Conscious Mindsets Part One, Intro and The World Temple

Conscious Mindsets Part Two, The Tourist

Conscious Mindset #3 — The Magician’s Apprentice

Did you know that you can influence whether people are happy or unhappy? Try an experiment — take one day and walk around all day with a pleasant smile on your face. Be friendly to people, ask them about themselves, and go a little out of your way to be nice. Then notice whether you thought that most of the people around you were in good moods or bad moods. The next day, put on a perma-scowl, and just sort of trudge through the day. At the end of the day, note how the people around you acted.

This becomes more ‘magical’ when we become more subtle. If we’re just thinking warm, happy thoughts throughout the day, the people around us will tend to be in good moods; however,  if we’re in a foul mood, even if we try to put on a smile, most of the people around us will tend to be rather grumpy.

This isn’t really magic. It’s simply a matter of how we hold ourselves, our body language, and perhaps even the pheromones we produce when we’re in one mood or another. The important lesson is that our attitude makes a real and tangible difference in our ‘external’ environment.

This can be seen whenever someone who practices modern-day magic does a love spell. Invariably, the spell works, and people report that after the spell, they are approached more, asked on dates, and simply get more attention. Again, this might not be ‘magic’ so much as a subtly increased confidence delivered by the recipient thinking that they have magic on their side.

If you explore this, you can truly begin to work ‘magic’ in your life. Your attitude — as manifested in your body carriage, the amount of eye contact you make, your level of confidence, and the way that you approach each situation in life — is the ’secret’ behind working miracles in your life. Forget, for a moment, everything you know or think you know about the Law of Attraction and Intention-Manifestation, and do your own experimentation with the power of a smile or a positive thought.

In the Magician’s Apprentice mindset, you are an apprentice magician, and the world and people around you are your training-ground. Don’t expect any certain results at first — just experiment. Some methods of using this subtle magic work better for some than for others. I won’t get into any detailed instructions or advice at this time, but will simply suggest that you play with things yourself.

— Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts —

I am an apprentice magician, and today my teacher has asked me to experiment with my budding powers. Results don’t matter — the only thing that matters is that I pay attention to my attitudes and thoughts, as well as any methods of manifestation that I attempt to use, and note what seems to work and what doesn’t. At the end of the day, I hope to have a better understanding of what methods of manifestation seem to have efficacy for me.

If you’ve ever experimented with Intention-Manifestation before, you likely ran into some pitfalls (if you didn’t, you’d probably be perfectly content right now and wouldn’t be reading this ) Many of those pitfalls evolve out of our own sense of fear and expectation. Using the Magician’s Apprentice mindset as outlined above removes us from fear and expectation — all that is important is experimentation, and when we’re experimenting, ‘failures’ are really successes, because they help us to understand what works and what doesn’t. Each of us has enormous potential to shape the world around us on scales that might seem unbelievable to us right now. This can be the beginning of your own experimentation and learning process as you discover your own ‘magic’.

Developing This Mindset

Keep a journal and note which techniques work for you and which don’t. There are many authors offering different techniques for manifestation, but your own inner wisdom can uncover your innate ability to shift and alter the world around you.

Even if you aren’t able to immediately create any ‘magic’ in your life, you’ll begin to get more in touch with the state of mind that you are currently in at any given moment, which is one of the first steps in the journey toward Awakening.

Also Read:

Conscious Mindsets Part One, Introduction and The World Temple

Conscious Mindsets Part Three, The Magician’s Apprentice

Conscious Mindset #2 — The Tourist

When we visit a new place, our minds are open to all the new sights and sounds and experiences around us. If we visit Mexico, for instance, we might be delighted by palm trees, coconuts on the shore, strange bugs, the food, and the people. We’ll visit shops, observe architecture, or go to educational programs.

Of course, when we live somewhere for a time, we start to be less amazed by our surroundings. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, because as we stop looking around us, we begin to create ruts, whereby we travel the same routes all the time and seldom deviate from our habits. Soon our environment can seem boring, because we’re always seeing the same places, the same people, and the same things.

