Gain Number Four: Financial Flexibility

This blog will:

1) Remind everyone that celebrating the gains is equally as important as learning to handle life challenges.

2) Talk about “Gain Number Four”. I am celebrating my gains in order of priority. See previous blogs.

I am celebrating having more flexibility in my financial life.  After a period of being caught in a financial pinch and being under employed, I designed a new career, and finagled free trainings and certifications in the field.  After visualizing for a year on receiving a specific job,  I was offered a position by one of the nation’s largest and financially promising companies.  I opted, for the moment, to remain self employed and keep my options open. It should not be unnoticed by interested readers that this has occurred over the past two years, officially designated as a depression - or close to it.

Primarily, I used the Law of Attraction and the Sedona Method to sculpt this new future for myself.  My blog describes the practical application of these tools in my daily efforts, and I also provide coaching on these subjects.


For coaching assistance:  deborah@deborahbird.com

Celebrating Gains: Gain Number Three

This blog will:
1) Remind everyone that celebrating the gains is equally as important as learning to handle life challenges.
2) Talk about “Gain Number Three”. I am celebrating my gains in order of priority. See previous blogs.
3) Discuss a gain I am experiencing from applying the Sedona Method to release resistance on the subjects of home and community.

Mary by rosebush - She is an expert
gardner

Steve is a talented
potter & ceramicist

Today I celebrate making some progress on my previous releasing efforts, where I addressed the issues of community and home. Releasing resistance is a technique where we allow negative thoughts to wash through us, as opposed to latching onto us and establishing roots. In recent blogs (Aug. 4th and May 24th), I have spent some time releasing on life challenges that have surfaced around the issue of living space. Completely unplanned, I have stumbled into a happy family scene with my friends Mary and Steve.

Some people are just born generous, and Steve and Mary are two of them. I have plopped down in their house, because I need accommodations while I work on a horse project here in Sedona. They have welcomed me on short notice with open arms, assisting me with my cause. Their home is cozy, serene, clean and well organized, providing a nurturing atmosphere for massaging my positive outlook on the world. Our days are full of shared meals, hiking in the sculptured mountains of Sedona and laptop sessions exchanging digital media revelations. Thanks Mary and Steve for this excursion into domestic tranquility and for generally being great friends.

Long Term Problems and How To Make Progress Anyway

This blog will describe:
Feeling stuck and how to get results with releasing anyway.

I expressed a frustration regarding slow progress on an issue to our coaches in a recent support group. “Don’t forget to acknowledge all the successes that you are having. It’s very common to forget to look at the improved mental clarity, the renewed physical vitality, the increased money flow and just grip onto what isn’t working”, they advised. Definitely good advice, but I am acknowledging my gains, which as evidenced in the two previous blogs and my daily activities.

They try again: “What about releasing on wanting to work on this goal?” This advice hits me in the pit of my stomach, right on target. My gut has announced its potency; my emotions verify by flying into irritability and anger. “That’s it, you got it”, I tell them. They are both good at providing the missing nuggets in releasing efforts.

The next morning, I begin releasing on wanting to work on the goal - the goal of getting rid of my father, the incessant hijacker of my abundance by his unappreciated visits to my visualizations. I can feel my frustration over this issue fade. I continue and the process expands into releasing on wanting in general, and again further into releasing on wanting results on my releasing. My stomach opens, my mind opens and the frustration disappears. As I do this, I feel larger and more connected to the world. I have a new found sense of freedom and begin a day full of connections with friends and meeting new friends.

Increasing Vibration: Gain Number Two

This blog will demonstrate:
1) What it is like to celebrate a gain, looking at every nook and cranny.
2) Talk about “Gain Number Two”. I am celebrating my gains in order of priority. See previous blogs.

I am celebrating vibrancy and health, but more importantly I am celebrating the multifaceted importance of my personal vibration and mastering how it creates health. Vibration is the radio frequency that all of us emit. When you look into the face of someone who is radiant and glowing, whose eyes sparkle, this is the person who vibrates at a high level.

