blissmonger.com

focusing on the fun

You think that the goal is to be over there, and we say the goal is the journey over there; the goal is the fun you have along the way on your way to over there.

— Abraham

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Abraham, you have taught me well to enjoy the process, and to appreciate what is over here while I’m on the way to over there. So what I’m going to focus on during the next cycle of intention is the fun. That includes whatever it is I distract myself with when I become aware that I could use a little attitude adjustment. Any amount of time spent mongering on the negative is precious time stolen away from mongering on the bliss. I am convinced that the latter doesn’t need to be accompanied by the former. With the momentum I’ve got going in dispelling limiting beliefs, I want to explore even more of this territory.

The tools at my disposal are my Resistance Toys, and among them are Joy Pullers - people, places things that pull joy through me when I think about them. I’ve demonstrated to myself how invaluable they are in goal-reaching, and I’m going to kick it up a notch by documenting what they have been in the past, and what I stumble upon every day that tickles my fancy.

And whatever else comes up that I can’t know about just yet.

Just thinking about the power behind this tsunami of fun makes me giddy :-)

expectations

So I'm catching myself focusing on an interesting facet of this 30-day intention thing.

Which is cool, because my intention this cycle is to deflate limiting beliefs.

I assumed all kinds of creative energy would be unleashed when I gave myself more time in the morning by getting up earlier, and getting to bed earlier.

Well, that's not what's been happening. And we all know that old adage about what assuming something makes you and me.

Don't get me wrong, there certainly have been bursts of creative expression along the way.

But there's something else going on here that I didn't anticipate.

I'm feeling rested.

I'm exploring energy and the directing of it in ways I wasn't aware of before.

I'm watching circumstances and people and events manifesting in my life at a pace that has my attention because of the fluid, organic, next-logical-step-ness of it.

I've been apprenticed as a wanna-be cat-owner.

I'm pulling my energy back from potential wildgoose chases, because I know where the chase will lead.

I'm being, more than doing.

So this perceived lack of creativity I've been thinking about, I think it's just getting channeled differently. It's there, with different clothes on, and I don't need to know the how or when of what's next with my producing out there in the world.

Which makes me wonder what will show up as my next intention.

Cuz it will rock.

that sleep thing

So it's been a bit longer than 30 days, and I'm thrilled to report that my intention to go to bed by 9:00 PM and get up at 5:00 AM has been a success.

Once I crossed the line in my head to do it, I've experienced almost a craving to keep to that schedule, and look forward to getting up that early. My alarm goes off at 5:00, in the form of the digitized sound of rain falling. I might lounge in the warm cozy goodness of my bed for awhile, and then I get up. I incorporated using a light therapy box, a first generation Litebook I found on craigslist, into the routine a few weeks ago. Half an hour when I first get up and again at mid-afternoon, and I think this is adjusting my circadian rhythms so I am truly tired when I am supposed to be, and awake when I am supposed to be.

I also received a nudge from the universe about buying a memory foam pillow - not the kind with the contours, but the slab version. Amazing difference in sleep.

I find that I'm not so focused on getting ready for work and what time I'll be leaving, either. I leave the house at a different time every day, and it doesn't really matter. Traffic is quite cooperative most of the time as well, which I take total credit for.

When the 30-day mark was reached, the group I'm playing with in the intention sandbox unanimously chose to continue on with each other as new-found cheerleaders and friends, creating new habits and attitudes in our lives in that supportive framework. I'd highly recommend that arrangement when you decide to choreograph change in your life. Transformation is powerful stuff, and it's better shared.

self-enhancing beliefs

I'm rereading Awake in the Heartland by Joan Tollifson - found it a few years ago in the awesome metaphsyical bookstore in Portland on NW 23rd, and have had a hankerin' to dip into it again. I'm staring down the barrel of my self-limiting beliefs, who's days are numbered, and Joan's words are like ambrosia for the process. Everything is a story, and when approached from that perspective, coupled with the feelings nudge I get from my inner being who just ain't goin' there when I believe those crazy things that loop over and over again in my head, well, it's a done deal.

Rather than play symbiotic footsie with self-limiting beliefs, I am now host to the self-enhancing kind. About a year ago I went through this process withering the power of lack in particular, so I'm looking forward to seeing what happens this time around.

Some choice passages from Joan:

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It is painful, and yet, there is always something I love about withdrawal. It is the stopping. YOu finally stop running, and you sink in. You meet what you've been running from. You don't move. And it feels like a huge relief. Like some enormous noise has stopped. And you're just here.

