It’s taken me a while to get my head (and heart) around the idea that uncertainty is not a bad place to be. But I’ve been coming to realize that when I "know" something, often my knowing becomes set in stone, and the result is a rigidity and inflexibility that is at odds with the whole concept of deliberate creation.

The other day, I came across a quote from Deepak Chopra, in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, which really summed up what I’ve been discovering about uncertainty:

Uncertainty … is the fertile ground of pure creativity and freedom. Uncertainty means stepping into the unknown in every moment of our existence. The unknown is the field of all possibilities, ever fresh, ever new, always open to the creation of new manifestations. Without uncertainty and the unknown, life is just the stale repetition of outworn memories. You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is your self left over from yesterday.

These days, when I’m faced with a fork in the road, and I’m unsure which way to go, I let myself settle into uncertainy. I don’t have to figure anything out, here and now.

And in that stance, I find myself in the flow of allowing.

Last month I began a new gratitude practice. I’m not so sure what prompted me to do this, but it would not be exaggerating to say that my life has been truly incredible ever since.

If you’ve been maintaining a gratitude process like a gratitude journal, you might want to try what I call the "every moment" gratitude practice.

It’s exactly what it sounds like - practicing gratitude in every moment.

The results are just amazing. Of course, the first thing you’ll realize is that you feel better. But it’s not just that - feeling good is just the top layer of it all.

I find it’s a spiritually renewing practice, much like meditation. You go very quickly from simply feeling good - no, make that feeling great! - to having this awareness of the beauty of the world, and an immediate sense of the love that’s inherent in everything.

I think we have a gratitude muscle, and like anything, the more you exercise it, the easier it gets. And even when events happen that you don’t particularly like, it starts becoming easier and easier to see through things to something you can appreciate. Because there is always something to appreciate.

With the every-moment gratitude practice, you see the gifts that have always been there, all around you, in every moment of the day, with every breath that you take.

Now What?

Okay, so you’ve figured out what it is you really believe, and it’s not helping your desire out at all. What next?

Living and Breathing Your Desire, As If It’s Already There

If you can live and breathe your desire, as if it’s already there, you’ll begin the process of shifting your beliefs. The more you do this, the easier it will feel, and the more real it will seem.

This isn’t about simply visualizing what you want. It’s choosing to BE the you who has that desire fulfilled. One excellent resource is Denise Coate’s book, Feel It Real. The first edition of the book is now out of print, but you’ll be able to get a copy of the second edition this coming spring - it’s being published by Atria, the publishers of The Secret. Denise is also in the process of relaunching her Web site, and there will be lots of Feel It Real resources there once it’s relaunched.

Affirmations and Subliminal CDs

There’s a little trick to using affirmations and subliminal CDs - they work if you believe they will work.

See? There’s that belief thing popping up again. Scientists have a name for beliefs at work when using subliminal materials, by the way - they call it the Placebo Effect.

I’ve tried a number of subliminal CDs, and the company that works best for me is InnerTalk. You can download some clips for free here - you have to give them your email address, but it’s well-worth it if you want to give their material a try. And if you live in the States, you can request a catalog from them. If you don’t live in the States, they will send you one with your order, or you can download it in PDF format.

BE the YOU That You Want To Be

This has been the most powerful practice for me - getting to know who is the Me that I want to be. And then, making the choice to BE the me I want to be.

It all comes down to choosing. We always have a choice. And whether we know it or not, we’re always making choices.

Getting in tune with who you really are is really just a matter of deciding to make these choices consciously.

It’s very simple and basic - but at times, challenging to do. The more aligned you are with who you want to be, the easier it will feel. And the more you consciously make this choice, the easier it gets.

It’s a practice.

My friend Holly Sorensen puts it this way: our only job is to Be who we want to be. And this can be everything and anything. Whatever qualities we want to give to ourselves, we can. Just focus on Being who you want to be.

And let the Universe do the heavy lifting work of manifesting your desires.

The key to this practice is a commitment to Being who you want to be for you. Not for the manifestations. They’re just a byproduct. You’re doing this for you.

Someone I love who’s going through a challenging situation right now has discovered the Secret, and I’ve been helping her work with the Law of Attraction in her life.

And she kept saying something that really made me think.

“How can I be happy, happy, happy, when I’m feeling so miserable?” she asked.

