Steve Pavlina Newsletter #57 - October 17, 2013

StevePavlina.com Personal Development Insights Newsletter

Issue #57 - October 17, 2013 - www.StevePavlina.com

Money Mindfest - Free Online Event Starts Monday

Learning Strategies is hosting another free Mindfest, starting on Monday, October 21 and going for 6 days. This one is about how to align yourself with financial abundance. Given the interest in this topic, this Mindfest is likely to be a super popular one.

Speakers in the Mindfest include Joe Vitale, Paul Scheele, and Jack Canfield. All three are financially abundant friends of mine with good hearts.

I especially like Joe's style because he's a prolific creator. A while back I remember when he was just getting into music. Within 18 months he had already created and released his first four albums.

There's no need to wait till Monday though. Go to the sign-up page now, enter your email, and then you'll automatically be notified when the Mindfest starts. Each session will only be online for about a day. Of all the Mindfests Learning Strategies has offered so far, this is the one you don't want to miss.

Here's the link to access it: Money Mindfest. Again, it's totally free.

How to Get Aligned With Your Desires

Oneness is the state of being free of resistance towards what's arising within your reality, which in subjective language we can call the simulation. Oneness is a sense of cooperation between you and the simulation. It means that the simulation is delivering what you desire -- and that you desire to experience what's currently being simulated. Another way of saying this is that you have what you want, and you want what you have. Other words that mean essentially the same thing as oneness are harmony, congruence, and flow.

Your alignment with oneness is not all or nothing. There are degrees of alignment. You could be very poorly aligned, which means you'll be noticing a lot of conflict between you and the simulation. You'll be experiencing a great deal of what you don't want. Or you could be very strongly aligned with oneness, which means you'll be noticing a delightful sense of harmony and flow. You'll be experiencing just what you desire.

One way to assess your alignment with oneness is to notice how you feel about your life overall. When this alignment is weak, you may experience feelings like sadness, anger, frustration, overwhelm, guilt, regret, or apathy. On the other hand, when your alignment with oneness is strong, you may frequently notice feelings like gratitude, appreciation, compassion, peace, joy, and unconditional love.

Practicing Oneness

How do you create oneness? The objective approach is to act upon the simulation itself. Try to make changes in your physical reality, so that you'll experience more of what you desire and less of what you don't.

Suppose you're having a personal conflict with someone in your life like a friend, family member, or coworker. An objective way to handle this situation would be to discuss your problems with that person and see if you can come to some kind of resolution. And if that doesn't work out, you may distance yourself from this person and spend less time together.

This approach also covers any changes you want to make to your physical body since your body is part of the simulation too. So if you're not happy with your body, then an objective approach might be to change your diet and change your exercise habits to help create the changes in your body you desire.

Now what's the subjective approach to creating oneness? In this case instead of acting on the simulation, you seek to make changes within your consciousness first and then let those changes ripple outwards into the simulation.

Start by imagining what it would feel like if you were already enjoying a sense of oneness with your simulation. I recommend that you start with feelings of gratitude and appreciation. Look around your simulation, and notice things that you can appreciate. Allow yourself to focus on those feelings of appreciation and to deepen them.

When I do this, I might start by looking at my watch and noticing how much I like and appreciate it. I might appreciate the computer I'm using and all it's capable of doing. When I'm at home I often look at my couch and think of what an awesome couch it is -- so soft, cozy, and comfortable.

Getting Aligned

Many years ago when I was deep in debt and about declare bankruptcy, I walked down to the beach and sat on the sand next to the Santa Monica Pier in California, looking out at the ocean, reflecting on my current life situation. My finances were in bad shape, but the rest of my life wasn't bad at all. I was enjoying a positive relationship, I was doing distance running and learning Tae Kwon Do, and I was making great strides in my personal growth. But I was allowing my financial problems to practically take over my emotional life and largely define my overall relationship to the simulation. My life was stressful and seemed to be filled with inescapable problems. I constantly felt like I was treading water.

I realize that these problems were negatively affecting the quality of my life, but solving them was going to take a long time. Did that mean I had to settle for a negative life until all the problems were solved? I'd been dealing with these financial problems for years, and they weren't going to disappear overnight, so where did that leave me? Was I going to have to suffer through more of this?

Then I began asking myself some interesting questions. What if I never solved these problems? Would I be doomed to spend the rest of my life in a state of stress and worry?

