There’s more to it, of course, get the whole story at www.spiritwithasmile.com.
By Gregg Sanderson
“Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative” – Johnny Mercer
Remember, the Being of Bliss (BOB) is not a person. It’s an Essence. It’s Life, It’s Intelligence, and It’s Love. With our limited vision, it’s easy to give It a human face and ascribe human characteristics to It.
For instance, you may say, “It’s BOB’s will” when something happens, as if this Infinite Power cares about your every move. To say something like “BOB wants me to be an accountant” is like saying “Electricity wants me to have a blender.”
BOB is a power, not a person and doesn’t care if you’re a lawyer or a garbage collector (although one may be more dignified than the other). To BOB there’s no difference, because It experiences life through both.
We each create our own life with our thoughts as we consciously or unconsciously plug into that power. Within the space of BOB’s creativity, as we trek our way through this life, BOB responds to our creative thoughts in the direction of maximum enjoyment all around.
So why isn’t it always fun? The answer is the RACE Trap (Righteousness and Approval Complicate Everything). When our thinking is colored by a need to be right or need for approval, BOB gets Its entertainment by living our drama. Although It may prefer enjoyment, the basic rule “Thoughts become things” takes precedence and, BOB always gets entertainment.
There is a difference between entertainment and enjoyment. Although a horror movie might be entertaining, we might not enjoy it.
War, famine, and pestilence can be forms of entertainment. Enjoyable? Unlikely. Entertaining? Always.
For example, suppose I’m working on my prosperity consciousness, as many of us are. When I focus on my abundant life, opportunities arise for me to provide something of value that will not only increase my prosperity, but make a positive contribution to the experience of other expressions of BOB.
If, on the other hand, I focus on my lack, I may get desperate and rob the corner bank to alleviate it. There will be consequences. Perhaps I’ll learn from it and seek my wealth in a way that works better once I get out on parole.
Or I may not. BOB doesn’t care, and I’ll get to do it over (and take the consequences) until I get it right. Multiply me by billions, and we have the current world situation. All of us are trying to get back to Love in our own way and trapping ourselves in multiple degrees of the RACE Trap. What’s a feller to do?
Purge and Surge
It seems to me if we purge the negative (RACE) thoughts and surge the positive ones, the outcome will always be better. The next line of the song quoted at the beginning is, “Don’t mess with Mr. In-Between.” What’s in-between creative thoughts and positive outcome? What else but the RACE Trap?
What we need to do is to recognize and deny those sneaky thoughts that limit us, and replace them with others that lead more toward the life we want.
In The One Minute Manager, Kenneth Blanchard advises us to catch people doing something right and praise them for it to reinforce the desired behavior. If we do the same with BOB, we will reinforce our own positive attitude, which will let us create our lives better, and easier. It’s called “the attitude of gratitude.”
It’s easy to catch BOB doing something right because It really can’t do anything wrong. That’s why BOB’s BOB. BOB is an impersonal abstract force and it seems a little silly to say, “Thanks, BOB.” Yet we don’t do it for BOB, we do it for ourselves. It creates the emotional voltage to help our thoughts build our world in the best possible way. You can’t feel bad and grateful at the same time.
Early in the morning, I’d plan my “things to do” for the day. One day I realized I wasn’t planning things to do, I was planning things to fix. I’d look around my world, see what was wrong or needed fixing and before I knew it I was buried in my own complaints.
It made a difference when I created “Gratitude Time.” Now early in the morning, I spend time with “Thanks, BOB.” Then I see how long I can go before I find something to complain about. My goal is to make it to 10:00 a.m. It really works well, especially when I sleep late.
So when you come across something you like, and especially if it’s something you consciously created before, don’t forget to say, “Thanks, BOB.” BOB isn’t listening and couldn’t care less about your manners, but the emotional force of your gratitude adds energy to your declaration and just helps everything get better and better.
After all, why else are we here, but to entertain BOB as It expresses through each of us?
There’s more to it, of course, but that’s what months of previous columns are about. You can read it all at once at www.spiritwithasmile.com.
