For most of us working sucks which I think is why work is a four letter word. Have you ever really thought about why you work and what role it plays in your life? Most of us work because we think we have to, to pay the bills or really to survive. We might have a job that we can’t stand or we might even have a job that we like or no job but when whatever we do becomes work it takes on a quality of struggle. If we work for ourselves doing what we love often it becomes work when we struggle to make ends meet. Our society is built on work and struggle, the idea that you have to sacrifice much of who you are to survive. Right behind the struggle is lack, the belief/feeling that we are incomplete or lacking something that we must seek externally whether it is money, love or fulfillment.

This mentality is conditioned into us right from the beginning. Children are taught about the different kinds of jobs in society, especially the most accepted ones and they begin to be groomed and educated to fit one of these ready made roles (policeman, fireman, lawyer, doctor, bus driver not to mention husband, wife, lover and friend). They are also taught the importance of money and what is necessary to get it. One’s education gets more and more specialized into the career path they have chosen as they get older and progress through the educational system. When you finally emerge from the educational system you go out and look for a job, basically a role that you have been properly prepared to fill. If you don’t find a job well you are in trouble because you won’t be able to make it unless you have wealthy parents or a partner to support you. This produces a constant underlying fear regarding survival, if we cease to find what we think we need “out there” our very survival is threatened. This is especially exaggerated in tough economic times like these.

This way of life urgently needs to change and that is exactly what I’m seeing because people are stopping and questioning whether all this struggle, pain and fear are really necessary. They are asking the question, is there another way, can I be prosperous and successful without sacrificing my truth and passion? These questions open up the possibility for change and create cracks in the established paradigm. I encourage everyone I work with to question their beliefs on work and prosperity and look at where those beliefs came from and whether they are serving and ultimately necessary.

What if there was another way? What if we could shed the concept of work and the process of struggling to survive? What if we no longer needed to participate in the limiting roles that society prescribes for us, not needing them any longer to define our identity? That is all quite possible and what many people are waking up to right now. To do this requires a bold step, it requires courage and it requires faith. It involves turning your perspective around 180 degrees and starting from within.

Do you experience yourself as a whole complete person just as you are? If not this is where lack begins, if you are incomplete within, you will always be struggling to find what you need “out there”. However if you sit down right now and allow yourself to be fully present you may just find that in this moment there is a sense of completeness right under the surface. This completeness is life itself, your deepest self, your true nature and it is lacking nothing because it contains limitless potential.

Through a regular practice of getting in touch with this deeper part of yourself whether through meditation or some other means you can create an entirely different life. A life that begins right now lacking nothing where there is no need for struggle. From this place passion flows freely and we can get in touch with what we are here to do, our life’s work or purpose. There is nothing to figure out or be confused about because at this level there is clarity if we can still the noisy mind and allow that clarity to emerge. Living from this place requires faith however because this clarity only exists in the moment and cannot be used to create security in the future. Security comes from following this inner clarity right now and trusting that if we continue to do that everything will be just as it needs to be. Living from this place also requires great courage and commitment because following our heart requires us to look at our conditioned beliefs and patterns of lack and face the fear and pain of challenging them.

When we begin to live from the heart life becomes less about struggle and more about flow. Less about needing to know the future and more about fully knowing and engaging right now. Pursuing our passion allows us to be fulfilled and living in a way that is congruent at all levels and so we are as effective and successful as we can possibility be putting our natural inclinations and talents to full use. This is an awakened life and it is our birthright, we just need to take that bold step and follow our heart path.

I’ve been working a lot with trying to balance the perceived need for money with what I really want to create in my life. In working with this I’m seeing how the process of creating has been reversed at least relative to the way I am choosing to do it now. The way I would do it before would be to focus on money first. I would need to make money usually by getting a job or doing some kind of work. The amount of money I was able to make which was always limited would then determine what resources I had access to which would also be limited. I’m seeing more clearly now the way this process is dysfunctional why it has involved struggle and lack.

The problem is characterized by the focus on money as the source or the necessary requirement for resources. Money was never what I really wanted, what I want is what I can buy with money – food, shelter, clothing, travel, entertainment, teaching etc. Money is in many ways symbolic of the way of lack and struggle because it is inherently limited and in limited supply. Money takes the limitless abundance of the universe and condenses it into a limited controlled form. Money has the energy of struggle and lack associated with it. So by focusing on it primarily in order to acquire the other things in our life we are immediately engaging the process of lack and limitation.

