For most of this year, I’ve been rudderless.  With no way of steering, I’ve manually paddled in one direction then another … my gaze on the horizon, seeking work that feels right and could produce a steady income.

All my paddling, though earnest, has been desultory.  That’s not surprising.  When you don’t have a destination, you don’t have much incentive to put your back into it.

Who can be productive like this?  Not me.

Here’s how I went from drifting aimlessly to gleefully churning through inspired actions that are lighting me up like pulsing neon and how you can do the same

1.  Let Go

After all that aimless effort, finally, a couple months ago, I let go of the oars and let my boat go where it would.

In real life, the way this looked was a lot of time reading, walking Ducky, visiting with my parents, doing things around the house, writing blog posts when the mood struck, messing around on Ducky’s Facebook page, taking naps, doing more reading.  Once in awhile, the gotta-do-something part of my brain would kick in, and I’d push at this project or that, always with no enjoyable results.

For example, in the beginning of August, I got the idea to write an e-book on novel writing that I could give away to prospective buyers of Novel Writing Made Easy to provide them with a sense of what kind of information I have in the system I sell.  I thought it was a cool idea, and I started the e-book.  It took me 3 weeks to write it.  This wasn’t because I was working on it for that long.  In actual time, I think it might have taken two days.  But I couldn’t seem to stick with it.  I kept getting distracted.  I finally made myself do it, and I got it on the site, and … what a surprise … it’s had no impact on sales.

I went back to reading etc. This time I truly let go.  When fear would rise up and yell at me:  “Gotta make money.  Gotta make money,” I’d say, “That’s none of my business,” and “I choose to be at peace.”  My energy would shift, and I’d relax again.

One of the etc.s was keeping up with my e-mail inbox, and over the next couple weeks, I received links to internet marketing training videos that discussed affiliate marketing and video blogging.  Although intrigued, my initial reaction was a bristling resistance.  I’ve had bad experiences with internet marketing in the past, and I think much of it is scammy and smarmy and I want no part of it. But I reminded myself that the past is in the past; I watched the videos with an open mind.

2. Give Ideas Time To Settle In

The videos planted a seed of an idea in my head. For two weeks, I did nothing but continue to read etc. In the back of my mind, though, the idea began to sprout.

Finally, on August 30, I told Tim about my idea.  “I can’t guarantee it will produce an income,” I told him.  “And I have some concerns about being so visible on the videos with my weight the way it is.”

“You’re beautiful,” he said.  (Do you see why I LOVE my husband?)

3. Check The Resistance Level

Tim then said, “Does it sound like fun to you?” (He’s loving AND wise!)

“Yes, it does,” I said.  “It combines all my passions.”

“You want to do this more than write another book?” he asked.

“I have some resistance to writing a book,” I said.  “I can feel it.  But this idea feels pretty resistance free.”

When you feel edgy about an idea, when you’re entertaining the reasons why it might fail, you have resistance.  Resistance grinds the wheels of productivity to a halt (as it did with that novel writing e-book I mentioned).

4. GO Without Hesitation

Two days later, I did go for it.  I generated a plan, scribbled down a bunch of ideas and came up with name for my new project (that was easy—it just popped into my head).    And just like that, Up From Splat started going from idea to reality.

Between September 1 and September 11, I did this:

• Registered a domain name for a new site
• Chose a theme and tweaked the code until I got it the way I wanted it
• Wrote all page content for the site and 14 blog posts
• Wrote content for six videos and 16 audios and recorded them
• Wrote and did graphics for a 23 page e-book
• Wrote and did graphics a 35-page e-book
• Set up an autoresponder sign up sequence and form
• Set up a youtube channel
• Set up a new Facebook Up From Splat Group

And this is just what I did for my new project.  I also

• Started a new eating plan (yes, I know I don’t need to eat specific things for my body to be smaller, but it feels right) and banished 14 pounds—woo hoo
• Began meditating again (I used to do it regularly and got out of the habit)
• Set up several other self-care systems that used to work for me and that I’d let fall by the wayside

5. Don’t Stick Your Nose In The Universe’s Business

About six days into my rapids-like action, I ran into a boulder.  I watched my new videos and had a moment of self doubt.  “What if”s sprang up like weeds:  what if people hate it, what if it’s a dumb idea after all, what if it fails.  Blah, blah, blah.

I stopped what I was doing.  I used the chi machine and meditated and did deep breathing, and I told myself repeatedly, “That’s none of my business.”  It’s not up to me to handle how it’s received or what happens now.  All I need to do is stay excited about my idea and remain in the identity of a woman who’s already built a successful business.

Ahhh.

I went back to my action fully charged up and raring to go.

Productivity Isn’t Willful

And that’s how you get things done, quadruple what it seems like it’s possible to do.

