Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born. Dale E. Turner

Come out head first in 2012. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The first step is to claim the power of your mind. Your mind is BIG, and I don’t mean big in the high haired “Rod Blagojevich” sense of the word or the big talking “Donald Trump” sense of big. I mean big, as in the Sanskrit word “maha” which is also translated “great”. It indicates something spacious, beyond size. We tend to think that sky or space is the biggest thing. But a Zen teacher once said,

This whole universe covers my body, yet my mind can cover the whole universe.

When you “think” of the whole universe, you have drenched your mind in it. Your mind is spacious enough to include whatever you can conceive of. This includes things that are likely much larger than the universe; like love, forgiveness and generosity.

Your mind is massive, but it has to be cultivated and used for good purpose. This is the second part of coming out head first in 2012- possibility thinking. Don’t fall for stinking thinking that always focuses on what’s wrong and comes from a basis of fear. And don’t lapse into monkey mind, that swings from one thought to another habitually and mindlessly. Engage in some possibility thinking.

Eckhart Tolle says this about the mind,

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

Some would say that your mind creates your reality, so mind your thoughts. At the very least, your mind shapes the way you experience your reality, so shape your mind. You mind is like a set of eye glasses. It can holds many different lenses, and sees life through whatever current lens you use. Let me offer a visual example. At the moment I have a small sty on my eye, and I can see it at the corner of my vision. It looks like everything I see has a small bump on it. It doesn’t of course. It’s my eye that has the bump. The same principle holds when it comes to seeing the world around you. You can either see life as full of possibility or full of fear and threat.

The important thing (and note to self here) is that if the sty is obstructing my vision I should have it removed. Once you realize that you’re seeing the world through vision that is cracked and warped by an unexamined or stubborn negative belief, you can make a choice. You can take the glasses off, examine them, clean them up, and remove the limiting beliefs. You can transform your whole worldview as if you’re putting in new lens. Or you can choose to continue seeing only fear and danger. You know who you are deep down. So you know what serves you and you know that you don’t need fear to thrive.

The incredible thing about coming out head first is that you tend to attract those people and situations that confirm the way you see the world. So your life becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Prophecy great things for 2012 and follow through with regular reminders, and then be prepared for an amazing year. (read on for more about possibility thinking)

Come out head first in 2012. Retrain your mind to see the world through the lens of possibility.

Woody Allen once ended a stand up routine by saying,

I wish I could think of a positive thought to leave you with. Will you take two negative thoughts instead?

What do you do with persistent negative thoughts? Don’t judge them. Two negative thoughts will not create a positive thought. Think positive thoughts about negative thoughts. Love them into submission. Possibility thinking is not about suppression. You WILL have negative thoughts and some of them will be stubborn. Some of them will be poor visibility from a cracked lens. Some of them will be appropriate and be the exact motivation you need to make a change in your life, hence revealing themselves to be anything but negative. Affirm even the negative thoughts, and the difference will become clear. Which thoughts are serving you, and which thoughts are locking you into self destructive patterns?

This is another one of the challenges in an election year when we will be inundated with negative attack ads. Up to a certain point, negative political ads are healthy and part of the very process of free thought that I’m encouraging. If they can help us to assess candidates then that’s a healthy thing. But they are usually full of half truths and slander. Many end up being absurd.

Take for example the ad released last week attacking Jon Huntsman. In no way am I endorsing Huntsman as a candidate, but this ad was absurd. The ad includes footage of Huntsman speaking Mandarin and holding his Indian and Chinese daughters. Then it calls him the Manchurian candidate and questions his American values. This goes too far, and is classic stinking thinking. Huntsman has two sons in the Navy. One of his sons plays football for the navy. He was the twice governor of Utah and American ambassador to China. He adopted an Indian and a Chinese baby, effectively saving their lives and now raises them with strong awareness of their culture of origin. He is Mormon, but embraces religious freedom for all. This guy seems to have awesome values and quintessentially American values, in the mold of the free thinking founders of this country. This ad was stinking thinking, created in the service of fear. We can do without this negativity.

Come out head first in 2012. Put aside stinking thinking, and engage in some generous thinking, for yourself and others. You don’t become anything more by making someone else less. On the contrary, the more generous you are to others, the larger you become. This is part three in the series. Part two looks at claiming the power of your mind. Part 4 in the series looks at the power of memory and imagination for coming out head first.

May your mind transcend limitations.
May your consciousness expand in every direction.
May you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be. Patanjali