Half empty? Half full?

02/11/08

The perspective or attitude we adopt when viewing our world, our experiences, and our life can make all the difference in what that world, life and experience is.

Half empty:

This is the pessimistic view of our world, life and experiences. We tend to look on the "dark" side of things. When we hold this attitude and way of looking at our life and the world, how does that feel? What are the results of holding this attitude?

When we look at things from this perspective, we are more likely to be critical because we are seeing things as being incomplete, not enough, not good enough and those sorts of attitudes. What this does is it reflects back to us (or draws to us,) things and experiences of being incomplete, not enough, not good enough, etc.. When we adopt the critical approach to our life experience, we get more to be critical about because that's just the way it (the law of attraction,) works. And, when we are critical in that moment, we know what it is we want, but in that moment, instead of paying attention to having what we want, we spend the moment crying for the lack of what we want.

Generally, in my experience, this attitude is not very fulfilling, and doesn't feel good.

Half full:

This is the optimistic view of our world, life and experiences. We tend to look on the "bright" side of things. How does it feel to be optimistic? What are the results of holding this attitude?

A person who is optimistic generally is hopeful, there are more possibilities, and he/she is generally more open to finding them and experiencing them than a pessimist is.

Actually, being optimistic is more in line with our flow of energy, and being more in line with our flow, feels generally better than being a pessimist which is either going against the flow, or resisting the flow.

We all have predominated tendencies that have sprung up within our attitudes and experiences usually harbored and nurtured by those around us as we grew up. We generally adopt the attitudes of those around us when we are young, because they present a strong vibration of that, and being undefined vibrationally, we tend to identify with that which is predominate in our field of experience, especially when we are very young in these physical bodies.

Even if we have one attitude or the other ingrained into our mind, once we realize we now have control, we can begin to break free from the patterns which don't serve us any longer.

To break free, we must catch ourselves over and over again, when we express the pessimistic view, and when we do, turn it around to the optimistic view. (Every experience holds equal potential for either experience. As the experiencer, we decide which side we are going to pay attention to.)

This process is a "never get it done" type process. What I mean is, we always will be faced with the decisions of which side of the equation we are going to pay most attention to. The good news is, that as we practice mindfulness, and as we choose to be more optimistic, we weight our experiences in favor of being optimistic, and the more we are optimistic, the more we experience things to be optimistic about. This results in a snowball effect. (By the way, the same is true if we choose the pessimistic perspective.)

Now that being said, both of these attitudes are valuable in that the Half empty attitude point out to us something we want or desire, and the Half full attitude then applies focus of attention towards what we want. So you may see, that it is sort of a "flip flop" experience, first we see what we don't want, which make it more clear what we do want, and being more clear about what we do want, we pay attention to that, which brings that into our experience.

So, when we have a pessimistic moment, we can rejoice because in the moment that follows, we can see optimistically what we want, and seeing that we can move towards that.

If I could express a timeline of what this might be like in life experience, it might go something like this: Half empty, half full, half full, half full, half empty, half full, half full, half empty, half full. This is actually the creative process which could be stated in another way as in this example:

Not enough love in my life, I pay more attention to the love that is already in my life, and by paying attention to that, I experience more love in my life. I create more opportunities to experience more love in my life.

(By experiencing the "not enough" side of the experience, I built the desire for more. If I hadn't experienced the "not enough" I wouldn't have desired or moved towards creating more loving experiences in my life. So, while the "not enough" didn't feel good, it gave me the opportunity to turn towards what it was that I wanted, which feels much better. It works in my favor when I experience it, then look for the seed of what it is I want to create out of it.)

Every moment then, is the fruit in my experience that stirs up within me the desire to plant the seed for future experiences. As I am more and more aware of this process occurring moment by moment by moment, I become more and more the deliberate creator, planter of seeds, which express in the outer world experience as the fruit I've created.

If you begin to deliberately plant seeds of joy, from moment to moment, eventually, those seeds will manifest as joyous life experiences, will express as the fruit in the moment by moment experience of life. So, while I'm planting seeds of joy, I continue to reap the harvest of joy from the seeds I've previously planted. This is the value of being deliberate in your focus, attitudes, and emotional experiences.

How long does it take to make this transition, to be mindful enough to be a deliberate creator? We are constantly creating, planting seeds in this here now moment by moment experience.

If you've never paid much attention to your here now experience, you've never observed your mental tendencies, your attitudes, you will have to develop these by beginning to be more mindful of your moment by moment experiences, and in this mindfulness, observe how you feel, and what it is you are thinking about when you feel that way, and what your attitude is in this moment as you are experiencing this feeling.

Through continued exposure and practice of mindfulness, we develop a clarity about how we use our moment by moment experiences to create our life experiences.

Through this clarity, we then choose deliberately thoughts and feelings and attitudes which serve us, which plant seeds to our liking. As the progress unfolds, the seeds express as fruit in our moment by moment experience, and thus we reap the harvest we've intentionally and deliberately planted.

Practice being deliberate.

Meditation is a practice in being deliberate. Being deliberate for a pre-determined amount of time, in a place where we are free from interruptions and distractions. A time and place set aside to deliberately pursue this experience in awareness. When we sit for meditation, at first we may just sit and observe the experiences we have, we may feel the bodily sensations, we may feel the welling up and subsiding of emotions, we may observe thoughts that come and go, and in all this, we can become more clear. At first observation and stillness may be the goal of meditation, so that as we meditate, we just sit and adopt the observer attitude.

Eventually, we may choose to do something deliberately, such as repeating a Mantra, or focusing upon a simple thought such as "One" or "Love." We may deliberately repeat this mantra or word over and over again. Whenever another thought or feeling comes up, we might have a tendency to drift off with that, but being mindful, we catch our self and then return to the Mantra or word we've chosen to deliberately focus upon.

As we continue to practice, we become more and more proficient at this until it eventually is so easy and effortless that it is a natural expression of our being.

Once more thing about being deliberate, this isn't a forceful process, where we adopt an attitude like, "I'm going to do this come hell or high water!" where we grit our teeth, and tense up, and become rigid. Rather it is a gentle but determined approach where we observe our distractions, then gently return our attention to our desired point of focus.

This is an example of the mental process during a meditation period:

Love, love, love, I wonder what I'm going to do this afternoon? I think I'll go get some milk I need to remember to get milk. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, that itches, I got to scratch that itch, dam, why is it itching, I wish it wouldn't itch, I got to get back to my meditation, but this dam itch is distracting me, (scratch the itch,) love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, I wonder how long I've been doing this, this is boring, man, why am I doing this, this is really stupid, I don't see why I'm wasting my time doing this, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, humm, this does feel better, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love....

Half empty? Half full?