Yes, I know I keep talking about my dogs.  But when you live with a being who spends all day everyday in the Vortex, if you don’t pay attention to her attitudes and actions, you’re just plain dumb.  Who wouldn’t want to emulate pure joy?

One of Tim’s jobs requires him to work until 2 a.m. a couple nights a week.  I’ve found that it’s easier for me to go with the flow of his schedule and adjust mine to his rather than to try and resist it (as in all areas of life).  So last night, I was awake when he called me at 2:15 to tell me the car wouldn’t start.  He wasn’t sure whether the problem was the battery or something more serious, but we had to at least try to give it a jump.

Expect Fun

Ducky and I had been lounging in bed, and I was so attired.  When I got up to pull on pants and a shirt and slip on shoes, Ducky perked up.  These were “going out actions,” and we never go out this time of night.  You could see in her bright-eyed scrutiny that she was wondering, “What’s up?”  Her whole body quivered in exuberant expectation.

When I grabbed my wallet and keys and said, “Come on,” Ducky leaped in the air, whirled in a circle, and began vigorously wagging her tail.

You could just hear her:  “ALL RIGHT!  A ride!!!”

Her enthusiasm catapulted her into the garage and up into the 4Runner.  She licked me joyfully when I got in, and then she stuck her head out the window to investigate the night air as I backed out of the garage.

Reroute Old Programming

I wasn’t all that thrilled with the fact that the car wouldn’t start.  My mind, its old programming so easily dropped into a negative groove, started chattering:  “What if we need a new battery?  What if it’s worse than that?  Figures.  We just got a little extra money, and now we’ll have to spend it on the car.”

Luckily, in spite of this old programming, I have new programming that immediately recognizes the old programming.  I caught this rickety train and threw the switch on it:  “I’m sure the battery is fine.  We just had it checked a couple months ago.  We just need to jump it and charge it up and it will be fine.”

About this time, Ducky bounded into the front and sat down in the passenger seat, her ears perked, her gaze curiously scanning her surroundings.  She was buzzing with happy energy.  I was reminded to look for positive aspects:  “Well, Ducky’s happy, and it’s nice to be out in the fresh night air.  It smells great.  The headlights look pretty reflected on the rain-slicked streets.  It’s a good thing Tim works so close to home.  I’m glad we have jumper cables.”

When we arrived at the gas station/convenience store where Tim works (about a minute from our house—most days he rides his bike, but it was stormy last night), Ducky spotted her Daddy and exploded into paroxysms of ecstasy.  The SUV could barely contain her squeaks, wiggles, and wags.

Tim greeted her then hooked up the jumper cables.  He started up the car.  I followed him home. On the way, Ducky wagged some more and eagerly sniffed the air again.

When we got home, she went into full spazz mode, leaping and arrwooing and wagging.  You could hear her: “Wheeeee, we had an adventure.  It was so fun!  Now we’re home.  Isn’t that wonderful?” She was as happy to be back as she had been to leave ten minutes before.

The Three Keys To An Adventure Attitude

Now, of course, I know that Ducky had no context for this middle-of-the-night ride.  She didn’t know what car trouble was.  All she knew was something out of the ordinary was happening, and it would probably be fun.  Her perspective and behavior, though, create a blueprint for living in the vortex.

1.  Attach no meaning to the situation.

Most of our life experiences could be experienced as adventure if we left our “meaning” behind.  Instead of “dealing with car trouble,” I got a chance to see Ocean Shores at 2:30 in the morning, which isn’t something I generally do.

Anything can be shifted this way.  Instead of “just going to the store,” you can see what fun new things you spot in that great place that has such an abundance of food or you can go exuberantly hunting for bargains.  Instead of “just cleaning the house,” you can celebrate your surroundings by relishing all your precious belongings and giving them the care they need.

We turn things into mundane activities, or worse, problems by the way we think about them. When you wipe away negative expectations and the old stories you have about certain activities, you open yourself up for adventure.

2.  Celebrate spontaneity.

We tend to think of “not as we planned” as bad.  What if we did the opposite? What if we rejoiced in all surprises and life’s twists and turns?  Seeing the unexpected as something to get excited about would turn life into a grand adventure.

