Now Is All That Matters A few years ago, I was led on a journey of discovery. I was shown step-by-step a path to understanding spirituality. My path started with reading books; books that had been presented to me by the universe. By this I mean that the books were put in my path and shown to me repeatedly until I paid attention to the synchronicities and read them. These books had introduced me to the idea that I am the creator of my reality through meditation and observing my mind instead of blindly following all of its terrible suggestions. They led me to the understanding that I could find a path of Spirit that would bring all my desires to me, without a lot of hard work. I was fascinated to say the least, who wouldn’t be? I read books on meditation for a solid year before I ever tried the practice because I was so concerned about doing it wrong. It was the same cycle for me with manifestation, however I switched my focus to YouTube videos. It started slowly with videos about the universe and its guidance system which eventually led me to videos about manifestation. I was so excited, I wanted to live in the “vortex” too. I knew that I was on to something good. I began watching videos by Abraham Hicks. You know the ones; Abraham speaks through Esther and tells everyone what they need to let go of to get all the goodies in the vortex. I loved the idea, all this great stuff in the vortex, just do these few things and it will all come to you. Come to me baby! The problem was that every time I watched the videos, I felt anxious. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to feel anxious, rather good, grateful, and as if I already had it all. I 1 wanted to feel the latter, I really did, but I was still anxious every time. I kept listening for a while in the hope that the feeling would pass, it did not. Finally, I had to stop watching the videos. I didn’t know why I was experiencing anxiety, but I knew that this was not the feeling necessary for manifesting all that was waiting for me in the vortex. I left Esther and moved on with my life. I always had a feeling that maybe I would be able to go back to them one day, but I didn’t want the wrong feeling to cloud my manifesting machine, I knew this much was true. Occasionally I would become curious and go back and watch the videos and I would feel that tinge of anxiety rises, and I’d turn them off. My curiosity was more about why I was unable to watch them without the anxiety while these people were able to completely embrace the ideas that were discussed in the videos. Why did I always have that feeling that I shouldn’t have feelings, or at least not feelings that I perceived as negative? I knew that I was on a path of discovery and that God/Universe/Source/Higher Power would guide me and I didn’t need to stress, but I wanted to know! What the hell was I doing wrong, or was I just too underdeveloped spiritually to consume this at that time? I left the videos alone again. At this point, I began to practice staying in the moment in my life. You know, you can watch a million videos, read a million books, listen to a million podcasts, but if you never incorporate the practices into your life, change will never come. If you think about it, this moment is all that we have. Yesterday is gone, we can dwell on it or relive it again and again but nothing about yesterday will ever change, it’s done. Tomorrow is not here yet so we can fantasize and project, but it hasn’t happened yet, so it isn’t real. The only moment is this one, and this one, and this one. That’s it, there is nothing else. 2 Something amazing happened when I began practicing this skill, I started to have this feeling inside, a good feeling. I don’t know how best to describe it except to say that it was like pure happiness. It is a feeling that fills me so full of contentment that I don’t concern myself with any other moment. It is gratitude, happiness, satisfaction, wholeness, and love all wrapped into one. Now I always get this feeling when I shift my perception from one of worry (thinking about anything that hasn’t happened yet) and regret (thinking about the past and all the things that can never be changed) to being in the current moment. When I can make that shift, everything is beautiful. I am not wanting anything, I don’t have a need to change my feelings because the feeling is amazing, I can breathe in my surroundings, the air, the light, everything, and enjoy it all. It’s truly incredible. It is so hard to describe, I have read about it and listened to others describe the feeling and none of those descriptions do it justice and I am sure that mine is completely inadequate as well. I am trying to convey that you simply must find it for yourself. You can and you must practice this and find the feeling that I am talking about. It is so easy for me to access it now that I have found it and have practiced enough to know how to access it at any time. When I first began to practice being in the moment I needed to sit quietly, without any chance of disruption, relax my breathing, close my eyes, and focus on being in the here and now. After all the preparation that I needed to find my special place within and without, sometimes I would find the place and sometimes I couldn’t get my head to shut up. My mind is a terrible place to live and sometimes it takes me on a journey detailing every mistake and misstep I have ever made in my life. It can be exhausting. So, on the good days that I was able to get into the flow, the sweet spot, that joyous place in the present moment, I would experience that amazing feeling of absolute rapture. After finding this place within myself several times, I began 3 practicing in other places. I started to practice while riding as a passenger in the car. It was easy to attain here too. As I continued to practice in different areas, I learned that although it is easiest to attain this state while not doing