Deliberate Receiving Read online

  Think of it this way: let’s say that you’re looking through a telescope in order to spy on someone across the city. You’re currently watching the screen of your target’s computer, having zoomed in so narrowly that you can even see what he’s writing. Now, let’s say that you need to find a new target, in a completely different building. If you try simply to swivel that telescope around a bit in order to find your new target, while continuing to zoom in that narrowly, you’ll see nothing but a blur. Finding that new target will be like trying to find a straw-coloured needle in a haystack. If, however, you take your eye off the viewfinder and just look at the city’s skyline (a broader, more general view), you can find the building where your new target works and point your telescope at that. Now, you can use the telescope on a less specific setting, to find the right row of windows, and then narrow your focus to the correct window, the desk and finally the computer screen.

  In other words, if you want to change targets (shift from the problem to the solution), you’ll have to back off, take a broader view to reorient yourself, and then focus in on that new target gradually. If you try to focus too narrowly too soon, you’ll lose your place and things will get blurry and frustrating.

  Thanks to the Law of Attraction, this narrowing of the focus happens automatically. As you activate a specific frequency, the LOA will bring you ever more specific manifestations that match it. But you have to allow that process to unfold instead of trying to jump ahead in the Progression. You can’t find the specific window if you haven’t taken the time to find the right building first. You can’t find the right desk if you haven’t taken the time to find the correct window, and so on. Each step leads to the next.

  Now, let’s get back to how the tool of faith fits into all of this. As you keep imagining the idea of the solution and how it will feel, more and more details will manifest and the picture will become more and more vivid. You only need to have enough faith to believe in whatever it is your imagination currently has access to. You don’t need to have ‘blind’ faith in a solution that you can’t yet imagine, and your imagination will only ever be able to access easily the next stage in the Progression of a Manifestation, but not much beyond that. To put it another way, you only need to have faith that you can find that other building, not that you can find that new target’s computer screen. After that, you only need to have faith that you can find the window, and so on.

  Let’s say that you feel unworthy and you’d like to change that belief. Blind faith would require you to reach for the exact opposite: that you are worthy, and do your best to believe it. So, you chant affirmations of total worthiness. And… nothing happens. In fact, you may even start to feel worse. The problem is that you’re reaching too far; you’re not respecting the Progression of a Manifestation. If, however, you begin to change your belief incrementally, you use your imagination to find a solution that feels good, no matter how general, and you have faith in the fact that this solution could come about (perhaps ‘I believe that I will, eventually, feel better’), you’ll make a lot more headway. We’ll be spending a lot more time on the process of exactly how to shift a belief incrementally in Chapters 10 and 11, but for now, remember that it’s an incremental process, that everything is a Progression, and that you only have to apply imagination and faith to the next step in that Progression.

  Once you truly understand the progressive nature of reality, it will become easier to adopt the perspective that you have to believe it to see it. After all, the physical evidence can’t manifest until you match the frequency that will allow you to perceive it, but if you understand how to attune yourself to that frequency bit by bit, allowing each piece of evidence to fuel the creation and reception of the next one, you’ll have all the knowledge you need to shape your reality into anything you want.

  The Five Basic Steps to Changing Any Belief and Releasing Resistance depend on the recognition that there is more to your reality than you can currently, physically perceive, and that you can manifest this ‘more’ by incrementally building your faith in its physical existence. You cannot look for the evidence needed to allow you to adopt fully a new belief, if you’re not willing to believe in at least the existence of that evidence.

  Let’s recap…

  We’ve now explored:

  What vibration is.

  What we really mean when we talk about matching the frequency of something (representational frequency).

  How your desires are born.

  That your emotions are a feedback system, which helps you to attune yourself to what you want.

  The mechanics of the Law of Attraction.

  How you choose what you want to manifest in your reality.

  How manifestations actually become physical.

  How you automatically set up your next manifestation through your reaction to the current one.

  What resistance is and the basic requirements for shifting it.

  Are you ready to run out in the ‘real world’ and start applying this knowledge? Not just yet.

  You see, even though I’ve just dissected four of the biggest core beliefs that our society holds and which you were most certainly programmed with to some degree, you’re not exactly going to be limiting-belief-free now. In fact, out of the millions or possibly billions of beliefs you hold, a small but significant percentage will always be obsolete and need to be replaced. I’ve shown you the basic process of how to shift a limiting belief, but what I haven’t yet done is teach you how to actually find those beliefs.

  You could, of course, just read a ton of books, exposing yourself to loads of different perspectives and evidence that supports them, in the hope that you will recognize some of your own limiting beliefs in someone else’s story. This is a valid technique, just a really, really slow one. You have to read a lot of books, and there’s never any guarantee that what you’re reading will actually contain something useful to you. It’s a bit like trying to find a defective needle in a stack of needles.

  But, if you understand how reality actually works, and you now do, you can use that knowledge to get those pesky limiting beliefs to yell, ‘Yoooohoooo! Here we are!’ In other words, instead of hunting through all your beliefs in an attempt to find the limiting ones, you can make them come to you. We’ll discuss how to do that in Chapter 9, but before we can do that, we’ll have to delve deeper. Way, WAY deeper.