3.  Look for something fun in every experience.

As deliberate creators who know how important it is to be aligned with our nonphysical selves and how crucial it is to get and stay in the Vortex of good feeling if we want pleasant experiences to come our way, we understand the value of fun.  Many of us who live in awareness of law of attraction go looking for fun things to do.  But do we look for the fun in all things we do?

We often miss opportunities for fun by getting in a chore-like or “must do” mentality.  When faced with a situation that isn’t intended to be a kick in the pants, we fall into a plodding sort of attitude.  We go through the motions of chores like heading out in the middle of the night to jump a car battery.

But all of these experiences have a spark (excuse the pun) of fun or at least of something positive.  If we get into our inner kid place or take on a joyful puppy persona, we can find the fun in something as simple as the fresh smell of night air.

Instead of going out of our way to find happy adventures in life, we can just allow all of life to BE a happy adventure.  Ducky ever-so-eagerly showed me how last night.

And the result of that adventure mentality?  Today, we borrowed my parents’ battery charger and charged up the battery, and now the car is fine.  A happy attitude creates happy endings.

How about you?  What adventures are you having today?

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We all know that the first step to feeling good is getting easy with what is.  We must accept where we are if we want to move on from an unpleasant reality.

We know it.  But sometimes, it’s a bit of a challenge to do what we know we must do.

Last week, I was all ready to reveal my new website, Up From Splat.  I was jazzed. I’d churned out that website from the Vortex of tuned in and turned on energy, and I was more excited about it than I’d been about any other project I’ve done in the last several months.  I was sure I was on the verge of great things because I already felt like I’d achieved those great things.

So imagine my amazement when, on the very day I was going to announce the new site here on this blog and on Facebook, the site mysteriously was deleted from our server.  Gone.

Shock And Awe

My first reaction was shock.

I was in awe of what appeared to be a cosmic joke.  My site about getting up from life’s splats had just gone SPLAT.  Very funny, Universe.

I went from there to deep sadness.  My next reaction was fury.  I reminded myself to reach for peace, and I meditated.

Then I returned to fury.

I moved a little further up the emotional scale via pizza and a nice red wine.  (I think pizza and wine might need a permanent place on Abraham-Hicks’ emotional scale—perhaps between anger and discouragement.)

What in the bleepity bleep happened, I asked Tim when he got home from work.  He had been transferring some files to our server, and the site disappeared after that.  He didn’t know; so he called the people at our server, and they didn’t know either.

I dropped back to rage.  I had these fantasies of destroying everything in my house.  I had a burning need to break things.  I didn’t indulge the desire.

I moved up to discouragement again.

It took me three days to move up to hopefulness then positive expectation and finally to eagerness.  I threw in some appreciation for Tim’s help.  He had tried to retrieve parts of the site, but it couldn’t be done.  He was able to capture bits of the html code, though, which made my rebuilding process easier.

Finally, from a place of acceptance, I started rebuilding my site.  It took 16 hours of solid work.

In the middle of that 16 hours, I discovered something.  The site, which I’d thought was ready to reveal to the world, had a major glitch.  Some of the pages weren’t accessible by anyone but me.  I didn’t know that because I could get to the pages so I assumed anyone could.  If I’d revealed the site before solving that problem, I would have had a big mess on my hands.

Aha!

What at first had seemed like a BAD thing, had become a good thing.  Redoing the site had brought a big problem to my attention.

When the site disappeared, all I could see was the fact that my work was trashed and I was going to have to do it over.  I couldn’t get past that.

That’s a pretty normal reaction to setbacks.  The way we see our life is sort of like looking at a radar screen.  We can only see what’s on the screen, and the screen is only a puny part of the universe’s expansiveness.  So I could see that my site was deleted and that seemed to be BAD, but I couldn’t see how the deleted site might serve me. That part was off my screen.

In order to be okay with whatever apparent “badness” comes our way, we must remind ourselves that we have a very small radar screen.  Just as the radar operator who is looking at a radar display of a 500 mile radius can’t say for sure that there’s nothing within 2000 miles, we can’t say for sure that what we’re experiencing is bad … or good, for that matter.

