"Live" from The Epicenter! - By Rebecca Fine

I'm sure you've plinked a stone into a pond and watched the ripples spread out from the center. Or seen a boat plow through a lake or harbor, a massive vee of wavelets widening behind it.

But I'm also pretty darned sure you've NEVER seen ripples start at the EDGES of a body of water and spread into the center — unless, of course, you also live on that water's edge, 15 or so miles from the epicenter of a 6.8 earthquake.

I won't bore you with all the details (which were pretty exciting while they were happening yesterday!). Everything and everyone around here is OK, just still a little dazzled by the experience of standing braced in the kitchen door, watching the whole house shake like crazy amidst the crashing and creaking and wondering if the house would stay here on our little bluff or end up in the drink.

But I learned a few things that just might be related to our purpose here and I'd like to share them with you. (And one more thing that isn't related at all: An earthquake-terrified cat looks just like it's stuck its paw into an electrical outlet — and, wow, they can open their eyes REALLY wide, too. Big as golf balls.)

Recently we talked a bit about guarding our thoughts, since the thoughts we give our focus, feeling, and faith to will sooner or later show up as actual people, places, or things in our lives.

And I suggested (as I have here before) that rather than trying to resist and fight off the whole raft of negative thoughts that come unbidden into our minds every waking minute — especially the strongly emotional ones that can just seize hold of us, hang on, and shake us up much more than a mere 6.8 — we might be better served to learn how to simply take a mental step back from the experience and sort of let go and just "watch" the thought pass through.

This is surely not anything original with me; it's ancient — if largely unused — wisdom. Jesus taught the concept of nonresistance and so did the Buddha, among others. And it applies both to thoughts and actions.

In the wake of the quake, I watched an engineer explain why there was relatively little damage to newer buildings in the big cities, while the worst destruction was visited on older ones. Now, this quake was a deep one, which usually causes less shaking and destruction than one nearer the surface. But the other main ingredient is the way newer buildings are "planted" in the earth.

Nowadays, a large structure can be seated on what amounts to giant shock absorbers, so that when the rumbling and shaking begin, rather than having two hard and unyielding surfaces jolting together, the resistance is dissipated and absorbed into the special material. Without that, the resistance builds and the force — having nowhere else to go — is passed up through the structure, magnifying the movement and ultimately tearing the building apart. And now there's havoc and ruin.

It's really quite the same with us! When we resist those thoughts we don't want to give our focus to it's like the old saw: For the next 30 seconds, do NOT think about monkeys. Only this is not amusing. What we resist persists — and the force of our resistance can grow and tear us apart.

Think about some little something that just gets on your last nerve — say, for example, someone is inexplicably rude to you and you immediately feel humiliated or angry or both.

Now you have — right in that moment — a choice: react, go with that immediate negative thinking and "give as good as you got" or simply let the moment and its feelings pass.

In that choice is your own "giant shock absorber." Do you choose to use it? Or to let the negativity take control and shake you all up?

When we choose the latter we may soon find ourselves in the same condition as the older, unprotected buildings, being pushed and pulled and torn apart by those thoughts and feelings — and before long we've got a great big mess to clean up, not just in our own minds, but perhaps in the outer world, too.

And the same is true with other kinds of thoughts that Mr. Wattles points out may be disastrous to our plans: disappointment, ingratitude, thoughts of failure or of scarcity and lack, "competitive mind" thoughts like jealousy, envy, and so on.

But now that we know about the science of getting rich, and now that we have embarked upon the certain way of thinking and acting, we've got something special that most people also have but just plain don't know about and therefore can't use.

We've got the Ultimate Giant Shock Absorbers.

Use 'em, my friend! And the unique, priceless, glorious edifice that is YOU will stand straight and tall and undisturbed, no matter what's going on all around you.

Rebecca Fine is the founder of The Science of Getting Rich Network  where you can download your free copy of the amazing 1910 forgotten classic, The Science of Getting Rich. http://www.scienceofgettingrich.net   ©2001 Certain Way Productions.