Toward Full Actualization

The theme of this blog has been learning to live in a state of "Full Actualization".

Simply stated, this means learning to access the spiritual dimension and higher-self consciousness, even while fully embracing our physical existence.

A great deal of spiritual teaching is available, much of which is helpful and somewhat convergent. Certain concepts are widely accepted, such as reincarnation and the "law of attraction".

It's easy to find teaching on how to attract wealth, or how to connect with loved ones on the other side. The problem I experienced was how to integrate it all into a broad, practical philosophy of life. Having money is great, but what if learning to attract wealth doesn't answer all the questions? What if the questions run along the lines of "Why am I here?" and "What is the purpose for all this suffering", and even "What can I do about the things in my life that I don't like?"

The "Fully Actualized Life" is based on a number of initial assumptions about how it all works, based on my experiences along the spiritual path up to this point. I have seen enough correlation with other sources to feel fairly confident that this is the gist of how things really work in the universe.

Here is a recap:

 It's All About The Soul.

The soul is a splinter off the vast, unitary consciousness that fills the universe, which we call God.

The soul incarnates in various physical environments in order to experience lessons or achieve objectives that are difficult to experience in spirit. Being human on Earth is our primary experience, which we will address here.

The primary objective of the soul is not to gain more knowledge, since it already has infinite knowledge of the Godhead at its disposal. Humans seek to rediscover knowledge as part of their experience.

The primary objective of the soul is not to become more holy or righteous, or to "earn" a higher level in the cosmos. The soul does not seek to please God, for the soul is already comprised of God.

The primary objective of the soul is not to resolve every problem and reach a state of bliss, because it originates from a state of bliss. The soul originates from a state of total love and security, but bravely sets sail on uncharted seas in an attempt to rediscover love and learn how to manifest its needs in a contrived system of fear and scarcity.

So Why Do We Suffer?

The soul does not come here merely to suffer. 

Suffering occurs primarily due to the following:

1. Failure of the ego-mind to understand the lessons at hand, and to resist them.

2. Failure of the ego-mind to understand that physical existence is merely a drama on a stage, and that there is much more to reality than what our physical senses are aware of. The ego-mind therefore buys totally into the concept of scarcity and fear as being the norm. In this state of mind, life can seem like a cold, cruel joke.

3. On occasion, the soul incarnates with specific intention to experience certain limitations, such as physical disabilities or distressed environments. Accidents or acts of violence are often "contracted" in advance according to the soul's purpose.

4. Often balancing a karmic account is a major part of the soul's purpose. Depending on the nature of the karmic contract with other souls, the experiences that are created can be difficult or challenging.

How Can We Optimize Our Experience as Humans?

1. Recognize the lessons the soul has planned for this life, and stop resisting. Often unhappy circumstances will recur over and over, because the soul seeks to provide the "stage scenery" that is necessary for a particular lesson. Accepting and completing the lesson is the fastest way to change things for the better and move on.

2. Learn to balance the major Chakra energy centers. For example, a healthy root chakra keeps us grounded to the Earth and feeling secure, while an open heart chakra is necessary to give and receive love. Learning to eliminate fear and open one's heart to love is a general lesson for any soul incarnating on Earth.

3. Realize that personal reality is created by the individual. All problems have roots that can be discovered in the energetic body or subconscious (higher self or oversoul). By accessing the subconscious, problems can be either resolved or at least understood as part of the soul's plan. This knowledge alone should help dispel fear, since it precludes the possibility of being victimized by outside forces or random events. The journey of self-discovery and self-improvement is a major theme on this blog, and is the focus of energy practitioners in general.

4. Become aware of the Shift. Our planet is graduating to a higher vibrational frequency. The process is often chaotic and challenging, but the end result will be great! The human race is evolving toward a state of golden enlightenment, such as experienced in the distant past. Even better, the veil between the physical and the spiritual is thinning. The truly Fully Actualized Human will live with one foot on the ground and one foot in Atlantis. This is something we can begin to experience now!

Lynn Savage

Getting Past the Pain

In the quest for the "fully actualized life", the problem of pain and suffering must be dealt with. Everyone experiences it at times, no matter how successful they appear to be.

