Saturday, August 21, 2010

Your Soul and Your Backpack

As a Mom, I constantly find myself in the car driving my twin daughters around to various outings. We try to converse in the car, rather than listen to music or watch the DVD player. Of course the kids would love to watch the DVD player even if its just for a trip to the school and back if I let them, but I prefer conversation and so the TV stays off as we drive around.

This weekend, we were driving up to see my Mom for a day-long visit and the kids decided that they wanted a snack. I offered them up a granola bar and Sophie says, “I want chocolate chip” and Maggie says, “I want peanut butter!”. So I reached into the bag beside me while keeping my eyes on the road and said out loud, “Okay, a chocolate chip for Sophie,” and promptly pulled a chocolate chip granola bar out of the bag. I wasn't too surprised, even though there were other flavors of granola bars in the same bag as well as lots of other items that I had packed. I handed the granola bar to Sophie and reached in again, keeping my eyes on the road, while saying out loud, “and a peanut butter for Maggie!” As I pulled my hand out I could see it was indeed a peanut butter granola bar.

Then I said to the girls, “Wow! How did I do that?” knowing that it wasn't all that surprising. This kind of thing happens to us all of the time. Maggie said, “Magic!” and I said, “Well it could certainly seem like magic!” I explained to them that this kind of thing always happens so it doesn't seem like magic as much to me anymore, but to someone else, it may very well seem as though I had performed a really cool trick.

The truth is, anyone can use “magic” if they wanted to. Whether you are looking for a granola bar, or a parking space, we all have the power to “manifest” our wishes. Of course, many of my readers already know this, but many people do not. They don't understand how it works nor could they if they have never tried. To those people, they may be fearful of some of the things a true “magician” could do. They don't understand that we all have this inherent ability to really affect our own reality, we just have to use our backpacks, just like a certain Hispanic girl does each time she needs a hand on her explorations.


And this is exactly how I explained the whole thing to my girls, who were really quite fascinated, as it turned out:

Before we were born, and before we got ourselves into our human bodies, we were just a spirit, a soul, without a body. We were able to go anywhere we wanted to go, just by thinking about it. So driving in the car was not necessary as we could just think about Grandma's house and be there. We could fly, walk through walls, and we didn't ever need to eat granola bars, because we didn't have a tummy that would get rumbly. We could even be at our school and at home at the same exact time, although we never needed to go to school because we already knew everything there was to know about everything.

When we decided to come down into our bodies, there wasn't very much room in there to hold everything that we knew how to do. Our brains are so small that they couldn't hold all of the knowledge and wisdom that we have when we are not in our bodies. So we had to pack them into our backpacks and leave them in the coat closet, just like we do at school. And just like we have to get our lunch and supplies out of our backpacks from time to time in school, the same goes for our soul's backpack.

In school, you simply get up from your seat and go in the closet and reach in to get your stuff. But with your soul, you have to sit down, be very quiet and meditate to get into your backpack. Its really hard to do because there are lots of thoughts that run through our head and get in the way. In order to get through them all you have to try to watch them come and go and just take notes about them. You really have to sit so very still that there are no thoughts going through your mind at all, and then you'll see your backpack. And the more times you look into your backpack, the better you get at using the things inside your backpack.

Of course this was a great way to explain to my children about why we meditate, but there are lots of other benefits to meditating that some might not know about. Those are also great reasons to begin a steady meditation practice, such as the ability to remain calm in situations that might otherwise make you lose your temper, the ability to make wise decisions regarding your life and purpose, health and body improvements, and a wide variety of psychic abilities, although everyone is different. I never would have considered myself psychic even just 5 years ago, but I have been meditating for about 3 years now and I have to admit that sometimes I do just “know” things. I really enjoy using my backpack and I hope you'll try it to!