Utilizing The Gap

Opportunities multiply as they are seized -Sun Tzu

         Do you have a dream? Do you have a calling or an inspiration? Do you ever envision the best life for yourself? What happens when you stop imagining your dream and come crashing back to the here and now? Is it jarring? Does it make you feel letdown to see where you are now versus where you want to be one day?

         I have said many times and I’m sure you will hear me say it many times in the future, never focus on the gap. Don’t focus on the gap from where you are to where you dream of being someday. My advice is always the same which is to simply focus on the step that you are on. Just do what is on your plate today and leave tomorrow’s problems in tomorrow. However, the mind has a tendency to make you feel not good enough by focusing on the gap.

         When you focus on the gap all that you have done to get where you are now disappears and you see only the mountain in front of you. The ego does this in order to make you feel unconfident in yourself and your abilities so that you give up on your dream altogether. Sounds kind of silly, doesn’t it? But I’m betting you have come across someone who had a million-dollar idea and said something like, “It’s just too much to take on right now. I don’t have the time, means, or wherewithal to accomplish bringing that idea into reality.”

         The ego doesn’t tell you that every day you climb the mountain or focus on bringing your dream into reality you gain momentum. It also doesn’t tell you that the gap is an illusion. How would you or the ego know what is going to happen between here and the life of your dreams? The future is always a fantasy so anything that happens in the future is only happening in your imagination. Until you reclaim your imagination, it belongs to the ego.

         This is why focusing on the here and now or the step in front of you can be so powerful. If you are present in the here and now you have all your power but if you are daydreaming about the future your ego has all the power. You have wandered into its spiderweb like a fly. Knowing this many will say, “Then every time I notice my mind imagining the future I will gently release it and bring my conscious awareness back to the present moment, just like meditation.” A solid plan to be sure but no one starts out a master of meditation.

         When you begin the journey of self-discovery or the healing journey you will find yourself in the imagination almost constantly. Many people believe their minds are fully in their control. It isn’t until after a destructive thought won’t leave them alone that they realize something is amiss.

         All that said, I still believe that focusing only on the step in front of you is the best way to thwart the ego. But I want to give you an abundance of options when dealing with your ego’s tricks. So instead of letting go of the gap when you realize you are focusing on it in the imagination, let’s utilize the gap.

         The ego is terrified of pain. Its main job is to protect you from pain even if the pain is only imagined. You will have to shift your relationship to pain eventually to defeat the ego but for now, let’s flip what the ego is scared of and use it to our advantage.

         The ego only sees the struggle in the gap. It wants you to focus on all the time and energy that will need to go into finding and mastering your calling or realizing your dreams. It never wants you to focus on all the growth and evolution in the gap that brings you into vibrational alignment with your dreams. Essentially, what we are going to do is discuss how to fall in love with the gap so the ego stops using it against you.

Excited For Pain

         When I first began my journey, I never paid any attention to my relationship to pain. I thought I was tough having endured so much physical, mental, and emotional torment in my past. What I came to realize is that fear and pain are tied together. If there were no pain in this world you couldn’t really experience fear. There has to be something you don’t want to experience for fear to be able to grab hold of you.

         Since all humans come into this world screaming in pain, fear becomes hard-wired into the brain. Everyone, whether they pay attention to it or not, will naturally gravitate away from pain and toward pleasure, joy, fun, etc. However, avoiding pain is fear. Protecting yourself or loved ones from pain is also fear. Throwing away a dream because of the pain you imagine in the gap is a fear-based decision.

         So then, to be able to flip what fear is scared of and utilize it to our advantage we must become excited to experience pain. Being excited to experience pain may sound confusing like an oxymoron but if can welcome pain by seeing the growth within it, you will bring fear to its knees.

         All emotional pain has something to teach you. All negative emotions are your heart and Soul’s way of communicating to you that you have false beliefs, outdated programming, or an incorrect perception of a situation. This means that all emotional pain is attempting to help you. However, if you don’t know how to process negative emotions then pain reminds you of the cruelty of this world.

