The Secret Is Wags

I’ve been trying to find my way through the nonphysical aspects of life for over 40 years, maybe for even longer.  My father used to tell me that when I was two years old, I would stare off into space with such a pensive expression that he was sure I was contemplating the meaning of life.

I entered college with the intention of taking pre-law courses—government, economics etc.  I was bored out of my mind by the end of my first semester, and I ended up spending the rest of my college years immersed in psychology, philosophy, and religion.  I still landed in law school, but the reasons for that is another story.

About a dozen years ago, I thought I’d figured out one important aspect of being a physical body in a world ordered by nonphysical energy that I still didn’t understand.  I thought I could find my way through life by following my intuition in conjunction with sychronicities and signs. 

If, for example, I spotted a book on a subject I’d recently thought of, I took that to be a sign that I should pursue that subject, and I bought the book.  If I was trying to decide whether or not to try a new diet and someone happened to mention it, I saw it as a sign that I was supposed to try the new diet.

Even after I began reading and listening to Abraham-Hicks and other law of attraction resources, I still tended to see signs as indicators of where I should go.

Last week, Tim and I found out that we could settle the remainder of our credit card debt (we have settled and paid off part of it), for a fraction of what we owe.  The total settlement amount, about $17,000, is still $17,000 more than we have, but seeing that we were so much closer to a resolution of the debt felt like a little puff of breeze sneaking in through a crack beneath the door.  I so want this debt to be gone. The idea of being that close to it being gone felt wonderful.

When Tim found out we could settle for that amount, he announced that he was calling his father and asking him for a loan.  Though calling his dad wasn’t something Tim wanted to do and we hadn’t done it since the whole problem began even though we knew he had abundant financial resources with which to help (whereas my parents do not), we would rather be making payments to a family member who isn’t going to sue us than face the legal action and possible huge judgment we have ahead of us.  In other words, Tim decided that calling his dad was his path of least resistance.

Tim’s adoptive father is a military man with a rigid, conservative, mainstream belief system.  For some time, he has thought our choice to attempt to make our living online and with my writing was silly.  He has wanted us to get “real jobs” for many years.  Tim knew his dad wasn’t going to be happy about Tim’s request, so he was nervous about the call, but he still felt it was the right thing to do.

Unpaved Roads Are Bumpy

Tim picked up the phone and called his dad before he “lost his nerve.”  I didn’t hear either end of the call, but Tim’s description of it was enough.  His dad launched on a tirade about our irresponsibility and our failure to “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps.”  He spewed a bunch of irrational and untrue things about Tim’s work record.  He accused me of failing to be an adult.  He said that after Tim’s head injury, I should have gone back into the legal field.  He said we were lazy and we’ve been sitting around playing and now want someone to bail us out.  Bottom line, even though he has ample funds with which to help us, he refused to do so because we need “to learn a lesson.”

Tim attempted to explain to his dad that I’ve been working 6 and 7 days a week, long hours daily for over five years, but his dad wouldn’t hear that.  All he could say was that I should go back to being an attorney.  Tim explained that I was no longer licensed to practice and haven’t been for 14 years and that I’d have to take an expensive course to prepare for the bar exam, sit for the exam again, and then I’d have to compete with people 25 years younger than I am, just out of law school with all their legal knowledge fresh whereas I’ve quite deliberately let all my legal knowledge leak away over the last 20 years.  He then explained that for me to get a legal job that paid well enough, we’d have to move, and he explained the various obstacles that make moving a poor choice.

His dad wouldn’t listen.  Tim was deeply hurt by the time he got off the phone.

After Tim told me about the phone call, I spent a couple hours in a full-lathered rage.  I admit I experienced a form of temporary insanity, completely forgetting anything I’ve ever known about the law of attraction.  Well, not everything.  A tiny voice piped up from behind my anger and said that what Tim’s dad thought about us wasn’t at all relevant to anything, but I was rather enjoying my anger, to be honest.  I’d been trying to move up the emotional scale from sad and fearful for several days.  Anger felt darn good.

So I talked to a friend and my mom about Tim’s dad’s notion that I should go back into the practice of law.  Ridiculous, my mom and friend agreed.  Not only was it not financially or otherwise logically feasible, I hate the law.  All of us acknowledged the law of attraction on this point—nothing good comes from a bad journey.  Getting work I deliberately left behind for a variety of sound reasons isn’t the way to solve Tim’s and my problems.

