my favorite part of LoA is the feeling that i generate in the here and now, of what i will feel like once i meet my goal.
the paradox, and what makes me giggle, of course, is that if you can feel that way now, then the whatever it is that's meant to make you feel that way in the future is sort of beside the point, right?
i mean, if you can get to that feeling without the shiny red bike, then the shiny red bike is sort of superfluous. but, with the feeling in place, that lays down the track for the shiny red bike to show up. i feel as though our expectations imprint the future, and then it's just a matter of real time catching up with that imprint.
by the way of example, 4 months ago i was sitting in my gnarly bedbug-ridden apartment. i had recently been dumped by a boyfriend i truly loved, and i was sleep-deprived and depressed and paranoid and kind of despondent -- i felt trapped.
the possibility of a beautiful new apartment came into my life, but it was uncertain cause the landlords were flaky and had concerns about me. i remember sitting on my bed in the old place and trying as hard as i could to summon up the feeling of security and freedom and happiness i would have in a great place with no bedbugs and no leaks in the ceiling and tons of warm wood floors and hot water available on demand and a yard of my own, etc. etc. i was completely grateful for the experience of living in this beautiful apartment, even though i didnt live there yet.
when i got to that place emotionally, i felt so good that i almost considered just getting a good exterminator and staying in my old place but i quickly banished that thought. i mean, the difference between the reality i was living at that moment, and the reality i was anticipating emotionally was huge. and now that i am living in that beautiful apartment, i am as grateful for it as i was then.
but i think being able to get to that place, where you are just filled with gratitude for the blessings you have as well as those you anticipate, is the engine that runs LoA, and also the funnest part of the whole experience. because, as has been stated upthread, the shiny red bike isnt really the point. it's merely the fruit of a deeper process of aligning yourself in the here and now.
the fun question is -- would you be able to engage in that process of alignment if you didnt have that desire for the bike in the first place? i doubt it, at least i couldnt. we are physical creatures in a physical world who respond to physical stimuli.
i also think that, for me, the direness of my situation was what enabled me to get past the hump of my own skepticism and just go for it. if moving was something i wasnt sure i wanted to do, or wasnt 100% keen on, i wouldnt have been able to muster the gratitude to get there.
(i actually just gave myself a little eureka in that last paragraph. maybe i havent gotten my own true love/record deal/everything i ever wanted because deep down i have ambivalence as to whether i really want those things or not. i feel lucky to have realized this -- cause now i know my next task is figuring out the ambivalence, and identifying something i'm *not* ambivalent about to work towards. so thanks for the thread velvet!)
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