The way I am working on creating now feels much more powerful, more limitless and more natural (and of course more edgy). This approach does not negate the need for money but it puts it into a more appropriate place in the creative process, as one of many means to acquire what we need. Instead of focusing on money first we instead focus directly on what we actually want. If our desire for something is genuine and not just an ego desire we will be able to access joy and enthusiasm when working on creating it. This joy and enthusiasm is the power of creation itself. Putting money first often cuts us off from that creative power because what we want is now filtered through the limitation of money.

For me the creative process first starts by grounding myself in the present moment, the now, which is where creativity emerges from and where my power and clarity lie. In order to engage the now however first requires surrender and acceptance of what is. If I don’t like whats happening right now or the way I feel right now there is no way I can be present. I must first accept and be ok with things as they are. Then in the stillness of the now I can be in touch with what I want to create and why and can feel joy in imagining it. From that still joyous place I can then take action to bring my vision into manifested form while all the while remembering to let go and not be attached to an outcome because that also limits the creative process, the universe needs enough space to determine how best something can be brought into form. In the now I can also feel that I am whole and complete as I am so I don’t need to seek or chase after what I want, I can truly create it from that place of wholeness.

I find that the symbol of a tree particularly speaks to me. By surrendering to what is and becoming present I cultivate the fertile soil in which to plant the seed of my vision which will grow into the many branches of manifested forms in my life. I nurture the seed with acceptance and feeling the reality of what I’m creating and bring it into form through joyous effort that emerges out of stillness. The tree grows and the branches become the many forms of my creative vision each of which must be nurtured and cared for with presence and joyous effort. Another example for me is from Yoga practice where we practice a posture called tree pose. In tree pose you start by standing on two feet and firmly grounding yourself, then you shift your weight to one foot and raise the other one placing it up against your thigh while bringing your hands together at your heart. To maintain balance you must stay grounded and to stay grounded you need to be fully present. From that grounded present place you can then extend your arms as branches above and out. If you lose your grounding the pose comes apart much like life.

I believe that a key part of the transformative process we are undergoing as a collective involves taking back our creative power and fully realizing that lack and limitation are not the natural state. They are instead created by conditioning, beliefs and patterns of behavior which we have the power to illuminate, let go of and replace with healthier more whole ways of being. In so doing we become manifestations of a new society which has a ripple effect on the greater field and helps usher in a real paradigm shift. From where I stand we are on the verge of something incredibly remarkable and powerful………

Now that I have left my job and chosen to pursue my heart path I am yet again directly up against the edge. One thing I always find at this edge is the fear of not being able to survive. Letting go of the world of career and work immediately brings up the fear that without that paycheck I won’t be able to survive, to eat to have shelter and clothing etc. Its ironic that making a choice to follow the heart leads to a question of survival but it shows how deeply ingrained the beliefs about security and material needs are in our society. In the old paradigm, following the heart and living in the moment is not taught to be a way to responsibly and effectively live life. Instead we are taught that we must sacrifice, struggle and make money if we want to have what we need and be ok in life, often at the expense of the heart and perhaps even our health and relationships.

If one chooses to step out of this crazy and dysfunctional perspective the first thing to be dealt with are the underlying beliefs from years of conditioning into this way of relating to livelihood. For me this has involved fear, well no lets say terror, that I will not make it that I will not survive. In uncovering these beliefs and fears it has also illuminated the degree to which the old paradigm projects well being and survival externally. We need to struggle to “find” a job, “make” money and “pursue” happiness, as if they are things we need from out there to be ok. This viewpoint is firmly fixed in materialism and completely discounts the idea that we create our reality, that external reality is a reflection of what we think, believe and feel inside. Trust in the heart, in the universe and abundance is sorely lacking. But that’s to be expected because who but a fortunate few are taught from childhood to openly feel life, to live in the present, to follow their intuition and believe in their creative power. For the rest of us its a practice of illuminating and dissolving these conditioned beliefs, feeling and releasing the emotional trauma we carry from living in lack and separation and learning to trust ourselves again and actively use our creative power not just in accepted artistic realms but in creatively dreaming up our lives as a whole. Life itself becomes the canvass.

