Changing My Mind

In January, on the heels of the death of one of my dearest, closest friends, I quit my office job. Well, the job was godawful to begin with, anyway, but the false money-guru in my head kept saying, “But I need the money, but I need the money!” And I stayed. Until Randy died. Then I said to myself, “You know, if dying at 50 is a life, it’s not worth it. I’ve got to get out of this way of living.”

What is another way of saying “this way of living”?

Paradigm.

My new favorite word. Only I didn’t know I was embracing a new paradigm at the time. All I knew was I had had enough! Enough so that I was ready to risk not knowing what came next.

First, the money ran out. Now, please understand that that doesn’t mean I was flat broke. But the money I had allotted for this experiment ran out! My ex came along and said, “Move back in with me,” and I did. And our relationship was suddenly completely different than it had ever been. Miracle #1 - We had both changed enough to be good for one another more steadily than ever before. Hmmm.

Then I went through anxiety – not a surprise; that was my modus operandi for years – and I got good and sick of anxiety but could not stop its toll.

Fortunately, it was time for the summertime visit of my spiritual teacher, and by the time she had left the area, I was over the anxiety. Over the anxiety? That would be Miracle #2. Hmmm, again. That happened in June.

Also in June, I was introduced to a business that is like a wine club or a book club, but where you get paid for being in it. I took a look at it – with a seriously jaundiced eye, because I had spent last year being taken in by swindles small and large – and found that this business was a new … wait for it … paradigm. So I got in. The light at the end of the tunnel was getting bigger and bigger.

Then the tunnel began to disappear completely when I read a book that cohesively assembled all of the pieces of understanding and experience I had gathered from my life – glimpses of understanding of a different way of living – that I had never been able to link up in a cohesive manner.

What if, it said, everything that we do/are/experience is a creation of our Consciousness? Of course, for those of us who move in spiritual or so-called New Age circles, this is a no-brainer, almost too easily rolling off the tongue. But we don’t have the understanding of how to apply that knowledge. The book provides those practical tools and I use them along with others I have gathered. The Sedona Method is one of those tools. And the book is Busting Loose From the Money Game by Robert Scheinfeld. By the time I was halfway through the book, my life had changed.

Why? Because I had changed my mind.

The practical application of changing my mind was this: a new determination to look at my life differently, day by day, moment by moment. Life is a pretty short journey, all in all, and why not just be foolish and enjoy it, even though it makes more “sense”, to my crazy self, to worry about it. (Has worry ever solved anything? No. And yet, we continue to apply that wet band-aid to our bruised “knees”.) That new attitude made me laugh at odd moments for no reason at all, and without all of that worry to drag me down (because I now had the tools to work with the worry and let it go), I felt more like a little kid than I had since I was 9 years old! Miracle #3.

Then I took a look at my new “wine-club” business. It seemed that while I was presenting something that is a completely new paradigm and helpful both financially and interpersonally, I was unable to see outside of my old paradigm of “selling”. Which is interesting, because I’m not a saleswoman. I love connecting with people, and I really dislike being pushy. But I didn’t know any other way to present the gift I had been given.

I started thinking about that changing-over place from old paradigm to new. I started thinking about where I fit into this new puzzle picture I had created. I wondered if I should simply let the business go, because as a bridge between the old and the new, it has that odd quality of being both visible and invisible, depending on where one is looking (invisible if one is looking at the old, and visible if one is looking at the new).

I spoke with a very wise friend yesterday, who answered the question for me. She said, simply, “Why don’t you focus on what it is you love about this, and simply stop addressing what you are afraid others might not see about it?”

It’s true. If someone has a doubt or question, it is up to them to ask me, and up to me to respond. Simple! Now I could just offer the information with an open hand, unattached to the response.

So, in life, in love, in business, no pushing. Instead, presenting, offering, sharing.

In attitude, something I have believed in since my father’s illness in the late ’90’s: possibilities. Keeping my mind open to positive possibillities.

In action: releasing what doesn’t serve me (The Sedona Method), and reclaiming my power from the illusion of externals (Busting Loose).

This is the kind of work I can go deeper and deeper into, discovering more and more of myself, and of the wonder of being alive, which I distinctly remember from my childhood, but which I turned from around the age of 11.

Miracles #4, 5, 6, 7 and beyond. Way beyond.

So, what is the old paradigm, and the new, then? The old one says: “Everything we have here is limited, physically-based, and there’s me vs. you so that I survive.” The new paradigm is an understanding that we – you, I and everyone else on this planet – are an intimate part of what happens in our lives, and that as real as our externals seem, they are in fact less real than the Truth of who we are. And it means that we have an intimate and immediate effect on what happens in our lives. Now, I don’t mean that I or you or anyone else is planning out the next day like a teacher with a syllabus. Call it your higher self, call it God, call it the Universe, but the idea is that we are, each of us, being guided to having the experiences we want or need to have. And those that we “need” to have are those that are carry within them the seed of freedom; those difficult situations are chock-full of just the kind of thing we need to demand answers we may have not even dreamed of!

This all makes more sense to me than all of the positive thinking or visualization books I have read,. I have been looking for years for answers that apply to everyone, and all the time, and not just to some and I don’t believe that positive thinking or visualization is a cure-all for everyone, since it seems to work for some and not for all, and even for those for whom it works it does so erratically. So there must be another answer.

The answer, according to all of the great beings who have ever walked the earth, is us. But that is an incomplete answer. Incomplete because it begs the question, “How?”

And I imagine it is incomplete because each one of us finds our way to our own answer to that question, individually and uniquely.

But I’ll tell you, the small taste I’ve had of its Truth is bringing genuinely miraculous events into my life, and setting me free from my own worries, negative expectations and brooding – not to mention any and all office jobs!