The Journey

The Law of the Garbage Truck

Someone sent me one of those things that floats around the email circuit forever.  This one was one of the good ones (it didn't even tell me that I would grow warts with hair growing out of them if I didn't email this to 200 people in the next 10 minutes).  At any rate, here's the synopsis of the thing I received.

    A passenger in a taxi sees a car leap out from its parking place so close to the front of the cab that she was certain they were going to
    hit the offending car.  The cab driver was very alert and was able to slam on the breaks fast enough to avoid and accident by inches.  The driver of the offending vehicle opened his window and yelled and gestured obsenities at the taxi driver who simply smiled and waved and went about his business.  Of course the passenger was amazed at that and asked why he would do such a thing. 

    (Here's the really good part.)  Here's what the cab driver told her:
    Many people are like garbage trucks.
    They run around full of garbage, full of frustration,
    full of anger, and full of disappointment.
    As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it.
    And if you let them, they'll dump it on you.
    When someone wants to dump on you, don't take it personally.
    You just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on.
    You'll be happy you did.

    I love it!  How Abraham it is to do this--the way I see it, it's totally downstream thinking.  Want more information, see The Astonishing Power of Emotions

Remember Uri Geller?

3/3/07

I don’t know why I thought of this but as I was writing about my car and how she failed to start I remembered a night over 30 years ago when I saw Uri Geller on the Tonight Show (Johnny Carson was the host back then).  Uri came on and held spoons and forks between his thumb and forefinger and they bent.  He did other stuff, too, but I don’t remember what it was.  What I remember was that at one point he looked directly into the camera, at all of us watching him on television and told us to go to some electrical thing we had in our house that wasn’t working.  He said if we had a television set or washing machine—whatever it was, go over to it and put our hands on it.  He talked about thinking hard and carefully walked us through some very positive affirmation-line things and then told us to see if that thing was working.

I had a stereo that hadn’t worked for months.  I didn’t have a radio because that wasn’t working.  It wasn’t that I really missed it all that much but there were times when it would have been nice to listen to the radio and I just hated to throw it out.  It was also a record player (remember, this was 30 years ago) and I think it might even have been a cassette player.  It had a couple of fairly largish speakers, and had cost well over $100.  That was a lot of money 30 years ago.  Anyway, I did as I was told.  I put my hands on the stereo, said whatever I was supposed to say and thought hard—very, very hard—about wanting it to work.  When he said to see if it worked, I turned it on and it worked.  I swear, I had tried to get that thing to work for months.  Every once in a while I would turn it on just to make sure I hadn’t imagined that it wouldn’t work any more.  It worked now. 

I wasn’t quite ready to believe that I had the power to create my own reality but it was the first thing that ever happened that let that little crack of light shine on my belief system.  It was the thing that has allowed me to go further and further until now I know that I can manifest whatever I believe I can have.  Pretty amazing, isn’t it?  Thanks, Uri.

What You Put Out is What You Get Back

3/3/07

The Bible says, “What ye sow, so shall ye reap.”  See?  It’s all there—all this stuff so many people talk about as New Age is ancient.

I digress (I’m good at that).  Yesterday I had a whine-fest about my fears—today my car won’t start.  Oh, I know, I’m not being punished for “bad” thoughts and I also know my car has at least as many physical challenges as I have but it seemed a little more than a coincidence that I spent WAY too much time yesterday being afraid.

Right now I’m waiting for my amazingly generous neighbor to take me to the grocery and auto parts stores.  I am so lucky to have so many wonderful people around me.  I’m so grateful for each of them.

The Secret

Written 2/24/07

Oprah has been having a lot of shows about the book and movie, The Secret.  Of course every time there's a show there's also an after the show that goes with it.  I've been watching lots of stuff about this (as well as having watched The Secret, too).

There were a few things I heard on those shows that had tremendous impacts on me.  One of them was talking about how we can be thinking we want something but asking the Universe for the opposite at the same time.  I first read about this through Abraham's teachings but I seem to benefit from frequent repetition.

I'll give an example of this in a little bit but when I thought this wasn't working (and of course it always works) there was something else going on that I didn't even realize.  One of the other people on one of those shows said that we can't receive the good things we want into our lives until we can be genuinely grateful for what we currently have. 

I knew that.  Yes, I knew it several different times in my life but I forget it every once in a while.  Here's how it worked for me most recently.

