What's in Your Way?

Before you can focus and direct energy toward conscious, helpful action, you have to become a clear channel for that energy. That involves a lot of inner work. And inner work is not easy. We resist it and distract ourselves from it. You can acquire intellectual knowledge, tools, techniques, and practice
rituals and spells or your chosen method of manifestation, but if you find things are not manifesting, or you are manifesting the opposite of what your words request, you are out of alignment with your Higher Self. In other words, your ego is resisting the call of Spirit.
 
It can be a challenge to let go of the certainty of the intellect. As children, we learn in an almost completely experiential way. Before we have language, we use taste, smell, hearing, touch, sight to learn about our world. We also very quickly develop intuition. We learn who the safe people are, and then, as we meet strangers, we have one of three reactions—indifference, joy, or fear. And then there is the matter of invisible friends, talking trees, the sound of color, and the color of sound—all part of childhood perception when we are close to Spirit on that end of life.
 
Then we go to school, and our developing frontal lobe is taught to override the natural flow of information from Spirit. We are taught the rules and the content of a rational life. And it works—because the entire system of which we are a part has been built to reinforce it. This is not entirely bad. We need this knowledge and skill to fulfill our purpose here. The problem is that we end up excluding the other forms of perception along the way.
 
Gordon Mackenzie, who worked for a major greeting card company, used to speak in schools about creativity. He would ask second graders, “How many of you are artists?” Almost every hand went up. In high school, a few hands would go up. Somewhere in between, art, creativity, intuition, and the simple joy of Spirit became unimportant, even unreal.
 
That art is separated from science makes sense to us—and we learn to use science for decision making. If every time we do X, Y occurs, we come to expect Y. When Z occurs, we either don’t perceive it or we become angry or fearful. But—things that can’t possibly happen, do. A frail woman
lifts a car off of her injured child. Cancer mysteriously goes into remission. A psychic intuitive locates a missing child. You start a sentence to your significant other, “When our son
calls—” interrupted by the ringing phone.
 
As we gain experience and perspective, we notice that there is a tenuous correlation between church membership and the quality of compassion a person exhibits. There is an inverse relationship between academic success and success in the “real world.” Those who think “outside the box” are the makers of breakthroughs and insights. Those who think inside the box count the results of innovation. And we realize—or remember? —there is “something else.”
 
Which brings us to the question of belief. If something is determined to be true using the scientific method, we tend to overlook those times when it turns out not to work quite that way. For example, many people scoff at energy healing and intuitive or psychic information because it can’t be perceived using our five senses, or it can’t be demonstrated on demand – that is, it doesn’t always “work.” If the same criterion were applied to nearly every pharmaceutical on the market, none would be approved for use. Because there is no drug that produces the same effect, without side effects, 100% of the time. The rejection of spiritual information and phenomena is resistance. The question is – why?