Some people think that "magic" works through Selective Attention, and so it is a trick. For example, the 23 Enigma. Another example might be this: You go to a fortune teller. The Seer says you will find "love." Love is then on your mind. You tend to notice the word written all over the place. You'll see people that relate to that feeling and anything associated with it. It "manifests" in your consciousness. The fortune teller didn't make these things manifest. They already existed outside of your consciousness, which is to say they did not exist for you. It could be anything. But when it's on your mind you'll see it everywhere, whether the subject is the Number 23, love, hate, persecution, or wealth. These things in some way existed as a construct in the Universe at Large, commonly called the Multi-verse by physicists. You manifest these things by noticing them.
All attention is selective, and the only reason we perceive anything at all is through it. If the Multiple Worlds Theory of Quantum Physics holds true, then the mechanism of Selective Attention would explain one way of navigating through it. We experience the world through our attention. By controlling our attention, we can control which aspects of the world appear to manifest. Rather than manifesting things into existence, these things already exist within the grand scheme of things, the Universe at Large, and we are simply focusing our attention on them, at which point we become "conscious" of those things -- the objects of the senses and their effects. Thus things seem to "manifest" quite naturally and unobtrusively, unless we notice them with great suddenness. Either way it is our attention that focuses upon them that brings them into being in our own personal reality. So magic is a trick. The trick is to use your will to alter your attention, and thereby alter your world. "Change in conformity with will."
If your world sucks, stop complaining and try to notice all the good things in it. There are lots of them, no matter what your situation. Bring more of that into your awareness. Forget about the crap. Try to notice anything good, even the good in what seems bad. Use your attention, and focus it on what you want. This includes changing your emotional and practical perspective. Think about how sometimes the same thing can seem good or bad depending on how you feel at that moment. Memory is state dependant. The more you can remember any particular feeling or thought, the more you will tend to do so in the future, especially when you feel the same emotional state.
Energy is like water, and the mind is like a hillside in which it tends to gather and form ravines. As the ravines get deeper, more water tends to flow through the ravines, which tends to make them even deeper, thus encouraging even more water to flow through them. It is a self-reinforcing cycle, and the same is true with our thoughts and our reality. The more you think something, the more power it gains to pop up in your mind, and your thoughts and feelings definitely affect you, your behavior, and even your physical body. So really, you can either make your reality consciously or unconsciously, but either way you are the one making it. Forget the past. Your point of power is in the present.
Your power is here and now, neither in the future nor the past. Whatever you want, simply be aware that you bring into your own consciousness what you focus on. If you want to change your world, change your focus. Control your selective attention by using your will, simply intend, and think about things that you would like to notice. Rather than be obsessed with trying to manifest things, realize that whatever you want already exists in some form, and be open to it.
This takes almost no energy. Energy is consumed by effort. Forget about effort. Just use your thoughts as a navigational tool, like a steering wheel, to point you in the direction you want to go. Don't worry about where you are. Just ask yourself, "How can I get there?" Ask yourself questions like you would ask somebody else, expecting an answer. The answer will come by means of your attention.
You may notice something, say an object, a book or newspaper article, something on television or the radio, or it may seem to be you answering yourself. It is. There is a part of you that is smarter than you could ever believe. Court that part of yourself. That is your divine spark, regardless of where you think it comes from. Use that spark. You do it without even realizing it all the time. You've been doing it your whole life, at least since you learned to talk. The voice within is quiet at first and hard to hear. Sit in silence, stop the internal dialogue, and let your attention wander from time to time. Reset. Start from where you are right now, not last year, or ten years ago. Start fresh. Let fear and doubt drop away like melted fat into the fire. Let them burn up into nothing. Then think about courage. Think about things that make you feel strong, capable. Transform yourself.
At first this may seem difficult or sporadic, but if you keep it up pretty soon you'll be, well, in a whole different world. At some point it will literally seem like you are in a different world, and from a Quantum Physics perspective, you may very well be in one. More than anything else, believe in yourself.
"Smile and the world smiles with you."
J. Douglas Mayfield has been studying consciousness and perception through an interdisciplinary approach for over ten years. He was trained in this interdisciplinary approach as a tutor at the Academic Achievement Center of Columbia College in the Sierra Nevada Foothills of Sonora, California, where he acquired his Associate's Degree in English in 2004. He also attended Las Positas College in Livermore California, where he was trained in psychology, in which he majored at that time. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the
Peer Help Center of Sonora, a peer-run division of Behaviorial Health, where he is also a client. His primary goal there is to help people help themselves by showing them better, more practical ways of percieving their world, functioning within it, and healing themselves.
Douglas strongly recommends visiting the following links, for anyone interested in consciousness, spirituality, or insight into ways we can better our lives and those of others around us...
Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D.
Wolf is well known for his simplification of the new physics and is perhaps best known as the author of Taking The Quantum Leap: The New Physics For Nonscientists (1982). He has presented a great deal of information freely online - here's his download page.
My Stroke of Insight
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened, as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one - speech, movement, understanding - she nevertheless studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story and worth your time, I guarantee it.
