“Your intention and attention shape your experiences. What you intend, through the density of matter, through the densest level of Light, becomes your reality. Where your attention goes, you go.
Gary Zukav
Alexandra:
Gary started this chapter off speaking heavily on incarnation and the multiple evolutions of our soul in its journey to becoming whole. I want to focus on something he said about our intentions though where he says “your intentions create the reality that you experience” so therefore we should be mindful of what we project as that is the first step to authentic power. Taking that into consideration I want to ask you how you’re being mindful of your thoughts throughout your day? This is something that I’ve had to learn through the experiences I’ve created over and over because I was unaware that the source was my thoughts. See, growing up I would hear folks around me talk constantly about what they didn’t want to happen and then I’d see those very things coming to fruition but it never occured to me that their thoughts were the source of those experiences. Even before they would open their mouths to speak, their intentions were already set on one thing. Now this has definitely not been a smooth walk in the park for me to learn as I became an adult but being able to stop, pause and question my intentions has been a very big step in my soul’s evolution; I may not do it every single time I should but it’s definitely a tool I keep in my soul’s toolbox.
“The highest-frequency current, the highest energy current, is love”
Gary Zukav
There is a section on p.106 where Gary talks about Love and choosing higher frequency currents. He speaks on how love heals everything and that love is all there is which when I first read it, it sounds VERY cliche as that’s often the line I hear whenever someone has done another person wrong and a third party steps in to proclaim that all we gotta do is love (insert John Lennon song here…haha)! But as I reviewed that statement more I realized that the aspect of choosing the higher frequency current in EVERY situation is more so the thing to zoom in on which goes back to having to ask ourselves questions about how we choose to take something in when we are experiencing it. So I would say as we experience different situations that life brings to us, how can we see harmony and love in it in a way that will allow us to see the higher frequency current that we must align ourselves with? Although love is all there is, at times it feels too shallow to me when that statement is just said as is without any other supporting statements.
Brandon:
You referenced how G. Zukav spoke about how our intentions create our/the reality we face, in which you asked how mindful am I about my daily thoughts throughout the day? Surprisingly, well maybe not too surprising, but I am absolutely conscious about the things that cross my mental projection screen. Not just what comes into my sphere of awareness, but how many times and how these thoughts project into my expressions. Just today, well not today, a few days ago, I had a conversation with a Mexican brother about how people are not conscious about the racist things they say, particularly White men. Fast forward a few days, a Black brother said some off the cuff remark about this Mexican brother, and he exploded on the Black guy, telling him why he always makes something about race, so on and so forth. I immediately went back to our conversation a few days ago, and thought was I one of the causes of that heated exchange. A thought I was having, I passed or transmitted that energy to someone else, and they manifested a specific reality. Sometimes I may be a lil too analytical over my thoughts, but in plain terms, yes I do monitor my thoughts. Going further, the chain is that thoughts become beliefs, and this is where reality is really forged. We loosely call them our thoughts, but these thoughts, images, and visions become the constitutions and charters that we judge every moment and event on. These thoughts are derived from the subtle influences of television, movies, music, words from people we respect, and there becomes an art and science to how we form the sources and “wells” in which we draw from. Similar to children, who in their formative years, will indiscriminately imitate anyone, we as adults can still have this indiscriminate approach to who we mimic. For example: why do girls and young boys put on their parents shoes? Especially, when they put on the heels of their mother? Of course, they are showing they are watching and imitating her. Fast forward some years, and some of the same young women, now grown, still wear the same style of high heels. Women wear high heels even though they hurt their feet, have lil’ practical value in actually walking, but they still wear them. This so-called “innocent” act of mimicking their parents leads to the belief that this is the adult way of doing things, or is how a woman expresses beauty or style.
“The dispositions, aptitudes, and attitudes that you were born with serve the learning of your soul. As your soul learns the lessons that it must learn to balance its energy, those characteristics become unnecessary, and are replaced by others”
Gary Zukav
How many manners and behaviors are we doing solely based on prolonged imitation w/o any discernment, even as fully grown adults? Not only must we keep a watchful eye on our thoughts, but which thoughts become our beliefs. Having this immediate, selective, and refined consciousness creates more autonomy when it comes to expressing more mature and harmonious actions, which pushes past looking for the distinguishing features in a person or situation, but gives avenues to recognize the corresponding and connecting traits. This is how we start the process of being in alignment and harmony, or as I call it,”seeing and being love,” as we must find the oneness in each other and with the world. If you cannot see yourself in others, or circumstances other than your own, then you will naturally distance yourself from that person and circumstance. There is a oneness and singularity in the world, and we must find it. This removes some of the selfishness, greed, and arrogance, and only will love shine through once those, and their relatives (hate and ego), come up missing. The answer to the question of how do we see harmony and love in every situation? Look for it!!
“When you are compassionate with yourself and others, your world becomes compassionate. You draw to yourself other souls of like frequency, and with them you create, through your intentions and your actions and your interactions, a compassionate world.”
