How to Use Your Mind, When Trying to Achieve a Goal

We have to handle our minds a certain way when trying to bring a goal to fruition. In this post I am going to discuss the way to do this.

Connecting With Formless, Energetic Potential

When we chant we are told we tap our Buddha nature, our connection with the universe. So what are we actually doing? Our true identity at the core of our lives, is cosmic life force. We call it the Mystic Law. It embodies all of the potentials which express as individual things and beings in the material world. According to Tien’tai, a famous Buddhist teacher, when we chant, we connect with that level of our lives through our Buddha nature, our universal connection. (Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra, V. 1 pg 170)

The life potential in the universe is forever expressing itself through us and everything else in the universe. That creativity is always in abundant action. We see it everywhere, in a thousand snowflakes, each different, in hundreds of seeds distributed from one flower. Your desire to expand your life is one with the movement of that potential to express itself in the world of form.

Setting a Goal is Like Creating a Drawing

When we chant with a goal in mind, we are purposefully using our thoughts to create something out of the formless potentials inherent in life. In a way when we form a goal, a determination, it is like creating a drawing of what we want. We want to draw this picture in detail in our minds. We are creating a picture in the invisible world of what we want to show up on the material plane of our daily lives. When the time is right that picture is going to manifest in daily life.

Claim Your Goal as Already Done

Have an unwavering purpose and claim your goal as already done, no matter how things look in daily life. For example, you can only see big obstacles and your goal looks impossible. You must continue to hold the image of your completed goal, no matter what seems to be real. What appears on the surface is an illusion.

This is the great challenge of bring something into manifestation. You must hold that completed picture even if your goal doesn’t show up exactly when you want it to. Keeping that focus is hard work.

Dwelling on Doubts, & Fears Can Undo Your Efforts

What happens to this drawing if we doubt we can do it or we begin to be swayed by obstacles which appear impossible? What happens to the drawing when the fear, that it might not happen, comes to haunt us?
If you indulge the doubts and fears, or chronically envision the obstacles and not the completed goal, the picture you’ve been drawing becomes blurred or erased. If this happens we have to begin the hard work of creating it again.

If doubts fears, or uncertainties come into you mind, ask yourself, “What do I want to create? My goal or my doubts?” When I did this, it felt easier to banish those doubts and once again see my goal already accomplished. You may have to do this 50 times a day as I had to, when chanting for a goal important to me.

Take The Action in Front of You

You are going to have thoughts about actions to take to move you towards your goal. Don’t be passive – take action. Act on those thoughts one by one and accomplish something each day towards your goal.  The universe works through you when you take action and makes connections you would never have imagined. You might have to handle something which could be an obstacle if not addressed. Do it, keeping your eye on the goal.

Gratitude

Gratitude Changes Everything written on desert road

You may have noticed that experienced practitioners express a lot of gratitude for what they have received. Gratitude is expressed in many of our daily prayers. That feeling of gratitude is a way of relating yourself to the Mystic Law. It brings you closer to the source of your benefits, that limitless life potential.

Summary

• Create a picture of your goal already accomplished.
• If doubts or fears come, don’t indulge them.
• Refocus and see your goal accomplished as you wish it to be.
• Take action on ideas which come to you.
• Pay attention to anything which relates to your goal.
• Celebrate each step achieved
• Have gratitude