Understanding the Four Parts To Vibration:

Part One: Feeling Good Emotionally
The primary driving force, which determines how we are feeling in any given moment, is our emotions. Our emotions are controlled by one thing and one thing only: our thoughts, our point of focus. The greatest miracle of life is that we can only think one thought at a time. What a blessing! Why? Because our minds want to grab onto difficulty, ruminate over it, and re-live it. Much better to reign in one drama rather than to deal with multiple ones. I have learned how to redirect my focus even when I am entangled in my mind’s most engaging “Debi Bird Soap Opera”. I have become the director of my play and can write, script and caste a play of abundance - usually in a matter of minutes. Therefore, I rescripted my difficult thoughts into vitality, joy and enthusiasm.

Part Two: Spiritual Vibration
When our spiritual bodies vibrate at higher and higher levels, our thoughts are buoyed and default more often to pleasant thoughts, thereby supporting and enhancing our emotional being. Any of the variety of spiritual methodologies will suffice…..any religion, any spiritual path, any form of meditation – the form is irrelevant. What is relevant is the time of day during which the practices are undertaken. The first few hours before sunrise, known as the brahma muhurta or the spiritual hour, is known across religions as a potent spiritual time. All nuns, monks, yogis of any path perform their spiritual practices during this time of day. You will double or triple the effect of your practice by making use of this time. Recently, I have participated several times a week in a temple program taking place at this time.

Part Three: Increasing Physical Vitality:
Eating high vibration foods and exercising automatically increases our emotional states. These two activities are the fastest and simplest way to lift our vibrational state and to get into the flow. Faster still is the art of juicing, drinking raw vegetable juices prepared in a juicer. I recently completed an eleven day juice fast, a wonderful up lifter, but not necessary to participate in the joy of juice. For now, you can start by adding three eight ounce juices to your current diet. Because of the extreme nourishment in these juices, your cravings and your desires for low energy foods will simply dissolve. Exercising and diet also work on a physical level to cleanse toxins from the body.

Part Four: Organization and Cleanliness of Physical Environment
Cleanliness and organization empower and energize the body, and streamline thought processes.

By doing any or all of these processes your personal vibration will increase and your thoughts will more often focus on the positive in your environment. When this happens you go with the flow and into the place where your desires manifest instantly – or at least more quickly. The good news comes with a caution. If you do everything I mentioned in this blog, your vibration will increase quickly. What happens frequently in this situation is that our well-entrenched thought patterns may continue grasping the negative. This creates a gap between who you are being now, i.e. Mr. or Ms. Crabby, and who your vibration has become, i.e. floating in a pool of joy. The two beings stretch apart with great intensity and you will feel like you have hit a tree at one hundred miles per hour. See blog: Burning Up In The Gap: August 4th, 2010 to learn how to handle this situation.

Debi is available for coaching at debi@debibird.com

This blog will:
Remind everyone that celebrating the gains is equally as important as learning to handle life challenges.

This morning as soon as my eyes opened, I remember the thick, long multicolored snake obstructing my path as I tried to return to my inn a few years ago while visiting Brazil. The neighbors heard me call out in this rural peasant village and soon there were a handful of people gaping at this eight foot long -snake. “This is an important sign – I just wish I knew what it meant”. I knew by the villagers reaction that this snake was unusual even for the countryside-quasi-jungle of Brazil – after all the snake had plenty of jungle he could squirm around in blocks from where we stood. Coming to the center of the town, stretching out across the road, and lying there placidly while everyone around him was screaming and acting like they were going to slay him with bow and arrow was unusual. I had come to Brazil to visit world reknown faith healer John of God, making the significance of the snake even more important.

