"The real nature of what we call our 'daily grind' is really just our own mind telling itself, over and over again, how much it wishes things would change.
"This brings us to this next important lesson. It comes to us in two parts, but tells one story much as an oak tree grows out of an acorn. First, our present level of mind can only place and hold its attention on one thought or feeling at a time. Secondly, as goes our attention, so comes our experience.
"For example, we can see that whenever we give our attention to something beautiful — a field of spring flowers or robins romping in a birdbath — we experience within us the delight of what we've given ourselves to see. But as we're about to learn, this same principle holds true when it comes to how we make ourselves feel when looking at 'scenes' in our lives that we don't want to see. Let's gather the details behind this important discovery.
"When we feel stuck somewhere, in a rut of some kind, to what do we give our attention? As a rule, what we see in our mind's eye is the circumstance we think responsible for how we feel in that same moment. Although this pattern of placing blame on conditions outside of us seems wise, a closer look tells a completely different story. In fact, this way of looking at our situation is a part of the very rut we wish to escape! Remember:
"No condition outside ourselves can create a rut or trap us in it. It's impossible.
"Use the next friendly fact to prove this important idea: Ruts don't create the cattle that follow them; cattle create ruts by blindly following one another, slowly grinding down the ground upon which they walk. If life seems like a grind, it's only because we're following around the same level of thinking that makes it so. Blaming outside circumstances for trapping us in a rut is like blaming the television for the boredom we feel while sitting watching nothing but reruns.
"It's time to break our ties with anything in us that would rather complain about its situation than go to work to change it. And it doesn't matter where or how we feel stuck — whether we're living under what seems an impossible situation, making too many self-compromising choices, or feeling like a prisoner of what seems an inescapable past. Yes, our condition may feel real, but any reason our mind gives us about 'why' we're stuck there is a lie! Great nature herself proves the truth of this when we know where to look!
"Nothing in life repeats itself in exactly the same way: not the seasons and not the path of the stars that drive those seasons, let alone the eternal genesis that sits behind all of creation. More simply stated, life never travels the same road twice. Like a bed of roses bathing in streams of sunlight, not a moment unfolds when some new impression isn't raining down upon us, even as it wells up from within. So anytime it feels as if we're a captive of some condition outside us, this sense of ourself has to be a lie, because nothing in real life remains the same! Living in the grip of this illusion is like sticking our finger into a bucket of ice water on a beautiful summer day, then not wanting to go outside because we're sure it will be too cold to play!
"So, the first step to breaking out of any rut in life is to no longer enable the parts of us that keep walking in them while wishing they weren't so deep! Learning to watch our own thoughts and feelings — to be quietly attentive to what the mind is attending to in each moment — ensures that we won't fall into these ditches, because our heightened level of attention keeps them from being dug!"