         Processing negative emotion is all about recognizing that there are multiple perceptions of any given situation and shifting to a higher one while simultaneously learning the lesson pain is trying to teach you by connecting to your heart and healing. Negative emotions are invitations to examine your thinking and perceptions. What this means is that if pain is avoided, so too are the lessons within it.

         The lessons that are avoided don’t go away. Wounds that are not cleaned out will fester and become worse. What you resist persists but only every single time. The gap between where you are now and where you want to be can be perceived as a path of healing all the lies in your mind that tell you that you don’t deserve the life you imagine. The pain is there to elevate your consciousness to feel worthy of receiving your dreams. It is also there to stop those who are not courageous enough to believe in themselves.

         To unbrainwash poverty you must learn how to heal the traumas of your past. When you practice that skill enough to heal your own trauma, what you realize is that every single time you experienced extreme pain there was a valuable lesson or a golden nugget of wisdom wrapped up in the pain. When you heal the wound the wisdom is allowed to be revealed. What this means is that all emotional pain has something important to teach you.

         That may not make you excited to experience pain, but the alternative is to avoid pain or dread it coming. Pain is coming no matter what. It is the nature of the game we are playing. You can either have the pain of growth or the pain of defeat, it is your choice.

         Can you shift your perception to see all emotional pain as a ‘growing pain?’ Growing pains typically happen through the adolescent or teen years when the body grows extremely quickly compared to the rest of a human’s life. Well, what if we saw all emotional pain on the journey of self-discovery as the pain needed for transformation? Looking through that lens you will see that avoiding pain is avoiding growth.

Our greatest transformation happens through our toughest times -Anna Pereira

Space & Time

         Let’s imagine for a second that you are like me, and your calling is to help people heal in some way. How would you feel if you became world famous and had droves of people clamoring for your attention in your first year of service? I’m betting you may feel a little overwhelmed or underprepared. However, this is exactly what the ego wants. It wants immediate gratification and instant success.

         From my experience, I am extremely grateful that I had space and time to heal before a large number of people heard about my skillset. If droves of people had come asking for help in years one, two, or three I would have been a mess. It would have been a disaster because I was still figuring things out and healing myself to lead by example. I was angry, frustrated, and constantly letdown by my healing journey.

         My ego was consistently upset that no one found me or that the Universe didn’t send me people to heal. But now I know it sent me the most important person to heal first, myself. I wasn’t ready for people until I was healed. I didn’t want to admit it to myself back then but I had no business telling anyone how to unconditionally love themselves or this reality. I was still emotionally maturing.

         Now you may read that and think that you are ready right now. You may think you and I are different or our journeys or callings are different so what I’m saying doesn’t apply to you. But let me ask you this, knowing it takes 10,000 hours to master your calling, how much do you want the world to watch you fall down while learning mastery?

         Yes, I will admit that there are certain callings that you must have people to practice with and you must have human interaction to get to the 10,000 hours. Let’s use a comedian as an example. Kind of hard to master your craft without an audience. However, one of the first things a comedian learns is how to ‘bomb’ or fall flat on their face in front of a crowd with dignity. There is no comedian alive who doesn’t have a story, if not several, where they told all their jokes, and no one laughed. These experiences teach them to get back up, craft some new jokes, and get back on stage. If they don’t, they will never master their calling.

         I don’t know your heart’s calling. If you do then count yourself already successful. If you don’t know your calling then keep following your highest excitement until your heart reveals it to you. When the calling does show itself then you will have to face the 10,000 hours to mastery. In my opinion, there are only two ways to approach it mentally. Do you want to fail in front of people like the comedian, or do you want to fail behind the scenes?

         Before we go further, no one starts out as a master of anything. You must learn through trial and error like everyone else. If you don’t think I’ve had my fair share of bad days, you would be lying to yourself. You may as well get used to the idea of having egg on your face because it is going to happen. If you were learning a new language or a musical instrument, do you think you wouldn’t make any mistakes the entire time? Even geniuses and prodigies must learn through trial and error.

         Let’s stick with the analogy of learning to play a musical instrument later in life. How do you want to approach the 10,000 hours to mastery, in a classroom or at home playing by yourself with space and time to fail or by finding a band you can play with in some small venues to practice? Or maybe some hybrid combination of both. The point is there is no wrong way to do it but if you are being stifled by the gap to mastery and are letdown that no one is paying attention, then be grateful you have time to master your calling alone.

