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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Monday, the rain came back.  Hurray!

I’m a passionate rain lover.  I’m okay with the rest of nature’s weather buffet too, but my favorite part of it is rain.  So I was excited when we got our first all-day, steady rain and wind after having two months of dry weather.

Monday morning, Ducky and I headed to the beach to have an invigorating walk in the elements.  It felt awesome!  What a rush!  The feel of the cold sheets of water on my skin, the musky scent, the relentless and energizing rhythm—walking in the rain on the beach is a 100 times better than coffee for an early morning kick start.

So there I was on the beach in the blustery wetness, and I suddenly felt inspired to invoke the power of the rain.

This whim grew from the seed of communications I’ve been sharing with a new friend I made on Facebook, a fascinating woman from Italy who has studied Wiccan traditions.  She also loves rain, which is pioggia (pronounced peeoja) in Italian, by the way.  She told me that she often calls on the elements when she wants to send an intention out to the universe.

Of course, she knows that you don’t need any ritual, Wiccan or other, to send an intention out.  Just by having an intention, it’s out there.  But rituals can be fun, and anything that’s fun is worth doing.

Summoning The Power

In the middle of my walk, I threw up my arms to the heavens, tilted my head back to get the full force of the rain and shouted something like this:

I give thanks to the universe for the wonder of rain.  I receive it with gratitude.  I now invoke the power of the rain.  I summon the power of the rain and send it out into the universe to call forth a flow of financial abundance to me.

Yes, I know that I don’t need to do this to have financial abundance.  Yes, I know that if that invocation comes from a place of lack it will get me nothing but a wet face.  But like I said—it felt good.

Water, Water Everywhere

I keep an open stainless steel water bottle on my nightstand so I can take little sips when I awake during the night.  In the early hours of Tuesday morning, about 5 a.m., I knocked it over.  The metallic clunk followed by my whispered expletive had me out of bed grabbing for something to mop the water off my oak nightstand and the books piled on it.

Then, still half conscious, I went back to sleep.

A couple hours later, I woke up and discovered I had an unhappy belly and an urgent need to use the facilities.  I’ll skim over this indelicate part a bit, but to make my point, I do need to share that I managed to stop up the toilet so badly that even my frantic plunging couldn’t prevent the overflow that cascaded over the sides and all across the bathroom floor.

At this point, my expletives were no longer whispered.  I was still plunging with all my might, and the water (not clean water, mind you) was splashing onto the floor when my previously sleeping husband, Tim, heard me and stumbled into the bathroom.  Bless him—when I explained to him what had happened, he told me to lie down, and he cleaned up the mess.

I spent the next half hour cuddling with Ducky in bed while I basked in appreciation for my wonderful husband.

And that’s when I remembered my little invocation.  I burst out laughing.

Didn’t I kind of summon the power of the rain—i.e. WATER?

Power Gone Awry

Do you see how power can be misplaced?

Now I’m not sure what happened—did law of attraction bring me more water because of my focus on the power of the rainwater?  Of course, I can’t say.  But I do know that I felt, deeply, the lesson I was receiving (for probably the millionth time):  I have extraordinary power.  So do you.  We all do.

Our power is in our focus and thoughts.  It is a power a thousand (or more) times greater than any physical power we can wield.  We can use it to create wonderful things.

And we can use it to create big messes, which is what many of us tend to do.

When we get in those messes, we tend to feel powerless.  But the truth is the exact opposite.  Within the mess is the fuel that will increase our power—the contrast that shows us what we DO want now that we’ve experienced what we don’t want.

Although calling on the rain was a kick, I don’t think I’ll do it again soon.  I think I’ll just enjoy the rain, keep my focus on what pleases me, and allow myself to align with my nonphysical self, who already lives, in freedom and joy, on a nice rainy beach.

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Photo by Riebart on Flickr.

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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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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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Ducky In Her Play Bow

Today’s post comes under the heading of “Yes, I KNOW this,” but I think it also comes under the heading of “I can’t have too many reminders.”

