Fish or Snake

A boy went to his father and asked him for a snake.  The father was surprised by this request.  Very surprised!  He looked around for a snake that would neither crush (such as a boa constrictor) nor give venomous bites so his son could have what he asked for but still be safe from danger.  This took him some time, as he wanted to be really certain the gift would be safe.  Eventually he found a nice grass snake and proudly gave this to his son.  The boy looked at his father wide-eyed and asked "why have you given me this instead of a fish?  Do you expect me to eat a snake?"

Rather a silly story don't you think?  And if you know your Bible you may recognize it as a twist on Matthew 7:10.  A father will not give his son a snake if he asks for a fish.  But will he give him a snake if the son, intending to ask for a fish, asks instead for a snake?

The reason I have told this silly story, and maybe risked offending some Christians who won't like me changing something Jesus said, is that it illustrates something that is going on all the time.  Something I can pretty much guarantee YOU are doing.  All of us, me included, sometimes have great problems communicating what we really want to communicate.  This is nothing to be ashamed of - it is the human condition.  But it IS something we should recognize.

Recognizing the communication problem we all have is extremely important.  Even if we find it difficult or perhaps even impossible to communicate effectively all the time, we should at least be aware that we are frequently miscommunicating.  If we are aware of this we are much less likely to act the way the son did when he blamed his father for not understanding what he wanted.  We can  step back and recognize that the problem is probably ours rather than someone else's.

At a national level, the difficulty in communicating properly literally causes wars.  At a personal level it causes breakdowns in relationships - resulting in tragic and perhaps completely unneccessary divorces, and the loss of what should have been great and deep friendships.

The difficulty in communicating often starts with a difficulty in even understanding what it is we really want.  A desire begins deep inside.  It is a desire for something good and wholesome.  Something that will make us happy but will also do good in the world, create lasting change for good.  As that desire rises through the different levels of our mind and spirit it becomes tainted.  It changes.  Until it becomes a desire for something completely different once it reaches the upper levels of our conscious mind.  We communicate that often horribly mutated desire, are given a snake instead of a fish, and then wonder why we are unhappy and are not satisfied even though we have achieved and/or acquired what we thought we wanted.

I have said this many times in other blogs, and make no apology for saying it again, as I believe it is one of the major keys to unlocking a fulfilled, successful life.  If you want to be successful the first thing you must do is strip away all the camouflage that has so distorted your deep, inner desires.  Find out what it is you TRULY want rather than what you THINK you want.  Do this by taking some time, every day, to sit quietly and meditate.  Breathe deeply and slowly.  Relax.  Close your eyes.  See in your mind's eye a beautiful garden.  Notice what lovely flowers, beautiful trees, and delicious fruits are growing in the garden.  Let those lovely things speak to you.  If you do this often and properly you will be amazed at the way in which your own inner communication changes.  You will begin to understand much better what you truly want.

Once you know what you really want, you can ask the Universe for it, and can also go out and find it.  As you go looking for it, and doing whatever may be necessary to achieve or acquire your desire, you will find the way towards it is much better prepared and signposted than you expected.  This is the way the Universe gives us what we ask for.  Not by letting us just sit there waiting for it to appear, but by allowing us to see so much more clearly how to get it once we know what it really is.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?  If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"  Matthew 7: 9-11

Passion

A guest posting by Jimmie Perry.

We’ve all had periods in our lives when we are wondering how we would develop a sense of direction.  How exactly, or when exactly, we would develop that thing called passion that everyone was talking about?  Well, passion is something that we should all develop; we must understand this.  Very few people are born knowing what exactly it is that they will be doing for most of their lives.  Heck, many people don’t even know what exactly they want to do.  That is because passion isn’t something that one is born with.  Passion is something that is developed with time, experience, and commitment.  The method for finding your passion in life can be found by reviewing the life of one of America’s founding fathers, Good Ole Ben Frank.

We are not born with a passion

For starters, passion is not something that anyone is simply born with.  We don’t just come out of the womb and know exactly what we want to do for the rest of our life; it takes time.  Passion comes from a love for doing a certain activity.  A love, or hunger if you will, that stays with us for an indefinite amount of time.  Acquiring passion in any one area requires that we are presented with a desire to solve or understand a problem.