Gary Zukav
Alexandra:
I asked you to choose an archetype, which Gary describes as “a collective human idea,” that we’ve created within our society and infuse it with spiritual consciousness. I chose the archetype of Housing because living in a city like Chicago that is something that I’m always seeing in various conditions, either there are too many living spaces stacked on top of each other with every new high-rise building I see going up or there are housing units sitting vacant and dilapidated in excess numbers in other areas of the city. Infusing spiritual consciousness into housing would look like first examining the amount of land that can be used for housing and what land we should leave alone and allow nature to flourish. Then I would change the shape of the houses we chose to build because the square, boxed-in shape is very much a masculine form of building whereas a more rounded shape leaves more room for movement and circulation and is more feminine in nature. Finally I would shift the design of the interior to create more of a relationship to nature as opposed to the hard delineation between the outside and the inside that we see in our homes now. Of course I’d have to take into account the natural elements depending on where someone lives cuz snow is real and winter is a thing! But how can we work with these cold elements to power different systems within a home? Similar to how the sun is used to power solar panels, what could snow and wind in the winter time be used for? Perhaps the snow could be collected and used for water in some way or the wind can help power an electrical unit in a home. Another aspect I must include when imbedding spiritual consciousness into housing is the way homes are stacked on top of each other so high. Now from the places I’ve traveled outside of the U.S., people living above each other at such high heights was not something I saw often, with the exception of a few hotels, but when it came to residential living, no. The concept of being grounded is something I always consider even when I’m choosing where to live in the city, so much so that I chose to no longer live above 3 floors because I feel way too disconnected to the earth; even if the view is nice I will pass on living there. Now some would say that Chicago has so many people so we have to stack them above one another but I disagree and would ask folks to expand their idea of housing within a city. We would probably have to reexamine how we chose to structure our city, whereas everything cannot be too concentrated, but I believe there is a way to structure housing that is sustainable and accommodating to a larger population.
“Every intention sets energy into motion whether you are conscious of it or not. You create in each moment.”
Gary Zukav
Brandon:
Okay, speaking to the archetype of “health” in Western culture, which is in my humble opinion, missing a multisensory perspective in so many ways. As right now, the collective view of what it means to be healthy is to have steady physical exercise, having a balanced diet, even receiving adequate rest is being focused more and more. But there is so much emphasis on the physical status of an individual, and when there is talk about so-called “mental health,” the remedy is prescribed in the form of exotic designer pills, which have altering “side effects.” The injection of a multisensory, spiritual, and Higher Self substance into the concept and ideal of health would start with how people identify themselves, first and foremost. If we saw ourselves as temples of Holy Consciousness and Energies, no way would we put items in our bodies that we either don’t know, cannot pronounce, or have no benefit. What nutritional value does a damn popsicle have? Let alone, what spiritual value does it have? Is this good brain food? Does it still your anxieties? This is just one facet of unholy-istic(holistic/holy) approach to health. It surely is unhealthy for one not to see how everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, is connected. To live a segregative life, with your physical, social, and mental health, leads to sheer destruction. We can improve our personal health by having everyone see that the way you use your emotions, beliefs, imagination, and will, affects your physical life-force. The way you treat your neighbor, or the marginalized, is an indicator of how healthy you are as well. This is how we change the way we see health, as hospitals are not the final authorities on who is healthy and who isn’t.
Alexandra:
On pg. 108 he says how “everything in our world reflects personality energy” and how we strive for external power which then creates destructive competition. I sat back and reflected how even as an artist I’m made to feel pressure in achieving every status there is to gain and to see anything other than that as me having ‘not made it.’ I therefore am tasked with really understanding what my intentions are when it comes to my artistic career and how I want to feel when it’s all said and done. So looking at Karma and it giving us the choice to learn through doubt and fear or wisdom and love, when I create work or speak to an audience I’m consciously made aware of what avenue I want to create and speak from that will go on to ripple waves into the world? Looking through this lens adds a whole other layer to my ‘why’ when it comes to the way i’m living out this thing called life!
Brandon:
Moving forward, Mr.Zukav did make the express point of highlighting that so much of the world operates off of personality energy in the pursuit of external power. These are the cultural points in America that really rub me the wrong way, as this country is rooted in these limited 5 sensory principles. Capitalism is pitched as the best way to allow the talented and hard-working the freedom to prosper, but it creates this “Greed Is Good” mindset, and leaves so much unevenness in its wake. Everything is measured in how well one exercises external power. From the schools, where children feel like they have to outdo their classmates to fight for the limited desks and seats at elite private high schools and universities, to hospitals and clinics, that will turn down someone if they don’t have a platinum insurance package. We are made to be in this perpetual race with others for these so-called “resources,” and probably at the top of the list is control and power. We are still allowing others to write our scripts for us, particularly the scripts that tell us to act this way and what to pursue, and while we are easy to dismiss the latest Hollywood movie for being too much fantasy, we don’t apply that same detachment from the suggestions that we must secure this or obtain that, which is the same sort of fanciful story or role. By being in prison, we are conditioned, whether by our own delusions or external influences, to think that nothing matters while we are incarcerated, almost as if this is the Hindu concept of MAYA, which considers reality an illusion. We are in a race to become free, and rightfully so, but until that moment comes, everything before that day is not an exercise in futility. It is crazy to say, but the pursuit of literal freedom can be a seeking of external power if one is not taking caution to see that their spirit and soul is tended to and liberated first. If we are to find a competition to engage in, let it be one where you become the first “you” to develop and generate your authentic power and vision.
I also wanted to briefly touch on something else Gary spoke on when it came to page 114 where at the beginning of the first full paragraph, Gary says that as our consciousness grows, we see that our mentalities and perspectives weigh more and have more priority than the reality and external world in front of us. This is such a critical thing to stress. So many of us, and I do say “us” including myself in it, worry about the things and affairs around us, and give lil’ care to the way our minds are processing or calculating the dynamics. You can create any reality you desire, but you have to start with your own knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, then you will slowly see the unfolding of your visions. You actually start to control any environment and circumstance by shaping your mind to however you need to. Instead of conforming to a situation, make the situation conform to your mind. This point cannot be overlooked, nor overstated.
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