We tend to think of productivity as a willful thing, something that comes with discipline and schedules and responsibility.  We usually push our way into productivity and then feel all virtuous about it.

True productivity has nothing to do with effort.  It comes from putting yourself in a boat that needs no rudder because it knows exactly where to go—toward alignment with your highest self.

When you stop working so hard to look for a direction and you let that direction simply reveal itself to you, you remove the impediment that was keeping your boat from finding its way.  And that’s when you get productive because that’s when the energy is flowing.  That’s when you have the power of you (your physical self) and YOU (your nonphysical, higher energy self who knows who you really are) acting in sync. When that happens—WOWZA!

I invite you to join me at Up From Splat.  It’s not a site devoted to living in law of attraction awareness as this one is.  The site starts from a place of contrast, from the yuck of what is, and sets a course toward the wonder of what can grow from that contrast  It’s my way of making something awesome out of past events that could be considered lousy.

Although the site isn’t law of attraction-oriented, of course it’s written through that awareness because that’s my perspective.  But I do share more action ideas on the site than I do here.

If you like the site, please share it with whoever you think might find it useful.  And as always, I welcome your comments and thoughts!

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Last week, I ran into Susie, a fellow regular beachcomber, on one of my walks with my dog, Ducky.

“I haven’t found an agate in weeks and weeks,” Susie said to me.  “Have you?”

“No,” I said.

“Where have all the agates gone?” she asked.

I said I didn’t know.

We chatted a bit more and went our separate ways.  Not five minutes later, having forgotten all about agates because I was thinking about traveling in a luxury coach with Tim and Ducky and her two Springer sisters, I found an agate.  And I found another five minutes after that.

Two agates … and two important things to remember about the law of attraction.

Just Because You Haven’t Seen It Yet Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t About To Happen

One day artist and mom, Cindy Jett, got an inspired idea to write a children’s story about a caterpillar that didn’t want to be a butterfly.  With her daughter nearby, Cindy curled up to write a manuscript, and when she finished, she decided to send it off to see if she could get it published.  Here’s what happened, in her words:

“In the ensuing months, I got a steady flow of rejection letters. At around six months, the letters quit coming and, at about eight months, I forgot about my story altogether. Then, a year later, I received a phone call while vacationing in Mexico. It was from New Horizon Press, and the woman on the line was telling me that she wanted to publish my story. You can imagine my total shock, surprise and delight!”

TWENTY months passed between the time Cindy sent out her manuscript and the time she sold it.  After half that many months, most writers (ahem, sadly myself, at times, included) would throw up their hands in despair and say, “I’m never going to sell it.”  Maybe Cindy did that.  Maybe she didn’t.  But what she did was forget about it.  And that’s when it happened.

You might be literally seconds from seeing the experience sprout you’re expecting, the agate you want to find.  The extended lack of it has nothing to do with its coming appearance.  The only thing that can prevent that appearance is a focus on the lack of it.

Forgetting Is Creating

When I talked to Susie about not finding agates, I had no negative emotion about the lack of agates.  I wasn’t at all upset about the lack of them.  Who needs agates when you have Ducky carrying sticks.

I mean, is she the picture of joy … and cuteness … or what?  Then there’s the ocean and the sky and the driftwood ….  I like finding agates but I don’t need them to feel grand.

Like Cindy, who moved on from her manuscript and was focusing on something fun, like a vacation to Mexico, when her manuscript sale showed up, I wasn’t “trying to create” an agate when I found one.  I was just feeling good.

One of the misconceptions I held for a long time, and one that’s still being perpetuated by many law of attraction teachers, is that you have to hold the object of desire in your focus at all times in order for it to appear.  You have to focus on it, visualize it.

Not true.

The moment you have a desire, the universe knows of it.  Your desire is complete, fully created in the energetic world in that instant.  It’s there for you.

Now all you have to do is line up with it.

You do that by being the person who already has that desire.  And that person, of course, feels good.  That person is joyful, at peace, and appreciative.  That person feels awesome.

So that’s how you need to feel to get in the vibrational vicinity of your desire.  That’s it.  No obsessive focus.  No staring at pictures or setting a clock to visualize daily.

If pictures and visualizing makes you feel like that person who already has the desire, then for sure look at pictures and visualize.  But making yourself focus on a desire, which I did for a very long time (with predictable poor results) doesn’t work.  It doesn’t work because in the effort of forcing, you’re actually activating the lack of what you want instead of the appearance of what you want.  Because, think about it, would you be forcing yourself to focus on something you already have?

Finding agates and other treasures like sold manuscripts isn’t supposed to be, in fact, it can’t be work.  It’s fun.

So the way to have the life you want is to simply look for fun … anywhere you can find it.

