The Secret Is Wags

Last week, I wrote about what to do if what you want isn’t here yet.  Today, I want you to think about this question:  What if it IS here and you just can’t see it?

We bought a new mattress a year and a half ago.  It was a memory foam mattress we put on top of a sealed wood platform that Tim build.

Here But Hidden

We loved the mattress at first.  Then it began to sag.  It broke down within a few months.  We called Costco and they said they’d come and get it (you gotta love Costco), and we ordered a different mattress to replace the one that didn’t hold up.

The day the pick-up company was supposed to show up, we took the mattress off the platform to move it to the garage.  I was shocked to discover that under my side of the mattress, a huge wet spot was mildewing on the mattress and on the platform.  Tim’s side was fine.

The reason for the spot isn’t really important—but if you’re curious, I was having major night sweats during those months, and memory foam mattresses generate more body heat.  We think I basically sweated through the mattress.

For all that time, I’d been sleeping on a big, mildewed water stain.  It was less than 10 inches from me, and I couldn’t see it.  It was right there, but if you’d have asked me if I slept on a mildewed wet spot, I would have confidently told you I did not.

You Can’t See The Energy

All physical manifestations—experiences and things—exist in energy form before they take physical form.  We can’t see that energy.

Just like we can’t see the radio waves that bring us our FM stations or the waves that bring us TV and cell phone service, the energy that creates our world is there but not visible.  It’s no less real just because we can’t see it.  Radio waves are real all the way from the station to our stereos even though they don’t seem to be real to us until the music hits our ears.

Every single thing you want begins to form on an energetic plane the moment you conceive of it.  All you have to do is allow it.

It might be just inches from you, so close you could touch it if you knew it was there.  But then you start asking why what you want isn’t here.  You feel like the character, Anya, from the Buffy the Vampire TV series when she says, “I’m trying to be patient, but it’s taking too long.”

The second you ask that question … BOOM.  Your creation, which could be seconds from taking physical form, retreats back into energy.  Here but hidden.

That big wet spot has been a big deal in my life.  Every time I’m tempted to say, “Where is my …….?” I remember that spot.  I remember that what I want is RIGHT HERE.  I already have it.  I’m sleeping on it.  I’m living with it.  It’s here.

For those of you who care—I don’t have a wet spot under my mattress anymore (I checked).  The new mattress (different brand) has been great, and I’ve discovered a cool herbal supplement that has left me night-sweat-free.  And that was a creation that was in my reality on the nonphysical level far before it landed in my physical experience.

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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 (more…)

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My mother keeps many of her memories in a cedar chest at the end of her bed.  The trunk holds awards and clippings—I think she saved every newspaper column I ever wrote, and she has at least five copies of the first whole newspaper in which my first column appears.  The chest holds locks of hair and photographs and playbills.  And it holds some of my early artistic and literary efforts.

There’s the paper plate covered in uncooked pasta and sprayed with gold that I made in third grade.  There’s the misshapen sickly blue mug that I made in fifth grade.  There’s the stilted poetry I wrote throughout grade school, and the 20 page, 10 chapter “novel” I wrote when I was twelve (I think it started with something like “it was a dark and stormy night.”)

My mother treasures every one of these creations.  Why?  Because her only child made them.

Each of us is still the child we were when we were young enough to be making funky art projects.  Each of us is worthy of the kind of love that saves those projects.  Each of us deserves to have our creations treasured and celebrated. (more…)

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About five years ago, I met an elderly gentleman who, according to his wife, could fall asleep within one minute of closing his eyes.  And he could do it in any situation.  Since I often took a long time to fall asleep, I was intrigued and I asked him how he did it.

