Last week I endured two ordeals that confirmed a theory I've had that everything we need is available right now to get what we want. Now, I have come across this theory many times in my life, and have had it confirmed often enough to keep it on my back burner of Useful Ideas.

Usually, when "stuff" happens to me is when I'm in a hurry. And this was one of those times. I had a drumming gig at the local blues festival, and due to a customer phone call that went longer than I thought it would, I was starting to run late. I quickly gathered up my backpack, grabbed my wallet, and cell phone, coaxed the dog out of the house, locked the door and started to bolt for my truck. Then it hit me. I didn't have my keys.

My mind raced through all the different ways I might have to get into the house, when I remembered I had just given the nextdoor neighbors copies of the house keys in case of an emergency. Whew! So I hiked over there, rang the doorbell. Rang it again. Not home.

My mind went back to racing about how to break in to the house, when I remembered I'd left one of the side windows open on the family room bay window. I just might be able to squeeze through there to get in. I removed the screen, and spied my keys waiting expectedly on the kitchen counter. I hoisted myself up into the window and tried to squeeze in, quickly realizing I was about 50% too big. A small child could probably do it, but not a full-grown 200 lb. man. Oh. Okay.

So now it became a matter of extending my reach through the window to snag the keys on the counter. I found a bamboo pole in the garage and tried it... too short. I then remembered there was a longer one staking the raspberry bushes in the front yard, so I ran over there, snatched the pole out of the ground out of the clutches of the raspberry bush, and wa-lah! Reaching the key chain, I manuevered the keys onto the pole and easily retrieved them. I then replaced the screen went back in the house, locked the window, locked the door on my way out, and made it to the festival without further incident.

As I reflected on what happened, my old theory popped up. I HAD to get to my destination, and everything I needed to get there was available to me even if I locked my keys in the house. The window was open, the bamboo poles were there (even if the nextdoor neighbor wasn't), and I was struck by how many immediate opportunities there were to achieve that objective of getting to the festival on time.

The next "ordeal" was a few days later, and once again involved a music gig. I loaded my drumset into the venue and began setting up when I noticed that the pedal for the bass drum had come apart. But on further inspection, it turned out that the post anchoring the spring for the pedal had been broken off completely, rendering the pedal useless, and I needed to be ready to play in 10 minutes.

Since my "Need Theory" was still fresh in my mind, I relaxed and just nodded to myself, "I've got the part I need to fix this." I looked through my tool bag where I keep various equipment odds and ends collected over the years, tried a few things, but to no avail.

I then flashed on my RV that I'd driven to the gig, and one of the kitchen cabinet drawers. I looked in the drawer, and in the back was a single likely-looking black screw about an inch and a half long. I tried it on the pedal, and it fit perfectly. It fit so perfectly, I was flabbergasted, since drum equipment screw threads can be very non-standard. In fact, using the screw in this way was actually better than the stock part, since it was longer and because it was a simple screw it had a head on the end that kept the spring from falling off, where the stock part had another part for that function.

I spent several minutes in profound gratitude for this resolution, and thought back on the incredible series of circumstances that allowed this outcome. It goes way beyond statistical probability, and enters the realm of quantum synchronicity. These thoughts were accompanied by the Rolling Stones anthem, "You Can't Always Get What You Want," but you just might get what you need...

As I mulled that over it occurred to me that there's a disconnect in the physical world between one's preferences and what we see in front of us. Rather than noticing what is not matching our preferences, why don't we notice what is. The strength of this option is based on quantum physics where something changes when it is viewed. The more attention given to something, the more it changes. And in practical life, the more attention is paid to something, the more life reflects back what it is being paid attention to. It's some sort of principle of focussed attention.

Therefore, if attention is focussed on how the external world is accurately reflecting internal preferences, desires, needs and wants, the more and more examples show up of how the external world is the same as the internal world. Usually, the habitual process of noticing differences supercedes the noticing of similarities. By noticing the differences, they amplify. So instead, by noticing similarities to an intention (desire, need or want) after placing that intention, the similarities begin to amplify in the external world.

A shaman I studied with repeatedly told me that there is actually no difference between what is "in here" and what is "out there." That it is one continuum with an arbitrary border that we place there in order to define ourselves.

Hand-in-hand with this self-definition strategy is the ingrained habit of noticing what is different between the outer and inner worlds. As this process continues it becomes clear why. If you did NOT notice any difference between outer and inner, then you would have no need for ego-gratification to prove you existed, you would have no need for anything other than what you had, and that would eliminate most economic games, and other processes of desire fulfillment. You would simply BE everything to yourself. This defines the Eastern spiritual state of Self-Realization--one realizes that Self is Everything; or, Self is God.

Author Dr. David Hawkins, M.D. in his book, Healing and Recovery tells ths story of his near-death experiences and his spontaneous states of self-realization. In them, he says that there was really nothing to do, but just be. He found himself seeing clients and performing miraculous healings and a filled appointment book, yet he could remember little of what occurred because he was operating from profound states of divine joy and ecstasy. He reports that eventually he came to be able to control the "episodes" so that he could live his life in a more or less linear fashion, but that these states are always available to him.

Hawkins' whole life has been about studying the effects of the inner world on the outer world, and as he became healed himself (from a myriad of traumas, conditions and diseases), clients, friends and family became healed as well. And as he experienced the profound states of ecstasy, his life rearranged to allow for more and more of that.

It is truly as if life itself simply wants to give you what you want. It's just a matter of opening up to the truth that everything you need for what you want is already at hand.