The fire continues in the hills above Boulder and many people's homes are being destroyed. The feelings of loss must be overwhelming for those who loose everything. Please send your healing thoughts and prayers to those suffering. There is hope for a rain shower this afternoon.

This disaster got me thinking about how much power we have to shape our own exprience of our life. The world of ideas is infinite and this creates endless possibilities. There are possibilities that are positive, conscious and expansive. There are also ideas that are limiting, fearful and contracting. Which set of possibilities we focus on is a matter of choice.

Those that focus on: problems, what makes them angry, what they are afraid of, what is wrong with others, who is to blame, are choosing to come at life from a place of contraction, from fear or anger. This viewpoint colors everything they see as not ok. Living this kind of life is scary, disconnecting, judgmental and dissatisfying.

Those that focus on: what is possible, seek solutions, look to enjoy life, see the good in others and situation and have compassion are choosing to experience life from a more pleasant point of view. This way of seeing the world opens us to what is possible. Living this kind of life is fun, loving, freeing, uplifting and satisfying.

There is really little middle ground between these two because the mind doesn’t tend to hang out in neutral. It feels more natural for our thinking to have a preferential point of view. From very early in our development we get the biases of those around us in the form of conditioning. We spend the rest of our life sorting out these biases and finding our own perspective.

Finding, exploring and creating our own view of self and the world are all part of the maturing process that each person can go through. If we don’t question the extensive programming we have been through than we never discover who we are. Not discovery who we are means we miss out on the possibility of an extraordinary life. The rest of us loose out too if a person chooses to be the just person others told him or her to be.

So what will it be, finding out who we are, keep on growing, exploring new ways of thinking and viewing the world, and expanding into the endless possibilities waiting to be expressed? Or will it be trudging down the ways of the past, the predictable, the familiar, living by the views of others and feeling the fear of missing out on a better life?

The world of ideas we live in is up to us.