The Only Thing That Matters (25 page)

This requires a very high-level promise to oneself. It entails an acknowledgment that there is something Larger going on here—­something more than just day-to-day Life, rolling out randomly. It implies that there is a Particular Process taking place in a Particular Way. A sacred process. An eternal process. A process that serves a Divine Purpose—all of which is described in wonderful detail in
Chapter 14
.

Your commitment to this Process and this Purpose is your own shouting out, it is your own full-voiced declaration to the world: “My life really
is
about more than just get the guy, get the girl, get the car, get the job, get the house, and get all the stuff everyone else is trying to get! I will
not
spend my time on the 98% of things that
just don't matter.
I … will … not.”

29
Can Emotions Be Selected?

I
F
G
RATITUDE IS
a powerful tool that can change your experience of life by allowing you to focus on The Only Thing That Matters, the question then becomes: What could cause you to decide to feel Gratitude in the face of events or conditions that ordinarily would invite condemnation, not commendation? How do you put the power to use?

As we explore this answer, you're invited to notice the specific words that were used in the question: “What could cause you
to decide to feel
Gratitude …?”

Decide? Emotions are things we decide to feel?

Yes.

Emotions are not what your experiences generate; they are what generate your experiences.

Most people don't understand this. Nor do most people see themselves as having an active role in choosing their emotions. Not at first, in any event. They may feel that they can
control
their emotions by choosing something
other
then the emotion that arose initially, but most people do not feel that they are creating their first response. At first, they say, their emotions simply arise. They
show up.
Unannounced. Unbidden. Unexpectedly, sometimes.

People think of themselves as just
having
an emotional response. They often say that they were just
overcome
by emotion.

The truth is that all emotions are chosen—even first ones
.
The Mind
decides
to feel a certain way. Emotions are an Act of Will.

This is a challenging truth to embrace. Accept this and suddenly you're responsible for everything: for how you feel, for how you act with others as a result of how you feel, and for how all events in your life are experienced. So when people hear this, they often look for an “out.”

(“There must be
some
way in which I am not responsible for how I'm feeling. I mean, I can see that I'm responsible for what I
do
with my feelings, but my feelings themselves?
C'mon!
I can't be responsible for
that
. I feel the way I
feel
, and that's
just my truth.
Am I supposed to
lie
about that? Am I to be
inauthentic?”)

Have you ever told yourself (or sold yourself) some version of that? Most people have. Yet the human race can never evolve until we see the role we all play in the creation of our emotions
.
The story we've been telling ourselves about emotions is our admission that we have no idea how the Mind really works. The extraordinary description of the Mechanics of the Mind found in
When Everything Changes, Change Everything
is reprinted here, virtually verbatim, as it offers deep insight that cannot be repeated too often.

This book tells us that emotions are chosen
.
They are selected exactly the way you select the clothes you want to wear. Emotions are the costumes of the Mind. The Mind
decides
to feel a certain way.

Now this much will be conceded: Your Mind makes its decision
so fast
that it can
seem
as though you have no control over your emotions at all. At least not your very first reactions.

Your Mind moves you very quickly into an emotion, based on a Thought that it has formed. This is what is meant when people say, “I felt very moved.” Indeed, they were.

Thought is
energy
, and your Mind's job is to
move that energy into motion
(E+motion).

Since this happens so
lightning
fast, it becomes crucial that we know,
ahead of time
, before we are confronted with an “emotional situation,”
what makes us choose one emotion over another
.

You've already learned that it is your Thought. Yet what
generates
the Thought that creates an Emotion? Where does any particular Thought
come from?

If you can figure
that
out, you will have gone a long way toward being able to
change
your Thought about something. And if you can change your Thought about something, you can create a different Emotion around it—which will produce a different Experience of it.

So here's how it all works: The moment your Mind encounters anything in your exterior world, using the sensing instrument that is your Body, your Mind will collect the Data it is receiving and search its memory for any correlating Data. It will then compare what is happening Now with what its memory holds about any similar prior event, and use this combined Data to form your present Truth about the event now occurring in your exterior world.

Your Truth about it will be drawn mostly from your
past
, and least of all from what is
actually happening right now.
This is because what is happening now is but one byte of Data, compared to the megabytes of Data your Mind holds about similar prior events. “Now” is simply overwhelmed by “Then.” Today becomes deeply mired in Yesterday.

The Truth that your Mind forms in this way creates your Thought about what is now occurring. This can be either an Imagined Truth, the Apparent Truth, or the Actual Truth, depending on the quality of the Data The Mind has accessed.

Your Thought will quickly generate an Emotion, and that Emotion will very rapidly produce your Experience. All of this, in fact, happens in one-millionth of a second. You will then call the Experience you arrived at in this way, “Reality.”

It is
by this process
that “you create your own reality.”

Now just think: if you were to change the Data of your Mind
ahead of time
about
all of your past
(using the Law of Retraction), you could rise to a new level of preparedness to experience mastery
in this Moment
—because whether your Mind is caught up in memories of the past, or you are deeply engaged in a challenging Present Moment and wish to change your Mind
this instant
about it using the same tool, you will in each case encounter Gratitude. And
that is transformative
.

What has been labeled the New Thought Movement has been saying for years, “You create your own reality,” but sadly, it has not explained very clearly how you are doing it.

Reality Creation goes far beyond simple “positive thinking” or the making of “affirmations”—approaches that have been touted as the “secret” to producing what one desires.

That's child's play. It is the sandbox of metaphysics. And so, of course, in movies and books about Life's big “secret,” these simplistic approaches are shown manifesting simple toys.

If you really want to know how to create your Highest Experience of Self (and not just put a new car in the driveway), if you really want to create a better world (and not just a better necklace for your bodice), you will benefit enormously from an understanding of the Mechanics of the Mind as outlined in short form above.

(As rich, wonderfully clear and far more detailed explanation of this can be found in the book
When Everything Changes, Change Everything
, from Hay House, 2010.)

As fast as the Mind works, it still works only on the Data it is working
with.
Computer programmers are very familiar with this concept: GIGO.

Garbage in/garbage out.

So if you have put “garbage”
into
your Mind (about Life, about God, about any particular experience that you have stored in your virtually endless memory), garbage is what is going to come
out
of your Mind about anything in the Present Moment that even
looks like
a previous experience (and all of them do, in one way or another). Yet if you have put Gratitude in, then Gratitude is what is going to come out.

It's still GIGO!

What we are saying here is that if you
live in Gratitude
for
all
events, then Gratitude for every one of your Present Moment events will arise—
regardless of the event itself
.

The employing of Gratitude as a tool is what separates the Master (who always does so) from the Serious Student (who occasionally does so), and the Serious Student from the Initiate (who has not yet even heard of it in this context—or who has heard of it, but who uses it very rarely, if at all.)