Client: … I want to understand my whole process of what we called  the ' heart' house, a place for me to be me. When what I thought was that special house came for sale, which I wanted so much as my retreat, my personal place, I couldn't do it.  I balked at the price, even though I could afford it and then when I let it go, I felt such a sense of loss. I looked at other places but nothing clicked. But after a time as I wondered about what 'heart house' really meant to me in an inner place, I found my 'heart' right here in this house. 

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Even the universe came in and brought me a reason to redecorate some things and suddenly I was really investing myself in this house.  So in a few months, I went from so much wanting another house and now when I walk into this living room  I go, 'Oh my gosh I’m so glad I didn’t sell this place.'  What a transformation and there seems to be a mystery to it all for me.  How did this happen?

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Orion:  We would sum it up as a culmination of all the work you have been doing around having inner permission to be you, to think 'what do I want,' to think 'Oh, I changed my mind on what I want' ~  to have inner permission to follow not only what arises from within, but what you respond to from without.  The heritage you were given was for you to second guess.  The seed that was sown is to doubt that what you know is correct.  On top of  the lesson to first doubt yourself, was the further lesson that there would be consequence from others if you do just want you want, especially if another in your life wants something else.  'If I do this because I want to, then I won’t have mother, I won’t have husband, I won’t have friend.' and so on.

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In reality, all those decisions you were fearful would have emotional consequence, did not. You are a thoughtful, caring, considerate person, so there is really no real danger to others in your saying no, changing your mind or doing something else.  In fact you've done the opposite; you made commitments to people and you honored them further and longer than other people might have, because you don’t want that your own actions to negatively impact someone else.  That’s a strength. The problem for you in this situation was when you didn’t recognize it as a strength and you instead felt, 'I have to do this for that person,' as opposed to 'I’m really choosing to.' 

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The  challenge with your allowing 'heart house' was that there was no external, overtly practical reason supporting your decision.  You had to emotionally push through, 'I want this house just because I want to,' and the finances didn’t feel reasonable by your inner criteria, even if by other criteria you could have purchased it. Emotionally, it was simply impossible to do it 'just because' you wanted to.  Rather you were hiding 'I want it.' within 'It’s a good investment',  in a practical rationalization and when that seemed otherwise, you could not move forward on your desire.

In this case, we are talking about a major purchase and anyone might think you truly should have needed external support and couldn't just buy a house because you wanted to.  But this same principle of doubt in taking action on 'I want' is challenging to you and others, in an array of other considerations, from the most major to 'Is it okay for me to have a Cappuccino, when I could just have a less expensive cup of coffee?'

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We see that you find yourself thinking 'Oh I didn’t get the heart house to have this lesson.'  We don’t use the concept of 'lesson's' being created by the Universe.  We do get to learn from our experiences.  If you had gotten that heart house, you would have taken another path toward learning.  Would it be learning about your inner judgment on 'I want'? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

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This experience let you see your pattern of, 'I can have it if it’s a good deal' and when it fell through and then you were left with the emotions and question of, 'Am I allowed to have something just because I want to that’s not a good deal?'

You also learned that you were thinking of your current house more as your partner's house.  So when you were talking about heart house, you really were talking about a place of one’s own, that’s just 'mine.'  But when the purchase didn't work out, what you opened to was, 'Well maybe this truly is our house,' and you discovered that you consciously didn’t even know that was an issue and a whole new aspect in your relationship was discovered.

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When you were not able to take action the way the mind had resolved the situation 'I'll get a retreat of my own',  the heart opened another path for you to find ease and allowing a next level of connection with the house you share with your partner.  And then the Universe, stepped in and asked you to fix up your house for a house tour, which set you in motion to invest yourself in your home and ironically, the tour did not occur.  We definitely see in all this a note of 'grace', in that the All pushes us out of our comfort zone and then in the end we say, 'Well gee, I didn’t have the tour, but I love all these things I did in my house.'

