It's All A Dream...

Don Miguel Ruiz is one of my favourite writers and teachers. His teachings are very strongly matched Buddhist philosophy. He sets forward the idea that we create our own reality through "dreaming" our lives into existence. Everything that we have in our lives is there because we dreamed it into existence.

This echoes the Buddhist teaching of cause and effect, which is strongly linked with Karma. All that we have now, we have created ourselves. We have drawn experiences into our lives through making various causes - positive and negative - and this creates certain effects in our lives. Our present day lives reflect the causes that we have made in the past, and if we choose to change the circumstances we have for the future, we must change the causes that we are making now.

My friend Mark recently introduced me to The Secret, which again is aligned with Buddhist philosophy. It takes the concept of cause and effect further, stating that our thoughts are energy and the Universe responds to that energy frequency and gives us what we are thinking about. Worried about debt? Notice how the more you worry about the debt, the worse it gets? The Universe doesn't discriminate. It takes the signal that you are focussing on the debt, and sends you more.

In the Buddhist tradition, we create causes that bring about our debt, or relationship, or job situation. Similar principal.

Often we don't realise that we play an active part from day to day with the creation of our lives. We get to choose who we associate with. We choose how to react to things. We choose to focus on a particular emotion and become consumed by it. Our days are filled with choices, yet most of our time is spent reacting to others, rather than taking an active role in our life state.

This is the difference between engaging with your own life and letting life simply happen to you. Most of us have bought into the illusion that we are powerless to effect change in our lives. We are taught as children that we are naughty, no good, hopeless or only good at certain things. Buying into these illusions is what Don Miguel calls making agreements.

The great thing about it all is that you DO have a choice. You do get to create your own future, your own world, your own dream. We all have the ability to manifest the lives we truly want. I believe that what it takes is belief, sweat and a little time and you can create anything you want within your life.

My father's recent passing reminded me that our time on this plain is limited. It has served as a signpost for what is TRULY important in my life and to me. This moment is all we have. Make it a wonderful moment.