Ask And You Will Receive

1. The Importance of Dropping Pebbles

A poet once penned a prescient verse:

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.*

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By age 40 I finally learned that processed sugars, those elements injected by manufacturers into a plethora of foods, led to metabolic illnesses. My body (and mind) had suffered from ignorance of this fact. When I learned of the ill effects, I determined to be very cautious—and I would not give children candies, soft drinks, or other foods sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup or any simple sugars that would compromise health.

We provided my son with school lunches of only whole foods with fruits or fruit juices. We learned later that he had traded some of his lunch items with others for their soft drinks, pastries, and candies. You can’t control life!

We’d occasionally find candy wrappers “hidden” under his bed. So, when he was younger he found ways to satisfy his sweet tooth. We need to taste the sweetness of life.

Our total ban may have whet his desires to have sweets. Perhaps there was, for a time, a sort of silent passion he developed to find ways to acquire the banned substances. At least that appeared to be the case.

It wasn’t that he advertised his desires or argued. He was a gentle soul as a child, teenager, and now as an adult. He would quietly observe, accept, adjust when need be, and keep on keeping on.

Every desire, expressed or held silently can be seen as an asking. Each thought is like a prayer of appeal. Most thoughts are too brief to cause much concern; however, the ones you think often solicit, consciously or subconsciously, and bring that thing, person, or emotion you think about more front and center into your life.

This is the “law of attraction” that seemingly never fails to prevail. Think it and a creation begins. Believe strongly enough you won’t succeed and you won’t; on the other hand, a belief that desires will unfold, supported by consistent thoughts aligned to it—that is, you don’t pull your hook out of the water just because a fish hasn’t taken it yet—will lead them to manifest in some way.

As a friend and I worked on a project together, we would meet for lunch at a local restaurant. Her son and mine were both nine years old. She always provided the soft drinks (or other sweets), not unlike most parents at the time. The server or course brought her boy the largest soda on the menu.

I saw my son’s eyes widen, but he knew I wouldn’t buy him such, and he didn’t plead with me; however, I could read his thoughts: “Billy has one, and I sure would like one too.” You could surmise that he was politely and silently asking.

I observed. I could see he was resigned to drink water, yet at the same time he was calm and open, happy to be at a restaurant. He’d apparently, however, not removed his fishhook from the water, for two minutes later the server arrived with a large soft drink, gave it to my son, and said, “Its on the house.” ∆

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There’s a clear pond of being.

You drop a pebble into it, and ripples form.

They will undulate across this sea of consciousness.

What kind of waves do you want to create there?

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* William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” from Poems, edited by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1863)