It seemed utterly ridiculous to me to perpetuate these negative feelings for the rest of my life just because I was experiencing problems in one area of my life. I accepted that my financial situation was not what I wanted it to be, but did that mean that my life as a whole had to be defined by those problems? Surely there had to be a better way to live.

In that moment I decided to change my overall relationship with the simulation, although I didn't think of it in those terms at the time. I decided that regardless of what was happening with my finances, I still wanted to enjoy my life. I wanted to be happy. Otherwise what was the point of living if I was just going to be stressed the whole time?

At that point I begin paying attention to the scene in front of me. The ocean waves were lapping against the seashore. Seagulls were circling overhead. Children were playing nearby. The sun was shining. The sand felt warm between my toes. I could smell the salty air and feel the cool ocean breeze. I was surrounded by all of this beauty, but I didn't even notice it because my attention was elsewhere.

I noticed that I could consciously control where I put my attention. Regardless of my financial situation, I could still find things in my reality to appreciate and feel good about. Then I realized that no matter what happened in my external life, I could always direct my attention to something positive. I could appreciate beauty. I could appreciate nature. I could appreciate my breathing. I could appreciate happy memories. I realized that even if I was broke for the rest of my life, I could still appreciate all of these things.

That was a major turning point for me in life. I let go of any sense of being victimized by the world, and I embraced the feeling that I was in control of my relationship with life itself. Maybe I couldn't control what was happening out there in the world, but I could control where I put my attention. I can always find something positive to notice.

Once I made that internal shift, my external reality quickly improved, as if it was compelled to bring me the experiences that would match what I was feeling on the inside. I went ahead with the bankruptcy, but it was a smooth and relatively painless experience. I made changes to my business that worked beautifully, and in less than a year I was debt-free and enjoying a positive cash flow.

I had been stuck with these financial problems for years, and trying to solve them by acting on my external world, such as by trying to earn more money or cut expenses, never worked. In the long run, the problems only grew worse. But when I worked on my internal feelings and brought them into alignment with a positive life overall, my external reality began to align with those inner changes. My finances improved dramatically, and I had all the money I needed.

Since that time (which was 1999), I've been enjoying a wonderful flow in my financial life. Once I learned how to create those feelings of appreciation and gratitude, I stopped manifesting an abusive relationship with money. Money and I have been on good terms ever since. I like money. I feel good about the role it plays in my life these days. I like earning money. I like spending money. Money likes me and treats me well.

Do I maintain this relationship perfectly? Certainly not! I screw up and fall out of alignment from time to time. But when I realize what I'm doing, I remind myself that I'm creating this relationship from within. Then I turn my focus back to appreciation and gratitude. And as I reestablish this practice, sure enough, whatever problems I was experiencing with money soon evaporate.

This is a bit oversimplified though because gratitude is just one of many frequencies we can align ourselves with at any given time. Usually feelings of gratitude and appreciation aren't enough. If that's all you do, I suspect you'll stay broke. We can create those nice feelings and still be holding onto a lot of fear and resistance as well. It's not enough to engage in some temporary feel-good sessions if we want to change the simulation. We need to make sure the totality of our vibe is congruent with our desired reality. So let's explore another way to diagnose and identify alignment problems.

Broadcast Your Desires

A revealing test of your alignment with oneness is how comfortable you feel broadcasting your desires into the simulation. In practice this means sharing your desires openly with other people. How would you feel about posting your deepest desires on the Internet, where all your friends, family members, and co-workers can see them?

If you and your reality are in harmony, this should be fairly easy. It's like ordering food at a restaurant. You ask for what you want, and you receive it. You could easily tell other people what you've ordered, or you could post a picture of your meal online for your friends and family to see, and it wouldn't be a big deal. When you're nicely aligned with receiving what you desire, there's no friction in telling other people. Sharing may even enhance your enjoyment.

But when you experience a lack of alignment, you'll have a hard time broadcasting your desires into the simulation. You won't feel good about telling everyone what you want. When you think about sharing your desires openly, you may feel some fear, shame, guilt, embarrassment, or other forms of resistance. This is a clear sign that you're holding back. You're not congruent. And so your simulation cannot easily bring you what you desire.

The simulation responds to the totality of the vibes you're emitting. So even if you have a very strong desire and gush appreciation and gratitude, if that desire is still tainted with resistance, such as worrying about how other people may react if they knew the truth about you, then that resistance is part of your vibe too, and it essentially cancels out your desire.

Part of your vibe may be welcoming your desire, while another part is putting the brakes on that request. So how will the simulation respond? It's not a clear and congruent request that you're making, so the best you'll receive is a fuzzy and noncommittal response. This basically means you're going to be in a holding pattern. You'll experience stuckness until you work through this resistance.

