Posts Tagged ‘Miracles’

Getting What You Want

Sunday, December 11th, 2011

To paraphrase Shakespeare:  What to choose and what not to choose, that is the question.

Followed, of course, by all manner of other questions:  What choices are actually within my power?  What if what I want is not within my power to obtain or achieve?  What if I make a mistake?  What if I don’t deserve it?  What if God has something else in mind for me?  How do I go about getting it?  What if I fail (stumble, look stupid, hurt someone else in the process, lose)?  What if I get it, and end up disappointed (again)?  Etc.

Choosing can be difficult for many reasons, starting with the need to know yourself pretty well and including the limits of the human imagination.  No matter how creative you are, it’s impossible to envision every outcome.  And it’s especially impossible to envision the best way for something to come about.

So here you sit, facing the questions of what to choose (or not choose), besieged by additional questions and limited by your imagination.  And held captive by your assessment of yourself.  Now what?

Well, you can wait for something to happen and hope it’s good.  You can fall back on old habits and old choices and make the best of it.  You can find ways to explain your immobility:  reality, the economy, your obligations, your fears, other people, ego, your lack of resources (money, education, talent, opportunity).  You can look for a sign.  You can experiment with the options you see.  You can go to work on becoming better acquainted with yourself.

You can learn to make miracles.

The Nature of the Miracle

Traditionally, miracles carry a religious connotation, occurring as a result of divine intervention.  You pray, and the gods respond in your favor – if they favor your request.  When I first began to explore the idea of miracles, I realized I held a core belief in the laws of the universe.  I believe natural laws govern all outcomes, and even the gods work within the laws.  I concluded if we can’t see how an outcome happens, we simply do not understand the laws.  (I’m even more convinced of that since I’ve been studying quantum physics.)

For most of my life, I’ve been observing patterns and then dissecting the patterns to discover the contributing factors.  One of the most powerful insights I’ve gained over the years is that any energy or entity “out there” wants our best good.  Completely.  In all things.  Without exception.  Cosmic Consciousness (or God, or The Source, or whatever you want to call it) wants us to be happy, healthy, wealthy, wise, successful, and abundant.

That entity wants us to know ourselves, to know love, to gain enlightenment, to access the full measure of our personal power, and to serve powerfully.  There are no trade-offs.  We don’t have to sacrifice something in order to receive something.  We don’t need to have abundance in order to be happy, or health in order to be wise, or love in order to serve, or service in order to know love.

Of course, if you believe in such trade-offs, they become true.  But what if they aren’t true?  What if you could believe in miracles without limitations?  What if you could believe in your own best good?  What if you could believe your best good was your birthright?  What if you could believe that just because you were born on this planet you were given the right to enjoy the full fruits of life?

I’m going to assume you do believe this, and you do want Your Best Good.

Who Knows What’s Best?

Let’s explore Best Good a bit more deeply.  First of all, recognize Your Best Good is best for you, and you are the only arbiter.  No one on this planet knows what’s best for you better than you do – although cosmic consciousness might.  Your parents don’t know, your teachers didn’t know, your boss doesn’t know, your neighbors don’t know, you minister doesn’t know, your therapist doesn’t know.  No one else knows.  Everyone else will see your best good through their own lenses, and their lenses will be tinted by such factors as their beliefs, their experiences, their values, their view of you, and what’s in it for them.

But, you may be saying, I don’t know what my best good is!  Yes, you do.  At least your soul knows.  Your mind has probably been listening to others for too many years to be able to sort what you know from what everyone else says.  However, your heart and your body have ways of communicating that knowledge to you, if you are willing to listen.

I envision the methodology for making miracles to have three parts.  Each part of the model is an action point and requires your full commitment .

First – Choose, and Choose Truly

First, the choice you make must a true for you – and you must be willing to be true to it.  If you make a choice that is not true for you, you will know it in one of two ways:  1) You won’t be able to hold the intention.  It will simply slip out of your mind and out of your life.  2)  You’ll start getting messages from your true self.  Those messages will begin with a nudge, a pinprick of discomfort, a slip-up somewhere:  you’ll come down with a cold, your car won’t start, you’ll lose a computer file, etc.  (This is not to say every slip-up is a message, but it pays to explore the possibility.)

If you pay attention to the first message and correct your course, you’ll soon be on your way to Your Best Good.  If you ignore the first message, the second will be stronger:  the flu, perhaps, or a rear-ender, or a crashed hard-drive.

