If you are feeling overwhelmed, either by outer stressors or inner ones, this month’s article is specifically meant for you! It will offer you ways to raise your spiritual vibration as well as suggest a practice of actively focusing on noticing positive experiences and opportunities in your life. This can be imperative especially when many of us are feeling some of the harsher realities that weather and the denser astrological aspects may be demanding of us.
All of us have no doubt been feeling the overgrown energy of a harsh winter and are looking forward to warmer weather. We are anticipating time to be outdoors, enjoy nature and feel the innate nature in ourselves with more ease and fluidity instead of slogging through cold fronts and polar vortex’s. The energy it takes to go back into yet another storm can really make us brace against ourselves and feel that what looks like forward movement is more of an unending circle back to the beginning—another cold front. With the decreased light, chilly moods can begin to replace more sunny hopeful and helpful responses.
If you read last month’s Jenny’s Gems article you know that it was about choosing not to pick up or take on things that were too heavy to easily sort out. I often tell my clients the same, not to over burden themselves with decisions that need to be felt through, instead of thought out. Because we live in a culture that expects us to always know what to do at every moment, we’re not sure we can put great amounts of pressure on ourselves and feel undue and unnecessary guilt and shame when we are processing choices. If we can learn instead to “sit down” or temporarily “set aside” the big stuff in our lives, usually the heart-felt soul spoken answers of our inner voice becomes self-evident.
When we are going through life-changes and have already committed to slowly processing the big stuff in our lives, it can help to raise the overall energy around our day to day activities as well. I had to do this in January. I hit a wall where it felt like some of the everyday stuff was outweighing my sense of well-being and daily joyfulness. I made an agreement with myself that no matter what I was dealing with in my everyday life, I was determined to only focus on noticing positive experiences for 21 days. At the time, I have to admit this felt somewhat reckless. However, even though my head was thinking overtime, I could still feel a flickering of light warming toward the potential to shift my energy to a place of new awareness, growth and rebirth.
Deepak Chopra has offered a brilliant awareness regarding the idea that it takes 21 days to change a habit. That is, it takes 21 days for our bio-chemistry to realign and set in motion a new awareness and con-current reality. This means that if we can replace our habitual thinking and lingering belief system with another possibility, we can see great changes in the areas of our life that need addressing. This can work for anyone. I know when I reach a dead-end and find myself battling in a closed loop, often what helps me recognize a new direction is to just say to myself in that very moment, “What if something else were true?” Or try this variation, “What if something else we’re possible?”
This seemingly small but very powerful shift is enough to jump start us out of our routine and can be accompanied by a lightening in our overall feeling about ourselves’. If we can replace this idea and use it as a mantra; that is, say it daily when we feel overwhelmed or stuck, it can help us to replace some of the more rigid ideas about who we are and what our life holds for us. The trick is to remember to do it. This takes practice, so if you are remembering to be gentle on yourself…know that changing a behavior takes time and that with patience and love this little side shift can become a daily practice.
Another idea that has really helped me in noticing positive experiences is something that was going around many social media sites for the past several months. This is to create a manifestation jar. The basic suggestion is to write on little slips of paper all the good things that come into your life. Put them in the jar and on New Year’s take them out and read them and start fresh for the next year.
I tweaked this idea so it would be more meaningful as a pro-active daily practice. I use this variation with many of my clients to help them escape limiting beliefs about themselves and their lives. I use it myself as well.
The brilliant documentary Happiness has shown that those who do not rely on outside sources of happiness, but instead, are able to go to a feel good place internally, are across the board the happiest throughout the course of their lives. This is because what they rely on for happiness is internal. That is, it cannot be given or taken away from them. If this idea seems foreign to you, I really suggest you watch this amazing movie and explore the idea with yourself further.
So with that said, instead of focusing on just monetary manifesting, which I call the “bigger, better, faster, more variety; consider focusing instead on good feelings and noticing positive experiences in your life. It is okay to have some of these things, but I definitely encourage you to stretch your definition of happiness and extend your vision and awareness to expressions of joy that are less tangible.
When you get your jar, what should it be like? Well, a jar that is beautiful and meaningful is going to capture your attention and interest more than the jar you ate your pickles out of last week. Imagine your jar…what color is the glass? What shape is the Jar? How big is the jar? Where is the most meaningful place in your house to put the jar? Where will it easily becomes a practice—a go-to every day?