If you’ve been reading a lot about the Law of Attraction - online, in books, watching the Secret - I wouldn’t be surprised if you were somehow picking up on the message, too, that in order to make the Law of Attraction work for you, you have to be “happy, happy, happy”.

But guess what?

You DON’T Have to Be Happy, or in Bliss, or Filled with Joy Right This Minute

Does that surprise you?

Yet it’s so true.

If you’re feeling miserable, or depressed, I can bet that you’re probably going to feel even more miserable or depressed because you want so much to bring the power of LOA into your life, but you don’t feel like you’re within range of even a mildly happy thought.

Another failure, right?

Wrong.

It’s All About Feeling BETTER - Even Slightly

The next time you get the impression from a book or an article that you need to “shape up” and be happy, relax. Sure, feeling happiness, being in bliss, filled with joy, these are all great things, and if you feel that way, guess what? You’ll be happy, feel blissful and joyful.

All very wonderful things.

But sometimes you’ll find yourself feeling depressed, or miserable, or just plain NOT happy, and if you find yourself in such a space, you don’t have to beat yourself up. There’s nothing to get frustrated about.

You’re doing fine. All is well. Truly.

Just Aim for the Thought That Makes You Feel Even Slightly Better

It’s all about the better feeling thought. And as Abraham-Hicks says, no-one expects you to jump from depression all the way over to happiness and bliss.

And really, if you’re new to giving yourself self-love and the permission to feel good, and you do think you’ve made that “jump” from being miserable right into being downright happy, you just might be happy-stickering (another Abeism). Putting a happy sticker on what you’re really feeling.

The thing is, the better feeling thought doesn’t have to make you feel a whole lot better. Just a little bit better works fine.

It’s about small steps. It’s about building on your previous feelings. And while it may not seem that way to you when you’re feeling miserable, if you can change your habit of thought so that you aim to always feel a little bit better, and then a little better than that, and then a little bit better than that … you’re well on your way to breaking out the bliss.

You’re building on your previous feelings. You’re not staying stuck where you are. You ARE shifting your feelings, just a bit at a time.

Stick with it. It works.

Lately I’ve been reading Jane Roberts/Seth - The Nature of Personal Reality and The Magical Approach - and I’ve been finding some very powerful concepts within this material.

There’s a very simple process outlined in The Nature of Personal Reality that I really like a lot. If you’ve been coming up with a lot of beliefs that are in conflict with your desires, you might want to try shifting to a new belief using this process.

The Present is Your Point of Power

The technique requires that you focus on the fact that your point of power is right NOW. This is one of Seth’s main points, that it is the present that is your point of power. You are not ruled by the past, or the future. It is in the present that you have all your choices.

Feel for the certainty that you create your reality, and that you create your reality right now, here in the present. Then for a period of five minutes, focus on your desire.

Do this using whatever techniques come most naturally to you - visualization, writing down, imagination.

Don’t Dwell on What You Lack

You may find yourself contrasting what you want with what you actually have, but for this five minute period, keep your focus away from what you lack. Believe that you have what you’re wanting.

Forget About It … And then Act

Don’t do this for any longer than five minutes - but make this five minutes be five minutes of your fullest energy and attention. Be very clear about your intentions.

And then, forget about it.

But, sometime during the day, perform an action that is in alignment with your belief or desire. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. Simply do something that shows that you have faith in the process.

One example that Seth gives:

“If you are poor, it can involve such a simple thing as buying an item you want that costs two cents more than the one you would usually buy - acting on the faith, even that feebly, that the two cents will somehow be given you or come into your experience; but acting as if you had more than you do.”

It’s a simple technique, and easy and fun to do. (Fun is always good!). Give it a try; I think you’ll begin to see and feel a difference in your life.

Recently Lucid asked in a comment on another post here:

One thing I often hear people saying is, “But how do you feel wealthy or abundant when you’re not?”…………..

I, like sooo many others, am having the hardest time with this one. I have read The Secret and have grasped the concepts. I will know that the universe is abundant and that I am ready to receive. I have focused directly on seeing myself in a better financial setting in life and then BAMMMMM…. something happens. This time around it was my husbands car, my daughters car, and then my daughter broke one of her adult molars….. Total =$1600 out not in… What gives… Do you have any helpful hints?

Feeling good, knowing that the Universe is abundant and visualizing yourself where you want to be financially are all good techniques for helping you create abundance. They work because they help you to allow abundance into your life.

