Mentalechoes

For the first time in a month I find myself in my flat alone. The mate that I had staying with me - the one who was going through a seperation with his wife - has gone back home to patch things up. So now it’s Saturday just past midday and my place is eerily quiet. There is no noise from the kitchen where my friend would be now being playing a “Perfect Circle” CD whilst painting away at some artwork on the table. There is no idle banter going backwards and forwards between us. There is no noise from my upstairs neighbours, and there isn’t even any noise from the streets outside. Right now, I’m living in a bubble that is perfectly insulated; a capsule suspended in reality where nothing touches me inside. I have the feeling that if I concentrate hard enough I can mould the reality outside of my flat to be anything I want, anything I desire; I can create my own existence…

… and then a emergency services vehicle screams past, siren blaring, tyres screeching, and I am broken out of my reverie…

Well for the brief moment while it lasted it was good. But it brings up a good point actually. We all occupy the same world, but the way we perceive it is unique and individual unto ourselves. Let me make two very blatant examples to illustrate my point. G.W.Bush sees terrorist and enemies on all sides and makes decisions based on this world view. The Dalai Lama sees a multitude of potential bhuddas, and so goes about the world teaching in the hopes that he can assist someone to acheive their potential. Yet it’s the same world, and what they see outside the window is the same picture.

Bill Hicks the comedian said at the end of one of his live acts that I watched, the world can change and be a better place, and all it takes is for each of us to make that decision. It’s not difficult, we just have to make the decision to change and make it better!

After I heard that, I really thought a lot about it. I think that’s how it is with true wisdom; the very wise ideas are often very simple, so simple they are incredibly hard to understand because of their simplicity, which in turn means you spend a lot of time thinking about it to make sense of it and incorporate it into your own world view. We can change our view of the world - our picture outside the window - and bend it to our own reality to a very great degree. We need only change our own mind and change the filters through which we look at the world. If you look for bad things, you will see bad things; if you look for good things, you will see good things. It really is that simple. The only thing that makes it hard, is ourself.

This is not to say you become a naive idiot who bumbles about getting fucked over at every turn because you act like you have an IQ of 53. There is a difference between positive living and foolish ignorance. One does not have to be the other.

A famous sports psychologist back in Bis-vegas (I can’t remember his name but he was the coach of the Rugby League club I followed when I there) said, if you do something for 90 days it will become a habit. That’s anything! If you light up a cigarette in the morning upon waking up, after 90 days you will do it automatically. If you stop smoking cigarettes for 90 days after waking up, you will automatically not smoke first thing in the morning. So if what he’s saying is right (and I have no reason to doubt him because my team won the premiership for 2 years running) then you can “train” yourself to do anything and be anything you want. You simply have to make the choice in your head to do it. It’s easy if you think it will be. Maybe the acheivement takes a lot longer than 90 days, but at the very least 90 days gets you started down the path enough that you keep going.

We see what we want to see, and we are who want to be. All you have to do is choose.

I reckon I might give that a go!

Padwanna.