an activity, I am able to attain it amidst activities as well. A great place to put this into action is during conversations with difficult people. I can listen intently to someone while in my mind I prepare for takeoff. I can find the sweet spot and listen at the same time. Over time and with practice I have been able to incorporate this practice in many areas of my life. During any activities that I have difficulty reaching this state, I can reach it in between active moments, I believe that it’s better to achieve when you are able to as opposed to never finding this place at all. When I was finally able to let go of trying to do it perfectly, all the time, and accept that I should just take it when I can get it, it became much easier. When I surrendered, and allowed, it became easy. When I stopped trying to control, or understand and correct, it became easy. When I loosened my grip, I was able to get a firm handle on it. I am currently working on shifting into this state while triggered. This will be the mother of all challenges thus far. When I am triggered, I have a hard time controlling my emotions. To be able to control my emotions and my mouth, find a place of surrender, relaxation, and gratitude within, and then settle into it will be a great achievement. I have been working on triggers for the past few years. When I am triggered, I can stop the spiral of thoughts, breathe, and identify whether my reaction in the situation is warranted or if I am overreacting. I can then focus on my breathing and pay attention to where the emotional intensity is coming from and by doing this practice, it takes the proverbial wind out of the trigger’s sails. I am very proud of all the work that I have done, it has not been easy, but the result is that I no longer have to react to these raw emotions. 4 One very important aspect of this journey has also been developing the ability to shift my focus on being in the moment. A crucial part of this occurs when I look at things differently than I ever have before. Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about how we can rewire the brain with our thoughts in order to create our dream life. He says that by thinking differently than we had originally been trained to think, we can create new circuits in the brain which can help us to build a different future apart from the trajectory that we are currently traveling. It makes sense to me. If I continue to do the same old things, day in and day out, why would anything about my life change? If you think about it, most people can move through their lives pretty much, unconsciously. We can wake up in the morning, drink the same coffee, eat the same breakfast, kiss our significant other and kids on the same cheek, etc. So, when I am moving through my day, sometimes I stop working and just think about how grateful I am for my job, my home, and the beautiful life that I have. I do not need anything, I have everything. If you ask me in this moment, what I need, I will say, “nothing”. I have everything. If you honestly stop and look around and ask yourself what you need in this moment to be content and satisfied, what would you say? I don’t mean that you should look over your entire life and list all that you feel is missing, I mean just look at this moment. What, in this exact moment, would you need to feel complete? Just for this one moment? If you can keep your mind in the present moment, I believe that you would know that there is nothing else that you need, you have everything within you. There is nothing else. This is the key to maintaining that good feeling. When I stop and look around and consciously realize that I need absolutely nothing, I am free. That feeling of freedom from the bondage of ego, self, wanting, lacking, etc., is the key! This is it! It’s simple but it certainly wasn’t easy. Don’t let social media convince you that you need to buy their products or do things exactly as they say that you do. My experience comes from watching others, practicing what 5 feels right to me, and perfecting the style that I developed for myself. I don’t believe that this practice is black and white, and we should all conform to a cookie cutter model of behavior. We are all different, we all understand and execute things differently, and if you start to work on new processes to help yourself, I truly believe that the universe will guide you into the process that will work for you. Do what feels comfortable and right to you and you can’t go wrong. Remain teachable, and open to the guidance that will be offered. The universe will nudge you to keep you on the path and the journey will be much easier if you can follow the guidance and not proceed aimlessly on self-will. Self-will and ego will derail us and put us on a path of pain, but the universe will always redirect us no matter how far off course we travel. If you are anything like me, then pain will become your friend in this process because you will learn after several challenging situations, that the pain is the gateway to growth. The growth we experience on this journey is truly invaluable. Once you can find your way to the present moment or “the zone” as I sometimes call it, you then must figure out how to stay there, at least for small amounts of time. I’m not sure that it’s possible to live in that space but I often catch myself outside of the zone, sleeping in life, and must shift my perception back to the present moment. We are conditioned beings so we will slip back into the ordinary moments that pass us by with minimal awareness to their existence. You know, those times when you can drive for miles and just be lost in thought and not remember the drive? These are situations where we are sleeping, we must wake ourselves up when we realize that we are falling into that place. When I see that I am living an ordinary existence and not spending my moment in appreciation, I simply shift to that place. I look