Monthly Archives: June 2007

Well, I’m here reporting from the Gap again. I have been accused (unfairly, of course) of getting stuck in my thinking on occasion. to the point where I can miss a point as plain as the ample nose on my face. In this case, I seem to have a bit of gap fever going on. Again, it has nothing to do with casual wear, but rather with my desire to jump quickly from where I am to where I want to be.

So once again, I asked The Shower Team about this particular brand of leaping—and how I can get the knack of it.

You are trying to understand better this distance between where you stand and where you want to be, this so-called “gap” and how to bridge it. And while you are on the right track in your desire to bridge that space that you perceive as a gulf or separation between you and the You who has what you are asking for, We want you to consider that there is a faulty premise at work here—and that faulty premise, or misconception, is the notion of the gap itself.

What we want you to begin to get a sense of is the reality that there is, in fact, no gap—only your perception of one. The You that sees all that is going on from your broader perspective has no such gulf or gap to contend with. That You already knows the joy, the exhilaration, the satisfaction of the having of what you want. That You feels, sees, experiences no distance between any desire or dream of yours and the receiving or manifesting of that desire.

It is from your limited, physical view that you perceive this gulf, and from that view, you hold yourself apart from the You who immediately becomes one with your desire as soon as you launch it. Pay attention to the ways that you describe your desires, or more specifically, the ways that you talk about having what you want to yourself or others. Listen carefully to what you say. More often than not it sounds something like: “Yes, some day I will have the abundance that I wish for . . .” or “One day down the road I will meet the mate of my dreams . . . “ or “Maybe in a few years I will be able to find a job that really fulfills me . . . “

Even now in your pursuit of understanding for how to “close the gap” between where you are and where you want to be, your focus is as much or more on the gap as it is on the elimination of it. If you keep going on about a gap that needs to be closed then you run the risk of just getting more gaps to close. And again, we want to offer to you a perspective where there are no gaps, where there is only the space between the thoughts you are practicing. There is only the proximity between you and You that is the difference between wanting what you want and having what you want.

Rather than spending time trying to trudge across some imagined chasm, we would encourage you to imagine yourself in front of a mirror, seeing You . . . but the You in the glass is the You who has what you desire. This You looking back at you is living the life that you dream of, receiving all that you are asking for. How is that You different? What is different about that You compared to the you on this side of the glass? How does that You look and feel? What is He/She doing? What does He or She say?

Now imagine that the glass separating you from You becomes permeable . . . as immaterial as air . . . so that you can reach through it and touch the You on the other side. Imagine you and You becoming one. Imagine you inhabiting You on the other side of this barrier that no longer exists.

You might say this is just fantasy or yet another exercise in using your imagination to trick yourself or to act as if you actually create your own experience, and we would say that is exactly right and that it is your imagination that is key to the closing of this imaginary “gap” of yours. You choose to make this imagined gap real by the way that you perceive it and think about it. You make the gap real and the having of what you want a fantasy, and in doing so, you hold yourself apart from it. You create the gap and then you create all this work for yourself in trying to close it.

How would you be different, feel different, act differently, if there were no gap–if you could easily inhabit the You on the other side of the looking glass? We promise you that if or when you allow yourself to be, to think, to feel the way You are when You are receiving what you desire, then all perceived gaps or barriers dissolve as easily and quickly as the imagined glass between you and the You on the other side of the mirror.

To start, decide that you will speak no more of gaps. Speak instead of bridges. Carry the image of You on the other side of the glass around with you . . . and regularly see your Selves reaching through the glass to become one. Speak of how much closer and closer you are drawing to your dreams. Speak of the progress you are making. Speak of distance only in the past tense, in terms of how far you’ve come. Speak of what is desired in terms of nearness, closeness. Take yourself nearer and nearer to your desires by finding ways to create the experience of feeling what it will be like to be the You who has received what you want.

Put even a fraction of the effort you expend in holding the image of or laboring to somehow get across “The Gap” into placing yourself smack in the middle of being the You who has what you want. We promise you that all this talk and this fretting about gaps will soon seem like so much “Gapola.”

You gotta love spirit guides who can get into word play. You may also have to wonder how many times I have to be reminded that most everything I complain or ask about is all in my head. In a manner of speaking I suppose, We/They are pretty much all in my head.

In any case, bridges do sound better to me than gaps. And if Alice could slip through the looking glass why can’t I? It’s a magical thought that leaves me feeling like a very cool character in a story I get to write. And that leaves me not only feeling far less hung up on gaps—for now—but also for the moment, imaginatively complete.

