All I Know I Learned in Bible Class

“Whatever the conscious mind thinks and believes the subconscious identically creates.” ~ Brian Adams

When I was a young girl and was attending Bible classes, I often sat in the room, bored to pieces, and listened to Don Battaglini explain how much we should guard our thoughts. “If a man thinks of having an affair with his brother’s wife”, he used to say, “He’s as sinful as the man who does”. As every know-it-all teenager in the room probably did, I also believed it was just bogus. By then, I had pretty much concluded that thoughts and facts were very different things. My ideas in that regard would change in the future.

Since even then I loved to write, but couldn’t really come up with a specific character, I became the protagonist of my own stories. On days when I had the time, I would write short stories, and then I would put them away. When I wrote them I became so attached to the situations – most of them rosy wishes of a teenage girl – that I often envisioned myself living the stories. Strangely, within a short period of time, most of them became reality. One of them, particularly, took the cake. After a trip to London when I was sixteen, I often fantasized about living there. In my daydream I imagined I had married an English guy I had met while he was vacationing in Italy, we had three children and lived on one of the streets near Victoria Station.

Then I grew up, I forgot my fantasies of London, and focused more on real happenings. I met my husband, moved to the States and settled into the life I’m currently living. It was a few years ago, on my way home, that I absent-mindedly glimpsed at the sign outside my subdivision while I waited to turn at the light…the name on it was the same as the street in London I had envisioned living on as a kid! It took my breath away. Suddenly, the events that had played a huge role in my life flashed in front of my eyes – I have, after all, married an English man, and we have three children; we don’t live in London on the street of my fantasy, but live in an area called by the same name.

Once I started paying attention, I realized that thoughts do indeed affect reality. Not all thoughts do, but only those we fuel with emotions and passions. We manifest that which we deeply fear, wish and expect, if we feel strongly enough about it. Without emotional charge, thoughts are just that – fleeting ideas streaming through.

That is why it is so important to watch our thoughts. If we train our conscious minds to accept only positive images, those are what we send to our subconscious mind for production. One important thing to note is that things do not instantaneously change the moment we alter the way we address our thoughts. First we must live through the residue of what we thought yesterday. However, if once we decide we are going to change our thinking we stick to our guns - regardless of the left-over trash we are still experiencing - eventually those thoughts will run their course, and all that will be left to manifest will be positive images.

So many years later, I finally understand what the good old priest was trying to explain. And that brings a smile to my face.

March 25th - What Tomorrow Will Bring

“Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.”~ Brian Tracy


Tonight my parents are arriving from Italy. The past few days have been a flurry of activity in preparation for their visit, and we are all eagerly awaiting to see them. Today, as I was putting in the final touches, I found myself daydreaming about all the wonderful moments we will spend together in the next three weeks, and all I could envision was fun, laughter, and many, many hugs.

Those thoughts triggered a question I my mind – would I look forward to their visit as much if I hadn’t had as nice a childhood as I did? Of course I would still love them for being my parents, but would my expectations of the days to come be the same?

It occurred to me that our expectations for the future are, in great part, directly tied to our experiences in the past. If we had nice, rewarding moments – and are able to connect them to a person or a situation – we are likely to expect that everything ahead is going to be equally rewarding. If, on the other hand, our past experiences were less than desirable, our expectations of our future are probably just as bleak.

We can’t change our past, but we can do something about our present and future. Because of their intimate tie, by changing our expectations of our future, we are able to heal some of the wounds of the past.

Our perception of situations is often connected to our point of perspective at the time of the occurrence. By improving our self-worth and creating rewarding expectations, we can open ourselves to a new awareness, and create a pathway which will allow us to look at our past with a new point of view. Once we examine old hurts with new eyes, our assessment of them is likely to change, thus giving us the opportunity to move past some of our inner blocks.

By allowing the formulation of healthy expectations we give ourselves silent permission to heal and forgive those elements of our past that we weren’t able to reconcile with until now. We may not get what we deserve, at times, but we all certainly get what we expect. So, why not expect the best and enjoy the moments preceding the occasion? We might be pleasantly surprised.