As I reminisce over this divine gift, I remember being told that it means transformation, and transformation I have received. In addition to being healed of cancer while I was in Brazil, I also received a nice push to track down Esther Hicks, who I learned about in the movie The Secret. The consistent and accurate application of her body of work provided the transformation I sought. Many people say, “Oh yes I have been familiar with this work for years” and imply that they have adopted it into their lives. Yet by knowing them and also hearing how they have applied it, it is apparent to me that many people mistake Esther and Jerry Hick’s work for another book on positive thinking. Far from it. For example, thinking positive thoughts when you are in anger is detrimental because it only activates frustration, effectively blocking whatever you are programing to receive.

Rather, I would classify their work as first of all learning how to love challenges in our personal lives, because this is truly the fuel, the motivation, for moving us forward. They call these challenges contrast. After this acknowledgement, we clearly identify where we are in range of emotions and implement a series of steps to lift our emotions into higher states. When we are in a state of fluid, effortless appreciation our desires instantly manifest. And lastly, there is a whole psychology of how to “milk it”, as they say, when we are feeling good. When we experience a breakthrough, have fun at a party, get into a higher emotional state, then relish this, turn it over in our minds, play it out as long as possible.

In that vein, over the next several days, I am going to celebrate my gains from having ACCURATELY adopted the law of attraction into my life. I know my audience wants to hear me say: “I made a million dollars, I met my soul mate, I got the perfect job”, but what I have to say is much better than all of that put together.

Number One Gain: I now love contrast. Contrast is highly intense, unpleasant emotion, which seemingly arises from life circumstances that irritate us and sometimes push us to the limit. It is never the circumstances that are the cause of the intense emotion. It is always, always, always because our true self is vibrating at high levels where every dream unfolds into our lap, and our everyday self is not letting us go there. How? By thinking lower level thoughts that don’t match the vibration of our high self. Solution? Jump up and down for joy that you have an emotional guidance system that is letting you know right away and with lots of force that you need to improve your thoughts, gradually and meaningfully. What do we normally do? Try to figure the problem out, blame others, justify the strength of our rightness, push really hard to change the circumstances, get angry, call all of our friends and tell them how ridiculous so and so is who “caused” all these problems – all of this is like pouring kerosene on a fire.

What a relief it is to have the perfect solution to every problem. Isn’t it wonderful that our goal isn’t to change the circumstances? Isn’t it wonderful that we get to change our thoughts, because it is soooo much easier than changing circumstances. I am so grateful that my emotional guidance system lets me know with such accuracy, when I am swimming upstream.

Tune in tomorrow for the Number Two Gain…..

deborah@deborahbird.com

Burning Up In The Gap

This blog will explain:
1) How to handle seemingly unresolvable life situations that erupt and cause tension.
2) Why things always get worse, before they get better.
3) How to stand in the fire and do a focus wheel at the same time.
4) The processes contained within this blog can be applied to money, career, relationship – any aspect of life where there is a concern.


I am whoosie at the thought of moving into my new apartment, which I hastily, and now I see somewhat blindly grabbed. It is a furnished monthly place that includes utilities, cable and wireless - not easy to find, even in a big city. I see now that my highly dependable sense of smell must have been temporarily disengaged during my first visit, as I enter the door and inhale that cheap hotel smell. I just now see that my neighbor has tattoos over every square inch of his tee shirt and shorts laden body. Since he wasn’t there when I surrendered my deposit check, I only now get to see that when he parks his car it is eight inches from my bedroom window. Currently, I am in travel mode, promoting my business and meeting with clients for extended contracts and I have brought too many possessions along. The physical effort of finding a place, relocating my things, cleaning, and now being disenchanted by the new place puts me in the fire. There is no refuge. I can't go forward and I can't go backwards.

The roach in my bed tomorrow morning agrees with my assessment as he cackles, sitting back on his haunches, glibly picking his fangs with a tooth pick, legs casually crossed, reclined on his elbows: “Yee haaa, here we go again Bird ….more chaos”. This eruption in my life only has value in that I get to ask myself: “What would Abraham say, what would Ester & Jerry say.”