I find that I’m compelled from a deep place to let these old ways go and realize a new way of living and being. Every time I try to do things the old way and work at an incongruent job so I can “make it” I find frustration, dissatisfaction and suffering. Living in a new way for me involves living in the moment and trusting in the universe. It involves being grateful for what I have and consciously putting my attention onto what I wish to create while seeing, believing and feeling its reality right now. It involves acceptance and surrender to what is while allowing space to feel painful emotions but not grasping onto them so they can flow and dissolve. This is not an easy practice but an essential one and one that I see almost everyone around me working on in their own way. I have a deep knowing that each of us is complete and has all the power we need to create everything necessary to live a joyous fulfilled life if we can only transcend the old patterns. Its a work in progress and a wonderful if sometimes terrifying adventure. I not only want this for myself but for everyone because its painful to see people sacrificing their hearts, the pain underneath their expressions touches my heart.

What does washing the dishes have to do with creating what I want in my life and being happy? Well everything it seems. I’ve embraced the concept of abundance for some time now believing that we have the power to create what we choose to create in our lives because we live in an abundant universe from which we are not separate and it is through the power of our attention and intention that we can transform abundance into form. However sometimes it seems so damned elusive. I believe it and on some deep level I know it but it seems like a very different thing to actually put it into practice on a daily basis to create the resources I need to survive and flourish without sacrificing my truth and my path, well actually without sacrificing my heart. It has been a painful process of trial and error.

Lately I’ve come to realize more just how simple this whole thing really is. The question keeps coming to mind of if I don’t feel like I can access abundance what is it that is cutting me off from it? The answer for me seems to be disconnection from the present moment and addiction to compulsive thinking. I noticed that when I am feeling fearful, limited, unsuccessful or just plain confused and crazy I am always lost in my head and not in touch with the present. I have been swept away by a train of thoughts and feelings which are a part of a habitual pattern of lack and fear and come up consistently and powerfully.

The simple practice of realizing that I am lost in my head and then coming back to the present almost always dispels the fear and anxiety and negative thoughts and emotions provided I leave space to acknowledge and feel them without judgment. What I find when I become present is peace, simplicity, clarity and power. The only thing is there is a powerful habitual pattern of not being present, being addicted to compulsive thinking and worrying so it becomes a constant practice of mindfulness. In Zen this is known as doing one thing at a time with our whole body and mind. When you do the dishes just do the dishes rather than planning your entire day at the same time and not giving much attention to the action you are in the middle of.

This seems a bit ridiculous at first because why would you want to give all your attention to something so mundane as doing the dishes? The answer is because that is what is happening right now and right now is where your power is, where life is. Doing the dishes is only mundane and trivial from an ego centered point of view, its just an everyday task, a means to an end. But from the perspective of complete presence it is a manifestation of life, of consciousness in action and it is beautiful. From this perspective everything is sacred and filled with wonder and power, if we just pay attention. In the moment there is clarity, the problem we can figure out becomes clear in stillness and we find we already knew the solution.

This translates into a very simple yet powerful practice of mindfulness, just paying attention to right now. Its amazing that when you really do that the problems of life begin to dissolve. Its not that there is no suffering and difficulty, there is, but it just isn’t so much of a problem anymore and how to address it is clear. To become present however requires that we surrender to our experience right now because if we are resisting what is we cannot become fully present. The resistance creates separation and we are cut off from our power and left in a painful state of confusion. With surrender we let go of resistance to what is and become present and ironically then we can see clearly how to change things if they need changing and its within our power. But whether we can change an external situation or not we can always find a state of peace inside by accepting what is and having an open full and harmonious relationship with right now…….