Passion comes from a desire

Most people do not know this about Benjamin Franklin, but he was extremely passionate about putting out fires.  He saw that the fires that were flaring up in his city of New York were causing a serious problem and he sought to find a way to reduce the damage that they caused.  Do you think that the passion to put out fires was something that Ben was born with?  There is no way that he could’ve known about fires at the time of his birth.  His passion for fires was something that he developed as he gained experience with them.  He saw that they were causing massive amounts of people to get injured.  He noticed that the fires weren’t being put out efficiently and that the fire squadrons played a big part in that inefficiency; there essentially was no system.  The issue that arose with fires gave Ben something to focus his energy on which in turn resulted in an insatiable hunger within him.  In short, one of the key parts of finding a passion is finding something that fulfills your desire to solve a problem.

Experience is key

It wouldn’t have been at all possible for Ben to solve the problem if he hadn’t been present when the fires were taking place; he lived in New York and was seeing the damage that the fires were causing.  Again, if he hadn’t been present when the fires were happening, he probably wouldn’t have had the desire that he had to solve the epidemic.  He wasn’t born simply thinking of new ways to make fires more of a rarity or thinking of new ways to make individuals safer; he had to see the fires for himself even to begin thinking of new ways to improve the human condition in that way.  The same goes for all of us; we must go out (or stay in) and experience the things that happen in this world.  We must see all the possibilities (or at least a great many of them) and once we do this we will gain a bit of insight into the things that give us our drive; the things that make us whole, if you will.  We don’t have to explore the world in a physical way.  The world has become increasingly digital in the past few decades and there are now multiple things that can be done in the digital world.  One never knows, you may find comfort in this space as well as your passion.

Cross things off your “Passion List”

A side effect of exploration is that it becomes possible to gain an understanding of the things that we dislike doing.  Our understanding of our dislikes can be leveraged in our quest to find our passions; as you cross things off of the list of your possible passion, you get one step closer to finding the thing(s) that you love and want to do.

Consistently pursue that passion

Remember that neither Rome nor Benjamin’s method for stopping fires developed in a day.  To be honest, Benjamin didn’t even make any major headway in his fire prevention system for a year.  Neither will the thing that is considered your passion be built in a short space of time.  It will require a decent length of time before compound interest begins to show that you are making any real headway into your project; while you are in the process, you may not even notice the progress that is being made.  The point is that once you find that passion, you should relentlessly pursue it.  Don’t allow any lack of progress or apparent failure to stop you from moving.

In short, passion comes, but it’s a process

Passion is something that we can all develop, but it requires a great deal of both patience and exploration before it is ever really found.  This point must be reiterated because so many have trouble understanding it.  Our passions are things with which we become infatuated.  They are problems that we can’t help but put forth countless hours and energy towards solving; they move us.  You will not know exactly what it is that you want to do right out of the gate.  None of us knows what it is that we want to do right away, without any thought or preparation.  If we did, think about how dull life would be; we would literally know what the future held for us.

With that being said, the key to finding our passions in life amounts to these three things:

• Experience: Go out and explore (or stay in and explore)
• Reduce: Reduce the number of things that you like doing to a select few
• Be consistent: Once you find your drive, pursue it relentlessly

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Jimmie Perry is the owner of JimmiePerry.blog and an avid trader.  In his free time, he enjoys writing about the experiences that he has had, and trading.  He is also currently working on his degree in Business Administration from Madonna University.

Manifestation and the Supernal Triad

If you really want to manifest your desires you need to use the principles expressed in the Qabalah as the Supernal Triad.

I hope you haven't switched off at this point.  Yes, I know that unless you have studied the Tree of Life what I have just written is probably Double Dutch to you!  But bear with me - the concept is both important and easy to understand.

Before I go any further let me reassure you.  I am not saying you have to learn the basics of the Qabalah in order to manifest properly.  Rather, I am just saying that the Qabalah neatly outlines what you must do in order to manifest your desires, even if when you do so you do not realize what you are doing has a Qabalistic interpretation.

In Qabalah, the Supernal Triad is the top three "Sephiroth" of the Tree of Life.  It is the way the Supreme Being begins creation.  And used properly it is the way we, too, create reality from our inner dreams.

There are three points in the Supernal Triad, as you probably realize from the name.  They are "Kether", "Binah" and "Chokmah".  Some describe Kether as the Soul, Binah as the Womb into which the Soul enters, and Chokmah as the force of Creation that results when the Soul enters the Womb.  But there are also other names for these three Sephiroth, and those names show you what you need to do in order to manifest properly.

Kether, the Soul is also known as "Desire".  Binah, the Womb, is "Imagination".  Chokmah, Creation, is "Visualization".