They say what they always say and get paid, at their own admission and amusement, millions of dollars to say over and over again to us mortals, who hear it every time as though it is revelatory: “Don’t take action to change the circumstances, take action to change your vibration surrounding the circumstances.” Then we revolt with our regurgitation of what it is: “There is no way I could continue to stay in the yoga center. My feet hit the floor at 4:30 am and I ran until 8 pm. There is constant unspoken pressure to work all the time on the center’s work, even though my original agreement was to have time to work on my own business. Then there was a bit of dogma here……. Blah, blah, blah.” This only causes the roach to cackle even more, he pulls out his tiny scissors and begins clipping his hair: “Success – I have ensnared her in the maze of her mind. She thinks that proving how right she is matters”. The fire turns into a furnace.

Engulfed in flames, I am surprised that I am able to gather my thoughts to the point where I can hear what I know and have already heard: “Despite the fact that you are exploding at the moment, change your vibration around place. Right now your vibration is screaming chaos on this subject and I am delivering what you asked.” Does anyone else ever want to slap Abraham?

I begin the series of steps to welcome the "place chaos" prescribed by the Sedona Method. (See blog entry: Monday, May 24th, 2010: Releasing Does It Take Time To Work for detailed instructions.) I welcome the roaches; I welcome the funny smells now well steeped into the walls of what has turned out to be a shantytown abode. When the only grocery store in your neighborhood is a Food City you know you’re in trouble. I welcome the Food City. I welcome early childhood troubles that have the same aroma as this one.   After releasing some resistance through this process, then I start my focus wheel as prescribed by the Abraham-Hicks techniques.

Step One: Identify what is outside the focus wheel: Living place chaos.

Step Two: Identify what is Inside the focus wheel: Easy, flexible living circumstance.

Step Three: Identify one small thing that is working now on this subject and build up in small steps to the center of the focus wheel: “Yikes! Hmmmm? The roach is especially handsome…no that’s not right.” I try again: “I am lucky to have a troubled childhood because now I have lots of motivation to learn healing techniques…..no not quite, but maybe a little better.” “My last living situation was an improvement over my previous one….that’s it….very true….I got it….I got on the focus wheel”.

Now, I build from this point: “ I have been doing lots of things to increase my vibration. I completed an eleven day juice fast. I have been doing early morning spiritual practices every day and rising early every day. My current dilemma notwithstanding, my energy levels are soaring and my sense of well being is at an all time high. Now that my vibration is higher, my lower level thoughts are creating a bigger gap between where I am vibrating internally and my general, old, worn out mental disposition. This is why things always get worse before they get better. Although this gap is extremely uncomfortable, I am the master of my thoughts and can redirect them. Remember when you feel really uncomfortable, start by appreciating something small. I really appreciate the spiritual atmosphere at the yoga center. I got to participate in daily spiritual practices, which, on the physical plane, overcame my hypothyroidism…..so many people are struggling with this disease and now I am healed. Lucky me.

Well, I am doing something right by changing my location in order to experiment with new healing techniques. I have incredible techniques now to achieve any goal that I want to. I am so grateful to have learned all this and it has helped me so much already. I love the contrast I am feeling right now that I am labeling “living place chaos”. I get to breath it in, love it, and be compelled to change my old, worn out thought patterns surrounding it for ultimate healing. I am sure harmony is around the corner. I can stand in the fire and truly welcome it. I am just burning up the gap.”

I go out for my normal evening run and stop at the doggie park. I walk in and carry on a friendly easy conversation with just about everyone in the park.  I am having fun and the contrast has simply melted. I feel much better and celebrate meeting someone new. Everyone at the park is extremely social.  We have a nice evening chatting with amongst ourselves just as though we had were on a pre arranged Saturday picnic.

Deborah can be reached for coaching at deborah@deborahbird.com

Law of Attraction

This blog shows:
1) The steps to deliberately creating a joyful experience.
2) How two people living side by side can experience a completely different reality even though they experience the same outward situation.
3) Defines and gives an example of pre-paving: a set of thoughts, words and emotions that focuses on any event past, present or future. Pre-paving creates a future that matches what was discussed, felt, and pondered. Most humans pre-pave unconsciously, usually by rehashing a negative experience, therefore resulting in more of the same. By harnessing our thoughts and purposely thinking and talking about good experiences, we will have good experiences.