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Today is Ducky’s first birthday.  The Joyful Springer post I did for this special day says everything I need to say here today too.  So visit the Joyful Springer for a reminder of how to set your priorities for today and everyday.

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Think you can’t ignore something that’s right in front of your face?  Think again.

Last week, thanks to my reader, Mary, I watched a youtube yoga video that teaches breathing exercises and postures that help with weight loss.  Because it felt like inspired action to watch the video and because it felt easy and comfortable to write down the routine and plan to do it, I decided to start a short version of the routine.

One of the exercises in the routine is alternate nostril breathing.  This is something I used to do, and whether it helps with weight loss or not, I couldn’t say, but it is calming, and I wanted to get in the habit of doing it again.

In the interest of time-saving, I decided to do my alternate nostril breathing while I listen to cds or watch videos.  To remind myself to do this, I put a Post-it® index tab at the top of my laptop screen and on the top of the TV screen.

The first day, the tabs got my attention, and I was prompted to do the breathing.

After that, apparently Harry Potter or one of his friends got into my house because the tabs have become pretty much invisible.  Well, not really.  They’re still there.  But I don’t see them.

I can look right at them, and I don’t see them.

Although this isn’t all that helpful when it comes to reminding me to do my breathing exercise, it’s a great skill.  And it’s one I’m becoming rather good at.

Of the seventeen or so ours a day that I’m awake or conscious, I now spend less than an hour of it, maybe not even that, thinking about anything related to lack of money.  It’s like that reality has become a sticky index tab that I see right through.  The same thing is happening with my weight.  I’m becoming so good at ignoring my size that I can look in the mirror and not register what I’m seeing (even though in the past, it triggered a whole passel of negative feelings).

So what am I doing with all that extra time?  Mostly, I’m attending to what’s in front of me to do.  I’m also lingering on anything that makes me feel lucky.

Now, when I say lucky, I don’t mean lucky the way most people mean it—as experiencing something good that just happens to come along.  When I say lucky, I mean the true definition of it:  receiving good fortune, prosperity and success.

I Feel Lucky, Oh So Lucky

You know my penchant for making up singing ditties. “Happy happy day to me” now has to share time with “I feel lucky, oh so lucky, I feel lucky as lucky can be. I feel lucky, and great things happen to me.” This is to the tune of “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story.

Seeing past unpleasant “what is”s allows me to feel lucky.  I have so much to feel lucky about.

There’s all the cool weather we’re having.  It’s 56 degrees outside.  Birds are twittering.  The branches of the lovely hemlocks that surround my house are swaying.

There’s Ducky.  There’s Tim.  (Don’t tell him he got second billing—it’s just that her joy is so pure.)

There’s this feeling I have that everything is on the verge of falling into place.

I feel lucky, oh so lucky.

And I don’t see anything that doesn’t feel that way.

And guess what’s come my way this last week?  Money.  Money is starting to flow in.  It’s a trickle.  But every flow starts with a trickle.

I recommend seeing the world through the eyes of luck, aka, a vibrational match to good things.  True luck isn’t random.  It’s a vibrational frequency of prosperity that the law of attraction responds to with prosperous experiences.  You can find that frequency when you learn to look right through any unwanted “what is.”

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Power Chatter–Part Three: Talk It Up

—-

Photo by Daehyun Park on Flickr.

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A few days ago, Tim and I met with an attorney and provided him with all the paperwork and information he needs to prepare to file my Chapter 7 bankruptcy.  Before that appointment, I had about three weeks to get used to the idea that last year at this time, I thought I had more than $50,000 in the bank and no balances running on my credit cards and now here I am filing bankruptcy because of something dumb that my own husband did, something that ran up all my cards and ran down the bank account.

I realize now that I’ve spent the last ten months in shock.  When you think you’re trucking along doing just fine and then you get gobsmacked with a “what is” reality that seems to have erupted from the ground beneath your feet like a malevolent alien, shock is a reasonable response, for sure.  But it’s not all that helpful to stay stuck in shock for a long time. Shock isn’t exactly a positive vibration.

While in this shock, I have also rocketed up and down the emotional scale.  I’ve been in abject despair, barely contained rage, relentless disappointment, edgy annoyance, and extreme frustration.  I’ve also been in hope and optimism, and yes, I’ve even been in appreciation and love and joy.

I didn’t realize until I gave into the bankruptcy that shock had been the foundation of all my emotion for these many months.  I didn’t realize that I’d yet to fully accept my situation.

The Broken Table

The word bankruptcy can be traced back to the days when business was done on benches or tables in the street.  When a businessman couldn’t pay his debts, his trading table or bench was destroyed—this was the indicator that he was out of business.   The Latin word for table is “bancus.”  And “ruptus” means broken.  Thus “bankruptcy.”