To create the Tourist mindset, consider that everything is always changing. We might think that the drive into town looks the same as it did yesterday, but in actuality it’s quite different. Begin to imagine that you are a tourist in your own town or in the natural areas you frequent. Even, if you like, in your own home! Try some of the restaurants you’ve never bothered to go into, visit some shops you’ve always ignored, talk to some of the ‘locals’. Look on bulletin boards to find out what community activities are happening, and see if you can observe your surroundings as if you’re beholding them for the first time. When we do this, we are often surprised at the wondrous things all around us — things we ignored because we had adopted habitual patterns of observation.

— Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts —

I’ve just arrived here in this foreign country, and I’ve never seen any of this before. I’m excited to experience and observe all the new things, people, and places that this country has to offer.

Thinking like this helps us experience the world from a fresh perspective, and helps to rescue us from our tendency to develop a sort of tunnel-vision that largely prevents us from engaging with our surroundings.

It helps even more to do this with a friend, child, or partner, who can point out things that you miss. At the end of the day, share your experiences, or if you like, keep a journal and take some photos to record all the things you experience. Take a moment to notice how much richer your experience is when you approach everything from a fresh perspective.

Developing This Mindset

With a little practice, we can permanently incorporate a sort of Tourist mindset. By observing the amazing changes that take place around us all the time — in our environment, in other people, and even in ourselves — we can begin to understand change, and become amazed at everyday phenomena. As this grows in us, we start to find wonder in raindrops, in clouds, in the way our fingers can move over a keyboard and communicate thoughts and feelings to people on the other side of the planet. Living life in amazement opens our hearts to every moment, and gives us a true passion for living.

Also read:

Conscious Mindsets Part Two, The Tourist

Conscious Mindsets Part Three, The Magician’s Apprentice

Conscious Mindset #1 The World Temple

In this mindset, we stop looking at the world as a place where we’re trying to provide for our own security or always trying to manipulate events so that things happen in a certain way. In the World Temple, you are a monk, and every experience and person is a teacher that can enrich our spiritual lives.

To create this mindset, consider that perhaps the meaning of life isn’t to acquire tons of stuff or to make things happen perfectly. Maybe the meaning of life is to grow and experience. Looked at this way, the world is a perfect temple, providing us with all sorts of fellow monks and various experiences to challenge us on our journey. You are a monk, and the world is your temple.

— Affirm each morning that you want to intentionally hold this mindset using the following thoughts —

Other people are my temple teachers. No matter what they’re like — friendly or mean, stressed or calm — they are teachers from which I can learn.  I don’t need to change anybody — I only need to observe them and see what they can teach me on my spiritual journey. If it seems that someone has nothing to teach me, I’ve missed the lesson that is hidden within them.

This point of view gives us a deep respect for others, and also helps us to increase our ability to recognize life lessons in others. Seen this way, someone who calls themselves ‘teacher’, and is willing to feed us lessons, is not nearly so great a teacher as the mean grocery store clerk who, like a wise Zen master, is making sure that any lesson we discover is found via our own inner wisdom.

Experiences are delivered to me in the temple in order to increase my spiritual understanding. I need not seek out happy events or disappointing events, since all events and experiences hold equal ability to enrich my spiritual journey.

This point of view allows us to see all experiences as equal. If we get in a car accident or our boss yells at us or we lose our keys, these are valuable experiences that we can approach with openness and curiosity. Likewise, if something very  happy occurs, this is not an experience to lose ourselves in — it’s an experience to observe with openness and curiosity. Nothing ‘bad’ can happen, since we eagerly open ourselves to every experience that emerges in our temple.

Developing This Mindset

This mindset can be refined and evolved if you choose to play with it for more than a day or two. It will begin to beg questions such as: “If I am open to every experience that emerges in my temple, why am I still seeking out certain experiences and avoiding others?” or “Why do I usually see other people as faulted when it is so easy to see them with respect and curiosity?” As you answer these questions for yourself, you’ll come to some interesting realizations.

Next time we’ll explore another fun and interesting mindset to play with. Until then, give the World Temple Conscious Mindset a try and see what transpires. =)