If the second message slides past without acknowledgment, and you continue to pursue a choice that isn’t true for you, each successive message will be stronger still.  Pay attention to your pain, whatever form it takes.  It could be serving as a wake-up call, as a seer stone, as a magnifying glass, as a window to your soul, as a reflection of a past un-true choice, etc.

Choices in favor of Your Best Good will always result in less pain, less suffering, less struggle, fewer obstacles, a faster pace, and greater peace.

Second – Align With Your Choice

This section is tricky because it’s absolutely impossible to see the unification – the alignment – take place.  The only way you can know whether or not you’re aligned is to look at the result.  If what you have chosen isn’t happening, you’re not aligned with it.  You’re aligned with whatever is happening.

The mis-alignment can be in your thoughts, in your emotions, or in your actions.  Since actions are the most observable, it’s fairly easy to assess whether they’re in unity with your choice.  If you’ve chosen to be healthy, are you living healthily?  If you’ve chosen to write a book, are you actually writing?  If you’ve chosen to build a business, are you focused on service?

Conscious thought is also fairly easy to monitor, just tune into your mind and listen.  Are you critical or creative?  Are you distracted or determined?  Are you candid or calculating?

Sub-conscious thoughts, beliefs and emotions are more subtle, but they are not invisible.  They show up in such non-subtle ways as trials, tribulations, and pain.

During three recent coaching sessions I worked with people in physical pain.  One client had pain in her shoulder and numbness in her forearm, one had sciatica, and one had irritable bowel syndrome.  In each case, we looked for emotional conflicts by probing for the metaphorical message in the pain.  Once the client found the message, listened to it, and made a different choice, the pain eased up.  My client with shoulder and arm issues, found a belief that it was her responsibility to be the “good right arm” of others, and in accordance with that belief she was investing an excessive amount of energy in other people’s goals.  She decided to refocus her attention on her wholeness and best good.  My client with sciatica realized the pain began when she let herself be drawn into a situation she didn’t like and became angry with herself.  We revisited the incident and she chose calm instead of anger.  My client with the irritated bowel found he was taking responsibility for the emotions of others.  As soon as he identified this burden and acknowledged he had chosen to take it on, he was able to release it.

In each case, when my client recognized the inner conflict and released the part that wasn’t in alignment with Best Good, the pain subsided or disappeared.

Third, Receive the Miracle

Receiving may seem like a no-brainer.  If you choose truly, and if you unify your thoughts, actions and emotions, of course you’re willing to receive!

However, since the miracle will be Your Best Good, it might not look exactly like you envisioned when you first made your choice.  You’ve heard the old story of the guy sitting on his roof during a flood, praying for deliverance and turning away rescuers because he expected God to magically transport him away from danger.  You can’t know in advance what the miracle will look like, what form it will take, or how it will show up in your life.  Be willing to open your arms and embrace the miracle that comes.  Sometimes the miracle is the end result, and the only thing left for you is to celebrate.  Sometimes the miracle is an opportunity, and it’s up to you to stride through the door and proceed eagerly up the path.

Wanting Your Best Good is not a substitute for more specific choices.  If you want to write a best-selling novel, decide what that would feel like to you, and choose it.  Unify your thoughts, actions and emotions with that choice.  Then let go of any expectation, any concept of what that must look like.  Go to work; keep your emotions in partner or creator mode, and willingly receive Your Best Good.

The universe will then deliver the miracle.

(If you would like more information about personal life coaching, or would like a free introductory session, please contact me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com)

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Proceed With Courage

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

The alignment aspect of making miracles is often the most challenging – especially in those areas of our lives where we experience the most struggle.

An often-overlooked way to bring your thoughts and your actions into alignment with your emotions is through courage. And then, courage grows as the result of such alignment. As with many of the power principles, the way is the result and the result is the way.

The following five techniques will help you gain courage, use courage, and accept courage as the inevitable result.

1. Listen to your intuition

Your inner voice is the voice of your soul – that inner essence of you that transcends the physical and is one with the universe. Your inner voice will always be truer for you than the voices of anyone else. However, learning to trust your intuition over the advice, beliefs, agendas, opinions, habits and experiences of others may take practice.

Begin by recognizing that everyone else speaks through their own emotional filter. Consider that your emotional filter began forming when you were an infant (perhaps before you emerged from the womb), when you experienced (or didn’t) your mother’s love. Since infancy, you have been interpreting what goes on around you and assembling your view of yourself, your life and the way the world works.

From these first beginnings your emotional filter has evolved, fed by emotion, attitude, experience, in-coming information, the filters of others, your education, and assorted other inputs. Everyone accumulates an individual perspective by way of this emotional radiation, some of it true, some of it not. Generally speaking, this makes the voices of others no more reliable than your own.

Your true inner voice, however, can sidestep your emotional filter, and it’s the only voice with that power. Here are some techniques to help you hear it and trust it.

  • Turn down the volume. The world itself generates so much noise it can become nothing but static. You may need to turn off such distractions as the TV, radio, or stereo. You may need to shut your doors and windows against the external noises of your environment. You may need to limit the number of people whose opinions influence you.
  • Use the mute button. Spend some time every day in silence. This may mean devotional silence such as prayer or meditation. It may mean some kind of quiet occupation, such as reading or sewing. It may mean getting out into the silence of nature. Silence helps you gain the calm of the Observer.
  • Calm your own “monkey mind” by releasing any Victim or Interpreter emotions. Should guilt, anger or disappointment start yammering at you over past events, extend compassion to yourself or others and come back to the present. Should fear, obsession or anxiety start eating at you about the future, detach from outcome, move into trust, and come back to the present.  Remember, your thoughts and emotions are yours by choice.
  • Trust your infinite partner. Your inner voice is in direct communication with the wisdom of the universe. That wisdom is available to you at any time just for the asking. Ask and you shall receive.

As with most things, the more you listen, the more you’ll hear. As you learn to rely on your intuition, you will discover how reliable it is. When you recognize you receive reliable wisdom, it’s easier to bring your thoughts, actions and emotions into alignment.

2. Be Open

By now you know the basic formula for manifestation:  set an intention, align with that intention, receive the results. I’ve been approaching the middle step, alignment, as a task, as the inner work. Now let’s look as alignment as a gift, as a miracle.

To be open to alignment requires some effort on your part. You must dismantle your barriers, and chances are you’ve had those barriers in place a long time and have grown comfortable with them. They protect you from anything on the other side of them, even if at the same time they’re preventing you from reaching what you really want.

Opening your gates takes courage. Moving beyond your walls takes courage. Striding into the unknown takes courage. A huge part of being open is being out in the open. Exposed. Vulnerable perhaps, but if you’re hiding behind your barriers, how can the miracle find you?

What does it take to have the courage of openness?

  • Love for yourself and your fellow human beings.
  • A commitment to purpose, to what you have to learn and to what you have to give.
  • Confidence that what you want wants you.
  • Happiness.

When you adopt this courage and become open, you are more likely to experience the miracle of alignment. Alignment then produces all other miracles. When you are aligned and unconflicted, when you are congruent and connected, only best good can occur.

3. Exercise Your Emotions

Emotions are creative energy, and with every emotion you experience you create something. In most instances, the only evidence of this creation is the result:  fear creates danger, love creates healing, anger creates malignancy, etc. Because every emotion creates something, you can identify the emotions you’re experiencing by the results they produce:  if you have safety, you know peace; if you have friends and family, you exude love; if you live in abundance, you radiate openness and generosity.

Most people express their emotions and receive the result without making a connection between the two. Their emotions roil out of them willy-nilly, creating results as if by accident. Because accidents occur within whatever medium is available, it’s easy to explain the accident as the result of physical circumstances. The cause and effect can seem so perfectly logical the emotional contribution is often overlooked or ignored.

If this has been your pattern, you can break free of it by becoming conscious of your emotional energy and using it purposefully and intentionally.

Remember, you can purposefully use your emotions to create anything you want through mindfulness, intention and practice:

  • Become aware of the cause-and-effect nature of emotions. Victim emotions result in misery; Interpreter emotions result in struggle; Observer emotions result in calm; Partner emotions result in cooperation; and Creator emotions result in oneness.
  • Know what you want. The more knowledgeable and intentional you are about what you want, the more you can manifest that specific result.
  • Practice. Apply the appropriate emotion to the specific situation.

Have the courage to use your emotions to create intentionally. Be confident enough to choose what you want. Be brave enough to acknowledge what you feel. Be fearless enough to choose the emotions that will create the life you want.

4. Allow Best Good

How much courage does it take to envision best good?  A lot. Usually because most people restrict best good. Some common restrictions are:

  • Best good is bigger than most people can imagine, so they don’t try.
  • Most people think of best good in terms of “reward,” something that must be deserved in order to be received.
  • Many people want to withhold best good from others, and thus withhold it from themselves.
  • Some people are afraid of best good.

There are two restrictions on best good. The first is existing circumstances. Given existing circumstances, best good is the best possible outcome. For instance, in winter, best possible good is probably not a sudden swing into summer. The second is your best good won’t diminish the good of the whole. For instance, suddenly summer would have worldwide consequences in terms of food production, local consequences in terms of expectations and preparedness, and individual consequences on people’s body rhythms. No matter how much you might want summer, visualize summer, affirm summer and bless summer, it would be pretty hard to conceive of it as a general best good.

On the personal level, best good is never restricted, never limited by immediate and conditional circumstances. (Such as illness, poverty, loneliness, unemployment, etc.) Best good wants to soar, to expand, to be free. Change limiting emotions to expansive ones, and you get an expansive result. Have the courage to visualize and radiate best good, and miracles can happen.

Expansiveness, yes; excess, no. Excess tends to encourage negative behaviors such as greed, avarice, jealousy, intoxication, and control, and thus creates more harm than good.

Best good often looks different than you’d expect, mostly due to limitations of the imagination. Have the courage to accept best good if it shows up a form surprises you. Gracefully and gratefully welcome the unexpected.

5. Energize Your Intention

Give your intention a good, solid booster shot of happiness. Happiness enjoys, delights in, welcomes, enthuses, laughs with and blesses. Happiness doesn’t hold back. Happiness is perhaps the most amazingly huge, expansive power in the universe. Only love has as much constructive power. (Hate and anger are equally strong, but they destroy.)  Where love is the greatest healing power, happiness is the greatest creative power. Creative in terms of originating, building, generating, establishing, expanding, etc. While all emotions create a result, happiness is creation itself.

When you infuse an intention with happiness, you cannot get any result other than best good. Happiness and best good go together. Where you have happiness you have best good, and where you have best good you’ll find happiness. Happiness is not just an end, it’s the means to an end. Employ it as your means to your intention. Use it to energize what you want. The happier you are as you envision your best good, the faster your best good will come to you. A few ways to empower your intention with happiness include:

  • Open your senses and enjoy what you experience through them.
  • Stay present. Refuse to stew over the past or agonize over the future.
  • Detach from expectation; stay focused on best good.
  • Smile, play, laugh, celebrate.
  • Enjoy every aspect of the process, even the hard parts.

Happiness has the power to join you and your intention into a congruent whole. If you withhold happiness in any measure, you cannot integrate that aspect into the whole, and best good becomes almost good, or next-best good.

Happiness is not just a good idea, it’s an essential key.

Application

I’ve numbered these techniques solely for the sake of presentation. They are not a step-function or a hierarchy. Use them as appropriate to energize your courage. Internalize them to follow your path boldly. Master them to access ever expanding layers of your personal power.

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Empower Your Miracles

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

In the article Clarify Your Intention, I invited you to set an intention and formalize it as a statement. Part of the exercise was to identify those whom your intention would serve and to imagine how it would serve them. I believe when you add service to others, your intentions grow wings. Suddenly what you want is no longer grounded, no longer plodding along. Once in flight, it soars swiftly and easily into the miracle.

Service, at this miracle-level, is given without conditions, carries no judgment, and holds no expectations. You reach out to others, simply to help them along their way, to enrich their experiences, to empower them.

Giving and Receiving

One of the biggest obstacles to such simple service is thinking that what someone else wants conflicts with or obstructs what you want.

Say, for instance, you love the city life you’ve created, and your significant other wants to move into a cabin in the mountains. Or you want your daughter to go to college, and she wants to be a ski bum in the winter and write during the summer. Or you want to implement a new process at work and your boss doesn’t want anything to change. Or your neighbor supports gun control and you want to carry.

When your values, ideals, preferences and desires conflict with those of someone else, where does service come in?  You can’t even understand what they want; let alone support it.

It is, of course, important to stay true to your integrity, which may make such situations seem non-negotiable. Perhaps they are. How can you compromise on the second amendment, or not give your best at work, or let your daughter ruin her life, or uproot and leave friends and family for the sake of some mid-life crisis?

On the other hand – assuming miracle-making service is given without conditions, carries no judgment, and holds no expectations – what would happen if you removed any conditions you’ve imposed, stopped judging, and released your expectations?  What if you stepped outside your own agenda and chose to truly understand the other person’s position?

So, your husband wants to simplify and move to a cabin. You’ll have to set your own preferences aside in order to recognize his underlying motivations. Some of those reasons will be more obvious (and perhaps more acceptable to you) than others. It may be easy to understand the need to simplify, but can you empathize enough to actually feel the urge to live closer to nature, to detach from past paradigms, to go looking for something that’s been missing?

So, your daughter wants to ski and write. If you can set your agenda aside, you’ll have a better chance of recognizing her hunger for freedom, her creativity, her love of adventure, her determination to listen to her heart and find her own way. Where you see a college education as a good way to both knowledge and security, she may see it as a good way to erode her soul.

So, you want to innovate and your boss wants to stagnate. Do you know anything about his obligations?  Are you privy to the pressures from his investors, his board of directors, or his family’s traditions?   Can you appreciate his efforts to do the best he can with what he’s got?

So, you think your neighbor wants to ban all guns, wants stern laws and stiff penalties. Have you ever asked him what gun control means to him?  Have you ever listened to the reasons supporting his concerns?

Becoming neutral – exercising acceptance, empathy and compassion – is the first step toward service at the Creator level. (See The Power of Emotion.)

Mastering Your Emotions

The second step is to become the master of your own emotions

When you’re in conflict with someone else, you see your reasoning as logical and your arguments as valid. You are steadied by your facts and supported by your common sense. Naturally, you’re passionate about what’s right.

But what if your passion – and that of the other person – creates and maintains the conflict?  What if the factors of the situation are actually secondary?

When you deem your position to be right (or even just mostly right) and the other person’s position to be wrong, you are in Interpreter mode.

Consider again the above examples.

Perhaps you resist the idea of moving to the mountains because: the whole idea is scary and overwhelming, you resent that your feelings don’t get more consideration, you deplore the prospect of roughing it, you want to protect what you’ve already built, you believe your spouse is immersed in a temporary and unrealistic fantasy.

Perhaps you resist your daughter’s plan for her life because you’re anxious for her, you’re disappointed in her choices, you’re certain a college education is necessary. Maybe deep down you envy and resent her free-wheeling ways.

Perhaps you resist your boss’s inertia because you’re certain you know a better way, you’re frustrated your suggestions aren’t given more consideration, you’re irritated by his attitudes and fears, you long for more responsibility and recognition, you’re afraid at this rate you’ll soon be out of a job.

Perhaps your differences with your neighbor are only partly about guns. Sure you believe in the right to carry, and you think he’s naïve, his dog barks half the night and poops on your lawn, and half of his front yard is an unsightly, poorly-tended vegetable garden.

Such underlying emotions are all from Interpreter mode, and Interpreter emotions always produce struggle. And the more you struggle, the stronger the conflict grows.

If you’ve already dropped your conditions and released your expectation, if you’ve already chosen neutrality, you’re halfway there. From that place of calm it’s fairly easy to release any remaining Interpreter emotions. And when you refuse to indulge in interpreter mode habits, you access more of your own power.

You also ease others away from their Interpreter tendencies by not adding the fuel of your so-called “passion” to their fires.

Mastery comes as you practice consciously choosing Partner mode emotions instead. When you operate from Partner mode, you create cooperation instead of conflict. For instance:

Imagine how discussions of whether or not to move to the mountains would be different if you replaced fear with trust, resentment with affection, aversion with tranquility, frustration with harmony, and suspicion with respect.

Imagine how your relationship with your daughter would improve if you replaced anxiety with confidence, disappointment with admiration, certainty with respect, envy with contentment, and impatience with gratitude.

Imagine how your dissatisfactions at work would abate if you replaced frustration with eagerness, ambition with willingness, longing with tenacity, and fear with confidence.

Imagine how the tension between you and your neighbor would ease up if you replaced arrogance with friendliness, helplessness with amusement, hostility with patience, and vexation with recognition.

The higher you move on the scale of emotions, the more personal power you access and the more you become the master of your emotions. The more you master your emotions, the more wisdom and empowerment you bring to the situations of your life.

Whenever you bring wisdom and empowerment into any situation, you serve others as well as yourself. You serve by releasing tension, by shedding fresh and clear light on situations, by making some of your enlightenment available to others.

When you empower others through your understanding, acceptance, encouragement, cooperation, and love, you expand your influence, gain credibility, form alliances, broaden your base, and roll out the welcome mat. What you give to others comes back to you.

Partner emotions always result in cooperation. When you free yourself from conditions, judgments and expectation, you open the door to a far wider range of possibilities than exist in Interpreter mode. When you are in full mastery of Partner emotions, best good becomes probable. You become an agent in bringing about the best good of others. You provide extraordinary service when you take yourself out of someone else’s picture.

The Universal Whole

This expansive energy you now experience and generate also strengthens your connection, partnership and oneness with the universe. In Partner mode, it’s easy to trust the universe will support you and others at the same time. Conflicts dissolve in best good because almost always the best good of others is also your best good.

Consider these ways in which the universe partners with you:

1.    The universe never judges. Your outcomes result directly and inevitably from the energies you generate – your thoughts, your actions and your emotions. There is no score-keeper-in-the-sky recording on a tally sheet whether you’re good or bad, marking you down for “bad” choices and rewarding you for “good” ones.

2.    On the universal level there are no arbitrary or unstated conditions. The rulebook never changes. You get out according to what you put in, and that’s that.

3.    The universe is never disappointed in you, because the universe holds no expectations. You do what you do, and you experience the results of your choices. If the universe has any desires for you, they are for your growth, your joy, your well-being and your best good. There may be hope that you will receive these miracles, and there may be rejoicing when you do; nevertheless, there will always be love and encouragement when you don’t.

Does this partnership with the universe support you, empower you, serve you?

What if you supported, empowered, and served others, following this model?

When you extend to others what the universe extends to you, you help strengthen the universal whole. The more you serve in this way, the stronger you become. The more you expand your Partner and Creator influence, the more others will move to higher levels of calm, cooperation and oneness.

Service and The Modes of Power

As a quick review, consider that the way you serve reveals your mode of power.

If you subjugate yourself, you are in Victim mode. This subjugation can occur in two ways. You can cede your power to someone else. Or you can submit to the emotions themselves. Whether you let others control you or you let your emotions dominate you, you relinquish your self.

If you serve reluctantly, you are in Interpreter mode. Almost all emotions in this mode have a sub-context of reluctance. You give because you must, or should, or have ulterior motives. Sometimes you want to avoid pain; sometimes you strive to come out ahead through  manipulation. Often, if you could see another option, you’d take it.

If you detach your emotions from your service you are in Observer mode. Neutral service takes little energy on your part, feels optional, and promises no particular benefit – and not offering it carries no penalty. Such gentle service can be as simple as offering a smile to a stranger, making a joke to ease tension, or holding the door for someone.

If you cooperate, you are in Partner mode. Overt generosity requires an emotional investment. You consciously and mindfully open your heart and help the other person in a pro-active way. Your service might be physical, but it can as easily be thoughtful or emotional. You want the other person’s success, the other person’s growth, the other person’s happiness and wellness, without putting it in the context of your own success or happiness.

If you bless, empower and trust, you are in Creator mode. At this level you become one with the other person – even if you remain in disagreement. You become one with the universe in sustaining and facilitating. You easily and effortlessly invest peace, love and joy in their efforts. You trust the other person’s best good as you trust your own.

Serve and Soar

Every worthy intention benefits someone else. As you align yourself with the miracle you have chosen to manifest, incorporate service into your efforts and watch those efforts take flight.

Service always imbues intention with greater power and swifter attainment.

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Pacifying Your Objections

Sunday, December 19th, 2010

When I first realized the power of emotions, I thought of them as prayers.  (Or wishes, or desires, or intentions, or choices.)  I saw happiness as a prayer for more happiness, and misery as a prayer for more misery.  Then I began to also see thoughts as prayers and actions as prayers.  For the past fifteen years, my observations have affirmed and expanded that original idea, and I have come to see the power of combining these three energies into a congruent whole

Congruence Produces Results

When thoughts, actions and emotions are joined toward something, that something results.  This is true whether the result is something you want or something you don’t want.

For most people, most of the time, results occur more by accident than by intention.  For instance, you probably have no intention to catch the cold bug that happens to be going around.  But if you have the thought/belief that illnesses are passed by germs, the emotion/acceptance that you’re vulnerable, and an action/contact with those germs, you’ll be congruent about catching cold.  You can easily catch it by accident.

The recognition of congruence is easy when what you have is what you like, enjoy, delight in, appreciate, love, or are at peace with.  It’s much more difficult to acknowledge a potential alignment with the troubling aspects of life – conflicts, illnesses, hardships, frustrations, lacks, etc.

