The Law of Noticing

I love learning new things and the more esoteric, the better.

I took a course this past winter in Permaculture Design which means I can now, with some authority, destroy your backyard with a backhoe, a pick axe and a bad attitude. The course took me three months to complete and was done one hour at a time for about ninety hours. The fascinating aspect to me was how everything fit together; keeping rainwater, creating ponds, where trees should go based on sunlight and winds, what plants work under trees, keeping your own fish, what plants work together so they're healthier, etc. Fundamentally, it is about creating a backyard that, for the most part, takes care of itself and is in harmony with itself and the surrounding area.

Oh... and most of the stuff growing can be eaten. I thought that was pretty cool.

When I started gardening, I started noticing gardens.

Have you ever been car shopping, become interested in a certain type of car and miraculously discovered the type of car you are interested in suddenly seems everywhere? It's not that there are more of them around you... it is simply a matter of noticing they are around you. They were always there. It is the same with everything else in our lives.

To a worm in horse manure, their entire world can be defined within the descriptive parameters of... horse manure.

We can only describe the world by what we see. If we see that world through the lenses of our problems, we see only more problems. If we see the world through the lenses of what we have, we see more of what we have. If we see the world through lenses of what we don't have, we will see more lack. If we see the world through the lenses of clutter, we will see only clutter.

What the hell does that mean!?

There is something out there called The Law of Attraction. Simply put, that which we focus on is what is attracted to us. If I focus on happy people, happy people are attracted to me. And to make the attraction that much stronger, if I am happy, the happy people come more quickly. If I focus on negative people, I will attract more negative people into my life. If I focus on spiritual people, I attract more spiritual people into my life.

Personally, I don't think there is a Law of Attraction. I believe it is a Law of Noticing.

The Law of Noticing goes like this:

That which I focus on I will notice and I will notice more opportunities to deepen that which I focus on.

Huh?

As an example, if I am happy and I focus on happy people, I will notice more happy people than I will notice unhappy people. Further, if I focus on being happy, I will see more and more and more opportunities to be happy! It's not that the opportunities to be happy were never there. It is simply that I didn't previously take notice of them.

There is another saying out there that is often heard... When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. In actual fact, the teacher may have always been there. Now that the student is ready (usually that's me), they recognise the teacher as a teacher and... viola... we have found our teacher.... or vise-versa... or whatever.

For the record... we are all students and we are all teachers... at the same time.

This doesn't all work on specific people, by the way. Keep in mind that others have their own path. For instance, if your desire is to have the Dalai Lama in your living room, don't expect the man to suddenly have an auto breakdown in front of your house and ask to borrow the phone. What will likely happen is, you will focus on the Dalai Lama and you will notice his book. You likely would never have noticed his book if you hadn't focused on him. Now, the opportunity to “meet” the Dalai Lama has presented itself through his writing. Whether you buy or borrow the book or not is up to you (opportunity). If you do buy or borrow the book, there is a good chance that book will be in your living room at some point.

Huh. That's pretty cool.

A wonderful example of this in movie form is Under the Tuscan Sun where the lead character wishes for family to be around her and she gets it... just not in the form she expected. That's the odd thing about focusing on something. It may appear, just not in the form we expect or from the people we might expect. Try focusing on one little thing. I would bet that you would take notice of that one little thing much more often.

And miraculously, there it is... where it has always been.

I wonder if the Dalai Lama would let me dig up his back yard.

Namaste