Abundance!

Something I've been really chewing on and working on for myself lately is a practice of channelling abundance. It started when I asked a teacher of mine how to be motivated without consequences, deadlines and stress, and without that adrenaline shot that urgency and fear provide. I almost never see her get upset, but this day, she nearly yelled "That's bullshit! You don't need to feel stress and panic to be productive and to move forward with work if you love the work and act from your hearts intention! I burst into tears. I had no idea that I'd needed to hear this, or how deeply seated my beliefs were about this! I wasn't in an emotional place the moment before. But my physical response was strong and immediate. What a revolution of thought, and approach to all of life! This got my shift rolling with a bang. Although I needed it, and it's good for me, having a deep seated notion like that challenged actually hurt. Like having a huge weed ripped from my heart all at once. It left some holes and a lot of small roots got ripped off and left behind. The dirt all shifted around it, and it upset the plantings all around it. It's a hard truth to get your head and heart around when they've been steeped in the opposite thoughts for 40 years.

Then I started absorbing much more about it from, of all places, a business course I took online. This course was very heart focused, and my teachers talked about abundance versus lack, and the difference it can make in how I approach the world and how the universe responds to me, and how it shapes my whole life, self employment included. As a midwesterner, and a person who has never really been motivated by money, and yet still frustrated at my lack of it, I go through the world saying: "I cant afford _____." It distills down to this: I feel I can't afford what I really want to do in life. they asked us to write our vision of what the next 3 years would look like. They said to write it as if it were already here, and to take out any negatives however small. Even "I hope to.." was seen as not abundant nor present, because there is some doubt there, and some hint of "it's not up to me entirely. Writing this showed me how deeply integrated operating from a place of lack truly is.

I've started by practicing how to be generous in my life with things that I can be generous with. In situations where I'm asked fo something, and my immediate response is "no, I can't because..." I try to think about how I could possibly say yes instead. it's not easy, but beginning to notice the pattern of negative response first is the fist step. Just like in asana class and in meditation, The noticing of the patterns comes first. Then we can get in there and work on them.