Today, I read with confusion that the rain that fell here on the Gulf Coast yesterday was black with oil and that I’m being prohibited from speaking out about the true conditions here  in the Northwest corner of Florida because I’m secretly under martial law and some sort of lockdown.  Really? 

These words were spoken with authority by some guy who’s never stepped foot in the area I’ve lived in since 1985 and still live, work, and have the freedom to say pretty much whatever I damn well please.  But he read it somewhere, or saw it in a conspiracy-theory website somewhere, and therefore it must be true.  As my readers know, I have nothing positive whatsoever to say about BP or the oil spill (just search oil spill in the search box to the right).  However, some of the spewing of rumors is ridiculous, baseless, and deeply upsetting to people who aren’t getting balanced coverage, no reference to FOX News intended.  Some are, however, quite fascinating as conspiracy theories.

I’m not a big fan of fear-mongering, but I am a big fan of conspiracy theories.  I love to write them, love to read them, love to watch them in movies.  Maybe that’s because I like the kernel of truth, the plausibility, the drama and excitement of it, and yet it’s just outlandish enough that I can recognize the paranoia and know that it’s not wholly the truth.    In other words, I’m not so focused on the barely disguised hope of conspiracy theories  being true that I see conspiracy in every utterance of life.

Something about the human race seems to crave End of the World catastrophe and apocalypse.  In my non-writing career and in my Southern Baptist the-last-days-are-upon-us childhood, I’ve heard thousands of theories, all focused gleefully on doomsday.  Maybe there’s some fantasy of who might survive such a doomsday–certainly the characters in my books don’t perish and somehow manage to stop it or delay it and save the world.  Maybe it’s our ultimate fantasy to get out of this world alive, even if we’re the ones fleeing the planet on a spaceship, saved by an alien race or whatever the current movie of the week delights in.

And yet, it’s disturbing to watch people focus so much on disaster that they  spin themselves into nothing but disaster.  The Law of Attraction would say they bring it to them…and I’ve seen that more than once–which is what scares me more than anything else.

I work with many different individuals and teams, and one group in particular makes me want to run screaming from the room every time I meet with them.  They’re skilled, competent, nice people who had a few distractions early in their project, resulting in what seemed like a short run of bad luck.  Yes, these things happen. Most professionals push ahead and focus on a positive outcome. Not these good folks.  They got into a downward spiral of “how much worse can it get?” to “we’re cursed” to “nothing ever goes right.”  On that last count, it became a reality.

The group wasn’t focused on conspiracy theories but most of my social time with them was spent listening to BP oil spill comments and watching them spin themselves into tizzies over things none of us can control.  From there, it became a huge what-if list that stressed them out.  These attitudes spilled over into their professional demeanor.  They began cataloging daily earthquakes around the world, not quite understanding that the planet moves within and always has but now we have the technology to record tremors we never knew existed before.  Then they added various catastrophes– tsunamis, hurricanes, airplane crashes.  They had a whole wall of one room dedicated to disaster after disaster after disaster. 

Were they a positive bunch to be around?  No.  Did they have the slightest belief that they would finish their project without a hitch?  No.  In fact, I have never seen a project have as many unforeseen glitches and disasters as theirs.  In spite of their competence, they constantly spun themselves into worry and upset.

I do believe that we fulfill our own prophecies.  If we look for flaws, we will find them.  If we look for disaster, we’ll find that, too. 

In regard to all the reporting on the Gulf oil spill, I guess I’d just like to hear and see the truth, without the spin of fantasy, and keep all my conspiracy theories and wild-eyed reports of apocalypse by non-witnesses on the screen or in books where I like them to be.

I think it’s sad when people are so consumed by an issue that they can no longer see anything else objectively or positively.  Everything they encounter is evidence of how they’ve been wronged.  People who don’t know me have taken spoken and written comments I’ve made out of context to prove I’m pro-XYZ or anti-XYZ, all depending on the filters they’ve created for their lives.  A good example of this is found in my article,  “Racism, Sexism, and Religious Prejudice: Seek and Ye Shall Find.”

So I decided I didn’t want to become THAT passionate about a minor health issue that I’ve managed easily.  In fact, I’d rather not focus on it or even think about it at all.  I shut down the project and didn’t worry about the financial or time investment.  It’s a far greater investment in myself and in my serenity to be passionate about much happier things.

 Photos here used with permission from Gregg Hall and True Reporting on Gulf Oil Spill.  Photos show oil on the white beaches in nearby Pensacola, Florida (currently being covered up–WTF?–by yellow sand brought in) and the notice given out by the local National Park Service, even though the health advisory signs have been covered over with black bags.  If you’re curious about what’s really going on here on the Gulf Coast, forget the mainstream media and get the scoop direct from the locals. Click on the photos for a larger view.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the Teachings of Abraham and believe that they make a fine template for most religious thought.   I’ve been in the presence of Deity, both as a devout Christian and later as  a devout Wiccan, and it’s the same to me as what Esther Hicks and Abraham refer to as Source or The Vortex—but that’s another post on semantics and universality of the human experience.  I’ve gotten quite good at being in a highly positive mindset all the time.  Where I’ve had trouble recently is with the Gulf Oil Spill and pivoting from my anger and irritation—and feelings of contamination and toxicity.

I’m one of the Abraham-Hicks “gluttons.”  For those who are familiar with their subscription program, you can download unedited versions of their workshops, which are 4 to 10 hours, depending on whether the audio is of a regularly workshop or one of their cruise workshops which are much longer.  These are great for me because I consistently always hunger for new perspectives and use these downloads to augment my spiritual work. 

Since the oil spill on April 20, 2010, I’ve listened to at least 5 or 6 of these lengthy downloads and,  every time, a question either comes up about the oil spill or Abraham addresses it directly.   It’s clearly heavy on the minds of workshop participants.  The Abraham perspective is always useful to me, but it’s only now after 74 days and seeing the snow-white beaches 5 miles from my home become contaminated and toxic that I am finally beginning to shift to a better mindset.  That’s evident in my health over the past 2 months.

In the beginning, when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill first occurred in April, I was annoyed, irritated.  And that grew with every news story.  I don’t normally have allergy problems after the end of March or the first week of April when the pine and oak pollen have subsided, but by Mother’s Day, I seemed to be allergic to everything—and very sensitive to the fumes occasionally blown inward from burning oil in the Gulf of Mexico.  My allergies induced asthma and a severe respiratory distress,  and every time I walked outside into that gods-awful smell, my throat closed up.  That’s honestly very scary, as I happen to like breathing and my throat closing sends me into an automatic, primal panic.   There was a definite physical connection between my allergies and the oil spill.

From a metaphysical viewpoint, there was also a definite connection between the spill and my allergies.  The emotion related to the symptoms?  Irritation.  I’ve always been very irritated by people who don’t take responsibility, by people who make a  mess and don’t clean it up, by people who destroy something through intention or negligence and then expect me to deal with it.  And I really get irritated (agitated is the proper word, I know) when someone makes a mess of things and LIES about it.  BP certainly triggered a lot of anger and annoyance in me but irritation is the best way to describe both my feelings about the oil spill and the symptoms of my illness. 

The worst of it came as I began to see the reports of the beaches I love becoming contaminated and toxic (with chemical dispersants like Corexit) as black oil washed ashore in nearby Pensacola, an hour west of here.  My illness became much more serious as a new infection took hold while I was already weak, and yes, it was life-threatening.  I understood the metaphysical connection but still couldn’t shift it that quickly.  I was still feeling irritation but now, I felt vile and violated, poisoned, out of balance, impure, contaminated, toxic…pretty much my emotional connection with the waters and beaches of the Gulf. 

My new medication is working now, though I may be on it for another month.  I’ve made a significant shift in distancing myself from the toxicity and irritation.  It’s taken 74 days to get relief and get to a point of looking forward again.  I don’t know that it’s acceptance or resignation, but my empathic nature requires me to find some way to shield myself emotionally from the tragedy that’s hit home.

 Photo taken by camera phone at a beautiful lake near my house at sunset, April 2010, before the smell of oil tainted the air.  Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder; all rights reserved.

One of the most valuable things I’ve learned in the past year is that I can cure myself, that I do have that power.  I’ve also learned that it’s not always easy for me to use that power.

I’m not new to the mind-body-spirit connection or to the idea that there is a metaphysical reason for various illnesses.  I first heard insights on this back in the mid-90’s and later while listening to Louise Hay’s audiobook, You Can Heal your Life.  I could easily make the connection with sickness and injury I’d endured over the years:  the lack of support that manifested as a mid-back injury;  the rejection that manifested as nausea; the feeling that I couldn’t move forward that manifested as a foot injury.

While listening to a Abraham-Hicks workshop from the late Spring of 2010, I heard something that resonated with me. It came at just the right time, too, because I’d been dealing with allergy-induced asthma exacerbated by the controlled burning of oil from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  I smell the wind-driven fumes and immediately my throat closes up.  Initially, it had started as an allergy to star jasmine (which all my neighbors tend to favor) and then to mold in a home where I was an overnight guest, and just got worse until I lost my voice for several weeks.

I’d read years ago that allergies were a sign of irritation and how if I could only let go of my irritations, I’d let go of the allergies.  Uh-huh.

But what I heard in the Teachings of Abraham made me think about it in a different way.  The advice given was to think about the symptoms of the illness or injury and find the emotion that matched it.  Then ask if that emotion is one I was already feeling before the illness or injury occurred.  Then, to find healing, shift that feeling to something better.

Something clicked.  It’s not uncommon for me to realize I need to stay home from work for some reason and suddenly become sick long enough to miss the work day and then feel great.  I can go to bed thinking that I really need more rest after a grueling week but I have to go to work.  Then I’ll have insomnia—“I need more rest”—all night and wake up realizing that I absolutely can’t go to work because I must stay home and get more rest.  But that’s a simple analogy.  Let’s go for something more difficult.

I became ill during a breakup.   I was, eventually, able to shift my emotions and heal myself, completely.  My doctors thought it was somewhat miraculous but I’d been working on healing myself and figuring out what to do to heal myself for a long time.  When I did, everything clicked into place and my test results were suddenly…well, miraculous.  I couldn’t quite explain what had happened to change it but my feelings definitely shifted after I made a few key decisions.  Now, when I look back and try to identify   the emotion that went with my symptoms, it was one of feeling like a victim or as if I’d sacrificed too much.  I’d felt that way before the illness took hold.  Once I no longer felt like a victim, the illness disappeared.

Back to my allergies….  They progressed to the point of becoming a trachea infection.  That was a shock.   The last time I’d had a trachea infection, I’d been on bed rest for a month, voiceless for three months, and didn’t fully recover for a total of six months.  That was five years ago.  Then I made another connection:  the person in my life at that time had reappeared and our interactions in 2010 closely resembled our interactions in 2005.  That had to mean something. 

