You’re so impressive

Chances are, I’ve never met you and yet I can still stay with 100 percent certainty that you are impressive. Really, you are.

Actually, all of us here on Earth are impressive but probably not in the way you’re used to thinking about the word. In conscious creation terms, you impress the universe with your vibrational signature, that unique combination of thoughts, emotions and beliefs that are uniquely yours.

What you think matters; what you feel matters; what you believe matters. And when you get a hold of that concept fully, you can start to take conscious control over your day-to-day existence in a much more meaningful way.

So what does this mean to you, personally?

It means that you’re never at the mercy of an uncaring universe. It signifies that others don’t have the control over you that you think they do. It means you have control over your experience in ways you’re not even aware of. Most of all, it means you have a choice in the way you steer yourself through this thing we call “life.”

Without going all quantum physics on you, think about your existence in some simple terms. You are consciousness. Consciousness is energy. You come from and are a part of that great energy. Some people call this energy “God,” others call it “source.” The terms aren’t important. But what is important is understanding that you are a part of all existence because you are made of it and you help it grow with every thought and action you perform. You are co-creating the universe right now.

Your thoughts are made up of electrified, coded information. They literally send out “imprinted” information into the universe, stamped with your intent. As those thoughts go forth into the universe, they seek out similar vibrational patterns that eventually form the “real,” physical world you experience. You’ve heard this referred to as Law of Attraction or Law of Creation. The important part to remember, however, is that your imprint—your imprint—is what forms your reality.

That’s some pretty trippy stuff, I understand. But if you agree to it—whether or not you understand the mechanics of it—you begin to get a sense of why it’s important to direct your conscious thoughts in constructive ways.

You are impressing the universe in every moment of the day and night, literally. So you can understand why taking a hold of your unwanted, negative or distrustful—even sloppy—thoughts is important. Your beliefs and expectations are formed through habitual thought patterns and those beliefs and expectations are the biggest driving force of the reality that you know.

What does all this mean in practical terms?

It means “waking up” to yourself. It means becoming aware of your thoughts when you can catch them. If your thoughts and beliefs are serving you well and you’re happy with the life you’re living—keep at it! But in those areas where you’re unhappy, dissatisfied or simply want change, you must become acutely aware of what you’re doing. What are you thinking? What do you tell others? What do you daydream about? What do you believe? What outcome do you really expect? If you catch yourself focused in negativity, judgment, and criticism or if you’re holding onto bad memories of the past, make an effort to change. Change the thought, rearrange the picture, choose a different word, walk a different path. Do something to interrupt your habitual imprint.

This isn’t easy work. In fact, it seems to fly in the face of what we’ve been conditioned to believe about the way the world works. We’ve been taught that if you have a problem, you should concentrate on it, keep a hold of it and analyze it to death. In the world of conscious creation, you become aware of a problem, realize it’s the result of your past thinking and then make a conscious choice to move your thoughts in a new direction.

Sounds simple on the surface, doesn’t it? I admit, it does take effort to become aware of your thoughts. It takes courage to face those thoughts directly and it takes willpower to change them. It does get easier as you go along.

The goal is not to be Polly. Or Anna.

I’m not suggesting that you become one of those people who won’t say a bad word about anyone or anything or that you deny your experience. You must allow your creations their due. What I am suggesting is that you familiarize yourself with your vibrational signature. Remember that your signature imprints itself on the universe and returns to you the physical world you experience.

When you consciously understand your role in creation—the point that you mold your physical experience through the action of your thoughts, beliefs and expectations—you become more aware of your choices. You come to believe that it’s important to direct yourself in carefully chosen directions. You also then come to experience the world in a new way, one that is more fulfilling, creative and exuberant.

That is pretty impressive.

 

The Little River Band, Tom Petty and the Expectations

You’d think for someone who wrote an entire blog post about “signs from the universe,” that I’d be happily navigating my days in constant communication with the big U. You might think I’ve become quite adept at asking questions and receiving answers from the great unknown, but sometimes when you’re looking for signs, you simply don’t see them.

That’s the way the past few weeks have been for me as I’ve searched for answers. I’ve asked the universe for direction on a great number of things, from “what shall I do with my life?” to “what shall I have for dinner?” Perhaps the most frustrating set of questions arose from a book I’m reviewing for Hay House. In E-Squared, author Pam Grout has her readers perform “scientific experiments” to test (and ultimately believe) the theory that we do create our own universe with our thoughts, beliefs, emotions and expectations.

The book seemed a natural for me, having studied the material for several years. But when I set out to start the first experiment, I failed miserably. Grout asks her readers to set an intention and a timeline for a response. In this case, it was asking the universe for some kind of blessing that proves—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that the universe exists and is predisposed in my direction. The time limit: 48 hours. After 96 hours, I was still waiting for that blessing.

