How to Develop Future Potential and Personal Genius : Chapter 1
Developing True Choices: The Observationist
Right now, where you are, stop and observe the environment around you. Notice the texture of the walls and ceiling that surround you. See the fabric within the upholstery and tapestry, how detailed and artistic their creation. Now look at the clothes you're wearing. Observe their stitching, how the artist designed the articles of clothes you're wearing from simple materials to help create your personal image. Now go outside or to an open window and slowly glance at the landscape surrounding you. Do you see the wind moving through the trees? Do you feel it on your face as you stare at creation?
"What does all this mean?" you ask.
Life is built in frames, from the social to the scientific. What we have attempted to do is view the world from the frame of the artist. It is the world of texture, sound, feeling, and vision. If you participated in the above observations, you will realize that the world is created by artist. The world around you is being created from this frame of life-it is the artistic perspective.
First, I would like to interchange a couple of words as we continue in this chapter of developing true choices. Artistic perspective is simply observation and observation is artistic perspective. You see, the power of an artist, the power that he or she has to create, is the power of observation. To spend time watching, pondering, or visualizing a thing is to observe it. A painter observes the canvas before applying his or her brush. A sculptor observes the clay before applying his or her knife.
Today, you are sculpting your world by the choices you make. Everything from getting out of bed to lying down at night. We however, fail to make good choices simply because we fail to make the original choice-the choice to observe. This is very important because your freewill exists only because of choice-not all have the same freewill. Your choices are made through your awareness or knowledge of a thing. The number of choices you have are proportionate to the amount of perception or awareness you have. For example, do you feel it possible to swat a mosquito biting the back of your neck if you are unaware of its presence? Most would answer no, simply because if you don't know it's there, you will not have a choice whether to swat the insect or not. Subsequently, that small, insignificant bug has more choice, more power, and more control than you in this situation-it will decide when it is ready to stop using you as a mid-day snack.
So is it with other manner of unobserved scenarios in your life, but through observation you gain awareness then choice. Those choices go on to produce a certain degree of power, which in turn gives you a certain degree of control. To have control is to ultimately have freewill. This 'ladder' within us all is hinged on observation because through observation we gain perception or awareness. This awareness brings knowledge and it is through knowledge that an artist creates the world around him.
Now to understand how observation and awareness affect your life, equate them to a mathematical equation-your life is the unbalanced problem, observation is the problem's mathematical solution and awareness is the answer. Your life, actually, is balanced-it is the sum total of your decisions up to this point, it's just not balanced the way you desire. Observation and awareness is about understanding this balance and changing the values as you see fit. Every problem in your life has an answer, it is possible to balance your life the way you choose. In order to produce the kind of life you would like to have, you must first observe your life and the world around you as it exists right now and know that your life is balanced, but there are solutions and answers to change that balance. Every answer is connected to a problem, but are only found through observation. Understand the small details of your life-your motivations, weaknesses, and strengths. Also, get an understanding of your environment and the energies, both negative and positive, that surround you. From this platform, you will enhance your freewill-your freewill simply states: I can change my life.
Not everyone is confident that they can change their life or their situation because they simply ignore or refuse to observe. It alone is the most powerful mental tool within you capable of re-directing your life in the direction that you desire. Without it, you are ignorant and ignorant people suffer, causing the environment around them to suffer. An ignorant person is the bull in the china cabinet, the out of control train, the tornado down Main Street. An ignorant person is pure destruction. Now that we have established what an ignorant person is, understand that you are an ignorant person. In your life, there are degrees of perception or awareness. This in-turn, obligates you to degrees of ignorance and suffering. To develop better choices, to free yourself from ignorance, you must develop the original choice, the choice to observe.
Observationist are C.E.O's of companies, generals of armies, teachers of students, parents of children. They are those given the disposition and responsibility to oversee something. With this, they wield a certain amount of power and control over what they are responsible for and they are judged by the results they produce.
If you were not aware, you are the C.E.O of your life. You have been given that disposition and responsibility to change your life. Your life is a wonderful network of interactions between your mind and your environment-how you observe these interactions is important. If you see yourself as the subject and other things as objects, you will place yourself in the center of the Universe and seek to please yourself first.
Instead of seeking to enhance the environment, you choose to only please yourself. By doing this, you become a negative force in the Universe, draining resources and hurting people-many major corporations do this all the time. Your perception becomes skewed as you blur out the world and focus on yourself. You become unaware of the subtle interactions that bind us in the Universe. Now, if your perception is off, then your choices are off as well. You limit your ability to control yourself and thereby limit your freewill.
