Prepare to be astonished
Question: What am I doing wrong that nothing is happening, that I'm no closer to realising my desires? Where am I messing up? I want to be able to teach all this to others, so I want to understand the common roadblocks — and I'm assuming that mine are common, garden-variety blocks, misunderstandings — so that I can avoid them further myself and point them out, with personal examples, to others.
Answer: ”Get up offa that thang, and dance 'til you feel betta!”
That's the secret: have fun with your life. Enjoy your life.
Question: I still don't see how that gets me any closer to realising my goals, and I don't think anyone else will, either. I need to make this process more… real? provable? reliable?
Answer: The game humans are playing as a group at the moment is one of power by force, achieving by doing. Try achieving by being. Or even just being. And see what happens.
Question: I have seen what happens: nothing. Oh, I might be happier, or at least less depressed; and I might be healthier, or at least less disordered. But I still don't have what I want; in fact, with every day that passes without evident progress, I slide further and further away from my goals as time (and money) continues to run out.
Answer: That's a common misconception — so common, in fact, that it's practically universal in your culture. It's generally understood to be the truth about the way things are and how “the world” works. However, it's a self-perpetuating un-truth; not a lie, exactly, just a profound misconception.
Question: Can I really go along as I have been lately, just floating on my good feelings and doing only want I want, and still achieve my goals, still live the life I want — and go on living it indefinitely? I realise that relaxing, enjoying my life, and following my interest is exactly how I want to be living. But what about earning money? How does that come about if not through my actions?
Answer: The first step — the most essential step, because it's foundational to everything else — is to relax, let go, float on the infinitely resourceful nature of the universe, the maker and source of all things.
Then, once you're sufficiently relaxed, open, let this same nature move you. Let yourself be moved. Allow yourself to be moved in the direction of your dreams/desires. Allow yourself to be placed in the way of your desires. That's it. That's all there is to it.
Its simplicity is deceptive. Allowing/relaxing/opening is not the same as inertia. You're mistaking inaction with inertia, when the two are quite different, although sometimes indistinguishable.
If inaction is accompanied by an active braking system, active resistance to motion, then you have a problem. You cannot get to where you want to go when you are actively resisting forward motion. So, the first and most important step is to relax, let go, and allow yourself to be moved by your desires. They are yours already, so simply allow yourself to be moved toward them.
The other part of this is for your desires to move toward you. That's outside of your customary processes. It's where the 'law of attraction' comes into play.
Simply by desiring something — your own home, for instance, and the means to acquire and maintain it — you draw it to you, as long as you continue to desire it, which is to say to focus on it with feelings of enjoyment and pleasant anticipation, to live in it.
But that's your only role in this aspect (allowing it to move toward you). It's more invitation than anything. Invite it into being. And remember to consider beyond it; what then? What will you do with it? What comes next?
Revel in those thoughts as often, and for as long, as you can. Dream it into being. In the meantime, live it now.
Question: What can I say to someone — heck, what can you say to me — who is faithfully doing all this and not seeing any tangible results?
Answer: What results do you want to see?
Question: I want to see the money in my bank account that allows me to buy the house and land I've been imagining for myself. I want to be living in that house.
If I stop trying to control the mechanics of it, stop trying to push and pull it into existence, then how does it happen? I can see and feel the value in stopping all the straining and striving. The relief is reward in itself. But what then? How do I get there if I don't even try?
Answer: Misconception. Myth… on myth, on myth. All of your stories (you humans) are about overcoming. Striving. Straining. Resisting. Pushing. Pulling. And at last, against all odds, prevailing. But that's the hard way — the very hard, very slow, arduous, precarious way.
You've designed it like that. It's the present game you're all playing, to explore other avenues of creation, other methods. You cannot help but be creative beings, although you can very well block or stymie your abilities.
Put another way, you are always in the process of creating something. It can be something you want or something you don't want; the choice is yours.
So, you are inevitably continuing to create at the same time as you're exploring every facet of individualization, individuation, separation, isolation. But in doing so, you're creating via very slow, difficult, even circuitous routes.