Reaching Your Tipping Point

The good news is that you don't have to achieve perfection here. You don't have to identify and release every last bit of resistance within yourself. You just have to release enough of it so that your desire becomes the clear and dominant signal.

Imagine that you're having a conversation while some music is blasting loudly, and you and the other person can't hear each other speak. You don't have to turn the music off completely. You just have to turn down the volume enough that your voices can be heard over the music. It works the same with turning down the resistance that opposes your desires. You don't have to completely eliminate your resistance; you just have to jettison enough resistance so that your desire becomes the dominant signal.

Suppose you have the desire for a certain sexual experience, like a threesome. Now imagine sharing this desire openly, like posting it on your blog so that everyone can see. Search engines can pick it up and connect it to your name. Potential employers would easily be able to find this information. Your family members could discover it. Everyone would know that you like threesomes.

Or suppose you'd like to earn a great deal more money than you're currently earning. Can you share your income goals with everyone you know? Can you share status updates along the way to let everyone know your progress? Do you expect positive support from the people in your life? Do you expect to succeed at your goal? Are you afraid to commit to it? Are you worried you may fail and embarrass yourself?

Notice what kinds of thoughts and feelings come up when you think about sharing your desires openly. Do you fear the judgment of others? Do you worry about what effect it will have on your security? Are you ashamed of your desires? Do you feel guilty for wanting what you want? Do you expect to fail?

All of these and feelings are part of your vibe, even when you're not consciously aware of them. Resistance is most often unconscious, but when you use the litmus test of broadcasting your desires openly, you can expose them and bring them to conscious awareness.

After all, if it's just a simulation that's reading your vibe anyway, it would seem rather foolish to think you can hide anything. The simulation already knows everything you know. You're not hiding anything. You're just living in denial and repelling what you really want. If you were truly aligned with oneness, you wouldn't feel any resistance with respect to broadcasting a desire. You'd know and trust that the simulation would support you in receiving what you want.

When I have a desire that I don't feel comfortable broadcasting openly, I pay attention to my resistant thoughts and feelings, and then I work through them until I feel congruent. Sometimes I'll broadcast a desire before I feel fully congruent since dealing with this conflict openly helps me resolve it internally.

Outer resistance is simply a projection of inner resistance, so they're essentially the same. Due to the equivalency principle, you can get the same gains by working through your resistance internally or externally. You can have these discussions and debates privately within yourself, or you can have them openly with other people. When you're fully aligned, then you can do both with ease.

Invite Your Desires

When I began getting in touch with some of the sexual experiences I wanted to have, I still felt a lot of resistance to them. My Catholic upbringing taught me to link a lot of shame and guilt to sexual desires. It was just a huge bundle of sin.

I couldn't fully work through this challenge using the objective lens, but when I got deeper into subjective reality, I saw that I could solve this problem. I was harboring all the shame and guilt within me, and so it was showing up in my external reality in the form of judgment -- not to mention repelling these desires from actually showing up.

An attitude that has helped me through many challenges like this is curiosity. I become curious as to what might happen if I released my inner resistance to a particular desire. So in this case, I began to reason that it may in fact be possible to invite and experience certain desires -- if I could only let go of my inner resistance. After all, having a threesome shouldn't be that difficult. All it takes is a couple of willing partners, so how difficult could it be?

I pushed myself to work through that resistance, including sharing some of my interests on my blog before I had really worked through my inner resistance. That attracted plenty of judgment from others, but I was fine with that because I wanted to work through it anyway. When I saw my own self-judgments reflected back to me in the form of email feedback from others, it helped me see how it was all a reflection of what I was creating internally.

I also saw how silly these judgments were. For instance, some people equated sexual exploration with abuse. How can it be abusive if it's openly consensual and if everyone feels good about it afterwards? Other people felt it was perverse. But perverse means wrong or wicked, which is merely a relative judgment based on personal tastes. It didn't take long to see just how feeble this opposition was.

As I let go of these judgments, my desires grew stronger, louder, and clearer. It was like turning down a noisy radio. As I shed the resistance, I felt a calm attraction to exploring threesomes, if only to satisfy my curiosity. Yes, it can be intensely sexual, but it can also be really beautiful and loving -- a way for people to come together and open their hearts. It's all about people making each other feel good.

