TheBanyanTree: A presentation - kinda long

[Russ Doden]

This next Saturday, I'll be giving a one hour presentation at a 
local Spirit Fair.  These events are gatherings of 
metaphysically oriented people where there are merchants 
selling their wares, as well as people offering services such as 
tarot card readers, palmists, and so forth.  They have speakers 
throughout the day as well.  As I said, I'm one of the speakers.  
I have been a speaker at the last two events put on by this 
group.  Here is what my presentation for this next event looks 
like so far.  I just thought I would toss this out to the Banyan 
Tree since I haven't contributed much over the past year.  I've 
modified it a bit so it is more like an essay than a presentation.  
This is because eventually I may submit it for publication in a 
metaphysical magazine.


Creation is Your Birthright. Moving from wanting to having...

“Creation is Your Birthright. Moving from wanting to having.”  
That’s a pretty bold statement to make. To use a well worn but 
very appropriate expression, “Extraordinary claims require 
extraordinary proof.”  Actually, is title is two statements.  
Either one of them is pretty bold. What do I mean by them?  If 
you have seen and really “bought into” any of these movies 
(and/or books)- 
                             The Secret
                       Conversations with God
                           What the Bleep
                        Down the Rabbit Hole
you know just how bold these statements are. You also know 
that these statements are true.  If that is the case, I’m 
“preaching to the choir.”  If you have seen these movies or 
even programs like Oprah’s TV shows on The Secret, but just 
“looked at them” without understanding what was being said, 
you have been brought here for a reason.  Likewise if you are 
just wondering what this guy is talking about, you have been 
brought here by your own creative thoughts!  

Let's take these two statements one at a time.  Either one is 
enough to make a persons head hurt if we think about it.  
Creation is your Birthright.  Wow – to think we have that 
much POWER.  Well, we do.  We use it every day too!  How 
many times have you woke up and thought, “this is going to be 
a GREAT day," and sure enough it was.  Conversely, you may 
have thought – which is just another way of saying you have 
decided – that it was going to be a rotten day and guess what 
you got - a rotten day.

In the books Conversations with God, Neale Walsch (or maybe 
God) tells us something along the line of  “thoughts become 
words.  These words create actions.”  This is creation! As was 
said presented in Down the Rabbit Hole  “Most people don’t 
affect their life in a consistent way because they don’t believe 
they can.”  This is because the average person loses their 
attention span every 6 to 10 seconds.  By this I mean that our 
heartfelt focus jumps all the time.  We may stay in a 
conversation with no problems, but how many other thoughts 
rip through us during that conversation?  Our thoughts hop 
around like Mexican Jumping Beans, going from idea to idea, 
concept to concept, belief pattern to belief pattern.  To create 
with our thoughts though, and this is what this is all about, we 
must modify our thoughts and actions enough to make them 
permanent.  If not permanent, at least be able to pull them up 
on a consistent basis AND BELIEVE THEY ARE REAL.  I 
have heard it stated many times, by scientists, philosophers, 
metaphysicists, and even theologians, that our thoughts are 
probably more real than anything else.  That is the source of all 
we get, have and are.  We are designed to create.  This is being 
recognized now by more and more people.  

Does this mean we can manifest a loaf of bread out of thin air, 
or have a million dollars in our bank account?  Yes and no!  I 
say yes because according to many great thinkers now, it is 
theoretically possible to just do these little parlor tricks.  We 
don’t do it though because we don’t believe it is possible.  Our 
belief patterns are so ingrained into the world culture that 
doing things like this are deemed impossible.

Our experiences define what we know, and this is our 
downfall.  To compound this, sadly, we usually don’t know 
what it is we want.  Often times we think we know, but we 
don’t.  We think we want something, and then something else 
catches our attention and we are off in a different direction.  
This is because our conscious and “not conscious” minds are 
not in agreement so we give the universe / God / or what ever 
we view as source, mixed messages about what we want.  If 
we have drama as our focus – that is what we get.  

If we focus on gratitude for what we have, and realize even 
more of that is available, we get even more!  We all know 
people who seem to go from one drama or crises to the next.  
That is their focus.  We may also know people who seem to 
“get all the breaks.”  You know what?  The people that "get the 
breaks" don’t see it that way!  They KNOW that what 
happened was supposed to happen, and they believed with all 
their heart that it would happen.  