Mom and I also talked about how what Tim and I have been doing—attempting to build an online business so I can return to fiction writing—requires the kind of determination and persistence that inventors, artists, and writers must have in order to create so much of what we all enjoy in our lives today.  Mom mentioned that men like Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford didn’t give up on their experiments and/or goals and go back to shoeing horses when things didn’t work out.  What Tim’s dad wanted me to do was give up on my work years ago and get a safe, “real job.”  Mom said that we’d be sadly lacking in technology and the arts if that’s what everyone did.

Happily, I did calm down pretty quickly, and Tim and I discussed what had happened from a law of attraction standpoint.  I asked Tim if he pre-paved the call.  “Did you imagine the way you wanted the call to go?  Did you have an imaginary conversation with your dad first?”

“No,” Tim admitted.  “I should have.”  He said he was so embarrassed about making the call, he just wanted it done.  So the results of the call were as they should have been.  Tim didn’t set his intention for what he wanted.  He let his vibration—embarrassment—bring him, by law of attraction, a response that matched his initial feeling.  By the end of the call, he was even more embarrassed.

Re-signing

Tim and I got ourselves back in alignment pretty quickly.  I enjoyed my anger for a bit before moving up the emotional scale to optimism.  Maybe it was best, I decided, that Tim’s dad said no.  It meant we had a better unfolding coming.

The day after the phone call, when I talked to Mom, she told me that a couple hours after she talked to me about inventions and the arts and the need for persistence, she walked into the living room and found my stepdad watching a TV show about that very subject.  The show mentioned the three men she’d mentioned to me.  Was it a sign that I was on the right track after all?

The next day, I received in the mail a complimentary copy of the King County Bar Association Bar Bulletin.  It was addressed to me with my last name as it was when I was married to my ex-husband.

This mailing was off the charts astounding.

I haven’t been a member of the Washington State Bar for over 14 years.  When I was a member of the bar, I was never a member of the King County Bar Association.  I lived in Pierce County, and I wasn’t even a member of that county’s Bar.  I was only a member of the state Bar.  I have never received this bulletin before, and I haven’t received law-oriented mailings in at least ten years.  Was this a sign that I should go back into the law?

In the past, I would have been mightily confused by these two “signs.”  On the one hand, it would appear I was being pointed toward continuing with my writing.  On the other hand, I was being pointed back to the legal field.

The truth?

I wasn’t being pointed anywhere.

These “signs” aren’t what I always thought they were.  They’re not directions.  They’re indicators.

They’re not so much “road signs” pointing me toward where I need to go as they are bathroom graffiti, something akin to a ragged etching on a metal wall that says, “Ande was here.”

Mom saw what we’d talked about on TV and I got the bar bulletin not because the universe was pushing me in any particular direction but because that’s the energy I put out the day before I got these signs.  The law of attraction brought me matches to my passionate energy—on the one hand, my passion for persevering toward my goals, and on the other hand, my anger at being judged for not going back to the legal field.

I think in our quest to be spiritual, to be oriented toward the nonphysical, we can get twisted around.  The truth is that the only signs we need to be aware of aren’t the sychronicities that show up (except to the extent that they remind us of the power of the law of attraction).  Instead, the signs we need to be watching for and following are the emotional signs that tell us where we’re heading.  If we’re feeling good, that’s a sign that we’re on the road to good things.  If we’re feeling bad, that’s a sign that we’re heading toward something unpleasant.

The law of attraction does come with a road map.  That road map is how we feel.

I keep coming back to that even though I’ve yet to find ways to feel great consistently in the face of all that’s going on.  I do know, though, that I don’t have to feel perfectly great.  I just need to find a way to feel a little better, then a little better, then a little better.

Each improvement in how I feel is a sign that I’m heading in a direction I want to go.

And that’s the only sign I need to follow.

———-

Photo by jphilipg on Flickr.

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Tags: Abraham-Hicks, Feeling good, Law of Attraction, signs, Synchronicity

This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 11:34 am and is filed under Abraham-Hicks, Emotional guidance system, Emotional scale, Feeling good, Law of Attraction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.