What Really Blocks the Good Stuff From You and Your Life?

Maybe you’ve been on the spirituality/metaphysical/Law of Attraction path for quite a while, yet don’t feel as in the flow as you’d like to or that it’s easy to get in the flow, no matter what you know. What’s up with that?

You may or may not like what this is really about, but until you take hold of it to help you move forward, you’ll likely stay frustrated in one or more areas of your life. Ernest Holmes got right to it when he wrote, “We are One with the Universe, and that Spirit flows through us at the level of our recognition and embodiment of it…. Spirit expresses itself through each individual at the level of his [or her] consciousness.”

Okay, so we have to face the truth that this is akin to water seeking and meeting its own level, which means the energy of what’s going on to us, for us, and through us meets our own consciousness level. And the only place energy and consciousness can increase is within us, by choice, intention, and commitment. So what blocks this from happening easily for us?

Ernest Holmes (again) said “The Spirit can do for us only what IT can do through us. Unless we are able to provide the consciousness, IT cannot make the gift.” Catherine Ponder said it this way: “God can only do for you what He can first do through your mental attitudes.” This leads us to look at our habit of thought, or said another way, our mental/emotional attitudes.

What happens when things are not going well for you? Your ego-aspect runs amok, for one, whether it’s about the state of your health, finances, business, job, relationships, and so on. It resists what’s happening, probably in a big way. Maybe it blames others, who may have been triggers, but it doesn’t want to take any responsibility, or take as much as it might, for perpetuating your mental/emotional discomfort. Maybe it expresses envy about others who aren’t having the same experiences (and ignores other experiences they may be having). Maybe it goes into self-pity and stays there. Maybe it starts talking in statements (thoughts) that oppose (are opposite of) your good and won’t shut up.

I just learned about a book and method called The Emotion Code by Dr. Bradley Nelson, which I’ll read soon. You can look up his videos on YouTube (especially check out the one called “Emotion Code example” that runs almost 12 minutes). He points out that some of what blocks us may not even be ours. Wouldn’t that please the ego?! But, it could be true. It’s now ever more widely believed that we inherit more than just physical aspects through our DNA, we inherit non-physical ones, as well, such as beliefs. That sense of lack or any prevalent negativity you feel and haven’t been able to shake that you wear like a wool overcoat, for any area in life, may not be yours. You could be living your life according to one or more patterns that aren’t yours and can be easily released.

But, there are your own patterns to consider, as well. What happens when you hold onto resentment, fear, un-forgiveness, criticism, or any negative emotional attachment to any part of your past (and the past can be five minutes ago)? You create one or more blocks that cause you to unwillingly, unknowingly reject YOUR good that Source is eager to deliver to you, whether that’s health, finances, or whatever area of life you feel blocked in. Maybe you believe it’s more spiritual to give than receive, rather than realize it’s a loop of energy, so you block receiving. Any or all of these, when practiced, are why you ask and ask—maybe plead and plead, yet “it” doesn’t happen the way you desire and which your spiritual self knows it’s designed to and is meant to.

Neale Donald Walsch said that blocks we bump into are requests for our attention on unfinished business. More often than not, that unfinished business is about our mental/emotional attitude (but it could also be an emotion code). We’ve got crud in our stream that blocks the flow of our energy and our good, blocks our ability to be in flow and receive our good. So we keep asking and asking Source for what we need or desire, and Source patiently waits for us to clear the way for its delivery. Sometimes, we relax enough for some of our good to squeeze through to us. Maybe we recognize this for the demonstration of a mental/emotional attitude it is, or maybe we don’t.

Forgive yourself for not knowing better, as well as for anything you’ve been rejecting about yourself. Release others from your rejection of them, because like you, they picked up patterns that weren’t theirs, as well as sometimes just didn’t have a bleeping clue about what they were doing to themselves, much less to others, just as we all sometimes experience. Release the crud that your ego finds so tantalizing to dwell on and in. Swap those thoughts, every time they surface, with better thoughts, especially with the thought that you, from now on, choose to learn what you can, and will keep only the good from everything. Choose to now accept the possibility of what’s new and good. As Catherine Ponder also said, “Although we cannot force good into our life, we can invite it by dwelling on it.” Our good, our success, our relationship with Source are not usually what many dwell on most of the time.

