Infinite Possibility, Infinite Flow

flow

In recent weeks, several friends who are experiencing financial challenges have posed this question to me:

Why is that so many aspects of my life seem to be flowing, but when it comes to money, I feel so stuck?

Or,

Why is it that when I’m meditating, creating, writing or “in the zone,” I feel alive and vibrant, as though I’m living at the highest of frequencies, but when it comes to finances, I come crashing back to earth?

These are important questions and the answers are both simple and complex.

They remind me of a time in my life of profound financial struggle, a time when both these questions were constantly on my mind.

The “Olinda Effect”

We were living on Maui then, in the coastal community of Kihei. Here, in this amazing Pacific paradise, money was a constant challenge. And despite my two jobs and our weekends selling crystals at the island’s flea market, there was never enough to cover all our bills.

Kihei was supposed to have been a landing place, we thought, our first stop on the climb to prosperity. Our desired destination was the tourist-free — and pricier — uplands of Kula.

Every couple of weeks we’d drive up the mountain, often to the lush hills of Olinda, where we’d gaze admiringly at the handsome homes and go walking in Olinda’s serene experimental forest.

While strolling among the stately pines, anything seemed possible: infinite abundance, an Olinda mansion, work that impassioned us… It all felt within our grasp. Easily.

And then we’d drive back down the mountain to Kihei, down to our tiny condo with its overdue rent and overdue bills, back to the jobs I hated, back to a life that wasn’t in flow.

By the time we reached sea level, the “Olinda Effect,” as we’d dubbed it, had fully kicked in: We were anxious, fearful and no longer in that anything-is-possible Olinda resonance.

Money and Flow

I’ve thought about that story a lot as I’ve reflected on my friends’ questions and on my time both on Maui and now in Albuquerque.

It’s said that if you do what you love, the money will follow. But money follows, when it does, not because we’re doing what we love. It follows because in living our passion we are living at a vibration where lack cannot exist, where flow is infinite.

But — and it’s a big “but” — unless we can hold that resonance when the bills come in, we crash back down into a consciousness of scarcity.

That’s what happened on Maui. That’s what’s happening to one of my friends. Let’s call her Julie, even though she’s a composite of several people.

Julie loves her work. When she’s in the midst of it — and in much of her life beyond it — she’s one of the most powerful, conscious and aware people I know. Through most of her days, she breathes light and enlightenment.

Then rent day approaches. Or the car payment. Or some other bill that she doesn’t, in the moment, know how she’ll cover.

Fear and anxiety roll in like a heavy fog, casting a pall over the passions of moments earlier. Like I did on Maui, she comes down from the mountaintop of infinite possibility and finds herself in a swamp of doubt and apprehension.

For as long as she lives in that place of doubt and apprehension, it will be harder for the money to flow.

I’m speaking here about money. But I could be speaking about love or peace or health or any other aspect of our life that doesn’t seem to be working.

Whatever it is, the more anxiety we attach to it, the more our fear keeps us from living in the fullness of our highest potential around it.

Our fear will always keep us from living that potential.

Passion and the Present Moment

Back in December 2004, I left Sedona, Arizona on what would ultimately become an open-ended road trip. I left with limited funds and no idea how I would be supported.

In those early months, I was very much like Julie, dropping into a state of panic whenever my car payment — then, my largest singly monthly outlay — was near due.

In those moments, that still, small voice we can all access would ask, Are all today’s needs taken care of? Food? Gas? Accommodation? My answers were always “yes.”

Then let tomorrow and tomorrow’s bills take care of themselves, the voice would say.

Somehow, through more miracles than I could possibly list, tomorrow and tomorrow’s bills always did take care of themselves. Not always in my preferred timing. Not always in my preferred manner. But in holding myself to the present moment and in knowing that I would be taken care, I always was.

Today, my life is infinitely more complex — and expensive. Yet the basis for how I live it has not changed.

Even as I still don’t know how I’ll be supported from day to day, I live each moment (to the best of my limited human ability) knowing that by holding the resonance of my passion, I will always be in the resonance of flow.

Many of us maintain a meditation practice of some sort. We carve ten or twenty minutes from our day to spend in the higher realms.