  Part II

  THE NITTY-GRITTY

  Chapter 7

  Introducing the Spectrum of Empowerment

  Now that we’ve explored the basic mechanics of how reality works and how you, the powerful creator in charge of your reality, can control it, it’s time to delve into the nitty-gritty of the machine. So far, you’ve gained enough understanding to begin to make some changes to your world. You know the basic rules of the game, and have an inventory of most of the tools that are at your disposal. You know to focus on something positive, to pay attention to your feelings and to do your best to feel good. Best of all, you know exactly why those things are important. Now it’s time to give you the advanced manual, the understanding that will allow you to find any resistance and release it with surgical precision, as well as fine-tune your focus on what you want so that it will manifest in your reality effortlessly and easily.

  It’s time to delve into the heart of Deliberate Receiving, explore our emotions and what they really mean, and learn how to shift from a worse-feeling emotion to a better-feeling one.

  As I mentioned in Chapter 2, humanity is in the process of crossing the threshold from the Old World, which is about pain minimization, into the New World, which is about pleasure maximization. This shift and the corresponding points of focus (pleasure vs. pain) can be mapped out on a spectrum, which I call the ‘Spectrum of Empowerment’.

  Imagine a basic number line: a horizontal line with numbers where zero marks the spot in the middle, with positive numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) ascending to the right, and negative numbers (–1, –2, –3, etc.) descending to the left. Don’t
worry, this is about as math-y as we’re going to get. I’ve even made you a diagram to make it easier; see Fig. 1 below.

  Fig 1: The Spectrum of Empowerment

  On this number line, zero represents neutral – the point at which there is no pain, but also no pleasure. The negative end of the Spectrum represents the Old World, where we are more concerned about what is wrong with the world, and decisions are made based on what’s less painful. The lower the number (–10 is lower than –5), or the further to the left you go down the Spectrum, the worse you feel.

  The positive end of the Spectrum represents the New World, where we’re focused on what’s right with the world and how to make it even better, and decisions are made based on what feels best. The higher the number, or the further to the right you go up the Spectrum, the better you feel.

  Living on the Spectrum

  Throughout human history, we’ve tended towards operating in the negative side of the Spectrum. We, as a society, have been (and still are) generally focused on the problem (what’s wrong?) instead of the solution (how we want it to look instead). We’ve been assuming that pain is a necessary part of life, even taking pride in our ability to put up with a crap load of it (‘My pain threshold is SOOOOOO high, I can work 80-hour weeks! While having the flu! And taking care of five kids! Who also have the flu! No amount of suffering can stop me!’). And, for the most part, our goal has been to get to zero – what many people thought and still think, is the highest possible goal. In other words, we’ve been doing our best just to reduce and, dare we even hope, to eliminate the pain.

  Most of our institutions are still set up this way. Our medical and psychological systems are both designed to take us from non-functioning to functioning, from ill to not-so ill, from in pain to not in pain. But a lack of pain is not the same as a presence of pleasure. Just because you don’t feel bad, doesn’t mean you feel good. To put it more bluntly, deciding not to eat Jalapeño peppers in order to avoid flames shooting out of your mouth (and later an opening that’s far, far worse), is not the same as eating chocolate. Not even close.

  Neutral is just the middle of the Spectrum. There’s a whole other side, a whole other world to be explored. This is the side of the Spectrum that more and more people are waking up to.

  But you don’t have to wait for them to wake up in order to make that shift. You see, the Spectrum works on a macro as well as a micro level. It can be applied to society, a group of people, a culture, a family, one person, and even a single moment in that person’s life. As a society, we may be operating on the negative side of the Spectrum. Our news outlets are almost exclusively interested in bad news. Our politicians are much more interested in war than peace. People, in general, spend a lot more time bitching and complaining than praising and appreciating. But you, as an individual, are not required in any way to buy into that. You can choose to be at any point on the Spectrum, no matter where your neighbours or colleagues or family are. Society could be miserable, while you’re a Happy Shiny Puppy. Notice that you don’t have to be happy because of their misery; you simply do not need to share in it.

  What’s more, you could be on one side of the Spectrum one day, and on the other side the next day. You could be at a –3 on one issue, and a +2 on another issue. As I said, it applies on a macro (grand, societal) scale, and a micro (teensy-weensy, individual, even moment-to-moment) scale.

  There is no good place or bad place to be on the Spectrum. This is why I’m using a mathematical number line to represent this concept. Maths, bless its little heart, knows no judgement. One number is no ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than another. They’re all just numbers. A ‘negative’ number is not bad or detrimental. In this context, the word ‘negative’ doesn’t mean unwanted. It’s just a way to signify which side of the Spectrum you’re on. It’s a way to pinpoint your vibrational location, if you will.

