Focus and the Family
By Annie Burnside
As I have heard many spiritual teachers share through the years, the energy flows where the attention goes. When this tenet becomes consciously utilized on a daily basis, its universal truth is apparent and life-changing. Focus is a creative tool that leads to physical manifestation. The passion, joy, and enthusiasm behind this focus will determine the ultimate outcome of a heart's desire. Focus creates a consistent and expanded energy flow that allows for greater access to inner wisdom. Energy that is consciously directed toward a specific desired creation announces to the Universe, loudly and clearly, intention. I have found that when this divine connection is open and pulsating with purposeful energy, assistance from both the spiritual realm and earthly connections expands exponentially providing more frequent intuitive flashes and divinely inspired synchronicities.
I encourage all parents to assist their children in understanding the importance and value of focus. Teach your children to make their own daily assessments of exactly where they are placing their powerful energy output. Help them to realize that focus is merely a building of energy toward a specific outcome. Children are never too young to understand, on the most basic of levels, that they are creating their own reality based on where they choose to focus their energy. The building block for this all-important spiritual teaching is the understanding that they are energetic and vibrational spiritual beings, first and foremost. This profound understanding is the doorway to remembering that they are deeply connected to and an integral part of All That Is. Once this groundwork has been laid through family discussions and continual reminders as to their very nature, it will be much easier to expand into teaching the importance of conscious focus, as well as all other spiritual facets, to their overall well-being.
Children should understand that where they choose to place their focus is always a personal choice. No one has the power to determine what we think, say, or do except for us. An individual's thoughts, words, and deeds provide a blueprint as to where his energy is currently focused. These energy patterns determine future reality, no exceptions.
Parents can help children understand the spiritual mechanics behind their focus by teaching them the universal law of attraction. The law of attraction states that like attracts like, so children will come to understand that the Universe will give them exactly what they are asking for through their thoughts, words and deeds, which are simply threads of energy. Awareness of the power of these three creative tools and the encouragement to consistently monitor them provides the starting point for conscious living in a family.
A mucky focus of energy will always create a mucky result. In any given situation or relationship, it is imperative to pause every so often to assess focus. Encourage your children to become very clear on the energy offered to a specific subject and to the world at-large. Through your example, teach them how to recognize patterns of focus that may be moving positive energy away from a desired intention. As natural consequences arise which are not to their liking, help them to make changes in their energy output to keep them on course. You can assist your children in making a list of the different thoughts, words, and deeds that led them to this point in time and physical manifestation. Show them how to categorize these energetic offerings as either expansive or detrimental to intended outcome. As their spiritual guide, demonstrate the importance of wakefulness in regard to choices. On a regular basis, openly share your heart's desires and intentions and the energetic pathways utilized to create them. Consciousness is the understanding of where one places his powerful focus and the willingness to constantly change energetic offerings if necessary.
While at first it may seem daunting to children to take full responsibility for being cognizant of where they focus their energy, the confidence derived from this newly remembered aspect of their spiritual nature leads to the self-realization that they are indeed captains of their own ship. The freedom that this profound inner-knowingness and sense of worthiness brings cannot be underestimated. As children knowingly exercise their rights as a conscious creator to focus their energy where truly desired, they will find their unique capacity to capture the rapture and experience their own divinity through their life lived.
Annie Burnside, M.Ed., is a soul nurturer, author, public speaker and teacher specializing in conscious relationships and spiritual development. Her book Soul to Soul Parenting: A Guide to Raising a Spiritually Conscious Family (Wyatt-MacKenzie, June 2010) offers everyday mediums and universal, life-affirming themes to those families seeking to expand spiritual awareness. Annie resides in Chicago, IL with her husband and three children.