I have been deeply engaged in a process of visioning my life, creating goals for this year, and dividing those goals into measurable, achievable steps, and then following through. The process has been amazing and challenging and quite a learning experience. Suddenly I am making things happen in my life that I have wanted for a long time and felt like I either couldn't make time for or had no control over. In the process I have to get very real about what's important to me, what I truly desire, and what I'm willing to commit myself, my energy and time and resources to. How much do I want it?
One of the things I am realizing is that in the past I have relied heavily on wishful thinking, waiting for a miracle to take me out of my current predicament in some area of my life and bring me my dreams. I have used prayer to ask the Divine for what I want and need in my life. While I continue to use prayer in this way, what I've been seeing is how I've been praying in this way while not committing myself to making the things I am praying about happen for me. I haven't felt empowered to create the life I desire, to manifest my dreams. I have felt helpless and hopeless, like the best I can do is ask the gods and then maybe these things will show up and maybe they won't. Hence I vacillate between periods of great optimism and great despair, because I don't feel I have any agency in the situation.
Now I realize this is totally wrong. The whole recent craze around "The Secret," "The Law of Attraction," and manifesting your life has gone overboard with the sense "I can have anything I want" without regard for what is right alignment, what is good for all beings, what is there that I might need that I don't know about and that at the outset I might reject, how sometimes the difficult or unpleasant situations of our lives are exactly what we need for our highest good. But on the other hand, the idea that it's all out of my hands, it's all up to the gods and there's nothing I can do about it, is no good either. We are here to co-create with the Divine within us and all around us. In fact, in the past I have approached the Law of Attraction in just the same disempowered way as I have approached prayer. I have written affirmations and done visualizations (admittedly, sometimes with startling results) all still hoping for a miracle, for it to be done for me.
There is a saying, "If you take one step toward God, He will take ten steps toward you." I think I believed my one step to be prayer, or affirmations or visualization, but there's more required of us. This is what I now see. The value of prayer is releasing the results, the outcome, to the Divine. After you create your vision, this is an important, in fact, crucial step, that is missed in the whole manifesting craze. What I see now is the step I was missing, which was not this one.
So here are the steps:
1) First you get very clear about what it is that you desire to create in your life. You name it. You visualize it. You feel it in your being, and in the feeling, you make sure you really want it, and it isn't just something you think you should want. You get clear and real about the details. You define. If I want to publish my writing in literary magazines, I need to have a clear idea what that means: I'd like to publish in five magazines by the end of this year, for example.
2) Then, you change the wishing and wanting to a commitment. I commit to publishing my writing in five magazines this year. I find in changing my desire to a commitment, feelings about it and resistance may arise. This points to work I need to commit to doing, to clear out what is in the way inside of me that keeps my desire away from me. This is my job, to feel the feelings and beliefs that hold me back, and work on them.
3) You state your commitment to friends. You make it known. You have accountability and support. And you ask for help where you will need it to make this dream a reality. Don't try to do it alone.
4) Then you can do your prayers or affirmations daily to keep it in your consciousness, but as you do them remember it is up to you to take the step toward God, to act. This next step is the step I was missing.
5) You take actions congruent with your desire. You make your life congruent with what you wish to create. If I want to publish in five magazines, I need to write and I need to submit work on a regular basis. I need to make a schedule and have commitments to make this happen, not just vaguely decide I'll do it "sometime". Otherwise all the prayer in the world isn't going to make this happen for me.
6) A very important step many people miss: You surrender. You hand it over to the Divine, trusting that the highest and best for you will be done in this situation, even if it looks nothing like what you asked for. You let it go. Even though you continue to conduct your life congruent with your desire, until you receive information/feeling/sensing that it is no longer right for you, you still release the results. If I keep writing and sending out my work, and it does not get published anywhere this year, I trust in the process, and most of all, I remember to enjoy the process, that the process is everything, or nearly everything, because the process is my life happening now.
So it's not enough to engage in wishful thinking and magical practices. You have to go out and change your life, take action, be the creative force in your life, make all of your behavior congruent with your desire, be accountable, be empowered, and then release the results. No one, not even the Divine, is going to do it for you if you don't care enough to make it happen in your life.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Listening to the Child Within
I've been doing this journalling process, in which I have conversations on the page with my "inner child." I do it in my head and out loud too. It's a process I learned from a wise and intense book called Healing Your Aloneness and I was using this process last winter when I was in a lot of emotional pain. I've returned to the process now because a little voice in my head told me it's what I'm needing for the next step in my journey.