Almost five years ago I decided I wanted to be a Virtual Assistant.  I did a bunch of research and decided to take some training through AssistU.  I was working a full-time job at the time and took the training in the evening and did homework nights and weekends.  I calculated how many hours I had to bill each month in order to be able to quit my job.  I decided I could make the transition if I was very careful.  I won't bore you with the details but I had it worked out to a nearly scientific formula for how it would work.

I started looking for clients and what I was getting were, well, let's just say they weren't the ideal clients I had carefully written about in my homework assignments.  I got a little frustrated and I also had a nasty attack from my fibromyalgia and the next thing I knew, I wasn't doing much toward even looking for clients.  I had some other personal issues to deal with and I drifted away.

I decided it was time to do something different with my life.  I wanted to do what it was I had spent all that time, effort, and money training to learn.  To that end, I found myself a life coach, Deanna Davis (she's another whole story and I great and glorious inspiration to me), and started working towards getting clients for my virtual business.

This could get to be a very long story so I'll cut to the chase.  A little over a year ago I was working for a company who shall remain nameless that I referred to as a technological sweatshop.  I was making more than just about anyone else in my position and I was making a whole big $10.50/hr.  There was no insurance, vacation, or sick leave the first year.  A few weeks after my one year anniversary I was called into a miniature conference room and fired.  Again, this could become a very long story while I explain to you that I had no idea why I was fired (I didn't), how I had done nothing wrong (I hadn't), how I got unemployment even though I was fired (a sure indication that I had been fired without cause), but the bottom line was very different.

Deanna and I had set March 30 as my final day at my job.  I was fired on January 25.  I went home in tears.  I called a friend of mine, another Virtual Assistant, who (bless her) said something like, "I realize it's probably too soon for you to think about this right now but I'd like to suggest that when you feel better that you consider the possibility that this might have been a gift that gives you the space you need to grow your business.

Well, of course I hadn't thought about that but because she suggested it, I was able to get to that point very quickly.  I was able to be grateful for being unemployed.  I was able to be grateful for having been fired.  Before I knew what was happening, I had enough clients to support me and I no longer had to worry about whether or not my unemployment payments would last long enough to keep me from losing everything.

Where this long and meandering story has been going is this:  When I thought I had been thinking about wanting to be a Virtual Assistant, what I was saying was some variation of, "I really want to have clients because I really hate working here."  That goes back to what I was first talking about--that we may think we're asking for one thing when, in reality, we're asking for something completely different.  I was focusing on how I hated working where I was working and what I got was more of an opportunity to work at places I hated.  As soon as I became grateful for my circumstances (being fired) I was able to genuinely want clients because I wanted clients, not because I didn't want something else.  It was amazing how quickly my life turned around.

That led me to this place where I'm able to examine where I live, how I live, what I surround myself with, and tons of other stuff I never would have thought I would wonder about when I was busy getting from one day to the next at work.

How joyful is that?

The Secret

Did you watch Oprah the other day when she had a bunch of Law of Attraction people on there talking about The Secret?  It was really very exciting.  I mean, the Law of Attraction stuff has been around forever and many of us have been working with it for years but it has now hit the mainstream in a big way. 

Even though I’ve been working on the whole Law of Attraction stuff for years, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I really started “getting” it. 

Nearly 15 years ago I heard about a web site for this totally weird woman who channeled spiritual beings.  In other words, these people were dead.  What I read was interesting but I just couldn’t quite go there—I mean, really, channeling?  The funny thing was that a lot of what I read kind of stuck with me and rattled around in my brain for the next 10 years or so.  Then a friend asked if I had ever heard of Abraham and I said I thought I had a vague recollection of taking a look at it many years before.  She shared a CD with me and it brought some of those memories I had up to the surface again. 

I still wasn’t quite ready for it, though, because I thought about it every once in a while but did nothing about it.

Almost two years ago that very same friend (she’s a REALLY good friend) send me the book Ask and It Is Given.  It’s an Abraham book and I think it’s safe to say that it may have changed my life. (It's listed in my book list--I strongly recommend it.)

I could write for hours about this.  I think I want to wait, though, until I have a couple of thoughts a little more well-formed.  In the meantime, you want to learn more about The Secret and more about Abraham.  On the Abraham site you can download the free audio I heard.  I got mine on a CD for the cost of shipping and handling but they give it to you free if you want to download it.