The symbolism seems appropriate to me.  I certainly feel like my table (my sense of stability and security) has been broken.

And until this last week, I have resisted the idea of admitting that it was so broken that I couldn’t fix it without going through a legal process I’d always viewed with an extremely negative perspective.  Did you notice the important word in that sentence?

Resistance.

We all know that when you have resistance, you can’t find alignment with source energy and thus you can’t bring in by law of attraction what you desire to have in your life. And so, all of my shock and refusal to accept that I am where I am has kept me stuck where I am.

Happy Hillbillies

The morning before Tim and I left to go see the attorney, Tim set his metal-framed glasses on the kitchen counter, and when he picked them up again, he was shocked (do you see a theme here?) to find he held only half his glasses.  They’d split right down the middle of the nose piece.

He was baffled.  He hadn’t mistreated the glasses in any way.  They just inexplicably broke.

And oddly, that’s when the shock finally left me.

After Tim and I taped the glasses together and he put them on, I burst out laughing. This was all so ridiculous.

“You really ought to just take off your belt,” I said, “and tie your pants up with a rope, and we can call ourselves hillbillies.  We have all the old stuff and old cars …” (When you prepare for bankruptcy, you do an inventory of everything you have, and I faced the fact that most of what we have is so old it has no value to anyone but us.) “… and now you have taped glasses frames.  Let’s just embrace our situation.”

Tim didn’t see the humor.

I was still laughing.  “Heck, the TV ‘Hillbillies” struck oil,” I said.

I kept giggling.  Maybe I was having a breakdown.

And if I was, it was a good one.  It was a breakdown of resistance.  It was acceptance of what is.

Not that I said acceptance of what is.  I’m not saying focus on what is.

You see, I’ve been doing my best NOT to focus on what is.  But what I’ve discovered is you can’t remove your focus from what is until you accept it.  If you’re pushing against it, you’re focusing on it. You have to be able to say, “It is what it is, and that’s okay.”

What do you do with a broken table?

Well, you can throw it away.  Or you can you use the wood for something new.

Transformations In Wood

A couple weeks ago, my friend, Nancy, sent me an e-mail about extraordinary wood carvings that were created from the tree skeletons left in Galveston after Hurricane Ike’s fury roared through.  About 40,000 gorgeous old trees died.  But the area residents managed to turn this devastating loss into something positive.  They cut down the trees and left the stumps, which wood carvers turned into stunning sculptures of dogs and dolphins and toads and mermaids and angels and a whole lot more.

When I saw the pictures of some of these sculptures, I was struck by the awesome creativity and beauty that can grow from the ugliness of loss.  I knew I needed to apply the lesson to my own situation, but I wasn’t able to do that until I faced my own broken table.

On Thursday, the day after the meeting with the attorney, I began a new way of being in my world.  I’m not just changing a few ways of thinking, I’m changing many ways of thinking AND many ways of acting.

I am taking the broken table of my circumstances and turning it into something new.  I am standing in the now of my life, and without looking back at how I got here, I’m designing a new now and a new future, and in doing so, I’m also designing a new past, because my new thoughts are revising my past as well.

In other words, I’m carving something awesome, something abundant, out of the broken pieces of my life.

What will my carving be when I’m done with it?

I don’t know, but I’ll share it as soon as it takes shape.

In the meantime, I offer this to those who think they can’t possibly be happy in their current situation:

I am standing in the aftermath of a personal hurricane that destroyed much in my life (the finances are just a few of the “trees” that have died in my “what is” reality), and I am happy.  I’m laughing.  I’m having fun.  I’m appreciating.  I’m finding positive aspects.

You don’t have to wait for alignment to bring you something you desire in order to feel good.  Just feel good.  Get in alignment.  And bask in “ahh” of that ease.  Then allow the universe to hand you the tools you need to carve something new.

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In 1996, when I moved to the beach, I bought a book, Drawing For Dummies, because I thought that now that I was going to be a free-spirited divorcee, I would try my hand at art.  But I was so busy walking on the beach and writing that the book sat on the shelf.  Until 2008.

After my accident in 2008, I spent months off my feet and much of that time, I was on pain meds that clouded my thinking. I didn’t do much writing or reading.  Something about my pain or the painkillers or the shock of the accident disconnected me from my usual link with words.

Still, I craved creativity.  I wasn’t content to just watch TV or listen to music.  I wanted to bring something to life. Law of attraction reminded me of that book on my shelf.

Starting with just an ordinary pencil and a pile of computer paper and eventually progressing to a sketch pad and an array of drawing pencils, I began on page one of Drawing For Dummies and worked my way, exercise by exercise, through the whole thing.

