Our thoughts, our world

"All that we are arises from our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world."

I came across this quote on a little app on my fiance's IPod that presents you with a handful of Buddha Quotes each day. In fact, I believe it's called Handheld Buddha. This particular quote stuck out in my mind and has been swimming around in my brain ever since.

What we think shapes the world around us - how we act, how we speak, how we perceive. We've heard many a time that a negative mindset brings about a negative reaction from the universe right back to us. In turn, a positive mindset will return a positive reaction from the universe.

Let's take it one step further.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop on a rainy Fall day and had one of the most memorable conversations with my friend and noted author, Larry Trivieri Jr., where we talked about the concept of manifestation.

I was reading a book called "An Unlikely Prophet" at the time, by an author we were both big fans of - Alvin Schwartz. The concepts in this book led Larry and I to discuss some bizarre instances in our own lives. On my end of things, we were discussing concepts, situations, and realities that I had written about in stories, scripts, and films, that later, whether you believe it or not, started becoming true.

At the time that they were written, they were merely visualizations of ideas, ideals, and desirable outcomes that I was writing out of my own subconscious mind and onto the page (and in some cases from mind to page to film). However, as years went by, I could look back and realize that life situations that had materialized had evolved and developed very much in the way I had created.

One of our mutually favorite writers, Grant Morrison, has talked about this for years. Morrison wrote a comic series called "The Invisibles," where he based one of the series' key characters - King Mob - after himself. Morrison notes that many of the trials and tribulations that he put the character of King Mob through throughout the series - whether it was meeting a particular type of woman, or having his lungs crushed - it, over time, began to happen to Morrison as well.

In these cases, whether my own, Morrison's, or Larry's, thoughts literally had created a world - a reality.

We do it every day, whether we realize it or not. You, yes, YOU, are creating the world around you, your life of tomorrow with your thoughts of today. You an disbelieve it, you can shun it, or you can embrace it, and start creating your world today!

Precept One - Epic Fail

I tried. I really tried.

I know I put out the challenge to anyone reading this blog to join along with me as we tried to live out a Buddhist precept each week. The first was to not say, act, or think in a harmful way toward any living being, no matter what it was.

I failed...and miserably at that.

I struggled. I tried keeping my mouth shut at work when someone would say something ignorant or harmful toward something or someone else at work...I tried to take in everything around me as a part of the living connection between the universe.

I made some progress, but I can't in any way say that I made it happen. I kept my mouth shut...but it didn't mean I wasn't thinking some harmful comment to someone. And you know what I ended up doing last weekend? Pulling out the weed-wacker and taking out every weed I could find in the yard.

Perhaps I'm just not there yet. There are certain aspects of Buddhism that perhaps I AM capable of handling, but there's still so many more that I'm just not at the level of yet.

Maybe with time. We'll see. A brief reprieve before we try another one.

I wonder if other people had been or could be any more successful at it than I. Would love to know and get any tips if anyone has them.