There is a better way: effortless, joyful, and — to the human mind, trained to the current physical world — often surprising, even astonishing.
Prepare to be astonished, to be surprised and delighted, by what appears when you just let go, relinquish all attempts to/at control.
Question: I would like to include some stories as everyday examples of this mode of creation. Getting the residency — residencies, plural! — I wanted; getting this house… (See below.) What others? Any new ones in the making?
Answer: Stay tuned… Good stuff is on the way. The way is even good! Prepare to be delighted. Overjoyed, even.
***
When I wrote that last question, I had three particular instances in mind when I had unwittingly proceeded in this manner. I'm sharing these stories here as much to remind myself of what's possible as for anyone else's benefit. I do still often forget and keep trying to force or rush the process.
The first two involved residencies (advanced clinical training) at veterinary teaching hospitals, one in Australia and the other in the US. I had been in veterinary practice for over 6 years when I applied for the residency in equine medicine and surgery, coupled with a master's degree in equine exercise physiology, at the University of Sydney.
That residency whetted my appetite for further education, and it set me up for a second residency, this one in large animal internal medicine at North Carolina State University.
What is noteworthy about both instances — and for me a crucial element — is that I didn't know how competitive those positions were, how small the chance that I would be accepted, so I didn't worry at all about succeeding. I simply submitted my application and then went on with my life.
In fact, with the second residency, applicants were asked to rank their top ten choices. What I didn't know at the time is that pretty much everyone fills in all ten spaces, hoping to get at least one offer. Not knowing any better, I simply nominated the one and only program I wanted, and left the other nine spaces blank.
To be fair, I had excellent letters of recommendation, and by then I also had several years of practice experience, one completed residency, plus a master's degree in a pertinent field. Even so, the audacity of that decision surprises me still. I just didn't think I wouldn't get in to the program I wanted.
The wait for the letter of acceptance was quite long both times (several months), but that didn't worry me, as I knew it would take some time for the applications to be processed and, in the case of the US residency, for the national matching program to be completed. That, too, is a crucial element for me: patience, or better yet, faith. I was proceeding on a kind of innate confidence that I would succeed.
Fast-forward three decades, over many ups and down —incrementally and, in time, inexorably more downs than ups — to the third instance. I had moved back to my childhood home to help my youngest sister take care of our elderly mother in her final years. After Mum's death, the property was sold, so I needed to find a new place to live.
Try as I might, I could not find a suitable place to rent in the area I wanted to live. As time ran down toward move-out day, I became increasingly concerned. On a whim (or should that be inspiration?), I started looking interstate, in a beautiful area I remembered from my early days in practice.
I found a lovely little rental house on a real estate website and put in my application. Because COVID-19 restrictions prevented interstate travel at the time, I didn't get to see it in person. I just thought to myself, “That's exactly what I'm looking for; it just isn't where I thought it would be.”
There was so much packing, clearing, and cleaning needed to get our family home of almost fifty years ready for its new owners that I seldom thought about my rental application, and when I did, it was with little or no concern. The agent had told me that applications were taking a few weeks to
be processed, so I just set it aside in my mind.
Uncharacteristically, I wasn't at all fussed about the outcome. If I didn't get that house, there were plenty of others — or so I thought. I had paid no attention to Australia's “housing crisis,” to how many applicants there are for every rental, so it didn't worry me. Even now, I'm not sure how much of it is real and how much is ginned up or overhyped. Regardless, I didn't worry about my application, even though worrying had become a deeply ingrained habit by then.
And now here I sit, in that lovely little rental house, writing about how it metaphorically fell with a soft plop into my lap, in large part because I didn't fret about it. I know there were many different factors that facilitated the outcomes in these three instances. But knowing myself as I do, the common thread, and the object lesson for me, is that I decided on a goal, proceeded with simple confidence toward it, and then let it come to me, and me to it.
I want to get better at doing life this way!!
You are always in the process of creating something.
It can be something you want or something
you don't want; the choice is yours.
The Game
hide seek find laugh
Christine King
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