I use the term "inner child" with great reluctance. Something in me recoils at the pop psychology of it all. But the truth is we do have a child within us, at least one, and I've been making some real discoveries about her, this little girl inside of me.
The conversations usually don't go too well. She's angry and in pain a lot, reluctant to talk to me because I've neglected her too much and don't give her what she wants or needs. So the process can be painful, difficult and frustrating, but I stick with it, calling forth my most patient, loving, compassionate and understanding adult self, remembering to keep listening to her feelings, acknowledging them and asking how I can help. Here's what I'm finding:
I am happy to make contact with this little person inside--even though the conversations are often painful and difficult--because she knows what feels good and what doesn't. She has my passion and my joy, my creativity, humor, aliveness. She has my sensitivity, softness and vulnerability. She has my playfulness, openness, silliness, love of adventure, and sensuality. She is a fountain of good ideas that would not otherwise occur to me. She is imaginative and unique and miraculous. She knows how to create a life of passion, joy and connection, a life that matters. Without her, I do not have access to these qualities, this guidance, this richness of feeling and wonder.
She doesn't know how to reserve an airline ticket or balance a checkbook, and she doesn't want to do these things. That's where my adult self comes in, to do all these things, to make her visions a reality and to take care of the everyday necessities. She doesn't know how to protect herself, though she knows what's scary and doesn't feel right. She doesn't know how to heal when she's hurt. She doesn't care about convention or habit. She loves freedom, expression and play. She remembers what's important.
She's not always right. She comes to wrong conclusions, especially about herself, and she needs my help correcting those, but she has a childlike wisdom, insight and intuition that I cannot live well without. My job is to protect her, help her heal her wounds, encourage her, and most of all, to listen to her. My job is to help her live and express through me, to realize her dreams, so that i am living a life of heart.
I am grateful for her wisdom and her feelings, even all the difficult ones, because she is honest and true and knows things my adult self has forgotten or routinely neglects. She gets me to stop and smell the roses, to curl up with a book on a rainy day, to listen to the still, small voice within, to dance.
I use the term "inner child" with great reluctance. Something in me recoils at the pop psychology of it all. But the truth is we do have a child within us, at least one, and I've been making some real discoveries about her, this little girl inside of me.
The conversations usually don't go too well. She's angry and in pain a lot, reluctant to talk to me because I've neglected her too much and don't give her what she wants or needs. So the process can be painful, difficult and frustrating, but I stick with it, calling forth my most patient, loving, compassionate and understanding adult self, remembering to keep listening to her feelings, acknowledging them and asking how I can help. Here's what I'm finding:
I am happy to make contact with this little person inside--even though the conversations are often painful and difficult--because she knows what feels good and what doesn't. She has my passion and my joy, my creativity, humor, aliveness. She has my sensitivity, softness and vulnerability. She has my playfulness, openness, silliness, love of adventure, and sensuality. She is a fountain of good ideas that would not otherwise occur to me. She is imaginative and unique and miraculous. She knows how to create a life of passion, joy and connection, a life that matters. Without her, I do not have access to these qualities, this guidance, this richness of feeling and wonder.
She doesn't know how to reserve an airline ticket or balance a checkbook, and she doesn't want to do these things. That's where my adult self comes in, to do all these things, to make her visions a reality and to take care of the everyday necessities. She doesn't know how to protect herself, though she knows what's scary and doesn't feel right. She doesn't know how to heal when she's hurt. She doesn't care about convention or habit. She loves freedom, expression and play. She remembers what's important.
She's not always right. She comes to wrong conclusions, especially about herself, and she needs my help correcting those, but she has a childlike wisdom, insight and intuition that I cannot live well without. My job is to protect her, help her heal her wounds, encourage her, and most of all, to listen to her. My job is to help her live and express through me, to realize her dreams, so that i am living a life of heart.
I am grateful for her wisdom and her feelings, even all the difficult ones, because she is honest and true and knows things my adult self has forgotten or routinely neglects. She gets me to stop and smell the roses, to curl up with a book on a rainy day, to listen to the still, small voice within, to dance.
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