When we can remember that, it’s a lot easier to get easy about what is.

Have you ever had something that seemed really lousy turn into something awesome?  Tell us the story.  The more bad to brilliant stories we hear (with heavy emphasis on the brilliant part), the easier it will be to remember that our radar screen is tiny indeed.

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At the end of May, thanks to some serious misalignment, the law of attraction brought to us an uprooted, leaning tree.  The “facts” are that a freak wind storm broke off the top of one tree, and that treetop fell into a second, dead tree, knocking it partially over.  Surrounding trees caught the dead tree and kept it from going all the way over, but its position was precarious.

The day after the wind storm, we got an estimate for removing the tree.  The cost would be $850 … which might as well have been $850,000.  We didn’t have the money, and we still don’t.

If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you know that a couple months ago, my “what is” situation was a turmoil.  I’d just gotten sued over debt. I had no idea how I was going to pay my bills. We were in danger of losing our house. Blah, blah, blah.  The bottom line is that my mind was full of “dead wood thoughts.”

What are dead wood thoughts? They’re “how” thoughts.

How Thoughts Block Happy Thoughts

You know you’ve thought yourself into a tangle of dead wood when you’re continually mulling over how you’re going to make something happen or how you’re going to get something.  Back in May, my brain was stuffed with how thoughts—how am I going to handle this law suit, how will I pay for the tree, how will we pay our bills, etc.

As long as those how thoughts were in my head, I couldn’t get a clear stream of happy thoughts going.  Oh, I’d manage one or two or three, but I couldn’t get a flow of good feelings going.

Finally, though, I saw what I was doing, and I forgot about the how.  I stopped trying to figure things out.  In fact, for awhile, I stopped thinking as much as possible.  I didn’t try to visualize what I wanted or talk about what I wanted.  All I did was watch my dog, Ducky, as much as possible, and I read and I napped and I did whatever I felt moved to do.

To use Abraham-Hicks language, I let go of the oars.  I just let my boat turn with the flow of the stream and I enjoyed the ride.  I got in the Vortex.

And the tree?  It kept leaning.

Falling Into Place

So over the last month, my vision of the life I desire has gotten stronger and stronger.  Law of attraction has brought to me an amazing amount of information about houses, cars, and other goodies that I want.  I keep seeing the Toyota 4 x 4 extra cab, long bed truck I want.  I keep stumbling over things that help me clarify my desires about the trips Tim and I want to take.

And as for the money?  Have I thought about that?  As little as possible.

The “what is” is that we’ve filed for bankruptcy and because of that, the creditor calls have stopped.  The amount of money we need each month is 2/3 of what it was 2 months ago.  Tim is working in 2 jobs, which he got very quickly after his temporary job with the Census ended.  Each week brings some new development that gets us closer to the financial stability we desire.

I’ve cleared so much of the dead wood in my thoughts that I’m experiencing more calm than I have in years.  I can’t say that I’m in exhilarated expectation yet, but I’m okay with calm for the moment.

Calm is working rather well for me in fact.

Last week, my mother told me she thought we should take down the tree before the fall storms come and so she and my step-dad would lend us the money to have it done.  Well, that sounded good to me.  And from my place of calm, I thought getting another quote wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Tim made one phone call that led to a guy that led to another guy who came out today.  This new guy looked at the tree and said, “Interesting.  Quite a tight spot.”  This is what all the other guys had said about why it would cost so much to remove.

I remained calm, just waiting for him to give me an estimate.  I had $500 or better in my head.  But when he said, “We can do it for $200,” I was tempted to hug him.  When he said, “We’ll get started right now,” I might have levitated a bit.

I called my mom and asked if she could get me $200 cash within a half hour.  Thrilled to be lending us $200 instead of $850, she said she’d go to the bank.  Five minutes later, she called and said that my dad had been “hiding” money, and he had $200 in a drawer and they were bringing it down. Five minutes after that, I’m not kidding, the tree was down and all the wood was stacked in a depression hidden behind brush in our yard so you can’t see it.  It looks like the tree was never there. I’ve never seen a tree fallen and cut up so fast in my life.