As I drive to the lake, I begin pre-paving the experience I will have this weekend, which even surprises me in its effectiveness. I am going to a kayak outing with a large group of people and don’t know anyone. I have two friends coming this weekend, but whether we will camp together or spend time together is uncertain as they are not coming for the group experience and have a desire to camp more remotely.

Knowing that I am going to dive into a group of new people, I begin to pre-pave having a wonderful weekend. I picture myself having effortless, close and connected relations with the strangers I am about to meet. As someone who can be found pacing my apartment floor at 3 am from time to time, I also picture myself sleeping soundly and feeling well rested.

When arriving at the lake, I pull up to the gathering, situated around the perimeter of the lake. It’s a huge lake with numerous bays and the event is allotted one of the nicest. Even though its early evening on Friday, many people have already arrived and set up camp, which is in an open camping situation. I pull up next to an RV, get out, say hello and am immediately invited to sit down. I chat for a while, wander around, and meet a group who has come to the event together, who also invite me into their circle. I am in a happy flow.

When my friends arrive, we decide to camp separate from the group, slightly down the road. The spot has a high view of two bays, privacy and a campfire. We have an enjoyable evening sitting around the campfire, but my friends tell a few stories about previous camping outings where they asked noisy neighbors to be quieter and the neighbors became hostel. I cringe a bit and have to force myself not to lecture on the law of attraction and how they might be pre-paving, or creating, a noisy night.

I go to bed in my car and before falling asleep I look at all the beautiful stars beyond the car’s window and give gratitude. I wake up about ten times throughout the night and use a particular excersize to fall back asleep and It works well.

At one point, however, I have to crawl out of the car to go to the bathroom. I cannot believe what I hear when I open the car door - a cacophony of thumping music and people talking loudly. This campsite producing the unwanted concert is only 200 feet from where I am. With my car window open and housed in a small thin walled sedan, I heard nothing all night. As I reenter my car, I am anxious to see if it will block the sound and I am amazed that it does. At this point, I am wide awake, highly energized, but still fall back asleep.

Its only when I rise in the morning that I realize my consciously pre-paved reality is significantly different than my friends, whose tent was twenty feet further away from the disturbance than mine. The neighbor’s party kept them awake until 3am. These events inspired one of them to speak to the neighbors, a conversation that not did not go well….something about death threats I believe. As if this weren’t enough…… in yet another campsite a young woman was crying and vomiting for at least an hour. All the while, this normally finicky sleeper slept throughout the night and even until 7:30 am.

This is a great example of the Law of Attraction at work. Both my friends and I pre-paved our contrasting experiences ….me knowingly, with purpose, and with a positive outcome…..them unknowingly and without purpose, resulting in an unpleasant outcome. The formula my friends used is what most humans use day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and what Abraham-Hicks calls “sloppy thinking”.

In this situation, we were exposed to the exact same set of external circumstance, providing a good example to show that circumstances are irrelevant. The biggest gain in this scenario is maintaining a positive, joyful mental attitude throughout the day and into the following days. From this mindset, I will attract more joyful experiences into my life and my circumstances will improve on their own.

Don’t believe anything I say….try it and see what happens.

Debi is available for coaching sessions at debi@debibird.com or you may sign up at the Buy Now Button on this blog.

Disease Is A Springboard To Abundance

This is a story about:
1) Experiencing all the specific, documentable symptoms of a recurring disease.
2) Explaining these symptoms within the context of the Law of Attraction.
3) Using the information gained to springboard into a highly energized state.

I choose to listen to a Sedona Method seminar this morning as my morning program. While listening to the recording I begin to experience the symptoms of hypothyroidism and the more I listen the worse it gets. Hypothyroidism is one of the more difficult diseases to deal with because it sends an army of men to your mind that search out every possible memory and piece of data in your present experience and interpret it in the most negative light possible. It also causes extreme lethargy and fatigue, making doing anything about it difficult. It also removes will, making wanting to do anything about it difficult.

