Today's Draw: The Star from Wheel of the Year, new from Lo Scarabeo. Are you ready to baptize yourself in the waters of hope and faith? Or are there doubts you just can't let go of?
The Star is one of those cards I always look at before I choose to purchase a deck. It's one of my very favorite cards because it contains two of my favorite things—water and stars. And its message is nothing but inspirational. It speaks of hope, trust and abundance. It is always a very positive sight in any reading.
I feel the cards over the last couple of days have been talking about manifestation. Yesterday we discussed asking for a feeling, rather than a thing. And with her hands full of water (emotion), raised up to the heavens, I think this card is doing the same. But it's more than that. The woman is steeped in her emotions and is raising them up to the universe to heal and transmute. She leaves nothing within. All her hope, desires, senses and soul, she puts in the universe's hands, trusting that what will come back is what is right for her. And this last part is key, because sometimes we don't like what comes back to us and then doubt our faith in the higher power. Trust and faith is in knowing that *whatever* comes to us is a gift. No matter how it's wrapped.
Humans have a tendency to want to control things. No matter how much we might talk about our faith in God or whatever, we still think that sometimes we're "lucky" and sometimes we're not. But what if you shifted that thought and saw everything as lucky? I can whine like everyone else, but I would hope that most who know me well would agree that I see everything as a gift or a lesson. And I would have to say my greatest teacher in faith has been my freelance career.
As a self-employed person that works project to project, you have to have some sort of trust somewhere. I don't work on big contracts that last months. I work one two-hour job to another. And, as you can imagine, it takes a lot of two-hour jobs to support a person. Now, realistically that's a little dramatic. My average daily job lasts two hours, maybe, but I also have some 20 hour jobs in there. Regardless, it's scraping for change in relation to a consultant who has a six month contract. And I can worry about when the next two-hour job is going to come in. Or I can let go. I can worry about having enough work to support my month. Or I can let go. I can sweat every dry spell. Or I can let go.
I have always chosen to let go. This is the second recession I have weathered as a freelancer. And what I learned from the first is that the universe always provides. The universe led me to this career, this mortgage, this lifestyle for a reason. And if it takes one of those things away, that will be for a reason, too. Right now I feel like I'm being pulled like a tractor beam in a certain direction. And I am letting go. Even though what waits on the other side is unknown...and what I know of it is scary, because it will require me to change. Even though it may compromise something I love, I'm letting go. Even though it's moving me toward something I spent most of my life consciously never wanting to do. Even though I may fail, I'm letting go because the whispers in my ear are so strong. And the universe has never led me astray. I'm letting go because I trust.
Trust, faith, hope...they're not conditions as much as they are practices and disciplines. Conditions come and go. Practices are something you work on every day. Do I have doubts? Temporarily, yes. But my practice is to stop those thoughts and replace them with trust. Will I ever end up regretting this blind trust? No, never. I can honestly say I live my life without regrets. I spend zero time wishing I had done something differently. When I make a decision, it's made and I move forward. I'm happy to waste way too much time on other useless thoughts...haha. But not that one. Because you can't go back and change the past. You can only deal with the present. And whatever kind of waters I land in in my present, I at the very least move forward with a gift. Always. A gift, a lesson. There is no such thing as a mistake or wrong move in life. And once you let go of the notion that there is, you are free to accept whatever comes to you, even if it's something you don't think you want.
Now, trust me, I'm no perfect being. It takes so much to motivate me to change anything in my life that it's ridiculous. But when that tractor beam comes, like it has recently, I follow it. Because it feels like fate. It feels like the hand of god guiding me. And I'll say this, I'm not "lucky" I feel this level of faith and trust. Like I said before, it's a practice. Self doubt is a habit I have consciously worked on to eradicate and I still have it in some areas of my life, such as in the area of my body image. It is a practice, meaning I work on it every day. I fight the urge every day to give myself over to anything that is not faith and trust. It gets easier. And it's worth the effort. But it *is* effort.
Now, getting back to the manifestation thing. So one of the little-known secrets of The Secret is that you can sometimes be more effective wishing for an emotion, rather than a thing. We covered that yesterday. And today's lesson is that once you make your wish, you lift it up to the universe and trust that whatever comes is a gift to bring you closer to the goal. As Mike Dooley puts it, your job is to decide "what" and God's job is to decide "how". And sometimes that "how" takes a lot of trust. In Deepak Chopra's book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (highly recommended, and one of the first books ever about manifestation), he talks about asking for what you want, then letting go, basically to the point of clearing your mind of it. Again, it's a practice. A discipline.
So what about you? Are you ready to stand fully exposed to the universe and lift your worries up to the higher power so you can live a life where everything is a gift and contains the seed of hope? Are you ready to let go? Have you already? Or do you feel, whether for spiritual reasons or personal ones, that you need to control and/or micromanage your life? Where do you stand on this issue...in the water or on firm ground? :D
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