Right from the start, you "know" . . .

"It was much more important to you to recognize the existence of your own Guidance System, and to utilize it, than to be deemed correct by, or to find approval from, others." - Abraham-Hicks (The Vortex - Where The Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships)

The sentence above comes from Abraham-Hicks' new book, The Vortex. It appears as part of a chapter dealing with our relationship with our parents and how from birth, we already come with our own sets of beliefs, desires and actions we want to take in our lives. This is something I completely relate to and wholeheartedly believe in. I might not remember many things, such as what I had for breakfast this morning or the plot to a movie I've seen 100 times, but I distinctly remember this feeling of "knowing" all I needed to know when I was very little. I have vivid flashes of looking at my parents and thinking, "What?! Are you kidding me lady? Don't you know this is how it's done?" And, I also had no inhibitions whatsoever! Don't you remember a little of that? Or, if you don't, just observe a baby or a toddler and see how free they are. They know what they like and don't like and let you know with high-pitched screams, either of delight or anger. :-) They're not afraid to do anything and try everything. Brilliant little beings still so fully connected to the Source from which they came from.

As we get older and our well-meaning parents have taught us a thing or two, and we start dealing with other children in school, we start to lose that pure connection to Source Energy, or our Inner Being. As the connection begins to fade, our ability to trust ourselves implicitly also takes a beating. We start asking ourselves a myriad of questions before we take action. "What would mom and dad think of what I'm doing?" "If I wear this to school, I might get made fun of or picked on." "If I act this way, people will think I'm weird." And on and on and on. By the time we make it to the teenage years, it's a wonder we leave our rooms at all. It feels as if the entire world is always judging you, ready to make fun of you, or controlling your every mood.

How we survive these years and the shape in which we make it to adulthood depends on a variety of factors. Such as, what type of parents you have, religious influence, environment, etc. Personally, I was raised by Jehovah's Witnesses, lived in Communist Cuba until I was 8 and knew I was gay since I was about 4 or 5 (well, I knew I was different). Ha! With all of these factors active in my life experience, I learned to fake it to survive. But, luckily enough, I somehow kept that connection to Source that told me I was alright. I never felt a need to fully compromise myself in order to fit in or please other people. Even when those other people were my parents. I faked my way through the many years of going to Jehovah's Witness meetings and preaching door to door. What I mean is that I would do what they asked of me, up to a point. They wanted me to go preaching door to door on a Saturday morning? I'd go, but they weren't going to make me speak to anyone. They wanted me to participate in the weekly meetings and give short speeches? I'd do it, but I wasn't going to be the one preparing the speech or doing any of the research for it. I politely explained to my mother that if she wanted me to do it, she'd have to prepare the entire thing for me.

Many times we give too much of ourselves over to others in order to please them or have them like us. This is especially easy to do when it involves our parents or family members and we think that because we're blood related, then we must love and like each other no matter what. It becomes too important how another person feels about us. Too much control is then given to another. I've always had a different way of looking at these relationships, but I'll continue this on Saturday. Until then, take a few minutes and check on your connection to your Inner Being. Who's in control of your feeling good? Who are you trying to please and why? Does your happiness rely on what another person thinks about you or the way you live your life?

Peace and Light to you and KEEP DREAMING!

Gene-Manuel

Repairing our connection . . .by "checking in."

“Learn to let your intuition—gut instinct—tell you when the food, the relationship, the job isn’t good for you (and conversely, when what you’re doing is just right).” ~ Oprah

Every time I've gone against my gut instinct, I've paid the price. And I do mean, every single time, without exception. I have recently been more attuned to it and have made a conscious effort to truly listen and pay attention to my gut at all times. It's how I've come to create my art. The fact that I now work on something that brings me so much joy and feels so good is all due to following my gut instinct and listening to Inspired Action.