He told me he learned his “trick” when he was a soldier in World War II.  Because sleep was imperative but sleeping conditions were abysmal, he had to find a way to get to sleep no matter what.  He tried several things and finally discovered one that has worked for him to this day:  When he closes his eyes, he puts all his concentration on relaxing his facial muscles. He consistently falls asleep within a minute of beginning the process. (more…)

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I started writing right a few days ago.  I’m writing my ideal life.  To start, I dug out some old incomplete journals to use because I didn’t want to go out and buy new ones.  I’m writing in these differently than the way I used to—recording my life as it unfolded. Now I’m recording my life as it exists in the Vortex, that place where all my desires are already reality. I’m writing the life of the identity I’m claiming for myself as a financially free, awesomely successful, and stunningly healthy woman.

In one of the journals I dug out for this purpose, I discovered a list of manifesting steps taped to the inside cover.  The date on the cover was 1998.

When I saw this list, my stomach heaved, and the enthusiastic energy I’d summoned for this good-feeling project was sucked from me as if by a gigantic invisible Hoover®.  On my list of steps, I’d written out the four things I wanted at the time:  financial freedom, success as a regularly published author, a healthy and slender body, and a loving husband.  Okay, so I’m one for four (I have the loving husband).  Seriously, though.  I’ve been after these same things for a dozen years, and truthfully, even longer than that.  How depressing.

But wait ….. (more…)

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It’s a Scrabble day.  Most Sundays, Tim and I manage to get in a game of Scrabble.  I won last week, not that I care one way or the other.  For me, it’s all about getting the best word scores I can in each turn.

Last Sunday, I had the seven-letter word, “unmined,” on my tray.  I looked all over the board and couldn’t find a place to play it.

Before my turn, I’d realized (excuse the indelicacy but I share it to make a point), that I needed to pee … badly.  I thought I could wait until the end of my turn, but as I scanned the board for a place to put my wonderful word, my bladder kept vying for my attention.  I wasn’t comfortable.

So I put aside my lap desk and went into the bathroom.  Ahh, better.

While I was up, I got a drink of water (must refill the tank), pet Ducky, and looked outside at the trees.  All of these things felt good. (more…)

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I have three Twitter accounts.  Or rather, I have two—one for my writer self and one for my law of attraction self, and Ducky has one.  Ducky’s account is the one that has grown the fastest.  In just a few weeks, she’s up to 240 or so followers. Of my other two accounts, both of which are fledglings, the law of attraction account is moving at three times the speed.  I have seventy-some followers, and all but a handful are trying to sell me something.

Like I said the other day in One Small Squeak For Humankind, it seems like most of the world’s population is selling something related to the law of attraction. All these Twitter followers who want me to pay for their coaching or e-books or seminars, and all the authors of the multiple law of attraction books and blogs that I’ve read have something in common.  They’re people who have, or at least claim to have, used the law of attraction to make grand changes in their lives. These people say they’ve taken Abraham-Hicks’ teachings or the information in The Secret and they’ve run with it.  It’s changed their lives.  They’re success stories, and they’re clamoring to help everyone else be success stories too.

And here I am.

One small voice in the middle of a raging storm.

A couple years ago, I thought I was one of those success stories.  I had created a bunch of wonderful things in my life—finding my loving husband, Tim; getting three books published; losing a bunch of weight; inheriting money.  I got this law of attraction stuff, so I wrote about it and sold a short e-book about it for a time.

Then the winds rose and the torrents descended.  Life slammed me with injuries—Tim’s and mine, career disappointment, weight problems, and a huge financial crisis.

On the sliding scale of life messiness, with 10 being the most together and 1 being total disaster, I’m hovering around a 3.  It’s gusty around here.  The hail stings and threatens to blind my visions of a happy future.  The gale’s shriek nearly deafens me.

Who am I to write a blog about law of attraction?

The Woman Wears Gor-Tex®

The last couple days, literal wind and rain have blasted through my town in a succession of squalls that darken the sky and rattle the windows.  Each day, Ducky and I have headed to the bay side of town and walked on the beach in the storms.

I’m one of the few crazies in the world who actually likes walking on stormy days.  My last dog, Muggins, and I (a long time ago, I traded power suits for Gor-Tex® raingear) walked in 40 plus m.p.h winds and heavy downpours regularly.  When I had my accident and Tim had to take over walking Muggins for several months, he couldn’t stand the stormy weather.  He’s a wussy walker.  He started taking her to the nearby woods trails, where the forest sheltered them from the worst of the elements.  (Note—Tim says he’s not wussy; he’s smart.)

