Now Is The Time And We Are The Ones

[Guest]

NOW IS THE TIME AND WE ARE THE ONES

By Lyle Bradley


01. Power of Thought (1-4)

Chapter 1

Within my being I am aware that I exist.

I am.

My own awareness of my own consciousness is the only thing that does not need to be proven to me or learned through an outside experience.

I know that I am.

My awareness of my own consciousness is, at the same time, the only thing which cannot be proven to another, for it cannot be experienced by anyone else.

I believe, and can only believe, that others also have an awareness of their own consciousness but, for me, it is unprovable and unknowable. For I do not experience their consciousness, either within my own thought-space or within my physical dimension.

I am. This is my truth.

I once watched a young child, old enough to be aware of his existence and surroundings, yet young enough that he was unable to understand words and language. I watched him. I wondered what form awareness takes before language shapes our thoughts. I noticed that this young child had no concept of time, past or future, but lived completely in the present moment. I noticed him watching all that happened around him, taking it in. He knew only pure awareness of his present condition. I noticed that he would respond emotionally to his condition, moment by moment. If he was happy, he would smile; if he was unhappy, he would cry. There were no thoughts of an hour hence or an hour past, only now, only a response to what he was experiencing and feeling.

As we grow, words take form within our thoughts. Pure awareness and pure emotion give way to concepts and ideas. The words shape the way we interpret what we experience, and we project our thoughts into the past and the future.

Our own conscious awareness of our own existence puts all else that we experience outside of ourselves. We spend our lives seeking to bridge the gap between that which is within and all else that we experience in our physical dimension. It seems to me that our mutual commonality is this, that, although we share the same physical space, each of us is alone with our own awareness of self. Each of us is alone with our thoughts.

I am a wanderer, an honest seeker of truth. I have been walking around watching, listening, and thinking. I have seen what I have seen and heard what I have heard. I have experienced in each present moment that which was before me and have felt, like the young child, the emotions which those experiences created within me. At each moment, I have tried to respond as honestly as possible to the emotions which I have felt, and out of my own experiences, my thoughts have had their birth, born within me, from what I have seen and have come to know.

Alone with my thoughts, I am but one man walking upon this planet on a solo journey of discovery, surrounded by eight billion other conscious, thinking human beings who are also on a solo journey of discovery.

I wonder what eight billion people think about?

One thing is clear to me: A thought changes the course of a beings consciousness and, as simply as one thought alters our consciousness, the power of one thought can alter the course of humanity.

The history of civilization is the history of thoughts enacted. That which we call reality, the world we see and live in today, is nothing more than the effect of the manifestation of past thoughts lived out in the lives of countless millions. That which we call reality is nothing more than thoughts which individuals chose to focus on, and felt were important enough to act upon, through countless generations past. That which we call reality is the progression of past choices made and their effect rippling forward through time. Indeed, that which we call reality could very well have been a very different reality, if different thoughts had been thought and different choices made.

Many times throughout the generations past, history has been changed because of the actions of one person. Moments of history have pivoted on the lives lived by individual beings. One person can change the course of the entire species, for better or for worse, through their actions -- and their actions are a reflection of their thoughts.

Everything we know as human beings, everything we have learned, everything we have created, has come about because somewhere, sometime, someone had either a need or a question. As those needs and questions were pondered, we learned, solved our problems and satisfied our curiosity, then shared our insights with others.

We have learned all that we have, we have created all that we have, through the power of thought. Everything begins as a thought.

Yet this I know, not every thought is given form. I have many thoughts which stay mine, and mine alone. For to give a thought form, it must be transformed into the physical dimension through word or deed.

Out of the myriad of thoughts within my being, only those which I focus on and choose, through a manifestation of my free-will, are given birth into this world through my conscious action. The rest remain thoughts within, silent to whole rest of humanity.

For nothing that happens can happen until someone thinks a thought and expends focused energy of action to undertake and manifest it.

So, what are we thinking about?

As in times before, where we evolve to from here depends upon our needs and upon the questions we choose to focus on. Yet the direction of our thinking and the focus of our lives might not be in keeping with our present needs or state of being. It seems to me that, in our rush to forge ahead through life, we are not pausing long enough to consider whether the direction we are going is the direction we want to be going, or even should be going.

What are the underlying assumptions upon which we are making our choices and setting our direction? Where do we stand at this moment in our evolutionary journey, and where do we go from here?

Our greatest power, as individuals and as a species, is our power to learn and to change our minds. The way we are going is not the only way. As simply and as quickly as we change our minds, we can change the entire direction of humanity.

That which we do and the way we do it, often long outlives the reasons why we do it that way or the thinking which brought it about.

