Boosting the Circulation
At the end of the road in Folkestone where my grandmother had her hotel there is a statue looking out over the English Channel.
The statue is of William Harvey who was born in the town towards the end of the 16th century.
Harvey was the first to describe in detail how blood flowed around the body in a circulatory system.
From a very young age I was impressed by this statue and reflecting on it now I realise that this critical fact about how our bodies work has only been known for 400 years.
Thinking about it further it is apparent that within the laws of the Universe, ‘circulation’ is absolutely fundamental to everything.
The two constituents of the Universe, space and energy cannot be created or destroyed.
They cannot be created as there is nothing to create them from – the Universe just ‘is’, so if any energy or space were somehow destroyed then the Universe – and all that is in it – would simply disappear.
The secret of the Universe is in ‘circulation’.
Matter, including our bodies, is entirely made up of energy and space. There is space within every molecule and atom and science is showing that there is no fundamental particle of matter from which things are made up, only energy
Following Einstein’s work on mass-energy equivalence, more recent researchers including the late Stephen Hawking propose that mass IS energy. This however is very difficult to scientifically ‘prove’ – whatever that means.
I take it as a given, not being prepared to hang around for another 400 years until someone ‘proves’ it!
You and I can see circulation happening all the time.
It’s the basis of ‘recycling’.
Most things recycle naturally, breaking down into different forms, being reabsorbed in many ways. Over time, even rocks recycle as they are eroded and converted into something else.
Some man-made substances can be quite difficult to ‘recycle’ but everything is susceptible to heat and pressure as Singapore is showing with its recycling plants generating heat and electricity without any adverse environmental effect. All it really requires to deal with so-called ‘non-recyclable’ waste is as Wernher von Braun said to Kennedy, “the will to do it”.
If everything is circulating and recycling itself the concept of ‘flow’ becomes relevant.
‘Flow’ is the rate of circulation.
Rivers and glaciers flow at very different speeds but they are both part of the circulation of water around the planet as liquid water, water vapour and solid ice, and that water is taken in by living things and absorbed into inanimate objects as part of the process.
You and I take in water as a liquid and breathe some of it out as water vapour – we continually circulate water.
Circulation of ‘matter’ is obvious, matter (which is just energy and space) cannot be destroyed, only altered. One form of matter turns into another and usually energy is either released from or added to that matter so that it assumes another form.
What about thought? How does that ‘circulate’? How does thought assume different ‘forms’?
Thought is energy and can be detected as electrical impulses in the brain. These impulses follow different pathways and form different patterns of activity as can be seen on a live brain scan.
When you and I come up with new ideas we’re not creating new thought or energy, we are just re-arranging our thought patterns following some inspiration we receive.
Inspiration is ‘the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something’ and that may come from inside or outside.
It doesn’t matter – we change our thought patterns or thoughtforms accordingly in whatever way we choose.
Thought energy is circulation all the time, changing from one form to another and often back again.
You and I never stop thinking, even when asleep or in meditation, so thought can be conscious or unconscious. Like the Universe it just IS.
One of the tings we think about a lot of the time is survival, survival of our physical entity.
Back in the day this used to be about hunting or farming the foods needed to keep our bodies going, but now it’s more often about ‘money’.
We’ve refocussed our survival needs from food to money because we (in most cases) no longer have the skills to supply our own physical needs or the other needs we believe we require for ‘survival’ – transportation, entertainment, accommodation and so on.
Survival has become all about money.
Now there’s nothing wrong with that. As a lubricant, catalyst, and facilitator money works very well but most people have the wrong attitude.
They see money as ‘static’ – a need to accumulate money, a need to be ‘rich’.
When Napoleon Hill wrote his seminal personal development book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ back in 1937 there was understandably in the US at the time after the great depression a bit of an obsession about money.
Hill’s book talks a lot about accumulating ‘riches’ and, I think, overemphasises this aspect of personal development.
Being ‘rich’, having a lot of money is not a lot of use. Money is only useful when you spend it.
When you circulate it.
The more money you have, the faster the flow you can generate. When your income is high your level of spending is high. The money circulates through you from, and to others.
Even when you have money invested, it is being used by other people to generate a ‘return’ on your investment. You don’t have the money, it’s not in your possession in physical form – even when it’s in your bank account – it’s always in circulation.
But when money is invested or banked you aren’t really in ‘control’ of it, someone else is, and you can only increase your personal flow of money by changing that.
The more money flows through you the richer you are, because as you pass money on by purchasing products or services from others you enrich them, as you do when you invest money in them one way or another.
The Law of the Universe states that you must give so that you may receive – ‘givers gain’ – and this is where a lot of people get it wrong.
This is where most people slow down the flow and inhibit the circulation of money.
They look to receive in income before they feel able to give in expenditure or investment.
It doesn’t work that way and sadly this is very hard for most people to grasp because that is not what we are taught.
Although we do give by working or running a business the focus is on income, what we are going to receive, rather than expenditure, what we are going to give.
Hill does get around to this, and all personal development facilitators endorse this concept, but there’s one more step.
The focus must be on the giving, on the money going out, whether that be for a great holiday, a new car, a new home an investment portfolio, philanthropy or whatever, and not on the money coming in, our income, sales, or any other money received.
Bob Proctor puts it this way
Focus on what you want to buy, invest, give away and so on – how much money would that be? What income would that require? Believe that you have that income and believe that you are using it in the way you envisaged.
You and I cannot do this ‘overnight’ but we can make a start.
Forget about the income side, the receiving side, and just think, and think a lot (in the right way) about the expenditure side – the giving side.
Have the will to do it and see what happens.