Soon my inner resistance withered to the point where I just felt happy and enthusiastic when I thought about certain sexual desires. I felt much more congruent about inviting them in -- not 100% perfectly congruent, mind you -- but enough that I felt like I could make this a reality without blocking it.

And really that's all it took. As I changed my vibe in this part of my life, I became naturally more playful, flirtatious, and less tense. I found it very easy to invite a threesome, got a yes on the first try, and it was a delightful experience. That happened years ago. It was different than what I expected -- way better in fact. I thought it would be very sexual, and it was, but even more than that it was immensely loving. I felt such a blissful explosion of energy in my heart.

As I continued to go down this path, I identifying more desires and then applied the broadcasting test. Whatever I worried would happen if I were to broadcast a new desire or interest, that became my pointer to the inner resistance I needed to work through. Once I released enough of that internal resistance, my desires tended to show up with relative ease.

What's even more interesting to me though is that as I became internally congruent with my desires, my external world became more congruent and supportive as well. Nowadays I experience very little resistance to creating loving connections with the people in my life. My friends and business partners know what I'm into, and they're fine with it. In fact, many of them have told me about their own intimate explorations after seeing that I was on a similar journey.

By opening up so much, I encourage others around me to do the same. Since I worked through my own resistance in this area, the other people in my simulation seem non-resistant as well. These days I receive a negligible amount of criticism or negative feedback with respect to these interests. Mostly what I receive are connection invites from like-minded people as well as general positive feedback and some how-to questions.

I hope you can even see the logic of why this works. When you become congruent with a desire and feel good about broadcasting it openly, it makes perfect sense that you're going to get better results. Other people who share similar desires will finally become aware of your shared interests.

What I find most amusing is that after I open up about something publicly, people that I've known for a long time will finally confess to me that they have similar desires. As long as I felt incongruent or conflicted, they didn't feel comfortable sharing that with me. Or if I kept silent, they didn't know if they could trust me not to be judgmental. So they kept quiet too. But when I open up, they open up. In other words, when I get myself aligned with a desire, the simulation brings it to me.

What desires are you still ashamed of? What do you fear broadcasting publicly? What's stopping you? The resistance "out there" isn't an issue at all. The only issue for you to resolve is your own inner alignment.

Owning the Consequences of Being Fully You

Sure there may be consequences to being so open and public about your desires. You could get fired. Your current partner might leave you. Your family may disown you. But look at the big picture here. If you're worried about any of these consequences, then your relationship to the simulation sucks anyway. You're stuck in the vibe of fear, and that's going to slow everything in your life to a crawl. You'll never experience what you really want that way.

I think it's best to let all these consequences happen. Why would you want a job where you have to hide part of yourself anyway? Why would you want to be in a relationship where you can't be completely honest with your partner and trust him/her to stick around? Why would you cling to family members who will pressure you to conform? All of this is unnecessary baggage. It's a stupid way to live.

All you're doing is wrapping a huge bundle fear into your vibe, and that will cause your simulator to manifest countless problems for you. Of course you're going to have a crappy job if you fear being yourself. Of course your relationships will suffer if you can't be honest about what you want. When you hold the fear of consequences within your vibe, the simulator absolutely must produce the external manifestations of your fears. This is a surefire way to create what you don't want.

This is where the subjective lens truly shines. When you finally begin to realize that the reason you're stuck in these kinds of situations is that they're the outward manifestations of what you're doing internally to yourself, you can finally wake up to the notion that there's a better and more intelligent way to live. Start creating more alignment within yourself, and the simulation will give you fewer reasons to be afraid.

These apparent outward threats aren't the real problems. The real challenges lie within. You have to start unraveling that bundle of resistance and let some of it go. If you lose your job, you'll find an even better source of income. If your partner leaves you, so what? You'll attract a better partner for you, someone who doesn't require you to pretend. And if your family kicks you out, that isn't a big deal either. The simulator can easily bring you delightful new family members who love you for you. What does family even mean in a dream world anyway? We're all family in this simulation -- there are no strangers.

Do you get this? Do you realize how pointless it is to cling to all your needless fears and worries about what might happen if you actually started broadcasting your desires openly?

How the Simulation Reconfigures to Match Your Desires

What actually happens when you finally do broadcast some of your desires openly? How does this play out?

When you begin vibing with a new desire, meaning that you're coming into alignment with it, the simulation will reconfigure itself to keep pace with your internal changes.

Some people in your reality may react negatively to your shifts. They may whine and complain about it. Let them squawk, but stand your ground. If they can't accept what you're doing, let them distance themselves from you. Don't get clingy.

