High on a Windy Hill
Coming up on the month-end my thoughts turn to the discrepancies between the rent and how much money I have in the bank. Coincidentally [oh yeah] I just read a nice piece by Equinox on abundance and self-worth. Equinox suggests that feelings of lack could have two sources.
One is the belief that there is not enough for everyone. This belief is easily disproved by simply looking around at the overwhelming abundance exhibited by the planet and universe we call home. [It is interesting to observe that while there are definite limits to our willingness to experience pain, fear and lack -- we typically pass out or ‘check out’ when we’ve had enough of these things -- there are no known limits to our capacity for pleasure, joy and love.]
The other limiting belief about abundance is that we, particularly, are not worthy of our share. On mature reflection, this starts to look a tiny bit like arrogance. We, among all humans, possess such unique qualities of unworthiness that we dare not allow ourselves to participate in the natural abundance that we see others enjoying. Here is Equinox on cultivating self-worth…
"EQ: ...The first step that we would suggest would be to begin to give thyself gifts. Whether these are gifts of material things is irrelevant. Give thyself a gift. Perhaps that gift is a whole day that is yours, that no one else can take away from thee. It doesn't matter if you are called into work, it doesn't matter if your mother wants thee or your children are needing thee, what matters is this is thy day and thee deserve it because thee are alive and a good person. Then thee want to begin to look at thy value. It is an exercise of beginning to view thyself from the eyes of the people that love thee. Dost thou understand this concept? …
"Truly stepping out and saying, "Why does this person love me? What is lovable about me?" Ask them! And begin to accept it. It will be hard work and as time goes on and thee begin to accept more and more gifts either from thyself or from others, then the flow stops being dammed and it begins to come. Dost thou understand?"
Apart from all the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’, and the ‘hard work’ stuff, this sounds pretty reasonable. All this gift giving is for the medium term though! The month-end is only days away so I decided to get proactive and do a double whammy on the issue. I would use EFT and also use an intriguing practice I ran across recently from Elias called ‘Inner Landscapes’.
I gave myself a nice round of EFT using the set-up phrase ‘Even though I feel I am not worthy of abundance, I deeply and completely accept myself.’ This seemed to work well and by the time I was tapping my fingers in the second round, I was more than slightly amused at the idea of ‘poor little me’ not deserving my natural abundance.
However, it got really fun when I added Elias’ technique! The point in this exercise is to ‘step sideways’ into the periphery of our awareness and visualize the issue as an ‘inner landscape’. [Elias suggests intoning our essence name as a good way to signal this expansion into our periphery.]
Using this technique we project our awareness into the issue, somewhat like the StarTrek crew firing a probe ‘off the port bow’ to explore some interesting new phenomena. And just like on the Enterprise, we may view the imagery being generated by our probe and begin to understand the ecology and dynamics of this inner landscape. And remember, every detail is an abstract expression of some quality of the issue, so it pays us to look around and start putting things together for ourselves.
Next we allow ourselves to gently make changes to the scene – keeping in mind our responsibility to accept and nurture every aspect of ourselves and ATI. We do not change things willy-nilly. [These inner landscapes are as real, and as abstract, as official reality.] Our earlier explorations yielded impressions and insights. These are followed naturally by impulses. It is these impulses that form the basis for the changes we make to our inner landscape.
The landscape I discovered when I used this technique was ‘high on a windy hill’. I was overlooking a very steep cliff, looking down to the ocean surf pounding on the beach far below. The heights were lonely and deserted – just long grass blowing in the wind and vast expanses of grey sea and sky.
I explored the scene without judgment or thought, just observing the details. There were some people way down on the beach but you could tell they never came up here. Too high, too windy. Why bother? Not even sheep grazed this high so the grass was long and thick.
Knowing blockage of some kind is usually the issue, I wondered if I should build a path up from the beach. Try to get some activity up here. This felt too much like thinking and analysis and was not helping the energy. The beach was a very long way down a very steep cliff, and nobody in their right mind would climb up here.
Then it occurred to me that since this was such a barren, isolated place, it was a good place to hide things. Nobody would ever discover your secrets here! Sure enough, as I looked around I noticed a cave hidden in the rocks. It was great to discover a big casket full of gold and treasure and jewels, but what caught my eye was a large statue of a man. His hands were stretched outwards in a gesture of welcoming and acceptance. Very cool image.
Without a moments thought, I put the statue on the highest point overlooking the beach and the ocean. It looked amazing! This guy in a long robe, face raised, holding out his arms. I could see the people on the beach noticing. They were looking up and pointing. Looking back I noticed something that surprised me - with sudden tears in my eyes - the face on the statue was mine!
Saturday, August 26, 2006