Waking Up Behind The Wheel
By Kristen N. Fox
As far as conscious creation goes, there’s no INHERENT difference between creating a parking space and creating a million dollars. We rarely think that creating a parking space, as joyous as that may be, is something that will “change our lives” – but we often give that power to the idea of a sudden inflow of money, like winning the lottery.
Right away, you can look at the perspectives in each situation and see where the power is believed to be. Since we don’t believe that creating a parking space will extensively alter our lives and who we are, that means we believe that we are the power, the creating force, that the abilities inherent in that symbol are already a part of us. When we believe that things like winning ten million dollars or meeting the love of our life WILL change our lives, we are putting the power outside ourselves, and on the physical event instead.
What’s happened here is that as we widen our perspectives to accept ourselves as the creators of our realities, we have let go of our old way of seeing things from the outside in. As we discover that we are creating the very events we have believed we were reacting to, our perspective shifts, and we start realizing that we are not locked into any kind of cycle. That is, we start realizing that we can CHOOSE exactly how we wish to feel, regardless of what seems to be happening around us. Most of us have heard that we must BE the change we wish to see in physical reality, but where do we START?
These ideas become particularly relevant when we find ourselves in the middle of circumstances we’re not sure how we created in the first place, but we know we want them to change. It doesn’t require any major enlightenment, just a little attention to our feelings. The MOMENT you start feeling bad:
(1) STOP reacting to what’s happening, whether it’s an action or a feeling you’re experiencing.
(2) Take notice of what in physical reality caused you to feel badly. (trigger) This could be an event, an object, person or a thought associated with any of these. (For instance, you may be able to look at a picture of an old lover with no problem, but then you think, “I may never be able to find someone as wonderful again” which immediately makes you feel BAD.)
(3) Decide at that moment that you are no longer going to feel this way, even if this trigger event/object/person happens again.
(4) Decide what you are going to feel INSTEAD of the usual icky emotions. You may want to start with “indifference” if it’s difficult to feel GOOD at the moment. Choose new thoughts that will make you feel the way you want to feel. (For instance, if you want to feel good, you may decide that “since you created someone like your old lover, you can create someone like that and even better!”)
(5) Remain watchful for other similar trigger events, objects, people, thoughts that might cause you to go out of your center of connection and into this negative spiral again.
The steps are fairly simple, but actually DOING these steps may require the gathering of will, self-love, and courage.
Let me give you an example from my own life. I was once again feeling bad about not having enough money to cover the bills or get ahead financially. The trigger was an unexpected expense that came just as I thought, once again, that we were going to make ends meet. I started to feel bad. Call it frustration, powerlessness, disconnection, anger, whatever; it basically amounts to feeling bad. For a long time I had allowed myself to feel this way, to fight against the feelings, to try to AVOID the feelings, and I still kept creating similar situations. Finally I got fed up and BORED with feeling this way – I wanted OUT.
It wasn’t the expense that made me feel bad, but the thought, “There’s not enough money.” But how could I possibly believe there WAS enough money when I “knew” there wasn’t?
That’s when I remembered I was a creator, not a reactor. I had to accept that I had created this situation (repeatedly, most of my life!) because I have always thought and believed, “there isn’t enough money” – no matter how much money I actually had! I ALWAYS felt as if there weren’t enough money, regardless of circumstances, and it always left me feeling terrible.
So I flipped it around, shifted my perspective from reactor to creator. I could then accept that I DID have a choice about what I thought, and felt. I wanted to feel GOOD about money. I wanted to feel like I had enough, regardless of what SEEMED to be happening at the moment. And just like I felt BAD because of my associated thoughts even if I DID have more than enough money, I could choose to feel good, and to associate DIFFERENT thoughts with any kind of money trigger.
I had to pay attention. I had to catch myself. I had to accept that it was okay to be the one driving the car, that I wasn’t unnaturally manipulating my own emotional state (there’s denial, which leaves you struggling with yourself, and then there’s awareness and choice – two very different things.) And a funny thing happened. Next month, with NO CHANGE to our financial situation, we suddenly had enough money! I could add up the numbers any way I wanted and they worked out – both when I believed we didn’t have enough and when I believed we did. It really threw my rational mind for a loop!
The phrase “UNCONDITIONAL” love took on an entirely new meaning – suddenly I understood that being in a state of connection, feeling GOOD, regardless of the momentary CONDITIONS in physical reality (whether they’re yours or someone else’s) was the secret to creative power.
I was now in control of what I felt. And since our FEELINGS are our conscious way of experiencing actual vibration (the stuff reality is made of), and since we get what we resonate or vibrate with… I had just experientially “discovered” that I was sitting in the driver’s seat, after a long period of sitting in the back seat and wondering, “Are we there yet?”
[Originally published in The Edge, May 2000.]