When it comes to finding ways to improve our vibrational alignment so law of attraction will deliver pleasurable and wanted experiences into our lives, the methods and techniques are endless.  We can

• Visualize
• “Write right“
• Create manifestation boards
• Pivot off negative thoughts
• Do an “about face”
• Talk about what we want
• Act as if we have what we want
• And a whole lot of other “techniques” we can pay hundreds of dollars for if we’re inclined to invest in all the law of attraction books, CDs, and workshops available online and off.

Or we can reach vibrational alignment the easy way.

We can have fun.

All of those techniques I listed, and most other law of attraction “systems” or “exercises” or “practices,” are intended for one important purpose—to create a positive vibration. What could be a more positive vibration than fun?

Stairway To Fun

Obviously, having fun is good for us.  But we can’t play all the time.  We have things we need to do.

I am the Princess of Play.  I own something like a hundred plush animals (it used to be more—I donated a bunch to hospitals).  I quote Winnie the Pooh.  I love flipping a Slinky back and forth or tossing around a yellow Smiley Face ball when I’m thinking.  To relax, I blow bubbles off my back porch.  I give goofy personality to our furniture, our food, our cars—I anthropomorphize pretty much everything.  Tim and I play lots of board games.  We joke and tease constantly, and we make all sorts of playful bets. And then there’s Ducky—my always-ready-for-fun, canine playmate.  I love to play silly games with her.

But, I’ve always worked this play in and around the serious stuff.  And if the serious stuff gets overwhelming, as it has for me lately, my playtime is diminished.

See, I understand that to have something I need to already have it.  So I know I need to find ways to take on the identity of a financial secure, successful, healthy, slender woman NOW.  And I know I need to do what is before me to do.

At the moment, most of what is before me to do doesn’t, at first glance, seem to have much of a fun factor.  Bankruptcy and everything that is involved with it, for instance, isn’t fun. It’s more of a humiliating chore than anything resembling play.

BUT, with a little ingenuity, pretty much anything can be shifted from chore to fun.

Here’s proof (video courtesy of my friend, Nancy—thanks, Nancy!):

Fast Tube by Casper

It makes you want to install scales under the flooring in your house, doesn’t it?

It does me.

And more than that, this video made me start thinking about how I can turn things I currently consider an unpleasant chore or responsibility into something fun.

It spurred me to begin making one of the driving questions in my day: How can I turn this into more play than work?

Sometimes, the question can be answered easily.  When I’m doing work on the computer, for instance, I reward myself with the occasional tweets on Ducky’s Twitter account. “Yapping” with Ducky’s “anipals” as if she’s actually doing the typing (don’t tell her she isn’t—I’m pretty sure she thinks she’s the one online) is great fun, and it breaks up other more mundane tasks.

Sometimes, the question takes a bit more thought.

For the bankruptcy process, for example, I was having trouble finding ways to view filling out all the paperwork, listing all our assets and debts etc., as play.  But then Tim suggested we use each asset listed as a jumping off point to thinking about what we would like instead.  So we put on the list, 20-year old shelves, and Tim says, “I’m going to have so much fun building the custom shelves for the offices in our new house.”  Or we list, five dog beds, and I tell Tim a memory I have of how much our last dog, Muggins, loved a particular bed.  Using the list as a sort of seeding for fun conversation made the process more like play than work.

I’m finding that if you make it a dominant intention, you really can find ways to turn even the most arduous-seeming chores into something more playful and fun. Doing this creates a win-win.  Not only does having more fun improve your vibration so you attract more good things into your life, it also brings you more pleasure NOW because you can’t help but enjoy your days more if you’re integrating play into your work.

We get a match to what we’re looking at and what we’re looking for.  I’m finding that when I make it a priority to look for fun, ways to have more fun easily come to me.

How about it?  Wanna play?

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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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Lately, I’ve had to turn this into a mantra:  “The feeling, the feeling, the feeling.  Focus on the feeling.”

When you’re finding reasons to feel good or looking for ways to feel like you already have what you want, either by using track changes or other visualizing methods, it’s ever so tempting to look for results.

