by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys
I am standing in front of the mirror in the morning, doing those things that one does between the shower and breakfast, getting ready for the day ahead. This particular morning I have woken up with some fear in my belly over moving ahead with aspects of my life, anxiety about projects I’m working on, how well the manifesting is going in the career sphere.
As I’m working in front of the mirror, I’m thinking about how I ought to feel. I know that I need to be in a less anxious and more positive space for successful manifesting to occur. I know that much of this anxiety isn’t mine, but was gifted to me long ago by anxious adults, and that I know what a more positive space feels like. I begin to notice that my mind is trying to think me into that positive space: that relaxed, open feeling of gratitude and certainty in the bounty of the universe, that it knows I should be in.
Then it happens. Another part of my awareness wakes up a little and realizes how strange this is. My mind is trying to will me into the appropriate feeling/emotional state, to shift me out of anxiety and into abundance. Now, I have learned some time ago that willing things in to reality, while possible in theory, is exhausting in practice and in any case not the way my being creates most naturally.
Holding the appropriate emotional state, full of gratitude and certainty in the flow of abundance, and allowing that to flow through the vision of what I am intending to attract into my life is both easier and more powerful. I may not be able to hit this place all the time, but I have enough experience to know that this is true for me. So my mind has backed off a level, but still believing that it has the answers, or is supposed to come up with them, it is now trying to will the appropriate levels of surrender and gratitude and trust. This is pretty funny.
I begin to find my amusement. I also realize why this isn’t really working too well. My internal narration is writing out the description of the emotional state it thinks I should be feeling, but I am still being held in the mental levels of awareness. So I check in on the feeling levels. I drop down into my heart, which has felt these things, knows where they are and remembers how to get there again.
Letting my heart open, as my awareness shifts into the world of feeling and flow, and releasing the mental narration, for the moment, I begin to breath deeper, to relax into that place I have been looking for. Now I am feeling for it, which is a much easier and more powerful means to get there, the anxiety is dissipating and space is expanding inside me for gratitude, for receptivity of the support and abundance that the universe is already sending towards my intention and vision.
My anxiety after all was largely driven by the mental mind which felt there was a problem that it was supposed to solve, to keep me safe and happy, but which it wasn’t sure it knew the answer to. The solution was not to figure it out and willfully create a better emotional state, from a place of resistance and fear, but to relax the mind and slip into the heart, which always knows the path for finding emotional peace.
Once you have committed to following and understanding this path, spirit will be there to remind you over and over to stop the mind and drop into the heart, until it also becomes familiar and you have the freedom to choose how to approach each aspect of your life, from the heart, or from the head, or in a dynamic balance of the two. After the intention comes practice and more practice, over and over 🙂 May you find patience and joy in the process.
As I headed into my day in a different place than before, I marveled at the persistence and subtlety with which the mind, so used to control and dominance, that releases its belief in itself as the only savior in our life, one layer at a time. I am grateful for this gift of awareness from spirit, and the reminder that my heart is powerful and can work many things more easily than my mind, grateful to experience again the ability of the heart to find the way back to myself, to gratitude, joy, and receptivity. This is the proper space for manifesting dreams.
May these come ever more easily for all of us. Blessed be.
(© 3/2008)
