The hardest part about getting what you want is admitting that, deep down inside, you don’t always know what you want at all. And I don’t mean you don’t know at the outset of your journey, like in your teens or twenties – I mean you don’t know at many points along the way, even when you’re well down your path, into your career, your relationship, etc.
Here’s an example: for much of my life, I thought I was a film director. This was not a casual perception on my part: I made movies nonstop with my friends as a kid, then later got accepted into a competitive performing arts program in high school, where I got to study video-making for half of every day. My movies won awards. My performing arts teacher pulled me into the hall one day and said I had more talent than any other student he’d seen in his 25-year career.
Later, as an adult, I produced, wrote, and directed two independent feature films. Both got distribution, good reviews, and award recognition.
Reading the above, it would seem like all arrows were always pointing toward me being a director, right? But hold on: the path had a lot of good signs and encouragement lining it, but also a great deal of struggle and torment. For example, my little indie films made no money. Also, to the deeper point: I hated directing. I mean the physical act of doing it. I couldn’t take the long days, the hot lights, the interpersonal dramas with the cast and crew, the unbelievable stress of having to capture every shot we’d planned. It gave me no joy. Yes, I LOVED the outcome: the finished film. But the path there always consisted of me bitching and complaining.
That’s because I didn’t know what I wanted.
It seemed like I knew – it really, really did. Still, to this day, I love movies and directors, and even plan on directing more films! However, and importantly, it’s an uphill battle, a struggle – at times a seemingly impossible one.
I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t that what life is like for everyone?
Of course. Life contains struggle and suffering for everyone. But not when it comes to the abundance you’re meant to manifest.
We are made of vibration. We come into this lifetime encoded with specific karmic programming, also known as destiny. In the meantime, though, we have free will. Our destiny will do its best to come to us, but for a myriad of reasons, it might not reach us. The main thing that’ll stand in its way?
US!
We get ideas in our heads. We dream up whole other plans and paths. We fight and strain and force and insist upon those other paths opening up. But somehow they don’t. Everything remains so hard. The path goes dark and cold. We get so lost and confused, as we were so certain at the beginning that we’d found the way.
I was so sad, seeing myself get older and finding myself turning away from directing. But there was very little heat there. Sometimes I’d be hired to direct a pilot or a trailer, but in general, people sought me out as a writer; that’s how I made my living. And it was far more effortless for me than directing: no costly overhead, no hot lights, fewer interpersonal dramas and long days.
The message here is not that life should be easy. The message is that when you’re on the right path, it should not be filled with boulders.
Quite the contrary, on the right path, you encounter a string of openings. Opportunities lead to more opportunities. You receive endless, exponentially compounding affirmation. You’ll even find that mentors and clients and business partners show up, doing everything they can to help you. It’ll just make sense. And it’s not only professional. For example, if you’ve found your dream home, you’ll get signs of affirmation that you’re in the right place: the neighbor will look and talk like your grandma. Or the lawn will smell just like the one from summer camp. Or if you’ve found your ideal life partner, it’ll FLOW. That person will bring over takeout, having selected just the food you craved that day. You’ll get cold feet and take a break, only to get a call that the person’s had a crisis (a real one, not a staged one!), and suddenly requires your support.
So now we have a sense of when we’re in alignment with our destiny. The question is, How do we achieve alignment?
The answer’s simple: abundance favors a clear mind.
Again, I don’t just mean monetary abundance. Not everybody incarnates to get rich; were that the case, many more people would be. But everybody does incarnate to have riches; they’re what get us through life’s inevitable struggles. They might be our loved ones, or friends, or talents, or even “luck” (quotes used because I believe our personal pie charts of joy and suffering are more or less worked out before we get here). And the best way to discover them, to draw them in, is to keep our minds as clear and clean as possible.
Meditate. Do it for five minutes a day, at least. It’ll be difficult at first, as your mind will simply want to chatter and dive and jab and freak you out. But the meditation muscle grows quickly. Don’t strain. Make it fun.
Seek the silence underneath your daily thoughts.
Then sit in that silence for as long as you are comfortable there.
This is magic.
The more you do it, the more you become an energetic lightning rod for abundance. The reason is, our thoughts tend to lower our vibration. They crowd out our consciousness, constricting and narrowing all that we can be aware of and receive. People tend to worship the mind, but the truth is (and I say this as a writer, one who makes much use of his mind) that the mind knows almost nothing. The quieter it is, the wiser you are. Trust in this. Keep it clean. All your thoughts and ideas and epiphanies and breakthroughs and revelations are nothing compared to the gentle, eternal wisdom of your non-thinking state.
And as a massive bonus, that non-thinking state also helps you to draw in abundance.
As you clean up your interior world, you’ll come to find that your exterior world is characterized by more ease, fluidity, and clarity. The right people suddenly step into your path. The wrong people suddenly become so shrill and difficult that you (finally) have no choice but to leave them behind. Day by day, you find yourself navigating with enhanced wisdom and joy. It’s not perfect (life never is), but it’s truer to who you are.
Who you came in as. Who you’ve always been meant to be.
I was mourning my filmmaking career so hard. I love film so much. Why would this love – this mad and crazy love – be imprinted in my being if I wasn’t meant to do anything with it?? It drove me crazy. But, not wanting to feel (so) crazy anymore, I started meditating.
Opportunities came to me. It flowed like water. New producers. New co-writers. New screenplay jobs. At a higher level than I’d ever been used to before. It was insane, exciting. I wasn’t slated to direct in all cases, but in some cases I was. And I think the directing piece healed a bit because my vibration was cleaner; I was less anxious, and healthier, and therefore more up to the task. More prominently, however, the writing theme persisted. I wasn’t pushing, wasn’t forcing, wasn’t even pursuing that particular path.
I just cleared my mind, each day, and saw it open up before me.
Day by day, it’s a dance. If I’m stressed or anxious, my mind will go dark, and my relationships will seem more charged with negativity. It’s on me, though – not on anyone else. I have to go inside and heal. Have to find the ground. Settle. Seek the silence.
Seek the wisdom.
And the joy.
The more we can exist in this state, the more abundance simply finds us. For abundance is made of high vibrations. And when we’re made of high vibrations, too, we draw in abundance like soft soil drawing in the rain.
