Before we go any further, we have to tell you that we are “jumping for joy” because our journal HAS BEEN PUBLISHED! You can learn all about it here!
Now, in today’s post, we’ll talk about how some wishes may take longer than we hoped to come true or may not come true at all. Both of us have examples of this in our lives: Barbara has a wish about companionship while Margie had a wish about publishing her photos. She wrote about it in a recent blog post. What we are going to talk about here is how subtle resistance can be the reason a wish is not coming true, and how to recognize and address that resistance.
The main tool we use is a practice we both learned called Focusing, which is how we met. It is a practice that has become second nature to us, so that, at some level, we are always aware - sensing into - the interactions between us and our environment. From this place, and from some specific lessons of one of our most admired Focusing teachers, Ann Weiser Cornell, we have learned that there are two things happening inside that inform this resistance to our wishes being fulfilled. We have seen that the resistance to our wishes coming true is similar to - if not the same as - “blocks to action” that Ann Weiser Cornell talks about in her article, How to Release a Block to Receiving Inner Guidance.
Ann teaches:
“... let’s start by saying that ‘something in you’ refuses to hear and obey your inner voice. Does that sound right?
“And now let’s pause and see if we can feel the presence of another part. The word ‘obey’ is our clue… something wants to be obeyed.
“In the inner world, like the outer world, the demand for obedience is usually met with resistance. We don’t want to be forced… and neither do our parts!”
In wishing, it’s about recognizing that there are two “somethings” going on inside us when a wish doesn’t come true. Indeed, something in me wants the wish to come true, but the tricky, sticky part is, something else in me does not want it to come true.
In Focusing, we learn ways to address these inner conflicts - desire and resistance - and that is exactly what is needed in the world of wishing, as well. If we are carrying inner resistance to the achievement of what we say we desire, we are unlikely to ever receive what it is we say we want.
We’ve said it before: we really dislike when anyone says, in effect, “Here’s all you have to do!” and then does not tell us how to do that! So here’s more than one “how to do that” for addressing resistance.
First, we highly recommend reading Ann Weiser Cornell’s article, especially if you know anything about Focusing. However, if you don’t, there’s a lot of wisdom in it.
Second, here’s a few steps we use that you can try, as well.
1. Ask yourself, “What’s between me and aligning my emotional state - my vibration - happily with receiving the thing I desire?”
For Barbara and her wish for companionship, she realized that the resistance came from unhappy experiences in her past. Something in her was strongly protecting her from that kind of disappointment in the future.
2. Ask yourself, “What is it that I want to have in my life by having this wish come true?”
For Margie and her photos, she wanted the connection of sharing something she loves doing and interacting with people about her creation. However, she realized she was fearful of interacting with people because it could open her up to negative reviews. This is subtle stuff! She wasn’t conscious, at first, that she was holding this fear and that it was generating this resistance. When she got in touch with it, she found a safe haven in our wish work where she could publish her photos in our book, and, eventually, on our blog. The results have been more than she dreamed in terms of sharing her creations widely.
3. After you have asked and answered these two questions, we highly recommend journaling (or any other contemplative practice) about the answers, really going as deeply as you can into your inner world. With this newfound knowledge, you may want to revisit your wish. Just like Margie did in wishing to share her creations in a supportive way, you may want to adjust your wishes to concentrate on the outcome you desire.
For Barbara, it’s a little more complicated. The wish for companionship is an entanglement of a wish for “company” and a tentative wish for “romance”. She has used the steps above to work on this wish and has come to the conclusion that the wish for company - for things like movies, trips, restaurants, spas, and the like - has already come true. The romance wish, on the other hand, has a block, resistance based on past experience. The wisest course of action in a case like this is for her to work on her vibration - her emotional state - around love, without getting into “the weeds” of modern romance. We’ll write more on that topic in a future post.
Next week, in our Wishing Basics section, we will talk about calendars and wishing. There are a plethora of ways to create your wish list, and you don’t have to be “bound” by the calendar to have a truly powerful wish list.
Until then,
Peace and All Good
Margie and Barbara
The Wish Mavens
Photo Credit
The photo featured in this post was taken by (and is copyrighted by) Margaret A. Herrick.
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