See how slick that works? Remove dead wood thoughts and get physical dead wood down easily.

The law of attraction can bring easy solutions to every situation.  In fact, it can bring easy situations that never require solutions because there are no problems to solve. But the law of attraction can’t bring this sort of fall-into-place ease if we’re doing the mental equivalent of flailing our arms about.  The harder we try to figure out how to do something, the farther we get from alignment with that something.

It is not our job to figure out how.  That’s up to the universe.

It’s our job to desire and allow. When you let go of figuring it out, you relax into a place of calm, a place of ease … a place where dead trees disappear in the blink of an eye.

Related Posts:

The Smiley Face vs. The Rodeo Clown

Two Steps To Great Decisions

About Face

——

Photo by Paul Schultz on Flickr.

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Ducky turns one year old in a week.  Hard to believe.  I can still close my eyes and feel that warm little ball of wiggles I held in my arms when we brought her home last October.  Tim says he vaguely remembers being able to carry her around.  She’s now almost 45 pounds of mostly spring-generated muscle.

Since Ducky is my greatest and most consistent source of joy (she’s sort of like a cannon that shoots me into the Vortex), I decided to spend a couple bucks for the props to stage a good Ducky birthday picture for The Joyful Springer (it will be on the site on the 24^th).   So a few days ago, Tim and I stopped in Wal-mart to get a birthday hat and balloon.

As we were heading through the store, we heard two little kids singing:  “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Mary, happy birthday to you.”  They were off key in the extreme, but what they lacked in musical ability they made up for in enthusiasm.

I smiled because I thought that was pretty amazing.  Here we were to buy birthday items, and these kids were singing “Happy Birthday.”

The children were maybe three to five years old, a boy and a girl.  Both were in a cart and both had big smiles on their faces.

After the first round of singing, they started over.  This time, they sang happy birthday to Shannon.  Then it was a round to David.  Then it was a round to Brianna.  And it went on.

“It sounds like they’re singing happy birthday to everyone they know,” Tim said.

I nodded, smiling even wider.

These kids were having SO much fun.  Their mom was busy shopping, and they were oblivious to that.  They were just singing at the top of their lungs, happy as could be.

“I want to be a little kid,” I said.  “No worries.  No figuring out how to get money or what to do next.  Kids just have fun.”

“Then be a little kid,” Tim said.

I looked at him.

“Be a kid,” he repeated.  “Forget worries.  Stop figuring things out.  Just have fun.”

I watched the kids again.  I could feel the relief surge through me. Yes!

Of course, Tim and I were describing the Vortex.  Though I’ve been in the vicinity of the Vortex more in the last month or so than I have in the last year, I realized as I listened to those exuberant children that I still wasn’t there as much as I wanted, and I may not have been there when I thought I was there.  I know I rarely felt like those singing kids did.

I thought I was allowing things to fall into place, but I was still trying to figure things out.  Yes, I had accepted what is, and yes, I had my mind on what I wanted instead of what is.  Still, I was spending too much time thinking about HOW to put what I wanted into place.  In other words, I was acting happy but I wasn’t truly vibrating happy.

Real Happy

I left Wal-mart singing, “Happy happy day to me, happy happy day to me, happy happy day, dear Ande, happy happy day to me.”  It made me grin like an idiot.  I’m pretty sure that’s the feeling of the Vortex.

That day in Wal-mart, those children serenaded dozens of people.  I watched many blank or frowning faces transform into relaxed and happy faces as people turned toward the sound of the singing. Sometimes we don’t even notice that we’re not in joy until we see or hear joy.  Then as our energy shifts to match it, we realize we had been a long way from it.

Pay close attention to how you feel.  Are you happy or are you just acting happy?  The law of attraction doesn’t care how you’re acting.  It cares about how you are, or more specifically, how your vibration is.

You can’t fake vibration, and vibration is what attracts.

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I have a life-long pattern that I am in the process of breaking.

What I used to do was this Do-not-do-this-at-home-or-anywhere-else Process:

1. Begin thinking positive thoughts about my life or about something I want.
2. Get antsy and impatient when, after a few days, nothing changes.
3. When something negative happens, put all my attention on the negative event.
4. Lament the fact that positive thinking and the law of attraction “doesn’t work.”
5. Feel really, really bad.
6. Say, “See? I was right” when more bad stuff comes my way.

