I've been going through and interesting growth period lately that I thought I'd share, as some of the lessons were pretty profound (at least for me). I've written before about my awakening and the joys and tribulations since, and I've also mentioned that it's an ongoing process which, as far as I can tell, doesn't really end til you shuffle off this mortal coil. Then you get to come back and start over. :) The last couple of years or so have been a really interesting period, partly through the guidance and help from both Dr. Glenn Morris and Susan Carlson, and it's interesting how much progress I've made and how far I still have to go. I've recently come to an interesting new period in my life, thanks mostly to my other half, Anya. Living with her (and my step-son Jake) has opened up new areas and forced me to deal with things that I was always able to avoid before. When you're a modern day gypsy and bouncing around in an old RV it's really easy to have a casual attitude about living in our society, but settling down really brings on the new challenges. Most of what I'm learning now is probably old hat to those of you who've led stable, settled down lives, but it's a hell of an adventure for me, even at my age. The primary things that I'm dealing with lately are financial. I've always been able to make money, but in the last few months I've come to realize that I've always had bad attitudes about it, and I see the same attitudes reflected over and over from the people around me. It was a big shock for me to realize that much of my attitudes were actually limiting me. It was shocking because most of what I do is about rising above limitations and creating my own realities, then realizing how badly I was doing in this other area. Susan Carlson mentioned to me several times last year that I could learn a lot from Stuart Wilde's books, and I finally got around to reading "The Secret to Money is Having Some" and I have to admit that she was exactly right! Thanks Susan! :) I followed that up with "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" (actually I'm deep into the series and spending a lot of time on his website) and what I learned there was just as shocking, so in the hopes that some of you learn easier than I do I'll pass on some new revelations (apparently only new to me, but what the hell). I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina as a poor country boy and most of the time money was a tool that we just didn't have. Our "reality" was that we had to struggle just to have 'enough to survive'. While the concept of abundance was nothing new to us, we saw our abundance in what we could grow and make rather than what we could buy, and while those skills are definitely valuable, it's a very limiting attitude to have. So within my 'reality' money wasn't really a tool that was very prominent in my toolbox, even though it was consistently one of the factors that prevented me from doing the things I needed to do. Many of my attitudes came from the fact that I'm just not interested in money for it's own sake. I'm pretty unimpressed by the people I've met whose primary characteristic seems to be that they have lots of money. Also it's easy to develop bad attitudes when we see the evils done in the name of money, so for a long time my 'reality' remained that I was working to have 'enough to survive'. Another interesting factor is that many of us in western society are taught to believe that we DON'T deserve a lot of money. We're taught to WANT it, but not to BELIEVE that we deserve it, which only seems like a paradox til you think about how our consumer culture is driven by desire and want, rather than need. What I finally realized is that I have to expand my reality and shake off the bad attitudes. Money is a fact of life in our modern world. It's a tool that too many of us are taught to ignore and misuse, and just because many of the world's ills and evils are concieved to get it doesn't mean that we should ignore the fact that many of the modern worlds GOOD things are caused by it also. The fact that I can write this article and instantly send it out to people all over the world is just one example. I expect the next few months to be a very interesting and rewarding period as I learn more about this 'new' tool and how to effectively use it. Many of the healers and 'new agers' that I know also have similar attitudes to those that I always had, so I thought I'd bring this up here. I'm sure that many of you may have some interesting feedback. :) |