Many people are so tired of suffering that they lose their enthusiasm for being here. I'm not referring to clinical depression or suicidal thoughts - that is a serious problem of a different magnitude.

I'm talking about the millions who simply muddle along, shrouded in the "fog of distress". They resent the pain and suffering, and feel victimized by life circumstances that seem out of their control. Whatever the circumstances, be it illness, relationship disharmony, financial woes, or simply an empty feeling inside - the tendency is to feel angry and disillusioned about existence in a sea of pain.

One can blame God, blame your parents or partner, or inflict the damage upon yourself through persistent negative thoughts and self-directed anger.

A more spiritual approach is to seek answers from a higher source. Law of Attraction teaching correctly points out that changing attitudes and beliefs can greatly change the way things look and feel in physical reality. However, some LOA gurus seem to insist that pain and suffering can be eliminated by attracting Health and Wealth. This approach misses an an important point.

As I mentioned in previous posts, most suffering seems to result from resisting the soul's agenda and current lesson program. The attitude we take can make a huge difference in how it looks and feels.

Other issues can be unresolved pain from past traumas, that remains stuck in the etheric field, or metabolic imbalances resulting from poor diet or chronic stress.

A fundamental truth to consider is that suffering is not the primary reason we are here. The extreme duality in this physical plane ensures that challenge and chaos will abound, but that is merely incidental to our existence on the physical plane.

A silver lining to Earth's duality is that the soul is provided a stage on which to work out its purpose. What novel or movie would be entertaining without drama? Challenges can be seen a mere stimulants for creative problem solving.

The soul has all the tools it needs to overcome any problem. There is purpose in everything, so it helps to become aware of how the soul sees things.

To anyone currently facing challenges in life, I suggest asking yourself the following questions:

1. Could this experience be related to a lesson from the soul's perspective? This is especially pertinent if the challenging situation seems to repeat itself again and again. A passing grade is required to move on!

2.Some tragedies result from soul contracts or scripts. This may sound like scant comfort at your moment of distress, but if you can access your soul's perspective or Akashic records, it can make a huge difference once you piece together the big picture.

3. Many problems result from energy blockages, negative beliefs, past life bleed-through, or even spirit attachments. You may need to consult with a skilled energy practitioner to get help with these.

Whatever the cause, the point to remember is that nothing happens by random chance. From the ego-mind's narrow viewpoint, it's easy to develop a view that life is harsh and unjust. From the soul's perspective, life is a grand adventure! 

The way we experience circumstances can quickly change by simply changing our attitude. One reason for that is consciousness is the driving force behind our perceived reality, We are the cause, not the effect! This realization can be a truly liberating truth.

O we can wait no longer,
We too take ship O soul,
Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,
Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,)
Caroling free, singing our song of God,
Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.

- excerpt from The Sea Symphony by Vaughan Williams (from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass)

10 Principles of Abundance

Here are the 10 principles of abundance that are referred to in my last post. They are adopted from John Randolph Price's "The Abundance Book". They are designed to be meditated upon each day, one per day for 10 days. Then the cycle is to be repeated over three more times for a total of 40 days.

I can attest to the fact that this really works! Somehow the message must get past the ego-mind and into the subconscious. It continues to work throughout the day even though the conscious mind is not focused on it.

If you try it, please leave a comment regarding how it works for you.

1. Source is abundance, but is not outside of me. Source is me. The abundance is as individualized as me.

2. I am aware that I am source and substance of all good things.

3. I am conscious of the inner presence as my lavish abundance. I am conscious of the constant activity of this mind of infinite prosperity. My consciousness is filled with the light of truth.

4. I draw into my mind and feeling nature the very substance of spirit. This substance and presence within me is my supply.

5. Money is not my supply. No person or circumstance is my supply.  My awareness of the all-providing activity of the divine mind within me is the supply. My consciousness of this truth is unlimited, therefore my supply is unlimited.

6. My inner supply instantly and constantly takes on form and experience according to my needs and desires and as the principal of supply in action. It is impossible for me to have any needs and desires unfulfilled.