I can vehemently say that this process creates nothing worth talking about.

So lately I’ve been getting better at hanging out in the Vortex.  I am continually reminding myself to ride the rapids.  I am doing whatever it takes to feel good.

I keep reaching for thoughts that help me feel successful and financially secure.

I keep saying to myself, ” Who cares what my outer reality is doing?” And  I’m not going to talk about that.

I am not going to get in that old pattern again.  So I’ve been actively looking for thoughts that remind me that what I desire is fully developed on the energetic level and just because I don’t see it yet doesn’t mean it isn’t real.  The law of attraction has provided me with not only a helpful thought but also with a couple of experiential illustrations to create these knowing expectation thoughts I want.

The “In An Instant” Thought

One of the thoughts that came to me right way was that life can transform HUGELY in an instant.  One puny little second of this or that falling into place, and everything is suddenly different.

In 1999, I woke up with this funky little idea—what if we lived in a universe where fat was beautiful?  And that moment turned into my first published novel, Alternate Beauty.

In 2000, I sent a simple little e-mail to a guy I knew in high school.  That moment turned into my marriage.

In 2008, I headed down a short, shallow flight of stairs, and in an instant of falling, my ankles were utterly transformed (and not in a good way).

Life can zig faster than we can say zag.

Lingering beneath the surface of what we see now can be the blossom of all we desire.

The Vortex Flower

Last summer, I put dianthus flowers in planters on my back deck.  In the fall, I yanked them all out.  This spring, I didn’t put anything in the planters because our budget has no room for flowers.  A month ago, the weed infested dirt in the planters depressed me.

Then I got in the Vortex, and I didn’t even notice the planters.

A couple days ago, while I was outside playing with Ducky, I happened to glance at the planters.  And how about that?  A single dianthus bloom had emerged from the scraggly barrenness.

If you’d asked me a month ago if I thought the annual flower might bloom from soil that had received no care of any kind, I would have thought you were as crazy as many think Tim is for knowing that a lottery win is going to pop up from his personal soil. But here it is.

We can’t see what’s just below the surface of our physical reality.

We don’t know what’s just outside our door.

We don’t know what the next instant will bring us.

But we MUST know that if we don’t stay in the Vortex, we’ll never discover what great things are about to burst into our lives.

Allowing High Tide

Yesterday, Ducky spotted a piece of driftwood bobbing in the surf.  She wanted it, but even though she could swim to it, the surf was rough, and her Momma (i.e. me) was telling her to “come.”

Ducky decided she didn’t need that driftwood after all, but it got me thinking about the way most of us have surf-like vibrations that ebb and flow.  We want the driftwood, but we can’t exert enough effort to get to it.  We must allow that driftwood to come in and settle on the sand.  We must wait for high tide.

Everything that each of us has asked for is floating in a surf that’s eager to surge in on our shores.  But most of us don’t stay on the beach (in the Vortex) long enough to let that surf come in.

Every time we turn toward disappointment or complaint or frustration or fear or anger or any other negative emotion, we leave the beach.  We walk away from the prize bobbing on the water’s surface.

Our work is to hang out in the Vortex long enough for all we desire to settle at our feet.  And that has become my full-time job.

I am so grateful to a cooperative universe that, by law of attraction, brought me these thoughts.  They’ve helped me settle into my virtual reality.  I hope they’ve reminded you to hang out on the virtual beach too.

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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.”

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

Fast Tube by Casper

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Photo by emilyamimu on Flickr.

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There’s a restaurant north of where Tim and I live called The Ocean Crest. It’s an awesome place—incredible food, romantic atmosphere, attentive service, and a stunning view of the ocean through the veils of graceful hemlock tree branches.  We love it, and we go there on special occasions whenever we have the financial means to do so.

We recently mentioned how much we love the place to a couple we know (I’ll call them Jack and Jill).  Jill said, “Oh, we went there once.  We think it’s highly overrated.  The service was so slow.”

“My steak wasn’t done right,” Jack said.