I found all of my greatest treasures on Muggins’ and my stormy walks.  Every one of the glass floats I have appeared on the beach during or right after a storm.  And the rainbows?  I’ve seen some mind-blowing rainbows, the kind that are so vibrant and vivid—sleek streaks of color against a black sky—that they seem to stop time.

Photo by Bùi Linh Ngân

I’ve seen a dozen such rainbows on the beach in the last couple days.  Those rainbows reminded me of the extraordinary power of where I am in my life right now.

Desire’s Pull

Abraham-Hicks say that when you have strong, strong desire, the pull of that desire, the speed of the stream of energy that is moving toward what you want, is so fast that when you resist it, you’re going to get beat up.  And they say that when you start attempting to activate your vibration purposefully to attract something into your life, you will, as a matter of course, activate the opposite as well.  Things can become a big mess for awhile.

Someone with puny desires and no intention to align can putt along nicely in a mediocre place and look, from the outside, like everything is just fine.  This person can have enough money and a decent job and an okay relationship.  But joy?  Most people like this are missing joy.

People like me who have HUGE wants and even bigger intention to have those wants tend to trash our lives before we get it together and line up with all we desire.  But joy?  We have joy.  We have stunning pockets of it, like the swaths of blue that appear like a divine magic trick from the wall of blackened sky when squalls pass by and expose the sun.

This is the wild place, the disjointed, cacophonous place from which amazing things can happen.  This is the place where I’m living now.

Gratitude For The Wild Things

In 1995, my first husband and I separated for two months, and I rented a cottage by the ocean in Cannon Beach, Oregon.  I spent the time writing and taking long stormy walks with Muggins.  I also wandered the art galleries.  One day, I found a print by Bev Doolittle called “Prayer For The Wild Things.” I almost bought it but for some reason didn’t (money wasn’t an issue then, so I could have).  I wish I had.  The print captures for me the essence of life at its most powerful: a gnarled tree, ragged rocks, a dark sky, and hidden deftly within it all, created by the subtle strokes that are Bev Doolittle’s genius, dozens of animal spirits.

The print means even more to me now than it did when I first saw it.  The animal spirits, I think, are our desires—right there in front of us but hidden from our physical ability to see them.  The rugged landscape is the “what is” of a reality created by resistance vibrations.

Of course we don’t have to create wild messes like I have.  We were meant to come forth into joy and use contrast to lead us to more and more joy.  But most of us have let society and our “what is” circumstance get us out of alignment.  We’re in the wild place.

What we need to remember is the wild place is a powerful place.  It’s the place where contrast is SO huge that our vision of our desires becomes crystal clear.  When we’re in this place, the smallest shift in vibrational focus can have the most incredible impact.  To use Abraham-Hicks’ analogy, the energy stream is moving fast, and when we align and turn our boat to go with the stream, we shoot toward what we desire, with no effort on our part at all, with astounding speed.

So that’s who I am.  I am a powerful woman who by virtue of a little misuse of that power created a storm where the wild things live.  I write from what is and what will be.  I write from gratitude for the storm that has gathered around me because I rejoice in the beauty of the rainbows forming on my horizon.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you the story of a man who turned his personal storm into not just an amazing rainbow but the pot of gold at the end of it as well.

Say a prayer of thanks for the wild things.  They come bearing gifts.

I love comments and welcome yours.  To leave a comment, click on the “comments” link (it will say “No comments or “1 comment” or more) at the end of the tags in “Posted in” at the end of this post.

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Uninspired doing is a total waste of time.  I know this.  I’ve learned this the very slow, very hard, very long way.

What do you do, though, when all your action choices seem unpalatable and doing nothing doesn’t feel right either?

For example, over the last couple months, I’ve known that doing nothing about my financial situation didn’t feel good at all.  Tim feels fine about that.  He’s so sure money will flow to us that he could spend his days watching the clouds float by and be as happy as a dog running on the beach.