But your core beliefs around abundance are also important. They are the other side of the equation, because it is through your core beliefs that you create your reality. When you hold core beliefs that do not conflict with your desires, and you are in a state of allowing, you will begin to see your physical world change to conform with your core beliefs.

Examine Your Core Beliefs

So you’ve been feeling good, doing a lot of visualizing and feel ready to allow abundance into your life, but nothing’s happening.

What you need to ask yourself is, What are my core beliefs about abundance?

Sit down with a piece of paper, and start listing all of your beliefs about wealth and abundance. Include both “positive” and “negative” beliefs. Let each belief lead you to more beliefs that you hold.

When you’re done, take a look at what you’ve written down. Most likely you will see certain beliefs that you hold about financial prosperity that are at odds with the financial wellbeing that you desire.

For example, you may believe that you’re not really worthy of financial abundance. Or that wealth corrupts people. Or there’s not really enough to go around. Or abundance is something that happens to other people, but you just don’t have what it takes to be wealthy.

These are beliefs that you will need to change. They conflict with your desire for abundance, and it is through our core beliefs that we create our reality.

Knowing that you hold these beliefs is a good start towards manifesting abundance. Often, until we sit down to examine what we truly believe, core beliefs can remain invisible - we just assume that they are true, and through these beliefs we experience situations and events that serve to strengthen our conviction and assumption that these beliefs are “real”, that they are beliefs that run our world.

How do you go about changing these core beliefs? I’ll examine different processes in future posts, but for now, see, truly see, the beliefs that you hold about abundance, understand that YOU created these beliefs and so you can create different beliefs, and know that it is through these core beliefs that you create your reality.

Take a look also at your positive beliefs about abundance and see how these, too, have had an impact on your reality.

Examining your core beliefs will help bring you to a new place of understanding where you will be able to begin truly knowing that you do create your reality.

One book that I’ve found very helpful for understanding how we create our reality is The Nature of Personal Reality, a Seth book by Jane Roberts. You’ll find an indepth explanation of how our core beliefs work, and the role our conscious mind plays in creating our reality.

I’ve been experimenting with a new Abundance Process lately, and I’ve been finding it very helpful for getting to that feeling place of “I have this!”.

One thing I often hear people saying is, “But how do you feel wealthy or abundant when you’re not?”

Recently, I’ve had several wonderful things happen in my life. And it occurred to me that the feelings I’ve been experiencing are ones that I want to re-experience, but with more “juice”, when I visualize or use other Feel It Real techniques.

So I’ve been creating a “Feelings Bank”. I’m using a new notebook especially for this. And all I do is write down the feelings I’m experiencing from whatever wonderful thing has happened. I make it as vivid as I can, so that when I re-read my description, it’s easy to slip into those feelings again.

And re-reading my descriptions puts me so easily into appreciation, which is a wonderful start to doing my visualizations.

Once I begin to feel these specific feelings again, I build on them in my visualization.

For example, I recently had $500 come to me easily and effortlessly. Having abundance flow to me with ease is something that I’ve been working on recently, so it was also wonderful, feeling like I’m getting there! Another feeling to add to the pot, so to speak.

Now when I’m getting into the feeling place of being abundant, I reach into my Feelings Bank, and I read my description of the feeling of receiving this $500 out of the blue.

From there, it’s easy to build on the feelings, imagining, for example, how I’d feel receiving a much larger sum, or whatever it is that I’m visualizing at the moment.

Use the feelings in your Feelings Bank as a foundation, get back into those feelings of appreciation and joy and wonder, and build on them from there.

It’s huge fun, and you’ll find yourself slipping into the feelings of “I have that!” with greater ease.

Cardin over at OptimistLab writes that she’s been doing a bit of “vibrational housecleaning”, and it reminded me how wonderful it can feel to go deep and clean-up your vibes every now and then.

How do you know when you need to clean up your vibes? I usually know when I find myself not feeling as “up” as normal, but my feelings aren’t being triggered by something in my external environment. This is usually a sign that I should spend a bit of time “going deep”.