And I discovered I could draw.  And I LOVE it.

To teach various techniques, the book’s author leads you through drawing all sorts of things, from imaginary critters to real animals to facial features to people to landscapes.  I drew it all.  Whatever the author said to draw, I drew.

I quickly learned, though, that what I truly love to draw is the animals.  All the other exercises were fun, but the animals lit me up.

Once I finished the book, I began drawing pictures of cute animals.  I started playing with cartoon animals.  I even made up a crossbreed of animal that I will probably turn into a story one day.

My experience taught me two things—when I’m drawing, I’m moving toward alignment, AND when I draw animals, I am in the Vortex. I don’t care whether my drawings are good or not.  I have no plan for my drawings.  I don’t struggle with them.  I just enjoy the heck out of drawing animals.

In this simple lesson lies all we need to know about how to get in the Vortex, about the “draw of the Vortex.”

Your Unique Drawing

Getting in the Vortex (if you’re not sure what the Vortex is, watch the video at the end of the last post) requires, first and last and everything in between, paying attention to you.  You can’t get in the Vortex if you’ve not prioritized your NOW happiness at the top of your to do list.  You just can’t.

We’ve had it backwards all these years.  We thought if we got here or did that or became this, we’d be happy.  Truth is that we can’t get here or do that or become this UNTIL we get happy.

Hard work doesn’t draw you into the Vortex.

Goal setting and to do lists and complex plans don’t draw you into the Vortex.

Discipline doesn’t draw you into the Vortex.

Doing what someone wants you to do doesn’t draw you into the Vortex.

YOU becoming aware of the essence of you and the wonder of you and the delight of you and the fun of you draws you into the Vortex.

It’s the difference between me drawing a human face and me drawing the face of my sweet girl, Muggins.

It’s the difference between the pull of creating and the struggle of pushing something into being.

I’ve recently, finally, plopped into a virtual WHEW hammock, a place of “I give up.”  I’m no longer pounding anything into place.  I’m just hanging out here being drawn into the Vortex by that giant energetic pencil wielded by the genius artist called my feel good thoughts.

And what a canvass the Vortex is.

Just in the last week alone, things have happened that have lopped $1500 off my monthly budget.  That’s $1500 LESS per month I need to come up with to keep us going.  That’s HUGE.  And it fell into place with no effort on my part at all.

Last week, I got the idea to revamp the sales page on my e-book/audio program, the Novel Writing Made Easy System.  I’d just finished reading a 34 page e-book that cost $27, and I realized that I hadn’t emphasized in my sales page how much value I was 0ffering (almost 400 pages in two info-packed e-books, two 150 + page workbooks, 5 1/2 hours of audio, and thousands of pages in bonus materials) for my price of $67.  Selling isn’t my thing, and usually, messing with sales pages is a struggle for me.  It’s not the kind of writing I enjoy doing.  But from inside the Vortex, it was a breeze.  I got an idea, and the next day, the page was rewritten.  (It took until a couple days ago for Tim to put the changes on the site, but that’s okay.) What will it lead to?  I really don’t care.  It’s not for me to figure out.  I just did what I felt compelled to do.  I did it from my Whew Hammock, and I let it go.

Once in awhile, I catch myself thinking about how I could drive traffic to the site or wondering what other things I could do to improve conversion rates etc., but as soon as I do that, I do an about face and let that go to.  It’s not my job to wrestle with the details.  It’s my job to get drawn into the Vortex.

It’s my job to pay attention to what I like, what makes me feel good.

And I can honestly say that I am spending MUCH more time in the Vortex than I ever have in my life.

Here’s what it’s like in the Vortex:

Fast Tube by Casper

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So there’s this Vortex, to use Abraham-Hicks terminology.  It’s an extraordinary font of energy—organized, creational energy that holds everything asked for by everyone.

I think of the Vortex as a sort of energy clearinghouse where everything that’s asked for is given, where every request is put into place in a cooperative way for the good of all who are asking.  EVERYTHING asked for, from a better tasting toothpaste to the vastest monetary fortune imaginable, is given in the Vortex.

Obviously, the Vortex is the place to be.

And how do we get there?

We all know the answer to that one, right?

We get there by releasing resistance, by aligning with Source … in a nutshell, by feeling good.

If you really commit to staying aware of your energy, to really knowing whether or not you feel good (don’t laugh—most people in our society are not conscious of how they feel), you can almost discern a pleasurable elastic pulling sensation when you are sucked into the Vortex.  At times, I swear I almost hear a THWAWCK sound too.

And in the reverse, when you’re disgorged from the Vortex, you can feel that too.  I experience “devortexization” (like my new word?) as a sudden energy plummet.  This enervation is generally accompanied by muscle tension (hence my About Face technique) and for me, a sudden desire to eat something with no known nutritional value.

