Confined Like Fleas

Topics: Success, Expectations

Would it surprise you to learn that everything in your life right now is
pretty much the way you made it? That from hundreds of options you chose
your responses to whatever situations presented themselves? Would you
agree that you have exercised the capacity to choose what you have
received? If so, doesn't it stand to reason that if you made the choice
in the first place, you can change it?

What a powerful notion! Whatever happens to you, you can say, "I am the
master of my life."

But just as the good that comes to you is a demonstration of your
mastery, so is the negative. Consider how hopping fleas are trained. The
fleas are put into a glass jar. As they try and jump in the jar, they
bump their heads on the lid. Over time, they forget they can jump and,
for fear of bumping their heads, never go beyond the limits of the jar,
even though the lids have been removed. Through continued failure they
have become conditioned to confinement. So it is with us, if we let it
be. Our self-made limitations sometimes cause us to forget that we can
fly. WE RESPOND LIKE THE DISCIPLES, "WE ONLY HAVE FIVE SMALL LOAVES OF
BREAD AND TWO FISH. We often needlessly confine ourselves to glass jars.
We may yearn to use our lives creatively, but our invisible prisons
remind us: "You can't do that. It isn't practical. You're not smart
enough. It will cost too much. People will laugh at you. You're too
young. You're too old. Your health won't allow it. Your parents won't
allow it. It will take too long. You don't have the education."

But suppose we could remember that we were made to achieve? SUPPOSE THAT
WE COULD REMEMBER THAT MIRACLES DO HAPPEN? Suppose we really believed
that we are children and heirs of this magnificent universe? Would we
then still allow our jars to limit us to hopping just so far and no
further? Suppose we became aware that resentments, hurts, hates,
grudges, illness, greed and the like are glass jars that have been, or
can be, removed, that, indeed, we may be hampered by the illusion of our
own self-imposed limitations? We attract to ourselves whatever our minds
are focused upon.

Once aware, we can change and then we will no longer be confined to that
glass jar. We will be ready and able to achieve.

John Marks Templeton, Discovering the Laws of Life, Continuum, 1995,
242. Capital words added.