'Not in the Way You Think'

Medicine for the Illuminated Mind.

“Why isn’t what I want working out?”
”What am I doing wrong?? What should I do next?!”
”I just don’t know what to do anymore!?!”

I ask these questions to my ceiling often.
I have also heard it from friends and acquaintances who have the loving ideas with the best of intentions which they are trying to birth in the world.

We ask them when we are stalled, frustrated, limited, delayed and blocked.

Whenever I’ve asked, I’m fuming at the ears from repeated frustration.
So, it isn’t surprising that I cannot hear my inner guidance.

When I do hear the answer, it is some version of…

‘It is. Just not in the way you think.’

This is certainly a reply that infuriates.

But what if we weren’t angry at it and just flirted with it a little?

Walking the ‘Not in Way You Think’ Bridge

For most of us this is a disconnect between our brilliant desires, inspired plans and ‘saving the world’ notions, and what is actually happening (or not happening) today.

Say you want to save the world, and the best way you think you can do this, is by cleaning up your neighbourhood park where all the kids and puppies play. Eventually, you want to activate humans around the world to clean up their immediate environment, simply as a part of life no matter where they are.

This is sublimely beautiful.
It has so much goodness in the form of reconnection with the land, community, collectively healing, playing and puppies, getting to walk barefoot on the grass, taking care of our environment that takes care of us, global awakening and much more.

You put so much love and effort and empowerment into your desire and plans. You activate community and talk to schools and local business and families and get all this going. You post blogs and videos so that others may also do this in their neighbourhoods.

It feels so good to you and a lot of people are really engaged and happy.

Then one weekend, you go to your park with your family and find broken bottles, upturned garbage cans and other general trash. Things like this keep happening every now and again, often, just when you think you are making ‘progress’.

Maybe you attract some community funding, which falls through.

Maybe other neighbourhoods love your idea, but they want you to come clean their parks instead of doing it themselves, which isn’t what you wanted.

Maybe you find that someone else is taking credit for you idea and is on the news speaking about it.

Maybe your heart breaks a little when someone walks right in front of you throwing their trash on the ground instead of the trash cans you’ve purchased and placed at thoughtful locations.

Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash

We get sad, angry, frustrated, lost and doubt ourselves.
We no longer see the point of our once loving and activated idea.
Our place in the world becomes one of 'failure’.
We get bitter and tell ourselves that Love for ourselves and the world isn’t enough because of bad actors and corrupters; further, we tell ourselves that humanity is f*cked and everything is pointless.

This is how our despair leads to our own division from Source and our Spirit.
We become separate and the idea that was once Divinely inspired, infused with Love and connection starts to taste bitter and feels like heart-ache and mind-fog.

I think this is where ‘not in the way you think’ is such a challenging, yet potent medicine for all of us.

In this example of empowering communities to clean and reclaim their neighbourhoods, it is the medicine that offers a different perspective. The perspective which has the power to shift our expectations and heal our hearts open.

It is the realization that we live with all sorts of people with all sorts of different live experiences. While community empowerment and cleanliness is important to us, it may not be how another person expresses or efforts. And so the understanding here is to move at the pace of the community and not the prescribed plan of our mind.

When we want to enact acts of love, we sometimes forget that others may not be able to receive it for a plethora of reasons. The may not understand because they are wrapped in fear and they may even fight us, because they were never taught any other way to engage with humans. Flowing with our love and our energy means not taking the neglect or misunderstanding of others as a personal attack on our dreams and desires, and our finding way through the experience.

It could also be figuring out who our neighbourhood ‘polluters’ are. Working through our hatred and judgement, and perhaps figuring out what motivates them. Here, we can set boundaries, offer our love and understanding and space a group of people who are different than us. This is a tremendous healing potion as it has the power to heal what feels like ‘otherness’ in the neighbourhood; first by revealing what is hurt or ignored or abandoned along our alleyways and then, by acknowledging and accepting it together. This can give everyone their own time to sort things, without the need to rush forth to altruistic ideas at the cost the present moment.

Another generous gift of this medicine is humility which grounds the individual ego in service to collective requirements. Maybe it is really important to us that our park is well lit because we don’t want to walk our dog in the dark. But, it’s really important to teenagers to have some privacy when they explore their first kiss in the safe of their neighbourhood.
Here, we have to face our fears and notions (of the dark as well as of budding sexuality) and come to choose what is is aligned with Love, rather than fear - for all of us. Walking step by step in acceptance of our journey, is a self-check opportunity. We check to see who is running the show - our hearts or our ego-mind.

I had to start seeing the experience of ‘things not going my way’ as supportive and necessary for my own evolution. Instead of an obstacle, I had to embrace these hard and infuriating moments. This opened space for me take pause, get to recalibrate and realign before I moved on.

It’s hard, because so much of how we understand progress and success, comes from an experience of linear time-space.
Forward = Growth & Success
Backwards = Failure & Stagnancy

So, not only are we learning more loving ways to activate our loving journeys; we are also completely transforming our ideas of growth, progress and success and what how we develop our metrics of success.

In our park examples, do we measure success by the 900+ communities in your nation that started cleaning and reclaiming their relationships with their parks?
Or do we measure it by seeing kids running barefoot chasing squirrels with glee, while you sit in the park reading lazily watching a bunch of teens walk by picking up garbage left by others?

Maybe it is both and more.

Whatever feels like success, gives us sustained motivation and that is the difference between abandoning our loving ideas and continuing to walk it.

To me the biggest change is this:
We are not our success, whatever and however we define it.
We are the how of our journey.
We reveal to ourselves who we are in the process and unfolding of it.

When we feel angry, betrayed, abandoned, alone, confused and scattered, that is actually our truth in the moment, in more ways than just the project or the question.

We we feel all of the above and then choose Love, Radiance, Trust, Truth, Surrender or Faith, we alter the course and chemistry of the Self.

We cease holding our minds and bodies, our dreams and actions in the world, our desires and manifestations at odds with each other.

”Not in the way you think” is now a bridge upon which we walk.

We acknowledge that the speed and density of the mind and the body are different. This is a necessary and celebrated difference that works together with our Breath, our Spirit, our Love, our Will, our Intention all coming together towards a specific medley of Creation in the form of You and I.

In this moment, whatever it is that is ‘not happening’ or ‘not going as you wish it’, let it teach both You and I its tremendous lesson.
Let us accept what is, and integrate the lessons.
So that when we wake up tomorrow, we are lighter, more focused and more clear that we have ever been before.