Me?  Nope.  I don’t have the knowing that he has.

My path of least resistance is to do SOMETHING that could lead to an income for us.  Tim’s okay with that too.  (He’s pretty darn good at getting easy.)

So for a month, I bid on a bunch of freelance projects.  HATED it.  Did it anyway.  Never landed a single job.  No wonder.  My alignment sucked.

I batted about a bunch of ideas. None felt all that good.

I finally landed on the idea of revamping my novel writing e-book package and sales page and promoting it.  This idea felt a little better.  Not great, mind you.  But better.

It felt good enough to start moving forward with it.

Now, of course, my first choice is to write a novel.  Or better yet enjoy Tim’s lottery winnings and just focus on blogging.

I deliberately walked away from internet marketing two years ago; I never thought I’d be doing it again.  It’s not something I feel that great about.

But between that and working for pennies to write articles on subjects I have no interest in, the e-book marketing won out.  And so I moved forward.  I wasn’t having a good time.

Thoughts about the project kept pushing good thoughts out of my head. I noticed that instead of thinking about our house on ocean view acreage in Oregon, I was thinking about sales conversion rates and search engine optimization and website stats.  Not good.  I hate that stuff.

So I stopped.  And I asked, how could I make this project more interesting and fun?

It took a few days, but I came up with the idea of creating a series of audios to go with the e-book package.  Writing the audio scripts and recording them sounds like fun.

So NOW I feel good about what I’m doing.

Within this story I just told, do you see the two choices you have when an action you think you must take doesn’t appeal to you?

Kenny Rogers sings, in The Gambler, “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.”  He was singing about cards, but it applies to action journeys too.

Fold ‘Em

If the action you’re taking feels truly lousy and you hate every minute of it, STOP.  Fold ‘em. Walk away.

Sometimes, you may walk away and never go back.  As with my freelance job search, you may find that once you turn away from the resistance you were creating by trying to do something you hated, you attract another opportunity to replace what you didn’t want to do.  Or, as with my e-book revamp, you see something that was there already in a totally different way.  You don’t have access to great ideas from a place of resistance and “I hate this.”

Sometimes, when you walk away for just awhile, your energy shifts enough to go back and do the “hated” task with a different attitude.  By walking away, you get access to a better feeling place that then attracts a more relaxed way of facing the task.

Abraham-Hicks says, “If there is something that you have to do, resist the temptation to do it under duress. Ask yourself, ‘What’s the worst thing that would happen if I didn’t do this?’ And if you can get away with not doing it at all, don’t do it. And then imagine what would it feel like to have this done. Spend a day or two, if you can, just 15 minutes here, 5 minutes here, 2 minutes here, here and here, imagining it completed in a way that pleases you! And then, the next time you decide that you’re going to take action about it, the action is going to be a whole lot easier.”

Hold ‘Em

When a poker player holds a hand, what is he focused on?  The cards in the hand that do him no good?  No.  He’s focused on what he thinks could be the winning cards.  He’s focused on the pair or the full house or the straight.  The cards in his hand that don’t make up the potential win are unimportant to him.

This is how you must look at a task that you’re going to go ahead and do.  Find what’s good about it.

This is what I did with my e-book marketing action.  I looked for, and thanks to law of attraction, found something about it that appealed to me.  And now, when I think about it, I focus on the fun aspects and refuse to give thought to the aspects I’m not crazy about.

There’s always a way to take action that feels good.

Abraham-Hicks once offered the example of a woman whose husband is in the hospital dying.  She’s been at his side for days and days. She’s exhausted and sad and scared.  She understands her energy though, and she knows she needs to find reasons to feel good if she’s to help her husband at all.  He doesn’t “believe in” this vibrational stuff so he’s feeling sorry for himself and he’s depressed and scared.

This woman wants to stay away from the hospital.  She wants a day to do something that feels good.  But if she does that, the guilt will ruin any “feel good” she might find.