I found our jar at the thrift store. I purchased it because it was over sized only to realize later that it had holes poked in the top of the metal lid. It was undoubtedly a child’s bug jar. My jar clearly held perhaps the first open door to a new world of observation and discovery for a child. I like to imagine that it was a lightening bug jar. In this rendition of the story, the jar also held the magic of everything a lightening bug evokes for a child. First the adventure and forbidden joy of staying up late, and of course being able to go out and lose yourself in catching dizzying swirls of light. Then placing the jar by the bedside in your room and seeing the light flicker on and off as you close one eye and then the other with the knowledge that the light will follow you into the dreamtime, tracking you there with the safety of its beacon. All of these details add to my experience of the jar and the wishes I see made manifest there. What is the story of your jar?
Next, what do you put in this manifestation jar? First, I encourage you to imagine what it will hold. See yourself putting all these little slips of brightly colored paper in your jar with the wishes that have already come true. So, what amazing things have shown up in your world? What are you grateful for?
Perhaps it is the peaceful morning breeze where everything feels magical for a moment. And right then an ark of birds crosses the sky at just the same moment you are feeling that indescribable opening and greater awareness of oneness and deep connection with everything. Perhaps feeling that deep gratitude will invite you to surrender to that precious moment a little further? Or perhaps it is the realization that your mother has agreed to take the kids each Tuesday evening so you can go to a yoga class uninterrupted and so you are feeling deep gratitude for the gift of that time. And perhaps, too, you are grateful for the ability to buy a new laptop…Here though try to make it about the feelings that accompany the purchase.
Does this purchase help you feel more committed to projects you have undertaken? Does it help you feel more adult by being able to provide for yourself? It is fine to make some of these slips of paper about the stuff you buy, but I encourage you, as much as you can, to stay and play in the place of non-tangibles while filling your jar.
Now, I have shared with you the active way to use your jar…You can continue to fill it with all these magical moments whenever they happen for you. Ours sits on the rail at the bottom of the landing so it is the first thing that catches my eye as I head downstairs in the morning. It is beautiful– filled with a bevy of green, red, blue, purple, yellow and orange papers. It evokes my curiosity and stirs an innate desire for beauty, color and magic in my life. However, the jar doesn’t just have this primary purpose. It has a secondary grounding purpose as well.
On those days when you are really feeling overwhelmed, or you are too stuck in your back story- notice your jar and all the amazing fulfilled wishes piling up in it. On those days where you are still playing those old tapes with more veracity and energy than they deserve, look over and remember all those amazing moments represented by each tiny square of folded colored paper. Those moments are as real as the energy that is taking your power and pulling you away from your center in this moment.
Choose instead to move into the shift energy the “What if something else we’re true” place we talked about at the beginning of the article. This choosing is like a muscle, it will become stronger if you flex it more often. Breathe deeply during this process and you should start to feel that weighted energy abate. Allow yourself to move into this powerful possible moment.
On those days where it is still not quiet; those really stuck days where it is all flooding in far too fast and you feel like you are losing your footing and getting lost in the sliding. Those days where all the shoulds and ought-tos feel like they are piling up around you and the colors seem dull and murky and even the most vibrant shade of orchid pales to a dull aged rose.
Well, especially on those days, dear friend, I invite you to slow down. Set down the expectations you have of yourself and pull your powerful wonderful already manifested wishes one by one out of your magic jar. Now, read each one back to yourself slowly. Allow yourself to move beyond the head knowledge that has manifested to the heart place that holds the deeper feelings of fulfillment inside. There now. That’s it. Allow this feeling to rise to the surface again in the present moment. Invite yourself to relive it. See it in the present, re-member it with all your senses. I encourage you to close your eyes while you do this with each wish you place in your jar.
Now, check in. Don’t you feel more centered, more at peace, more present, more magical than before? Finally, set down the last vestiges of your previous hour’s story, it does you no good. You have a brilliant brand new moment to set into motion. Fly!
March’s affirmation Gem is celestite. I invite you to pick up a piece of this heavenly stone to add to your collection of inner tools. This will help you raise your vibration in preparation to participate in this 21 day shift with the manifestation jar. In healing, celestite contains some unique properties that will aid you on your journey. Celestite can help you to replace pain with loving angelic light. It attracts luck, reveals truth, brings balance, and, within this stone, one can discover the softening energy of peace.
March’s affirmation Gem is:
I have abundant support from my guides and the heaven’s to notice the shift presently occurring within me. This shift will help me to deeply notice and savor all that is good and possible as I grow toward and easily embrace the powerful light and truth of my brightest life.
I encourage you to employ these practices and tools for 21 days diligently. I am certain you will be thoroughly delighted and deeply renewed by the shifts you experience, as well as what you are able to manifest. Please feel free to share aspects and highlights of your experience in the comments following this article. I can’t wait to read what you bring into clearer focus and through your gratitude, clarity and appreciation of beauty that you invite into the new and brightest places of your being.
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