We all love law of attraction results.  We love to hear those stories about how someone thought about something incredible and got it.  And of course, we all love to experience those results.

Almost daily, I remind myself that I manifested my husband.  I like remembering that I have the ability to deliberately flow vibrational energy toward a specific result and have the result appear in my life.

I’m discovering, however, because of a spate of unpleasant events recently, that too much focus on results can knock you off the alignment track. 

Week before last, Tim’s adoptive mother died (he was taken from his biological mother’s care, for reasons of neglect, when he was barely 2 years old).  Tim’s mother’s death wasn’t cause for grieving, in and of itself.  She had Alzheimer’s and had been unaware of the people in her life for some time; Tim and I both knew that she had moved on to pure positive energy, and for that, we were grateful. However, her death triggered feelings about an even greater loss for Tim—the loss of his childhood memories.  His head injury wiped out all memory of his parents and his history.  He doesn’t remember his mother at all. By the time he talked to her after his head injury, she didn’t remember him.  Her death brought up that loss for him.

I don’t think anyone who hasn’t been stripped of his past could understand what Tim has experienced.  We speak of it blithely, but being almost 50 years old with only 4 years of memories isn’t a picnic.

Still, Tim and I understand alignment, so after we got word of her death, we immediately set to work to move up the emotional scale.  I told him all the stories about his mother that I could remember him telling me before his head injury.  I told him that when we visited his parents six years ago, his mother repeatedly said (the Alzheimer’s was advanced even then), “Tim will always be my little boy.”  She loved him SO much, and Tim and I talked about that.

He felt better.  I felt better.

Then the big winds came.  We generally get high winds and rain October through March here on the coast … never in May.  But a big storm blew in the night Tim’s mother died.

We live on a heavily wooded half acre.  In the fourteen years I’ve been here, I’ve never lost a tree.  Trees get blown down in this area all the time, but not my trees.  I LOVE my trees.  I know they’re fine.  I am quite secure about my trees.

Even so, one on the most sheltered side of the house snapped in half the night Tim’s mother died, and the top fell into another tree and uprooted it, tipping the second tree precariously into others.

I was shocked.  I have PERFECT TREE ALIGNMENT.  How could that happen?

I took a breath and said, “At least they fell away from the house.”

And we called a tree removal service.  They said it would cost $850 to take the tipped tree down.  They might as well have said $8.5 million.

Using a hack saw and elbow grease, Tim cut up the top half of the tree that fell and now we’re just intending for the leaning tree to stay where it is.

The next day, a narrow rift appeared in the middle of my laptop screen.  I told myself it was just a little line.  It would be fine.

By the end of the day, it was a three inch rift. The next day, we had to drive 1 ½ hours each way to the nearest UPS store to send the computer back to the manufacturer for repair.

“Well, at least it’s under warranty,” I said.  And when my mother offered to let me use her laptop until mine was returned to me, I said, “Well, at least I have a computer to use in the meantime.”  And I said, “At least Tim had just backed up all my files.”

We were a bit buffeted at this point, but Tim and I reminded each other that the small stuff matters, and we kept appreciating and clicking, and we also talked about the trips we’ll take when we get the RV we want.

Then Thursday evening, the doorbell rang.  A process server handed us papers.  One of the credit card companies we owe money to is suing us.

I sat down and cried.

Tim said, “We’re fine.”

He was unmoved by recent events.  He knew they didn’t have anything to do with where we were going.  He still felt rich.  He still felt happy.

I, on the other hand, was pissed.

How can stuff like this happen when we spend so much time focusing on feeling good?

And that’s when I started chanting, “The feeling, the feeling, the feeling.”

I remembered this Abraham-Hicks quote: “If you are predominantly focused on the RESULTS of your focused thoughts rather then FEELING your way within your thoughts, it is easy to lose your way.”

And this quote:

“We want YOU to be the reason you go into your vortex. And we want the reason to be because: It feels good. And I can.  … Every good feeling you have is for one reason and one reason only: You lined up with You just now.”