I’ll share more of my experience with the book in a future review, but the entire set of experiments set off a new chapter in my own learning. I was disappointed and frustrated in my attempts at affecting the universe on a small scale, which made my big-ticket goals feel even further out of reach.  For example, I couldn’t seem to manifest orange cars. That is, I set an intention to see orange cars for a 24-hour period. I waited and waited and after three days, I saw none.

How in the world could I manifest a new career if I couldn’t find any orange cars in a city with more than three million of them?

While the experience frustrated me, it didn’t change my views on conscious creation. I still DO believe that we form our own lives through our thoughts. I still DO believe that our emotions and expectations can bring us some pretty amazing things. Unfortunately, I also felt like these abilities were out of my reach and I would have to settle for my uncanny ability to manifest negative events and circumstances. I’m damn good at that.

I did not, however, allow myself to be swayed long by my frustration. Part of the rules of the road when you’re on the spiritual path is to see how quickly you can get back on the path when you’ve wandered off. I put my frustration aside and kept going with my other projects (the science experiments would have to wait).

This morning, the desire to receive answers about my life was again with me, as it is most mornings. But today instead of dwelling on the questions, I simply acknowledged them and sent them on their way. I went to work and put my concentration on some projects that needed my attention. At lunchtime I decided to walk down the street for some fast food and casually thought to myself, “when’s it going to happen?”

The question itself encompassed many other questions, but it was a silent and powerful plea to the universe that I was ready for information. Unlike other attempts at communicating with the universe, however, I didn’t stand and wait for any kind of answer. I simply placed my attention back into the present moment and enjoyed the sunshine and walk to the restaurant.

As I swung open the restaurant door, a song from my youth greeted me. The song was in mid-chorus but I recognized it immediately.

Hang on

Help is on its way

I’ll be there as fast as I can

Hang on

The tiny voice did say

From somewhere deep inside the inner man

I’d be pretty dense not to recognize the message. For at that point in time, the Little River Band decided to give me some much-needed TLC. They quickly reminded me that the universe is answering my questions and I need to be in the right frame-of-mind to hear it.

The musical interlude also reminded me of a similar experience just a week prior. I was on the same street, at lunchtime, and I distinctly remember asking the universe, “When are things going to change in my favor?”

As I prepared to cross the street, a car sped up and blazed past me fast enough to make me step back to the curb. As the car passed, I could hear another familiar song blaring from the open windows:

The waiting is the hardest part

Every day you get one more yard

You take it on faith; you take it to the heart

The waiting is the hardest part

In this instance, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers decided to play the role of the universe in the play that is my life. They spoke directly to me, answering the question that I had just posed. I interpreted the event as meaning my time was coming and that I needed to be patient.

So two musical notes from the universe were swirling in my head as I waited for my food. Both events helped me feel at ease with life and allowed me to see clearly that I had forgotten one of the most important parts of conscious creation: being nonchalant with expectation.

When approaching a change in beliefs or purposely outlining a goal, it is important to remember the role of expectation. Expectation works with your thoughts and emotions to affect the universe and set into motion all of the millions of little details that will end up working in your favor. Expectation means you believe it will happen. But when you’re wandering into uncharted territory, how do you know for sure that it will work out?

You don’t.  That’s where faith an a nonchalant attitude come in.

Expectation is a hard skill to learn and even folks who are pretty good at it still must flex their expectation muscles on a regular basis. But the key is to remember to use expectation nonchalantly. It’s almost as if you’re saying to the world, “It’s no big deal, it will happen.” Or, “Hey, I know it’s going to happen, so much so that I won’t even bother giving it a second thought.”

When you want to reach across the table to grab a cup of coffee, you expect your body to perform accordingly. You expect your arm to move, your hand to grasp the cup and your mind to coordinate the entire process so that soon the cup is at your mouth and you’re taking a sip. That kind of expectation is what you’re aiming for when it comes to conscious creation. You don’t think about it; you expect it and let the universe (or your body in this case), work out the details.

It’s a small point but one I needed desperately to hear and remember.

The universe is answering my questions and the universe is pointing me in the right direction. For now, I’m adopting an attitude of nonchalentness when it comes to my expectations, especially with the expectation that I’ll receive answers from the universe. Just to be sure, I’m going to turn on the radio right now.

Shift your expectations

Expectation is one of the most maddening belief structures you will ever encounter. At its best, expectation helps us easily, and transparently, manifest our beliefs in a variety of ways. At its worst, it stands in the way of conscious creation and blocks the creative universe from delivering our dreams in fun and exciting ways.

We speak frequently of having “high expectations” of people, places and events. We talk also of having our expectations dashed when they’re not met. But what is expectation? In terms of conscious creation, expectation can be thought of as a conscious belief that you anticipate will come to fruition. It’s usually a belief you don’t give a second thought to coming true.

