Fasten Your Seat Belt

“I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.” Julia Cameron

It’s been three years this month since I moved from my native Southern California home to Prescott, Arizona. Since moving here, I’ve experienced so many wonder-full experiences that fill me with awe and gratitude. Last week when we had unexpected snow, I was driving through a residential neighborhood and was so overjoyed seeing this wintery spring wonderland enshroud its magic on the giant pine, cottonwood, and oak trees lining the streets that I yipped out loud.

Four years ago, when my family friends asked me if I wanted to join them in moving to Prescott, I said “yes.” At the time, I was working remote since our office was still closed from Covid, but it was going to reopen soon. My boss, however, made an allowance for me to continue to work remote from Prescott. The housing market was booming then, and I made a bid on a new-build spec home and got it, and then got the loan for it. My cleaning angel friends helped me pack and move, and they gave me a housewarming gift of a three-month old Maltese.

A friend asked me, “How do you do it? Do you sit and meditate to make it happen?”

“Well, yes, I do my morning and evening meditation -- – “

“For how long?”

“Well, in the morning for about 30 minutes and in the evening –-“

“Do you sit in a special chair? Face a special direction?”

She thought I followed a formula to get what I want. But there’s no formula.

We have a saying, “Treat and move your feet,” which means pray and then get moving. But the first move we must make is to shift our thinking. Our minds don’t know the difference between an actual experience and feeling that same experience. When we say we want something, we must be able to shift our thinking into feeling. We must feel what we want so intensely that we believe we are experiencing it so that our actions follow to make it happen.

What happens is called “the Law.” The Law is how God works as cause and effect. Whatever we do or don’t do is a cause that has an effect, but we must understand this in order to effectively work with the Law to get what we want. The farmer knows that when he plants tomato seeds, he won’t get potatoes.

Also, we must know beyond any doubt that God is always here for us as a Goodness that has no opposite. But sometimes we deny ourselves this Goodness because our actions (cause), don’t comply with the results (effect) that we want.

There are wants that I call “wanna wanna’s” which are sparkly things that catch our attention, and then there are desires which are things that we really, really, really, really want. “De” means “of” and “sire” means father, so a “de-sire” is something that God puts into our hearts so that we nurture it into fruition by working with the Law.

Julia Cameron also says: “We are not accustomed to thinking that God's will for us and our own inner dreams can coincide.” Not only do they coincide, they’re the same dreams that God has for us so that we can know God all the better — as an even bigger Gooder God.