I like to think that I’m not the only person (mystic or otherwise) in the world who gets hung up sometimes on what I’m not getting or feeling from some of the people in my life.

I freely acknowledge that even thought I may be one of the world’s biggest introverts, and to many onlookers, a rather self-sufficient fellow, I still find myself wanting (craving?) attention sometimes—and particularly the kind of attention that feels like support and encouragement and approval from those I call my friends.

So when somebody I really want those things from doesn’t exactly step up, in my humble opinion, or for whatever reasons, doesn’t offer what I deem to be the appropriate levels of positive feedback and/or applause for some achievement I’m waving around in their face, it tends to become an ‘issue’.

And so, suspecting that I would once again hear that I and not someone else, am the problem, I asked The Shower Team, “What can I really and truly understand that will help me get past this need of mine for someone else to validate or approve of me?”

You rightly ask in this as in most situations, “How can I feel better about this?” because in this as in most situations where you are focused upon what someone else is doing or not doing to please you, the real issue is what you are doing or not doing and how you are creating the feelings that you wish to change. In this case, where someone you care about is not offering the kind of support or encouragement or the level of sharing that you desire, you are not wrong to want those things. It is perfectly normal and justifiable for you or anyone else to desire the participation of those you care about in the experiences that matter to you.

Where you trip yourself up is in your insistence upon this participation at all costs and more important, the ways that you choose (consciously or not) to compete with others for the good feelings that are available to you. When you stand where you are, relative to any topic, and allow your well being to be diminished in any way by someone else’s response—or nonresponse—to you, then you are effectively saying, “I measure my happiness or my success or my well being at least in part by the degree to which this individual offers his or her stamp of approval to me.” When you need someone else’s validation or encouragement or support in order to offer that validation or encouragement or support to yourself, then you are making that person the judge responsible for awarding you the points you feel are necessary in order for you to win—to be validated or to be verified or to stand where you are with a sense of approval about yourself.

In a sense, it is as if you believe, once again, in a finite amount of approval or validation available to you from the Universe and therefore you are continually reaching for ways to win or achieve it . . . usually by making someone else the dispenser of it . . . You decide that this person or that person has some ultimate authority to proclaim you worthy and you set out to win that person’s approval (often in the form of their support or encouragement or positive feedback) and then if it does not come, then you make the absence of that approval or validation from that one source the criteria by which you judge yourself worthy of unworthy of well being or success or contentment or peace or whatever you call the good feelings that you seek.

You are continually turning your efforts to feel good about yourself into a contest or competition or a race that you must win, with the prize being someone else’s to give. Whereas we would encourage you to recognize that there is no competition under way. There is no contest for the well being available to you. There is not a limited supply of awards or approval for you and there is not one person anywhere who has the authority to declare you worthy or unworthy.

There is no race and no finish line and no panel of judges. There is only a smooth and enjoyable ride downstream or a rocky and laborious struggle paddling upstream—and either one is your choice. You can choose to engage in some imagined contest for limited resources and an even more limited supply of rewards or you can recognize that the joy of your ride has to do only with the way you are approaching it. We would rather see you enjoying the scenery and the sweet, swiftly flowing current carrying you downstream and simply notice those around you enjoying their ride and in the process, recognize that the enjoyment of that ride is all any of you really have control over.

We would atually encourage you to put on the rose-colored glasses so many of you joke about, where you can see only the pleasure that is all around you and to relax into the sweetly floating raft that will inevitably carry you in the direction of your dreams and desires as soon as you stop trying to buck the current and as soon as you let go of your compulsion to call out to this one or that one and ask “How am I doing?”

Told you they’d say it was all about me. Do I know my Team or what? One of the hardest things for me to hear sometimes is how competitive I can be. I much prefer the sweeter, compassionate, soulful and sensitive Pisces hat that I normally (try to) wear. But when They put it that way, it’s hard to argue that I’m out to snag someone’s stamp of approval in these situations.

And what’s really curious is that as soon as I put the focus back on just doing my thing and having as much fun at it as possible—the approval or support or participation from others always seems to follow. It leaves me, once again, digesting the truth that it is, in fact, all about me—that is, what I think about me. And I’m thinking that a relaxing raft ride floating sweetly downstream in the company of appreciative others sounds pretty good. It leaves me with an “Ahh” of validation . . . and for the moment, sweetly complete.