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So the core issue again is trying to open to many aspects of yourself  and allow and permit that it really is all right for you to be you.  It’s all right for you to spend your money because you want to, not because it’s the best deal, which isn’t to say by the way that you don’t enjoy having the best deal, but when it becomes a criteria and it will talk you out of something, then pause and pay attention to that message.  Ask, 'Is it true in this instance or is it the old, unconscious negating message?'  Everyone likes a coupon, but when you say, 'Well, I can’t go to that store today even though I’m right in front of it because, oh my, I don’t have my 10% off coupon…' there may really  be an underlying message or pattern at work.

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Client:  What about this whole concept of surrender and allowing, I’ve been trying to dance with this a bit; allowing instead of forcing or pushing the river, allowing things to come more present instead of forcing.  I felt like I was so over-determined.  I had to get out of this house and the only way I was going to was with another house.  I couldn’t open to the fact that I never made this house my own. I was clueless.

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One of the things about not forcing and going with the river, is that, like all concepts, it still has to be  open-ended.  Sometimes when we’re in the river, we might start out saying  'I’m going to paddle in a certain direction.' and that might be totally aligned.  'I’m going to put my attention to this.  I’m going to put my focus to this. I’m going to do all that.'  The trick is to be willing to stay aware of the flow.  When you notice you are going against the current and the paddling doesn't seem to get you where you thought you were going, take a pause and ask,  'Okay, is there another way to do this?'   Sometimes we are in charge of the paddling direction, like in still parts of the river. But  if you come to a fall, you have to sort of line up and then go with the flow.  

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When we use concepts, we have to make sure we don’t allow them to become another  judgment system. The principle is our continuing willingness to re-examine our ideas, our ideals  'If my directing isn’t working, perhaps I should pause, wait, let go and see what happens.'   What we see as surrender is  the willingness to release the outcome; saying to the Universe, 'This is how I think I want it to go; if you have another idea I’m willing to consider it.' 

You will note our focus on the phrase 'willingness' - this very phrase keeps the energy open-ended.  It does not say you must, you should; it is not a rule.  Rather, willingness is an attitude, an energy, that opens ourselves to a possibility of different thought or consideration.

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Further, a willingness to release the outcome does not negate our focus and intention.  Many times we do get what we need by setting our intention and putting our attention to our idea, but when the road starts to change, we have to pay attention to the surround, to the actuality. We have to consider that our idea might need a more expansive view.  And often this is the very juncture where all sorts of coincidences, synchronicities and so on happens.   This is where you found, 'I didn’t get the house and then everything else opened up for me.' 

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These  kind of changes are often the most significant in a person's life.  The changes where people say, 'I never would have seen myself with that person.  Who would have thought I would have had this job? Next thing I knew I moved.'  Such things seem surprising in life, but usually these pivotal successful moments in living, are often the ones where Life has taken you on a somewhat different version than your mind had plotted out.   These are the moments we often describe as destiny, fate, grace or as we said  'Life', took me in a way that quite simply my conscious focused mind didn’t recognize.

Yet for all that, these moments are not truly from the 'outside'.  Rather, they arise because our own expansive self, our Expanded Awareness, our Inner Awareness is connected in a more open-ended way to the Inter- Connection of All Things.  It is one's receiving mode that aligns us and brings us into recognizing new opportunities. 

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The catch with the Conscious Mind is that it is most often in sending mode.  When it is so focused in sending as in, 'I want this, and I picture this and this is how it should be…' it doesn’t always 'hear' what is coming towards you.  The Inner Awareness and the Expanded Awareness is usually in receiving mode first and then they come together in a kind of dance and suddenly we recognize, which is a perfect term, 'Oh my sense is this isn’t working, so maybe I’ll try that… or 'Gee, that person called up and offered me this and maybe I’ll do that or…' and our world opens up.

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The Conscious Mind is a wonderful tool of focus; we do not function without it.  We need it.  We need it to winnow the outside world.  We need it to set direction, but we also to remember it is like looking through a telescope, providing a single view.  We need to remember to ask, 'Oh, should I be looking further?  Should I be having an aerial view?  Should I be having a stereoscopic view?' - a multi-view.

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Client:  I believed there was only one way to feel safe, but then, I wanted to see beyond just one way.

