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It's so interesting to me. When the movie "The Secret" came out, everyone was clamoring to see it to learn how to manifest what they want in life. I was among them. I knew there was something much bigger than me at play, and at that time, I was digging into the spiritual arena seeking answers.
That movie opened my eyes (and millions of others) to parts of the quantum physics arena that were new to me. But is also misrepresented manifesting and how it works, by missing the most important aspect of it! I see this misstep in clients on a regular basis, who wonder why their lives aren't improving in the ways they desire. I've found that there are generally three reasons why "manifesting" isn't working for clients: 1) they are missing this step 2) they aren't doing it as a practice 3) they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Since we long to create something better for ourselves and NOT repeat past messes, I teach the proper way to manifest to the women in the After A Breakup H.E.L.P. program. Once we begin to get our thoughts and feelings in order, we have space to shift our focus from the past to the present and start feeding what we want to create in our lives. So fun!
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After a breakup, many of us spend our days in tense situations at home or at work, feeling stressed, harried, and agitated. There's no time or space to take care of ourselves or to have our feelings. We can't nurture our hearts or heal. We have to force ourselves to get up, get going, and get busy. It makes it hard to get through the day.
We struggle on, counting the minutes, feeling exhausted and unfocused, trying to hide our pain from those around us. When we finally get to our car or home at the end of the day, we crumble into a sobbing mess, letting loose of the emotional pressure we've held in all day. That's no way to live. There are thousands of women doing this every single day. For some, it's about survival. For others, it's about fear. Yet for all of us, it's about what we've been conditioned to do: be strong, carry on, hide our pain, do for others, put ourselves last. The problem with this is that from a place of prolonged pain and self-neglect, we can't show up at our best for the rest of the world. And if we do this long enough, we will literally become sick. As the most dense part of ourselves, the physical body is the last place we experience the impact of prolonged distress. First, we will experience it in our thoughts as negativity and blame, in our feelings as depression and anxiety, in our spirits as insecurity and diminishment, and in our energy as exhaustion and deflation. Finding ourselves in this place doesn't mean we are failures or are broken. It means we've given all our power over to old wounds. The irony is this: it is in facing our pain that we finally move beyond it for good. If we continue to avoid or stuff it, we carry it with us for the rest of our lives and it owns us, hijacking all of our experiences until we die. If you are ready to free yourself from your pain and uplift the overall quality of your life, join the After A Breakup H.E.L.P. program to learn how. It's easy to slip into our "stance" when we feel strongly about something. Our level of righteousness can be an indicator of how important a thing is to us. And if we're willing to dig in, we will also likely find that our stance is an indicator of a hidden or subconscious fear we hold inside.
As humans, we tend to cling to the things that help us feel safe and secure. A sense of safety and security is basic need we all have. Yet it is also true that when we open to new perspectives and face our fears, we grow past them. If we never take space to challenge our views and our fears, we live in a narrow echo chamber and a false sense of superiority and safety. And we miss the whole boat when it comes to genuine loving. Echo chambers aren't where we find true personal power, safety, or love. It's in facing and challenging our views and our deepest fears that we access genuine personal power and safety. And doing so allows us to forge more genuinely loving relationships with ourselves and others. It's not an easy journey, yet it's a fulfilling one... We all learn how to survive growing up. The problem is that what we learn to do as a kid doesn't translate well into our adult lives, and creates problems in our relationships.
For example, as the youngest of six girls myself, I learned to get needs met by rebelling, getting angry, lashing out, pouting, crying, ignoring, hiding, or using other strategies. Our strategies become our auto-pilot "modus operandi" as adults, held in place and run by our ego / ego mind / pain body / conditioned self / subconscious mind (whatever term works for you; they all point to the same thing). Breaking these problematic, habitual strategies is key to forming genuinely loving relationships in our lives as adults. How do we do that? We have to SEE our strategies clearly, and then we have to know HOW to shift them, and WHAT to. I'm so proud of the women in the H.E.L.P. program who are mastering this challenge in their lives... WAY TO GO ladies! If you are ready to take on this challenge, click here. Some days it seems that nothing goes our way, and other days it seems that things just flow along easily. Our tendency is to attach a story about why, because the (ego) mind is obsessed with understanding things so it can apply that knowledge to future events.
