If you've been around New Age or New Thought teaching much at all, you've probably already encountered the saying, "Energy flows where attention goes" or similarly, "what you focus on expands." It's the same principle and it is found in many schools of thought. In Huna, the former of these two sayings is referred to as Makia. I believe in this principle and I've seen it in action in my life. Without meaning to prove it in three-dimensional life, I did just that when I happened to notice that there was a puny little rose bush in the yard of a cottage I rented for six months on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, Washington. It was so small and spindly that I must have walked by it dozens of times before I ever even noticed it. When I did notice it, I was a bit shocked by it. I love roses, and I've tended a lot of rose bushes over the years in various places where I've lived, so to find this one looking so pathetic was startling to me. All I did to set this principle in motion was to stop what I was doing and pay attention to this pathetic excuse for a rose bush, which in the beginning consisted of a few sticks and a small leaf or two. I simply looked at it and studied it for a few seconds to convince myself that it truly was a rose bush. It was nearly invisible it was so non-impressive.
Within a day or two, I walked by it again and simply looked at it and noticed that there was the tiniest little bud on one of the meager branches. I smiled at this little marvel and walked away, happy to know that I had a little hopeful rose bud trying for all its worth to come into being right in front of my cottage. It was like a little miracle. I wondered how my landlady had kept from mowing over it with her riding lawn mower when I had barely been able to see it in passing. I said nothing to my landlady about it, even though I ran into her a lot out in the mutual yard that stretched between our two dwelling places. I simply became a witness to the budding and blossoming of this beautiful rose.
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Miracle Rose |
When it finally bloomed into the lovely flower you see above, my landlady asked with great astonishment, "What on earth are you doing to that rose bush over there?" I laughed and said, "Nothing except noticing that it is there. It did all the rest. I just paid attention to it when I finally noticed it." She shook her head in wonder and said, "That thing hasn't bloomed in years." Then it was my turn to be astonished. I also started paying even more attention to it. I didn't have anything to feed it, so I fed it my attention and that is all. The rain watered it, and it started budding like crazy. It was not able to fill out again to any great fullness though because of the amount of deer traffic in the yard. Apparently roses are yummy to deer taste buds. The deer wound up demonstrating to me what had happened to the rose bush in the first place. It had been a victim of a hit and run deer foraging. But for the couple of months it lasted, I got to enjoy probably a half dozen blooms before it was added to the deer menu again.