What I didn’t realize is the process of change and growth that I have undertaken would not allow me to grasp on to these things in ways that I would in the past. In my job I created the perfect environment in which to do computer work. A worldwide Buddhist organization devoted to teaching and charitable work with an office that is as peaceful and conscious as I’ve ever experienced. A wonderful boss who seems to actually care about my happiness and well being, not something I’ve ever experienced in the workplace before. But this perfect environment essentially highlighted what I’ve been having so much trouble accepting for so long. I don’t feel called to do technology work anymore. No matter how much I try I simply cannot find any passion or interest for it. This is quite frustrating because I am very good at it and have more than 10 years of experience so it seems like the ideal way to make money and offer service. But its not to be anymore, this job has helped me see that, if I can’t do this work here then I can’t do it anywhere. So time to let go and face the edge again, if not technology work then I don’t know how I will pay the bills, its the unknown. Nothing to do but trust.

My living situation is similar in that I thought, great I’ve got a cool stable place for six months and then I’ll move on to something else. But its been anything but stable, with two roommates moving out in the first 2 months, utter chaos. Now come to find out that the landlords want us to pay the rent on any unrented rooms, so much for having a budget or knowing what to expect financially. Not sure how this will be resolved yet but there certainly seems to be no stability to be found here.

More than these things I’ve felt lately like I’m in conflict with everyone and everything. Like its an unending onslaught of problems, difficulties and interpersonal issues. I know I’m creating this buts its been absolutely exhausting. In group the other night it became clear that part of it at least is that I am feeling a great deal and not really allowing the emotion to flow. Feeling a lot around all the change and chaos, feeling a lot around my friend Sheleigh moving away to Arizona, feeling a lot about facing my fears of creating right livelihood, dealing with more change and attachment with my friend Kara, facing my fears and desires around relationship and on and on. There is a lot to feel but I’m still working on letting it flow, well really with letting everything in my life flow without grasping on so tightly. It hurts. Its terrifying. Its sad. And its also wonderful, freeing and filled with joy.

My practice has deepened which I know often brings more unconscious processes and feelings to the surface. It can cause a resurfacing of old patterns allowing them to be illuminated, felt and released yet again, another layer of the onion to peel away. Its a pretty intense time right now and I sometimes wonder if I will make it through but then again I know I will. My old Zen teacher Diado Roshi says that the process involves facing the edge and pushing it then inevitably pulling back into old forms of imagined safety, old patterns and then seeing that they don’t work and again facing and pushing the edge. A flow, no problem if you don’t try to hold on. Let go……..always.

In choosing to take responsibility for my experience and create the reality that I desire I’ve studied quite a bit of material on manifestation and how our external world reflects our internal experience. I fully believe that I have created everything that I experience in my life so its been a process of trying to understand how I’ve done it and with that understanding be able to do it more consciously. Needless to say its been a frustrating process at times and at other times quite incredible. From this point of view our external world is a reflection of what we think, imagine, feel and believe. If we want a mirror of the beliefs and thought patterns we have held in the past we need only look at our life as it is right now. If we don’t like what we see we can change it by illuminating the inner processes that created what we don’t want and put our energy into imagining and embodying what we do want to see in our outer world.

So how do we take something we wish to create from an idea into a physical reality? For me it starts with knowing what I want to create and making an intention out of it. This is the first step that makes the declaration to the universe that I’m engaging in an act of creation and this is what I want to create whether it be a relationship, money, a new computer, health, peace or whatever. From here I begin to create a vision, a mental picture of just what my creation looks like with as many details as possible including what it looks like visually, what it sounds like, smells like, feels like etc. This may just be happening in the mind but if external experience reflects internal as I believe then we are engaging in a process of giving external reality something new to reflect. The imagination is powerful and with it we can experience almost any quality of what we want to create.

The mental image or vision is not enough however because a vision alone lacks the power to create a physical form. This is where it can get challenging due to our habitual patterns, fears and doubts. What we need to do is infuse our vision with emotional energy. We take all the details we imagined when we created our image and feel that our creation is already manifested, that it is here now, its already complete. This would definitely feel a certain way. If I wanted to create a relationship it would involve a lot of feeling to actually have that relationship, to be in it and experiencing it. We have the power to imagine this. This is the process of fully stepping into our vision and making it a reality for us. If it is a reality at all levels inside then our external experience will have to reflect that. We focus on the end result and feel that it is completely real and present in our life now. We don’t focus on how it will come to pass, we focus on it as already present. This allows us to be open to the unlimited channels that something can come to us through rather than limiting it to just the ones we know or can imagine. The process of creation has the potential to be infinite if we allow it to be. If I can only imagine creating money through a job then my experience will reflect that by only bringing money into my life through a job rather than it being open to infinite sources of wealth that I may not be able to imagine at the moment.

