Understanding Becoming

We can meet it like a verdict, or like weather passing through. The same moment can harden us, or soften us, depending on the meaning we place upon it. Sometimes we don’t even realize we are the one placing the meaning. We think we are “receiving” reality, when we are actually shaping it in real time.

The mental law of existence is simple. What you think you become for as long as you think it. This law of life immediately and constantly shifts the world we experience into forms we choose. Part of being alive may be realizing how powerful we are as we project our thoughts into life’s waiting arms. Think of a still pond before you drop a stick into it. The pond waits……..and then the ripples begin. The ripples do not ask permission. They spread, touching every edge, changing the whole surface. In the same way, a single thought dropped into consciousness expands into posture, tone, breath, and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening. Before long, we are living inside the ripple we created.

My choice is being kindness because I have learned this experience already exists, waiting to be resumed when we open to kindness. Kindness is not weakness. It is clarity. It is the decision to meet life without sharpening ourselves into defense. Kindness can be the simplest return to what is true: that we are here, together, trying. When I choose kindness, I am not pretending darkness doesn’t exist. I am choosing which direction to face while it does.

Imagining what others are thinking about us is risky. When we imagine we are being spoken of thought of in negative ways, we automatically become that experience. These bodies fill with fear mirroring our thoughts, for as long as we think those thoughts. We tighten. We withdraw. We prepare for a harm that has not arrived. And even if no one is thinking anything at all, we have already created a world where we are unsafe. Here is a worthy consideration worth practicing if we feel fear: am I imagining another thinking about me? And if I am—can I pause long enough to release the image, and return to what is actually here?

Look around wherever you are now. Are you willing to be kind? To yourself first. To the life in front of you. To the person you may be misreading. Kindness can be the stick we choose to drop into the pond.