Manifesting Our Lives

                 “A core belief is invisible only when you accept it as a fact of life.”
    “Seth,” Nature of Personal Reality

The notion that that we create our own realities and the laws of attraction are ideas that many of us embrace, at least conceptually. Our thoughts create our realities. It seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? But time and time again, we find there are certain elements in each of our own lives that stay the same, or replay themselves over and over again like a worn out recording.

Could it be that there is a little more to it than the simple notion that our thoughts create our realities? 

The answer, I would say, is yes.

Last month we began to discuss that, until we better understand the “lenses” through which we view our reality, we won’t be able to fully understand the realities we are personally creating. In order to do that, step one is to acknowledge that perhaps we are wearing “glasses” that color our perceptions. If at this moment you are thinking that your perception is true reality and that you don’t wear glasses, think again; we all have them.

So where do these “lenses” that impact not only our perceptions, but also the realities we are creating,  originate?

Conscious thoughts: This topic is well covered so no need to expound. Rather, let’s give thanks for the many teachers that carry this message into the world!

Beliefs: There are some beliefs you know you hold, and others you don’t know you hold. In a sense, they are invisible. As stated in the quote at the top of the page, there are some beliefs we don’t realize are just ideas about reality because we think they are reality.

The mystical: By definition, this means “beyond human understanding.” If you believe in other lifetimes that impact one another, it goes without saying that the very lives we are living in the present are touched by lifetimes we are completely unaware of.

It is by becoming aware of these three levels of manifesting our lives that we can begin to not only change factors which may not be to our liking, but also begin to gain  broader understanding of  the totality of Self. “Believe” it or not it is possible, if we are willing to do the work.

Blessings,
Sheryl

Look for Sheryl's workbook "You Hold the Key to You: Understanding Self and Your Incarnational Past" in 2013.

Lenses of Our Own Creation

"Hot and cold, pain and pleasure. Come and go, come and go. Oh my dear one, manage to endure them." 

So says the Bhagavad Gita, and such is the reality of life on this earth; the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the good days and bad days. In this world of duality, we gain understanding of one end of the spectrum by experiencing the other.

For those that have already read Timeless Waters, you know it is a story about the realization and discovery of three different lifetimes; an experience I believe to be on offer to us all. As relevant and life expanding as that experience was, years later I realize that one of the greatest things I gained was a deeper understanding of the degree to which my perception shapes my experience.

That sounds like old information for most of us, yet so often we contribute to our own emotional dramas because of our perception of events and the meaning we place on them. Figuratively speaking, we see the world through specific lenses of our own creation.

Unfortunately, not only are many of us not aware of the specific lenses through we perceive the world, we may not even believe we have lenses at all! Until we can acknowledge that we do, we may find ourselves in a perpetual loop of "mis" perceptions. We will talk more about where the "glasses" we each wear originate, from our thoughts to the mystical, next month. But until then, begin to observe your experience and the emotions that come up for you most often for they are the key.

The hot and cold, the pleasure and pain will come and go as certain as the sun will rise and the wind will blow. But with the desire and commitment to examine the glasses through which we are viewing the world, the difficult times will likely be fewer and perhaps even a little easier to endure.

Blessings,
Sheryl

Look for Sheryl's workbook "You Hold the Key to You: Understanding Self and Your Incarnational Past" in 2013.

Transcendence

     “a state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience”

Just as we are all dichotomies, so we all have characteristics that can be viewed as both our blessing and our curse. One of those characteristics for me is my ability to feel deeply. My ex-husband would watch on with both frustration and awe as I covered the spectrum of human emotion in a matter of minutes, and then with ease, could carry on with the rest of my day. He once said the sky I saw was much bluer than the one he saw, but that the pain I felt was deeper too.

            Living life that way is a rich experience, and one that can enable a person to not fear what lay within him or herself. But sometimes when a person is handed too much over a span of time, he or she shuts down emotionally; a coping mechanism.

At the time I didn’t realize it, but it happened to me. I handled the experiences being handed to me with an “evenness” previously unknown to me. And so it was for several years, and it occurred to me that maybe I had learned transcendence; the ability to rise above and beyond the limits of material experience.

Then one night as I sat gazing at the stars, I realized my sense of awe was diminished. As I thought about many of the events I had faced over the previous few years, I also recalled that I had never shed any tears. The words to the Eagle’s Desperado played in my head-- “You’re losing all your highs and lows, aint’ it funny how the feeling goes away--” and I got it; I was numb. While the absence of the lows was nice, life without the highs is a flat life indeed. With that recognition, the tough exterior that shielded me for several years began to soften, and I got hurt. I sat on a friend’s couch sobbing, recalling how awful it was to feel something so deeply. Later that night, a favorite phrase from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, came into my mind:

        “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

            Gibran’s poetic wisdom both gave me pause to reconsider the concept of transcendence and reminded me of the richness that exists in this physical experience we have chosen. Human emotion is a critical part of that experience. With that awareness, maybe healthy transcendence is not so much about responding to what life throws our way by immediately rising above it. Perhaps it is ultimately about how we respond when we find ourselves in that deep well of human emotion.

Blessings,

Sheryl

Patterns

           If you have read Timeless Waters, you are already aware that it is a story of what felt like a space-time convergence leading to the discovery of three different lifetimes. These lifetimes spanned several hundred years and were all related to a specific location in New Mexico. What an experience it was! And while finding clues and documentation supporting my dreams and intuitions is what made the ride so unbelievable, it was the recognition of reincarnational patterns that has impacted my life the most. The stories, while relevant in their own right, are simply the backdrop; they are the vehicle through which the patterns are demonstrated. The patterns are what we carry with us through space and time, beckoning us to seek understanding.

            What I am still learning, however, is that just because I know about the patterns, and have detailed knowledge about other incarnations related to those patterns, it doesn’t mean I get to be finished with the pattern. The older I get, the more I see that life patterns are like an onion. You make your way through one layer of the human experience and shed your skin, only to find with the passage of time that—oh, there is it again in the next layer! And so it goes over the decades.

            One of my patterns is loss. It has come up over and over again in a variety of forms. Success in dealing with this pattern is not going to be demonstrated by the eradication of loss in my life and a cheer from above that I finally figured it out. Rather, it is about how I respond.

            I once heard someone say that life lessons are just that; for life. They are the crux of the work we as individuals are here to do, and no one is exempt. The challenge then, is to recognize what is happening when faced with your own particular pattern and each time you are, reach deeper understanding of the wisdom that can be gained from the experience—even when it renders you a pile of rubble.

            I write this as a reminder to myself as much as anyone else, as I am yet again faced with the challenge of one of my patterns. I know the past lifetime that the pattern relates to, and I even know the players. Yet I still struggle, as do we all. Does this mean we are failures or somehow less evolved? I don’t think so. It means we are here, having a human experience, engaged in the work we came into this life to do. 

Blessings,

Sheryl