What's Really Going On?

So many of us in our lives wonder why things just keep happening "to" us. The truth is that life doesn't happen "to" us, it happens "through" us. I mean WHATEVER happens to us in our lives is through our own creation. We create it all…the good the bad and the ugly. It is our consciousness that creates our total experience in life. That is why "positive thinking" works if we work it. If we constantly create positive thoughts, they will eventually turn into positive beliefs. The saying is really true that what you "believe you can achieve".

Our thoughts, feelings and beliefs shape our reality. Many think (I know I used to) that our experiences precede our beliefs, but truthfully it is the other way around: our beliefs precede our experiences. What you believe to be true shows up in your life. For example, if you believe that you are not going to get the career you want because you are not qualified, you will not get the career you want. If you believe that you will get it, despite the fact that you are not what is commonly thought of as "qualified", you will. How many have had experiences where they started with no experience in a field and rose to great success?

What is a true belief? It isn't the same as a desire. You can't just "want" to believe; you must really believe….deep in your heart, soul and most important, your subconscious. Your conscious mind only affects 2 to 4 percent of your behaviors, but your subconscious affects 96 to 98 percent of it. That is critical to know. What is in our subconscious all the way from pre-birth is what is running our lives and we don't even know it. Some go so far as to say that past life experiences are also involved in running our lives, but I prefer to stay with this life… that is plenty to work with.

What makes this very important is that even unaware, we are constantly attracting to us situations and circumstances and people that match the vibration of our subconscious. I can share an example from my own life. My ex- husband (the second one) was very angry and verbally abusive. When I learned about the vibrational match concept (after we had divorced) I tried to understand how I could have attracted him to me. Surely I wasn't angry. When I got right down to it, I found out that I was indeed angry.

The cause of my anger went WAY back. My father cheated on my mother while she was pregnant with my older brother. She of course was hurt and very angry. Back then women didn't just leave their husbands. She had quit college to marry him so she was, in her mind, stuck. Then she got pregnant with me and he kept on cheating. She now was not only angry with him, but also angry with herself. I therefore got to marinate for 9 months in her pure pissosity! Not to mention the many years after that I heard them arguing and fighting. I would wake up in the middle of the night to hear my father breaking dishes while cussing and fussing.

All of this settled into my subconscious as "what love looked like". So when I attracted a mate, I brought to me what I was, an angry, argumentative person. It happens that way all the time in our lives. Whatever we have going on is a result of a subconscious core belief and so nothing that happens is EVER anyone else's fault.

Once I went to a class and I thought that the instructors were extremely sarcastic. Having owned my own training firm for years, I knew that according to adult learning theory, it was important not to intimidate adult learners like that. I was truly miffed that they were so thoughtless with us. I had heard by then though that we can only see in others what is in us. Alan Cohen says "if you can spot it, you got it." So I decided to test the theory. I took my two daughters out to dinner one night and said that I wanted to try something with them. I said, " if I say something sarcastic to you and you alert me of it, I will give you 50 cents each." Before the meal was over, they cleaned my purse of all cash!! Not once did they point out a sarcastic remark that I made that I didn't agree with!! Not once!!

Since then I just trust the process. If someone at work, or in my family or wherever, triggers me in anyway, I always check to see where is it that I have that trait and do the work to release it. Usually the trait is exacerbated in the other person, but I know now that it is my Higher Self's way of telling me what I need to heal, transform or let go.

Ultimately we really should thank all the people that come into our lives to teach us what we need to know about ourselves. I had a friend once who said that she could not understand why her brother didn't realize that his wife was such a bitch. I told her that he wasn't one so he couldn't see it. She was one so she could! This also works for the good and wonderful people that show up in our lives too. They show us our good and wonderful traits. Everyone is a mirror, no exception.

The law of attraction works not only for personality attraction but for career success or failure, health or illness, wealth or scarcity. Every aspect of our lives is created by our vibrations which are created by our subconscious beliefs.

So what do you do when something shows up that you don't like? You must work to change the belief. How? Keep reading…

So you don't like what you see. Your boss is a jerk, your man is a cheat, you live from paycheck to paycheck… what in the world can you do to stop the drama? The first thing you must do is STOP focusing on what is not going right in your life. You get exactly what you focus on. Every time you talk about your boss the jerk, you add more situations and circumstances to your life to experience him as so. Every time you fuss at your man about his cheating… you guarantee cosmically that it will continue. You cannot think about a thing and NOT manifest it in your world.

You need to shift your focus to shift your experience. Boy is that hard when you are in the fire… the bills are piled up, the woman is calling your house, the boss is in your face! But you have no idea how powerful we all are!! Our spiritual power is mind-boggling!! If you put your spiritual mind to it, you can turn ANY situation around. As Dr. Wayne Dyer said in the title of one of his books... there really is "A Spiritual Solution to Every Problem!"

Rather than argue with your man go into meditation and "see" your relationship the way you want it. See him being a devoted, loving partner. Picture yourself having the kind of conversations that you want to have with him, going to the places that you want to go with him, laughing with him, smiling with him. See it in vivid detail. Do this inner work as often as you feel necessary (daily to start) until you see the change on the outside show up. Do it and you WILL see the change.

Do this in all areas of your life that you want to see altered. See it, focus on it the way you want it to be, and what you are doing is changing your internal subconscious belief about the matter and it MUST change in your external experience. It is law!!

It is critical that we focus on our wants and not our "don't wants." What you focus on is what you draw to you. Don't think over and over about your lack of money. Put up a collage of all the things you want to attract into your life and put it in a place where you will see it everyday and you will manifest it. You don't even have to try to make anything happen… your subconscious will take on the "how" of manifestation… all we are responsible for is the "what".

For example, I decided that I wanted to go on a safari. So in August of 2004 I printed some safari pictures off of my computer and put them in what is known to be the Feng Shui "travel area" of my home. I didn't do anything else towards going on that trip. I didn't look up prices, didn't put any money away, didn't plan any time off, but one year to the month later, I was on a safari in South Africa. My subconscious created the how for me.

Now the specifics of my how were that in November after putting up the pictures I met a man, a college professor, on an online dating web site. We chatted online for some months, met in person and dated long distance for some months and for my 50th birthday (August, 2005) he invited me to join him in South Africa where he spends every summer. In addition to time in Cape Town and Johannesburg, we spent two days at Kruger National Park on a safari!! Do you see how powerful our subconscious is??? Our spiritual powers are far superior to any earthly, material power we can think of.

Some other tools that work for focusing our attention and thereby changing our lives are listed in the blog I wrote on How to Have a Spiritual Practice here on MySpace.

In conclusion… as I said in the beginning… our outer worlds are merely mirrors of our inner worlds. Change the inner and the outer will have to change. When it comes to people… when we heal they will either change or go away.

Yes we create EVERY experience in our lives, happiness or sadness, health or sickness, wealth or poverty. Awareness of that… can save your life!!