Everything we bring into our lives comes to us first as a thought. Without thought, nothing but the natural world would exist in our surroundings. With thought, we become co-creators of our world. Even the greatest accomplishments of mankind must all first start out as thoughts.
For example, the architect has a thought about a magnificent
building. But it is just a thought, an
idea. He keeps at this thought, though, thinking
about how he would like the building to look, how it would be used. From there, the thought gets its first “solidifying
dose” and it becomes words. Now the
architect is discussing the building with other people, and the thought is
“gaining weight.” Then he writes his
idea on paper. He gives the thought
clothing with words on paper. He further
solidifies it with letters to business partners, etc., and they in turn add to
this “weight” by also writing about the thought (the building).
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| What you place in the canoe and bring to the other shore is up to you. |
Next, the architect begins to draw up plans. Day after day he pores over his plans,
drawing, scheming, fantasizing, until the whole building has been drawn on
paper. Now the thought is even
heavier. Then the architect builds a
small model of the building. Now the
thought has really gained weight. It can
actually be carried around and shown to crowds and might even be a little
heavy. Other people see the thought (the
model building) and they add their own energy and ideas to it, their own hopes
and dreams for it.
Finally, the decision is made to go forward, the
construction company has been selected, the financing has been obtained, and the
materials have been purchased.
Construction begins. The
thought--that thing that existed only in the architect’s mind--is now
manifesting in the physical world as a real and actual building. When it is completed, the thought will have
reached its physical conclusion. It may
have taken many years to get to the final form, but because the thought was
continued, was persisted in, had energy continually added to it, it finally
manifested.
The thought is the cause and the building is the
effect. When other people begin to
“realize” the effect, i.e., people begin working in the building, playing in
the building, living in the building, etc., the building now becomes its own
cause and new effects will be on the horizon.
This is how thought works.
This is how it cascades down from the mental/spiritual world to the
physical world, and how its appearance in the physical world then begins its
own cascade of effects and so on. Not
all thoughts will materialize. In fact,
most will not, and that is not a bad thing.
But when we truly want a thought to materialize, to “manifest,” then we
simply become the architect.
The canoe is on the shore, and anything can be placed into
the canoe or taken out of it. If we are
so inclined, we may push off the shore and drift along the watery currents and
allow ourselves and our cargo to find another shore. We can take something from one place and
bring it to another. From a dark and
hidden shore in our minds, we can take our canoe and oar and travel across the
watery abyss with our secret cargo of thoughts and plant them one by one on
another shore. And we know that they
will materialize because this is who we are.
This is what sets us apart from the animals. We are the architects of our world.