But remaining in the spirit of Fun, Fun, Fun, since I had my Riding the Rapids epiphany, my number one priority has been looking for ways to flip the switch on my energy and vibration.  I need as many ways to do this as possible because I am living some pretty strong contrast right now.  My “what is” is compelling to my pay-attention-to-the-physical-reality trained mind.

Even Abraham-Hicks has noted that it’s much easier to get into and stay in the Vortex before you manifest something lousy.  For that reason, law of attraction coaches and writers who have never created much of a mess, whose biggest “problems” are an extra 10 pounds of body fat, a need to double their six figure income, and a desire for more travel or fame or whatever, don’t impress me much. It’s relatively easy to manifest wonders when 90 percent of your “what is” reality is already wonderful.  The great stuff you have now, if you appreciate it, is the springboard to even better things.

But what of those of us powerful creators who, in our earnest efforts to understand the law of attraction, managed to focus more on lack than on abundance and created big, big messes? It takes a bit more finesse to find ways into the Vortex when your “what is” is 90 percent unpleasant and 10 percent pleasant.

Because I’m in that 90 percent unpleasant place, I’ve made it my intention to find as many ways to feel good as possible, and the law of attraction has responded to my intention with many fun methods.

My latest method is singing.

The High Note Method Of Revortexization

I’ve always enjoyed singing, but most of my singing was always done when I was alone in the car or the shower.  A few years ago, though, Tim (my hubby, a talented singer and musician, graduate of the Army School of Music) talked me into joining the community choir he directed.  Tim informed me that I’m a tenor, and he explained that I would be singing harmony. I’d never sung harmony before.

But I learned how, and I discovered that not only am I good at learning and remembering harmony notes, I love doing it.  Whenever I was singing, I felt good.  All thoughts of negative circumstances fell away.

The choir is no more (long, very non-Vortexy story, so I’ll skip it), and for the last couple years, I’ve been so caught up in the yuck of “what is” that I haven’t even remembered to sing much.

But in answer to my request for more fun, the law of attraction popped a song into my head: “On Top of the World” by the Carpenters.  Yes, I thought.  That’s how I want to feel.

So I tweaked the lyrics a little to refer more to abundance than love, and I began singing that song dozens of times a day. Then law of attraction nudged me with another song—“Believe It Or Not,” the theme from Greatest American Hero. I tweaked those lyrics too: “Believe it or not, I’m walking on air, I’ve always wanted to feel this free …”

Tim started singing along with me, and now he’s going to write me harmony lines for these two songs, and I’m going to sing harmony to his base melody.

Singing launches me into the Vortex every time. If I feel myself going low (low energy, low on the emotional scale), I can get higher and higher with singing.  What works for me is not just music but singing.  Just listening to music doesn’t quite do it for me.  I need to sing, and I need to know the lyrics, or better yet, rewrite the lyrics to fit what I want to be saying.  This focused singing releases resistance in an instant.

Not everyone responds to singing, but if you’re at all musical, you might give my High Note method of “revortexization” (as opposed to devortexization) a try.

1.  Pick an upbeat song. If you’re looking for some uplifting songs, check out Ducky’s Joyful Springer channel on Blip.fm. She’s a Vortexy DJ, and she blips feel good songs.

2.  Look up the lyrics online (search the song name plus lyrics).

3.  Change the lyrics as needed to say what you want to say.

4.  Practice singing your version of the song until you’ve memorized the lyrics.

5.  Sing your song any time you start to feel yourself being pulled out of the Vortex.

This is a really fun process that acts like a big old eraser, wiping out the siren song of “what is.”

—–

If you’d like a reminder of the Vortex’s power, watch this video:

Fast Tube by Casper

—–

Photo by emilyamimu on Flickr.

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Have you talked on the phone to someone you haven’t met and created a mental picture of the person based on his or her voice?

Years ago, I spoke on the phone with a woman who had what I thought was the sexiest female voice I’d ever encountered.  It was wonderfully rich, with a sexy timbre.  I was sure this woman had to be stunning.  When I finally met her face to face, I was shocked to meet a very large woman with a pock-marked complexion, stringy hair, and a Jimmy Durante-sized nose.  Mind you, none of these qualities are bad, but they just didn’t fit the voice.

For the last several years, I have been one of these mismatched people—not in terms of voice and appearance, but in terms of what I write vs. what I do and think.  To use an old cliché, I haven’t been walking my talk.

On this blog, and in other arenas, I’ve been writing about the law of attraction for many years.  I’ve been studying it even longer.

I KNOW this stuff … but I haven’t been consistently DOING this stuff.