7. The divine consciousness that I am is forever expressing its true nature of abundance. This is its responsibility, not mine. My only responsibility is to be aware of this truth. Therefore I am confident in letting go, and letting source provide total sufficiency.

8. My consciousness of the Spirit within me as my unlimited Source is the Divine Power to restore the years the locusts have eaten, the make all things new, to lift me up to the High Road of abundant prosperity. This awareness, understanding and knowledge of Spirit appears as every visible for and experience that could possibly desire.

9. When I am aware of the God-Self within me as my total fulfillment, I am totally fulfilled. I am now aware of this Truth. I have found the secret of life, and relax in the knowledge that the Activity of Divine Abundance is eternally operating in my life. I simply have to be aware of the flow, the radiation, of that Creative Energy, which is continuously, easily and effortlessly pouring forth from my Divine Consciousness. I am now aware. I am now in the flow.

10. I keep my mind and thoughts off “this world” and I place my entire focus on God within as the only Cause of my prosperity. I acknowledge the Inner presence as the only activity in my financial affairs, as the substance of all things visible. I place my faith in the Principle of Abundance in action within me.

The Law of Attraction Revisited

It has been a while since this blogger has written anything. I have been busy, working through some life challenges and soul lessons. You might say I have been out on assignment, since I consider my own life to be a laboratory for discerning and working out the spiritual teachings that I'm sharing. Could be part of a course that my higher self is enrolled in on the Other Side, and an earthly incarnation is like a field trip in the curriculum.

Anyway, my recent lessons have caused my understanding of the Law of Attraction to evolve. The brief synopsis: About 10 years ago, after being introduced to the Law of Attraction teaching, I became enamored of the idea that I could attract an alternate flow of income and quit my day job, leaving me free to pursue spiritual studies and various other noble endeavors. It took several years, but eventually something changed, in that an opportunity developed to become a self-employed contractor. No longer working for "the man", my schedule was more flexible. However, the only source of income still came from old-fashioned work, and it still amounted to trading time for money. I was still working for the man, or so it seemed.

Not sure how Bob Proctor and Joe Vitale came upon their millions, but "The Secret" sure wasn't working for me...at least that's how I was seeing it. When I was busy working, the money flowed, but my time was shortchanged. When I worked less, my alternative pursuits were more feasible, but the income sucked.

I sensed that "Clearing Baggage" was an essential part of the equation, and wrote about that extensively last year. But how to accomplish that? Some programming seems to go so deep. Hypnosis, energy work, psychic readings...all that these managed to accomplish was to point out that I have a problem. Duh, I know, right? Energy flow was blocked. I was stuck. Wave a wand and make it change, ok? Or maybe that's just "magical thinking".

Eventually I hit a low point that proved to be the necessary catalyst for change. My acupuncturist told me that I needed to change "the story I tell myself about money".  The story line that goes "Life is hard and you always have to struggle to get by". Ok, sure, back to the concept of baggage and old tapes. But as I pondered it, I tried to imagine how the story could really change. What would the new story line be? Why do we think life has to be hard and why can't it be easy?

I knew that a core truth about life is that the soul incarnates to experience things and work through lessons. I also readily accepted the premise that reality is an ongoing creation by the soul - that reality is energy and can flux and change.

A central point within Law of Attraction teaching is that your reality tends to reflect what you believe and what you focus your thoughts on. Change your beliefs about reality, and reality changes. Easy to change, eh? But then a new insight dawned on me: Some core beliefs that we embrace are embedded so deeply into our perception of reality that we don't think of them as beliefs - we think they are facts about reality. Thus the story line I had told myself about life being a struggle wasn't accessible as a belief that could be reconsidered and changed - it was my view of how the universe simply is.

Ultimately, it was yet another insight that had the most impact on changing my life. At just the right moment, a little green book crossed my path, "The Abundance Book" by John Randolph Price. It contains ten principles of abundance, which are meant to be meditated upon one per day for 10 days. The reader is instructed to repeat the cycle 4 times over for a total of 40 days.