If she goes the hospital, she knows she’ll feel resentful and angry and she’ll get sucked into her husband’s negativity.

Which is her path of least resistance?  She can’t fold ‘em because she’s not willing to walk away from her husband.

Abraham-Hicks suggested that she go to the hospital for just a couple hours.  They suggested that she find something that makes her feel good to share with her husband (a book or magazine or whatever) and when she feels like she really needs to leave, she tells her husband how much she loves him and she leaves to enjoy the rest of her day.

It’s like that bit of sunshine peeking through the wee hole.  When you can’t comfortably give up on some action, you find an aspect of it that feels good and hold on to that aspect the way a gambler would hold onto a royal flush.  You, “Clean It Up.”

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Okay, so I’ve found relief on the subject of debt. Now I need to find relief on the subject of creating an income, and more specifically, on the subject of selling my books.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from an agent who had requested a partial of my novel manuscript. She said she enjoyed it and it was very well-written but that she didn’t connect with the main character as much as she’d hoped.

Funny thing, that. My old agent, who decided not to represent the manuscript, said one of the things she did love about it was how compelling the main character was.

As you can see, it’s not about the facts. The facts vary from person to person.
Over the last week or so, I’ve received several rejections to my manuscript query letters. These letters have really been upsetting me. I’ve felt the grinding clench in my belly whenever I saw one.

Two days ago, though, when I got a rejection, I caught myself feeling bad and deliberately went looking for a better thought: “Okay, so I don’t like having my work rejection. What do I want? I want to find an agent who loves my manuscript and the way I write and is enthusiastic about representing me. I don’t need to agonize over each rejection because the universe will bring me the right agent at the right time when I just relax and allow.”

I reminded myself of a story a friend told me last week. She lives in New York City and has to hail cabs on a regular basis. She said she and her sister used to get very upset when cabs would pass them by, but my friend’s mother would tell them not to get upset because the right cab would come along. My friend said that she learned her mom was right. Often, when a cab finally did pick them up, they’d take my friend and her sister to their destination and not accept payment for the fare.

I know that my writing success isn’t about my talent so much as it’s about my vibration. In the past, I’ve always gotten upset by every rejection I’ve received. Obviously, this upset was a disallowance of what I wanted. Every time I got upset, I pushed away acceptance. And I got another rejection. And got more upset. And got another rejection…. And so on and so on and so on.

Abraham-Hicks says we’re never standing still even when it feels that way. We’re never stuck. We’re just creating the same thing over and over.

So I’m learning to relax about rejection. When I got the one yesterday from the agent who couldn’t connect with my main character, I only felt the slightest tension and annoyance before I caught myself and said, “I appreciate the contrast to remind me that I want an enthusiastic agent. The right agent is out there. In the meantime, I appreciate my ability to write and the fact that I keep being told that my writing is good.” And I could feel the relief.

So how do I spell relief? F-O-C-U-S. I focus on a good-feeling thought or experience. And I feel relief.

Are you finding ways to release resistance to what you desire? I’d love to hear your story.

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All week, I’ve been thinking about Mexican food.  I’ve wanted cheese enchiladas, refried beans, and rice.  I wanted to go out to eat, but that’s not something I’m going to spend my money on at this point.  Tim mentioned earlier this week that he wanted cheese enchiladas too.

Night before last, my friend, Kathy, called and said she and her partner were taking us out for Mexican food the next day.  No arguments.

How about that?  Tim and I both had cheese enchiladas, refried beans, and rice.  We manifested what we wanted in less than a week.  Kathy and Lyn have never taken us out to eat before, so this wasn’t a usual occurrence.

Two days ago, I offhandedly asked Tim, “What happened to all those Wiffle golf balls Ducky used to play with?”  (These were plastic golf balls with holes in them, and Tim gave her five to play with when we first got her in October.  She loved to toss them up in the air and pounce on them.)  Tim said, “They’re probably under the sofa or something.”