In order to make true choices as an observationist, we must observe everything around us as a part of us, and we apart of everything. The duality of good and bad, right and wrong, black and white must be perceived as the same thing in order to be influence properly by everything. Now, this does not mean to condone every act or condemn every act, but simply look for the good in everything and be aware of negative energy in everything.
It was once written in an ancient holy text, a story about a woman asking a prophet, which was right? For her people to worship on a mountain of their choosing or another group's choice to worship in a specific city? The prophet said to her "The day is coming when the true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth." That Spirit of Truth neutralizes the duality of US vs. Them, Me vs. You, This vs. That. When we see that everything and everyone is connected like a large web, our need to be the center of our focus diminishes. We are now able to look at things in their true light, the way they were meant to be seen. As you see the world in its true light, your awareness will grow. Your knowledge of how things work will expand. As your knowledge expands, so will your choices, your freewill, your control and power to change.
Now there are four categories of change. Everyone places each of their ideas in one of the four categories. They are: Impossibility, Possibility, Probability, and Immanency. We do this subconsciously due to our own experiences or the experiences of others. We listen to 'expert' opinion to predetermine in our minds what is possible and what is not.
Our brains file information away in one of these four categories. You can say that you are pre-programmed to believe that some things are impossible, some things are possible, some things are probable, and some imminent. You can move your beliefs from one category to another simply by increasing your knowledge of a thing. If you are not pleased with how your life is categorized, observe your life the way it is and think about how you would like it to be. The thinking of it will collapse the energy field of thought and expand your understanding of it.
What is the energy field of thought, you say?
90% of an atom is empty space-for that matter, about 90% of the Universe is empty space. Scientists share many theories concerning the make-up of this invisible matter, but they have not been able to confirm with any accuracy as to what it actually is. This 'dark matter', as scientists call it, is the energy field of thought. It is the material of Mind and Intelligence-the 'ghost in the machine'. That being said, everything is constructed of this form of matter and is affected by changes in Mind and Intelligence. Every human, animal, tree, plant, even rock-everything is affected by thoughts. Dark matter is said to have gravitational properties and is responsible for assisting galaxies in maintaining their rotation so they do not spin out of control. Thoughts have the same property, whatever is focused on is held.
In Quantum Physics, the Double Slit Experiment tests the boundaries of what we consider reality. In the experiment, small particles are fired at a thin plate with a slit in it. A screen behind the plate captures particles that pass through. The results are a single column of particles corresponding to the slit are registered on the screen. It is tried again with two slits, with expectations of seeing two columns. This time, however, several columns are registered. Baffled with the results, scientist re-try the experiment using water instead of small particles. As in the first, the wave passes through the slit and strikes the screen in the area that corresponds with the slit. It is also tried with two slits.
The wave, once passed through the two slits, splits in two and the two waves collide with each other. This colliding, cancels each other out and creates several instances of the wave. Those waves, in-turn hit the screen in several areas.
Scientist, wanting to understand how particles behaved like a wave, decided to fire the particles through the two slits one at a time. The particles continued to create several columns on the screen. They proceeded to set up a device to observe which slit the particles went through and what occurred astounded them. Once fired, they noticed that the particles only created two columns on the screen. It ceased being a wave as if it knew it was being watched. Amazingly as it sounds, the particle wave collapsed simply by observing it. Why is this important? Well, because what happens on the quantum level affects everything in the Universe. As observers, we too have the power to change what we observe. We, just like the experiment, have the ability to affect the universe simply by observing it. What do you want changed in your life? Whatever that may be, simply spend time observing it. Your observing of it will collapse the energy field of thought that created it. The Universe as we know it is comprised of seven states of matter, solid, liquid, gas, plasma, beam, zero, and thought. Everyone is most familiar with the first three, but the
next four are not as common. Now, plasma is a superheated gas that is unpredictable in nature due to the high friction of it's particles. An example of this would be fire. Beam is the unity of subatomic-particles. Because its particles move at a higher rate of speed, the particles become more organized and lack the friction of slower plasma. Because of the lack of friction, beam does not produce heat itself. Heat is produced when its particles come into contact with the particles of another object. An example of this is a photon beam-more commonly known as light.
Zero matter is the compression of particles into a singularity reducing its mass, ultimately, to zero. This compression increases the gravitational strength of the singularity. An example of this is a black hole. Now the last and final state of matter is thought. Thought is the base of all matter. It is the fastest form of matter. Thought is the vibration of energy in its purest form. As combinations of thought merge and slow down, they create a matrix of vibrations which materialize through the different levels of matter. We must understand the power of our thoughts-we must know that a thought becomes zero, beam, plasma, gas, liquid, and solid energy. Once we realize how important thoughts are, we will spend more time thinking creatively; creating a world around us of our choosing. We will realize that our present life's circumstances are the material of our past thoughts and that our future potential is result of our present day thoughts.
