Abundance

There's this thing I learned in grad school...that stress is when you have this feeling like everything that you want and need is sitting on top of you...just out of reach...on the other side of your existence...and you can feel it, but have no idea how to get to it.

That's how I've felt for a long time. I have been reading a lot of these good old PPY Teacher Training requirements, including You Can Heal Your Life, Miracles, and Moving into Stillness, and I've realized that instead of trying to claw my way out from underneath the suffocating barrier between me and all I desire, there is an entrance way through which I can walk to get there.

So you know the expression, "when the student is ready, the teacher appears." Well I am the student, I'm ready, and it feels like these books are my teachers. I've learned the lesson, thank you universe, ALAKAZAM! Where is the doorway?

So how do I get through? Well, it starts by acknowledging how silly and crazy it actually is to feel suffocated by abundance! Once you identify that that's what it actually is. That's about 80% of the battle. Otherwise we think "I deserve this anxiety. I deserve this suffering. This not knowing. This pervasive worry. It's all I've known and all I will know. Otherwise, why would I be experiencing it?"

But what we should be thinking is "I have the tools to access all that I want. It is all inside me. The universe is abundant. Once I acknowledge the abundance it is mine to access."

Well so far it's been about 2 weeks of working with these principles and the following has happened: Had the best Valentines Day ever; kicked ASS at demo-teaching and felt proud and full of light among my peers; got offered an incredible opportunity that signifies a new, wonderful chapter in my life...

Suddenly trains seem to come quicker, I feel happier, lighter, I am able to identify other people's moods and separate them from myself "cut chords of the past" and "shield my chakras" if you will.

I feel I am able to touch people with this new lightness I'm feeling and it's getting easier to meditate. I feel myself glowing, surrounded by white light, signifying the closeness of myself to the divine. And it feels so soothing. I feel so protected and rooted. Day by day I grow stronger. I am the seed unfurling and becoming a tree. Without struggle, but with grace.

I am also more sensitive to the positivity of others and how sensitive and reactive others are to my positivity. For instance, I spoke to someone today who said "well sure, bad things can always happen, but to be honest if you have faith in yourself and know what you're capable of then why would you think that they will?" It's so easy to forget how powerful our own knowledge of self can be.

My two most favorite Louise Hay affirmations are so simple:
"I approve of myself" (three or four hundred times per day until you actually do)
and
"I am a magnet for divine prosperity" (how much ass does that one kick?)

I also adore Stuart Wilde's assertion that if we believe ourselves to be wealthy and live life believing in the abundance of opportunities and joy then our lives will become our actions. The universe only knows what you tell it. So why not strongly believe in and live as your highest self? Why not embody pure potential?

Why not take 3 minutes...close your eyes...and be still...ask to be rooted, ask to be lifted...ask what your spirit loves

and do it?

Chakras, The Lumbar Spine, and French Fries

Imagine me, in typical bag-lady fashion, plopping down on my white leather sectional in my gorgeous Cambridge loft apartment, peeling off layers of sweaty spandex, and flipping furiously through my training notebook for the page with my notes on chakras, so that I can show my loving and saintly boyfriend what I've deduced is the next step for me on my path of spiritual evolution, and what his chakras mean. When I try to explain that I think he's aligned overall, with his spiritual upper chakras: his strong intution, deep compassion, ability to wrap his head around the big-picture, just as activated as his lower chakras: his groundedness, will, and stability. Whereas I live in the upper chakras, floating above the daily grind, giggling at the notion of trying to fit my round-booty-peg in the square holes all around me. As one of my fellow teacher trainees said (quoting Joan Rivers) "Just because it zips, honey, doesn't mean it fits." Just picture me jumping up and down, laying on the floor, trying to zip up and into the prescribed "right" course of action. Not a pretty sight.

So there we sat, him slowly understanding and maybe even accepting, my realization, that I could do with some grounding, but that I should never give up the amazing gift of my spirituality and ethereal mindset. Thank goodness the three upper and lower chakras are connected by the fourth, the heart. His and mine are both open, we become flooded with compassion and, in turn, humbled by loving kindness.

It kind of makes sense that the neurotic cerebral long island yoga loving surf haired flower child would meet the golf playing number crunching incense burning ohio hippy college grad and fall in love.

Which brings me to the lumbar spine...I kid! I just love when the most warm, sweet, gaga loving, guided meditation guru of a yoga instructor, Alex, comes at us with his model pelvis and talks about our vertebra like points in a game of battleship. My faves are L4 and L5...susceptible to injury and easily protected by proper alignment.

So really the functional anatomy and spiritual skeleton I'm developing through my 24 hour per weekend intensives have led me to conclude I should eat more salt. Salt comes from the earth and I was told by a reiki master I need grounding. More french fries. Sounds like a good plan to me.