My immediate reaction is to go to bed and sleep for a couple of hours. At this point in life, I have been tested for hypothyroidism so many times that I now can very accurately guess what the levels will be based on how I feel. In short, if you know any doctors, tell them you know someone who has a TSH level of 20, at which point they will look at you quizzically and say: “Has this person had a heart attack yet?” or “Is this person still living?”.

Today my TSH level is 20 and sliding. Since releasing (see blog entry May 2, 2010: Putting Our Processor To Work) took a long time to take effect the last time this condition surfaced, I decided to apply the Law of Attraction instead. I have to be direct, blunt and factual as the meltdown is spiraling:

1) Step One: Quickly do something that feels good and pleasurable to divert my mind. I opt for taking a shower and then going to a nice outdoor coffee shop and sitting in the sun.
2) Step Two: Be honest about what is, don’t try to cut it off, which in my case looked something like this: “Here we go again. I feel horrible. I am so tired of this.”
3) Step Three: Review the fundamentals of The Law of Attraction.
a. This Law states that my emotions are an indicator of whether or not I am allowing myself to go higher expanded states of well being that already exist.
b. Law of Attraction states that the only reason we aren’t automatically living in these states nonstop is due to the resistance that we create with our minds. In this example, resistance will increase if I mind gnash on how sick am.
c. Bad emotions mean I am not going to these higher states, also known as the vortex. All I have to do is to get up to speed with this new higher vibration, I will enter the vortex, and I will feel okay. I have serious doubts that this is going to work, but I am determined to carry out the steps none-the-less.
4) Step Three: Begin the Focus Wheel: Find one ray of hope to focus on however small or distant and enhance it little bit by little bit: “This illness is good, because –if I believe the Law of Attraction, and I do - it means I have just increased my vibration, probably by listening to the Sedona Method recording. All I have to do now is to find some ever increasingly pleasant topics to focus on. The weather in Sedona is picture perfect now. Its bright, sunny, with a nice spring breeze. The coffee shop has outdoor seating and I have enough space to work. I am so glad I have a laptop. My technical skills are really picking up. I am getting really good at doing blogs and web pages. I am learning so much about how to heal physically, emotionally and financially. I have so much to share with others. I have already experienced a significant increase in my financial situation. I can feel the increased abundance continuing on all levels.”
5) Step Five: Get in the vortex and milk it. I am now in the vortex, the higher state of well being that naturally exists for me and for everyone. Milking it consists of celebrating the goal or accomplishment, however big or small. In my case it goes like this: “Wow, I did it. I feel better. I can feel my energy increasing. This process is miraculous. I am so lucky to know about this information and to focused enough to apply it in such effective ways.”

During the process of the focus wheel, I am vaguely aware of the conversations going on around me at the café. One table inhabited by a bicycle club just finishing a morning ride. A key figure at the table adamantly states his position on networking and derides his co-rider for not having read a certain book. He moves on to tell a story about an immigration snafu that some of his German family members experienced, degrading every person and law they encountered. At a second table, a man fiercely degrades people for thinking that prejudice still exists in America. My knee jerk reaction is to judge their negative speak. But, since I believe in the Law of Attraction, I must confess to myself that I attracted them into my sphere. I breath into the need to judge and know that I must gently float with their conversation, not becoming entangled.

As the afternoon goes on, my energy levels soar. I am completely focused with my work, which today is technically oriented –not my strong suit. But please look in the upper right hand corner of my blog and you will see that I have added a Buy Now Button to my blog, which allows coaching customers to pay online for my services. Not only that, it has a drop down menu! Bill Gates here I come!

Deborah is available for coaching sessions at deborah@deborahbird.com or you may sign up at the Buy Now Button on this blog.

