starting from scratch

When I first started learning about intentions and manifestations I happened across a Wayne Dyer special on PBS. Up to that point he had never registered on my radar; I am sure I must have heard the name but it not carry any significance. He stated that if you find yourself waking up at two in the morning for no apparent reason it may be your spirit guides trying to communicate with you, at a time of day when it is quiet enough for you to hear the message. He recommended sitting up, turning on the light, and writing down whatever came into your head. Spirit writing, I think he called it.

For a while I focused on this idea, and did my level best to sit up and write if I found myself awake. I got a lot of nonsense, but a few thoughts did come through clearly. One was this: “Intentional living is not enough; be higher, be holy. Understand the nature of cause and effect.”

Erin did a reading for me last summer, and I asked her about this. At the time, this felt like a synchronicity for her, as she and Steve had just rented Down the Rabbit Hole the night before, which discusses similar topics. She recommended that I watch it, and so I did. While it was interesting (in places; I’m not a fan of this Ramtha character) it didn’t give me any satisfactory answers. As is my nature, I overanalyzed the statement, trying to understand cause and effect at a metaphysical level, far beyond my puny powers of comprehension. Some interesting insights there, but no answers. As things got crazy over the last several weeks with work and the upcoming holidays I gradually forgot the whole thing.

It came back to me in a rush as I lying in bed the other night reading The Diamond Cutter, which approaches the whole topic from the other direction. Here, your reality is dictated by your past actions. For instance, if you act in a generous way, your future reality will contain abundance — a simplified example; the book is excellent and very worth reading.

Anyway that, I believe, is what my “spirit message” was speaking about. It is not enough to hold an intention, I must give that intention energy through my actions now. It is important to be aware of my actions, and to understand what kind of energy those actions are creating. I believe this is why the Pavlina’s see so much success: they have aligned both their actions and intentions around serving others, and so their reality has evolved to encourage and reward that. My sister-in-law has seen similar, unexplainable success since she picked up my copy of Ask and It Is Given several months ago for, I believe, similar reasons. I do not see the same results, because my intentions and current actions are out of alignment.

Something I will need to work on, and then we will see.

So much has been happening lately, and no time to write. It feels, in a sense, as if everything is accelerating around me. Must be careful not to lose my grip.

I had two experiences — my first two experiences — of higher self. I can’t tell you how I know it to be higher self; the experience simply brought that label with it. Those of you who have had that experience already, I am curious if that is how it happens.

The first was while clearing my head at work, walking around the campus. I had just finished reading Erin’s article on chakras. I was focusing on spinning the colors up, not at all sure what I was doing or if it was having any result. As I moved up to white I suddenly had a very tangible experience of a deep, profound…humor, of all things. A feeling of joy and satisfaction, an experience of knowing a deep universal truth and finding it supremely…humorous. The experience — the only word that seems to fit — felt external, coming from above and around me, but connected. It lastest about 7-10 seconds, and left a lingering “afterglow” for several minutes beyond that.

The second came in a dream a few weeks later. The Dog started barking in the far too early a.m., and as I lay in bed attempting to restore quiet through sheer force of will, I remembered the dream that I had been having when I woke, of speaking to a woman among tall shelves of books, and of the encounter ending abruptly just before I woke, an ending that signified that what was spoken there was not to be remembered in the waking world. Again, the experience brought its own label; I knew “higher self” before knowing the memory.

Strange and curious. Must go be domestic now; I’ll try to plug in a bit more later.

I spent the morning working on my plan for the first quarter of 2007. This is the first time that I have tried to make a formal plan like this, and I am impressed with the results. As per my 30 day trial, I dragged myself out of bed at 5am (actually closer to 5:30 by the time I worked up the will to drag myself out from under the covers…it is cold) and hopped onto the laptop. I created a blank page on started with:

By April 1st, 2007? What can I do? What should I do? What do I want to do? What must I do?

And then I started typing. Assuming I have my purpose figured correctly (I have not, at this point, backposted that here yet, I need to get that done) my main focus is on getting my business up and running. A close second is continuing this personal growth push I’ve been on. Everything else is supporting those two efforts. In all, I ended up with these subheadings:

• the business
• self and spirit
• home and family
• work
• money

Looking over my notes again, I see that I could probably break out one more topic — career — which is currently scattered under the other headings. I will be continuing to work on this plan for the rest of the month, I’ll make that change next session.

I mostly put things down in a stream-of-consciousness fashion initially, thinking about what I could feasibly do in three months, keeping in mind my tendency to be grossly over-optimistic about such things. When my brain took a pause I pulled out goals into bullet lists under each topic, trying to phrase them in such a way that they were small, and well-defined. That tended to trigger more stream-of-consciousness ideas, and back and forth. After about two hours I felt like I had a pretty good sense of things. As a bonus, an overarching theme emerged: I am building a platform from which to expand.

I am toying with the idea of actually signing the plan, as if it were a contract, as motivation to stick with it (I am easily distracted).

I should mention that my 30 day goal of getting up at 5am made all of this possible by providing me with two solid hours of uninterrupted thinking time, with enough left over to write this post. But now M and The Youngest are up and about, and it is time to get back to life.

Today I started my first 30 day trial: every day this month I am going to get up at 5am. I hope it gets easier than it was today!

I usually get up between 6:00 and 6:30 (okay, some days maybe more like 7:00-7:30) which I can do without an alarm. That doesn’t leave much time to get anything done before I need to get out the door to work. And by the time the kids are in bed and the evening chores are finished I’m usually too braindead to get much done at the end of the day either. So this trial (and let me tell you, at 5am this morning it sure felt like a trial) is an attempt to find some additional productive time. Not just productive time but quiet time, where I can think about stuff like what I want to be when I grow up, without The Youngest climbing up my back.

The first morning went well and has me encouraged. I knocked off some household chores, exercised, and even meditated for fifteen minutes and still got off to work at about the same time. On the weekends I plan to skip the chores, jump right on the computer, and spend a couple of hours building my business before the kids get up. If all goes well I could add 50% to the amount of time I’m spending now.

Hopefully I don’t fall asleep during dinner.