I Love Mondays #20: Find Clarity Now

Picking up our lives and moving 500 miles from our home state really stirs up the emotions. New problems, but we can see how they’re patterns. New frustrations, but same old feeling. Wherever you go, there you are. The repeating issues really stand out in a new environment. Getting annoyed at other people’s actions, lazy thinking, escaping instead of confronting and trying to do everything BUT meditate to fix things are just a few emotional hurdles we’re facing here in The Land.

We’re doing our best to transmute, surrender, and purify without being too hard on ourselves. It’s no surprise that the answers are the same as always: listen to a mentor. Be aware of what you’re thinking. Face what you’re trying to escape. And when all else fails, meditate. It always helps.

We write these I Love Mondays to heal ourselves, and we hope it helps you on your own journey. When life is tough, know there are other people facing the same problems. Here’s what we’re trying this week to stay conscious, feel good and make sense of this wild ride.

Physical

1. Listen to Abraham-Hicks when you’re annoyed.
As we mentioned in last week's I Love Mondays, we've been experiencing a bit of contrast with our downstairs neighbor since we moved in. And really we should probably stop talking about–ha!–but sharing with you how we are working through it truly helps us transmute it rather than continue to create more of it. One point of annoyance is that she sometimes plays her music extremely loud and her stereo is right below our office. It creates quite the distraction.

One day, rather than play louder music to drown hers out (we'd already been doing that and probably annoyed ourselves more than we did her), we decided to listen to Abraham-Hicks instead. Just a short, gentle reminder that everything in our reality can only ever reflect us helped us relax into accepting and not feeling so annoyed by the situation. That feeling of relaxation set in motion a series of events in which cooperative components lined up for us to speak to her in person and resolve kindly and civilly another point of contention and generally help everyone involved feel better about the whole situation.

Right after we listened to Abe, a package got delivered, which Kelly ran down to receive so she could speak to the mail carrier. Our neighbor happened to be sitting on her porch and Kelly went to introduce herself. They spoke and things were resolved easily. Nothing we did made that happen. No force was taken. Any force we had already tried made it worse. When we relaxed and allowed because Abe told us to, we became a match to the universe lining up the events.

What's something that always makes you feel good? Next time you're feeling annoyed by the actions of others, do your happy thing instead. By turning your attention away from the annoying thing–rather than stewing in the annoyance or trying to think yourself into vibrational alignment on the topic–you will ease the tension you feel surrounding the topic. Then, from your new place of not caring so much about the thing, the universe will have space to line up the elements to resolve it.

Mental

2. Ask yourself, “How satisfying is this thought?”
How satisfied do you feel right now? How content? How at ease? If you feel even a little bit off-center in those areas, what thought is making you feel less than perfect? While listening to Abraham-Hicks to avoid our neighbor's music (see #1), we of course gleaned some powerful methods to share with you. Abraham advised us to "notice the very instant we feel dissatisfaction and become aware." Become aware when the thought pattern first begins and just choose not to go there. Nip it in the bud before it gains momentum. Tell yourself you're not going to allow yourself to go down that path. Is this dissatisfying thought what you want to happen? What you want to see? The reality you prefer? No? Then choose not to create it and it won't be that way. 

If I notice a feeling of dissatisfaction today, I will think ___________ instead until I feel better.

Emotional

3. Feel your emotions instead of avoiding them.
I love drugs. I love escaping my feelings. I love avoiding reality. I’m sure many of us do. But doing those things has led me to some self hatred I’d rather not experience, so I picked up Gay Hendricks’ Learning to Love Yourself. Hating myself so much for so much of my life caused me to devote a lot of energy to self love, and this book has some helpful ideas for flipping the switch.

One of Hendricks’ approaches for self love is, “Feel the feelings in your body–don’t conceptualize about them in your mind. Be with them by directing sensitive awareness toward them. Feel them as intensely as you can, and love yourself for feeling them.”

This technique goes against my years of addict behavior of numbing and escaping. Honestly, this is a brand new practice for me and I’m doing my best to just remember to attempt it. But when I feel myself reaching for a drug or food or tv to numb out, I try to remember to feel what I’m trying to avoid.

It feels like ghosts screaming in my chest. So many unuttered screams. Crawling, scratching, explosive screams. Needles through a wet washcloth suffocating my heart. “What did I do wrong?? What did I ever do to you?? Why do I have to DO so much just for you to love me? What did I do to become so BAD? Why do I have to change to be lovable?” Lying face down on hot concrete but feeling chilled to the bone. “NOT GOOD ENOUGH. NEVER GOOD ENOUGH. Everything I do is wrong!”

It hurts to feel all that. But just looking at the feeling, experiencing it, allows it to move on. I don’t have to keep that inside. I can let it go. I can surrender to the feeling and then it no longer holds power over me.

Is there a feeling you’re trying numb or escape? What does that feeling feel like when you choose to experience it? How do you feel now that you've allowed yourself to feel that feeling?

Spiritual

4. Want clarity? Meditate!
Another salient tip from Abraham-Hicks, this is the solution for all problems. As Abe explains to myriad seekers, there is really only ever one solution. As Abe is presented with question after question on seemingly different topics, they always come back to the same answer: meditation. No matter what the problem is that the seeker is trying to solve, they are always trying to find clarity on that topic. They are always trying to find a feeling of peace surrounding their money struggles, their love life, their bodies, etc. They always want the thing because they believe that thing will help them feel better. But ultimately what they truly want is to feel better. And meditation does that.

Meditation helps you feel better. It helps you find clarity. It helps you find peace. You don't need any physical circumstances to change to feel better. All you have to do is not think about what you don't have. All you have to do is let go of the resistant thought. When you meditate, you enter a space without the negative thoughts that steal your peace. You find that clarity you seek and then you realize you never needed the external to change, you just needed to find peace internally. This week, instead of trying to force things to happen, or even looking to outside factors to make you feel good, go within. When you feel dissonance, stop.

Sit still for 5 minutes and just relax. Write down how you feel afterwards. Do you feel better?