Putting Our Processor To Work

This is a story about the following:
• How our ordinary mental processing of day to day events creates our suffering.
• Specific examples about how to rework our processor to harvest bounty.
• How I did it the exact wrong way and turned it around to the right way.

While I am grateful that I live in an area that abounds in mystical and natural beauty, I have regretted the lack of social activities available on the weekends. A discouraging weekend last weekend, inspired a pledge that I was not going to let that happen again. I signed up for a kayaking group that was going to meet at a gorgeous lake some distance away. I didn’t care how far I had to drive. The kayaking trip was going to fill up the hole in my life, known as lack of community.

The drive did not go well as my exit off the interstate was blocked and without a map, it took and extra hour to get to the campground. I looked for the group for an hour and a half when I got to the lake, getting more and more disoriented when I couldn’t find them. Their instructions were specific and I was exactly where they said they would be. The hole got bigger.

The fact that two neighbors in my campground invited me to sit by the fire did not help. I couldn’t wait to sleep so I could get up for the early dawn kayak outing. My sleep was uncomfortable, after waking a trip into the bushes to relieve myself resulted in me being covered with desert stickers, the break-of-dawn kayak group was no where to be found, and 8 am turned out to be the real start time. The hole got bigger.

Frazzled and frustrated, I decided to apply some of the wisdom that I am constantly spouting. “Here I am at this stunning lake in perfect weather and I am miserable. I see once again I am learning that controlling and manipulating the material world is not the path to happiness (i.e. trying to fill the hole with a kayak trip).

We let the mind run wild like a balloon expelling air that slips from our fingertips. The balloon does uncontrollable figure eights in the air, exhausted and flaccid at the end of it. Like the balloon whirling wildly in the air, we religiously gnash our thoughts to figure out how to repair the holes in our lives. This whirlwind builds resistance within us.

Resistance causes our lives to malfunction in all the numerous ways that they are prone to. Releasing resistance shoots us into a state of grace and allows all our best dreams to unfold at our feet.

I begin the set of mental and breathing exercises. I have revised the Buddhist Tonglen practice, added in some Sedona Method and topped it off with the Law of Attraction. I start by breathing in the issue, which in this case is lack of community. I breathe this into me three times. I allow it to fill up the oxygen in my body to invade my blood, to become my heart and my soul. Then three times, I breathe out satisfying, enriching community, giving it away to people who already have it.

I continue with this process, and within fifteen minutes I feel the divinity of this majestic natural setting infiltrate my being. In another, fifteen minutes, I am filled with ecstasy. I then visualize a lovely, fun filled, community filled day.

Then the pieces of my day begin to come together in ways that don't make sense in the logical world. I walk to my car to get something and the kayak instructor calls out to me. He is parked at least two hundred feet from where the from the official gathering place for the kayaking event. There is no visible way to tell that I am interested in the kayak trip and he has never met me. This is technically a scuba event with hundreds of people wandering around and the kayak event is just a sideline.

Then the original organizer of the trip, who I looked for for so long the night before, shows up all of a sudden and introduces herself. Another woman wanders up several minutes later who was waiting for us at the official site for the kayak instruction. She is visibly upset that she missed so much of the gathering. I feel for her that she doesn’t know the art of releasing.

I could have gone to the official site for the kayak event and never found them, because the group never went to the official gathering place. I could have stood down there and gotten madder and madder, as that was clearly the direction in which I was pointed before applying the Law of Attraction..

We collect ourselves, have a delightful paddle, followed by a community filled lunch and a nap. I depart the event happy and fulfilled.

I am seeing that unwinding and turning around these everyday examples of the mind gone wrong is the true fertilizer for abundance. Our emotions give us the signal that we need to check in with our gnashing mind and pay attention to what it is saying. Our knee jerk faulty reaction when we have an unpleasant emotion arise is to look at the circumstances and try to change it. By acknowledging our emotional indicators of vibrational misalignment and redirecting the mind in the right direction, we harvest the natural abundance that the universe has arranged for us.

Deborah is available for coaching at deborah@deborahbird.com