Monthly Archives: October 2007

One of the cherished friends of The Shower Channel and a valued reader of The Shower Team’s messages, contacted me recently to ask for some clarity about some rather significant events in her life and the questions that have emerged as a result.

The Team responded to her questions in a way that she seemed to appreciate and as I looked at the response she received, it occurred to me that there might be others who would benefit from the message as well.

She graciously consented to allow me to post her question and the response to it here in the hope that someone asking similar questions might benefit from the answers she received.

In the past two and a half years everything that I have ever earned, married, or been employed by has disappeared in less than one week. My life is in a huge upheaval and I’m currently very fortunate to be on “stress leave” through the insurance from my employer. I have always wanted to “work” (earn a good income/work) in the field of spiritual transformation. Could the Shower Team give me some feedback on the best/most uplifting/most universally beneficial career direction I can take to fulfill my life’s purpose.

My second question is: I have been married more than once…… these relationships have taught me so much…. but now I truly want to “marry” or partner with someone who loves me unconditionally and is my “match” on the emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual level. Does the Shower Team see any possibility of that? I think that I still have so much to offer this perfect partner…..or am I meant to be alone and live a life more like a nun?

Your questions are questions that we understand are being born out of what you might consider to be the ruins of your current circumstances . . . or at least, what feels to you like the tumbling down of most of what you have constructed for yourself prior to this. The questions speak to your uncertainty and your current lack of clarity, and to the disappointment you are feeling about the way that things have gone for you lately.

Nevertheless, we see and hear the current conditions of your experience, the breakdown of much if not all that you have built . . and with all due love and respect, we say “Good for you!” “Bravo!” And while it may sound strange or even cold to respond in such a way to your obvious discomfort with current conditions . . . we want you to understand that the reason we applaud where you are is, in part, because of the powerful desire that is being launched from you under these current conditions. Powerful desire is being born here and where there is powerful desire there is powerful life force being summoned forth. The current of your life is flowing swiftly—more swiftly all the time, even if you cannot necessarily see that right this minute.

That current is carrying you in the direction of new or newly clarified dreams and desires. In the midst of this rubble or this ruin or this loss that you are experiencing, there are new ideas coming forth, a new light dawning that is pointing you more than ever in the direction of what your heart desires most.

When you find yourself in such a place of loss or letdown, looking around and noticing all that has fallen away . . . there is such freedom available to you if only you can see it. There is such possibility swirling all around you, such a delicious flow of energy and such a powerful calling to you if only you will hear it.

You can go anywhere from here. You can do whatever it is that you decide your heart is calling you to do. Anything is possible and very little is now in your way. There is truly an open horizon before you and all that you are ‘meant’ to do is to pick the point on that horizon that shines brightest to you and begin to move toward it.

You ask—as many do—questions about your life purpose or questions about what kind of connection, what kind of love or partnership, has been determined or ordained for you. And we say, please reframe the question, because asking it the way that you are asking implies that someone other than you has the final say about any of that.

What we want you to understand and to embrace and to celebrate is YOUR power to decide those answers for yourself. We want you to really feel how much power you have right here and now to determine the course of your own life—simply by becoming as clear as possible about what it is that you really really want.

Instead of asking, “What career will most fulfill my life purpose?” Ask instead, “what kind of work would truly set me on fire? What kind of work would I so love to do that I would long for every sunrise so that I could get started again?” Instead of asking, “Will love ever find me or am I ‘meant’ to be alone,” ask yourself what it is and why it is that you want to share your joyous life experience with another. What is it you want to offer someone? Why does it matter to you that someone be there sharing your journey and participating in your expansion and unfolding with you?

We want you so much to understand what a powerful creator of your own experience you really are, even though you may feel right now as though you are at the mercy of forces that are beyond your control. The fact is, nothing that has come to you, nothing that has ‘happened to’ you has or could come about unless it were somehow a response to what you have been offering in terms of what you think and how you feel.

So begin to focus now, during this blessed and richly fertile time in your life, on your desires. Feel them as clearly and purely as possible. Be as sure as you can be what it is that you REALLY want and begin to give your attention to it. Live it. Breathe it. Sing it. Dance it. Dream it. Write it. Paint it. Expect it!

You are, in fact, at one of the most pivotal and powerful places you can be right now . . . standing in your here and now, with almost nothing to lose and with everything to gain. All you have to do is decide what your gains will look like—and the only criteria for that are whatever pleases you.

Trust your own connection to Source, trust the You that you really are to continue to offer guidance to you—as You have been doing already all through these recent times—toward all that your heart is calling you to. See and celebrate the fact that you have turned toward You, and that nothing and no one can stand in your way now but you.

Follow Your own lead, day by day, dream by dream, thought by thought . . . and just watch how beautifully and perfectly you rise from these apparent ashes, ready to receive the life that YOU meant for you to live.

I don’t know about my friend, but that message made me want to go out and buy a bumper sticker or something. “Eat My Ruins!” Okay, maybe that’s taking things a little too far. I know that my track record is filled with a lot more boo-hooing that bravado. And maybe the message isn’t so much that boo-hooing is bad, but that it’s the wet tip of a mighty iceberg.