But meditation can be like Olinda. Sure, it can carry us into a place where everything is possible because in that frequency everything is possible. Yet when our moments of altered beingness come to an end, we can find ourselves back in our wordly life of bills, traffic and conflict, and the Olinda Effect can kick in.

We’re called to do more than meditate our way into higher modes of being. We’re called to reside there. Full-time. Even in the midst of all that life would throw at us. (See Rule #6 in “Mark David’s 10 Rules for Living” at http://markdavidgerson.com.)


Photo of the Sandia Mountains by Mike Pedroncelli

Today, I live in the Albuquerque equivalent of Olinda — in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, 1,000 feet above the city’s lowest elevation. And in many ways, it feels as though I’ve achieved at least some of what I thought I was seeking as I gazed longingly toward the Kula uplands from Kihei.

What I’ve achieved, though, has nothing to do with money. What I’ve achieved, most days, is an ability to live in infinite possibility full-time and to know that by living my passion, living in the moment and not freaking out at the latest stack of bills, the Olinda resonance lives within me wherever I am.

Ironically, the Hawaiian word kihei means “shawl” or “cape.” Even in the midst of that Kihei energy that felt so constricting and impoverishing, I was always embraced in a protective blanket of divine love.

Regardless of life’s externals, that kihei is always and ever present for us. The more we acknowledge it, know it and live it, the more we will experience it in all aspects of our life, including the financial. And the more that the Olinda resonance will show up — and remain present and alive — in our lives.

20 thoughts on “Infinite Possibility, Infinite Flow”

  1. It can be hard to take that mountaintop experience with you when you’re back in the daily grind.

    What I find helps for me is to write down the thoughts and feelings that get me into that charged-up, open possibilities state of mind so I can refresh myself when I’m struggling with the day. :-)

  2. Excellent post — I, too, noticed that whatever I worry about, are the issues/challenges I struggle with. Other challenges don’t bother me — I know I need a solution, but I just trust that I’ll figure something out and don’t spend excessive amount of time worrying or even thinking about it. And it always works itself out.

    The ones I do worry about, I do because I feel insecure there. There’s a weak spot, probably something hurt there in the past. Instead of trying to tell myself “don’t worry” I use it as an opportunity to explore. Why am I worried? What happened in the past that makes me feel that I need to be concerned about? I can almost always point to a past experience, and based on which I assume when I see A happen, then B is the result. Well, but who am I to predict the future? Even when I see the sign A, it may not lead to B the next time. This is how I begin to rescript my worries, so that I can let energy flow in places where I was holding back.

    ari

    Ari Koinumas last blog post..Blog Carnival: 10 Posts about Realizing Your Potential — August 2008

    1. That’s true for all of us, I think: the areas of our deepest insecurity are the areas that trigger our greatest anxieties. They’re also the areas of our greatest potential growth. Your “rescripting” technique is definitely a very powerful tool for rechanelling the energy.

      Mark David Gersons last blog post..Trust. Now.

  3. My basic philosophy is

    “Stay curious and open to life. No matter what happens keep learning and growing. Find what you love to do and find a way to share it with others.”

    That’s another way of residing in “higher modes of being”. I talk about how this has played out in my life in my latest post: My Brain Is My Favorite Toy ( http://cheerfulmonk.com/2008/08/18/my-brain-is-my-favorite-toy/ )

    Thanks for the food for thought!

    Jean Browman–Cheerful Monks last blog post..My Brain Is My Favorite Toy

    1. Absolutely, Jean. Every experience is an opportunity to keep learning and growing. And every experience we learn and grow from is a redemptive one.

      Thanks, too, for subscribing to my e-mail list!

      Mark David Gersons last blog post..Trust. Now.

  4. “What I’ve achieved, most days, is an ability to live in infinite possibility full-time and to know that by living my passion, living in the moment and not freaking out at the latest stack of bills”.

    This is a great place to be. Most of us, myself included, can only hope to achieve such inner piece.

    Thank you, Mark, for an inspiring post.