Once I heard the suggestion to make the connection between the symptoms and the emotion, I understood.  The allergens were irritants, yes, but the dominant emotion related to the allergy-induced asthma was annoyance.  Had I felt that way before the asthma began?  Yes, in relation to this particular person and his actions.  I had felt annoyed.   There were a few other related emotions I won’t get into but once I made the connection and began to shift my mindset away from thinking about his annoying actions, that particular allergy problem went away—overnight. 

Sometimes it seems that I must simply acknowledge the symptom’s underlying emotion and shift my attitude and feelings so that the symptoms are quickly gone.  But it’s not always easy.  I am still having (different) allergy/asthma problems, and they’re tied to the BP Oil Spill.  I am greatly annoyed and feel powerless.  And I cannot yet shift my feelings or soften them toward the spill or toward BP’s recklessness.  I continue to smell the petroleum in the air and I’m immediately annoyed and impotent to stop it.   And I’m angry.  My throat closes and I’m driven back indoors to avoid the fumes.

So from a metaphysical viewpoint, I know how to heal myself.  I just can’t do it yet.

 
Esther and Jerry Hicks’ The Teachings of Abraham DVD IV of the Law of Attraction in Action series,  Path of Enthusiam!, is a 2-DVD set, almost 4 hours long, that’s been excerpted from their May 2007 Philadelphia, PA, Workshop.  It retails on the Abraham-Hicks website for $30.  HOWEVER, I’ve “attracted” a better deal for you, and you can get it–new–for 1/3rd to 2/3rds of the list price here. 

So that I’m not telling you exactly what Abraham advised for every question asked on these DVDs, I’ll tell you areas of concerns I’ve had that were answered for me.  Funny, how that happens.  I don’t have to ask a question myself–the answers will come to me through the questions of others.

This DVD set had the usual Abraham nuggets that I’ve come to love—such as great analogies about GPS guidance systems in your car or finding lost things like keys or glasses—plus some oft-asked questions that you hear again and again in some form if you listen to Abraham-Hicks products as much as I do.  Those include heart-felt questions from parents who want to help their children attract the good stuff and protect them from mistakes, winning the lottery,  and issues with the environment.  Though this workshop was taped 3 years before the BP Gulf Oil Spill, Abraham’s advice is consistent with answers to questions about the oil spill at the recent Houston, TX conference and others since the spill occurred.  Abraham makes excellent points about how mankind tends always to look for some kind of huge catastrophe to push against, and offers up ways to find feel-good moments about the environment and even the potential for extinction of certain species.  I was listening to this workshop at the same time that the first tar balls were washing ashore  5 miles from my home, so the words of wisdom came exactly when needed.

Abraham reiterates the goodness of accepting where you are and how to do it.  I find it so true that most friends and family prefer you to be either depressed or joyful because either is less trouble to them than if you are angry or doing something about the situation.  Their discussion echoed my experiences coming out of relationship breakups where my friends either wanted me to be instantly “over it” or just crawl into a cave and shut up.  I was advised that anger wasn’t spiritual and striking back—even to balance the scales of justice–certainly wasn’t.  Abraham talks about what is sometimes necessary to get to a better feeling place, and that it’s not easy on the people around; therefore, if you express any of your louder, dark emotions when you’re hurting, you’ll get pushback to tamp it down and hold it in.  That’s part of making other people’s feelings/expectations more important than our own, and keeps us out of alignment.  A perfect example would be when I told my mom about my marital problems years ago when I was terribly depressed and she urged me to give up my spirituality if it meant I wouldn’t “mess things up” with my spouse. Living up to everyone else’s expectations was killing me, and it wasn’t until I threw off the restrictions I’d accepted that I began to get to a better feeling place in my life and later to a really great feeling place.  Getting to a better feeling emotion is, to me, power and the owning of that power.

Another point of this DVD set that I find personally meaningful is the part about feeling you have to prove something.  Proving something, as I understand it now, is more about doubt and feelings of lack and unworthiness.  If I’m proving to others that I can do something—say, sell a movie—then I’m letting others’ fickle opinions drive my actions and state of mind.  If I’m trying to prove to myself that I can do something—say, lose 20 pounds—then I’m trying to show that I can struggle and overcome and win out over my knowing that I can’t do it…rather than just simply knowing and enjoying the process. Abraham explains quite well how the need to prove something makes it more distant to manifest.
One other very interesting point to me was the discussion of the chakra system and how to keep chakras unblocked.  I was especially surprised at Abraham’s words that chakras are unimportant and why—and even more surprised to find that, based on what was presented, I agree.

These were the most pertinent questions this DVD set answered for me.  The rest was of good quality, too, and Path of Enthusiasm! was certainly worth buying, listening to, and sharing with friends in my home.

For the best price I’ve found on this Abraham-Hicks DVD, buy here.

 A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years.

At the center of this image made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short…..

Photo copyright and more info at 

 http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/b1509/.

Huh?  What am I working on?

Maybe it’s just a writer thing—because I don’t usually hear it asked of “normal” people within 10 seconds of someone meeting them  or reconnecting with them—but I often run into people who immediately after saying hello launch into questions of what I’m working on.  They don’t mean the multi-million dollar projects I’m working on in my non-writing career or my latest home repair-refurb-redecoration. You writers, artists, and musicians know what I’m talking about.

I don’t get the question from people who are very, very close to me.  They already know what I’m working on.  They hear it all the time because I’m excited about it, Gods help them.  The question is always from acquaintances or friends outside my small inner circle.  They know how much I love writing but don’t keep in touch that often…or just stay out of earshot when I start plotting a novel.

What I’m currently working on, writing-wise, is editing a Lauren Hartford project and several non-fiction ebooks, including 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It.  And I’m almost done with some last-minute tweaking of  Waiting on the Thunder.  I’m done, but I’m having a hard time letting that one go.

But I’ve started a new novel, too.  First time in a long time that I’ve started a new project.  I still have three finished books yet to edit since I started my last new novel, and I wrote all three of those while power-walking daily with a digital recorder, busy girl that I am.

It’s hard to explain what this new fiction project is, but it’s a suspense novel with the working title The Hand of God.  It’s not a religious book, though I’ve definitely thrown in some Law of Attraction.   The title refers to a specific image, and that’s the genesis of this new novel.  You want to know how I get my ideas?  Right here. 

Last week, while visiting with family out of state, I drove past an out-of-the-way spot that had a really strong visual allure to me.  An image there stood out, and to me, it looked like a “Hand of God.”   Later on the trip, I took my family out to dinner, to a place I’d never been—a hole in the road that served everything fried, including gator tail.  On the wall behind us was the same symbol I’d seen earlier, several miles away, painted into a mural.  That’s when the story began to form. 

I’m not sure how to explain it yet without giving away the story, but I know who the villains are…and the victims…and the protagonist.  The protagonist is not in any way based on me, but she’s the imagined adult version of a child I observed earlier this year.   The crime is based on something that never happened to me because, wow, am I ever being watched over!  But I came close enough that it got my attention and this novel will put it to bed for me in a therapeutic way.  The 24-year-old protagonist has abandonment issues—both the constant abandonment throughout her childhood and her adult patterns of abandoning others before they can abandon her—and those abandonment issues from her childhood are tied to someone else’s dark secret and even darker revenge.  Yep, my kind of story. 

The best part is that I’m not writing it according to any guidelines or any preferred market.  I’m just lettin’ ‘er rip.  Having a blast with discovering the twisted past she’s repressed and how it endangers her.  I’m not writing it for any particular audience or publisher.  I’m doing it for me.  It puts me into a joyous place, all this creativity, and when I’m done, people who love it will recognize the spark in it and love it, too.  It’s not the path to money or fame or anything but my enjoyment.  Anything more that it turns into is just gravy.

So what are you working on?  And is it for you?

This article is from the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

Early in my writing career, I became a regular victim of  my own sabotage.   It wasn’t the baby editors or the money-grubbing agents or the sucky market.   At the time, I believed the only way for me to gain acceptability as a novelist was to find a major international publisher who would pay me a pittance for a book that would sell 100,000 copies.  Technology has brought many new options to writers since then, and though I’ve not sold as many copies of books I’ve published through what used to be unconventional means, I’ve made more money per book than most of the ones I sold to major publishers, and I’ve done it  by finding new and unique ways to get my work to my audience. 

I’m primarily a suspense writer, and I love a good  thriller with a little romance thrown in and maybe even some paranormal.  Though I’ve written in just about every genre but westerns, my biggest sellers were in the  romance genre, particularly  what’s known as romantic suspense or paranormal romantic suspense.   That means lots of plot and complicated twists and some form of boy-gets-girl.  I didn’t really care which genre I got published in as long as a major publishing house validated my writing.  I shoe-horned myself into romance amid many skilled authors who could go deeply into emotion and character whereas I was more about the story and keeping the surprises coming right up until the last page. 

Unfortunately, instead of using the Law of Attraction to bring me opportunities that were easy and fulfilling, I did a great job of shoving my dreams away from me and making it as hard on myself as I possibly could.

The most obvious example of attracting the wrong thing to myself was in my rejection packages.  I joined the best writing groups out there, including the Romance Writers of America, which had excellent tools for teaching the craft and business of writing for publication.  They taught me what I needed to know about writing, selling, and promoting my novels, to the point where I hit a couple of chain bookstore bestseller lists under my pseudonym.  They taught me what to expect from an editor and how the whole process worked to get an editor to read your manuscript without using it for a foot stool (my second editor did that with another author’s manuscript).  They taught me that  if the editor wants your work–something that you could expect to happen rarely–you would get “the call.”  Acceptances were always a phone call.  Rejections meant a fat package in the mailbox.

Or a package that wouldn’t fit in the mailbox.

Writers had a lot fewer options for publication in the 1990’s when I was getting my start.  We had to accept conditions we didn’t like, such as “no simultaneous submissions.”  That meant we printed out a 400-page manuscript, packaged it up, spent a small fortune to get it to New York City, and then waited for a response…often up to six months, even when we were under a contract that said the editor had to notify us within 60 days of acceptance or rejection.  Remind them at five months, as I did with my second editor, and the rejection could arrive almost immediately for every project on her desk.  My longest submission–where I actually received a response at all–took 24 months to the day on a 30-page proposal.  Good thing I had a personal invitation from that editor to send the book!

I was prolific, and I rarely had fewer than five projects out for review, usually at more than one publishing house.  But instead of every day expecting every phone call to be from an editor in New York, which would have been the best way to use the Law of Attraction as a writer, I came home from day job and began to crane my neck to see the mail box from the moment I spotted my house down the street.  Sometimes I saw them crammed into mailbox,  those returned packages with a polite “Doesn’t work for me” or “Pushes the envelope too much” attached to pristine, unread tomes or to pages that smelled of cigarettes and coffee.