In order to manifest you must have all three in balance.  Miss out any one of the three and you will have, at best, a very lukewarm power to turn your dreams into reality.  More likely nothing will happen at all and you will walk away from the whole concept of the Law of Attraction complaining it doesn't work.

The work of Manifestation begins with Desire.  If you do not really desire whatever it is you are dreaming of it will remain as just a dream.  Your desire has to be strong.  Like a flame in a furnace you can stoke up your desire as long as there is a spark of desire there in the first place.  But make sure you are focussed on a real dream.  Too many people think they really want to achieve something, but the desire is not strong enough simply because they have not truly identified their real dream.

Once you have fanned your Desire into a passion, it is ready to act - which it does by entering the womb of Imagination to create through Visualization.

Imagination is important.  Too many people go straight from Desire to Visualization and miss out the step of Imagination.  You need to use your Imagination to begin creating the right Visualization.  Stoke up your Desire, and then begin using your Imagination to create the right scene.  If you use your Imagination properly you will find it automatically leads to a powerful Visualization.

If you find you don't have enough Imagination to create a vivid Visualization, such that it seems, when you close your eyes, to be as solid as the "reality" you see around you when you open your eyes, you should work on improving your Imagination.  To some people this comes naturally.  Those are the people who find the Law of Attraction works for them the moment they hear about the need to Visualize, as long as they are Visualizing something they truly Desire.  But it can also be a learned skill.  Like any other skill, you need to study it and then practise it.  One way to build your imagination is to read voraciously.  Pick authors who write powerfully, whose books are filled with descriptive paragraphs.  Read those paragraphs and then picture the scenes in your mind.  After you put the book down, re-visit the scene.  Try to see it in detail.  And don't just see it - use all your other senses too.  Hear it.  What do you smell?  What do you feel?  If, for example, you are reading a Joseph Conrad book with the setting in a jungle in Southeast Asia, imagine yourself in that jungle.  You are so hot!  The sweat is pouring off you.  There are the smells of strange plants around you.  This really works!

I have mentioned Joseph Conrad.  Yes, his novels are now very dated.  But they are also very powerful and a great source of scenes to improve your skills of imagination.  Or try Ernest Hemingway - another now perhaps dated, but very powerful author.  John Steinbeck, perhaps.  If you are into science fiction (or maybe even if you are not!) try Ray Bradbury or Brian Aldiss.  There are very many authors who are really great at building a scene, where you can visualize what they are describing as you read.  Just remember to keep practising re-creating those scenes even when you are not reading.

Once you have gained the skill of re-creating in your mind the scenes from the books, use that same skill to Visualize whatever it is you desire.  Again, use all your senses.  As you do so, fill the scene you are Visualizing with your deep Desire to make this dream a reality.  By doing this properly you will be using the full Supernal Triad which is the Universal force of Creation, and you simply cannot fail.  You are using a Universal Law, and Universal Laws never fail.

If you wish to source any of the writers I have mentioned, try your local library.  Certainly Conrad, Hemingway and Steinbeck should be there as their works are absolute classics.  One disadvantage, though, is that you will have a limited time to practise your imagination skills.  Also, some people find it helps to highlight or underline the passages they want to visualize.  Don't do that to a library book!

An alternative is to buy the book from a reputable source.  I have listed the particular books I think you will find the best for this exercise, and given you quick links to the cheapest copies I have found on Amazon.  Just click the link and it will take you to the right page to order it.  The first list is if you wish to pay in US$ and the second if you wish to pay in UK£.

US Versions:

Joseph Conrad - "Heart of Darkness"

Joseph Conrad - "Lord Jim"

Ernest Hemingway - "The Old Man and the Sea"

John Steinbeck - "The Grapes of Wrath"

Ray Bradbury - "The Illustrated Man"

Brian Aldiss - "Hothouse"

UK Versions:

Joseph Conrad - "Heart of Darkness"

Joseph Conrad - "Lord Jim"

Ernest Hemingway - "The Old Man and the Sea"

John Steinbeck - "The Grapes of Wrath"

Ray Bradbury - "The Illustrated Man"

Brian Aldiss - "Hothouse"

Finally, if you would like some help in using words, sounds and images to improve your Creative Visualization techniques, try using Mind Movies.  This is a brilliant way of focusing your Desire through Imagination into Visualization, and therefore using the Universal Law of the Supernal Triangle to create reality out of your dreams.  Click here to find out more.