To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Stuck in Doubt
I know at the deepest level that the mind controls reality for all of us. I know if I could reprogram all that junk I have in my subconscious mind, I ( this incarnation I call "me"and the higher Self) could have what I really want from Life. I so want to believe in this idea " Abundance is my birthright!" or Ask and you shall receive. Yet...here I am stuck in scarcity...looking at what seems to be a lack of peace and joy in those I love, looking at my bank accounts and my readership and my rejection notes from publishers...and I find myself seriously doubting these statements. More specifically, I am doubting my ability to transform my belief and therefore my Life with , "No...it won't happen for me." I am getting beyond the concept of "me" yet at the same time I am trapped in it when it comes to what this little expression of Life personally wants and her ability to get it. I feel that doubt like a knot in my belly.
I am on Day Three of Deepak Chopra's guided 21-day meditation practice on abundance. It was very timely to come across this meditation series on Spotify...Well , more correctly, it came across to me as an ad on my phone, otherwise I would never have known it was there. It entered my Life at a time I was dwelling in the mental formation of scarcity and experiencing doubt (the fifth hindrance in the way of what I truly want, engagement with the Ultimate).
Why We Doubt
Doubt and scarcity thinking/believing are not new to me and I guess are not new to many of you either. I find every time I get whopped across the head , several times in succession, with challenging Life circumstance, I have a tendency to get a bit punch drunk and negative...and my "reactivity" comes into the picture, pulling out some of those old self-limiting core beliefs in me. No matter how far I advance in this Life school I can still get knocked back down a grade or two by challenge ( a hard lesson), sigh! I find myself saying to the universe at those times, "Please just give me a break! Let me have one semester of bird courses and easy- learning, will ya? Just let me go more than a month without having some crisis to deal with. I am so bloody tired. If you got to keep challenging me, could you at least give me some positive sign that I am learning, growing, going in the right direction? Could you at least put a gold star on my paper , or just let me know I am doing okay by rewarding me with something? "
Wholesome Universal Beliefs
Then I catch myself getting lost in the idea of "me" again and remind myself it isn't about "me"...cause really there is no "me". So I try to get myself to look at and test my belief of these more universal statements :
- Abundance is our birthright
- Abundance comes into the personal experience from an infinite source
- Ask and we shall receive
- Our minds' create our realities
- What we think we become
- nature thinks in terms of abundance
And so many more. And I think I am getting there...but...then I see someone I love hurting, I look at my readership or my bank accounts or another rejection slip...and I think..."No...that is not happening for "me" so these wholesome beliefs must not be true. My beliefs that the world is harsh on people like "me" must be true.I will keep writing and doing this cuz I love to and I will find peace in that. "
I go around and around and around. ...from doubting there is "more" joy in store for me to wanting to believe I am getting it...to see the err in wanting anything out there in the physical world...back to doubting...etc. Vicious cycle. Then I wonder, do I actually believe that abundance is my birthright or do I believe scarcity is? Will I , for example, ever be rewarded with some form of material abundance ( just enough to stop the worry over money and as a sign that I am on the right path) for writing or teaching? That is not why I do it and I will continue doing it with or without external reward and recognition but man...it would be nice to trust that Something I can not see or understand has my back, that I am not being punished and denied ...that I have the power in me to do what I love to do, experience peace, joy, happiness, love, compassion and kindness "more" often and pay the bills at the same time. lol.
I erroneously tell myself if the universe would reward me with something external, a sign, I will know its all good, that I am going in the right direction.I don't want to demand signs from the universe and have my happiness dependent on whether or not I get those signs in terms of reward. I don't ! I want to appreciate what I have and be happy ...right here, right now! I have so much abundance in my life already and I simply need to focus on what I do have and what I want( without grasping or clinging, striving or demanding) instead of what I believe I don't have.
And as Samuel Coleridge put it...instead of forcing myself to "believe" I just need to direct my attention to the willing suspension of disbelief.
Sigh!
All is well!
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