I thought I had read enough books on abundance and prosperity, so why was this one different? The central premise in "The Abundance Book" is that we all possess the divine creative spark within. Since Source is unlimited, and we are Source, we literally have everything we could possible need or desire at our fingertips. It's not about visualizing or attracting; it's about simply letting go of the struggle and realizing that you have a divine mechanism within that can go to work shifting reality in whatever way it needs to be shifted. It's about realizing that you are a powerful being and that your soul loves to create.It's about letting go of the struggle and just focusing on allowing the flow to move through you and into your physical reality.

The angle that helped me change my story line was the realization that my ego-mind is not on the hook to produce what I need, and life is not meant to be a struggle in that sense. This frees me up to ponder what my soul purpose really is in this life. Seen from that perspective, the landscape tends to look different. If you understand what your soul is trying to accomplish, and get with the program, things tend to go much more smoothly.

It turns out that a major soul lesson for me was to overcome fear and insecurity. Applying that understanding to my life history, I realized that my soul had repeatedly created situations that triggered my fears and insecurity. I had always managed to muddle through these crises, but resented them and failed to realize that the soul wanted the opportunity to show what it could do. It has unlimited resources to work with, and excels at solving problems by targeting a flow of energy to where it's needed. The soul loves to be confronted with a problem, simply for the opportunity to creatively solve it. That's why we are here! In the higher dimensions, thought is translated into reality instantly. There is great value in having a stage to enact our dramas upon, which is essentially what incarnation is about.

I had previously thought of the Law of Attraction as a form of magical thinking, wherein if you could just hold the right thought long enough, you would attract or create it into your reality. Visualization is powerful, and this principle does work in some manner. However, the core principle to grasp is that life is about the soul and its lessons rather than being about big houses and large bank accounts. It's about tapping into the energy of Source and establishing a flow. It takes more than thinking in a static mode. It takes action. Establishing a flow is the key.

My attitude toward working has now changed. The Abundance Principles teach that no  particular job or situation is the source of your abundance, but rather the Divine Source within. A job is simply an outlet for creative flow. Of course not all jobs feel that way, but the soul will tend to guide toward the situations that best achieve its goals. Even stressful, problematic job situations could be precisely what was ordered for a particular lesson or experience. Things could look much better simply by getting with the program. Most suffering in life results from resisting the soul's program.

At this point I'm just starting down the path of abundance. It didn't take long for seeming miracles to occur, which is amazing and gratifying,  but this is a lifelong process. I have robust goals and expectations that are not yet materialized, but the vital, radical change has already taken place: I now focus on the flow. Problems are simply opportunities. The soul is not intimidated by anything. Possibilities are endless.

This understanding is a basic tenet of "The Fully Actualized Life".

-Lynn

Heaven On Earth

I was recently listening Sandra Ingerman's audio CD "Miracles for the Earth", and was particularly impressed by the message in the track titled "Changing Perception - Changing Reality".

Here is an excerpt:

At one point while writing “Medicine for the Earth”, I journeyed on the issue of “Bringing Heaven to Earth”. The response of my spirits was, they said Heaven is already on Earth. It was my perception that needed to change. I was told that as we learn to change our perception, we change our reality. This sounded really nice, but  I needed more information to work with, so I asked for more.

Next I was told that in order to change my perception, I needed to learn to see the beauty in all things. Once again, that sounded really nice, but I needed more.

I was told that in order to see the beauty in all things, we must live in a state of appreciation and gratefulness.

In order to really work with the principles that I’m speaking about here, there’s some personal  work that we have to do. The most important is learning how to change our negative states of consciousness. You must feel your feelings, and then learn how to work them completely through, so you are transmuting them to an energy of love and light that is being put out into the universe.

The energy coming from your thoughts and feelings are being sent out into the environment. I’m sure you have felt the negative impact of being in a room where there’s a lot of anger or fear. The experience of this energy is tangible. We are human beings and part of being human is having an ego that feels separate from others. We experience a range of positive feelings as well as negative feelings. We have positive thoughts, beliefs and attitudes, and of course there’s negative thoughts that creep into our lives. The energy from our emotions and thoughts is energy that is really tangible.

In tribal cultures, the difference between expressing anger and sending anger is well understood. In modern culture where the energy behind thoughts and emotions is not validated, we don’t realize the pollution we create by sending so much negative energy into our world. 