This hasn't always been the case. I have plenty of experiences where I decided to either listen to other people, or I've let my ego get in the way. When I've done this, I've completely turned my back on my inner voice, my intuition, and the results have always been disastrous! That is because we come into this physical world reality with this miraculous built-in connection to Source Energy. I mean, we are born with this otherworldly GPS device already programmed with all that we'll ever need to guide us in this world. From the start it is giving us information to help us along. As babies we cry when we're hungry or sleepy or need changing. Nobody told us to do this! This was all instinctual. We came here knowing this was how things had to be until we learned to communicate with these beings that were our parents and started using words.

As we get older and get exposed to outside influences, we tend to start listening to other people, maybe a little too much. We also start dealing with our friend, ego. And our ego, if we let him or her, will take over our lives. Dr. Wayne Dyer likes to say that the word ego stands for Edge God Out. I think he's totally right. That's one of the things our ego loves to do. It gets in the way of our gut instinct and tries to shut it down. Ego believes it has what's best for us in mind when in reality, it's only thinking about what's best for ego to survive. The more it can get in the way of our connection to our Source Energy, the better its chances of sticking around telling you what to do.

So, as the years go by and our ego gets stronger and we start listening to other people, we tend to rely less and less on our gut instincts. We pay less attention to that built-in GPS system. Especially if what our guide is telling us to do goes against what everyone else thinks we should do.

We all have stories of times when we went against our instincts and things went horribly wrong. What we have to do is remember these instances when a similar event happens and we're about to do something we feel deep down that we're not supposed to do. It's important to exercise our instinctual powers. Really get in touch with our inner voice and get that connection to Source Energy or God back in fine working order. One of the best ways to do this of course is by spending some time actively seeking to repair the connection.

In the mornings I like to do Ah Meditation sessions for about 10 minutes or so. But, I've started to extend this time a little at the end and do what I like to call a "checking in" exercise. I check in with my core and make sure that all is well. How do I feel about the state of my life at this very moment? Are there areas that feel wrong, that don't fit with me? Are there things I'm doing that I know I shouldn't be doing? Am I happy with my life?

When I first started "checking in", I found that ego liked to come in and answer the questions for me. It liked to come up with excuses for any of the questions that I instinctively knew the answer to. But, the more I calmed my mind and quieted ego, the easier it got to repair that connection to Source, that invisible line going straight from my core, my center, to Source Energy. Now in my periods of checking in, the answers come immediately. I can't even say they come in the form of words but more as immediate feelings. My gut remains calm and peaceful whenever a question is asked and I'm living in its truth. If I ask myself a question and I'm not in a good space with that question, my gut lets me know in the form of a small yet palpable twisting feeling. Whenever I get that response, that lets me know that I'm dealing with an area that needs further investigation. It doesn't mean that I now have to berate myself and that I've done something wrong. This just means that it's time to look inward and seek for the answer, which is already there, at a deeper level.

To start repairing this connection to Source, or make the connection you already have even stronger, I do recommend doing the "checking in" exercise a couple of times a week. As always, I like to make things easy, because you know what I believe . . . if something is easy to do, the more likely you are to DO IT consistently. So, depending on how good your connection is, then that can determine the amount of time spent checking in. At first, like I said, ego might like to get in there and mess with you, so it could possibly take a little longer to get through the questions.

The questions are simple ones. You can come up with your own set but I usually start with these:

• How are you?
• How is your life?
• Are you happy?
• Is there anything troubling you?
• What is going right for you?
• Is there anything you'd like to see change?

These are just a few examples. It really helps to customize your questions to whatever is going on in your life at the moment. I like to do the checking in exercise before I undertake any new project, no matter how exciting or lucrative it might seem. Checking in with specific questions relating to the issue at hand really helps to clear my thoughts and get in touch with my gut instincts. If all my questions come back with a positive response and my core remains calm and relaxed and at peace, you better believe it, I'm going ahead with that project. It's that simple.

Spend some time checking in and see how your connection to Source will help to guide you in the right direction. The stronger the connection the easier it will be to immediately trust your inner voice. It is right. Every. Single. Time.

