What we think is what we get. Make the central focus of life calmness. From the place of calm we find the freedom to be at ease, with the mind as a tool to find clarity and channel the truth. Without calm the mind is blown about in free association with all its resultant emotional storms. These are the storms that breed negativity, as we feel ourselves overwhelmed by the anxieties of thoughts seeking to birth in the center of our minds.

We get to calm by weeding the mind of invasive thoughts that grow bigger as they seek to root in the energy of our attention. We cultivate the mind by being in charge of where we place our attention. As all gardeners know, invasive species are a fact of life. However, like the gardener, we can be in charge of which thoughts receive our greatest care and which we discard as mere weeds.

There are infinite seeds of thought that seek to take root in the soil of the mind. The mind is daily flooded with a highly charged marketplace of thought-offerings that vie for the currency of our attention. The outer expression of this is eloquently mirrored in the insatiable attention-seeking behavior of political leaders, whose viewpoints thrive on the food of our attention, rendering us powerless and energetically bankrupt.

But we are not victims. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico confirmed that although extreme trickery is allowed in all realities, in the final analysis we must sign up or agree for our energy to be taken. Even in the most extreme of captive circumstances, pointed out Victor Frankl, referring to his stay in a death camp, are we still free to choose the attitude we will take toward our circumstances.

From the place of calm we arrive at detachment. Detachment does not mean dissociation. There is a distinction between objective emotion and subjective emotion. To be mindfully present does not free one from the power of emotion. In fact, it insists that we be fully present to all that is: thought, feeling, sensation, and intuition. Objective emotion is genuine reaction to the truth.

The story is told of the teacher monk who cried at the death of his son. His students were flustered at his display of deep emotion, this apparent failure of detachment. He replied that his son had died. What more appropriate time to shed tears?

Subjective emotion arises from thoughts that stray from actual reality, thoughts that catastrophize as they hook into the present and enhance it to archetypal proportion, leading to dissociation from reality.

From the place of calm detachment we see the truth and know right action. This is positive action, because whatever action that might be, it is the necessary response to the truth. If we know right action and act in accordance with it, we are in deep alignment with inner truth and feel positive, regardless of the phase of the moon. Ending a relationship, leaving a career, even leaving this world if it’s truly time to leave, brings with it an inner certainty of rightness of being that launches one’s full energy into new life.

The world is now undergoing deep transformation. Nature is daily acting out these fundamental changes. Of course, we are all free to ride the thoughts of illusion that deny the truth, or play it for profit. An alternative is to accept what is objectively there but not fall prey to catastrophic interpretation and attachment.

If we realize that our collective thought energy is what feeds the machine that controls us—or, put another way, generates the reality we live in—we are free to employ our thought energy, our intent, on positive outcome. State, for instance: “I intend a world aligned with the truth.”

See what happens!

Chuck