But what happens if we don't try to turn things into something concrete, if we just allow them to be what they are in the moment without judging them or ourselves as good/bad, right/wrong, positive/negative? What happens when we shed the need to label things or attach a definitive meaning to them? Do they become meaningless? What I have found is that they take on a much greater meaning, one that serves something other than the limited story in my mind, one that opens a doorway into the infinite realm of the mystery of this existence. "I don't know" is often my mantra—a gateway into infinite possibilities that I trust are in service to not only my soul's evolution, but the evolution of what I call the soul of life. Whew. I'll sleep on this one tonight... You know that person in the grocery store or on the road who just seems oblivious to anything happening around them, in their own little world, in a hurry, impatient, angry or aggravated, like it's all about THEM and they just don't give a shit about you or the rest of the world?
Have you ever been that person? I have. I have been that person...feeling entitled or arrogant, impatient or irritated, in my own little world, completely unconcerned about the reality of others, worried, anxious, unhappy, or angry with life. It wasn't personal, but I carried my mess to others who didn't deserve it, and it may have felt personal to them. I've prayed on this over the years, asking for forgiveness. I've done ceremonies to heal and release the shit that drove that mess in me. I still pay attention inside because there are STILL times when my inner mess wants to rear its head. It's pretty rare anymore, but it's still in there. I see it more clearly and quickly now, so manage it differently and try to keep it off of others. I know that this will be the case until I become enlightened. Will that happen in this lifetime? Who knows? But getting there is what Castaneda's spiritual teacher called "a worthy opponent" and I agree. One thing I've learned: It's never about anything other than my own inner shit. I know that now. Heck, I've known it for years but I'm no saint. I still have work to do. A lot. I still pray, and heal, and forgive, and clean inside, EVERY day. It's a life-long journey of the soul to reach a state of inner bliss and genuine loving...! It's easy some days to forget how far we've come.
Take time to take stock and reflect on the distance you've covered, and all the things you've experienced up to this moment. When you do, you realize how amazing the journey of life is. Moment after moment, day after day, month after month, year after year, here you are, having this miraculous experience... Whether painful or pleasurable, every moment is designed to bring you closer to your best self, IF you hold it as the sacred opportunity it is. This life is a miracle. Our bodies are a miracle. Our minds and feelings are a miracle. And none of it lasts forever. So do your best to lift it up, every moment. It's normal to feel sad and angry about things one day (or moment), and then okay the next. Healing and growth aren't a straight, smooth cruise to the top. They're a crazy rollercoaster ride!
The key is learning to surf the waves that shake things up and reveal the truth—the stuff hidden beneath the sand. Without storms and waves, you stagnate, freeze, and cling like a barnacle to whatever you think is your life preserver. But no matter how badly you want things to stay the same, everything is in a constant state of change. Nothing lasts forever, so clinging never works. If you cling to something long enough, releasing your vice grip feels like torture, a death sentence. If you want lasting freedom and peace, learn to trust, to let go, to feel the flow and ride the waves. Once you trust yourself, the ride is fun no matter what. You'll coast on gracefully sometimes, and crash violently other times, just like everyone else does. And that's okay. There's no shame in the crashes. They mean you're ALIVE and FULLY living. It's all the BEING part of HUMAN—having real experiences, feeling a range of emotions, living courageously instead of keeping your car in the drabness of the garage...because nothing great comes from that. What a POWERFUL notion this is—that we CO-CREATE every scenario we experience in this life to help us heal. I mean, I've understood for years now that every experience provides us with an opportunity to grow and evolve. But to say that we CO-CREATE the scenarios of our lives so that we can evolve on a soul level...well, that feels like a whole new level.
I've heard this notion many times over the years, yet for some reason, today I'm feeling it in a new way. I've had discussions about this with people over the years who have said, for example, "You mean it's my fault that I hooked up with this asshole" or "You mean I chose this bullshit" or "Are you saying I somehow created this trauma or am responsible for it?" It's hard to take in the notion that we co-create our reality when we feel so devastated by the circumstances of our lives in that moment, and want nothing more than to be free of them. Yet it seems to be a consistent bit of spiritual wisdom across multiple traditions that on some level, in some way, our soul participates in connecting us with just the right experiences that we need to evolve past the obstacles within us that keep us from our capacity to be genuinely loving—to drop our masks and our defenses and our stories and our conditioning and just let our true (love) nature shine out into the world. Whew. I think I'll stop there for now... |
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May 2022
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