Clarity of Intent

Someone asked me if the Law of Attraction works all the time. It does. What we have and what we do in our life right now is connected to our thoughts and actions leading up to this time. If the conditions of your life are unhappy and undesirable, have you taken actions to change them? Have you reset your intentions to create a better future?

What our life will look like from this day forward has everything to do with our thoughts and actions from this day forward. Clarity of intent has to be in place for the Law of Attraction to work.

Think about that for a moment. Once you have a clear picture in your mind of what you want, you can set the energies of the universe in motion to bring that to you. Like does attract like.

You can test in small ways every day to demonstrate that your thoughts will work in this way. Start with something small. Say for example you need to get a particular item for something you are working on. Not only do you find exactly that item, but you find it promptly.

Or say you want to talk to a certain person, and within a day you hear from that person.

Now after you have run some small tests apply the same method to larger goals. Of course, larger goals may take longer to achieve, but you can also use these principles to do things like expand your business or find a new person to go out with.

There is an old Chinese proverb that says that luck is the place where hard work meets opportunity. After all, we do have to take some actions on our own behalf to signal to the world that we are actively pursuing our dreams and visions.

I once asked the rune master Edred Thorsson why magic is considered controversial by some people. His answer was that magic is where we dare to exert our will in the world. Traditionally, in prayer people make requests and hope that it works out. Setting a clear intention and going for it requires that a person really put their life energy in play in a very vigorous way.

Having a clear intention set is the most important requirement in order to get the Law of Attraction working for you.

Our thoughts are powerful and they manifest into action. If you are not getting what you want out of life, it is time to stop and reexamine how you are stating your intention.

Keep this in mind. When you state your vision of what you want, there is a simple test to know if you have really stated it in the best way. How do you feel when you state your intention? Do you get that feeling in your gut that affirms it? Can you imagine your self feeling how it would feel to have your vision come true? Can you see it, feel it, taste it, smell it, hear it?

Your vision is not only in your head, it is in your body and your spirit. When you set an intention, do you feel it with your whole being?

Riding on Nightmares

Nightmares often arise from the conscious changes in a person's life which may be traumatic, or upsetting. When we lay down to sleep for the night, negative, fearful dreams that may cause us distress enough to wake up and not get a sound night's sleep can be used as a powerful vehicle to turn those fears around.

One way to do this is to write the nightmare down, then change the course of the story to be an outcome you find desirable. Use these as a guided meditation for three days and you can see the nightmare turn into a journey of power, passion and strength.

By giving yourself another way to view the progress of events, you can reprogram your mind to visualize a positive outcome. It is natural that nightmares come when we are making a difficult transition in life.

Nightmares can present us a gift if we look at our greatests fear, face it and see ourselves facing this fear and achieving a positive outcome. Often times we do not know our real strength and the extent of our resources and abilities until we are challenged.

Remember, courage comes from the heart. Anyone can do well when everything is easy and things are just coasting along. It takes a person with a lot of heart to rise to meet challenges and overcome adversity. It takes keen powers of observation to note where there is an opportunity to turn a difficulty to our advantage and then act on it.

Learn to ride the nightmares. Change the story of the nightmare so that it plays out in a way that is powerful for you. There is power in nightmares. Use it to your advantage.

Where Is My Magic?

How we see our life every day is a choice. How we feel about it is our choice. I like asking myself a question to remind myself of this every day. Where is my magic?

My magic is within my realm of influence. I am happy to be here, doing what I am doing. There are new friends and useful things to be learned in every experience, even the unprofitable experiments I try.

My magic is extended into the realm of making good things happen every day. Large or small, when I smile and expect good things to happen they do. I can complain that the car needs to be fixed or I can get it fixed so that I can keep using it. I can smile at the fact that it has been a good year for business and that it continues to get better.

I smile when I think of all the referrals that have come my way. I am happy to be of service.

Part of the magic of my life is that I have had a number of careers within this one lifetime and this has provided me with a variety of experiences.

How many times in my life have I done something after asking myself questions. Does this work? How does this work? I wonder if I can do this. So I try. I learn. It works.

Waking up every morning with a cup of dark roast coffee and my dream journal is the beginning of my magic for this day. Beginning my day this way is magic. It is simple. It is magic. I am waking up with the taste of the coffee while I make notes about my dreams and what they may mean. My day is already full of possibilities.

Where is my magic? My magic begins when I decide that this will be a good day. My magic begins when I decide that my interactions with other people will be good today. My magic begins when I know that some good opportunity will open up for me today. Often, I do not know what that is, but I know that a whole day cannot go by without my encountering an opportunity for joy.

Joy begets magic and magic begets joy. This is where I find my magic. . I ask myself these questions. Who am I? What am I doing? And in answer to my questions, I refocus my energy on the task at hand, smile and feel the joy radiate through me as I confirm that I am happy to be here, doing what I am doing, being alive in this moment.

Keys to Imagination

Recently I watched a movie that was quite faithful to the book as I remember it when reading it. This is unusual. Have you noticed that from your own experience?

The intersection of movies we have watched and books we have read is quite disappointing. Times when I have seen a movie based on a book that I particularly liked, I most often regretted seeing the movie. Why is this?

One explanation is simple. Writers use a careful construction of words to create images in the mind. It is that interaction between the words that the writer has chosen and the engagement of the reader's imagination that lets a person create images in their mind that enables them to see, hear, smell, taste and feel the story. In other words, it is a way of knowing.

What happens in the making of a movie? Actors love to improvise and add their own touches to characters. Directors look for ways to make things visually appealing. The selection of a composer makes a difference in a movie as well. And, of course, there is the script writer, whose job is more attuned to dialogue than description. So by simply doing what they do best, they may take a different approach to making a movie than the author did writing the book.

When I used to teach writer's workshops an exercise that we commonly used in getting their creative juices flowing and getting them started writing,was to get them to close their eyes and we would do a visualization exercise. Then I would ask them to start telling their visions out loud. After hearing them tell their stories, I had them start to write them down while they were still fresh in their minds.

Often, self help books advise  the reader to visualize the results they want as the first step toward setting the vibrations in motion to achieve their goals.

Visualizing is just another word for something we have all been familiar with since childhood. We called it imagination. No doubt teachers still talk to children about using their imagination.

They really are just two different words for the same thing. The power to make pictures in our mind is something that we do so commonly and frequently that we do not even think of it as a special thing.

Think about it. Artists, inventors, writers, musicians, chefs, builders, designers, architects, engineers, marketing experts, all kinds of people in all kinds of work must use their imagination first before they begin to make something out of the physical materials.

Imagination is a prime tool for helping us to know things, to picture ourselves in the shoes of another person, or to sense what our life will be like when it changes. Imagination is creativity, passion, enlightenment, vision and inspiration.

Our imaginations are powerful tools. If it helps you to go back to using this familiar term from childhood, by all means use it.