The challenge here is often that we don’t really believe in our vision at a deeper level and so aren’t able to fully feel and experience its presence. Therefore we aren’t able to infuse it with sufficient energy to complete the creative process. It can help here to illuminate the doubts and fears that get in the way and allow ourselves to look at them and release them. It can also be helpful to study the creative manifestation process in depth so we can build confidence in it and understand how it works. We can then find examples in our lives of how we have already manifested things, both things we wanted and did not want because we are creating our experience all the time its just usually unconscious and haphazard. The process works whether it is conscious or not and we can equally bring positive healthy forms into being as we can negative destructive forms. The motivation behind our vision and the quality of energy that we infuse it with will determine the quality and effect of the resulting creation.

If your intention is to create money in your life it is helpful to look into where that intention is coming from. What part of your consciousness the vision comes from also determines what quality of emotional energy will be needed to activate and empower it. If I build a vision of more money in my life to acquire possessions, buy a car as a status symbol and impress women the quality of energy that will be compatible with this vision is going to be a denser emotional energy such as greed or a visceral form of pleasure. If I envision money to help my friends, meet my basic needs and support charitable causes it will likely be compatible with a lighter vibration of energy such as joy and peace. There is no judgement in this in terms of what ones motivation should be or what is right to create and what is not. It is simply necessary to know where ones desires originate from and the emotional energy that is most appropriate to empower them. This is where people can feel that the process doesn’t work because the energy infusing the vision is insufficient or not compatible with it so it does not produce the desired result. The kind of emotional energy we need to manifest a vision is the same kind of emotional energy that is present when we experience that vision as a physical reality. The key in this process is the ability to step into the vision of what one wants to create fully and experience all elements of it in the present moment. When you embody your vision fully in this way your outer world must reflect it because it becomes what you are projecting “out there”.

I also have the ability to do computer work on the side but my skills have aged on that quite a bit and my passion for doing it is gone, its doesn’t feel like what I should be doing right now. Nevertheless the bills need to be paid and I need money to move and pay rent and I must admit that I feel confused and lost in terms of how to make this all work consistently. When you are doing healing work and needing to depend on it to make a living it can really interfere with the energy and the ability to help people because its all too easy to start seeing clients as a commodity. It distracts from the true work and focus on the client and the healing that they need.

I’m so used to working at a job and getting a paycheck and this feels so foreign to me. However I know that somehow I must make it work or maybe just allow it to work because I cannot go backwards and live like I was before. Money and how to create enough of it now is my primary process, my main focus.

What is abundance? I’ve tended to think of creating abundance in my life but when I consider what I believe abundance to be I find that the idea of creating it is meaningless. To me abundance is emptiness as it is stated in Buddhism, it is the nature of the universe, it is the field of limitless potential of which we are all a part. It is the underlying energy of all creation and the stuff of which all things are made. From this point of view abundance does not need to be created, as it is everywhere limitlessly. We are however not generally taught to see things this way, we tend to be conditioned to think of the universe as mechanical, limited and of there being a lack of resources. So it seems that first of all we need to investigate what abundance really is and what beliefs and attitudes and emotions we possess that block us from realizing it. I consider spiritual practice a good approach to looking at this issue because it can provide techniques for accessing our inner nature directly and provide a viewpoint that illustrates our ability to create and determine our experience of ourselves and the world.

So in order to create what we want we need to really develop an experiential belief in abundance and the fact that we create our own experience. From here we are then needing to learn the process of how to tap into this all pervading field of limitless potential and energy in order to bring it into the particular forms we wish to create. So what needs to be created in our lives is not abundance itself but rather the forms we wish to manifest out of it and the process by which we do that.

The process that I currently use which is constantly being improved and changed is first working on my experience and understanding of abundance as pure potential mainly through my spiritual practice but also in study of creative manifestation.

From there I work to illuminate the obstacles to tapping into it such as the conditioning of lack and the emotional states of fear, anxiety and inadequacy that stem from it. This process involves changing my beliefs while allowing myself to feel and release the emotions around lack.