This morning, I got up a lot earlier than I normally do.  Because I got up so early, I took Ducky to the forest and let Tim sleep in.  When we got home, I had to take her in our exercise room, where we have a TV and an office chair in addition to our exercise stuff, because she kept trying to scratch on the bedroom door to wake up her Daddy.  Confining Ducky to that room is something Tim’s been doing since we got Ducky.  Not one time in the four months we’ve had her have I been the one to hang out in there with her.  He does it for me because he gets up earlier.

So I’m sitting on the floor with Ducky, and I’m watching the Olympics on TV (an old console TV that sits on the floor), and I spot a Wiffle golf ball under the TV.  I get it out and, in the process, find another one.

Delighted, Ducky starts playing with them.  She tosses one behind a trunk.  I move the trunk, and I find a third one.

Interesting manifesting, huh?

And one more …

Two days ago, I was talking to Tim about something, and I used the cliché, “The proof is in the pudding.”  Since Tim doesn’t remember anything before 2006, most clichés are foreign to him, so I asked him if he knew what that meant.  He said he had heard that one and he did know what it meant.

A half hour after this conversation, I was reading something on the internet, something that included the phrase, “the proof is in the pudding.”

I hadn’t said or read or heard that cliché in years, and there it was, twice in a half hour.

If I can manifest these things, then can’t I manifest money?

One of my favorite Abraham-Hicks quotes is:

“It is as easy to create a castle as a button. It’s just a matter of whether you’re focused on a castle or a button.”

Apparently, I’ve been focused on buttons, not castles.

After thinking about the pep-talk I got from my friend a couple days ago, I decided I really haven’t been living the Abraham-Hicks principles.  I spend too much time thinking about what shoulda happened, coulda happened, woulda happened.  I lament and I worry.

I am not thinking about being the joyful lottery winner I want to be.  I’m not thinking about being the successful writer I want to be.

I’m thinking about my current situation.

So of course, I’ll perpetuate it.

I think the reason I can create Mexican dinners, Wiffle golf balls, and clichés is that I focus on them with a pureness of thought that doesn’t include worry and doubt.  I don’t agonize over these things.  I think about them and then I let go.

Abraham-Hicks calls this “the art of allowing.”  We don’t have to hammer this stuff into place.  We just have to allow it, and the way we do that is by aligning with our nonphysical self, i.e., by feeling good.

Earlier this week, I was doing some research on law of attraction because I was pondering putting more focus on this blog, and I read several articles and websites about it.  I discovered there’s a lot of misinformation out there about how it works.

For example, a writer on ehow.com said the law of attraction is a belief.  It’s not a belief.  It’s a law, a universal law, like the law of gravity.  It works whether you believe it or not.

Today, I received an e-mail from a law of attraction writer.  He suggested that in deliberate manifestation, you need to start small.  He says if you don’t have 100 percent belief, the universe “will be confused by the vibes that you are putting out.”  Huh?  The universe doesn’t get confused.  It just matches up vibrations.

So it’s not about believing per se, it’s about how you feel.  When you’re “ahead of your beliefs,” trying to manifest something you don’t think is possible, you get frustrated, tense, worried, etc.  These feelings are the indication that you are not in alignment with your inner being.  When you’re not in alignment with your inner being, you cannot manifest what you desire.

The universe KNOWS what we desire, and it’s happy to bring it us when we’re a vibrational match to it.  To be a vibrational match, we have to be aligned with our inner being, i.e, we have to feel good.

Personally, it doesn’t make me feel good to limit what I can manifest.  I like thinking about the big stuff.  But then again, when I don’t believe it’s possible, I feel bad.  I can feel the distance between what I want and what I’m thinking about what I want.

I think that’s why I can so easily create Mexican food and plastic golf balls and clichés and I’ve yet to create money.  For the former, there’s no distance between my desire and what I’m thinking about those desires.  I have no resistance to those desires.  For the latter, I have tons of distance.  I want it but I’m too busy looking at the evidence of not having it.  Huge resistance there.

So I’m still figuring this stuff out.  But I’m recommitting to my experiment.  I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.

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