We are born into a world where the decisions of the past have been built layer by layer, one on top of the other, until the present state of being -- our reality -- came into being. The process presupposes that each past decision was the best decision that could be made, and that the sum total of those decisions, our current state of affairs, is precisely what we should be doing and need to be doing, the best course.

Perhaps that is not true. Perhaps not all past decisions were the best decisions that could have been made; perhaps the effects that those decisions created, and the subsequent decisions built upon them, have resulted in a way of living that is not the best way that we could live; perhaps our current state of being is not all that it could be, should be, or needs to be.

We have accepted the social programming given to us from the past and live it as if it is the only program available for us to live. We accept it as the best way for our time, without considering the problems it is creating, or whether a different way might be more desirable.

As we take a look at our historically-created "reality", our way of being and thinking, as we take a look at its effects, we must decide if it is the way we want to be living. We do not need to accept the direction or focus given to us out of our past. We have the power to change. Reality is just one big social-historic program running in the bio-computers of our minds, and if the programming is flawed, let us change the program, write a new one.

Two thousand six hundred years ago, the man Gautama, known historically as the Buddha, taught:


Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handled down for many generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumoured by many.
Do not believe in anything because it found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
But, after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
It is time for us to take a good, hard look at where we are at -- here and now -- at this moment in history, and look at where we are heading.
Historically, attempts to control our societies, or to control the direction of our evolution, have included attempts to control the nature and direction of thought itself.

Control of information, what we are told, what we are not told, what we believe matters, what we focus on, or what we choose to ignore, shapes our thinking, shapes what we choose to think about, and how we live our lives.

The past has brought us to this present moment but where we go from here is up to us. As individuals and as a species, we do not yet know what we cannot do. We do not yet know the limits of our possibilities through our conscious manifestation of thought. We do not yet know where we could yet go, if we but abandon our disbelief of the possibilities.

For where there is a conscious free-will, the possibilities are as boundless as thought itself.


Chapter 2

One day, after spending months walking around watching, talking to my fellow human beings, and listening, I thought about what we have done as human beings, the way we treat each other, what we have created, and the state of the world, and I sat down under a tree and cried.

Knowing that everything that we do and everything that we create is the effect of our conscious choosing, I look around at what we have chosen to create, and I wonder why.

Look at what we have created out of the power of our consciousness. Look at what we have chosen of our free-will to do and become. If we consciously think about it, is this the best we can do? Is this reality that we have created really the reality that we want to be living in?

Margaret Mead once said: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed human beings can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

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[Guest]

I am reminded of a man who when he was four years old, was given some creamed corn to eat. He spit it out saying, "I hate corn." When he was five and six and eight and twelve, whenever someone offered him some corn, he would refuse saying, "No, thank you. I don't like corn." Twenty-one years passed without the man eating corn. One day, he was sitting with someone he did not want to offend. They offered him some corn. He accepted it politely, although reluctantly, and ate it...and liked it.

For twenty-one years he had been living a decision made by a four year old and accepting it as a core principle of his being. He knew he did not like corn because, "that is the way I am," yet he never considered re-evaluating the decision. He never considered that, over time, he had changed. He never considered that what is undesirable to a four year old might have meaning in his life now. Instead, he lived his life on auto-pilot, making his decisions automatically, based upon his past view of the world and his own past programming.

From time to time, we should examine who we are, what matters to us and what we believe. From time to time, it behooves us to set down our old baggage, our old values, old beliefs, our old way of seeing or being, that no longer serves us well because we have learned, changed and evolved. From time to time, we need to clean out the closet of our soul to make room for our new thoughts, our new lessons learned and our newly-created selves.

We do change with time, individually and as a species.

We possess the power to manifest the life of our choosing, whether it is a life we have been taught, programmed, shown, told, or ordered to live, or a life we choose of our own free-will.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22NOW ... &fr=my_top

[jeri sexton]

Truett'

[LisaA]

I understand the thrust of rejecting tradition and questioning what we're told.

I also know that those past generations are not fossils--they went through the same things we all go through, including rejection of upbringing. I am not original in rejecting tradition.

[Guest]

I sit here, re-reading the Wisdom and Light of Truett and I want to cry. What caused his apparent breakdown? What happened, Dear Dear Truett?
I am even now sending out loving and peacefull thoughts your way. I pray you are OK and that you will come back to your friends here on The Ship Fantastic.
What has passed has passed. The torrent than ran under the bridge is gone. More than forgiven, that torrent is forgotten. The River is peacefull now.
Please come back.

[eye-sea]

NOW IS THE TIME AND WE ARE THE ONES

I don't know about this, Truett.
It could have been yesterday,
and it could have been them other guys.
And were just stuck with the left-overs
trying to make a buck.

eye-sea

(Which little face means "wearing the cynics hat"?)

I am new here so I don't know you, Truett, but please do come back. My comment is tongue in check but I respect your vision and would to hear more.