If you’ve been feeling that way lately, here are seven tips that I’ve always found helpful for vibrational housecleaning:

1. Increase your meditation frequency. One of the fastest ways to clean up your vibes is to keep on track with your meditation, and make it a priority to temporarily increase the number of times or the duration of your meditation sessions.
2. Accept where you are and who you are. Often you’ll find yourself battling strong feelings of dissatisfaction with yourself - where you are, and who you are. Set aside time to practice processes that help you get back that beautiful sense of self-acceptance - the process I love most is the “self BOPA”. Developed by Denise Coates, the self BOPA takes the Book of Positive Aspects process from Ask and It Is Given, and makes you the subject of your book.
3. Play appreciation games. The practice of gratitude and appreciation is a very powerful way to “tune-up” your vibes. In addition to being uplifting, I always find that appreciation helps me to get rid of a lot of negative thoughts and feelings.
4. Make time for quiet and silence. Give yourself a period of time each day where you don’t have to do anything. Take this time, even if it’s only five or ten minutes a day, and sit and simply be yourself. You’re not meditating, you’re not playing with an abundance process, you’re simply Being. You’ll find it’s like taking deep breaths on a mental level that help to clear away vibrational cobwebs. Which brings us to …
5. Breathe deeply. Remember to stop every now and then to breathe deeply. Deep breathing can have a very cleansing effect, and help to center you. When you’re working on cleaning up your vibes, the physical act of deep breathing helps you to sharpen your internal focus.
6. Feel your way through whatever comes up. During this period of time, you will probably find yourself confronting strong feelings - and often these are feelings that you don’t really want to have. Don’t be alarmed. It’s all part of the process of vibrational housecleaning. It’s why you’re clearing a space and shifting your energies. When these feelings come up, reach for self-acceptance, and then gently reframe the feelings. I like to label these feelings as simply my “old stories”, and write down new ones for myself. It’s an easy way to reframe your perspective.
7. Reach for that feeling of trust. As you find yourself getting rid of thoughts, beliefs and feelings that no longer serve you, you’ll probably feel at least a bit of internal turbulence or chaos, some of which might even be reflected in your external environment. Practice reaching for that feeling of trust - trust that all is well. If you find accessing that sense of trust challenging, focus on that feeling of trust while you’re doing any of the things outlined above.

When you engage in vibrational housekeeping, what you’re really doing is getting rid of energy that is in conflict with who you are and what you desire. Cleaning up your vibes can be a quiet and soothing process, and when you emerge from your housekeeping, and shake the dust of past beliefs and thoughts off your “broom”, you’ll find a shift in your perspective that makes it all worthwhile.

Feeling It Real works.

Last year, my friend Denise Coates self-published Feel It Real, an incredible book filled with games and processes all based on our ability to “feel it real”.

As I’ve written in the past, the wonderful thing about Denise is she’s used all of these games and processes herself - she has created a wonderful life, and uses her book to help others do the same, rather than the other way around: “Unlike a lot of Law of Attraction teachers, Denise’s successes include areas other than the realm of teaching and counseling people about LOA. She is a successful actor, scriptwriter and independent filmmaker.”

And Denise continues using all the games and processes she’s developed in her daily life.

She’s been getting fabulous results.

Feeling It Real: Major Publishing Book Deal

How well does Feel It Real work?

Very well indeed.

Denise is just about to sign a publishing deal with the publishers of The Secret.

And she used the Feel It Real processes to manifest this wonderful result.

Five Minutes a Day

In talking about her good news, Denise wrote me, “How affirming that the Feel it Real! processes work! I used exercises from the book to manifest Feel it Real getting an amazing publishing offer from the publisher of the Secret. I used the Feel it First exercise where I got into all the juicy feelings of what it would feel like to manifest a wonderful publisher who was a huge fan of the book, and within three weeks of taking five minutes a day to get into the feeling place, I manifested the most WONDERFUL publisher who is a huge fan of the book! Getting into the feeling place of already having your desire truly creates MAGICAL results!”

If you already have a copy of Feel It Real, check out Game no. 13, “Find the Feeling Place”. Find the feeling place of your own big desire, then let yourself have fun with whatever processes resonate most with you. Denise has written about 31 of her favorite games and processes in Feel It Real, so there’s lots to pick from.

As my friend (and Denise’s publicist) Macha Blechner says, “This stuff really works and when it starts coming it is BIG!”

And not only does this stuff work, it’s a whole lot of fun.

Update: Unfortunately, because of her new publishing deal, you won’t be able to get a copy of Feel It Real until next year, when the book will be published by Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster.