The Straw by Susan Redding

Printed in the Conscious Creation Journal
June 2001

The Straw
by Susan Redding

The whole thing started with an image of a straw. It simply kept coming to me in dreams and meditations. I knew the Universe was trying to tell me something, to get a message through to me, but I’ll be darned if I could figure it out.

Usually I’m very good at this sort of thing. My family always turns to me to help them discipher their dreams and symbols. My brain loves to wrap itself around a puzzle and continue to calculate until it understands the answer. I know it as soon as I’ve hit upon the correct answer; it’s one of those ‘Ahhhh’ moments when you know you have it.

But my brain wasn’t able to calculate this one. I had to admit defeat. So I ask the Universe for help. I simply said to myself, “OK, I’m not getting this one, you’re going to have to spell it out for me. Clarify it for me. Tell me exactly what I am not seeing within this image.”

And I set it down. Mentally I handed it back over to the Universe.

It came back to me a couple of days later. My husband and I were driving to work/school down a beautiful stretch of highway when it was simply all there!

I’m not sure how these answers come for anyone else. But for me it’s never in a linear fashion with one word or thought following another, in a ‘ticker-tape’ form. It’s never a ‘voice’ I hear. I get no prior warning with bells that go off with signals of “Incoming message”. It is simply ALL THERE. It is as if you are looking and looking for something in one area, you turn around and while your back is to it, someone opens this curtain to expose this huge, vast landscape that you had not seen before. It is not describing each blade of grass, or every tree, or the wildlife. It simply shows you the WHOLE of it.

It was a moment like that. I suddenly could see the WHOLE of it.

I knew what the Universe was trying to tell me with the straw image. What a relief! If you’ve ever worked mentally on something you know how it feels to suddenly get it! I was so excited I started rushing out the answer to my husband, “I know what the straw means!”

You see my husband and I had started a project of sorts together. We had begun to meditate morning and night on the same images. This had been going on for a couple of months. And we were seeing incredible results, the type where you know that what you are doing is making a difference because you can begin to see things coming to you in response to what you have been ‘calling’ for. Money was appearing from avenues that hadn’t been there before. So I knew the straw image had something to do with our meditations, which is why I wanted to figure out what the Universe was trying so hard to get me to understand.

It was simply this: The straw was representational of the vortexes of energy I was summoning to myself.

The Universe was trying to tell me that I was summoning ALL of this energy and then limiting it to this small, narrow, long opening that it was able to come through. All of my beliefs and thoughts about what I desired was limiting the Universe to this tiny opening to bring me what it was that I was focused on.

I could see it, actually SEE it! At that moment I was passing a large, elegant motor home and what I could see were my thoughts of that motor home in relationship to myself. I could see all my limiting thoughts and beliefs about it, “I’d have to work forever to afford something like that!”, “You buy one of those things and then you park it”, “There’s no way I’d want to try to drive that around everywhere”, “Wouldn’t that be wonderful to travel that luxuriously”, “Once you buy something that big you had better have an income that can afford the gas for it.” First I was amazed to see that I had so many pre-existing conditions or beliefs about EVERYTHING! I began to wonder, “When did those get here?” I simply hadn’t realized that I was formulating conditions for it all. And with each thought, belief, & condition I entertained in my mind I was narrowing the vortex to what energy was able to reach me.

I not only could see my ‘conditions’ but I could see times in my life when I had created without using any.

Ex: When I was in my 30’s I happened to notice on the back of my hand an age spot. One of those ugly brown things. My immediate response was, “Oh no, that ain’t happening.” I decided right there and then that I was getting rid of that thing.

I couple of days later a blister formed directly underneath the age spot. I remember wondering if I had burned myself and just didn’t remember it, but when I noticed where it was I started to hope that when it dried up, the skin above it would be replaced by new skin. Which is exactly what happened. When the blister dried up, new skin underneath replaced the ‘brown spot’ above…no more age spot. Now it wasn’t because I was so enlightened or had gone to a mountaintop to meditate for hours on having my body heal itself. Nah, I had the best advantage of all. I was ignorant of how to remove age spots, I knew NOTHING about them other than I didn’t like them. In my ignorance about something I didn’t have any pre-existing conditions on how the spot would have to leave my hand. I simply let the Universe have free reign on how to remove it. If I had known anything about them I would have been mentally lining it all up, “Do I have enough money in my purse to go and get some of that cream that removes them?”, “I wonder what Drug store is open now?”, “I wonder if that stuff is expensive?”, “I wonder how long it takes to disappear?”

Within the blink of an eye I would have narrowed the Universe down to being able to send energy into just a small, long, narrow cylindrical shaped vortex. And then wondered why it took so long to disappear.

The length of the straw was my belief in the length of time anything would take or how far I stood from it, the area of the opening was all my pre-existing beliefs about something.

The straw was the perfect image of course.

Just weeks before I had given my husband a saying to use to help him see what he had been saying was what he was creating. Now I know that sentence was truly meant for myself.

I Pave My Way With What I Say.

In this case, it was what I was saying to MYSELF that was paving my way. I simply never really understood the depth of entertaining all those thoughts about something and how they were having an impact on its creation.

©2001, Susan Redding.  All Rights Reserved. Printed in the Conscious Creation Journal.  (Feel free to duplicate this article for personal use – please include this copyright notice and the URL.)http://www.consciouscreation.com