         Can you trust that the Infinite Intelligence who put your calling in your heart knows what is best for you? Can you trust that no matter what happens, open failure in front of others or practicing alone, will be perfect for you? Do you trust that you will be prepared exactly the best way for you and your audience? If not, why not? Why does it need to be your way?

         If you knew that eventually, many people were going to come from around the world to hear you play your instrument, how much would you want to be prepared? Personally, I want to be overprepared. So overprepared that nothing rattles me. So confident in myself and my abilities that nothing can throw me off my game. Trust the process because the gap is giving you space and time to practice for your concert.

Trust the process. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently -Henry Ford

Up, Not Forward

         As someone who has battled with ‘the gap’ myself, let me impart to you a mantra that has helped me keep things in perspective. The mantra is “Up, not forward.” You go up in consciousness and life moves forward on its own. You don’t have to worry about aiming your evolution toward the heart’s calling, all you have to do is focus on constantly evolving by shifting your perception higher and higher.

         What many people do unconsciously is forcefully push their life in the direction they want it to go. They believe they need to carve their life’s path through the jungle of uncertainty. When you believe in chaos it means your future is in constant jeopardy of not going the way you want it to go. Every decision you make affects your future fantasy of the best life possible. When you are worried about the future you make fear-based decisions to protect yourself from future pain and you are right back in avoidance and resistance.

         I know that it will sound crazy to your logical mind but let go of the future. There is no future, there is only today. There is only the here and now because it is always now. Your logical mind has been constructed by your past experiences. Even worse, your logic is based on your perception of past experiences meaning that if you perceive pain to be a ‘bad thing’ then you perceive this universe as hostile. Then it will be logical to protect yourself from pain by avoiding it. You may even hear your logic say that fear is healthy or that fear keeps you alive.

         There is no such thing as healthy fear. But I will admit is a very good trick. If fear were a magician I would be impressed by its tricks because it literally makes you scared to get rid of it. It is a pretty good trick to make you afraid of an unconditionally loving and supportive Universe.

         Fear may even make you believe that not focusing on your future is irresponsible. Remember, fear makes you believe that you are always under threat. Meaning that your future is always in jeopardy in the mind of someone afraid. By contrast, an enlightened master knows that the future is always a fantasy, and nothing is under threat. Threats are only in the imagination because everything is going to play itself out exactly as it should.

         When you go up in consciousness, you realize your heart is never threatened by anything. It is fearless because your heart knows the truth. The truth is that this is an unconditionally loving and supportive Universe that occasionally teaches through pain. If it were a hostile universe, why is there always a lesson in the pain?

         Focusing on going up in consciousness will show you that life moves forward without your interference. Fear will make you believe that not focusing on the future means you will not pay your bills, not take your kids to school, or not take a shower and take care of your body. Fear makes you forget about instinct. How is it that all animals on this planet take care of themselves and their families without thinking about the future?

         If you forget to think about tomorrow or the future in general, your instinct would still take care of your body, feed your family, and find a way to fulfill your obligations. This is the best way to neutralize the gap causing havoc in the mind. Focus on raising consciousness and listening to instinct will make you aware of any time the mind tries to drag you into the imagination and show you a future you don’t want. Fear likes to threaten you with things that you don’t want to have happen in the future in order to stay the same and not raise your consciousness. Fear is afraid of your evolution. Fear is the biggest scaredy-cat there is!

         What would it take to become grateful for the gap between where you are and where you want to be? For me, I look back at all the evolution on my healing journey so that when I look forward all I see is even more rapid evolution thanks to momentum. I’m a completely different person than the one who started this journey. The gap did that for me. The gap transformed me, and I believe that is why the gap is there for everyone. Finding and mastering your heart’s calling only comes once in a lifetime. Don’t be in such a rush that you miss the scenery of the journey.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is not think, not wonder, not imagine, not obsess. Just breathe and have faith that everything will work out for the best. Maybe not how you planned, but just how it’s meant to be -James Michael Sama