Life with or without pips?

The law of attraction is absolute. You experience what you are predominantly thinking and feeling. Oftentimes, I “get” that on an intellectual level…

“if I think this, or more aptly FEEL this, then I will live … this.”

However, we human beings are complex and we have a million thoughts and feelings every day and it’s very easy to start to look outside of ourselves for “reasons why” our experience is what it is.

Sometimes, as a gentle reminder, I get the opportunity to notice the correlation between what I’ve been thinking and feeling and what manifests in my reality.

Today this came in the form of Mandarins (or Mandarin-Oranges, as they’re called in North America, or if you’re using self-checkout at the local supermarket it might even be listed under “Oranges-Mandarin”…anyway, digressing!).

Growing up in Australia I enjoyed the taste of mandarins but the process to eat them was way too frustrating. There were pips (seeds) – and not just one, but oh, so many.

There is nothing worse that biting into a juicy, sweet, citrusy tasting mandarin and being stopped by the awful crunch of a pip. The horror followed by the saliva producing fumbling around in your mouth trying to get the chewed morsel out of the goodness of the juicy flesh, wondering if you got it all, and tentatively taking another chew to see if you missed some. Or, spitting the whole thing out altogether and starting afresh with a new piece. It’s just awful!

Some of the adults in my life growing up taught me strategies, like:

• holding each piece up to the light to see if there was a pip BEFORE putting it in your mouth and removing said pip with your teeth first; (this was the best tip in my book, second only to no pips at all!)
  

• or biting the top of each morsel first and squeezing out the pips with your teeth before eating the flesh that remained

• some adults told me to just swallow the pips and demonstrated this by popping several pieces into their mouth without checking! Ugh! I’d hear the crunch of a pip and they’d continue to chew and swallow, which succeeded in making me gag.

For years and years, I wished someone would make mandarins without pips (same with watermelons, which were completely seeded while I was growing up with only perhaps an inch of flesh closest to the rind that was seed-free). And as an adult, I just simply chose not to eat them.

When I came to Canada to live 10 years ago I saw the little boxes each year of Mandarin-Oranges for sale at the grocery store and bypassed them for fear of pips.

Then one day, a friend of mine offered me one at her home and I launched into my “pip” story and the reason I find mandarins so frustrating.

She looked confused, “Pips? These don’t have any pips?”

Now it was my turn to look confused, “No pips? Like, none at all?”

Amused now, she said, “Nope, none at all!” and popped a whole half a mandarin in her mouth.

My ears strained listening for the sound, my stomach clenched, my eyes grew wider as she chewed and chewed, and … swallowed. My goodness…no pips!!

It was a small miracle – like an answer to my childhood prayers! It was so exciting to me, and I have enjoyed pip-free mandarins for years and years!

Usually when I eat one, I marvel at the pip-free-ness of it. Marvel that someone produced a completely pip-free plant. I felt overjoyed that I could pop each piece, or several pieces, in my mouth without fear. I savoured the flavours and texture. Overall I have been eating them with love and content for many years now.

Until today!

The last few weeks I have been feeling a little flat and sometimes even ornery. This change in my attitude also changed my thoughts toward the mandarins I was eating. I started to think on the “other side” of the pip story.

Gone were the feelings of gratitude for the fruit I was enjoying.

Instead, with every one I peeled I asked myself (with a bit of a whine truth be told) why couldn’t ALL mandarins for consumption the world over be pip free? Why did I grow up with pip-filled mandarins? How much more would I have enjoyed mandarins if they were pip-free?

(You know how it goes when you’re on the “dark side” roll…!)

I took it one step further.

I started remembering what it FELT like to eat a mandarin with pips. That horrible crunch when you missed removing a pip. I remembered how frustrating it was as a child, always having to hold each morsel up to the light, having to break it apart to bust out the seeds before getting to enjoy what was left of the sweet juicy flesh. I remembered how messy it was and how from one full mandarin, you only got about 40% flesh, and 60% frustration.

And – in law of attraction fashion – after years of enjoy pip-free mandarins, literally pip-free for YEARS, today… I got pips!

One whole mandarin that I’d opened had pips in every piece!

The first crunch shocked me.

The second crunch appalled me.

The third piece I held up to the light and saw a pip in there waiting to destroy my mandarin experience!

The fourth and fifth pieces were the same.

As I stared with disbelief at the nasty little pip waiting in the sixth piece, I started to remember what I’d been thinking and feeling about mandarins over the past few weeks.

And I smiled.

When I finished my 40% enjoyment, 60% frustration and mess, I acknowledged the lesson here and wrote this post.

This was a simple and clear example of how we create our lives.

For the past few weeks though I was still eating pip-free mandarins while I felt the awful feeling of how it used to be to eat mandarins with pips, it was only a matter of time before what I’d been thinking, and feeling, manifested.

My feeling about the mandarins I was eating “in the now” had been influenced, and today changed, by a memory of not enjoying eating them with many pips.

Instead of focusing on what was happening in my now experience – wonderful pip-free mandarins – I focused on what my experience was in the past. And eventually that feeling of not enjoying pips had to appear, as it did today.

I was feeling how it felt to chew down on a pip, so the universe responded with pips. Simple.

It really is very fair when it’s as consistent as it is. The universe will bring to you what you are feeling, what you are imagining, what you are experiencing in your mind, even if that thing is not currently your “reality”.

Of course, when “pips” are actually your reality it makes it even more difficult to feel pip-free and attract a pip-free experience.

If you fear it, if you feel the feeling of how awful something would be, and you consistently do it, then guess what? Hello experience!

It made me wonder, how many things do I think, feel, say, in every day that is drawing “pips” into my life – without my conscious awareness?

I guess the answer to that really is “how is my life?”

Is it exhilarating in every way? Does it make me leap out of bed in the morning excited for another day? Or are there many “pips” that I constantly feel frustrated about? 

What we feel we draw into our lives. We are in control. We are our own guide, our own architect, our own oracle.

I spent the rest of the day feeling grateful once more for the pip-less years I have lived… and tonight when I ate a mandarin after dinner…guess what? Pip-free!

What else in my life I can make pip-free…?

How about you? Are any areas of your life filled with “pips”? Ever had a “pip” experience like this that bonked you on the head with a ‘you did this’ experience?

Happy 2014 to you all! May your whole year be pip-free, or may the pips remind you that you can change your focus, that you have the power to be pip-free!

Warm smiles and Love,
Ali Jayne 🙂