The Memory Game

There is an ad on TV for a website that promises a better brain, claims it can increase one’s brain power.  I don’t know if a website is needed to do that, but I think the concept is worth trying one way or another.

About a year ago, I caught myself using sticky notes to remind myself of just about everything.  Put laundry in dryer.  Take chicken out of freezer.  Brush teeth.  Okay, I’m exaggerating with that last one, but you get my point.  I was using notes to prompt myself through my daily life so I didn’t have to pay attention.  If I really concentrate and think to myself, when I walk down the hall I will remember to take the laundry out of the dryer, and picture myself walking down the hall and having these thoughts, I can remember of my own accord.

Just a fleeting thought of Oh, I gotta remember this-or-that, isn’t enough.  The decision has to be deliberate.  Now, I don’t discourage writing down super important things like your mother-in-law’s birthday or a minimum day at the school, things your are apt to go on autopilot and forget.  But I found that by writing too many notes, I was getting lazy.  I was actually encouraging more forgetfulness.

The mind is so flexible.  We’ve all heard stories of people who lose the use of their arms and learn to write with their feet.  If someone can accomplish that, surely I can remember to defrost dinner and fold the laundry.  At least, I should let myself try.

Tapping Into Abundance

The universe has no limits, but we humans like boxes.  We think we need them.  We are uncomfortable with limitlessness.  In our minds, everything is finite.  When someone tells us we can have as much money as we need or want, just for the asking, that we can create our own reality by visualizing, we reject that idea.  “It can’t be that easy,” we tell ourselves.  “If it were, everyone would be rich and successful.”

I saw the movie and read the book The Secret.  A lot of what was said there resonated with me, although it has been said before.  Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization, published decades earlier, suggests that many of the same concepts are true and offers many of the same techniques as The Secret, with more depth and specificity.

I believe that much, if not all, of what is suggested in those books is possible.  At first, though, I didn’t want to believe it.  Why did I reject the idea that the universe will support total abundance in my life?

I don’t think I rejected the idea for the same reason many people do.  Many people (the proverbial masses) engage in what I call “paucity thinking.”  They believe there is not enough to go around, that we have to “get ours before someone else does.”  This is not very useful thinking.

What if there were truly plenty of everything, enough to go around and more?  Many indicators suggest there is plenty.  True abundance can be found at every turn.

Since I don’t buy into this “paucity thinking” model, why did I initially shy away from The Secret’s suggestion that anything I want can manifest?  To me, it seems the book does not address a key component: the synchronicity needed to manifest our desires.  I believe that what we want must be in accordance with our true purpose as an individual (or one of our true purposes, since each of us may well have many).

Each of us has innate gifts, and I suggest we are morally and spiritually obligated to put them to their “highest and best use,” to borrow a real estate term.  We don’t have to; we could sit on the couch and drink beer all our lives, but in exchange the universe probably wouldn’t give us much more than an unhappy, purposeless life.  We could visualize all our desires to our heart’s content through the haze of a drunken stupor: driving a Lamborghini; owning a mansion in the Hollywood hills.  But it probably wouldn’t happen because there we sit, swilling down beer and watching reruns of Two and a Half Men.  We wouldn’t be using our “God-given” talents for the greater good.

That is the ingredient left out of The Secret.  It’s our job to discover our special purpose (no, not like Steve Martin’s character in The Jerk) and do it.  That’s how we tap into the abundance.  That’s the doorway to the limitlessness of existence.

I’m working on it.  I’m not drinking beer on the couch.  I’m using my gifts so that I can lead a purpose-driven, fulfilling life.  And though I don’t care much for Lamborghinis, I can think of a few things I’d like to own and accomplish.  When that “little voice inside me” says no, you can’t, I order it to stand corrected.  Yes, I can, I counter.  And why not?

For more thoughts and writings by Jennifer, visit her website at jenniferphelpswrites.com