“And it’s so expensive,” Jill said.

“The tables are too close together,” Jack said.

Tim and I moved on to another subject.

The fact is that Jack and Jill make some valid points.  The service at The Ocean Crest is quite leisurely.  The place is pricey.  Once, Tim’s steak wasn’t cooked right.  And the tables could be further apart.

So what?

Tim and I don’t talk about those things.  We talk about those positive aspects I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  And because that’s what we talk about, no matter what happens at that restaurant (slow service, overcooked steaks, etc.), we have an incredible time.  We have nothing but delightful memories of our meals there.

We also have delightful memories of every restaurant we eat at.  We’ve never had a bad restaurant experience.

This other couple has rarely had a good restaurant experience.  One of their favorite topics is the lousy food, service, or atmosphere at restaurants.  Tim has even asked me, “Why do they go out?”

This same couple tends to get bad service in stores and other businesses too.  Tim and I rarely get bad service.

The other day, this couple was telling us about some surly service they got at a nearby home improvement store.  Before they could go on about it, Tim said, “Whenever I get an unhelpful clerk, I ask them if they’re having a good day.”

“And I compliment them,” I said.

Tim and I never let the seeds of lousy service turn into a full-blown problem because we speak in positive aspects to everyone we deal with.

If a woman is being rude, I find something I like about her and compliment her on it.  If someone is ignoring us, we start up a conversation, asking the person questions about him or herself (people LOVE to talk about themselves).

We look for things to say that make people feel good.  And when we make people feel good, they make us feel good.

Some of our friends like to go on rampages of complaints about phone service—customer service people don’t speak decent English; they don’t have the right answers; they don’t listen … blah, blah, blah.

Tim and I don’t have these problems either.  Usually, by the time we get off the phone, we’re on a first name basis with the person we’re talking to and we’ve found out where the person is, how the weather is, and we usually know whether or not the person is married and has kids or pets.  We talk our way into great service almost 100 percent of the time.

Many students of law of attraction have a tendency to spend time tuning their vibration to attract wonderful things into their lives—visualizing and writing out positive aspects of their current situation, but they then forget to LIVE from this perspective all the time, in all of the little dealings and errands, in all of the minor, in passing conversations.

Abraham-Hicks say, “Every time you say, ‘I appreciate that. I really like that. I applaud that. I acknowledge the value in that.’ Every time you do that, you spend some of your Energy, and it is the spending of the Energy that creates a vacuum, so to speak, or an attraction, so to speak, that draws more and more and more and more.”

Every conversation you have, whether it’s with your spouse or with the clerk at the local convenience store, is an opportunity to raise your vibration and get in the Vortex.  When you speak in positive aspects, you’re using ordinary conversation to create extraordinary experiences because the law of attraction will match that positive energy.  Speaking in positive aspects aligns you with the kind of experiences you want to have.

Every compliment you give out draws a compliment to you.  Every bit of interest you show to someone else will come back in someone’s interest in you.

Make people feel good, and you will feel good.

Nothing you encounter in the business world is worth complaining about.  Nothing.

Every negative experience can be turned by speaking in positive aspects.

(If you missed them, be sure to read the first four parts of Power Chatter:  Part 1—Talk On The Dark Side; Part 2—Mundane, Not; Part 3—Talk It Up, and Part 4—Talking Tone.)

Photo by Weglet on Flickr.

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A few days ago, this Abraham-Hicks quote landed in my e-mail inbox:

“When you’re vibrating purely, you get only what’s a match to that. It’s your ambivalence: ‘I like that but I don’t like that… I like that but I don’t like that..’ that keeps what you like and what you don’t like coming at you all the time. You don’t have to ‘turn the other cheek’ when you are in vibrational harmony only with what you want. Then, only what you want comes.”