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To the mind, "nothing" is a terrifying idea....and so, we pull back from bare presence. We keep very busy. We avoid this terrifying nothingness that lurks just under the surface of everything. We avoid silence. We avoid gaps in the conversation. We turn on the radio or the TV. We read books. We have "meaningful" careers. We raise families. We go on vacations. We chase gurus. We drink. We smoke. We consume. We talk. Anything to avoid this dreadful nothing.

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I learned a lot from people's questions and my responses. It was easy to see, in the others, the absurdity of the stories, the flimsiness of the imaginary webs that seem to bind us. Whereas when it was my own story, its apparent reality had a greater hold. So everyone was a mirror in which I could see the emptiness of all beliefs, and the absolutely undeniable radiance that is always here.

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I want to emphasize again that these [suggestions] are not intended as a recipe for enlightenment or as guidelines for a spiritually correct life. These suggestions are merely pointers to what is. You won't acheive anything by following them. There is nothing to achieve.

If you have been meditating for many years, I encourage you to recognize what never comes and goes, and to stop pursuing it in any specific or exclusive experience. If you enjoy meditating, by all means meditate. But if you are separating meditation from the rest of life, recognize that every moment is meditation. Give up the whole concept of "meditation." Give up attaching importance to any particular state of consciousness, however "enlightened" or "unenlightened" it seems.

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Your suffering is your own activity. It is something that you are doing moment to moment. It is a completely voluntary activity....You will continue to pursue every kind of means until you realize that all you are doing is pinching yourself. When you realize that, you just take your hand away. There is nothing complicated at all about it. But previous to that, it is an immensely complicated problem.

--Da Free John

statistics, schmatistics

All those statistics that you are gathering about your own experiences and about others are only about how somebody has flowed Energy. It isn't about any hard fast reality.

-- Abraham

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Somebody focused a negative thought long and hard enough to make it happen in their reality. And then others focused long and hard enough to make it a part of their own.

I want to start my own statistic of how much fun I'm having, and how great life is, and what awesome people come out to play with me, and how quickly I allow my desires to manifest.

I'm considering options for my second round of a 30-day focused intention. One idea is to be hyper vigilant about what self-limiting beliefs are running me like the elephant in the middle of the room. I want to be so aware of these beliefs when they crop up, and so sick and tired of them cropping up, that I choose naturally to drop those stories and look elsewhere for my entertainment. I want to get so good at being able to decipher what event or outcome was predicated by which belief that I get bored with it all and take my power back from this slippery critters, go somewhere else to play.

I hope they're shakin' in their boots. Really, though, you guys can morph into something else in my psyche. I know that you served a purpose at some point in my life, and you're just trying to help. But the game has shifted now. New rules, new playing field.

New coach.

30 day intentions

I'm having a great time with my 30-day intention, with the people who are doing it with me, with the realizations that are cropping up because of the focus, so much so that we are all looking foward to doing it again when this cycle is finished!

Today I put some thought into what my next intention might be, and it took awhile before something started cookin'. What is sitting in the hot seat at the moment is awareness of self-limiting beliefs. I'm not sure yet what I want to measure around that, perhaps being able to notice when they come up, perhaps writing them down and tracking what type comes up most often and under what circumstances, perhaps dialoguing with them is some form--written, graphical, verbal. All for the express purpose of divesting them of their power over me, possibly turning them into allies with new missions in tlife instead of standing vigilant against some perceived intruder. It's just us here, and we're in this together, guys. Can we be a team now?

I think so.

decisions, decisions

Aargh.

It's Saturday night. There are several dvds stacked up next to the tv for the holiday duration that would be delicious to watch.

But it's already 7:44 as I type this.

Here's where self-sabatage might mess with my self-care efforts in the past.

Is there a movie that's worth watching that's worth foiling my intention?

If I'm going to bed at 9:00 like I say I want to, then I can choose to watch part of something tonight and continue on at another time, or I can postpone it altogether to a more conducive sitting.

Simple enough, but what is it that I think I'm missing out on if I go to bed earlier? What am I driven to be vigilant about in the late night hours? Granted, there's a certain seduction in late night-ness that just isn't there in any other time of day, or am I embuing late night with some vague attractive quality that doesn't really exist to justify hanging out there?

Maybe I'm on to something here.