Life has a beautiful way of teaching us far different lessons than the ones we think we are here to learn. Have you noticed that?"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." Bertrand Russell
I spent this past weekend at the I Can Get It! Conference in Tampa, Florida. I've had my eye on this Louise Hay event every year for the past several years. I always see it advertised in Andrea de Michaelis's Horizons Magazine, and every year a perceived lack of time and money keeps me away. Not this year. This year I cleared my calendar and scraped together enough dollars to make it happen.
My original intent was very heroic: I was going to attend all the lectures during the day and then write about them in the early morning hours before I headed off to the next round of lectures. That clearly didn't happen; as you are well aware, I have not posted here in days. Events have transpired that prevented that from happening. First of all, I booked a room in a motel that boasted wifi. Unfortunately, that wifi wasn't actually strong enough to get me online way up on the 12th floor.
Secondly, when I woke up to write that first morning, I found that I was completely exhausted. I walked around the conference as if in a daze. I pushed myself onward, because I have a vision of the terribly important contribution I can make to this world. I have books inside me that want to be written, and classes to teach, and conferences to organize. I knew that I would learn at this conference the key to making that all happen. I could sense that I am on the verge of something big, and if I just don't lose the momentum, I can make it happen. That sense of immensity is what makes me wake up at 5am every day to write before work. It is what keeps me up late at night reading, soaking in new ideas. It is why I am so very tired.
Wayne Dyer opened the event. He has been one of my role models for many years. I love the calmness of his demeanor, and the gentleness of his message. He spoke about the Law of Attraction and the primary importance of the Imagination in that process. Don't worry, I'll give you a full report of his talk in a later blog. For today, though, I have a different message to bring. The theme of Imagination and Visualization would recur throughout the conference, along with advice on how to increase the power of attraction by eliminating all the stuff that blocks our field of attraction.
That night, before heading back to my room, I picked up a little book by Wayne Dyer called Being in Balance, where I found the quote I used as an opener to this post. It was part of a chapter called There's More to Life Than Making It Go Faster. I suddenly realized that although I have a clear mental image of what I'd like to accomplish, I haven't yet lost the notion that I must be the one to make it happen. In my misguided vision, I still believe that miracles are the result of really hard work: no time to eat, sleep, rest, laugh. There's work to do. I have to get up extra early and write about this! I realized at that moment that I have been working too hard. I have been STRIVING, which is exactly the opposite of how Spirit works.
Jesus told his disciples, "Come, follow me, all ye who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Following Spirit, really allowing Spirit to take control and to direct the unfolding of things, is an easy, joyful process. It will never be hard work. I was walking an easy path, but making myself walk it in a difficult manner so I could feel I was contributing something important to the process. All at once, I realized that was unnecessary. Spirit, however, knows how stubborn and hard-headed I am, so I got lots more confirmation of that lesson as the weekend progressed.
Louise Hay, herself, talked about how she went from being a model to being the icon she is today. She said that she never really had a full vision of how it would all turn out. She just kept firmly in mind that she wanted to help people by teaching them about affirmations. She said, "We just kept doing whatever work was set before us. We just concentrated on the task at hand, and one thing led into the next." Sounds to me like she just stayed joyfully in the present moment, and let Spirit guide the action.
Out in the parking lot, at the end of the first evening, a woman turned to me for no apparent reason to say, "You know, last year I heard Louise Hay say that she never sets goals. She just holds her vision and does whatever work she has to do that day."
The next morning I heard Greg Braden speak. I can't wait to tell you what I learned during that lecture. But for now, the important message is that in order to prepare for what will happen next on this planet, we need to do whatever it takes to keep our energy clear, so that we maintain a clear field of attraction. That means changing how you eat, how you work, how you think, and especially how you feel.
Later that day, I stumbled across someone taking aura photographs. I've always wanted to do that, so I shelled out the $20. He told me many things, but what is important here is the message, "You're beginning to discover your joys and your passions, but you are impatient and feel that they need to happen NOW. Your aura is still unfocused, so you need to clear your field so that you can manifest your vision."
