Flying Lessons

We are all designed to fly – the tricky part is learning to stay aloft

This is a reprint of an article I wrote many years ago, with my new comments at the end. As our collective outer world feels ever more strange and precarious, it’s clear that people are having a harder time believing in the good that is possible, for each of us individually and for our larger community, and I felt moved to share this piece again:

____________________________________________________________________________

Much has been written about the power of intention and the law of attraction. Perhaps you have even experienced these principles in action in your life, and you understand something about their power. In order to create what we want in life we need the right knowledge, tools, and support, and then we need to fine-tune our attention, intention, and full awareness to the precise compass setting for what we want to attract and manifest. These are the first steps.

There is a next step which is equally important if you really want to rewrite your story and recreate your results in life. This is the step we don’t often hear about, and it’s the step you need to learn in order to sustain your new improved life, and to begin “playing big” or flying high in earnest. It is relatively easy to begin manifesting what you want, while riding on a powerful wave of fresh new inspiration and enthusiasm. Once you tap into the magic of the laws of attraction and manifestation, you begin to see positive results, and even the first tiny shreds of evidence that it could be working will spur you onward.

Once, I made a request to the Universe, with all the laser-focused intention I could muster : “I need help to source $1,000 by the end of the week, to pay an important bill.” Within five minutes the phone rang and a friend asked if I could drop everything for three days to help her finish a big job. She offered to pay me $1,000 for my work. That’s the kind of evidence that made me a believer!

Staying in this powerful flow is the sustainability part – the next step - and this is where things get more complex. It’s been said that it is our LIGHT that we fear most, not our darkness. If you listen to the news, you know that our society does not emphasize living in the light. In fact we love to create drama, usually of the dark sort. And if you listen to peoples’ general conversation you will hear lots of complaints, blaming, and exasperated expressions of stress and hardship. We may feel guilty or uneasy, and certainly out of synch with others, when we manifest greatness in our lives and begin the shift to living in a chronic state of joy and wonder (our truly natural state).

Making this shift requires discipline and constant commitment. This discipline is in fact our ticket to the freedom we desire. By learning to discipline our thoughts we create the words, actions, habits, and values which bring about the life we desire. Most of us will find subtle (and even not-so-subtle) ways to sabotage our new successes. We do this if we harbor a belief that we are not good enough, or deserving to live fully in the light of joy, happiness, and success. We do this if we do not whole-heartedly love ourselves. We sabotage our success because playing small is our comfort zone, and being there keeps us in familiar alignment with the other small players in our life.

We also shy away from the light when we believe that we don’t yet have all the knowledge, tools, support and camaraderie we need to live every day in that brightness. It takes great courage to bust through these common barriers. We need to learn to believe that we can be resourceful, strong, loving, and disciplined, and we need to come to believe in our essential greatness. Here are some wise words on this topic from Mahatma Gandhi:

Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.

I am often asked how we can stay “grounded” while flying high. What does being grounded mean to you? In my experience, flying high (or living in the light) requires that I be willing to stay “out on a limb,” to live “out of the box,” and to keep an open mind while I follow my own heart. So, if being grounded means coming back down to some familiar place with familiar rules and formulas, then I don’t want to stay grounded because that puts me back into thinking that there are limits to where my life can go, or how much joy I can feel. Instead, I like to think of grounding as staying in close touch with my pure essential nature, while practicing the necessary discipline that keeps me in alignment with physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health and lets me know that I am in the driver’s seat of my relationship with life.

“If you want a place in the sun, you must leave the shade of the family tree.” - author unknown

____________________________________________________________________________

Just imagine what would become possible if we were all truly interested in this kind of personal flight. When individuals ground themselves in their heart-wisdom, and act with discipline from a place of focused intention, integrity and self-confidence, it is truly for the highest good. It’s okay and necessary for us to want different things, and to have different flight patterns! Our work collectively then is to honor the individual, to learn from each other’s differences and discoveries, and to celebrate the beauty of this true variety and diversity.

I am concerned that the recent cultural/societal trajectory seems to be aiming to glorify the notion of a kind of (impossible) group cohesion, supposedly to be achieved by amplifying a select narrative and using whatever means necessary (including propaganda, advertising, and coercion) to push people into line with this narrative. But the only result possible with this sort of tactic is that most people would have to abandon themselves in the process.

What do you think happens when we abandon ourselves? I invite you to feel deeply into this. I think it’s possible that nearly ALL the societal problems we face today stem from this core of self-abandonment, across our human population. What do you think? Please share in the comments.