What If We Really Could Be Happy Exactly the Way Things Are?
I lost something very precious to me, a few weeks ago. I was consolidating my computer files and I discovered, much to my horror, that four years’ worth of my client call recordings had vanished. Anyone who knows how much heart and soul I pour into my coaching practice would understand why having my entire archive wiped out was … disconcerting … to say the least.
The questions raced through my head that always race through our heads when we “lose” something. What if a client needs the recording of their call? What if there is a truly useful purpose someday for that archive? I have no other substantial log of the work I’ve done these past few years … what if I need a way to retrace my steps?
And then something happened … I realized this was something over which I did not have a lot of “control.” Either I was meant to have the files or I was not. If I was meant to have the files, God would give them back to me through a miracle. And after a few days I realized that even if all the files were gone forever, I could still be happy. I could enjoy having the “weight” of the past lifted from me. “The past is gone, it can touch me not.”
I had fully accepted that the files were gone.
Until today … when they miraculously showed up again. The entire archive. What also miraculously showed up today was $100 that a customer had owed me for a year. And my old iPhone that I thought was gone. The real miracle though was the realization that I could be happy either way. With or without any of these things.
And you know, looking back, that’s a hallmark of many of the miracles I have received. I had given up on losing weight and forgot about the tapping videos I had created when suddenly 15 pounds dropped off my body effortlessly. I had “let go” of having a new car anytime soon when my brand new car miracle appeared out of nowhere. And I’d pretty much given up on my business right before it turned around completely in 2010.
In the self-development world, so often the focus is on what we need to improve. What needs to get better. Where we need to have more, more, more. And by doing this we create a war within ourselves, where one part of us wants to be accepted and happy the way we are, and another part of us wants us to change. A tremendous amount of energy goes into fighting this internal war. It’s exhausting.
The truth is, I have never been very good at conforming. And I have felt a lot of shame about this. And yet … would I be happy if I had done what I “should” have done? I could have been a multi-millionaire by now by working at a law firm … and I would have been miserable. I felt horribly ashamed that I wasn’t married with kids … and then last year when my cat got sick, I suddenly felt so grateful that I didn’t have kids. If taking care of my cat’s bodily needs could take that much out of me, what would it be like with a child dependent on me?
Earlier this year, I spent a month in Costa Rica, and I’ll soon be embarking on a month in Bali and Southeast Asia. Those trips would have been near impossible if I had ever “surrendered” my freedom, whether it be to a husband, children, a job, or any of the other “prestigious” trinkets that the ego loves to convince us will make us happy.
So now I have decided to embark on a new Challenge … the I’m happy the way things are challenge. Every day for the next month, I am going to focus all my attention on appreciating my life exactly the way it is now. I don’t want to focus on making MORE money. I don’t want to focus at all on men or dating or trying to have a relationship that is not here right now.
I am going to focus all of my energy on BEING HAPPY NOW. And this happiness, as my recent experience with the lost files proves, does not depend on what I have or don’t have in any given moment. It just is.
And when those negative feelings arise … I’m not going to “pretend” that they are not there. I’m going to do what I did today, take them to the holy instant and there let the Holy Spirit release me …
“God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.” And I am claiming it now.
Love,
Erika Awakening, High Priestess of Miracles at TAPsmarter
I’m curious as to why you hold the belief that having a husband and kids means surrendering freedom…Is it not possible to still feel free within a relationship and surrounded by children?
Hi Kat,
Thanks for stopping by. It’s a good question. Setting aside the possibility that having children and husband could be totally reimagined … which it could be, it just in my experience would require a very dedicated commitment to subconscious mind transformation … although in that case you might not want them at all, as entirely new possibilities are imagined and the need to “recreate myself through a body” perhaps disappears …
Society’s current default version of husband and children is not “freedom” any more than my job was “freedom.” I had to be there every single Monday through Friday except for a few holidays for eight hours a day bare minimum. If I have an infant, and I haven’t radically changed my subconscious mind … my entire life is going to be dedicated to meeting that infant’s bodily needs. Crying, feeding, changing diapers, dressing, putting to sleep, driving to appointments. Unless I have someone else do it for me, which hasn’t really solved the problem, just moved it around. No, I wouldn’t call it freedom. Not even close.
In principle I agree. There is a lot of commitment required to care for another person. I myself do not not have children yet, but working as a nurse, caring for sick patients I can attest to that. On the other hand I’ve found in my work that “doing for others”, causes me to temporarily distract myself, from myself…and there is a sense of freedom and empowerment that comes from that as well. Hopefully, when i do decide to have kids and get married, I will be able to shift my subconscious mind, into finding freedom, where others might imagine it to be lost.
To be sure, freedom of a kind can be found in any experience. People have even written about the Holocaust and how a few people were able to find an experience of happiness in the worst of conditions.
However, once we realize we are at choice about this, why would we subject ourselves to the worst of conditions? I would not willingly go back to a job, it would feel like a prison compared to what I have created for myself. So why would I willingly enter into any other kind of prison?
Wow. Thanks for sharing. All the power is in the NOW. Besides, I’ve always found that the more grateful you are, the more you will have to be grateful for. I believe Esther Hicks said that :)