This isn’t new information, obviously.  I know noticing what I like brings me more of it and noticing what I don’t like brings me more of that.  For some reason, though, this statement immediately projected an image of a teeter-totter into my head, and as I moved through my days afterward, I became acutely aware of how my thoughts constantly shifted from likes to don’t likes and how the teeter-totter in my head popped up and down in sync with my shifting thoughts.The graphic visual spotlighted how much my thoughts go up and down, up and down, up and down.  Just in the short five-minute drive from our house to the forest where I walk Ducky, for instance, I watched my thoughts do something like this:

• The cherry blossoms in that yard are lovely. UP
• They need to pull some weeds. DOWN
• I’m glad they repaved this road. UP
• Why did they leave those pieces of asphalt piled up at the corners? DOWN
• That’s where the nice people who own the Mexican restaurant live.  UP
• They’ve left their garage door open—what a mess they have in there. DOWN
• It’s a nice mild day; no rain. UP
• The mosquitoes are going to be ferocious on the back trail. DOWN

It’s amazing I’m not in a state of perpetual motion sickness.

I’ve been paying attention to my emotional guidance system to help me monitor my thoughts, and I’ve been doing SO much better than I was even just a couple months ago.  No more panic and anxiety.  I’ve been feeling good.

But when I started paying attention, I saw how much I focus on things I don’t like.  I seem to attach a dislike to every like I come up with.

I’ve even done it with Ducky, my feel good touchstone:  Ducky makes me laugh, and she purely delights me, but I sure wish she wouldn’t bring in sticks and tear them into pieces to leave on my rug.

Remember being on a teeter-totter when you were a kid?  You needed someone of somewhat equivalent weight on the other side so you could consistently pop up and down.

When I was in grade school, one of my classmates was an extremely fat girl.  Most of the kids wouldn’t play with her, so I did.  One day, she and I settled onto the teeter-totter, not thinking about how the difference in our weights was going to impact our fun.  I was a skinny kid.  She was huge.  I straddled my end.  She got on and sat down.  I shot up in the air so fast I nearly fell off.

No matter how hard she tried to push off the ground to pop up in the air herself, she couldn’t do it.  I was stuck up in the air until one of my friends came over and hung on to my end to lower it down.

Teeter-Totter Thought

The high end of the teeter-totter is our focus on likes.  The things that please us allow us to push off and fly into the air.  The things that don’t please us are the push-offs on the other end of the teeter-totter that send us back to earth.  Most of us have as many dislikes as we have likes, so the balance of our thought is half up and half down.

The law of attraction matches our experience with the balance of our thoughts.  If we’re half up and half down, no wonder we get so many things we don’t like in our lives.  We go up, and great things happen.  We go down, and lousy things happen.  Our experiences teeter-totter in perfect rhythm with our thought vibration.

What we need, I’ve decided, is a nice fat focus on likes that is so big and so heavy that it catapults us into the air and leaves us there.  That “up” position on the teeter-totter is Abraham-Hicks’ vortex.  It’s vibrational alignment with all we desire.

I know you’ve had times in your life when something you like SO commands your attention that you don’t even notice negative things.  Falling in love comes to mind.  Christmas morning, a major win in sports, landing a big job, winning money—these are all such big, heavy likes that they fire us into the air and leave us there for a time.

But how can we focus on something that feels that good when nothing that good is happening in our “what is” reality?

We can either get so adept at visualizing from a place of “I already have what I want” that we feel like we’re focusing on something good that already exists OR we can focus on so many little likes that they glom onto each other and form a big heavy blob of positive energy that acts the same way a single, heavy focus does.

I’m still working on visualizing from the place of “I already have what I want.”  I’m playing with a new visualizing technique that I’ll report on when I have a little  more practice with it.  In the meantime, though, I’m finding that just being aware of the thought teeter totter is making it possible for me to consciously look at more likes than dislikes.

Just over the last day or so, I’ve begun to see all this little likes come together to create a fat focus that is starting to weigh down the other end of my teeter-totter so I’m up in the air more often.  It’s pretty fun to feel that high (excuse the pun).

Are you aware of how much your thoughts are teetering up and down?  Pay attention.  You may need to create your own “fat focus” to raise you up.

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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Last week, Tim and I made a pact to have a complaint free week.  We only had a couple slips, and we caught ourselves immediately.  I think that’s pretty good.

Being complaint free felt so good that we’ve extended the one week to forever.  No complaining, period.

That’s the goal, anyway.

There’s a bit of a learning curve.

