Let me take a little liberty with this famous quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

To begin, or not to begin: that is the question. Do we suffer the slings and arrows of procrastination, or do we decide, trust, and move forward? In Hamlet, Shakespeare shows a man trapped by indecision—to his own detriment. Life imitates art! Indecision is everywhere, and it holds us back.

So why do we hesitate? Why is it so hard to decide and then begin? The truth is, once we take that first step, we declare to the Universe that we mean business. Quantum principles remind us that action collapses possibility into form. The moment we decide and act, the Universe backs us fully. As Thoreau wrote: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams… he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

So, do you find yourself hesitating in some part of your life. Have you begun something that maybe you’ve been putting off? If so, what? If not, why not?

Some of the reasons we hesitate include: – fear, lack of confidence, waiting to get all our “ducks in a row,” doubt in our ability to shine, fear of failure and criticism to name a few. I want to move on to something that I believe is behind all of this. It is our thinking. If thoughts are things and I do know they are, then this would have to be the truth. Don’t just take it from me, this one principle has been expressed and taught throughout history by men and women of intelligence.

Buddha (5th c. BCE) – Dhammapada
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) – Renaissance mystic & physician
“The spirit is the master, imagination the tool, and the body the material plastic.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) – Nature
“The ancestor of every action is a thought.”

Prentice Mulford (1834–1891) – Thoughts Are Things (1889)
“Thoughts are things. Every thought is a force sent out.”

James Allen (1864–1912) – As a Man Thinketh (1903)
“The mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance.”

William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932) – Thought Vibration (1906)
“Thought is a force—a manifestation of energy—having a magnet-like power of attraction.”

Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) – Unity co-founder
“Thoughts are things, and occupy space in the mental realm.”

Ernest Holmes (1887–1960) – The Science of Mind (1926)
“Thought is more than energy. Thought is power. Thought is a thing in itself.”

Florence Scovel Shinn (1871–1940) – The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925)
“Whatever man feels deeply or images clearly, is impressed upon the subconscious mind and carried out in minutest detail.”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) – Feeling is the Secret (1944)
“The world is a mirror, forever reflecting what you are doing within yourself.”

Wayne Dyer (1940–2015)
“What you think about expands.”

Louise Hay (1926–2017)
“Every thought we think is creating our future.”

Dr. Joe Dispenza (From Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself:
“Your thoughts have consequences so great that they create your reality.”

Gregg Braden (From The Divine Matrix (2007))
“We are creators, and we create with the power of our beliefs. What we believe in our minds and feel in our hearts is what becomes real in our world.”

These are just a few. As I read these, as I contemplate this Principle, I understand that what we must begin is to believe that this principle is true and then to act upon it. I do not think we would continue to think the thoughts that we think if we really believed that they would affect and are affecting our life and experiences.

What I think is happening instead is that we are creating our thoughts by what we see in the world of form. We are so used to this line of thinking that it is unconscious. We just do it this way. In the Science of Mind we use the term “creating from secondary causation,” It is creating from what is already created in the world of form. In other words, when we see lack in our checkbook, we look at that as a fact and ruminate upon it; therefore, creating more lack. The higher road would be acknowledging the lack, but turning away from it to begin to think from a higher perspective or what we call “First Cause.”

Just to reiterate:

Secondary causation = living from effect. We stare at the bank account, the diagnosis, or the relationship conflict and assume that is the “truth.” It becomes a loop: thought → form → more thought about the form → more of the same form.

Primary causation = living from Source. The Creative Law responds to our inner conviction, not to appearances. This is the “causeless Cause” — pure Spirit, which creates ex nihilo (out of Itself).

I can surely see and have experienced how it is easy to continue in this frame of thought. What I am proposing is that we make a definite decision to begin today to change our whole mode of thinking. To use our imaginations as the primary tool for thinking. What is the highest thoughts we can think? What is the most fantastic outcome we can project. Don’t forget, quantum physics support this too. It is called “the observer effect.” When we observe only what is already collapsed into form, we reinforce that probability. When we choose to observe from a higher intention, we “call forth” a new wave of possibility into manifestation. As Dr. Joe Dispenza says: “If you keep firing the same circuits in the same way, you keep producing the same mind and the same reality.”

So, let me share a concrete example of how we would do this. I would wake up every morning and think upon the unlimited possibilities that there are for my life, a project I’m working on, my financial status or anything else that seems stuck. I would stop looking to what is and instead take the time to create in mind and in action that which I want to experience. I wouldn’t fixate on the outcome, but I would be so absorbed in my creation that the other situation would fade from my focus. For example, right now I am thinking of my labyrinth ministry and all the possibilities to bring the labyrinth into the world. I am creating projects, making phone calls to the appropriate people and resources. That is not what I did before. I simply sat staring at the labyrinth in our Center, thinking about how no one was really appreciating it or coming to my walks. I was lost in the past of living in Los Angeles and having a ministry that no one wanted here. That shifted the day I decided to think differently and explore new avenues of learning and look at my labyrinth in a whole new way. Then, I put action behind it. I no longer think the same way about the labyrinth. I’ve opened up to greater possibilities without becoming focused on the outcome.

So, since the title of this blog is “To Begin or Not to Begin,” let me wrap it here. When are you going to begin to think from a higher perspective and stop staring at the facts? Can you just look at the facts as what they are: creations of your state of mind, effect, conditions that are simply waves that have concretized themselves into form by endless hours of staring at them? This is very exciting to me. I feel it is time to begin. To quote Henry David Thoreau,

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.”
 

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Dr. Rita, Author, Founding Spiritual Director CSL Kaua’i, Founder of the Red Dress Movement