What he said.....

Just the other day I wrote about overlays, that the remedy to fear, anxiety, and deficiency is not getting rid of fear, anxiety and deficiency. It is not overlaying fear, anxiety and deficiency with a positive mental attitude or filling our deficiency with what we see as lacking. Rather, the remedy to fear, anxiety, and deficiency is, simply, trust. ...when we manifest for certain results or try to think our way to happiness or prosperity or whatever it is we think we lack, what is our starting point? The starting point is narrowness and constriction, seeing the lack, the deficiency, the problem, what we don't have but we want or need (or think we want or need). Instead of coming from a holistic place, it instead creates a wide gap between the problem (what I perceive I want/need/don't have but hope to) and what I think the solution should be. The solution feeds from the problem, so we never escape from having the problem as our focus and starting point! ...Both a problem-focus and a solution-focus have the exact same starting point, and no amount of time spent on focusing on the solution will ever completely neutralize the stemming issue of lack/limitation/what I don't have. Even a solution focus is driven by the problem which led us to the solution! And, perhaps worse, a solution focus leads to little ego thinking we have the complete solution in our own doing whether by mental yoga or other ways to manipulate our situation.

This morning I picked up a tiny book and read this, written nearly a quarter of a century ago, by an author I have never before read until this morning. He wrote,  

We start with a vague idea; we back that with reasoning to confirm the idea to ourselves. Then we lace it with emotion, investing ourselves in it. The we go through a ludicrous emotional power play... in an attempt to get what we want. When circumstances call our bluff, we're devastated.  If the emotional content you lace into an idea is sustained over a period of time, and if your desire is continually denied, it can lead to yearning.  ...in leaning emotionally toward your dreams, you actually push them away. The emotion of your desire creates a gap... because yearning is a powerful emotion that categorically states, 'I do not have the thing I yearn for,' [thereby] constantly affirming that you haven't got what you want.

Yes! So my idea is not a new one, and there seems to be some truth to the matter. How could all those people who push "positive affirmations" and "manifesting prosperity/other things you want" have been so wrong? Because in yearning, we become self-indulgent. And, yearning can become obsessive. As this author I've been reading this morning writes, "Obsession is a serious disease of the ego."

The remedy to this, as I wrote in my Tammuz blog, is trust. Trust that what you truly need will find its way to you as you live one day at a time by taking action, and finding ways to be of service to others. Give of yourself. Think of others.

When we get out of the whirling, swirling pot of self-indulgence and what-I-want/need, always looking through the eyes of what is lacking in my life and wrong with everyone else, we come face to face with the mirror. When we really see ourselves, we can strip away the self-indulgence, then turn and begin to give to others.

If we aren't happy, we find that giving away smiles to others will increase our own happiness. But we do not do it to increase our happiness; we do it to increase others' happiness, to increase happiness in the world.

If we think of ourselves as poor (be it in money, resources, time, or other ways), we look for ways to be giving and generous, if not in money, then in thoughtfulness and kindness and presence.

If we think of ourselves as inadequate or less than, we can never fill that deep hole inside by external means. That hole inside is a valley. The valley is a comfort zone, because it's easy to stay in the valley, the deficiency, the lack. The valley is based on lack and fear. We can only fill up the valleys by learning to live in trust, realizing that there is no lack, there is no inadequacy, there is nothing to fear, we learn to get out of our own way.