We’re learning that instead of complaining (as in looking at something from a negative perspective), we can look at something we don’t like and discuss it from one or two perspectives: from a what is perspective that’s judgment neutral or from a this is what I want instead perspective.

For example, Tim’s computer is old, and he has to reformat the hard drive from time to time.  It’s almost time to do it again.  His computer is moving slowly, and he has a lot of work to do.  The other day, Tim said, “When I’m done with this project, I need to make time to reformat the hard drive again.”  His tone was matter of fact.  He wasn’t complaining.  It was just stating what is and moving on.

I said, “Okay.  Wouldn’t it be lovely if we got an influx of cash and could buy a new computer before you need to reformat the old one?”

The old, complaining me would have said, “What?  Again?  I sure wish we had the money to update our computers.  I hate wasting time with reformatting.”

I’m learning.

Law of Attraction Brings More Complaint Free Help

A couple days after I posted that Tim and I had made our complaint free pact, my friend, Kathy, told me she happened to be reading Complaint Free Relationships by Will Bowen.  (Isn’t this law of attraction evidence great? She just happened to be reading about being complaint free when Tim and I made our pact???)  On Friday, Kathy loaned me the book and I read it the next evening.

This book is Bowen’s follow-up to A Complaint Free World. I haven’t read that one, but Complaint Free Relationships has great advice for becoming and remaining complaint free.  Bowen’s advice is essentially what Tim and I have discovered on our own: you can still state your preferences without complaining.  Just because you’re complaint free doesn’t mean you have to eat soup with a fly in it or be okay with your spouse leaving his socks all over the house (in our house, this isn’t a problem: socks on the floor are collected by our helpful pup, Ducky).

You can state what you want without the negative tone.  And this is what Abraham-Hicks’ the “vortex” is all about.  So it’s no wonder that having a complaint free week has put me in the vortex more than I’ve been in a very long time.

Complaint Free Benefits

Being complaint free has other pay-offs too:

1.  It improves the quality of your conversations. When you are consciously staying in a positive place, you don’t hook into other people’s complaints, and you naturally lead the conversation into more enjoyable topics.

2.  It uplifts the people around you.  If you announce that you’re complaint free, people make an effort not to complain (yes, even my mother has done this).  And if they do complain, and you say nothing, they run out of steam and say, “Oh, that’s right.  You’re not complaining.”

3.  It brings more positive aspects into your awareness.  When you’re not muddying up your thoughts with observations of what’s wrong, you have more room in your head for thinking of things you want and noticing things that are right about what’s around you.

Of course, being complaint free is about more than not TALKING about negative things.  It’s about not THINKING about them either.

I discovered Sunday evening that I have a little work to do on that front.

Using Pictures To Stay Complaint Free

Tim had made me a promise last week that he didn’t keep.  I value people who keep promises, and I told him that I needed him to follow through on what he promised.  I told him he had a choice: he could not make the promise in the first place or make the promise then keep it.

I thought I was being complaint free because my tone was level and I was consciously stating what I wanted.  But inside, I could feel the anger building.  Tim has a pattern of not following through, and he’s done some things that have betrayed my trust.  As I spoke, I noticed that though my words were neutral, my thoughts weren’t.  I was activating all the old frustration and rage.

Okay.  Quick mental shift.  I tried to find a thought about Tim keeping his promises that felt good, and I wasn’t able to do so.  Too much hurt on that one to move up the emotional scale that fast.

In Complaint Free Relationships, Bowen talks about the inner pictures we have of the people we relate with.  When the pictures are positive, we feel great about them.  When they’re negative, we feel negative.

So I shifted my attention to what I love about Tim.  I put new pictures about him in my head.  Instead of the “Tim doesn’t follow through” pictures, I pulled up pictures of Tim loving me, of Tim caring for our dog, of Tim listening to me and being supportive.  And I did this out loud.  I started listing his great qualities.

Of course, he liked that because he was feeling bad about breaking his promise.  And I immediately felt my energy shift. I could see his shift too.

When you’re going to be complaint free, it has to start in your thoughts before it moves to your mouth.

So I’m going to keep practicing complaint free living.  It feels pretty darn good.

Have you made your complaint free pact yet?

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