventually prostitution and ends up in Jail; where she meets Madea.

The message is stated directly, by the street-wise prison chaplain and then echoed by Medea (just in case we didn’t get it the first time):

Fool, if you cain’t forgive others you are hurtin’ yourself. They- are out there. And you- are in Here, in prison!

The Scriptures insist that we should forgive others. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, asking that God “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

In The Psychology of Positive Thinking we find something similar:

“Dr. Michael Beckwith, on the Oprah Winfrey Show of February 15, 2007, that was discussing the book The Secret, had this to say about forgiveness: when you hold a grudge and are unwilling to forgive, it is like choosing to be a victim, over and over, of the wrong you felt was done to you. James Arthur Ray, another teacher of The Secret on the show, agreed: ‘Being unwilling to forgive is like drinking poison, expecting the other to die.’”

Positive Thinking Lesson Plan

Positive Thinking Lesson Plan

There is a parallel blog under construction, the Positive Thinking Lesson Plan Blog. As the positive thinking lessons are constructed they will be mirrored with discussion entries on this site. This blog is under construction, as we are all under construction. Your comments and suggestions are welcome. Your ideas will be integrated with mine which are but an integration of many others’ ideas in the first place.

Then let us begin, and at the beginning. The fundamental principle of positive thinking lies in knowing what direction is positive. Which way is up? The answer to that question lies in knowing two things:
• Where are you now?
• Where do you want to be?

We have each been put on this earth for a purpose that we can uniquely accomplish. Our journey pursuing that purpose, our life’s mission, begins with one step: a small first step. What is your direction?

Write it down. You can change it tomorrow. Let's get started Now.