Contemplate Floating

As you may have noted, I have gotten sidetracked off my usual posting, primarily because of doing a lot of remodeling around the house, but also because I just got tired of scanning old photos and laying out the posts. I am motivated to write today not so much by travel, but by current events and a CD set I've been listening to in my Jeep. (Come to think of it, I guess that is travel.)

Let me first say that I feel saddened by the loss of three icons: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson.

I watched "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" for many years. I distinctly remember when I was in college returning from my night custodian job to watch Johnny, Ed and Doc Severenson while eating Ritz crackers with leftover baked beans or peanut butter before going to bed.

Farrah, of course, was a pinup girl around the same time, even for those of us who rarely watched "Charlie's Angels."

From those early songs like "ABC" to his domination of music in the '80s, Michael Jackson never ceased to amaze me as a performer. As to whether he was a Christlike victim of scammers or a pedofile, I personally have not decided, but he was an amazing performer.

They'll all be missed.
 

On a separate topic, for Father's Day I ordered "Excuses Begone" from Nightingale/Conant for Julie to give me. I've listened to their records, tapes and CDs since my late, great father turned me on to them. He even represented Earl Nightingale Motivational Records for a while part-time in the 1960s.

By the way, Amy gave me a can of refried beans and a card about my love of music that tied in, and Jay gave me some delicious wine, cheese and beef stick, but I digress.

This new set by Wayne Dyer is just what I hoped it would be: a throwback to his very practical older stuff from the 1980s with influences from his newer stuff, which tends to be more spiritual. It makes me feel good to listen to these CDs. Anyway, something I heard him say yesterday really hit me, and it occurs to me that by focusing on all the trillions of deficit government spending, craziness on Wall Street, and Axis of Evil saber rattling, we lose our sense of control over what happens immediately around us, which is really the only reality there is. All anyone has is the present moment, and as we know, most of what our lives are has far more to do with how we think about and respond to what happens than the events themselves.

It's always amazing to me that when aboard a giant airplane it not only gets off the ground but flies, or that on a floating resort like we will be on in a little more than a week, a hundred thousand tons floats like a Dixie cup. (There's the tie to travel!) That's why instinctively I can accept that despite all the illogical stuff happening politically right now, we don't HAVE TO sink. We do, however, become what we think about, and our reality eventually reflects our innermost thoughts. Banish fear, and accept the good that God wants for us right now, in the present moment, which is the only time we ever live in. We are spiritual beings enjoying (or not enjoying) a human experience, rather than the other way around.

Dyer quoted Thomas Troward, who said, “The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.”

"The Wright brothers didn’t contemplate the staying on the ground of things. Alexander Graham Bell didn’t contemplate the noncommunication of things. Thomas Edison didn’t contemplate the darkness of things. In order to float an idea into your reality, you must be willing to do a somersault into the inconceivable and land on your feet, contemplating what you want instead of what you don’t have."

~ Wayne Dyer, 21st Century Spiritual Teacher from The Power of Intention