Looking at the debris and envisioning the new and improved structure that could rise shining from the rubble is often a challenge for even the most imaginative among us. But sometimes the sky can look pretty damned spectacular when you’re looking up from the curb . . . and when there’s not much left to lose, it’s amazing how wide the field of possibilities can become.

It’s enough to get me to think about slapping a different headline on my bad news, and that leaves me feeling much freer to write—and edit–my own copy . . . and for the moment, complete.

I’ve noticed that one of the things that happens when you start describing yourself as a channel or an intuitive or a psychic, is that people want you to predict their future. Lately I can’t seem to get away from questions like the ones in that old Doris Day song, “Que Sera Sera.” “What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?”

We all want to know on some level what’s ahead for us. What’s going to happen? What can we expect? Will things get better? We think there’s some power in that ‘knowledge’ and many of us (myself included) will often seek out those who we think might have the answers.

Something about being on the receiving end of those questions, though, always makes me a little uneasy. Fortune telling is fascinating and even fun sometimes. But how much does it help us?
I asked The Shower Team, “Is the future really ours to know? Is it even any of our business?”

It is understandable that you wonder about the future, particularly when you are holding a view of yourself or your experience where you see your life as something that happens to you rather than something that you are creating moment by moment. If you feel that the events of your life are more or less random events or are controlled by some higher power who is pulling the strings because you’re just not smart enough to manage the whole business . . . . then it stands to reason that you would have great curiosity about what’s ‘out there’ for you or what will come your way next . . . or when the things you want might appear.

The problem with that sort of speculation is that it is often attached to a sense of powerlessness. In fact those very questions: When will I meet the lover of my dreams . . . what will I be doing a year from now . . . . where will I be living when all the things I’ve asked for finally come . . . and so on and so on . . . are questions that suggest some sense of your having little to no say in the direction that your life takes from wherever you stand.

There is nothing wrong with imagining your future, of course. We urge you to do it as often as you can, provided what you imagine feels joyful and eager and compelling to you. What we also urge, however, is for you to recognize that you are the author, the creator, of whatever future comes your way.

You shape your future with every choice you make. Every single thing that you give your attention to over time helps to chart the course of your life. Everything you focus on . . . everything you look at with consistent joy or hope or pleasure or anticipation—or with consistent worry or fear or doubt or anxiety . . . becomes part of the fabric of your future.

But more often than not, you don’t approach your future with that sort of perspective. Instead, you wait for your life to happen in many respects . . . and you think about what’s coming as though it’s part of a script somebody else is writing that you haven’t been allowed to read beyond today’s episode. What this does is keep you in the dark about your own life and about the possibilities that are before you, waiting for your creative input.

When you ask, “Will I meet the man or woman of my dreams?” or whatever it is in your future that you can’t quite trust, you are in a sense saying, “I have serious doubts that I’m going to find anybody.” Why else would you ask? If you were confident and eager and joyfully anticipating the rendezvous with that one who ill be the perfect match for you, then the question would be irrelevant or at least, unnecessary. Your belief in your ability to manifest this desire would be evident in how you feel and what you think . . . and the future would simply be that vividly drawn, lushly felt image that you have created in your mind and that you are moving toward as a result of continually choosing the thoughts that line up with it.

What we would encourage you to do is to reframe your picture of the future. Instead of seeing it as some inevitable chain of events that you must simply wait for and accept . . . see it for the powerfully dynamic production that it is . . . see it as a play or film or novel that you are writing one chapter, one day, one line at a time . . . shaping it with each thought you keep thinking, each desire you keep launching. See your future as the fluid and responsive canvas and palette that it is, being ever colored and fashioned and modified and perfected by the choices you make.

You don’t have to do this, of course. You can continue to hold whatever belief you choose, continue to practice whatever thoughts are most comfortable or familiar to you. You can consult whomever you like and believe whatever answers you are given. But whether you see it or not, the future that unfolds for you will always—always—be the result of what you give your attention to where you stand here and now . . . and in the moment after that . . . and in the moment after that . . .

So when you ask about the future, instead of asking about what’s coming when or who’s going to show up where or how things will be for you there or then . . . ask instead, “What will I focus on next that will take me forward in the direction of my heart’s desire?”

You’ll never go wrong with that approach—and never need anyone to ever tell you again what your future holds—unless you just like hearing somebody tell you what you already know.

I’m pretty sure they’re not really trying to put psychics out of business. I remember hearing a very wise (from my perspective) intuitive say that the best question to ask in a reading isn’t “What does the future hold?” but rather, “What can I understand about the present that will help make the future brighter?” Clearly she wasn’t as longwinded as The Team but the same point seemed to be made.

If I pay attention and focus more consciously on the future I’m creating in the here and now, then it probably stands to reason that some if not most of the answers to my questions about the future will become largely self-evident. That doesn’t mean I’ll never get a second (or third) opinion, but it does offer me a more self-reliant approach to the whole business of what will be.

That leaves me feeling a little bit surer not only of my ability to shape my tomorrows but to tell how they’re likely to shape up. And that leaves me feeling like a much more self-reliant psychic—and for the present moment, complete.