I’m not saying we should not have negative emotions and thoughts. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty for being a human being. Part of being a human being is to experience the full range of feelings. We know from the cancer research that has been done, if you repress your emotions you can create illness inside of yourself.

So the solution isn't not having negative emotions and thoughts, but learning how to transmute and transform the energy coming from them into love and light. Another aspect to this is in working with the power of our words.

After one of my lectures, a Navajo woman came up to me after listening to me talk about the power of words, and asked me if I was familiar with the term "May you walk in beauty". Living in the Southwest, I told her of course. She said the term "May you walk in beauty" had to do exactly with what I was talking about - the power of words. The Navajo believe that whenever you speak to another person, it's important to empower them in beautiful words, and never to plant the seeds of fear. This is what the term means.

Putting the Law of Attraction to Work Part 3

I have been making the case that understanding the Law of Attraction is an essential part of the Fully Actualized Life. This is because the LOA is in operation whether you are aware of it or not. If you aspire to learn how to consciously guide and shape certain aspects of your reality, you must learn to master the LOA. If you are content to accept whatever randomly comes your way, then you can go back to sleep and skip the rest of this blog.

As I write this blog, I am actively working on these principles in my own life. Following are some of my recent insights:

Prosperity requires that a flow be present in your life.

Some confuse the LOA with "magical thinking", which is a disparaging term used in the field of psychology. Not to dismiss the possibilities of magic, but in practical terms, it's best to not assume that the LOA is akin to pulling a Genie out of a bottle and commanding your wishes to be met.

Seriously, there is a place for magic, and in theory, the soul is enough of a natural creator to manifest anything it wishes. It's simply a matter of consciousness acting upon energy to form matter. It's how we got here to begin with.

However, it's best to take baby steps at first. Within the context of the Fully Actualized Life, we are focusing on producing a prosperous flow within our physical existence. The soul knows well enough how to create, but it's really here for the experience. A creative flow in your life means that the soul is expressing itself in the outside world. A creative flow is almost always synonymous with prosperity and success, although these terms should not be narrowly construed in terms of dollars and materialism.

So what produces a prosperous flow? Our society is structured around the concept of work and career being the centerpiece of our purpose in life. In many cases, one's vocation does represent the soul's highest and best aspiration for self-expression. In those fortunate cases, a creative flow is already present and producing a degree of prosperity.

For those less fortunate, who find that their soul's expression has not found an outlet in their work, some fearless self review must be undertaken. Is your soul finding an outlet? Many people find that an avocation or hobby outside of work is sufficient. However, in many other cases, the soul feels blocked and frustrated. This is a major source of misery in life; anxiety, depression, stress, illness and accidents often result.

Due to trauma or negative conditioning early in life, we can have major blocks in the body's energetic systems. This causes the ego's view of reality to become distorted. The ego can be very stubborn and resist the natural expression of the soul.

Another negative factor is that society conditions us to sell our time as wage slaves in exchange for material needs. We learn early in life that it can be unreasonable to expect for our job to be enjoyable and rewarding. The ego uses this argument to tell the soul to stuff it when thoughts drift toward daydreaming of a better life. Whatever fun, fabulous endeavor has been suggested by the higher self would be nice, but it doesn't pay the bills! So we reluctantly turn our attention back to the salt mine and try to accept our fate.

In all the teaching I have reviewed on the LOA, prosperity is never achieved through working hard at tedious, unrewarding jobs. That's fine if your only goal is to merely get by, and are willing to reduce your expectations for happiness, but that's not prosperity. The teaching seems unanimous, that prosperity and happiness require that the soul be free to seek its bliss. In fact, the soul seeking its bliss is a major source of prosperity.

For those stuck in unrewarding jobs out of economic necessity, the LOA offers a path to become unstuck and begin moving toward a more rewarding life.

In my own case, I had a somewhat satisfying career as a programmer, but my soul aspired to take a different direction later in life. Thus I have found myself at a crossroads where the LOA is an essential tool to employ.

To be continued...

Putting the Law of Attraction to Work Part 2

In the last post, I criticized the commonly understood definition of "abundance" as being primarily about wealth and health. While there is nothing wrong with desiring those things, this approach appeals to the ego-mind as opposed to the soul or higher self. Since selling the LOA has become a business model, I suppose it's natural to gear the pitch toward the ego.