When we dwell on and in opposing thoughts to our good, we create experiences that the ego takes as rejection from outside of us, when in fact it is we who are doing the rejecting of something, from a subconscious level. And what we reject for ourselves is actually something we reject about ourselves, because of patterns of beliefs we carry that need to be shed or shifted. Source would NEVER and will never reject us. So, it is us doing the rejecting. That’s worth looking into.

We also have to let go of the idea that our good can come to us from only one source or only a few sources. Source’s resources are INFINITE and always available to us, according to what is appropriate for us, which is something our spiritual self is directly involved in determining, not Source. As far as Source is concerned, if we ask and have the consciousness to allow and receive it, it’s ours. But we do have an inner coach (our Spirit) calling the game for our particular experience and evolution. Only when our ego-aspect works in opposition to our own inner spiritual coach do we hit roadblocks and detours. And even if some of our experiences are not what our ego-aspect would ever sign up for, our relationship with our inner spirit self allows us to say, “Show me.” And we can glean from our experiences that which will help us evolve in the way we came here to do, in each moment.

Another gem from Catherine Ponder about this is, “You do not so much attract what you want as what you are—according to your secret thoughts.” Any negative secret thoughts come from that chatterbox we call the ego-aspect. It gnaws on our mental and emotional attitudes the way beavers gnaw on trees. And it’s just as effective at damming (and damning) the flow as the dams beavers build. From Emma Curtis Hopkins, we get these wise words: “The world in which we live is the exact record of our thoughts. If we do not like the world we live in, then we do not like our thoughts.” This can be both a discomforting and comforting realization. But it also inspires us to monitor and shift our thoughts in order to shift our experiences.

I’m not just “whistling Dixie” about this topic: I’ve bumped up against it in a big way (more than a few times—if I had a dollar for every time…). As an image posted on a social site said, “If you’re still looking for that one person who will change your life, take a look in the mirror.” I had to look at how much of what I’ve learned and know is floating on the surface of my consciousness, meaning what I’ve yet to integrate as a mental attitude or way of being versus what I have integrated. And like me, maybe you’re doing this as well, not realizing that you aren’t, at times, actually practicing what you know the Truth to be (and instead are letting ego drive your bus); that knowing the Truth is never enough to get you where you want to go—you have to live the Truth to make the journey you truly desire to make.

I can say that this, as Ponder wrote, has been my (repeated) experience: “…when we dissolve the barriers of repellent thought and substitute a receptive attitude of mind, good things come to us in unexpected and wonderful ways, and sometimes with a promptness that is astonishing.” Now, I just have to practice remembering this and living it more than I sometimes do, and especially when I’ve allowed my ego-aspect to get my mental and emotional knickers in a knot.

Why don’t we practice what we know as we should or could? It’s because we often practice opposing thoughts yet are unaware of this because of the emotions we feel and are justified to feel, but get stuck there. We may practice patterns that may or may not be ours. What also blocks us is if we have somehow become locked into the negativity of others. In the Bible, there’s the story of Jesus going to the home where the daughter had died. When he got there, all the mourners told him there was nothing he could do about it. He knew differently, but he also knew something else; and this knowledge caused him to kick everyone out so he could do what he knew he could. It’s not always easy to put an end to or remove ourselves from the negativity in our lives, but it is imperative to do this as much as we can so we can function and perform what we know we’re capable of. Not doing something to shift negativity or remove ourselves from its influence is more often than not a form of self-rejection (ouch!), not necessarily stoicism, which does have its place, but is a wholly different energy.

So, we need to look at the blocks we practice without realizing it or without realizing how fully they affect us, such as self-rejection, in all its forms and influences. We need to look at how much we carry the past around with us and resolve to release all but the good we can extract from past experiences. We need to look at our attachment to self-pity and shift this by embracing our relationship with Source and allowing Source to supply and support us. We need to discover whether or not patterns we practice are actually ours or if we picked them up from others, and then release these patterns, no matter their origin. We need to become better at identifying our opposing thoughts and replacing them with supportive ones. And, we need to love and accept ourselves as we are and as we evolve, and honor this, be available to it. It’s a good practice, one you’ll appreciate.          

         

Practice makes progress.

© Joyce L. Shafer