You want an example?  I think I can qualify as an example.  I 
didn’t think I had anything of any value to say to anyone for a 
long time.  Several years ago though, I set about changing a lot 
of things.  I decided I was on the wrong track and that I was 
going to change it.  I didn’t know about all this stuff then.  In 
spite of that, I was fortunate enough to have some very good 
teachers, and some very wise people come into my life.  (I 
asked for help and received it.)  It was a long slow process at 
first.  I didn’t believe in myself.  I also didn’t believe that just 
by changing my mindset I could change my life.  Remember 
what I said earlier about holding a thought for only 6 to 10 
seconds?  I should have been so lucky.  Over time, my 
thoughts changed.  My words changed because my thoughts 
changed.  Thoughts become words, and then words become 
actions.  I wanted (through the encouragement of some good 
friends and teachers) to start to help others.  The next thing I 
knew I was teaching Reiki, Meditation, and Personal 
Shamanism.  Did this happen overnight?  No, it was a long 
slow process because I still didn’t believe this worked.  I was 
encouraged to do more – encouraged by respected people as 
well as by my spirit guides – I felt I needed to reach out 
further.  Now, here I am.  I’ll let you in on a little secret; I’m 
not through reaching yet.  This is just a step in the right 
direction.

Did you hear one of the key words there?  Change.  Change 
means we have to abandon our old ways of thinking – which 
means we abandon our self-destructive thoughts.  This in turn 
requires that we change our words.  One of the best teachers of 
that is Don Miguel Ruiz with The Four Agreements.  When we 
change our thoughts and words, our actions change.  As is 
stated in Down the Rabbit Hole, when we change our minds 
we will change our choices.  When we change our choices we 
change our life.  This is creating our world.  

One of the easiest things to create is our reaction to what we 
experience.  If you think you can’t create a response, do this 
exercise.  Think about something that makes you sad, how do 
you feel?  Sad, right?  Now think about how you feel about 
something that makes you upset.  How do you feel?  Are you 
seeing what is happening?  Now think about something that 
makes you happy.  Feels good doesn’t it?  Now think about 
something that makes you feel very filled with gratitude.  Do 
you feel that sense of gratitude grow within you?  Do you see 
how you can create how you perceive something just with a 
thought?  When we hold the “attitude of gratitude” in all we 
do, we are creating.  As was presented in The Secret, and was 
recently on television on the Opra show about The Secret, like 
attracts like.  If we hold a feeling of gratitude, we draw more 
of what we are grateful for to us.  This is often called the 
Universal Law of Attraction.    

What does this have to do with creation?  EVERYTHING.  If 
we focus on lack, that is what we get.  Lack of abundance, lack 
of love, lack of things, and so forth.  By focusing on a feeling 
of lack, that is what we create – more lack!  The flip side of 
this is by being grateful for what we have; more of what you 
are grateful for comes to us.  There is a trick to this though.  
We must do this with consistency, persistency, and belief.  We 
must believe it is real.  The more we do this, the easier it 
becomes.  

There is an exercise that is presented in Down the Rabbit Hole, 
and reinforced in The Secret.  When you first begin your day, 
before you even get up, envision your day.  Visualize how 
your day would go if you could script it.  Hold this 
visualization all day, and pay attention to what happens.  You 
will find small things happening that you created by your 
thoughts.  The more you do this, the more you can draw to 
you.  You can’t sit on your pockets visualizing though and not 
take action.  If you do that you can have wonderful 
visualizations while your house gets repossessed! Remember, 
thoughts lead to words, then these words lead to actions.  This 
is the sacred trinity of our creative abilities.  If we don’t have 
all three of these working on concert, we won't see results.  As 
a result of that, we then believe that this doesn’t work.  It 
doesn't work; we just aren’t doing our part!

Sometimes we create things we don’t want.  Accept that, take 
responsibility for it, and learn from it.  Often we have to really 
look deep to see this is true.  With things we claim we don’t 
want, we have to accept that what we are bringing to us, we are 
at the very least co-creators of.  The fact remains that we can 
create.  The other option is that we can sit back and let things 
happen to us. 