Then I state my intentions which reflect what I am working to create in as much detail as possible. My intentions focus on the end result that I seek to create not on how those results will be accomplished because the how is often where we get stuck and how we limit ourselves. There are limitless means to creating what we want and this is the part that we need to leave open so that our creative energy can flow into whatever means is most appropriate to bringing our intention into reality.

So I clearly focus on the end result I wish to create and visualize or imagine it being reality and seeing myself experiencing it. I also infuse my visualization and intentions with joy and positive energy to provide the necessary power to bring abundance into the particular form that I am working with.

This process of experiencing abundance as raw power, removing mental and emotional obstacles, stating clear intentions, visualizing results and bringing in the power of joy and positive energy is my process at this moment and it is a work in progress but its already produced some amazing results.

There is a lot of hype and media attention being given to the concept of manifestation these days especially following the success of The Secret. The question is how much of what’s out there regarding manifestation is new age fluff and how much of it contains real wisdom that can be put into practice? I’ve decided to become something of a living experiment lately to determine if techniques like the ones presented in The Secret can be successfully put into practice and its been quite an interesting journey so far.

I’ve set about creating a new life which sets aside old ways of thinking and adopts new approaches wherever possible. My process has been to maintain a set of intentions which describe what I wish to create in my life in all areas. In my view intentions are extremely powerful because they direct the creative process and allow energy to flow into a particular vision. Intentions need to be kept fluid however because they need space to change over time and its also important that they not turn into expectations. Expectations tend to be projections of ego control which fail to tap into the creative flow and the natural abundance that we all are a part of. Expectations also reflect a “need” for things to be a certain way or turn out a certain way which doesn’t leave room for the infinite possibilities and potential that naturally exists around every situation. The process of setting, maintaining and working with intentions creates a direction or flow in life that helps define a larger vision of purpose and meaning.

In addition to intentions, visualization and joy are key parts of the process for me. If my intention is to take a trip to New York City then it further develops the process if I can visualize myself in NYC and imagine what I would do there, what I would see and how I would feel being there. If my vision is also infused with joy it becomes even more powerful in my mind and begins to effect my belief. In my view belief is a primary factor in being able to creatively manifest things in ones life, you can only create what you believe in. If we want something but we don’t fully believe we can create it we will not be able to put the same quantity or quality of energy into it to bring it into reality. Working with intention, visualization and joy however slowly helps to create a belief that it is truly possible to bring our vision into reality because we become more and more familiar with it and feel more and more empowered by the positive energy we put into it.

Another key point is letting go of any expectation of how what you are creating will come to you. I’ve always gotten stuck in the how and thats usually prevented me from going forward with what I wish to create because if I can’t figure out how something will come to me then I would not believe that it could so would dismiss it as not possible. However if we focus on the how we limit the otherwise limitless potential of the universe. The number of ways that something can come to you are infinite. If we can stay focused on the end result of what we are creating and let go of the how it opens the door for it to come into our lives in whatever way is most beneficial for us and that can be truly remarkable. Letting go of this takes some trust but that trust can be built over time as we work with this process and start with visions that are more believable for where we are at the present time.

I’ve been working with this process for more than a year now and I’ve managed to use it to create some pretty amazing things in my life including a new incredibly fulfilling relationship, a new approach to work and career that involves doing what I’m really passionate about, new relationships with friends that nourish me in many ways as well as various material things. I’ve found the hardest thing to work with is money or finances and I think this is because how much negative conditioning we receive in this society in this area. When I work with finances I regularly encounter voices in my mind that seek to sabotage my creative process. These voices include questioning what I’m trying to create, questioning the idea of abundance in general and questioning my ability to successfully put it into practice. That these voices arise however is not problematic as long as I don’t identify with them and fall into their trap. If I instead illuminate them and challenge them I have an opportunity to release these doubts or integrate them into my experience if they carry a wise message.

The final step is being open to receiving what we create, allowing it into our lives and never giving up our vision as long as it remains true to our individual path. We remain open to receiving as long as we stay connected with our inner creativity and personal power and as long as we continue to work to dispel obstacles that we encounter along our creative path by illuminating and challenging them with wisdom. I do believe that we create our own reality and therefore why not create it consciously in a way that is in harmony with our inner truth and the interconnectedness of all life?