Whether we experience unhappiness or happiness is always a result of how we have scanned the day, our work, and our lives with preconceived ideas of how things are.
The balance in my checkbook was off by $15.98.
“Ah ha,” I thought, “I see a check for $15.98, so if I take that out, it will balance correctly.”
I did, and it did.
However, that didn’t fix it because that check had to be there because it was a cashed check. That was not the answer.
Next, I decided the bank was wrong because even when I added up all the numbers with my calculator, I was still right, and they were still wrong.
However, I knew I was more likely to be missing something. I looked again and again until I saw I was missing two numbers. When I corrected that error, the bank statement was balanced.
My assumptions—how I scanned the world—led me down a path I wanted to be true but wasn’t!
What threw me off and kept me from seeing the mistake immediately was the coincidence that I had a check for that exact amount, and I wanted that to be the answer.
My problem was the outcome of my assumptions.
Whether we experience unhappiness or happiness is always a result of the way we have scanned the day, our work, and our lives with preconceived ideas of how things are as we do so.
This reminds me of what Tweedledee said in the book Alice Through the Looking Glass,
“… if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it isn’t, it ain’t.”
The viewer shapes the view, not the other way around.
I was watching a bird at a feeder in our yard and thinking about how its life revolves around always needing to find something to eat.
However, instead of scanning the world as if food isn’t available or deploring its life, it scans the world expecting it to be filled with what it needs, and it sings and soars in a display of consistent happiness.
We can view our lives the same way.
Symbolically, we, too, spend all our time finding something to eat.
But unlike the birds, we first have to work to get the money to provide it and all the other goodies needed to keep us comfortable.
Our circumstances, viewed in this limited way, could make us very unhappy.
However, we could take cues from the birds and scan the world with the perception that knowing what we need is always present if we scan the world differently.
Then what is called work is instead the joy of understanding the Divine, and by celebrating its beauty, we can sing and soar with happiness.
What if we started each day with a morning song of gratitude and kept it up?
What if we shared our gratitude instead of being caught up in what was wrong with the world?
What if we imagined ourselves not as humans living limited lives but as Life itself being lived?
What if we stretched our imaginations far from what a material scan of the world reveals and sailed instead into the sea of infinite possibilities revealed through a spiritual perception?
What if we expected to see only good, and when something other than good presented itself to us, we knew it as a temptation to believe in the absence of good?
What if instead of entertaining the temptation of believing in the absence of good, we immediately said, “As it isn’t, it ain’t.”
What if we all took just 15 minutes each day and practiced imaging what appears impossible but is not?
Instead of scanning the world like Alice, we could scan the universe like the Queen.
“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Why not take a moment today and imagine at least six impossible things, beginning with the viewpoint, perception, and assumption that Good is omnipotent?
After all, if the Queen can do it, why can’t we?
Just remember, if it isn’t good—it ain’t.
If you want to see far, it is better to climb a hill than to stand on your toes. —Xunzi
Here’s a book to help with your imagination: Imagination Mastery: A Workbook For Shifting Your Reality