Chicken vs. egg – which comes first? Compared to many of life’s pressing questions, that one seems easy. As I’ve studied cause and effect over the years, and as I’ve learned about principles of happiness, success, the law of attraction, etc., I’ve had to change many of my former paradigms. For instance, I’ve always thought that if I could be “successful”, I would then be happier. Now, I’m finding that success is often the result of happiness, not the cause of it. Another one – if I could solve my most pressing problems, I would be at peace. That’s logical, isn’t it? And yet, it appears that the best condition for finding answers to your problems is to be at peace. When you can take a deep breath, have faith, believing an answer will come, and accept the situation for what it is, you allow that peace to come into your mind, which allows inspiration to flow and answers to come. It doesn’t always come right away or like a brick upside the head. It often comes, softly and subtly. That’s how inspiration works.
I’ve written before about the complexity of the mind, body and spirit. We often want so very much to find a simple solution to a complex problem. The fact is that there are often multiple causes all interwoven together. As I work with people, sometimes I get nearly miraculous results. After just a light to moderate amount of treatment, a problem that they’ve been working on correcting for many years (physical, emotional, life problem, etc.) will suddenly disappear! I believe that in many of those cases, what I’ve done is to provide the last essential piece of the puzzle (which might be a big one) that got them over that final hurdle. Most of the results I get with people range somewhere between minimal and miraculous. Where my results seem to be on the minimal side, in spite of a lot of clearing, releasing and correcting, I believe that I just haven’t done enough yet to clear that hurdle where a major difference would be felt by the patient.
In cases where I don’t seem to be making much progress, especially when I confirmed every correction through my muscle testing, did I fail? Were my efforts wasted? Think about things in your own life, where you’ve worked hard to accomplish something but did not get the desired results. Were all of your efforts wasted? Did you learn from them? Did they make you smarter, stronger, wiser? Chances are that they did. When my results have been less than spectacular, I’ve had to remind myself (and sometimes the patient) that everything we accomplished was good. We made positive changes, even when it wasn’t enough to accomplish the goal they had in mind. I was reminded of this principle in a video I saw lately about how bamboo grows. For the first 5 years, you water it, fertilize it and care for it, but you don’t see anything happening. Then suddenly, it starts growing like crazy. It can get to be 60 feet tall in a matter of weeks. In reality, it was growing all that time – under the ground. It creates a thick, complex root system so it can support the tall trunk once it starts growing above ground. If you didn’t understand this, you would most likely give up watering it and caring for it after the first year or two.
What do you do if you’re not sure your bamboo tree is doing anything, so your efforts aren’t entirely being wasted? It’s probably not going to help it grow to dig it up and check on it every few months. You’d probably kill it! So what about other things in our life? How often have we given up just short of accomplishing our goals? Or how many times have we actually been accomplishing a great deal, even when we weren’t seeing the fruits of our labors, at least not the ones pertaining to our desired goals? May I suggest the following?
- Be at peace with the journey. Positive efforts are never wasted. Either they’re bringing you closer to your goal or you’re at least gaining wisdom and experience that will help you in other endeavors.
- Be loving, not judgmental, toward yourself. Do your best, but then forgive yourself when you don’t accomplish things just as you would like. Then extend that same loving, forgiving attitude toward those around you, which will bring you greater peace and happiness.
- Don’t be overly attached to every little outcome. Keep in mind that the purpose of life is to experience joy. Sometimes we don’t see the bigger picture. I’m not suggesting a lazy, “whatever” life devoid of goals or effort. I believe in working hard. However, I’ve learned that it’s important to first accept what is (as opposed to throwing inner tantrums hoping that it will magically change our current circumstances), and then with calm inspiration, work toward achieving and accepting that which we would prefer.
- Be open to causes and effects that you may not have considered previously. Sometimes we fail to find the answers for which we seek because we have blinded ourselves to them, simply because they don’t fit into the reality that we understand or have been taught.
- Understand that feelings of love, forgiveness, peace of heart and mind, and faith will attract more good things into your life than huge amounts of stressful work with the wrong attitude. The Emotion Code, tapping, ho’oponono, and other techniques can help to clear out the barriers to clear and peaceful thought.
I wish you joy and happiness in your life – not that everything will go smoothly without any challenges or difficulties (you’d stagnate and never reach your potential in life!), but that you will make the decision to accept joy into your life and align yourself with its principles.
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