Messages from the fifth dimension

Your Vote Counts

Just before the presidential elections in the year 2000, I sent email out to everyone I knew, urging them to vote. Not urging them to vote for any given candidate, mind you, but just to get themselves out to the polls and to vote for whomever they truly wanted to see in office. One of the things I said in that email, presciently enough, was that every vote counted. One might almost think that I was psychic and had had some prior information about the entire debacle.

I also urged people to forward my email to everyone they knew, with the hope that there might be one of those exponential each-one-teach-ten things and that perhaps it would make a difference. And perhaps it did, though I may never know.

Alas, of the total number of people eligible to register to vote, only 74% were registered at the time of that election (larger than usual—it was, after all, a presidential election), and only a pitiful 36% bothered to show up at the polls to vote. 2% voted for other candidates, leaving 17% each to vote for Bush and Gore. So no matter who should have or would have won, neither would have had the majority vote if we define majority as the majority of those who could vote, and not the majority of those who did vote. (And even then, it was so close that the whole election really should have been run again. And yes, I followed my own advice and voted for the candidate I wanted to see in office, which was neither a Democrat nor a Republican.)

But You Don't Believe That It Does

So what went wrong? And how did we get to this space? Part of the problem—and a really big part—is the fact that obviously a lot of people don't think their vote matters. One of the positive things to come out of that fiasco we call the 2000 presidential elections is that at least some people started to get an inkling that maybe, just maybe, their vote matters after all. And that's a good thing.

But what if that is not the only area where what we say or do matters? What if, and I am going to go wildly out on a limb here—what if EVERTHING we think, say, and do matters totally? What if those who say that we create our own reality, who say that we create it down to every fine detail, mean that in the most literal sense? What if everything we become aware of as going on in our reality is the direct result of our thinking?

Shakespeare's Wisdom

I am reminded of a quote from the immortal bard, Shakespeare, which goes something like this: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2) The meaning of this is that situations in themselves don't have the qualities of good or bad; it is we humans who apply those qualities by our thoughts. There is a great deal of wisdom in this, as in many of the things Shakespeare teaches through his plays, and many others have spoken on the power of positive thinking, emotional intelligence, the value of a cheerful and positive attitude, and so on, so I will not venture down that path tonight.

But what I will explore out of this is an idea whose scope I only barely grasped as I woke, and which has slipped a bit from my grasp since, but not so totally that I don't recall it well enough to put it down. In the next few paragraphs, I will attempt to capture the clarity of understanding that I had when I woke. Just remember that, should I fail in this attempt, the essential idea is that everything you experience, everything you see, everything that comes to your awareness is the outcome of your own thoughts.

You could, in a sense, say that the world truly does revolve around you, and does its best to dance to your tune. Unhappy in your work? Complaining about the state of the world? Look to yourself. What thoughts do you think? What actions do you take—not just in your thinking, which is an action too, but also in the more traditional sense of taking action in the physical world? The world is trying its best to grant you what you are asking for.

But, you say, you aren't asking for it. Instead, you are just noticing reality and commenting upon it. But are you?

This is one of those chicken-and-egg things, as in, which came first—reality, or your thoughts about reality? (In the case of the chicken and the egg, there is no debate. The egg came first, and not the chicken. Through the miracle of genetics and mutation, whatever laid the egg was not a chicken, but what hatched out of the egg was. Case closed. Those who argue that it cannot be because there is no evolution because evolution means there is no God have a surprisingly limited idea of what God is and what God is capable of.)

We Create Our Reality

But it isn't so simple when it comes to reality. We so often think that we are bystanders and victims of reality because we think that reality came first and our reactions to it and thoughts about it came after, and indeed it can certainly seem that way.

But what others have tried to teach, and what I have believed to a certain extent but not gotten nearly as close as I did tonight to truly understanding, is that, in fact, we are not only not the innocent bystanders and observers of reality, we are, in fact, the very architects and builders of that reality. The energy upon which our world is built is some powerful essence of Love, and the nature of that Love is to want to say Yes to us—Yes to our complaints and limited beliefs if need be, but it would much rather say yes to our positive beliefs and thoughts.

It dances, as I say, to our tune, whatever that tune may be. It strives to meet each individual person's needs and desires, loving each person to the utmost, but, because of that love, unable to impose upon anyone anything other than what those people are asking for. It would not be loving to force anyone to experience anything other than what they ask for.

There is more to it than that, of course, but that is the very core and essence of how things are created. We think something, or ask for something, and, even if we forget that we asked for it, or deny that we asked for it, or just don't recognize that we asked for it, we get it. The needs and desires of others are part of this, but the bottom line is that, as far as our personal reality goes, it is totally geared toward us and our wants and needs.

But How Do We Ask?

What do I mean when I say that we don't recognize that we have asked for something? There are many levels of subtlety to how we ask for things, but one of the most obvious is in, as mentioned, how we think about things. Including ourselves. If we only believe we are capable of so much, or that we are only going to get so much from life, then so it is. We have argued for our own limitations, and won. If we say it isn't possible, for instance, for us to meet someone that we would truly love to meet, then so it is. If we take in an experience and judge it as bad, then that is what it is to us, even though it could be that there is much good buried in the situation.

But it is always possible to change how we think about things. It may mean discarding a few habits of negative thinking, of thinking of ourselves as powerless and helpless in the face of whatever, but think about the alternative. Would you rather stay a victim all your life? Or would you like to start thinking that perhaps you are in control after all? Because if that is so, then you can change things. For surely, if you are a victim, then you cannot change anything (except perhaps how you resign yourself to your fate), but if you are not a victim, but are instead after all the captain of your ship, then you can pilot it where you will, including into sunnier waters and calmer seas if you so desire.

And you don't even need to figure out how things are possible. The workings of the universe are not your concern, any more than the workings of your car are. You get in, you turn the key, and you drive (skilfully, one hopes). It may be useful to know what happens when you turn the key, but you don't need to know. Just so are the workings of that Love that runs our world—it has its own physics that we need not concern ourselves with, but instead we only need to know that it works, and we only need to turn the key and drive. Which is to say, we need to realize that we are driving, and then take charge from there. Turning the key is perhaps analogous to asking for what we want, and the driving part is acting as though we are going to get it, and responding favorably and positively to what is brought to us in response to those requests we don't remember, and being open to the response being in a different form than we expected.

To quote Shakespeare again, this time from Troilus and Cressida, Act 3, Scene 3:

The providence that's in a watchful state
Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold,
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps,
Keeps place with thought, and almost like the gods
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.

And with that thought, I am going to go back to bed to ponder on this a bit more before I sleep again, perchance to dream....