Leave the mirror and change your face.
A lot of people apparently think that they can keep doing the same things and get different, better results.
This is kind of what we call a nothing-ventured-big-expected-gains belief that has many corollaries, but it's just the one we have chosen to make our point.
Mirrors are often used to see into the future. But just as often they are reflections of the past. Think aging here.
In medicine there's something called sub-clinical disease. That means the disease is there, in many cases, long before the symptoms or signs show up. It's just another way of letting one know, contrary to what many believe, that signs are not leading but following indicators.
Most of us have had the experience of driving down the street, seeing a sign or building and asking: "When did they put that up?" only to be told, "It's been there for years. You must've not been looking."
In the musical. "Fiddler on the Roof," there is a line in a song about children growing up and leaving: "I don't remember getting older. When did they?"
When you decide to leave the mirror you are burying the dead, the past with all of it slights and slings and arrows. Changing your face is a metaphor for changing your consciousness, changing your thinking and how you see things.
It's a growing up, growing out of the past and those self-imposed limitations we all erect around our lives. It's a doorway to stop blaming circumstances and others for our less-than happy life.
If you change your consciousness your external experiences have to change. As within, so without.
Don't just try it. Become it.
Whatever state holds your attention holds your life.
You know the story in the Bible of the so-called insane, naked man hiding behind the tombstone in the graveyard. He is supposedly possessed by demons that he doesn't want cast out, irrational as it seems, but are cast out.
Later, he is seen fully clothed and dwelling at the feet of the Master. The implication is clear, something has changed. That something is a state of consciousness.
Graveyards essentially record the past, history, where the dead are buried. The symbolism here might stretch the belief of some, but old ideas or experiences as such warnings like "Let sleeping dogs lie"or "Let bygones be bygones" are just another term for cemetery. It's the place where things go to be buried, never to be exhumed.
In this case, the graveyard of ideas and previous grievances. "Remember not the former things, not the things of old." To recall or dwell in the past is to return to it. Returning to to it is a state and, like it or not, that state, holding your attention, likewise holds your life.
Like all living things, it requires energy to stay alive. When you forgive and forget you withdraw that energy and the thing can do only what all living things eventually do when energy is finally withdrawn, die.
And so it is that whatever state holds your attention holds your life.
Mood attracts its affinities.
It's the holiday season and most of us will be in a good or better mood depending on our circumstances. And that's the key. We too often let circumstances determine our mood. And why not, it seems so logical?
But that's really just another case of putting the holiday sleigh in front of those reindeer. Mood determines circumstance, not the other way around.
I once had a girlfriend who claimed she wasn't a morning person. So obviously, rain or shine, fresh smelling coffee or tasty hot chocolate, mornings weren't big memory makers around that house.
Be careful what you claim.
Mood is just another way of saying claim. Claim a good mood as the last thing before you fall asleep every night and see how often you awake each morning with a good mood. If you want to own it, claim it.
Otherwise you don't really want to own it. So stop complaining and just enjoy your moodiness. It will never fail to reward you in what's known on Wall Street as PIK--payment in kind.
Mood attracts its affinities.
If you have some difficulty in your life to deal with--whether it be a person, place or thing--there is only one simple solution.
A single word solution, eliminate. Yes, eliminate it.
Webster's define that person, place or thing as something we all know too well. A problem: Something difficult, a source of trouble, worry.
Whatever we put energy into expands. It's a law. But once eliminated--by not dwelling on it--you no longer put energy into it.
Most of us are great at self deception. In fact, we're for the most part down right experts at it. Becoming an expert implies a time commitment, meaning we've become very good at it because we've been doing it for a while.
Next time you have what appears to be a problem check out how much time you spend thinking or dwelling on it.
A good rule of thumb is, if it's more than five minutes, you're most likely only making it expand.
