Naked Awareness - One from the Vault - Episode 135

Hey guys, this is one from the vault where we pull some of the classic episodes from the past on the Rise Up with Dragon show. Enjoy! Great morning world! Welcome to the Rise Up with Dragon podcast with your host, Dragon! Great morning world! Alright folks, ready, set, grow! This is Naked Awareness. Here's a few dragon thoughts to get things warmed up. Let's practice some present time consciousness today and recognize the massively groundbreaking potential that you and I have in this very moment. We do this how? Through practicing gratitude, which I consider the super highway to present moment thinking. Recognize that we have things rather than recognizing the things that we don't have. What are you grateful for? I am grateful for the basics. My breath, my heartbeat, my family and the 24 hours that appear to have been granted to me again as I was in a video game and my power had been depleted yet I picked up some sort of green emerald and had my life restored. That's what I'm grateful for this morning. Today, I'm grateful also for my eyes that can see, my ears that can hear, my nose that can smell, my skin and heart that have the ability to feel and choose to see that there must be more to life to you and I than we've been taught. I'm grateful for my ability to recognize that my thoughts, feelings and emotions are not strong indicators of my reality. I recognize the important things yesterday that I may have overlooked that very well may be the reason that I found myself overbooked. These are the things that I'm grateful for now. This is naked awareness. There were two young fish swimming and an older wiser fish swam up and approached them and said this, Hey you two, how's the water? I didn't really understand the question so they swam off and minutes later they looked at each other and said, What is water? When Bill Gates first met Warren Buffett, their host, Gates mother, asked everyone around the table to share the single most important factor to their success. Now imagine being at that table, whether you like these folks or not, imagine having the opportunity to hear Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, these two iconic giants share what their most important factors of success were. Gates and Buffett ironically both gave the same one word answer. What was that answer? Focus. Buffett, as a matter of fact, went further and said really successful people say no to almost everything. Fascinated with focus this morning. What's interesting about people that are highly focused, something that we've been kind of programmed to think is important to be highly focused, but people that are highly focused have a great degree of success in completing tasks and achieving goals. That makes sense. In fact, I worked very hard to be focused. But what's interesting to observe about this though is if I can ask you to take your focus off of what I just said for a second, here's what's interesting about it. It's that they also, these highly focused people have a high propensity to miss the little things that are happening outside their laser focus, like the two fish that were completely unaware that they live in water. It would be like me asking you, how's the air? And that only in that moment you'd realize I'm so focused on something. I forgot that I live on a planet that's moving at 60,000 miles per hour through some sort of space. And we're just a freckle in that expanded universe. And there's air. In my experience, the most magical things that have ever come into my life have come from outside my focal point. Isn't that interesting how I could be completely laser focused on something, task oriented, supportive of my dreams, everything, leveraging and accelerating, everything that I want. And the most magical things come from outside. It also makes me think in this moment about how the most amazing things that I've ever learned in life are not proven by science and mathematics. There's a great TED talk, by the way, by a man that I had the opportunity of being mentored by Mr. Marshall Thurber that talks about this. In case you don't know who Marshall Thurber is, you could always look him up, T-H-U-R-B-E-R and just look up his TED talk. But he is the rich dad in the story that Kiyosaki wrote, Rich Dad Poor Dad. So the skill set here is recognizing that many signs and insights that we see in life are very, very subtle and easily missed. Only a subtle mind can see a subtle sign. And that sign can change your narrative and your game forever and help you break through. Isn't that interesting that the thing that can help you break through is not the thing that you're focused on? So are you open to the things that are at 90 degree angles? Or are you so focused on what's ahead of you that you won't miss those things? It's interesting to consider the value of a silent or limited mind having the ability to pick up subtle blessings. The busy mind misses them. Now, for those of you that are struggling to focus, I just want you to know that you don't struggle with focusing on things. If you are distracted all the time, you're focused on distractions. You just need to learn how to focus on something else. Don't let your busy mind get involved today. It's going to do what it does, but don't let it be part of the shot calling today. Silence is the best teacher and receiver. In fact, I encourage you all to refrain from listening to this message with your limited mind. Rather, listen to this message simply with your ears. That's what ears are for listening, but let go of the thoughts, the labels and the concepts that are associated with what you're hearing. Just hear them and take what it is that you think you needed to hear. I call this resting in a naked awareness of reality. Make sense? If you liked the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.