You would think that finding reasons to feel good would be an easy thing to do.  You’d think that living in a virtual reality where your focus is on being the person you want to be would be a breeze.  Why wouldn’t you want to put your attention on thoughts that made you feel great?

The most basic principle of living in purposeful creative harmony with the law of attraction is as simple as it could be.  You just need to find a way to feel good now in order to create a vibrational match to the things you want that you believe will make you feel good when you have them.  Simple.  But not easy.

For example, if I had a penny for every time I’ve intended to be sure to keep my conversation positive and then listened to myself tell others about what has gone wrong lately, I would be the millionaire I want to be.  My mouth seems inexorably attached to the parts of my brain that are relentlessly focused on the struggle with what is.

It’s like that compulsion to stare at a car wreck on the side of the road or the need to gather at a crime scene for a possible glimpse of a murder victim in a body bag.  What’s up with that?  Why are humans so eager to observe another’s misery?

That’s a rhetorical question.  I don’t care about the answer.  All I care about is facing, once and for all, the truth that I’ve been a lazy thinker for a very long time.

I’m not beating myself up about this, mind you.  I’ve been doing the best I can.

On The Beaten Path

The brain is full of ruts, habitual neuropathways that make lazy thinking all too easy to do.  When we think a thought, it creates a connection between neurons in our brains.  That one set of connections is like the first set of tire tracks on a dirt road.  It makes an impression but a pretty faint one.  We need to think a thought over and over in order for it to create a habitual rut.  And that’s all beliefs are—habitual thoughts that we’ve thought for a very long time.

I have 50 years of habitual thought ruts in my brain, and many of them don’t serve me.  Even though I know better, I’ve been letting myself ponder along those deep ruts, and I’ve pondered myself into the bottom of a big, yucky financial hole.

And that is very, very good news!

Why?

Because of bottom vibes.

When There’s Nowhere To Go But Up

Bottom vibes—as in those thought vibrations you experience at the bottom of experiential holes like no money or severe health issues, the kind where they give you X number of weeks to live—are, I’ve discovered, pretty amazing things.  They can be life changing.

Bottom vibes are on the one hand as slow as vibes can get.  They’re way down there on the emotional scale.  They’re feelings like despair and terror.  They’re the kind of vibes that are guaranteed to keep you at the bottom indefinitely.

As lousy as that sounds, though, bottom vibes have hidden “magic” powers. Because these bottom vibes are so slow and feel so lousy and because they create such a miserable, awful, nasty place from which there appears to be no escape, they are vibes that act as a sort of springboard to the most incredible vibes you can have.

Bottom vibes are catapult vibes.  They’re the this-is-as-low-as-I-want-to-go-so-I-better-start-thinking-on-purpose-NOW vibes those of us who talk about law of attraction more than we live by it need.

The way bottom vibes work reminds me of this novelty toy my father gave me years ago.  It’s a clear plastic cylinder filled with some sort of clear, thick fluid and just a little air.  The air, of course, is at the top, and when you flip the cylinder over so the air is on the bottom, the air creates bubbles that slowly rise to the surface of the cylinder.  The bubbles create soothing patterns, which I think is the purpose of the toy.

At the end of last week, my slow-moving bottom vibes finally got low enough and slow enough that they launched me upward.  They launched me upward so fast that overnight I felt like a new person.

Nothing has changed in my physical world … yet.  But the way I feel is light years from what I have ever felt before.

I have finally integrated everything I’ve learned and thought about and written about.  I am, HIP HIP HURRAY, walking my talk. I am being on purpose about the thoughts I choose.  I am using any and all techniques I can think of to focus my attention on how I want to feel and not what is.  I am choosing to be happy TODAY in spite of the logical reasons not to be.  I am, finally, once and for all, following the bottom line of Abraham-Hicks’ advice. I’m chillin’ out.

I’m doing what I feel moved to do as I go through my day.  I’ve worked some.  I’ve played some.  Yesterday, I met with a bankruptcy attorney.  It’s all okay.  It’s okay because I am choosing to look for what pleases me, either in my “what is” reality or my virtual reality. I’m riding the bubble to the top. Want to come with me?

——

First photo is by Deb on Flickr.

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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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I know the law of attraction is one of the energetic laws that bring order to the universe.  I don’t believe it.  I know it.

Even though I know it, however, I have doubts.

These doubts aren’t about the existence of the law of attraction. They’re about my understanding of how to think and feel in a way that makes the law of attraction a positive force in my life instead of a negative one.

The basics of law of attraction’s impact on us are simple:

1.     Think thoughts that match up vibrationally with what you desire.

2.     The better a thought feels to you, the better it matches up with things you want.

Simple … but at least for me, it’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted to learn how to do.