When you look at what you don’t like in your life, perhaps you experience dislike, frustration, impatience, grief, fear, anger, or some other emotions from Victim or Interpreter mode.  It’s natural to wonder how you can possibly be aligned with something you so passionately don’t want.  It isn’t necessary to dissect or analyze the experiences of your past for the answer.  Simply look at your results and the energy that produces those results.  Are you suffering?  The energy of Victim mode emotions produces suffering.  Are you struggling?  The energy of Interpreter mode emotions produces struggle.

Remember, all emotions have power.  All thoughts have power.  And all actions have power.  Everything in your life indicates these three powers are pulling together in the same direction – or in conflict with each other.  If you change any one of the three, you will get a different result.

Today we’re going to do a little time traveling in order to de-energize what you don’t want – and energize what you do want.

In my previous blog (Becoming Congruent), I suggested a “But” exercise.  From that exercise, you’ll notice past experiences tend to be at the heart of many of your buts. Not all, of course.  Some will have to do with your current circumstances, and a few will reach into the future.  Take a moment to review your list and mark which is which.  Mark those rooted in the past with P, those centered in the present with C (for Current), and those projecting into the future with F.

To illustrate, here’s the sample intention I used last week.  I labeled long-held beliefs with P because such beliefs tend to have such deep roots into the past.

With delight and gratitude I enjoy unrestrained financial abundance, but:

  • I’m stuck in a job that barely pays the bills. (C)
  • Every time I try to feel abundance my stomach tightens up. (C)
  • The economy’s so bad, where would any new money come from? (F)
  • I’m farther in the hole than I’ve ever been before. (C)
  • Money is the root of all evil. (P)
  • The rich only get that way on the backs of the poor. (P)
  • I have to make sure everyone else is okay first. (P)

Change the Past

In science fiction, one of the primary challenges of time travel is to not interfere with history.  One little change in the past could completely obliterate the present as you know it.  For instance, what would happen to you if one set of your great-great grandparents didn’t conceive your great grandparent?  Or what would your childhood have been like if your father did different work?  Or what would your current situation be if you’d gone to a different school?

Look at your but list and choose one of those you marked with a P.  What if one little thing had been different in the past?  Would that but have the same power?

To change the past in a positive way, you will travel back in time and “rewrite” the event that originated the but, or influenced it, or reinforced it.  While there may be no mechanism to travel through time physically, metaphysically you can revisit your past and powerfully re-create your current reality.

Here’s one of the buts from the above list:  But I have to make sure everyone else is okay first.

Beliefs such as this may have resulted from a single event, but more likely they take shape through repetition.  The seed may have been planted when you were forced to share your toys, nurtured at functions (including your own birthday parties) where guests were served first, cultivated when you were instructed to watch out for your little brothers and sisters, etc. until you came to believe other people’s needs take precedence over your own.

Using the but you selected from your own list, travel back in time to a situation from the past that reinforced your belief.  It doesn’t matter if the situation actually happened or is simply representative.  It does matter that you can re-experience the feelings of the situation.  Also, the more meditative and experiential you can become, the better.  You’ll be moving through the situation emotionally, and you’ll control the clock so you can stop the action at any time.

Begin by letting your memory travel back to the situation you have in mind.  Imagine yourself at the beginning of the scene, when your emotions were in the neutral-to-happy range.  Say you’re happily playing by yourself with your toys when another child arrives.  Or you’ve just finished blowing out the candles on your cake and it’s time to serve it to your guests.  Or you’ve been left in charge of your cute little sister.

Now let the scene unfold until the moment when your needs or wants get pushed into the back seat.  Stop the clock.  Recognize this a choice point for you.

Of course, back in the past you couldn’t know you had a choice.  You were young, you were still forming your world view, you were vulnerable.  You couldn’t orchestrate the situation to please yourself.  (Violators will be prosecuted!)  Yet you felt something.

Start the clock and move through the scene just long enough to recognize what you felt then:  angry, frustrated, guilty, belittled, miserable, resentful, helpless, bitter, defensive, ashamed?  Stop the clock again.

With the clock stopped, acknowledge your emotion as one from Victim or Interpreter mode.  From your current wisdom you know Victim mode emotions result in pain and suffering; Interpreter mode emotions result in struggle.  The emotion you experienced then has been affecting your life ever since.  So, since you’re traveling back in time, now’s your chance to change the past.  And since you’ve stopped the clock and can pause it for as long as you want, take the time to decide how you would like to react instead.  Emotions from Observer mode will neutralize the old belief, Partner emotions will generate new opportunities, and Creator emotions will produce best good.