  At this point, I want to make something very, very clear: whenever we speak about vibration, we always have to remember that it’s completely relative. Remember from Chapter 4 how a ‘higher’ vibration simply meant a more aligned one: meaning, one that felt better to you? The same concept applies here. In fact, it’s exactly the same concept. When you focus on something that makes you feel better, you move up (or to the right on) the Spectrum. Your vibration therefore becomes ‘higher’ (but not necessarily higher than someone else’s, just higher than it was before – for you). When you focus on something that makes you feel worse, you move down (or to the left on) the Spectrum. Your vibration becomes ‘lower’ than it was before. So, when you hear teachers, including me, talking about ‘raising your vibration’, we’re talking about moving up the Spectrum.

  But why is this important? Why am I telling you about this Spectrum? For two reasons:

  The Spectrum of Empowerment is actually the main framework of Deliberate Receiving. While I’ve introduced you to the very basic number line, I’m going to be filling in that framework with a lot more information before you reach the end of this book.

  Where you are on the Spectrum not only determines how you feel, but which techniques you need to apply in order to feel better. This is why some people are best off just taking a nap to feel better, while others will get results by focusing on cleaning up some negative thoughts. This is why there seem to be so many contradictions in the advice given by different teachers. If you assume that all advice applies to everyone at any time, of course it’s going to seem contradictory. And if you then apply a technique that isn’t right for you in that moment, thinking it should work for you because it worked for someone else, and it doesn’t help, you might easily think there’s something wrong with you or the technique. When actually, all that’s happened is that you didn’t respect where you are in the Spectrum and choose your ‘treatment’ accordingly.

  It’s a bit like training for a marathon. If you’ve never run in your life and want to run a marathon, you don’t start off by tackling 26 miles on your first day. You respect your current level of fitness and train accordingly. Now, of course, you could throw yourself on the ground and wail about how you wished you were in better shape, but that wouldn’t help at all, would it? If you want to actually run that marathon, you have to figure out your current level of fitness, and then use the right type of training to take you from where you currently are to where you want to go. Trying to use the training regimen of someone in far better shape than you would actually be counterproductive. You’d probably get hurt and lose a lot of time to recovery (recovery consisting of sitting on the couch, insisting that you never wanted to run that marathon anyway, while cry-eating a tub of Ben and Jerry’s). If you try to use a technique that’s designed for a different part of the Spectrum than the one you’re on, you’re not only going to fail, it may actually make you feel worse (because now you feel like a failure on top of everything else).

  This is why being aware of the Spectrum, and where you currently reside on it, is so important. But how can you tell where you are? Well, as it turns out, you can tell by the way you feel. Your emotions, that glorious feedback system, are tied directly to this Spectrum. Isn’t that convenient? Each section of the Spectrum is associated with specific emotions. In order to determine where you are on the Spectrum, and therefore how to move on up that scale, you first have to identify and acknowledge how you currently feel.

  Again, this may sound like kind of a ‘duh!’ point, but it’s actually another one of those huge stumbling blocks that just about everybody trips over. Particularly those of us who tend to overthink stuff and are way too intellectual for our own good: we have the biggest tendency to fall on our faces when it comes to registering how we really feel. Splat! A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. A lot of knowledge without true understanding can be a debilitating thing. This is why I frequently work with those who have read every book, studied all the courses and know all the lingo by heart, but can’t seem to actually apply that knowledge to the areas of their lives that are most important to them. In almost e
very one of those cases, at least part of the problem (usually the biggest part) stems from a failure to acknowledge where they truly are on the Spectrum.

  Again, this is why I’m choosing a kind mathematical scale to represent this Progression. Maths doesn’t judge and neither should you (geekiest bumper sticker ever…).

  No emotion is ‘bad’. They are all helpful messengers that are trying to help you get where you want to go.

  The Spectrum of Empowerment and your emotions

  In order to utilize the messages that our emotions are trying to give us, we have to understand what each of them means and where they lie on the Spectrum.

  Before we map that out, however, let’s just clarify one thing: just like your vibration and frequency and your opinion and perspective, this is all deeply personal and individual work. Even though I can give you a basic outline of what the emotions mean and where they fall on the Spectrum, in the end, how you might label where you are on the number line really comes down to your own definitions. For example, what some people call anger, others call rage. What some people call frustration, others call annoyance. Tomayto, tomahto.

  I’ve addressed this issue by first giving you a definition of each emotion and then grouping similar emotions together on the Spectrum under a generic heading, instead of trying to map each one individually. For example, rage, hatred and jealousy are all in the same group, which I’ve called ‘ANGER’. For some people, jealousy will feel less volatile than rage while, for others, hatred is more intense. But they’re all in the same vicinity, and as far as pinpointing your location on the Spectrum, it’s close enough. What’s most important is that you don’t blindly follow some graph, but rather, feel your way through this, being as aware of your emotions at every stage possible. You cannot think your way through this, no matter how hard you try. I know that seems a little bit paradoxical, since I’m the queen of explaining stuff (I mean, I literally wrote the book on it…). And while it’s obviously really helpful to understand the mechanics of it all, when it comes to actually applying this understanding, you have to be willing to get your hands dirty (emotionally).