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And again, 'releasing the outcome' does not exactly mean not getting an outcome.  Again, it is only releasing our image of the outcome, especially when that has become limiting or winnowing of how the outcome can come present.  And you can see that often the essential quality or essence of what we wanted ~ in your case here, the heart house ~ is exactly what showed up.  So all that was changing was the mental ideation of what and how a heart house would be.  As you said your idea was another house, a country house, you had all of these very specific things, but in the end, you found, 'Wow, I’m living in my heart house!'  It’s like finding a tarnished silver thing and you ask, 'What’s under this?' and you clean it up and there’s this absolutely beautifully, intricately engraved bowl.

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Client:  And it seems like that out of all of this has come the beginning of inner peace.  I’m working with my fears and letting go of those things that I guess I’ve come to terms with that I can’t really change.

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'Inner peace' is a very large concept and at the same time, can be very defined. 'Inner peace' readily moves into being an archetype, symbolic and in that, our expectations of it what it is, how it feels, what it must seem to be, can become specific.  We suggest a broader version, as in, 'Right Now I am feeling peaceful within myself.  I am feeling more at ease.'  

 

In such phrases, you can readily feel the difference in the energy. One is saying, 'I am here now – I am peaceful and feeling more at ease…'  It holds inner peace in the present moment, rather than in the over-arching concept 'inner peace'. And when we operate from the concept of say,  'inner peace' and it doesn't feel present, one can say, 'Uh-oh, now I’m not having inner peace.'  Archetypes and symbols can easily be experienced as either/or states.  The further truth is life is not constant. 

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And more so, when difficult things happen to us we don’t feel ease, but we might find our way through it and from that we feel other kinds of ease, such as, 'Well I managed that…' or 'I did the best I could do there…' There are many aspects and qualities of ease or peacefulness.  We are oriented to learn by concepts, but allowing them, instead,  to be broad principles is another version of releasing the outcome; it’s releasing the singularity of the definition.  'Oh I’m using the term inner peace, but I know that this is a bigger, more permeable, moveable thing than when people say inner peace.'  And of course,  you can use the term 'inner peace' as long as you hold it as open-ended. 

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In that, you  can experience many variations of inner peace.  You can have the inner peace that is a nice cup of coffee in the middle of a stressful situation. You can take a moment and read a magazine for a bit or simply take a breath and look out the window. When we think  Am I in peace or am I not?', we are again, framing our ideal into one or the other. All peace or no peace.  We are not acknowledging there can be 'peaceful' moments within difficult moments.  This may seem paradoxical, but when we acknowledge the jumble of life, this collage of life, then we can easily understand that you can have peace and stress at the same time. 

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People share many stories of going through great difficulties and finding themselves having a wonderful laugh with a nurse at the hospital or things like that, incongruous things. Someone’s really having a difficult time, but they’re laughing, because that’s how life really is - a hodge-podge.  The idea most people want to hold is that life is all lined-up, singular, clear and one way, is the Conscious Mind’s illusion. Life isn’t like that and that’s our biggest challenge.  Our models are often not the whole actuality.

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As an example,  the calendar is a construct we’ve all agreed to. Yet, the calendar most people use right now wasn't the only calendar and is not the only one in use.  There’s the Chinese calendar, there’s Persian calendars, there’s Pagan calendars or other kinds of systems in use in the present world, besides the ancient ones that are no longer in use. 

And further, even the basic concept of day and night is not a totality. Yes, the sun goes down at night and rises in the morning, but even that seemingly 'true' thing is not the same if you live in, say, Iceland. There they have six months of day, so you can’t even use nature in the way that most of the rest of the world is using nature.

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All of this is just to remind you that when things seem that they must be, you could ask, 'Well really, totally?'  

In the end, let a sense of wonder be with you.  Let the awareness of Mystery and that not yet known, flow with you.  Let yourself listen to other music in life.  Let yourself be led by the dance of the Inner and the Outer.  When you lose you way or feel like your 'pushing the river' or don't know how to just be, pause and invite to your awareness the Interconnection of All Things.

 

Give yourself a moment to feel the Flow, the Interconnection.  Let a moment of peace arise.  Let a sign of direction emerge.  And in time, you will feel refreshed and ready to continue on your journey.  A journey in which there are no rights and wrongs, only rights and lefts.  Each choice will have a path; one may be more difficult than another, but you will learn and grow from any path that comes to you.  

 

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