Trusting Life

Much of my focus on my spiritual path has been about learning how important it is to demonstrate and “prove” my total trust of Life. The way it's been showing up lately has been quite fascinating and unexpected. What I'm observing is I cannot listen to fear, no matter how loud it gets. Fear is a survival way of thinking based on the past and exists in the intellect, not the heart.

My intention each day is to follow my heart and my intuition.

Easier said than done, let me tell you. Life offers countless opportunities to make decisions. The challenge for me was this: Do I make my decisions from the survival place focusing on security and safety OR do I make them from a place of surrender and trust? 

I've learned some painful lessons when I've listened to my fear and not listened to my heart. The results were not only unsatisfactory, but so laughably wrong. Plus, they caused lots wasted time and energy.

Taking whatever comes along is how many people live and how I lived during the almost six years I spent as a single mom. I waffled back and forth between demonstrating my trust during some of the worst stretches to buckling with fear when I thought I might not be able to pay my living expenses.

An exhausting way to live.

It took three years of living nomadically, then starting with nothing when I moved to Asheville, and then gradually shifting my business from doing what I believed I had to do to doing what I love before I was able to embody my trust of life to support me. It required lots of inner work to release the fear and subconscious beliefs that were running my life.

I knew deep inside it was time for me to trust Life to FULLY support me and to do whatever I’m guided by my Higher Self to do NO MATTER WHAT.

I recently read that sometimes when one says no to a low-paying gig, the better alternative doesn’t show up right away. Sometimes there is a period of darkness that one has to go through until that new better opportunity shows up. I have been through this eleventh hour process many times. The worst part is when one knows one hasn’t followed inner guidance in some way, such as a nudge to move or call someone or take a specific action when an idea comes in.

The whole point is to really listen and then leap without fear and without regard to the consequences!

To do so is a demonstration to Life that you are in fact listening and willingly following the inner Voice of your Higher Self. Hesitation and resistance are clear signs that one is listening to the small self’s will which is usually driven by fear to take desperate action and approach life as if one is putting out a fire.

It's so easy to get stuck in this small self mentality of putting out fires and rearranging external conditions to resolve problems rather than out-picture a positive outcome from within. This is simply seeing the process of manifestation backwards. Rearranging externals is buying into the illusion of a world made by past ideas and beliefs rather than creating a new world with new ideas and beliefs. Nothing good can really come from old ideas and beliefs except more of the same patterns and experiences.

To create anew, one has to tune into the present moment and manifest from there.

This entire way of thinking requires purging old programming that makes us feel guilty if we don’t do what society, culture and family tell us is right. We are shamed into feeling bad if we listen to our hearts rather than social pressure or intellectual arguments.  We have to shut out all the noise and sometimes withdraw socially to stay strong and reduce the temptation to conform to old social programming. We also upset people’s comfort zones when we enter a place of deep listening and trust. 

It takes daily practice to have the constitution or strength to stay disciplined and focused and in a place of faith rather than fear. I have been learning the art of discipline and commitment to the Highest Good, and I have gotten SO MUCH better at reading the signs Life is showing me. In general, Life tends to greenlight things in obvious ways when they are a go for me, and it put the brakes on or roadblocks things that are not right.  However, sometimes the signs are more subtle and I get confused and end up lost.  But the daily lessons are strengthening and teaching me and given me tools I never would have had had I not been a willing student.

Willingness is, after all, is half the battle, the rest is listening and following directions.