Down the Rabbithole

Have you ever considered that our reality is nothing more than our own thoughts played out like a parade of shadows on the wall? We do love to scare ourselves into a tizzy, don't we?

Most people are looking for their next high, in the form of something stimulating. People want their information fed to them. Critical thought processes have become uncomfortable for the average person. It's an ability that has atrophied within our culture.

We as a society have allowed ourselves to become enamored and swept away by the parade of images that goes by the screen unceasingly. We don't stop and ask ourselves what effect this is having on our peace of mind and overall health.

We do know that thoughts have a direct effect on our reality. We call it the placebo effect; it confounds drug trials and experiments to this day. Today however I would bring to your attention the nocebo, or the negative thoughts, and how they affect us.

We certainly don't want to admit that we gorge ourselves on the horrors that are spoon-fed to us on a daily basis. If we didn't love watching the world tear itself apart, the news wouldn't be playing an endless loop of that garbage. We do love to sit and watch the macabre images float by, and you know we love it because we keep coming back for more.

We can pretend that we have no choice, that we are just bystanders and not participants, but the truth is you always see what you are looking for. Quantum physics has what I will call a nuance, known as the observer effect. If you have never heard of it, I will try to sum it for you.

Basically, it means you can't observe something without affecting what you are observing. At the quantum level, I hypothesize that it is, in fact, you that is creating what you see, by first thinking it and then observing it. You then judge what you have seen and the tide of cause and effect that you/we created goes unnoticed, and as long the images continue to parade about we are none the wiser.

Like a good junkie, we are apt to continue doing what got us the high in the first place. We project our thoughts outward and then pretend that we are not the progenitor of said thoughts. If we ever did acknowledge we were the source of the movie that parades about, we would lose interest much like a child does after playing pretend for extended periods of time.

It's why meditation is so valuable. You stop looking outward and begin looking where it counts. When you look within, where it all began, you start to see that all thoughts never leave their source. That when you stop thinking terrible things you cease to feel terrible. When you think good thoughts, you start to feel good.

When you stop engaging the "thinking mind" and start affiliating yourself with being, which is always available to you and requires no action on your part, you start to understand that you have been on a hamster wheel going nowhere.

So when you start your day anew, try to start within. Find that center, and do your best to never wander from it. Really be present with what you're thinking all the time. Start to realize you don't always have to be thinking. You can literally sit and be at peace.

Peace to me is like a still pond. Have you ever noticed that when the water is perfectly still the reflection is most clear? The same can be said about you. You will start to see that your world always reflects what you are thinking, and then you will begin to understand just how important peace of mind really is. Let "peace of being" be your thought today.