OK, are we all in agreement that we can create now?

Now lets look at the other half of the audacious thesis of this 
article - Moving from wanting to having.  What do we mean 
by this?  Think about how we state things every day - what do 
we say?  I want 


  Oh sure, sometimes we dress it up and 
say “please give me”, or “if only I had” or other things like 
that.  What are we focusing on though?  Want!  Lack!  This 
means we are focusing on what we don’t have.  Remember 
what we talked about just a little while ago?  Like attracts like 
– when we focus on want or lack, guess what we get!  We need 
to really pay attention to how we are thinking and wording 
things.  If we focus on wanting to pay bills, what are we 
focusing on, getting money?  NO!  In that example we are 
focusing on two things, neither of which is helping us.  The 
first is that we are focusing on BILLS, not abundance!  The 
second thing is the underlying concept of lack!  Instead of 
focusing on the bills, focus on having financial abundance.  
Don’t even think of the bills.  Believe with all your heart and 
soul that financial abundance is part of your life.  

Sounds too easy doesn’t it?  It is.  This really does require us to 
make a fundamental shift in how we see ourselves, our life, 
and everything around us!  For this to work, we have to really 
believe it with all of the power of our intent.  This is a bigger 
hurdle that it seems at first.  It does work though.  Now, using 
this example of financial abundance, let's continue with this.  
We often find that our creation manifests in ways that we may 
not expect.  Here is an example – I started to focus on financial 
abundance instead of lack a while back.  It took a while for me 
to get my focus held, but once I did it, several things happened, 
all within 2 weeks of each other.  One was that my business 
picked up – being self employed, this is very big.  A second 
was that a business associate approached me to manage a 
business he is considering purchasing.  He would be including 
my business in with his.  This would benefit both of us, and 
would include a salary so I wouldn’t be so dependent on the 
roller coaster ups and downs of my business.  Lastly a third 
opportunity involving giving a way for people to gain amazing 
improvements in their health (and if they desired, help them 
with financial abundance) was presented to me.  I could have 
ignored it, but it was in tune with my core belief of helping 
others is the way to help myself.  This comes from the 
teachings in Conversations with God that says what you want 
for yourself, want for others even more than you want it for 
yourself, and help them get it.   Don’t do this with the intent of 
getting the desired “pay back” but do it from your heart, really 
wanting that for the other person, regardless of what it is, 
finances, love, business opportunities, whatever it may be.  

A big part of moving from wanting to having is realizing one 
simple basic truth.  The universe will give us what we ask for.  
Most of us don't know how to go about that though when we 
ask for things we feel we don't have, or don't feel is possible!  
If I say I want something, the universe says “fine, you now 
have a want for that something!”  It has given me exactly what 
I asked for!  WANT!  When we ask for something, we have to 
really pay attention to how we present our request.  If we say 
“I am grateful that I am having this something in my life,”  We 
are creating the mind set that it is already in process of being 
delivered.  Remember, like attracts like!  

Perhaps the best way of doing this is to consider this.  If I hold 
an apple out and you say, “I want that apple,” the universe says 
“fine, you now have a want for an apple.”  Do you have an 
apple?  No you have a WANT.  That may be a bit simplistic, 
but I think it makes the point.  Now, instead of saying, “I want 
that apple,” I say, “I am grateful that I have apples available to 
me.” Even though I may not have an apple at all, I am coming 
at this from a perspective of gratitude.  Now, from that 
perspective and that thought, I say, “I’m going to get some 
apples.” You may be thinking of stopping at the store on the 
way home to get apples at that point.  It is totally within the 
realm of possibility though that someone would walk up and 
say, “I got some apples the other day to make applesauce, but I 
won’t have time, would you want them?”  

The big thing here is to realize that the difference is in our 
attitude.  Instead of living in an attitude of lack, which draws 
more lack, we start living from an attitude of gratitude.  
Gratitude for abundance, love, peace, and everything else that 
fills our life with joy.  Even if we don’t always feel it is really 
present, try to come from that Attitude of Gratitude.  Know 
that these things are just waiting for us to create them in our 
lives through our thoughts, words and actions, all working 
together to create our desires with speed, ease, comfort, and 
joy. 


Have fun creating your life, and having what you are creating!