Again with the clearing of the energy field. Next stop was Caroline Sutherland, a medical intuitive who teaches people to listen to their own intuition when it comes to their health. She began her workshop with a guided meditation. She had us put our hand on our heart and ask our body what we were doing to cause it to age faster than necessary. What things must we give up in order to clear our field of energy so that we can manifest our dreams? By now I'm hearing Twilight Zone music in my head. My answer was immediate and very clear: There were two things I needed to give up if I were to be in my full power: Sugar, which I already knew, and my constant sense that I must always work, work, push, push, go, go, little bunny. Hmm. That part was new. Whatever. The answer came too quickly, I thought. It was just my mind coming up with an answer, I reasoned. That's not intuition.
After the lecture, I again roamed through the vendor tables, where I came across people sitting across from each other in chairs, doing some sort of weird reading thing. A nice Hawaiian woman came up to me to ask if I'd like to know more. Her name was Margie Kalaluhi, of Heart Centered Wellness, and she was practicing a form of healing that used Infinite Love and Gratitude as the healing modality. That got my attention. She said that if I paid for a reading she could tell me what stuck emotions and limiting beliefs in my subconscious were clouding my energy field. She said with that knowledge I would be able to clear my energy field so that I could better manifest my vision. OK. By this point there is no way I wasn't going to shell out the money for this reading, even if it did make me late to hear Carolyn Myss, another one of my favorites.
Margie told me some fascinating things about the emotions that were stuck in my body, causing my subconscious to cloud my energy field. These trapped emotions were the reason that my aura was unfocused, and she used Infinite Love and Gratitude to unblock them so that I could stay clear. She told me that my mind and my spirit were both disconnected from my body, and she showed me how to reconnect them. She told me that my body was overrun with Candida, and that I would need to starve out the yeasts by giving up starches and sugars. She also got a reading she couldn't quite understand. She looked it up on her chart, and appeared puzzled. She asked, "Does 'Having to do it all' mean anything to you?" Does it ever! It's the same answer I had just gotten in the last meditation just before meeting her.
I learned from her that I need to take care of my body. She taught me that there are five basics of health: Food, Water, Rest, Exercise, and Owning Your Own Power. She seemed rather surprised to find that I own every bit of my own power. Based on the emotional readings she had gotten earlier, I should have been a quivering mass of jelly. But these last few years have taught me to take back all the power I had given away. I guess now I'm ready to move on to the next stage, which apparently involves taking care of myself. Finally.
She said I don't drink enough water and that I forget to eat. No surprise there. She also said that I don't allow myself to get enough rest, and that it is very important that I stop pushing so hard. Which is why you haven't heard from me for a few days. All of a sudden, I realized just how exhausted I had become, and I gave myself permission to sleep. I've pretty much been sleeping ever since, even dozing off at the pool store once or twice.
So here I am again, starving the little yeasties that have lived in my gut for most of my life. They have a mind of their own, these yeasts, and they force me to eat sugar and starches to keep them happy. When I don't, they punish me by making me very sick. For the next couple of weeks I am putting my dreams on hold so that I can take good care of this body. I will learn to cook my own food again, get lots of sleep, drink pure water, walk in the fresh air, and sit for long spells at a time with an empty mind. Eventually, I will begin to feel better and my brain fog will clear.
Over the next week or so I will share with you all of the wonderful notes I took at the conference this past weekend. But first I will get a full night's sleep and I will cook myself nourishing food. I will take walks outside and I will swing in the hammock, staring up at the sky. I will even start practicing tai chi again, which is a powerful form of exercise that engages my mind as well as my body, forcing me to stay in the present moment. All of those things take time, so I'm suspecting I'll have to cancel quite a few meetings that last week still seemed so important.
And then, when I'm ready, I will begin my own writing project, the one that's been brewing in the back of my mind for the past couple of months. By then, my energy field will be clear, and I will be able to visualize without all that emotional junk from my past clouding the process. I don't know where all this is leading, but I do know one very important fact: The path I must follow will be easy, and it will be joyful. Want to come along?
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