I have had so many times in my life when I thought I was feeling about as good as I could possibly feel, times during which I was sure my thoughts were focused in the direction I wanted to go, times during which I felt exuberant anticipation for what I desired, … times during which the experiences I received were in no way something I wanted.  Why?

What do I need to do differently?  How could I think I was feeling as good as I can feel and yet create one nasty thing after another?

Because I’ve been baffled by my own lack of results, I’ll admit that even though I know comparisons are rarely useful and my vibration is my own work, I look at what others are doing.  I listen to what others say they think and feel, and I see what results they get.  When I see good thoughts bring good results, it encourages me to keep working at this simple process that for some reason is evading me.

One of the people I watch is my husband.  When you live with someone, if you’re close, you have a reasonably good insight into their vibration.  You can’t get in the other person’s head, but you notice body language and expression, and you listen to words.

And when you live with someone, you’re co-creating your reality.  Even though you can’t create someone else’s reality, by default what you create will probably impact your partner.  What he or she creates will impact you.

How Did He Create That?

So I’m curious about Tim’s creations.  Because he feels like a millionaire with complete financial freedom, I’m quite invested in seeing his physical reality match up with his virtual reality.

When Tim and I got sued, I was astounded.  That I would get sued didn’t surprise me that much.  Though I’ve worked and worked at feeling financially secure, I’ve not achieved that feeling with any consistency.  But Tim?  He’s a virtual millionaire.  How does he get sued for defaulting on a debt?

I posed this question to a friend a few days ago.  After chastising me for comparing my vibration with Tim’s and for talking about this bad thing that I didn’t want and that’s now in the past (though not really—it’s ongoing and requires continued action on my part), my friend said something that resulted in a huge shift in how I see vibration.

She said, “Whatever you felt at the time the negative manifestation occurred is how you must have been feeling before it happened because otherwise it couldn’t possibly have happened to you.”

Those of you well-versed in deliberate creation are probably shaking your heads right now, thinking, “That’s nothing big.  Obviously you can’t create something you weren’t a vibrational match to, and the way we can tell our vibrations is through our feelings.”

I know this isn’t big insight, but I’ve never drilled into it quite this way.  Though, I have often linked specific thoughts to events that follow, I’ve never specifically linked the emotion after the event to the emotion before.

I know that when we got sued, I felt scared and angry and embarrassed.  Before we got sued, I had moments of fear and anger and embarrassment.  That was easy.

What about Tim?

I asked him what he felt when we got sued.  “Confused,” he said.

What?

“I was just a little confused because I thought the company we hired to handle our debt was doing what was necessary to keep lawsuits from happening,” he explained.

“You weren’t angry?” I asked.

“No.”

“Worried or scared?”

“No.”

“Embarrassed?”

“No.”

“How do you feel now?” I asked.

“Fine. It’s a non-issue.”

“What about the inconvenience of filing papers and convincing them that we don’t have anything they can sell to get their money?”

“Oh, I guess that’s a little annoying, but it’s not a big deal.”

This conversation was like a whoosh, blasting cobwebs out of my brain.  All this time I’d been baffled by how Tim or others could create things with which they seemed to not be aligned, I was assessing their results from a skewed perspective, MY perspective.

What I did was attribute MY feelings about an event to Tim.  Since I was afraid, angry, and embarrassed, I assumed he was too, and I couldn’t understand why someone as secure and happy as he was could create an experience full of so much fear, anger, and embarrassment.

But he didn’t feel fear, anger, and embarrassment.  He felt confusion and a little annoyance.  His experience, the same experience I had, matched up with his vibration just as the experience matched up with my vibration, but our vibrations were different.

Maybe I’m the only one who gets off track and looks at the world around me to see what others are attracting.  Maybe I’m the only one who has felt I might be doing something very wrong because my experiences are still so far from what I truly desire.

If I’m not the only one, though, if you too have wondered why someone could manifest this or that, maybe my insight will help you.  We all process events in our lives differently.  It’s not all the same to you and me.  Something that might be devastating to you might be no big deal to me and vice versa.  What you perceive as a tragedy may not be tragic at all to the person it’s happening to.

To me, this explains a lot.  It explains how things I think are BAD happen to people who appear to be aligned with only good things.  The thing I think is so bad may not feel so bad to the person it’s happened to.

I find this comforting.

And I find it useful.  All this insight is helping me focus even more clearly on how I feel, on every little nuance of my emotions.

I’ve started looking at all the things I want and thinking about how I know I’ll feel when I have those things I want.  I’ve redoubled my efforts to find ways to feel that way now.

I know that looking at negative manifestations isn’t the way to create a vibrational match to desired experiences, but at least this time, dissecting what happened to me and to Tim helped me.  It gave me greater clarity into how to do this simple yet challenging thing called deliberate creation.

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