Observing your life should be an automatic response that we access for change. Most of us however, waste time trying to force change when we have not taken the time to think. When we choose to think, we choose to be the artist of our lives; the choice of not just seeing what is there, but what could be there. Within every great work resides a great problem, and within every great problem resides an equally great solution. Within every great solution resides success. It is that success that drives mankind forward in the quest for a better life. It is at the core of everyone's ambition-to be on the winning team. Most of us, because we do not take the time to think, settle for the image of success. This image is called vanity.
Vanity, innate in man, is a very low-level response to problems that exist in the world.
It is the attempt by one to establish the image of truth without obtaining the truth-to have the appearance of being right without necessarily being right. Everyone, rationally, wants to exist in peace along side his fellow man. However, when differences of opinion arise due to individuality, each person's automatic response is to assume the other is wrong. We begin to build an argument for our position, at the same time, close our self off to seeking truth in the other person's position. Most religions today take this vain approach.
One holy text states that God says to man "Come, Let us reason together." That word 'reason' is defined by the Greek word 'Logos'. It is where we get our word 'logic' meaning 'word of reason'. Logic is the science of the laws of thought. It is the formalizing of means of locating truth. Yet, instead of developing a means of obtaining a clearer understanding of truth, we most often settle for "what we know". This, "what we know", is called 'dialectic'. Dialectic is from the Greek word ' Dialegesthai'. It is where we get our word 'dialect' meaning 'to converse'. It deals with experiential knowledge. It arises from our desire to share our personal experiences, whether fact or opinion.
When you find yourself in an argument with someone and you here a bit of truth in their disputation, do you continue the argument for the sake of your position? If so, you just might be taking the position of vanity. A friend told me when talking with others about their beliefs, she likes to "do more listening and less talking". When I asked why, she simply said "I already know what I know. I want to know what you know." She pursued truth.
Now, beauty is considered something of a comely appearance, or something that makes you feel good. We must consciously equate truth with beauty and beauty with truth to get a good grasp of vanity. Ultimately, this is what vanity seeks: to appear beautiful or smart or anything benevolent of that nature. These things, however, only emerge through truth. If you are to increase your freewill and the power of change, you must free yourself from the desire to appear as having more freewill and power of change. This happens naturally with observation.
In order to transcend a thing, you must be aware it. Awareness comes from observation.
Observation leads to knowing. Knowing leads to power. Power leads to control. Control is very important in the development future potential. Control leads to self-control, and self-control is 'ego-control'. Ego is the consideration of ones self. The ego operates by way of emotions-energy in motion. Emotion moves in the direction that ego propels it. In order to have future potential, we must avoid future resistance from an out of control ego.
We often get in the way of our own success because we allow ourselves to feel discouraged, offended, betrayed, rejected, and every other form of resistance. Others not easily detected are pride, jealousy, lust, and vanity. To have control of the ego is to be above it-to see these offenses before they occur. In the Holy Bible, the fourth day of creation is described as God creating two great lights. The greater light governs the day and the lesser light governs the night. On our journey towards self-control, we will regard the greater light as awareness and the lesser light as ignorance. Now our sun governs the day. It is very bright and hot and it provides us with visibility and warmth. The moon governs the night and it provides minimal visibility and no warmth-the moon itself is illuminated by the sun.
In the same way, awareness provides us with the visibility to see things from a distance, while ignorance lends itself to short-sidedness. Awareness also provides us with a sense of comfort that resembles the warmth of the sun. On the other hand, ignorance is not comforting at all. With awareness, we have the ability to control more in our life. Someone with a great amount of awareness is someone who is confident in themselves and in what they understand; while a person void of much understanding has to gain confidence through vanity. By gaining awareness, we gain necessary insight to avoid future disaster(disaster means "dis-association with the astral"; the astral is Universal awareness and connection). If you want to avoid future disaster, develop your future potential by becoming an observationist.
To help sharpen your ability to observe, I have developed an exercise to increase your endurance to observe. An exercise will proceed most chapters of the book. If you spend enough time practicing, you will have results.
Get Acquainted Exercise : For 1 week , 1 hour per day, spend time getting re-acquainted with someone or something close to you. Pay very close attention to detail annotating anything new that you discover. Go beyond the surface. If you spend quality time performing this exercise, you will become more aware of your subject and build your endurance to observe. That is our goal; to build greater endurance in observing. The more keen the observance, the more keen the awareness. See you in the next chapter!