I knew that if I sat there and thought about the lousy results I was seeing in my life, my emotions about those results would flow like a line of falling dominoes and take me right to the bottom of the emotional scale and stay there.  I knew that I had to find reasons to feel good just for the sake of feeling good.

For right now, I can’t let myself think about the results I want in my life.  I can’t think about the money.  I have too much negative vibration on that subject because of the things that have been happening.

I need to just think about feeling good for feeling good’s sake.

I need to play with my pup.  I need to take long baths.  I need to remember how much my husband loves me.

It’s been three days since the process server came.  I don’t know yet what’s going to happen with that.  But I feel okay.

I’ve savored the sound of the rain on the roof, and I’ve laughed with friends.  I’ve inhaled one of my favorite scents, that happy-doggy-playing smell that dogs’ fur gets after they’ve been playing outside.  I’ve spent a lot of time with my eyes closed, using track changes revision to remember the last year as I wanted it to be.

And I keep chanting, “The feeling, the feeling, the feeling.”

—–

Photo by Aussiegall on Flickr.

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So I have this new job—to align with prosperity.  Part of the job description is easy—pay attention to how I feel and do only what feels good.  Part of the job description requires a bit more effort—find good feeling thoughts as much as possible.

I’ve been working on the good-feeling thoughts for some time, and I’ve gone from amazed to amused about how determined my mind is to find something negative to cogitate about.

I’ve been programmed to grousing instead of gratitude.

And I’m not alone.  Last weekend, I spent a little time with a friend who is aware of the law of attraction and who believes that our thoughts do indeed create reality.  In the short hour or so we were together, I lost track of the number of times she found the negative side of a subject.  Even when I was talking about something fun, she brought up a worry or warning about it.

Mind you, I’m not judging this.  Until the last few months, I did the same thing.  It’s how we were taught to see the world.  And our brains like to run our thoughts along familiar pathways.  We actually have rut-like neuropathways in our brains.  In order to create new ruts, we have to work at it a little.

We need to find a way to remember to find good thoughts as often as possible.

Last week, Tim and I received two thought clickers that Karen kindly sent us.  Tim, enjoying friendly competition as he does, immediately suggested we see who could come up with the most good-feeling thoughts in a day.

It took us a couple days to get the hang of it, but by the third day, both of us were clicking regularly.  He’d won a couple of the days, but I beat the pants off of him the next two.  For those four days, the competition had no prize.

He finally told me he thought the winner should get something.  I agreed.

I suggested that the loser has to clean up the kitchen after dinner. He thought that sounded good … because he expected to win.

But I once again beat the pants off of him.  I’ve done so every day since. (I’m motivated—I enjoy walking away from dinner and having someone else clean it up.)

The thought clicker has really helped me choose good thoughts more consistently.  I keep the clicker in my pocket or pinned to a shirt if I don’t have a pocket, and I click it every time I think of something I appreciate or have a thought that makes me feel good in any way.

Having the clicker there reminds me to look for more and more good thoughts.  I used to go looking for a good thought just when I noticed a negative thought.  I didn’t actively look for good thoughts when I was in a sort of neutral zone, just concentrating on the task at hand.  Now, I’m always reminded to find better and better thoughts.

My mood and energy have increased noticeably in just a week.

I think because we’re so programmed to muck around in negativity, we don’t even notice we’re doing it until we’ve done it for several minutes or hours in a day.  Once we do it for a bit, the law of attraction will bring us more negative things to think about.  The longer we wallow, the harder it is to stop wallowing.

We need something to remind us to find that good-feeling thought as often as possible.  Whether it’s a string around the finger, a post-it note, a special bracelet, a repeating chime, or whatever other method you come up with to remind you, you need a way to remind yourself to reach for thoughts that get you into the vortex of alignment.

Most of us are lazy thinkers.  We fall into talking about and thinking about what is without realizing we’re doing it.  We need a way to shake ourselves out of that pattern.

Thanks to Karen, I’ve found a fun way to do that.  I’m a happy clicker.