If I turned the corner on my way home and didn’t see an overstuffed mailbox or maybe a box resting atop it, my heart would skip a beat.  Another day, I thought, without a rejection, and that meant the possibility of going to contract on a new book. Then I would steer past the mailbox and into the drive and I’d crane my neck to see if perhaps the mailman or UPS had delivered a rejected manuscript direct to my door, which was also a familiar sight.  If not, then I could wait another day to see if the editor called with good tidings or left me an unwanted package.

Looking back, I see now that I was looking for rejection. I was focused on it.  I didn’t listen for the phone call–no, I looked for the rejection in the mail.  It became part of my daily ritual, Monday through Saturday, to look for rejection on my doorstep.

There were many other abominations that happened, like losing my editor, like getting a new editor who hated suspense, like having an editor give my killer title away to another author after rejecting my manuscript for being too similar to one she’d just bought, like having an editor give my entire synopsis AND the heroine’s unsual name to a has-been author who needed a new historical bestseller,  like finding a terrific editor and having the company close down the line three months after my novel was published due to a change in the market.  I could go on and on, but honestly, I’ve forgotten most of those atrocities now.  I no longer focus on them.  At the time, it was a feeling of helplessness in the big, bad publishing world and anything that could go wrong did.   Like with most authors I knew.  There were things going on in my personal life where I felt I had no emotional support from my loved ones and I put a lot of desperation (aka resistance) into having my dream career as a successful, full-time writer so I could leave a less fulfilling but more prestigious career.   

Things turned around for me when I found a place of contentment with my writing career.  I don’t have to put that old pressure on myself to make a new bestseller list or get a three-book contract or have my editor adore me.  All I have to do is love what I write and ways to get it out there to readers who enjoy my work will appear.   But since I’ve come to understand the Law of Attraction, I never ever go looking for rejection.

When you’re in the middle of a horrible experience, it’s hard to remind yourself that it’s making room for the good stuff coming that wouldn’t have a place to settle into your life otherwise.  As much as I don’t like losing people or situations in my life, I do believe that when we’re no longer attuned or aligned with the people or situations, they will…they MUST…exit our lives.  We can focus on how terrible the loss is or we can open our arms and welcome the gains that are coming to us. 

As much as I dislike the Bible story of Job–how can all his loved ones be replaced?! and why would a loving God do this as part of a wager!–I do understand Job being blessed many times over with the new things that came into his life.  Few of us volunteer to lose the things we are so attached to, though, regardless of the exponential blessings that might be in store for us.

This is an observation best made after the horrible experience and the wonderful new blessings, because generally our emotions are too fragile during the horribleness to even think about the blessings.  Now, so soon after one such experience, I can only smile.

A lot can happen in two months, if you let it. Less than two months ago, I was faced with losing my relationship with my younger daughter.  There are not that many parents of teens I know who have great relationships with their kids–I almost always hear the opposite from colleagues, friends, and even strangers in the grocery store.  I’ve been very grateful to have two amazing daughters who are beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, talented, and just about every other positive adjective I can imagine.  So when I am feeling so blessed with such loving relationships with my kids and someone messes with that?  It eclipses any good feelings I have for the person or persons threatening irrevocable damage to those blessings.    A moment of drama for someone else can give that person a passing thrill, but the damage done is permanent and at a critical point in a young adult’s life.  So of course, I’m going to fight that, and I’m blessed to have had others like my older daughter and my new friend Karen to step in and show her the truth from a more objective point of view. 

Two months ago, my daughter’s mentor put her in a situation where she felt she had to choose between him and me because I chose to end my personal relationship with him.  She initially chose her friendship with him because, well, Mom’s always gonna love her no matter what and where else could she find a mentor on such short notice?  Fortunately, she was able to spend a week with her big sister at college, with her sister’s friends, away from the situation and able to gain a little perspective.  It was a horrible experience for her, not just to lose her mentor and friend and to upset her mother, but to feel betrayed and used by someone she’d trusted.   Such experiences can taint a romantic  idealist’s view on men, fidelity, and  relationships. 

But for as horrible as the experience was, things changed for her very quickly.  Once she decided not to try to hold onto him either as a friend or a mentor,  new doors opened.  It didn’t take two months, either.  Maybe two weeks.   

Almost immediately after she returned from her visit with her sister, my daughter met a young woman in her 20’s who has become a wonderful new mentor and friend.  This new mentor trades off work with her, shows her new techniques, goes with her on excursions to practice together, lends her equipment, and shows no signs  of subterfuge.  She’s a professional without a lot of experience but a lot of enthusiasm.

My daughter is also now working with a top notch professional less than an hour away, a new mentor who was my best friend as a girl and has recently reconnected with me.  It’s a sweet sense of coming full circle, and I love to watch them working together.  My daughter is learning so much, stretching so far. 

She’s also developed contacts with two more mentors, for specific projects.  I can’t help but grin when I see how happy she is with all these new mentors, each of whom brings something new to her skills and offers exciting new challenges.   Mom is very proud of her, and oh-so-pleased with the new people coming into her life.

 Her cup of mentors runneth over now, and she doesn’t even miss her first mentor.  At all.  Why should she?  She’s far too busy with all these new opportunities.

Water lily photo by  duane.schoon; creative commons license.

Does it sometimes seem that the hardest thing to manifest is your biggest, most important dream?  And isn’t it incredibly frustrating? 

The secret to manifesting is that old phrase about “let go and let God,” but even that can be irritating to hear when what you’re most praying for just isn’t happening.  I’ve discovered that the thing that holds a dream at bay is the “resistance” to it.  That doesn’t sound right because you immediately think of resistance as doing things to keep from getting it, so how can you resist what you want so badly? 

Well, by wanting it so badly.  The secret to getting it is being 100% okay with not having it.  That may sound strange, but it works.  Just as soon as I’m positive I don’t need something, it will show up.  It’s sort of like the Universe saying, “Yes, we just needed you to understand that you are perfect as you are, and since you do, now it’s yours.” 

This resistance might also be considered yearning.  In some cases, it’s downright KEENING for something you want.  You want it so bad that it hurts, and that hurting is resistance that keeps the dream at bay. 

At the April meeting of my spiritual circle, we “played paperdolls,” as my dad would have said.  It was a nice little artsy-craftsy experiment with a powerful lesson.  It’s called “the Box.”

My group sat on my family room floor with a bunch of magazines I’d bought–a variety of men’s magazines, travel guides, financial magazines, health and beauty, you name it.  We took scissors and cut out things that appealed to us and put them in decorated boxes that each person took home.  The object of the game was to find things that represented big dreams and small, even shallow ones for our box and see what would manifest.  According to theory, the items that we don’t have resistance to will manifest quickly.  These are the ones that we’re okay with not coming to us nownownow or even at all because we are all okay 100% without them.  We know we’ll be fine, that we’ll be taken care of, that all is well.  We can put it out to the Universe that we’d like these specific things but we’re just fine, no matter what.  It’s that place of serenity and being at-one with ourselves. 

Different things in my box manifested quickly. This is where the understanding of “resistance” comes in because of how I feel about what–of the box–manifested and how I feel about what has not yet come into physical being for me.  Understanding that feeling is a big clue for me in learning to relax and let things come easily.

Among the things that manifested?   Water lilies!  That was one of the easy, simple things I put in the box.  I saw a photo of water lilies in a garden and tossed it in.  In the past month, those water lilies have been everywhere!  I’ve had the opportunity to snag me a few out in nature, though I haven’t.  I decided I liked them better where they were, and I enjoyed them there very much.  I don’t currently have room in my garden for them but I’ve relished them in the countryside.

Another was a picture of a woman riding a horse through a nature scene.  At the time, I remembered riding horses with my family through the Little Tennessee River in 2003 or so and how much I loved that and would like the opportunity to ride again.  I tossed the picture in the box.  About a week later, I was talking to a woman at work and out of the blue, she suggested I take her husband’s horse while he was out of town and go riding with her one weekend.  I’ve been out of town every weekend, having fun elsewhere, but it’s an open invitation and one I think I’ll take her up on. 

Besides a number of other small items or activities represented by pictures in my box, I put one biggie in there that hasn’t manifested but shades of it keep popping up.  Not the big dream yet, but little things that lead up to its fruition.  It’s almost like having all the accoutrements ready before the actual appearance.

I’ll keep adding things to The Box, and I’ll review them once a month to see what little things I’ve forgotten about have come to be.  That’s really it, you know–putting my desire out there and then just forgetting about it while the Universe delivers it to me in a great big satin bow!

About a month ago, I confided in a spiritual coach of mine that I was afraid of a particular small group doing me harm.  One had already stalked me online.  She suggested that perhaps I might involve the Elephant Gods in a protection ritual to set my mind at ease.  I wasn’t aware of any Elephant God other than Ganesha, and this definitely wasn’t a Ganesha issue.  My friend Murv (M.R. Sellars) suggested the Elephant God known as Dumbo, but that definitely didn’t work.  So I did a little research and found out that in some places, elephants themselves were worshiped as gods.  They can sit on enemies’ chests or carry people to safety.

Hmmmm.  So I incorporated that image of protective elephants into my ritual work and felt much better.

Eventually, a few threats did arise.  That’s when I walked through a store and saw…an elephant.  Or two or three.   Jeweled, wooden, and metal.  Just little knickknacks.  I hadn’t seen them in years but there were a couple of them in different stores.

At first, I wondered if maybe this was a case of selective filtering.  I had elephants on my mind so I was looking for them?  No. Since 1999, I have associated elephants with a former coworker who made my life hell, so I’ve actually found them somewhat distasteful over the years.  When I see one, I remember that I’ve seen one–because I think of that one person.  And it’s been a long, long time since I’ve thought of her.  No, this was something different.  It was exactly 10 days after my adviser had made the suggestion to connect elephants and protection, and just a few days after my ritual.

I took it as a sign and bought a single sparkly elephant on four jeweled legs and put him on the Rock and Gemstone Altar in my living room.   Every time I saw him, I reminded myself that I was protected.

A few days later, I walked through another store and–voila!–an elephant here or there.  I just smiled to myself and reminded myself, again, that I was protected.  Later that day, one of the people I was concerned about bolstered support against me.  I didn’t worry.  Those Elephant Gods were taking care of me!

I returned from a trip out of town last Sunday and first store I walked into, I saw a little elephant statuette.  In the next one, a department store, there were two or three on one aisle.  I just smiled to myself.

Then I walked into a store tonight with my daughter to find her a nicer set of comfy clothes for one a huge wedding photo shoot this weekend and turned the corner to find not one elephant on a shelf but a whole aisle of almost nothing but elephants!

Yeah, I love it when that happens.

And if my stalkers are reading this, well, I wouldn’t advise you go to the circus any time soon.

If you find this review helpful, see the suggested reviews listed at the bottom of this article.

