Change Yourself, Change the World

So, I tried my experiment in imagining joy. First, I found a background track on YouTube to listen to. I closed my eye while laying down and tried to picture a church service. I visualized walking into a main church auditorium. The chairs were arranged in a small square facing each other. I pictured taking a seat along with other people. As we sat there, I pictured a woman with a serene presence, glowing with light (an angel), walking around the room. She would bend down and whisper something in a person's ear. A beam of light, like a spotlight, would shine from the person up through the ceiling. The person would stand up and speak what the woman whispered. Smaller beams of light would arc from the person speaking to the other people listening and they would begin to glow. 

As she walked around the room, whispering to people, more and more spotlights shown through ceiling. Then my view shifted to outside the building. I saw a giant beam of light shooting up from the building into the night sky. As my view kept getting further away, I saw other beams of light shooting up from other buildings, temples, mosques and houses. Finally, looking from the Earth at a distance, I saw all these beams shooting out in all directions like spikes and the planet was glowing.

Then I focused my attention to my body to notice what physical sensations I was experiencing. I first noticed my body felt like I was bobbing up and down like a cork in water. I also noticed there were warm tingles on my arms, like goosebumps. I think this is caused by the Vagal nerve, a part of the parasympathetic nervous system. All in all, I would say it was a pleasant feeling.

So, what happened in this exercise? Did anything change in the external, physical world as a direct result of the activity? No. Did it affect my subjective experience of the world in that moment? Yes. It created pleasant feelings. I believe I can carry those feelings with me as I go about my day, which does have an indirect impact on the external world. For example, I'm writing about my experience and you're reading it right now, so my visualization is having an affect on you.

What's the point of all this? I think a person in a lighter emotional state is better equipped to bring a lighter emotional state to the world than a person trapped in a heavier negative state. So, if we want to be a source of good in the world, our first obligation is to change our subjective world. We first feel the change to external world we wish to see. From there, we can act much easier to bring about needed changes to the external world.

I don't subscribe to manifesting reality directly, but I do believe it can be done indirectly. Change the world by first changing yourself.

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