And I haven’t had to clean up the kitchen after dinner in five days.  I’ve decided to raise the stakes and suggest to Tim that the loser do all kitchen clean up all day long.

My intention is to keep clicking and enjoy watching Tim do all the dishes.

That thought makes me feel very good. Click.

——–

The photo of the thought clickers is from Karen’s website, www.karenwilliams.net.

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No—that’s not a misspelling in the title.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the large agate I found on a beach walk, an agate that I hadn’t seen the first time I passed it, even though it had been right next to my path.

Per the law of attraction’s steadfast like-attracts-like, I’ve received another agate lesson.

Yesterday, Ducky and I arrived at the beach access where I always park to walk by the bay, and as I always do, I scanned the beach for other people.  Ducky’s exuberance is something I’ve yet to contain, and not all people appreciate it, so I prefer to walk where others aren’t.

To my annoyance (and misalignment), I spotted a man carrying a tripod and a scope heading in the direction Ducky and I normally walk.  Uh oh.  A birder.

I have nothing against bird watchers in general.  They have as much right to the beach as I do, but birders and unleashed dogs are about as compatible as my ultra-conservative, tailored slacks and crisply ironed blouse-wearing mother would be with a tattooed, multi-pierced, leather clad, tobacco-chewing Harley rider.

With Ducky doing her excited squeak of joy, I considered my options: go to another beach access or leash up Ducky or wait until the man got out of sight and go in the opposite direction.  I chose the last option.

I usually don’t walk in that direction because that’s where the fishermen go.  Spastic Duckies don’t go that well with fishermen either.

But with only a bit more grumbling on my part, Ducky and I set off.  While she ran around chasing invisible things and snacking on crab legs, I scanned the beach for shells and interesting rocks, as I usually do.

About ten minutes into the walk, I spotted a large agate.  My second one in the last month or so.  For a beachcomber like me, it was an exciting find.

If I hadn’t had to go in the opposite direction than my usual, I wouldn’t have found it.

Soon after I picked up the agate, I noticed the birder was heading back to the access parking. Ducky and I turned around and took our usual walk.

In one of Abraham-Hicks’s workshop recordings, Abraham tells the story of Esther and Jerry’s 45-foot coach breaking down on the road.  I remember when they started the story, I thought, “How do people as aligned as Esther and Jerry must be manage to attract a break-down?”

Before I could chew on that thought for long, Abraham said that Esther and Jerry didn’t get upset about the breakdown at all.  They didn’t have a discussion about why it happened, how they must have been misaligned for it to happen, or what an inconvenience it was.  They just called for help and then had a delightfully fun adventure getting to know the tow-truck driver and the mechanics who worked on their coach.

Even though I got the message of the story, I haven’t done all that well doing what Abraham meant for the story to teach.  I’ve lost count of the number of days I’ve gotten out of bed in pure alignment, eager and excited about my day, only to have something major “go wrong.”  I recall a dead dishwasher, car trouble, my mother going to the emergency room, a manuscript rejection, and other “bad” things like these.  As soon as the “bad” thing would happen, I’d get upset.

“How could this happen?” I’d demand.  “I was aligned!”

And then of course, by asking the question, I was no longer aligned, and the day went downhill from there.

Today’s agate finally permeated the thick force field around my brain.

When I arrived at the beach, it seemed like the birder was a bad thing.  He was in my way, limiting my walk.  He was evidence of misalignment.

Thanks to my continued commitment to find better and better thoughts, I let go of my annoyance about the birder in a matter of minutes (I’m working on seconds or no time at all, but in the meantime, I’ll take the progress). Then I found the agate.

If the birder hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have gone the right way to find the agate.

Lesson:  the universal manager is smarter than I am.

Even if it seems bad, if you can stay in alignment, the “bad” will eventually lead to some experience you desire.

When you have that initial annoyance after something doesn’t go as you planned, remember that you’re being directed by the sure hand of the universe.  Instead of getting agitated, be agatated—ready to find some new treasure just ahead.

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