When you know the emotion you want to experience instead, choose it.  Generate it within you.  Feel it.  Let this be the mode you operate from.  Now start the clock again.

As you let the scene continue, the other players will try to follow the old script.  But when you use your chosen emotion to motivate new dialogue and responses, they will have to follow your lead and adapt to your new choices.  Pay attention to what happens within yourself as the scene plays out.  Notice any shifts that occur.

In science fiction, any changes to the past usually occur within the characters, with no permanent changes to history.  (Except they may have fixed something that had broken.)  When the characters return to their present, it’s often to the present they knew before, but they themselves have gained a measure of enlightenment.  In your reality, you will probably experience a similar inner transformation, and that inner transformation will impact your current circumstances.  You will have changed the past in one small way, and that change will also change the present.

Choose the Present

For this technique, return to your but list and select an item you identified with an C for Current:  But I’m farther in the hole than I’ve ever been before. Compared to changing the past, choosing the present is fairly straightforward, although it requires the same meditative and experiential attention.

  1. Identify the emotion(s) most entangled with this very present but.  For instance, my example may generate insecurity.  (Ah, I’m feeling insecure.)
  2. Recognize the creative power of the emotion you’ve been experiencing.  (Insecurity about money makes me feel sick to my stomach.)
  3. Acknowledge your power to choose your emotions.  (Oh my, I’ve been choosing to feel insecure.)
  4. Decide what you’d rather feel, what would be an antidote for insecurity.  (Hope.  I want to feel hopeful.)
  5. Relax into what you want to feel instead.  This step requires conscious willingness to replace the old habitual emotion with the new intentional emotions.
  6. Choose to operate from that new space.

When you replace insecurity with hope you move from Interpreter mode to Observer mode, and you will experience calm.  If you choose a Partner mode emotion, such as gratitude or eagerness or tranquility, new and unexpected opportunities will open up for you.  If you choose a Creator emotion such as delight or peace or optimism, your best good will unfold.

Connect with the Future.

You already travel into the future to create the present.  When your time machine is powered by Partner or Creator emotions, your visits empower your congruence with all that you enjoy and appreciate in your life.  When your time machine is powered by Victim or Interpreter emotions, you strengthen your congruence with those things you passionately dislike.

This technique will help you become more intentional about using the future to become more congruent with what you do want.

Most likely, when you look at the but statements you’ve labeled with an (F) for Future, you’ll find fear or worry.  In my example:  The economy’s so bad, where would any new money come from? Embedded in this are the Interpreter emotions of self-doubt, trepidation, worry, anxiety, and also a bit of helplessness from the anger and woe of Victim.

Such emotions make the future look dark and dismal, and if you draw such fear from the future into the present, the present becomes dark and dismal.  Even if today is bright and sunny and you have money in the bank and work scheduled on the books, you may find it impossible to enjoy any security in the now.  In other words, you’re using the future to create the present.

Imagine the time continuum between the present and the future as an assembly line belt.  The belt runs continuously, forward from you into the future and from the future back to you.  The now-emotion you put on the belt scrolls into the future, and the future scrolls the result back to you now.  Because this is a continuously running loop, the emotion you put on the belt determines your future and your present.

To try this, select one of your (F) but statements:  The economy’s so bad, where would any new money come from?

Review your intention statement.  Perhaps you’ve already selected an emotion or two to energize this intention:  With delight and gratitude I enjoy unrestrained financial abundance.

Generate the emotions of delight and gratitude within you.  Let the energy of them circulate through your body. Feel them.  Be them.  Let them expand within you and radiate from you.  Put them on the conveyor belt and send them into the future.

Now, receive what the future puts on the conveyor belt and returns to you.

Congruence is Power

There is no one way to become congruent, to align with what you want.  Sometimes it’s a process of dismantling or deconstructing.  Sometimes it requires release or surrender.  Sometimes all you have to do is become willing and welcoming.  Sometimes it involves practice or assembly.  Regardless of the ways or means of becoming aligned, when your thoughts, actions and emotions form a single, congruent prayer in unity with what you want, what you want must result.  And the results are often immediate.  When those three aspects of your power click together into a congruent whole, the miracle happens.  (The final result may take a little time.  You probably won’t loose those 20 pounds instantly.)

If the miracle hasn’t happened yet, stay mindful of your congruence.

For one-on-one coaching to create a new reality, please email me directly:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com

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