There is nothing wrong with having money, but a surprising number of people believe that there is, at least above a certain amount. They tend to lose sight of the fact that obsession with not having too much money is not morally superior to obsession with having it. Obsession with it either way is a construct of the ego, and therein is the problem.

Just to be clear, this blog focuses on "The Fully Actualized Life", and material abundance is certainly an important subset of this. However, rather than focusing on the goals as the ego-mind might define them, the Fully Actualized approach takes a more integrated view of body, mind and spirit. The abundant life balances between all three. Life on Earth is really about the soul's journey, so it makes sense to look at this from the perspective of the soul.

I am actively working on applying the principles of "The Fully Actualized Life" to my own life. This blog is about sharing my thoughts and inspiration on this, but I also intend to discuss my own application of these ideas. I certainly don't want to be promoting a theory that doesn't work for me.

At this point, I will share a bit of my own personal experience:

Achieving financial abundance has been a personal goal of mine for a long time. While generally always experiencing that my needs were met, I believed firmly in the Law of Scarcity. My parents and grandparents lived through the Great Depression, and their struggles to eke out survival were deeply engraved in their psyche. It's understandable that my ideas about money were inherited from their experience.

The Law of Scarcity holds that success can only come from working hard, and that's only if you are fortunate enough to have a job. Also, it's rare to really enjoy your work. You essentially sell your time to The Man and endure stressful working conditions in exchange for a pay check. You may occasionally think of other things you would much rather be doing with your time, but just forget about that. You are a wage slave. Too bad if you are too tired and drained when you get home to do anything else - life wasn't meant to be a "bed of roses". If this all seems unpalatable, just remember that the wolf is howling just outside of your door. People without jobs can tell you a much more dismal story, so suck it up and accept it!

Then one day a magical thought popped into my head. I had been reading some teaching on the LOA by Abraham-Hicks. The teaching suggested that you can have anything you desire! Really? I suddenly wondered if that meant I could manifest an alternate way to achieve an income. Radical thought, that! Could I actually discover a way to "own my own time", and do things in life that I find fulfilling, rather than things "The Man" wants me to do?

I wrote down a list of goals, and began to focus on them with the intent of manifesting them. Top of the list was an alternate means of achieving an income that would allow more freedom. The LOA teaching said that you can't focus on what you don't like, or on your lack of what you want. This part proved to be extremely hard. Each day I reluctantly got into the car and drove to work, wondering how long it would take to change my situation. It took many years of struggling with this before I realized why it was so hard for me. In a word: Baggage.

The Law of Scarcity was a belief system that I had subscribed to early in life. LOA doctrine teaches that old beliefs that are contrary to your goals must be dropped and replaced with positive beliefs. This wasn't so hard for me on the conscious level; The LOA made sense on an intellectual level, and I read convincing stories of others having success with it. 

But Abraham also said that feelings have a strong role to play in manifestation. It makes sense to feel good once the goals are manifest, but how can you do that when you are still experiencing the same old grind? This is the same conundrum I had stumbled over in my younger days in church - I was taught that God will grant your desire when you pray, but only if you believe in it first. Since the thing I was praying about was inevitably an issue I was fearful about, the strong feelings of fear that persisted must mean that I still doubted. How can you not doubt when you feel afraid? But doubting means you won't get what you pray for, so you have reason to fear!

Eventually things began to change. An opportunity came along to become a freelance contractor, with my former employer supplying a reasonably solid amount of work. I was quite fearful of giving up a guaranteed paycheck, but this arrangement allowed me to ease into independence with baby steps. It provided some flexibility in time management, and allowed me to work at home.

Around the same time, I met Marie (another item on the manifestation list), and later the vision developed between us for Earth & Water Wellness. It became apparent that this was to be my ultimate destination, a manifestation inspired by my original list of goals some 10 years earlier.

Still I was troubled by the fact that money only flowed when I worked hard on consulting projects. Pouring myself into things my soul desires, such as writing and our wellness business, didn't bring in much money. I keep reminding myself that following my soul's desires shouldn't result in poverty.

