Much of my social conditioning has come from a perspective of scarcity and lack. I grew up with the beatitudes as a kind of wish list. reasoning from Einstein’s theory that you cannot solve any problem from the same level as its source, there was seemingly no way I could be set free from my situation. Any action taken from a plce of scarcity cannot be productive.

I was fifty years old when I chanced upon books about abundance. One of my earliest books that awakened me to a positive and glrious world was Gary Quinn’s “Living in the Zone”. It reminded me convincingly that as a child of God the world was mine. I felt cheated; all the years of compliance within a religion that taught that man was created to the image and likeness of God yet limited me to a life of sacrifice and deprivation.

Eventually in Singapore I discovered the books of Esther and Jerry Hicks. Their statement of empowerment was:
Control over the way you feel – over your response to situations is not only the key to your consistent happiness but to everything you desire as well.
Moreover they continued: only when you are willing to find a thought, any thought that brings you a feeling of relief can you begin your trek up the emotional scale in the direction of love and appreciation that represents who you really are.

According to Joe Vitale … your conscious mind is aware of only 15 bits of information while there are 15 million bits happening each time. According to Martha Beck the verbal region processes about forty bits of information per second. The nonverbal processes about 11 million bits per second. Martha Beck favors wordlessness naturally. Vitale and Beck use different statistics to describe how inadequate the conscious mind is.

On many occasions I experience this inadequacy while i work on my daily crossword puzzles. When I get stuck and can’t gt the answer I usually do something else. When I do something I don’t like, like housework, I get frustrated and the cloudiness of my mind worsens. When I relax and especially when I go to sleep I usually get answers I previously could not access. Sometimes I get answers while eating something I like.

This is a far cry from the tiring process of studying during my college years especially when a lot of memory work was involved. There was no time to relax. I felt I needed all the answers immediately. Had I known the information from Vitale and Beck, I would have loved school life more. Needless to say many years ago school life was simpler. There was no college thesis then much less APA rules to give students nightmares. There were no cellphones to be checked every so often. There were no computers either. It was an age where there were fixed answers for every question asked in the classroom. I managed to have some fun in school even under a regime of authoritarian discipline. Our fun was a whole lot of silliness by the standards of the youth of today.

Recently, I view my world through Facebook. In the mornings I greet the day through pictures of trees on my newsfeeds, not only green trees but orange, yellow,red, violet, and blue leafed trees! Every so often I feast on different kinds of bridges.I like most the wooden ones. I also enjoy pictures of swans,ducks, chickens and birds; dogs and cats are so common I don’t enjoy them. Clearly I don’t have a house pet. I prefer horses and squirrels.

There are cute posts of children mouthing wise sayings. Cherries, my favorites appear once in a while and when they do I know my day will be cheerful.

My mood changes with posts about conflicts, wars, political upheavals and sickness. I don’t like gory pictures of Jesus which apparently appeal to a lot especially my countrymen. I am allergic to posts that start with “How many ‘likes’ … Posts that air dirty laundry spoil my mornings.

Whenever I find posts that may interest friends and relatives, I repost on their timelines. My intention is to spread the good messages and the healthy feelings evoked by the posts. I believe Facebook wisely used can set the tone of the day.

Some of my favorite posts come from: Buddhism; Oneness Happens Here; Whisper of the Heart; Beautiful Gardens; Sye of Relief; Nostalgia; Neale Donald Walsch; Pixelz; Lessons Learned in Life; Rose Cottage; Quotes Corner;Soul Speaking etc.

I choose to respect the opinion of a Manila bishop about selfies and selfishness. I haven’t heard his homily neither have I read the text. I simply red the reactions of some angry adults on Facebook.

I choose to take the positive angle. I learned from my psychology class of long, long ago that people especially the young ith low self esteem are prone to bad behavior. They don’t respect themselves so how are they to be expected to respect others. They don’t value life so what will stop them from harming others.

The few selfies I have personally encountered on Facebook have been innocent enough,ego boosting. But I don’t refer to the likes of Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez in the nude; these two had posts by Filipino adults.

Otherwise I find selfies amusing. It”s as though those who post them are not contented with looking at themselves in the mirror; they need an audience to react to their various poses.

From my psychology class and my observations’ breaking into media boosts the ego not only of the young but even the oldies. Speaking of psychology, in 2005 in Sydney I chanced on a book at Koorong Christian Bookstore. I don’t remember the exact title but it was enough to shock me. It read something like “Why Christians Don’t Believe in Psychology”.

It was so high up on the shelf I didn’t want to ask help from the only clerk in the store. I wish I had Checked out the book. This has been one of my very few regrets in life.

As I was growing up, the mantra from home, school and church was “think”. Whenever there was a problem, the injunction was “think”. When I got so sick in the 90s friends and relatives told me I got sick because I thought too much. Surprisingly my psychiatrist never echoed what everybody else said.

When my husband and I were team teaching at the graduate school in the 2000s we showed the fil “The Secret”. It was a hit with the students. I had a lot of misgivings about the film being too contrived and mechanical. Joe Vitale was one of the personalities in the film. I was not impressed at all with Vitale.

In 2009, in London I chanced upon Vitale’s book, “Zero Limits”. I saw this earlier at National Bookstore at Makati, Philippines but it did not interest me. The copy I bought in London enchanted me.

Vitale and Martha Beck have convinced me to neutralize my thoughts. Both authors do not sound airy-fairy even when they write about how to make your thoughts become a reality. Minutes ago from Facebook I got this from Alice in Wonderland Teatray:

There is no need to be trapped by your thinking,

You are more than your thoughts…

Feel….

Be free

Break through