Belief begins in the body. It is not in the head, where we generate logic or timelines. Belief begins deeper. To move forward in the work of manifesting, we want to begin tracking what that feels like. What it feels like when we know something when our intuition is ringing us.
Think of a time when you Knew something before it became true or apparent. Do you remember what that felt like? You probably didn’t have to work so hard to try to convince others, because you didn’t actually need anyone else to believe what you Knew. You just Knew. You had a sense of clarity.
Deep in your body, you have a system that is set up to alert you to your yeses and your no’s. In fact, most of us are quite aware of this sensation, it’s just that we cover it up a lot. We come up with reasons not to believe, not to follow our intuition, our hearts.
This makes sense when we look back on the patterns of human development. Most of us experience some life-altering situations when we are children. Often what feels like a small childhood experience actually informs how you view the world. When we are young, we make mistakes that teach us to not reach so far. We vow to never make the same mistake.
Sometimes we see someone else’s mistake and make sure that we never turn out like that by making promises to ourselves.
We learn the phrase, “be careful what you wish for,” and many of us take this into our body and encapsulate it.
In Shamanic work, there is a practice called Soul Retrieval. In the same way, we have an emotional body and a physical body, we also have an energetic or spiritual body. The underlying idea in Soul Retrieval is that when traumatic things become part of our experience, a piece of our energetic body actually leaves us. This occurs as a way of avoiding pain and damage; it is a survival mechanism.
The agreements we make to ourselves when we are young work the same way. They are important decisions that were necessary to keep us safe. No reason to be ashamed here, it kept you alive and safe. At some point, however, we outgrow them or we hit a limit with them. When you’ve found that you have hit a limit, this is when you know it is time for some deep inner work. Now it is time to bring all your parts back in and find your center in the chaos. If we have parts of ourselves “out there,” we walk around believing we are not whole. If this belief is unconscious, then we get into victim mode, get taken advantage of, or get triggered into anger or denial.
The work is to get eyes on what motivates you. What keeps you from feeling whole? What are you too busy to look at? It is really mindfulness work here. We shift from operating in habitual, mindless action to informed conscious action. We can sit in our center, experience the whirlwind of emotions and events happening all around us, then be able to witness from a place of neutrality. It doesn’t mean that we shut down emotion or don’t feel. It just means that the feelings don’t control us.
From this place, you get clarity. You get to understand why you make the decisions that you make. You get to call in your power.
If you see a vision of what or who you truly want to be, if you feel how you deeply want to live, then you are actually seeing your future. In our multi-layered experience, time moves in both directions. It moves towards the future and it ripples back towards the past. You would not be called to the thing you seek if you didn’t have what you need to allow it to come true.
Here, the task is not to convince yourself that something is true but to remove blocks that are in the way of Knowing it is true.
Ask yourself, “what do I desire?”. This week, let’s just play in this place. You don’t have to come up with the ultimate answer to set your soul free. If you come up with something or hear whispers from your soul, you don’t have to drop everything to make this come true. We are just playing with paying attention to what feels right in our bodies. When a thought comes across your awareness, does it FEEL like a “yes” or a “no”? Do you get a sudden spark of excitement? Maybe you even get a quiver of fear because you are right about what you really want and it feels scary to think about moving towards it. There is no right or wrong here. You are simply paying attention.
The second task for you this week is to work on warming up your prayer muscles. Regardless of our religious affiliation, this is something we all can do. Give yourself a few moments during the day to get collected. Close your eyes and take a few slow breaths. What do you want to ask for right now? Work towards asking for something that is just for you and avoid things that have to do with other people. If you find yourself thinking, “I want this, so that…” try to reframe your thought so it is more direct. Imagine what it would be like to ask with the freedom of worrying about no one else in your life.
The universe wants to bring it to you, but you have to ask.