I began to look at the issue of emotional baggage, and how the unconscious mind plays a huge role in directing a person's thoughts. I realized that deep down inside, I felt very insecure. I also lacked self-confidence, although this had been overcome at times while achieving success in my career as a programmer. Still, my success was tied to the notion of working for others. It was (and still is) very difficult to believe that I could do something on my own that would result in financial success.

My current thrust is on clearing the baggage once and for all. It turns out that during bouts of anxiety and insecurity, my root and crown chakras are closed. It's difficult to manifest under these conditions;  thus energy work and meditation are an essential part of this process.

I tell myself daily that Source is infinite, and material things are just energy manifest in physical form. That there is no shortage in Source, and we are connected to it. That if we could just live in the present moment, the soul knows how to manifest its needs. That the LOA really works, and has a solid basis in the physics of how reality operates.

There are several other insights that are working for me. More on this later...

Putting the Law of Attraction to Work

The "Law of Attraction" (LOA) works. Not because of some esoteric woo-woo principle. Not due to following some specific formula laid out by a high-priced success guru. The LOA works because (1) The universe is full of raw, potential energy, and (2) because we are conscious beings that create our reality as a natural matter of course. It's quite automatic and happens daily, wherein we attract a reality that matches our predominant thoughts and emotions.

The most convincing proof that the LOA works is the fact that we are all already living in a reality  that we created and shaped. We each drew up blueprints before birth that govern the path of our life. We knew that sufficient resources would be available when needed to carry out the life plan. Without needing to know anything about the LOA, we each manifest some type of reality.

The question, as posed by most LOA teachers, is why many people are unhappy with their reality. Why do scarcity and overwhelming problems seem to be the law of the land? Why should it seem like magical thinking to suggest that abundance should be the norm?

The answer they would suggest is that the LOA can solve the majority of life's problems by attracting abundant health and wealth. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

As I've written before, I have a major problem with the way The Secret and many other sources teach the LOA. Their premise is that suffering in life is due to forgetting the the key to abundance. Abundance is measured in dollars and degree of health. The assumption is that lack of abundance is the only thing standing in the way of happiness. This is a very ego-oriented way of seeing things.

From the soul's perspective, life is about experiencing a number of things, balancing karma, but most importantly, expressing its own unique qualities into the world. To achieve this, it tries to guide the life path along lines that provide opportunity for expression. The ego-mind may not grasp the big picture, and may clash with the soul's objectives. This clash is at the root of much suffering in life. An artistic soul will probably not find satisfactory expression as an accountant, for example, but the artist's ego might think that accounting is the only way of paying the bills.

The ultimate goal, as stated in this blog profile, is the "Fully Actualized Life". Essentially, this means living a life that fully achieves the soul's expression and exploits whatever potential for success exists in each person. With enlightenment and understanding, the ego can embrace the soul's program and enjoy life. Our natural state is actually intended to be one of joy, gratitude and contentment. This is how I would define abundance.

Of course, our civilization is structured so that money is essential for survival. Too many compromises are made in the pursuit of money, but it doesn't need to be that way. The real lie behind the "law of scarcity" belief is that we need to sacrifice our health, relationships and happiness in order to earn enough money. We sell our time like prostitutes sell their bodies and don't seem to realize what was lost along the way. The Bible says "the love of money is the root of all evil" but it's actually our embrace of the scarcity belief system that causes most of the problems.

I am in the process of working out these principles in my own life, and I will share more about this in future posts. For me, the Fully Actualized Life means trying an experiment to determine just how far the ego-mind can progress toward enlightenment of the soul's perspective. In other words, just how much of heaven can we bring down to Earth? What are the limitations? How quickly can we learn to manifest thought into physical reality? How can we transmute the awesome power of Source into love, compassion, and healing for those who are suffering?

I suspect that the "Shift" is leading us into a higher dimensional reality that incorporates my goals and more. Perhaps this is what inspires my goals. I believe that something fundamental has changed, that lifts many of the limitations on human development that were in place. The Age of Iron is over, and we can now once again be trusted to have "One foot in Atlantis".

How about you? Are you inspired and ready to move forward?