Peace and Light to you and KEEP DREAMING!

Gene-Manuel

NO LIMITS . . .

"A young and vital child knows NO LIMITS to his own will, and it is the only reality to him.  It is not that he wants at the outset to fight other wills, but that they simply do not exist for him.  Like the artist, he goes forth to the work of creation, gloriously alone." ~ Jane Harrison

I came across Jane Harrison's quote while researching the limitless power of our dreams.  Last week, after an incredible IntenSati class, of which I will devote more time to later, I was walking with my dear friend Nikki, and we briefly spoke about the child's power to dream and believe in his dreams.  In particular, I remembered how when I was very little, age 2 or 3, I knew, beyond any doubt, that I had powers over the things around me.  It was a notion, deep within my little self, that knew that all things were possible.  There were no limits to the things that I could do.

Whenever I was told that something was impossible, I kept asking "why"? "Why isn't it possible for this to happen?"  "What is it this word you use: IMPOSSIBLE?"  The 3-year old me knew deep, deep down that the grown up telling me something could not be done, had lost the ability to dream.  They had lost a connection to something that I was still very much connected to.  I remember being confused by this.  I couldn't understand why such a simple understanding of the way things worked didn't occur to these adults.  

I found it rather interesting that I kept hearing them (my parents) read from the bible about miracles, yet when I inquired about these miracles, they'd say that the "age of miracles is over."  How sad for them!  Wow!  They read over and over again about a miracle happening here and another there and now, too bad for us, the miracles were over.  No more.  Sorry, we ran out a long, long time ago.  

After a while, I decided it was best to keep these thoughts to myself and not share them with the people around me.  This didn't mean that I stopped believing that all was possible, it just meant I kept quiet about it.  As I've written here before, I always knew that we'd be able to leave the country and that I would come to live in the United States.  As impossible as it seemed to everyone else, I kept on dreaming about it and was certain that it was just a matter of time before I'd be stepping on a plane, out of the island.  I was absolutely right!

I believe that when we are little, we are as close to Source Energy, Universal Power, God, whatever you want to call that which is greater than we are, as we can get.  It could be that since we've just entered into the physical, that connection to the non-physical is still very much alive, throwing sparks really.  Of course everything is possible when we're mere babies!  We know, on a cellular level, that we can do it all because we've just come from the realm where we've been doing it all!  Although exactly what we did in that realm is not clear to us, we still carry with us those feelings of amazing wonders.  

As Jane says in her quote, at that time, I knew no limits to what I could do.  Unfortunately, as I grew older and started to deal with life issues, I strayed further and further away from my truth.  Without any useful spiritual guidance, I let my belief in the impossible become a distant memory.  It was just a childhood dream.  I started to suffer from depression at a very young age and my connection to that Source Energy that allowed me to believe in my dreams with 100% certainty, was broken for a long number of years.

Until, interestingly enough, I was brought back, by Inspired Action, to art. . . to that act of creation . . . which little by little has become a miraculous link to my truth.  I've written about how that came to pass.  And every single piece of art that I've created since I started in July of 2008 has been a guiding light to the next phase of my liberation.  My spiritual liberation like Michael Bernard Beckwith writes in his book of the same name.  Alone with my paper and arts supplies, I have awakened to that connection that was broken for so long.  In the Universe's loving wisdom and abundance, I have been led by these pieces, to where I need to be. 

That child of 3 that believed in the impossible is alive and well and stronger than ever.  I encourage his enthusiasm for the wonders of our Universe on a daily basis.  I seek out miracles in the world around me, no matter where I am.  A quick glance up at the sky is proof enough that we live in the times of miracles still.  We are surrounded by things that were once just dreams.  We are on the leading edge of creativity and we must take full advantage of our power.  DREAM WITHOUT LIMITS! 

Peace and Light to you and KEEP DREAMING,

Gene-Manuel