You convince yourself that a particular belief is set to play out and you wait for the universe to deliver it. For example, you believe that the sun will rise every morning; therefore, your expectation is fulfilled when you see the sun crack the Eastern horizon. Expectations are formed primarily by surface beliefs and are the property of the ego. The ego wants to protect and advance the self and then sets rules around the way the world should work.

If the universe doesn’t deliver our beliefs to us in the way we expect, we become frustrated. We blame others and ourselves. We question our expectations and wonder where we got off course. Thoughts such as what did I do wrong? or why did she do that? come into play when expectations aren’t met. In these cases, expectation seemingly works against us and causes frustration, sadness or anger.

Years ago, the first lesson a spiritual teacher suggested to me was to drop all expectations. When I asked why in protest, she told me that expectations would always let us down and that we couldn’t rely on the universe to deliver things to us exactly the way we want. Talk about an expectation! While I appreciated the idea behind this teaching, it didn’t sit well with me. I thought there must be a way to incorporate expectation into everyday life that makes sense.

Expecting the worst

Expectation of negative events is a sure-fire way to make sure they come true. And in this sense, expectation can at times act as hypnosis if we’re not careful. Think about winter and the dreaded cold and flu season. Your coworker walks through the office sneezing and coughing. “Great, now I’m going to get sick,” you wail to your coworkers. You have just expressed expectation that you’re going to get sick and more often than not, you will.

Another example is seen frequently when you hear of a celebrity death. How many times does news break about a famous person’s passing when someone mentions the “rule of three,” that fictitious rule that says that bad things will always come in threes? We expect it and then watch the news waiting for two more people to drop dead. We search for the verification that this expectation will be fulfilled.

Negative expectations are sometimes hard to catch as we’ve conditioned ourselves into believing that “it’s just the way it is.” And it’s this kind of negative expectation that can hurt us the most. We’ve been brought up believing that bad situations will always get worse before they get better. We believe a bad economy will negatively affect our abundance. We “plan for the worst and hope for the best” and in the process find ourselves faced with expectation’s actualization, giving us exactly what we thought we’d get.

Fearful expectations cause us to look at the world through a different filter, a fearful filter. That filter then causes us to reorganize thoughts around fear, creating more fear and eventually causing a big manifestation of fear. It’s a viscous cycle and can set up some difficult challenges in the future.

Setting high expectations

The other main area where expectation trips us up is when we set ours too high. I am guilty of this frequently when I go to restaurants. I expect good customer service when I go out to eat. When my expectations aren’t met, I’m upset and bewildered. It took me a long time to even think about adjusting my own expectations or even shifting them to a different perspective. To my untrained eye, I was simply at the mercy of uncaring workers.

When we expect other people to behave in certain ways—positively or negatively—we’re in for an awakening. It can be a rude awakening or a pleasant awakening. True, law of attraction will generally bring us those things that match our vibration and our beliefs. However, it’s sometimes the hidden beliefs that attract others and their actions and those hidden beliefs often get attached to expectations.

Here’s an example using my restaurant expectations: I expect good service at a fancy restaurant. So when I sit down, I’m prepared for exceptional service. If expectation was the only criteria and I believed it fully, I’d get good service. But what if I have a hidden belief about being worthy of good service, a belief I’m unconscious of? A small, hidden belief that says I don’t really deserve to be treated well at all. That smaller, corollary belief then attracts its own reality, which may manifest as bad service. If I remain unaware of the underlying belief, I think my expectations have failed me.

So what good is expectation?

As I’ve thought about this over the years, I’ve discovered the benefit of expectation is to apply it generally without getting too specific. Trying to control the specific outcome of any situation or person can be wrought with difficulty and frustration, so ratcheting back to a more generalized approach helps frame our expectations in a more positive light.

Structuring expectation in a positive, general way can help train your conscious and subconscious mind to look for evidence of your expectation and diminish frustration if it’s not met. Consider these types of positive expectation statements:

I expect to learn something from every situation.

I expect to find the best in this.

I expect that no matter what happens, I’ll be safe.

I expect that everything happens in the proper time/space sequence.

I expect that anything that happens to me is in by best interest, even if I can’t see it now.

Similarly, becoming mindful of our negative or fearful expectations and then eliminating them can help move us in the right direction. Watch out for these damaging expectations:

Things will continue to get worse before they get better.

The economy is going to affect my bottom line.

No one cares what I think.

People are bad drivers.

It will take me forever to get through security.

Some of these statements can seem over generalized but you can appreciate the sentiment behind them. Rather than eliminate all expectations, let’s shift them to a more positive, generalized belief and allow ourselves some space to let the universe work it’s magic.