around and become aware of what’s around me. If I am eating, I notice the food, the taste, how I am chewing, I try to enjoy everything about the moment. Humdrum attitudes don’t bring us our wildest dreams. The 6 reason why so many people don’t believe in this is that they would have to change their behavior and do it while having complete faith that it works. They fear looking a certain way in front of others and stay in their cages, they keep themselves locked away in the ordinary. Day in and day out, the same old thing. Why would anyone want that? If you knew that if you listened to your intuition, that force inside of you that sometimes gives you a yearning to do something completely out of your “character”, at the very least you might have fun because you tried something new and different. At the most, you might find out that you have a talent you never realized or a gift that you have been squandering out of fear of how other people might view you for trying it. Just do it, do the thing, go with the feeling. I have a lot of people on social media that follow me, and I know that every time I post a new blog or anything really, they look at it but never like it. These are the people that live in fear. They are even afraid about what I’m doing, imagine that. It’s as if being happy for me for trying something new and putting myself out there to be judged is such a bad thing. What kind of mindset keeps you in a place that you can’t even support other people that are doing things that would absolutely scare the life out of you if you were doing it? I want to cheer people on, especially those that are risking something to help others and build their own business. It’s not easy to do this. When I made my first few YouTube videos, I was so worried about being judged. It was stressful after I released them and shared the link on my social media, I was so anxious. Then I realized when I got only positive comments and feedback that a lot of people probably wish they had the guts to do it, but they don’t, and they never will. They will stay in their safe, conditioned habitat, doing exactly what is expected of them each day and nothing more. My goal is to help people to realize that sleeping through your life is not the way to get what you want. Working hard is not the only way either. The universe doesn’t punish us or place 7 expectations on us, it only conspires to give us all that we believe we should have. If we believe that we deserve nothing, that’s what we get. Have you ever been in a relationship and said repeatedly, “He/She is never going to change.”? When you speak like this you are sealing your own fate. You have decided that in fact, they are never going to change and since you are fixated on that idea then clearly that must be what you desire, and the universe delivers. When you can remain in the feeling of gratitude and all the good feelings that come with being in the present moment you really can’t help but attract good things. It’s like when you are driving and you think about red cars and all you see are red cars, everywhere. One comparison I can make is that the universe is like social media, the more you search for and talk about a certain thing, the more your social media will present it to you through ads, profiles, and pages. I realize that the aforementioned example is a result of analytics and not of the natural order of things, but it is an example that mirrors the behavior of the universe and it’s easily understood by the vast majority. Another very important realization that I came to in this process is that when we wake up in the morning we automatically and immediately think of our problems. It is instantaneous, and it sets the tone for the day. If our first thought out of the gate is a negative one, then exactly how would we expect things to go from there? As soon as I realized that I do this, I was able to stop it. I don’t do it perfectly but as soon as I become aware that my thoughts are traveling down the road of negativity, I snap myself out of it. I stop my train of thought and shift my focus to something positive. Usually, I think about the yoga that I am about to do and the meditation that will follow that. I make it a point to smile to myself and feel happiness about my morning routine. In the past, I would have the thought of my problems the instant I opened my eyes and then I would move through my morning routine, my coffee, my shower, and all the while I’d be 8 ruminating on my problems. Even though I was awake and doing all these things in the name of self-care and starting my day off right, I was mentally stewing in the negative. Seems counterproductive doesn’t it? If you trust the Universe/God/Source/Higher Power and go with the flow, stay in the present moment as much as possible, and live your life in appreciation for all that surrounds you, your life will change. I can guarantee that. I can say that because when I did these things, my life changed. When we are faced with challenges and we’re able to remain calm and as objective as possible, solutions will come. When you live in a state of gratitude and awe for the gifts that are all around you, life is beautiful no matter how much or how little you have. This is the perfect state for manifesting but it’s really the perfect state to simply be in. How can you lose? Relax and allow what is yours to flow to you. If you are struggling with finding what works for you, stop. Don’t struggle, allow the answers to come to you. You will be guided when you are at peace. It’s harder to receive the messages and direction when you are tense and struggling. I have learned that anytime that I feel an internal struggle because I am trying to make something happen, I need to stop, relax, and wait. The message will be revealed, the answers will come, the direction will be given, I will be shown the way and you will too. 9
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