    Vereds last blog post..Top 10 Fashion Mistakes To Avoid At All Costs

  5. I still find it interesting that money has such power to freak us out and keep us from living life to the full.
    These posts support us to release the hold money has.
    Thanks Mark.

    1. Thank you, Wilma. Money is just a stand-in for deeper issues. I know that when financial anxieties come up for me, I don’t have to dig too deep to find core fears that have nothing at all to do with money.

      Mark David Gersons last blog post..Trust. Now.

  6. We’ve given money so much power! Money is only the way we exchange energy in this third-dimensional world. That’s it. Everything else is our construct.

    If we think about it that way, we have to remember to be open to receive. Most of us, when we go into lack, go into action and “output” mode. This actually stops the inflow of money, since our energy is going outward. Eventually, our financial energy flow is a one-way street – we work, work, work, work and constantly do more output. There ends up being a bottleneck of energy going out, nothing coming in.

    We have to put ourselves into a state of receiving in order to experience abundance.

    Blessings,
    Andrea

    1. So true, Andrea. However, we’ve so conditioned that receiving is somehow not good, not spiritual. Just saying we’re open to receive is not enough. We have to recondition and reeducate ourselves, changing our beliefs, our language and our actions in order to step more fully into that receptive space.

      Mark David Gersons last blog post..Trust. Now.

  7. Mark,

    Thank you so much for this article. As soon as you mentioned “Kihei” I was hooked. As I told you via email, but my readers probably don’t know, Kathryn and I were married in Kihei so it is a very special place for me. To read your explanation of the word Kihei just makes it even more meaningful. Thank you :)

  8. Interesting post. In addition to personal struggles with doubt and apprehension, these same negative emotions can take hold of entire groups of people: nations, cultures, etc. Just look at the fear induced by the notion that letting go of U.S. dependence on oil will result in economic ruin.

    Nothing could be further from the truth. But those fears, perpetuated by those who have the strongest hold on oil, absolutely paralyze national policy.

    I’m really interested in seeing how some of these self-actualization techniques on the personal level can scale up to address larger problems.

    Bill Kanapauxs last blog post..Altered states 1: Your world on the brink

  9. Maria | Never the Same River Twice

    Mark, I have a similar practice to your trips to Olinda. I live near a beach area and I often walk (trespass) on the beaches in front of beautiful homes and pick out the one that I want. What I recently realized by reading Playing the Money Game by Steve Pavlina, is that I still don’t see those homes as real possibilities for my life. That is a mental limitation that I need to work on before I can be in a place to achieve that level of abundance.

    Maria | Never the Same River Twices last blog post..The Authentic Blogging Manifesto

  10. I’ve been an investment advisor and financial planner for more than 10 years… With every year of experience and every certification, degree and designation I earned along the way, it became more evident to me that financial success has nothing to do with money.

    In fact, any form of success has little or nothing to do with the particular object of success and everything to do with self-knowledge and self-awareness.

    Most of us are misled by social conventions that are telling us to “be somebody” or to “improve your self” with the aid of some physical world object, such as material wealth or social status.

    I find it especially interesting that many commenters here are bloggers, like myself…

    How many of us are trying to leverage social conventions and marketing techniques to “steal” attention from others in the effort to build our “subscribed readers” number?

    I believe the best service we can do for our readers, or any person for that matter, is to help them find themselves rather than suggest “50 Ways to be Happy” or “How to Retire Young and Rich.”

    There is no reason to pursue “happiness” if we realize that we already have what we need. There is no reason to pursue material wealth if we realize that we are already “rich.”

    As you breathe your last breath, you may just find that you were at the “wealthiest” moment in your life when you and your wife were looking at “Olinda.”

    “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” ~ Epicurus

    Great post. Thanks for provoking thought…

    Kent (The Financial Philosopher)

    The Financial Philosophers last blog post..Thinking Outside of ‘The Game’

  11. Thanks, Kent, for your thoughtful response. I agree with pretty much everything you say. I think it’s important for all of us involved in personal growth work to do our best to empower people (including ourselves) to connect with their inner richness, acknowledge all the wonders of the moment and recognize the infinite nature of all that is (including potential blog subscribers!).

    Mark David Gersons last blog post..Trust. Now.

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