Esther and Jerry Hicks’ The Teachings of Abraham DVD X of the Law of Attraction in Action series, Let Loose!, is a 2-DVD set, a little over 3 hours long, that’s been excerpted from their July 2008 Stamford, CT, Workshop.  I bought it from the Abraham-Hicks website for $30.  HOWEVER, I’ve “attracted” a better deal for you, and you can get it–new–for 1/3rd to 2/3rds of the list price here.  Still, this one was worth the full retail price.

So that I’m not telling you exactly what Abraham advised for every question asked on these DVDs, I’ll tell you areas of concerns I’ve had that were answered for me.  Funny, how that happens.  I don’t have to ask a question myself–the answers will come to me through the questions of others.

My big epiphany during my third listen to this DVD was that it never works for me to match my vibration to someone else’s.  This could simply be said as “stop trying to be what other people want me to be because that’ll just make me miserable.”  If you’ve listened to much of the Teachings of Abraham, that probably seems obvious but it hit me in a way that surprised me.  I may have wanted a relationship with a particular person in the past who shared a vibration and then…didn’t…but any time I ever tried to figure out what was going on with a romantic partner so I could adjust my own view of the world, even subconsciously, the result was disastrous.  I cannot worry about what’s going on in some  silly man’s head because it doesn’t matter.  The only thing that matters is what’s going on in mine, and if the vibration is the same, then life is all the sweeter.

The DVD segment on psychics in many ways echoed one my articles, “3 Reasons Psychics Are Bad for the Law of Attraction–and 1 Good One.”  The Abraham-Hicks approach is a little closer to what I detailed in “3 Keys to Not Giving Away Your Power to Spiritual Advisors,” but with an extended explanation.  I found the description of how a psychic reads vibrational energy to be quite fascinating and worth the price of the entire DVD if you’ve ever visited a psychic, a Tarot reader, or some other intuitive.  For as much work as I’ve done personally on reading the energy of someone else or connecting with them empathically, I now have a much different awareness both of how to help clients I’m coaching to change their world and how to change my own when the predicted future looks bleak.

One of the “hot seat” questions led to a better understanding of a recent difficult time I went through (aka, “contrast”).  The discussion was on asking for help and how sometimes help comes to you and sometimes you are the help for someone else.  Between this segment and another on lawsuits, I found a deeper understanding of some concerns in my life over the past few months.  I’ve noticed on workshop downloads, DVDs, and in the live workshop I attended in Orlando that people in lawsuits really want to know how to pivot to something better-feeling because it seems that nothing like a lawsuit can drag you out of your sweet spot, aka “the Vortex.” The choice seems to be one of whether to continue fighting in a lawsuit because it’s the right thing to do (for various reasons) or to let it go and be free of it.  Hey, these things can be tiring, right?

I’m not in a lawsuit, but I have had to deal with some investigations I never wanted to be involved in.  I had a choice of letting it go and not having to focus on the grueling daily aspects and simply move on or…fight for what I felt was right.  Through this DVD, I was able to see that I may not be “in the Vortex” while putting my efforts into standing up for what’s right, but I do feel a whole lot better than if I let unethical and illegal matters that have affected so many people, plus myself, be swept under the rug. I would feel like a failure, a coward, and a victim if I kept silent.  Instead, I am the one who has been able to help others.  They all asked the Universe/God/The Powers That Be/etc, for help with their situations and I was the one in this tapestry of connections who brought it all together into a design we all understood and could take action on.  I asked the Universe for help in one simple matter and got it, but by sharing my clarity with other interested parties, all their lives have changed.

These were the most pertinent questions this DVD answered for me.  The rest was of good quality, too, and Let Loose! was certainly worth buying, listening to, and sharing with friends.

For the best price I’ve found, buy here.

The labyrinth at the Florida Pagan Gathering at dusk–a powerful maze for contemplation. The best thing about labyrinths is that you just let your feet follow the path and your mind flies to more spiritual planes.  Photo Copyright by Lorna Tedder; all rights reserved.

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

My 17-year-old sprawls across the passenger seat, her injured foot on the dashboard, and she cuddles against her pillow.  Her mood is that of a wounded kitten, and she’s withdrawn rather than her usual outgoing and delightful self.

I don’t understand how I could have manifested this,” she whimpers.

She’s not talking about her foot.

Her foot injury is a simple accident that resulted in a lot of pain, soreness, and blood–and hopefully not a broken toe.  That happened as we were leaving four days of camping and festival-making in the Ocala National Forest.  The throbbing foot was the icing on the cake, a culmination of her frustrations.  Easy to see how that one manifested.

Instead, she’s talking about how much she’d looked forward to this festival–for weeks–only to wind up feeling shut-down by people she’d admired because of a new policy put in effect that felt like a gut-punch rejection.  We’d both been so thrilled about this trip that we were thrown off-kilter by a series of events that left her tearful and me pissed off on her behalf.  Of all the camping trips we’ve been a part of since 2006, this was probably the worst for us–and the only one where we considered leaving a day early  and finally left for home feeling low instead of amped.  Considering that we’ve attended past festivals when my dad was dying and also right after two big heartbreaks, that’s saying something.  What saved the trip for us was being involved with particular circles of friends as well as some great workshops and talks.  The downers were all specific to a policy that affected her, one where she’d followed the rules  100% and the rules were changed on her mid-way.  Not her fault and no way to change minds …which was another reason we took it so hard.  We had no control over a hurtful situation.

As she sleeps and I drive for six hours, I start trying to figure it out for myself.  How exactly did this manifest when we’d left for the trip exuberant about the possibilities?  The present situation, simply, boils down to legalities involving a minor child and her professional photography.  It involves being told she’s misunderstood, it involves feeling coerced into agreeing that what she’s told is okay, and it involves her having to be the bearer of disappointing news.  It involves her being pulled into the politics of adults and, to some extent, being pitted against her mother.   Funny, but that’s incredibly familiar, isn’t it?

Different characters, different setting, but the same elements of plot and theme.  It’s a replay of a situation that has not yet fully resolved.  We’re still repeating that pattern, that “vibration” of six weeks ago, and it’s still an active pattern that we haven’t broken, even though we thought we were done with it.

Six weeks ago, Aislinn was pulled into a situation that left me equally as angry at seeing her put in the middle of what should have been between adults.  The past situation, simply, boiled down to the questionable legality–and definitely the ethics–of involving my minor child and her professional photography talents in someone else’s deceptive activities.   She was told she’d misunderstood (about me), felt she had no choice but to agree and keep quiet, and left to be the bearer of disappointing news that should have been delivered by an adult.  She was put in a predicament where she was pitted against her mother, and Mom was very unhappy about that, enough so to involve authorities.

The past situation of six weeks ago isn’t just in Aislinn’s vibration but it’s still in mine.  I recognized that almost immediately–a month ago at least.  My part of the past situation is more personal than professional, and though I can immediately end a relationship with a long-term liar with multiple girlfriends who don’t know about each other, I cannot immediately change my entire vibration so that I don’t repeat it. How did I recognize my vibration?  Easy–all I had to do was look at what was going on around me.

The first two guys to approach me about dinner dates were already encumbered and lying through their teeth about it.   One was married, according to his social networking site, but “getting a divorce,” according to him.  I didn’t just take his word for it.  I quizzed him about whether she knew they were getting a divorce and golly-gee-whiz, but she’s on a business trip and he’s planned to talk to her about it when she gets home.  The other guy, when pressed for details about the girlfriend shown on his social networking site, became quite cagey.  About 3 hours before we were to meet for dinner, he finally told me that he was on his way to see her to break up with her (he hadn’t already as he’d sworn) and he’d see me afterward at dinner.  Wow, thanks, dude!

I decided not to date anyone new for a little while, until this pattern of lying scumbags had passed.  When I ventured out again, I met a seemingly sweet man who said all the right things–and like the last man in my life, went to great lengths (oooh, I mean the last two men in my life) to keep his girlfriend a secret on his social networking sites and somehow failed to mention her except eventually to refer to her as a “friend.”  Sheesh, isn’t it exhausting to walk such tight ropes?  These guys could probably produce enough electricity to fuel North America if they spent their energy on positive works rather than deception.  The highlight of their lies is that almost every time, their other girlfriends turn into crazy stalker chicks who feel the need to blame me for their men not being truthful with them or with me.  In the end, they end up with their liars and not me–and that’s not a bad thing at all.

So in looking around at the men I’m still meeting, that pattern of liars is still there for me.  And my fix for that is to not date, to not get involved, to just keep things easy and single for a while.  Kinda gives new meaning to the term sucka-free, doesn’t it?

But the pattern is still there for Aislinn, too.  How to fix it?  Maybe she’ll break her pattern by not offering or not being talking into offering her photography skills for free, whether they’re paid for later or not.  Or maybe she’ll just make sure her skills are really wanted and appreciated.  I don’t know.  Given the good heart she has, it would be far harder for me to convince her not to volunteer for the next photography project that arises for a good cause than it is for me to decide to forgo men for a while.

When the current pattern has finished playing itself out, then I think we’ll both be free to be appreciated to our full extent.

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

You wouldn’t let your last boyfriend–the one with all the drama and problems–choose your next boyfriend, would you?  Yet that’s what most of us do without realizing it.

Whenever I’ve been single in my life, particularly after being married, supposedly smarter people than me are great at unsolicited advice like  “Just ask the Universe to bring you the right guy” or “You should pray for God to pick the perfect person for you.”  Well, duh.  These people also tend to have been married to the same person for a couple of decades and just looooooovvvvve telling others how to be as miserable as they are.  Yes, they amuse me.

But their advice isn’t all bad.  It makes perfect sense, yet in recovery from the last break-up, we don’t so much choose to let the next guy to come to us be exactly what we need as we do hope they’re not what we had last time.  In that sense, we look for, seek out, attract to us a guy with key features that are the opposite of what we just endured.  And we try like crazy not to keep attract the same kind of guy as last time while actively seeking something better.   Better equals opposite, you see.    That doesn’t bring us the perfect guy for us–it brings us a guy with a different set of drama than the last one.

For example, after dealing with a romantic partner wasn’t very romantic, wild passion was definitely what I looked for in the next man.   The key factor missing from my  previous relationship instantly narrowed my dating pool to a few teaspoons of men who were the opposite of where I’d been, regardless of their other issues.  I got wildly passionate–and tons of drama and him sobbing in my arms.  So the next time I was open to a romantic partner, I specifically asked the Universe to bring me a guy who was happy and drama-free.

I got that, too.  Of course, he was happy and drama-free (seemingly) because he was leading at least two secret lives and delivering a daily performance that’s just got to be worthy of a suspense thriller in my future as a novelist.

After that, it was easy enough to set my intentions for a new romantic partner who isn’t living a life worthy of a whole week of guest starring on Jerry Springer, but I decided not to.  Instead of looking for people who aren’t anything like the last guy, I reset my intentions.  The next special guy who settles in for some extended good times with me doesn’t have to have the opposite traits of all my past partners.

Nope, he just has to match to me, not to what I didn’t have in the past.

When I attended my very first live Abraham-Hicks workshop, two women seated near me asked if I’d bought the Telling a New Story! DVD yet.  I wasn’t even aware until then that there were DVD’s.  I’d been exposed to the books and audio downloads, but wasn’t aware of how many other products were available for someone like me who hungers for deeper knowledge.   The two raved about how great this 3-hour DVD set was for them so I decided to buy it and give it a try myself.  Then I decided to review more of the Abraham-Hicks products as a regular part of The Spiritual Eclectic blog.

Esther and Jerry Hicks’ The Teachings of Abraham DVD IX of the Law of Attraction in Action series, Telling a New Story!, is a 2-DVD set, a little over 3 hours long, that’s been excerpted from their January 2009 Mexican-Riviera Cruise Workshop.  Though I had the opportunity to buy it at the live workshop for $30, I had a 7-hour drive home and opted to buy several CD’s instead.   After I got home, I bought it from the Abraham-Hicks website for $30.  HOWEVER, I’ve “attracted” a better deal for you, and you can get it–new–for 1/3rd to 2/3rds of the list price here.  Still, this one was worth the full retail price.

So that I’m not telling you exactly what Abraham advised for every question asked on these DVDs, I’ll tell you areas of concerns I’ve had that were answered for me.  Funny, how that happens.  I don’t have to ask a question myself–the answers will come to me through the questions of others.

My children are not so young now that I have to tell them very carefully about their heritage to avoid nightmares.  They’re young adults now, but I still want to protect them from all the boogie men out there and remind them of what I myself have witnessed and insist they learn from me.  I’ve wondered before how you can tell your children or teens about horrific events in our spiritual heritage and even in our genealogy without having them focus on finding more of the same pattern in everyday life.  I’ve seen it often with racial, gender,  and spiritual prejudices, where people begin to look for, to strive to find, examples of the prejudices they are so certain are there.    Abraham answers a mother’s question about her ethnic heritage and ends with a rousing explanation of Martin Luther King’s dream.  My daughter walked in while I was listening to this segment and we were both frozen in motion as we listened, awed.  Beautifully done!

Another question I’ve struggled with both for myself and in discussions with my nearly grown daughters is one of choosing “a” career.  My children were expected by their school systems to pick the one career choice that would satisfy them for the rest of their lives…at age 13.  I used to shake my head over the idea.  Technology alone will render many current career choices obsolete between age 13 and even entering college–and provide many more options.  They’ve both wondered how to find that perfect career to leave college with when they have so many things they want to do and be.  I’m certainly past the age of choosing a first career, but I too still want more than one career and never know where the next “rocket of desire” will take me.

Teaching children about the Law of Attraction at different ages made me think,  as well as distinguishing between yearning and desire.

Another segment that I found meaning was how to stop looking at certain purchases I wanted to make as selfish, while other financial exchanges of equal or greater amounts are acceptable to me because of connotations I’ve placed on them, such as charitable gifts or any type of purchase that directly helps someone in need.  I had never thought about the flow of money in quite the way it was explained.

These were the most pertinent questions this DVD answered for me.  The rest was of good quality, too, and Telling a New Story! was certainly worth buying, listening to, and sharing with friends.

For the best price I’ve found, buy here.

In Esther and Jerry Hicks’ The Teachings of Abraham DVD IX of the Law of Attraction in Action series, Telling a New Story!, Abraham says that the best way we can teach our children to become “aligned” is by the example of our own alignment.  That may be true, but with my own kids, I seem to learn quite a bit about myself and my own alignment by watching them.

Shannon, now 20, was first aggressively exposed to the Law of Attraction when she was 16.  For her, there was already a lot of resistance in play.  She’d certainly seen enough in my life!  Early on, a lot of my own practice took the route of bringing to me exactly what I didn’t want, and I wasn’t quite as good at it then.  I wasn’t as serene or positive as I am now.  Still, I’ve been amazed over the past year at watching her manifest.  She’s gotten the hang of it far more than she gives herself credit for.

The most fun I’ve had watching her manifest was when she wanted a different place to live and made a list of 30+ rather unusual things she wanted–tile downstairs with carpet upstairs, a screened patio,  a big kitchen, a front porch, vaulted ceilings, two bedrooms, three bathrooms, a townhome/house, a safe area, close to work/grocery/shopping/gym, some utilities included, pets okay, washer/dryer included, a peaceful atmosphere conducive to study, close to campus–oh, the list went on and on, and all cheaper than her current, noisy, small, 3-roommate apartment with negligent managers and elephants for upstairs neighbors and drug dealers across the hall.   That was a slightly rocky time, when the perfect place–or even a dingy imperfect place– was not turning up.  Just when it seemed she might be tenting somewhere while her current lease ran out and her third roommate bowed out of plans to room together for another year, she discovered that her lease erroneously included another month and she had another month’s time to find…home.  She knew it when she saw it from the outside–absolutely the perfect spot, even before she saw the inside and all of the features she’d put on her wish list.  She’s been happily ever since.  And to me, it reminds me a lot of the little house she lived in when she was three.

I’ve watched her manifest all sorts of things in the past year that have me awed, even though she sometimes forgets how well she does this.  I’ve seen her fret over getting research projects and opportunities that just seemed to fall into her lap and provide a delicious landmark on her career path.  I’ve seen her bring incredible internship and symposium opportunities to her where she was pursued when, logically, such opportunities shouldn’t have been there for her at so young an age.  It’s fun to watch, though I recognize she still has some resistance at times, and I recognize it because I’ve so often been in that same spot and I feel she mirrors my own methods of manifesting (or not) at times.

With Aislinn, I’m mostly just amazed at her manifesting skills.  She’s really, really gotten the hang of it.  At barely 17, things manifest very quickly for her.

She was first exposed to the Law of Attraction at 13, and I honestly regretted it.  No sooner had she watched The Secret for the first time, than she did what many  did when they first jumped on the Law of Attraction bandwagon (and soon after fell off).  She rushed to her bedroom and taped a dollar bill to her ceiling, over her bed, so she could focus on…MONEY!  I really disliked where she took her focus, which was all about money, shopping, stuff. Not that stuff is necessarily bad, but she was at a materialistic stage in life and bought into the get-rick-quick hype that later made the Law of Attraction the focus of the general public in the 2007 time frame.  She wasn’t old enough yet to understand all the other things she can attract to her.

When she was 16, I began to see big changes in her, and she began to listen in discreetly while I played audiobooks at home, putting what she heard into play.  Many of these audiobooks and downloads were Abraham-Hicks offerings, which gave a more spiritual, self-improvement bent to the Law of Attraction than so much of the money-money-money-themed products out there. She began to change the way she handled herself, finding alignment more quickly, not focusing on the past as I have often done.  She began actively listening to the Abraham-Hicks workshops on her iPod on 12-hour bus trips to forensics competitions.  She started actively setting her intentions and then checking them off as they happened, with seemingly little to no effort at all.

I’ve seen this with her change  in schools 15 months ago to a place where she has blossomed and is appreciated for who she is.  I’ve seen it with her grades and classes and career plans.  I’ve seen it most of all with her photography business. I’m am still blown away that she is a junior in high school with 7 weddings to shoot in the next year and more appointments than she can comfortably handle.

In many ways, it seems easier for them than for me to let go and manifest their dreams.  They don’t have the years…the decades…of ingrained resistance that I have.  It makes me so excited as a mom to see them catching on so early in life.  And, it’s a great reminder to reach back to my early childhood, to the times when I could play freely and play creatively before I succumbed to the resistance and structure of the world around me.  That’s not a bad thing, though.  My life leading up to now has given me a lot of “contrast” and because of so much of it, so young, I’m now very sure of who I am and what I want.

I will believe in honor.

I will not become jaded.

I will not lose my compassion.

I will not be a victim.

I will conduct my relationships with integrity.

I will love myself enough to demand accountability from those who do not behave honorably toward me.

I can look myself in the mirror and not flinch.

Sometimes people disappoint us.  We can make excuses for them or we can acknowledge that they’re human.  We can even forgive them.  That doesn’t mean we have to continue our relationship in the same way, especially when we’ve conducted our side of the relationship with honor and integrity and they’ve done everything but.

There is a tendency, after such a blow, to wall ourselves off, to withdraw.  We think that if this one person we cared for can be so corrupt, then anyone can be…that anyone is…that everyone is.

The lens of life we look through can become tinted a darker shade, one that matches the experience with that one person.  Or even with many other such persons, since feeling keenly such a betrayal brings similar betrayals to us via the Law of Attraction.

But I don’t want to be that way.  My friend Jillian used to tell me I was too idealistic.  I’d learn something awful about a person or two and still give them the benefit of the doubt or be too forgiving, and later get burned.  But I like being idealistic.  I like being compassionate and trusting.  I don’t ever want to become jaded by too many heartbreaks to not be idealistic and compassionate and trusting.

Balance has been the key for me.  Holding a liar accountable.  Pulling back the curtain to show the truth, regardless of how ugly it may be.  Seeking justice to balance an injustice.  Seeking truth to balance a lie.  It helps me to believe that the world is not skewed to favor the dishonorable man.

I still believe that there are good people out there.  I like that I believe it.

For over a year, I’ve been listening to my friend Sharyn rave about attending live Abraham-Hicks Law of Attraction workshops all over the country and on cruises around the world.  I was already enthusiastic over their books and recorded workshops, but I had no idea what an experience a first workshop could be!

Last summer, I decided to become a regular subscriber of their monthly download program of edited workshops.  That lasted a few months and I decided I was getting so much out of the downloads that I went to the twice-monthly downloads.  There were live workshops within 7 hour’s drive  (Atlanta and Orlando) but they happened to coincide with trips I’d already planned, so I decided I’d give one a try in the Spring rather than in the Fall.

Orlando was an easy choice for me since I have a daughter in college at UCF and I’d be able to spend the weekend with her.  If I’d had any idea how useful a live workshop would be to me, I would have coughed up the extra $400 for my 17-year-old and 20-year-old to attend with me!  Here are my thoughts on what I observed:

1.         I was surprised by the number of people in attendance.  From the DVDs, YouTube videos, and websites, I would have guessed that the crowd would be small, intimate—maybe a hundred or so people at around $200-250 a pop.  The last seminar of this type I attended was a Michael Dooley TUT workshop in Orlando that had  probably 75 seats and a surprising number unfilled.  At the Abraham-Hicks workshop, there must have been 700 or more people, and only a dozen or so who made it to the “hot seat” to ask a question.  The attendees were from all walks of life, all ages, all backgrounds—but everyone I met was hungry for knowledge.  The room buzzed with excitement and the air conditioner kept things a little on chilly side as a nice accommodation for the heat of group energy.  Most of my lunch companions were repeat attendees.  Some were long-time followers of the teachings.  Some obviously “got it” by the glow on their faces and spring in their steps while others talked the talked but hadn’t clicked into their stride yet.  By the way, I didn’t ask a question or try to get to the hot seat–no need:  everything I wanted to ask got answered for me.

2.       Watching Esther channel Abraham was…convincing.  I’ve been around an occasional channel before and I’ve seen much the same effect as an intuitive or strongly psychic person who is tuned in to something at a frequency higher than where I’m at.  Their faces change somewhat and their voices become different.  There’s an odd relaxing that I can’t explain but have witnessed a few astonishing times.  I didn’t have a good idea from the recordings I’d seen and heard how long it would take Esther to settle into the merge with Abraham, but it was consistent with what I’ve seen with channels and intuitives I know personally.  There is a point where I can tell by the voice that they are tapped into a Higher Power or something that’s ascended a few level above the rest of us.  If I ever had any doubt that this woman is channeling something bigger, I don’t doubt it now.  No offense to Esther, but there is simply no way a human being can be that quick, consistent, and wise, never missing a beat with a question.  Since I’ve known some of the people in the hot seat personally, I know for a fact that the questions are not plants.

3.       The length of time “in the vortex” was surprising but shouldn’t have been.  If I can get to my happy place while listening to a one-hour recorded and edited workshop, sitting through a day of four sessions with the energetic buzz of hundreds of other people around me isn’t four times the focus and fun.  No, it’s more like to the fourth power!  Abraham said that after spending a prolonged time in the vortex at the workshop, we’d leave and see a lot manifest for us over the next few days.  Absolutely correct!  I had been through some serious shake-ups in the 48 hours before the workshop and back to my happy self long before I left the workshop.  My daughters picked me up from the hotel lobby and pointed out that I was glowy, happy, and excited whereas the night before had been a bit rough.   Over the next 3 days, some incredible things manifested for me, seemingly out of thin air.

4.       The group mind at work became evident quickly.  We were the audience that suddenly shifted into a fist-pumping rendition of “Eddie! Eddie!  Eddie!”—which hopefully will become an Abraham-Hicks video treat.    I have no other description for it except “energy” as people together began to focus together, all getting into that happy vortex together, progressively by the end of the day so that we all felt completely motivated and blissful.  It suddenly reminded me of times when I was a kid and had to go with my parents to a week-long tent revival-type series of church services.  Most of the time, they were horribly long and boring, but every now and then, we’d have a guest preacher who said brilliant things  and really connected with his audience so that everyone seemed to be enthralled and caught up in a powerful moment of oneness with the Universe and everyone in it.  That revival energy, at its very best, was like this live Law of Attraction workshop.

In summary, a first-time, live, Abraham-Hicks Law of Attraction workshop is exponentially better than their terrific recorded workshops because of the energy boost of like minds and being held in such a serene state of mind for hours at a time.  If you get the opportunity, don’t pass it up!

When you’re in the midst of a heartbreak or trauma, it’s very easy feel stuck in the muck.  I have come to see the turning points of my life in a different light, because that’s exactly what the worst moments of my life have been:  turning points….turning to something better, even if that was impossible to see then.

If I look back on the path my life has taken, every time there was a really rough patch, it forced me to change the course I was on.  Usually, I was not content with the course I was on but I didn’t know how to change it, to craft it into something better for me.  In a way, I suppose I brought that to me, Law of Attraction-style, because I was looking for something that would force a decision. I wasn’t proactive in an action sort of way but rather in a thought sort of way. 

That was true of my back injury when I was so focused on my career that I wasn’t doing much toward fulfilling my dreams or tending my spiritual needs.  It was true of how my marriage ended. It was true of home-business decisions.  It was true of health decisions.

It was true of several relationships I had that were really forks in the road for me.  I was happy with how things were going but wanted more.  If I’d gotten more, I would have been taking a particular fork that would have led to misery.  I couldn’t see that at the time because I needed that aerial perspective to see where the path beneath me was headed….into fire pits, swamps, and far more heartbreak than I got from a break-up.  Those break-ups put me on different path, one that was smoother, wider, gentler, and far less violence to the emotions.  The break-ups were just a few horrendous days wide as I got pushed onto a different course, rather than the miles of sameness before walking through years of hell.

What started as heartbreaks put me on better paths to more confidence, independence, happiness, serenity.  I could have spent the rest of my life–easily–with any one of those men.  I would not have grown in the ways I have, been loved in the ways I have, or learned to love myself.  If I were to map my life, you would see drastic zigzags with markers at each course correction, each with a name or event, but each directing me to higher ground.

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

It’s easy to blame all the lying, cheating, mean bastards out there, but if they’re not bringing us down every chance they get, don’t worry: we’ll do it to ourselves.  There’s a little bit—or a lot—of the Saboteur archetype in all of us.  Few of us can defy our past overnight and shift into a different vibration, or pattern.  That means that old wounds are repeatedly re-opened or new ones formed, thanks to our very own self-sabotage of the great and wonderful things we want to bring into our lives.

Let’s say that we recognize the error of our ways.  We’re tired of the bad stuff.  We want to bring a certain something good into our lives and we set the intention to do so.  We make lots of changes in our lives to get to a better place to bring it to us.  Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try or want, we can’t get into the vibration of that certain  something good.  We really want it, and we really do understand the Law of Attraction and how to get it.  The problem is, we just can’t manage that last step we need to bring that certain something good to us because we’re stuck in the past where a certain something good never came to us or, if it did, turned out to be a certain something not-so-good.    So even though we now adhere to the Law of Attraction, we still can’t make it happen for us I the way we want.  Oh, it happens for us all right—but it’s just a miserable repeat of the past.  We are still vibrating away at the frequency of oh-please-screw-me-over while yearning for sweet princes on white horses.

It’s taken a rather powerful new influence in my life to help me see this, and I’m actively working to change my vibration to one of perpetual buoyancy by focusing on trust.  I’m honestly fascinated with the situation and the lessons I’m learning from it, and I’m determined to correct my course.

I’ve dated over a dozen terrific men in the past year, and a couple who weren’t exactly terrific but, for the most part, didn’t send me scrambling for a window in the Ladies’ Room while at dinner.  Even from the less-than-wonderful, I learned more about what I wanted and didn’t want.  My intention, set back at the Winter Solstice of the previous year, was to enjoy one or more romantic partners who were happy, vibrant, young, drama-free, kind, interesting, sincere, good men.  Oh, yeah, and hot, too.

The Universe certainly delivered!

There’s only one of these men that I continue to see after a year, and I’m rather fascinated by what I’ve learned from him.  Namely, that it took me a solid year to trust him. I’m not sure whether to be surprised that it took so long or that I was ever able to trust again at all.  But I’ll come back to that.

Looking back, I know now that I had a similar situation in my life with platonic friendships.  During and after my divorce, I was terribly hurt by the lack of emotional support from the people I considered my closest friends.  Five years ago this month, I cleared my slate of most of my 50 closest friends and allies because I was making a big change in my life and they represented the negativity and inertia of my past.  Energetically, they felt like a physical anchor dragging me down, trying to control my actions and thoughts, and constantly telling me what to do.  Within the next year, I parted company with the last of my closest friends from my “old” life.

In that year’s time, even though I said goodbye to almost all my former friends, many of whom were really terrible friends to me who lied to me or used me, I didn’t want to become jaded about friendships and relationships.  I wanted to trust again.  I wanted to have friends again—just not the control freaks, users, and liars of my past.  So I made big changes in my life and made a conscious effort to bring new friends into my life.  Too bad I was still vibrating that my friends were control freaks, users, and liars…because that’s exactly what I attracted to me yet again.

I was so used to being disappointed by my old friends that it was an underlying expectation.  It didn’t take long for my new friends to disappoint me in ways that could not be mended.    Within six months,  I was being blamed for the break-up of a long-term marriage because my friend had told her husband she was out partying with me when she met her new boyfriend, even though I was never one to go out clubbing and was intentionally celibate at that time while I healed from my divorce.  She was seldom home, and she usually gave my residence or “Lorna needs me” as her reason for her  extended absence from her home and children.  There were lots of lies told, and I never really got the closure I needed that would have come from defending myself.  As soon as I discovered the truth and refused to cover for her or let her use me, she dropped our friendship.

There were other new friends who disappointed me also, but it was the betrayal of this new best friend that hurt the most and bothered me for years afterward.  By the time my other significant friendships ended, I drew inward for a while to work on myself and make sure that I had changed my vibration enough that, instead of bringing more users into my life as best friends, I would bring in friends who genuinely cared about me and weren’t users by nature.    That transition time was very hard for me, very lonely.  I literally had no friends for  many months while I rebuilt my life to reflect the kinds of friends I wanted.  I built a new social network, brought back a couple of old friends who’d been through changes of their own, and grew lush new friendships.

I needed that downtime to transition from someone whose friends were users to someone whose friends were sharers.  There’s no way I could attract happy, caring friends into my life when I was still stuck in the vibration of what I’d experienced repeatedly in my past.  Even though I took the right actions to find new friends after clearing out the old ones, I still had an underlying belief that I couldn’t trust my friends to back me up when things got rough.  I had to change my own beliefs and vibration, and that took time and some careful deliberation on my part.

Which brings us back to my fascination with a man I’ll call “Bear,” thanks to his stature.

It has taken me a year to trust him.  Not that he’s given me any reason not to trust him, except thanks to the Saboteur we all have in us.  For a year, I have observed his interactions with me, with my daughters, with his child, with his colleagues, with his friends.  All of his actions have been consistent with his words to me.  I have seen things I didn’t quite understand and felt those old pangs of fear that it was evidence of a deception, that it was just history being repeated…and then, before I could even ask or before he knew that I knew, he would offer up that information as well as the reason for it.  No deception.  No using and abusing.  And then, as if the Universe was telling me here was something important to pay attention to, someone unrelated would unwittingly corroborate the information he’d given me.

The fascination I have with this epiphany is that for the past year of not trusting him, it’s not been about anything he’s done or hasn’t done.  It’s been because, while I brought him into my life with solid intentions of spending more time with men who really are good men, I have been vibrating  my belief that good men are too good to be true, that a seemingly good man will eventually be discovered to be either a lying user or a gutless coward…because that’s been a prevalent pattern in my life.  (Pattern equals vibration.)  That has been my true belief about men, and as a result, I’ve attracted men of that type to me again and again.

So my challenge now is to stay in this vibration of being joyful that there are some great guys out there whom I enjoy and who have been good for me…and just continue to enjoy the hell out of my time with him and anyone else like him.

Serene moments in Donalsonville, GA.  Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder.  All rights reserved.

I was somewhat mortified (to put it mildly) when my 17-year-old announced that she was looking up men from my past on Facebook and friending them.  They were all men I’d cared for at one time or another and she had, too, which is why she was concerned about how they’re doing now.  Some of them weren’t doing so well the last time she saw them, and she has a soft heart.

Some have since responded readily and some never will, but that has everything to do with the Law of Attraction and the way things must line up for old lovers and friends to be reunited.

The first thing to look for in such alignments is where you are.  For my daughter and me, we are both in a wonderful place in our lives right now—lots of hard work but plenty of excitement and passion for both the future and right now.  Most of the  people I attract into my life now become fast friends with her as well because we’re on the same wavelength—not an easy feat  with every teenaged child!

So I can’t blame her for—and won’t stop her from—choosing to reconnect with men who’ve been somehow important in her life because they were once important to me.  She has a big heart and a lot of compassion, and that reflects in her connections to others.  I can’t always see this so well in her connections to other people her own age—people I don’t know well because she has so terribly many friends—but I can certainly observe their alignments in our mutual friends.

Because I know where the two of us are in our own frequencies, it’s easy to tell where others are in their interactions with us.  If we’re in alignment with friends from my past or present, that comes through rather clearly in our initial re-introductions—or lack thereof.  Only the people in alignment with us come back into our lives in a stable way.

It’s an interesting lesson:  some happy, vibrant people keep coming back into our lives over and over, and we have such great times with them.  They never stay away for long, and if they are away, it’s mainly because they are as busy as we are. Some people, who are not “in a good place,” show up only intermittently…if at all.

We may wish for those we love who are unhappy and miserable to be back with us, but the Law of Attraction does us a huge favor by matching us up with people who are more in the mindset and good mood that we are.  It’s a blessing in disguise, though most people don’t realize it when they’re agonizing over a missing lover.  It would be much more difficult to stay upbeat and serene if we spent all our time and effort on friends and lovers who are negative, angry, and bitter.

Right now, with the people we attract into our lives and the people we attract back into our lives, it’s easy to be happy.

I’m stunned that I forgot to set goals.  That’s so unlike me.  Goals are the guideposts to the future and without them, I tend to amble off the path.

One of the benefits of monthly sessions with a  life coach is that they keep me on-track in my busy life and help me to fine-tune new things I want.  It’s therapy, in a way, and it’s a nice objective sounding board for me—one that doesn’t judge  in the way a close friend or colleague with an agenda might.  My coach simply helps me to talk through worries and come up with a game plan.

In this month’s session, my coach asked about a certain project.  I had mentioned to her how well it was going, and her resulting question was, “So what goals have you set for this project?”

Huh?  The question really caught me off-guard, and it shouldn’t have.  I stuttered a bit and had to admit that I’m not sure of my goals for this project.

I had goals for it, over a year ago when I first started it.  They were very specific goals, and the project has met those expectations and more.  Way more.  But I realized when she asked the question that it’s not meeting my goals so much now.  I don’t really know anymore where this project is going.

Somewhere along the way, my original goals were met and I began looking for something more, even though I hadn’t set goals or intentions for something more.  I’ve been wondering what more might come of this project and wanting more from it, but what exactly I want now, I can’t say.

See, I met the goals for that project but since the project is on-going and pleasurably so, I never re-set those goals.   And I have no idea where the project’s going.  It’s just sorta fun and undefined right now.  What I needed it for originally is based on my emotional needs over a year ago and not on my emotional needs now.

That’s my assignment for the next few days:  figure out exactly what I want out of this project now.  I certainly honor that it met my intentions joyfully and has been a sweet addition to my life,  but what exactly are the needs I want it to fulfill now?  Once I figure that out, I can set new goals for it.  I can put my intentions out there…and I can take a path to new heights.

Reaching a goal is not always the end result.  Sometimes, for anything ongoing, you need to revisit your original intentions and see what needs to be update in the goal department.

What projects, relationships, or dreams do you have that have met your goals and need a new and improved set of goals?

What was it you just said?  “I’m getting old”?  Or maybe, “I must be getting old and decrepit”?  Rest assured, with that kind of self-talk, you’ll be feeling older than you are, faster than you can imagine.
How can I wake you up from giving yourself the polar opposite of affirmations so that you don’t fulfill your own prophecy long before your body, mind, and spirit are ready to decay and fade?  Oh, I know:

Thwap!

You’ve been slapped by the cold, wet salmon of self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, you just attributed an inconvenience, twinge, or annoyance with becoming old and decrepit.

Am I saying that the human body doesn’t age, weaken, and wear down with time?  No, but I do believe that mindset can contribute to an early frailty and stagnation that, for some elderly folks I’ve known who have been upbeat and vibrant, didn’t happen until the very, very end of their long lives.  I’ve known too many people to go from being healthy and productive to fragile and apathetic, and the transition has been a steady stream of self-deprecating remarks on their age and the expectations they have of it.

When I was a teen, my middle-aged mom used to tell me that “Age is a state of mind.”  It is, but it’s more than that.  Age is a mindset, and if that mindset is tainted with constant, powerful phrases—incantations!—of how old and weak and damned we are becoming by the minute, then the negative mindset will shape our physical reality.

I’ve become very aware of men and women between 35 and 55 who tell themselves and others at least 5 or 6 times a day (that I know of) that “I’m getting old.”  Older, yes, but old? Many of the times, they tie the phrase to some minor health issue that isn’t necessarily a sign of aging.  For example….

-          A colleague of mine is having trouble thinking.  Every time I am in her presence, she makes a remark about getting old and that she can’t seem to focus.  I’ve known this woman for 20+ years and when she was 30,  I recall that she was under a lot of stress and complained to me frequently that she couldn’t seem to focus.  Every time in her career that the stress has been overwhelming, she’s become fragmented and unfocused because she’s been pulled in so many directions.  The difference now is that ever since she turned 50, she gives her age as the reason.  Over and  over and over.  Never mind the pressure, the stress, the fact that she needs to be cloned several times to do her job.

-          A guy friend of mine is in his early 40’s.  Every so often in his life, he does something stupid like go join a gym and kill himself working out the first day.  The next day, he can barely move because he’s so sore and stiff.  When he was in his 20’s, he complained that he’d overdone it at the gym—a valid point!–and then snoozed in his apartment for the next week while he recovered.  Now, it’s because he’s getting old, he says.  Not because he didn’t work up gradually to a tough routine.  It does take his body longer to recover, yes, but his entire focus is on his age as an excuse, not on taking care of himself properly.

-          A female friend of mine makes fun of me—as well as anyone else who has problems occasionally with their glasses prescriptions.  As the human eye ages, it loses its ability to accommodate near and far vision without help (readers, multi-focal contacts, laser eye surgery, etc).   I refuse to say, oh, I need glasses because I’m getting old.  I needed glasses when I was 13, and I’ve had a long history of all sorts of contacts and glasses and tweaked prescriptions.  I need glasses but I need them for slightly different reasons, and those reasons have changed many times over the years.  So what?  But this particular friend hates her glasses—which she’s always had, by the way—so she makes a huge point to ranting whenever anyone pulls out reading glasses or uses a  non-microscopic font.  “You must be getting old,” she says.  “Hell, I know I am!”

I’m afraid she’s going to be one of those old folks who spends all her time comparing notes and competing with other old folks to see who has the worst medical symptoms.  Sheesh!  Bring it to yourself as fast as possible, will you?  This is prime Law of Attraction stuff where a person can certainly fast-forward into that reality.   The elderly people who are the most vibrant don’t seem to be the ones talking incessantly about this little ache or that little pain—they focus on other stuff.  You look at them and see the deep wrinkles but still think of them as “young at heart.”  They are still lots of fun to be around.

If you remember the Carol Burnett skit that later became “Mama’s Family,” Vicki Lawrence played a woman decades older.  It always amused me how she could just become “Mama” so quickly, enough so that it was a little disturbing whenever she played her younger character, who was closer to her own age.  Good actors can easily morph into other realities of themselves–the characters they play–if they’re in the right mindset.  Most people don’t claim to be actors but too much time in that mindset of I’m old, I’m fat, I’m bald, I’m…whatever…when they are not physically those things yet will put them on the fastrack to making it reality.

Instead of hurting yourself with endless negative self-talk, try something new.  Wipe that cold, wet salmon off your face and the next time you have a scatterbrain moment, say, “Wow, I forgot what I was going to say.  Good thing I bounce back quickly!”  If your knee hurts, say something like, “My knee hurts.  It’s a good thing I’m healthy and my super-duper vitamins make me feel better every day!”  And hey, if you’re having a hot flash, just remember that not so long ago, most women didn’t survive to see menopause and that you are one lucky woman to be so vibrant and sexy and alive!

Photo credit by -RobW-; creative commons license

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

I had a date with a  man I can’t get out of my head.  Normally, that would be a wonderful thing because—normally–there would be something pleasantly fascinating about the man.  In this case, I’ve had problems figuring out how I ever attracted him into my life in the first place.

As my readers know, when I talk about such scenarios, I use composites or describe the guy in such a way that none but my closest friends have any idea who I’m talking about.  The man in this case was someone I’d met through a website, sight unseen.  He’d posted something interesting on a forum and I responded, and in turn he asked me to dinner.  He was older than most of the men I usually date but was open-minded and willing to take a risk.  The worst that could happen?  We’d continue a great conversation started online, with a focus on our professions and what they have in common.  He swore he was more adventurous than his age might lead me to believe, and I had a great attitude as I dressed for our date.

As most guys over 40 do, this man had quite a few “requirements” for the women he dated, most of them laughable.  He had quite the fantasy woman in mind.  But the thing that struck me as really…I don’t know–I couldn’t put my finger on it…was something in his attitude that bothered me.  Though I’ve had men in the past demand to see a driver’s license to prove my identity, this one wasn’t quite so obvious.  At least, not at first.  I guess the thing that bothered me was that he was suspicious. Of who I was.  Of my motives.  Of…everything.  I barely noticed at first, because given our day jobs, we’re required to have a little bit of paranoia about meeting new people. (They might be spies, you know.)  But he also had a habit, which he later admitted, of asking misleading questions to try to catch a date in a lie.  Which explains some of the oddball stuff he asked me that didn’t make sense.

After a good 30 minutes of telling me about women who’d used fake identities to get to know him online, who had stolen pictures off Facebook to “prove” they were whom they said, who had lied about their attributes for months while dodging face-to-face meetings, I was seeing a strong pattern here.  Every woman who turned out to be “real,” didn’t measure up to his requirements.  Every one who did, turned out not to be real but a scam artist.  He even questioned how I could be authentic if I didn’t have the same fears he did, to which I answered, “I prefer to stay positive and assume that you’re as real as I am.”

After another couple of minutes of his thinly-veiled paranoia about how all women are liars, I snapped my official ID down on the table and joked about it, hoping to lighten the tension I was starting to feel.

His response?  “That just proves you do the job you say you do.  That doesn’t prove you really are who you say you are.”

Ooooooh-kaaaaaaay.  Somehow, I’d thought that by showing up for the date, I had taken a big step in proving who I was.  I didn’t realize I should’ve brought my portable polygraph with me.  Nor had I done anything to deserve the assumption of being a fraud. If anything, he seemed a little disappointed that he didn’t catch me in a pack of lies so he could tell me off, as he said he’d done to countless other women.

We had a nice date, and then it sorta fizzled out over the paranoia display.  When it fizzled, it was okay with me and I was ready to go home and relax.  Relieved to be leaving his presence, even.  Only, I couldn’t relax.  This man’s quiet paranoia (and subsequent witch-hunt) kept tugging at me for days.  He was NOT the usual kind of date for me.  The previous few men I’d dated were happy, relaxed, fun, carefree but caring.  In other words, the men I’d been attracting to me and back to me were a good reflection of how I myself felt about life in general.  So why the sudden ick?

That’s when my analytical side took over.  I don’t want to be around a date, romantic partner, or even a stranger like that, so how could he have shown up in the middle of sweet and easy-going men who are usually my company?  I went back to the moment he appeared in my life and back-tracked.

That night, I’d checked out a forum I’d been to no more than two times in the past year.  I was in a little bit of a funk when I did, but I saw his intelligent post and wanted to discuss it with him.  My spirits picked up after that and I actually ended up talking to someone far more interesting a couple of hours later who is more in line with my usual upbeat mood–and perhaps I’ll be seeing him soon.

Taking it a step backward to before I checked out the forum where I found the topic of discussion, I’d spent the previous couple of hours feeling a little not-so-happy.  I’d received an annoying email from a man who–ironically, now that I think back on it–had the same first name as my date.    That had come in the middle of feeling a little perturbed that a man I see occasionally hadn’t responded to a text  message I’d sent him, which had conjured up old fears that he was ignoring me or lying to me or….well, basic unfounded paranoia rather than the fact that he was dealing with something harsh he didn’t want to share with me because he was worried it would bring me down.  And right before that, I was laughingly telling a friend that I had an intention for the weekend of at least one date.

It’s amusing now, looking back at how I went from being joyous and feeling good and great friends to letting myself slip out of that serenity just long enough to worry about something totally unnecessary and unreasonable.  I got it back together a little later, yes, but that window of blooper-tunity was wide open just long enough for my weekend date to show up.  And as much as I hate to admit it, he was a very apt reflection of my angst for the 2 hours before he manifested on the forum I was visiting–his first ever visit.

Once you figure out how to manifest what you want, it becomes especially important to stay aligned and not let yourself slip out of those good feelings–especially over something ridiculous.  The rewards for getting to the point of fast manifestation are exquisite, but if you drop out of alignment, it can be a cold slap in the face.

Have you ever discovered that your intentions came true, just not in the way you planned?  Happens to me all the time.

A little over a year ago, I put the intention out there in a Law of Attraction exercise to take more courses, particularly enjoyable courses.  I didn’t have a set agenda of which courses, but I simply wanted to keep learning more and keep expanding my mind and knowledge.

And yet, I never did renew that Spanish language course I’d been taking at work because I didn’t have time there.  Nothing exciting showed up in the local college schedules that I hadn’t already taken.

It seems I spend so much of my time teaching, and it’s important to me to continue learning.  I don’t need yet another degree, but learning is extremely important to me.

As the Winter Solstice drew near—the time of year when I focus on my intentions for the next year—I thought about my intentions for the year that had just passed and how I hadn’t spent much time in classes at work or at home.  Very few conferences or workshops!

Fortunately, my day job requires that I take 80 hours of continuing education every two years, including lots of free online courses…but that doesn’t help with the enjoyable courses I’d wanted to take.  By boss came to me rather suddenly, reminding me that I was behind on my 80 hours and needed to submit any type of workshops or courses I’d taken recently, so I went into mad-scramble mode to keep from ending up on some big boss’ list of outcasts in the next few days.  I really had to strain my brain to come up with anything…at first.

I’d not only attended a two-hour geo-political lecture by George Friedman related to his book, The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21^st Century, but I had downloaded the entire 9-hour, 41-minute audiobook and listened to it while cleaning out files at the office.    I decided to push my luck and see if I could get credit for the book, which was directly related to my work—and did!

That got me thinking.  Maybe there were other audiobooks I had listened to that would qualify.  As I began making a list of all the courses, speeches, lectures, workshops, and guides I’d listened to on my iPod while getting some exercise, gardening, or cleaning house, a pattern emerged that surprised me.

I’d been listening to plenty of enjoyable courses.  Without realizing it.

Though I prefer to download speeches and recorded-live workshops from Audible.com, I can get many of the more popular non-fiction guides through my local library and listen to them on CD.  I can also listen to a gazillion college lectures free from iUniversity through iTunes, and love listening to psychology courses my daughter recommends.

What’s on my iPod this week?  The Anglo-Saxon World by Dr. Michael D.C. Drout, part of the Modern Scholar lecture series.  I understand if the migration pattern of Beowulf’s people isn’t your cup of, um, mead, but then, there’s also an audiobook on the history of beer-making….

In the summer of 2003, I took Shannon with me on a road trip, just the two of us. She was at an important age, going into the eighth grade, which in my own history was the threshold for beginning to understand things as an adult. Too many “grown-ups” don’t seem to remember their youth, and that’s unfortunate for both their children and themselves. Too many of my colleagues tell me they can’t/don’t/won’t talk with their kids because, well, they’re teenagers, as if being in different phases of life excuses their lack of interest in their kids’ minds and emotions. I was determined not to be the distant parent.

I had recently received my Second Degree Elevation within my church organization and was driving “up North” to attend their annual spiritual retreat. This gave me a chance to bond with my new teen and to explore the rural lowlands of North Carolina in the hopes of finding answers to a particular genealogical mystery.

Our trip lasted ten days, with the second half spent camping in the woods with Mom’s very cool friends with tattoos, pentacles, and Goth skirts, and then driving straight home for 19 hours, with a brief stop in Carrollton, Georgia, to get directions from an angel—but that’s another story. By the time we reached home, my daughter had a much better understanding of Mom and vice-versa, and I wouldn’t trade that time together for anything.

The first half of the trip was a little more awkward. We left on a Sunday afternoon, simply because we couldn’t get everything together quickly enough and my ex wasn’t terribly happy about my taking a trip without him. I’d considered inviting him, except that he had only disdain for my spirituality and also I needed to know that I could made a road trip on my own. I needed that burst of self-confidence that comes with a cross-country adventure where you know you’ll find your way if you get lost and that you can take care of yourself. We did.

The first day, I drove for nine hours or more—a grand feat for someone who feared her ancient back injury would make the road hard, but after the first day, the stresses of home and the work world lifted and so did my soreness. My daughter and I discussed every shallow subject we could think of, and we were starting to get into deeper waters.

By the time we’d crossed parts of Alabama and then every detour in the bowels of Middle Georgia, it was well into darkness and dreary weather and we were on the outskirts of Augusta, Georgia. I was exhausted and wanted the first hotel we could find. Unfortunately, we could find only a few hotels along the road. The next morning, we discovered that our road merged with a new highway lined with beautiful, clean, sparkling hotels…about a mile from where we ended up.

When my ex and the kids and I had traveled on vacations and business trips, we’d always stayed in “nice” hotels. Even though the hotel was a well-known chain where I’d had good luck before, that first night of our trip was a new experience for my daughter.

I paid the bill through a mouse-hole in a glass-and-barred window, and the disgruntled woman on the other side slid me a bent key. Our room was on the second floor, for which I was grateful, considering the shadows lurking in the parking lot. Our room had a door that closed all the way but was a little lopsided. I pushed a chair underneath the door knob and braced it with other furniture and suitcases.

The phone in the room didn’t work. Well, actually it did, but you had to wait for the other hotel guests to hang up first. The sign outside the hotel boasted microwaves and refrigerators in the suites, but the ones in our room had been torn out, with the wires still dangling. To top it off, the room was infested with roaches. I considered sleeping the car, but I was too afraid of the crazy old white dude hanging out in the parking lot.

We went to bed early and got up at the crack of dawn and left as quickly as possible, laughing about it after we reached a safe distance away. Then our conversations took a deeper tone and we really got to know each other.

We crossed South Carolina in a few hours, faster than we’d planned for, and by noon, we’d reached our ancestral lands in North Carolina. We spent most of the day comparing modern roads with maps from 1810 and digging through courthouse records. Along the way, we saw a beautiful bed-and-breakfast inn that called to us. We’d purposely not made hotel accommodations for the trip so that we could set our own schedule and stay where we wanted…and this place, we wanted—badly.

Several times during the day, we stopped by to see if we could get a room for the night, but no one answered the door. We called the number on the sign, but all we got was a message to leave our name and number. Since my cell phone had just died, we had to make our calls from a phone booth.

About an hour from dark, we tried one last time. We so wanted to spend the night there. We’d read their pamphlet’s description of the rooms for rent, we’d walked around the grounds, we’d admired the shade trees and gardens. We had our hearts set on spending the night there. But when darkness was coming and we still couldn’t get an answer, we gave up. There weren’t other lodgings in town, so we left, dejected. We would have to drive an hour out of our way to find a place to sleep.

On a road “less traveled,” a road in the middle of the proverbial nowhere, we saw a sign for an “old inn” and stopped at an unusual Tudor-style building. We found a sign on the door that said to come next door to the restaurant if we wanted a room, so we parked the car and followed a stone path through a courtyard to a second building. When we walked inside, our eyes had to adjust to the dimness of a room with a huge wooden chandelier, candles, and enough Medieval-style décor to make my heart jump!

Because we hadn’t stayed at the pretty little inn in town, we’d happened onto a Medieval-style restaurant and inn that normally catered to bus tours from the coast but opened on certain week nights for the locals. We had a wonderful time there that night and, over candlelight, we kept marveling about what an incredible find we’d stumbled upon. If we’d settled for what we thought we wanted, we never would have had our heart’s desire.

I’ve seen the lesson of that evening applied many times since, but most recently in regard to relationships with men. Sometimes you can find one in a well-known area with a well-known name and discover he’s infested inside and flanked by shadows. And sometimes, you can find one who’s attractive, interesting, and seems to be everything you could want, but you just can’t get inside.

And sometimes, the real prize is off the beaten path—unusual and different, relishing being unique, a perfect match you didn’t dream existed. And one you never would have found if you’d made your home elsewhere.

Yeah, that’s where I want to sleep.

Article originally published in Life in the Third Degree, available for download now.