If you can allow these people to have their reactions without fighting them, they'll eventually stop resisting. They may come to accept and embrace your new vibe. Or they may accept it but not feel comfortable with it and distance themselves from you. Or they may have a big issue with it and excuse themselves from your reality by breaking off contact. In any event, the resistance will end.

No matter how they react, let them seek out their new positions in your reality relative to your new vibe. There's no need to resist these changes; that will only slow things down. Do your best to accept that as you undergo big internal shifts, your outer reality must reconfigure itself to match, sometimes dramatically.

Now the good news is that while some people may shift further away from you, other people will move closer to you. Some of these people will already be in your life, while others will appear as new characters in your reality. Your new vibe is attracting them to you because these people (or characters) resonate more strongly with your new vibe than with your old one.

Let these new people enter your life. Welcome them with open arms! Celebrate their arrival! And smack yourself for unnecessarily keeping them out of your life for so long.

You may fear that when you start shifting into a new vibe, you're going to lose too many friends and end up alone. There's this fear of abandonment -- that such shifts will isolate you and leave you worse off than before. This may indeed seem to be happening initially, but try not to worry. You can only manage so many close connections in your life at any given time, so if you're going to attract more compatible connections, the simulator may need to create some space for them first.

It took me a while to get comfortable with this shifting process, but the more I do it, the more I can see that I never end up alone on the other side. It's always the opposite of that. As I allow the simulator to reconfigure itself, I feel a delightful twinge of anticipation -- and a hefty dose of curiosity -- since I know that some amazing new connections are about to show up.

One of the first times I made such a shift was when I was a teenager, finally realizing that Christianity wasn't for me. All of my friends and family were Christian, however, so I was genuinely worried that I'd be cut off from any and all social support if I kept going. And initially that did seem to be the case. But as I let go of my lingering resistance to this change and embraced it more congruently, I easily attracted an abundance of new friends -- friends who were smart, open-minded, and curious about the world like I was. That was a truly golden time for me socially. I enjoyed such a wonderful expansion in this part of my life. It was amazing!

Now I've been through this process enough times that I feel less and less resistance with each pass. I know that whenever I create a significant inner shift in my vibe, my outer world will reconfigure itself to match -- especially my social circle. I trust that my life will be even better on the other side. This isn't some kind of blind faith. It's a trust rooted in experience -- that's simply how it always turns out.

What happened when I gave up on trying to be an employee? I made lots of new friends who were entrepreneurs. What happened when I started traveling a lot? I made lots of new friends who love traveling. What happened when I broadcasted that I love cuddling? I started getting lots of cuddle invites from like-minded women. These are good outcomes, are they not?

What about the down side? I have fewer employee-minded friends, fewer friends who hate traveling, and fewer non-cuddly female friends. Is that actually a bad outcome? Do I miss those old friends? Uh... to be honest it would take a bit of mental effort just to remember some of them. So no.

Yes, if you change your path, you're going to lose some friends. You'll lose the ones who can't support you on your new path. You'll lose the whiny ones, the ones who want you to stay broke, the ones who like seeing you depressed so they can feel better about themselves, the ones who don't want to see you succeed because it threatens their fragile self-esteem. Is that really the part of the simulation you want to cling to? If so, well... good luck with that.

Don't get clingy with your simulation. Lean into letting go of the old, so you can receive the new. It's really beautiful to shift into alignment with new desires and then to see your outer world change to match it.

Oneness means that your inner world and your outer world are the same world. If you don't like what you see in your simulation, change the vibe you're emitting, and release your resistance to your desired new reality. Then your outer world will reconfigure itself to keep pace with you.

Side note: If you want more help aligning with your desires, especially when it comes to financial abundance, be sure to listen to the free upcoming Money Mindfest. It's going to cover some of what I shared above from another perspective that you may find helpful too.

Please follow me on Twitter and Google+ for inspirational messages and quick updates.

Steve Recommends

Here are my recommendations for products and services that I've personally reviewed and which I believe can help you on your personal growth journey. This is a very short list since it only includes my top picks.

Site Build It! - Build an income-generating website.
Getting Rich with Ebooks - Earn passive income from ebooks.
Lefkoe Method - Permanently eliminate a limiting belief in 20 minutes.
Paraliminals - Accelerate your personal growth.
Sedona Method - Free Audio - Learn to release blocks in a few minutes
The Journal - Keep a secure journal on your PC.
PhotoReading - Read books 3x faster.
Life on Purpose - Discover your life purpose.

Until next time, live consciously!