If you have spent many years, or even many decades, heading away from your dreams, then the process of reversing course is not a quick one. You may naturally want it to be, as I did. Indeed (to use a metaphor from an earlier blog), it may seem as if it should be as simple as pushing the tiller away from you, and just bringing the boat around and heading in the opposite direction. Jettison the house, change careers, divorce a spouse, move cross country -- do something radically different, and a different result will be achieved. And yet, at least for me, it wasn't that simple. First of all, I didn't have a house, a solid career or a spouse, any of those markers of success or illusory success. There wasn't much to jettison.
I eventually came to terms with the realization that outside factors were not keeping me from a course more in keeping with my true self. Inner beliefs, and crossed wires of thinking, sent me consistently "over there" rather than "over here." Whatever your dream may be, if you have believed it was hopeless for any reason (forces of history, funding, the impossibility of getting people to understand or support you, or even "just" logistics), chances are that a whole palette of hopeless thinking has been at work, leaving your boat drifting and directionless, even when major outer changes are made.
My ultimate crossed wire was believing that the Universe was not on my side. I certainly believed that there was a God/ultimate Source/Universe/Goddess. It's just that for whatever reason, I felt separate from that force. I was the perfect wandering mystic, but my focus was on a distant Divine, not one within me or available to me. I saw that the wind existed, and it was blowing across the lake and other boats were sailing flawlessly in it, but in my little bay, my little eddy, there was no wind available to me, no power to draw from.
A few years ago, I realized that this was at the bottom of everything, and I just couldn't stand being stuck any more. And it was too much, at first, to even address the issue of God, so my instincts told me just to start small, and start to notice appreciatively whenever even the tiniest thing went well...whenever there was even the most imperceptible puff of wind, you might say. Borrowing somewhat from Abraham-Hicks' "List of Positive Aspects" and similar suggestions in many other books, I regularly wrote a list (often of ten, but sometimes several pages long) of things I was thankful for, happy about, amused by -- anything positive and uplifting in my life. These lists usually consisted of simple positive sentences ("I appreciate the roof over my head," "I really like the fact that it is sunny today.") Some days, I could barely struggle through even two or three appreciations, blurting out half-hearted things like "I'm glad the bus was only ten minutes late today." Yet some days over the last year, the list was glorious ("I appreciate that my plane just landed safely in London.")
Different teachers give different reasons for making these kinds of affirmations: in a law of attraction universe, the more you focus positively on your life, the more positive things will happen; when you focus on the positive, you cannot focus on the negative, etc. For me, I think it was just a question of silencing my inner "Eeyore" for just long enough to start to believe that it was OK to feel happy, appreciative and joy-filled. It was OK. I was OK. It was even OK to appreciate that the other boats' sails were filled with wind even if, at that second, mine was not. I had in fact had a blessing-filled life, but I just hadn't been able to "feel" that at my core. Slowly, over the last two years or so, I've begun to make the connection between that power and me, even when there is no wind blowing in my face. My lists have helped me to see the big picture -- to appreciate the power behind the wind, and its manifestations, big and small. Anyone who takes their boat out into the lake has the force of the wind around and in them, and it will benefit them as long as they stay on the lake, expectant and prepared for that first gust. Anyone who has the courage to be born into this world is part of its ultimate power, and divine power is all around us and in us, every day. We just need to see and feel it more and more, and be similarly expectant of its bigger and bigger manifestations.
So my course reversal has so far come more from "seeing," "noting" and "being ready" than from "doing," per se (although there have been some fabulous exceptions) -- but when a steady wind does come up, there will be much to do, and it will be fun and exhilarating to do it!
