Moving on, to bigger and better lessons…

I made a deal with myself a few months ago.

I was tired of having money issues. (Okay, I still am, to be perfectly honest.) I’ve been stuck in resource lessons for a while, repeating some old patterns, and decided I was ready to step up on Maszlow’s Heirarchy of Needs. Getting beyond survival issues, I can start working on higher level issues (relationship, existential, etc) that can only really be fully addressed once the survival state is taken care of.

“So,” I said to the Universe, “I’m ready to step up now. You can give me bigger lessons, and I’ll just keep the wheel turning on this whole money making thing, so no more problems there. Deal?”

For a while, yeah, that worked.

I’m kinda glad I went through another period of scarcity, because I’ve come to handle them a lot better now. I don’t get wrapped up in the emotions, and perpetuate it for six months, like I used to. I’ve learned how to remain calm, and optimistic, and gently decline the opportunity to freak out, and just focus on what saves me in the long run: working hard, getting clients, doing my thing.

The times I have been most scarce in my thinking (and therefore my wallet) have been the times I paid the closest attention to my budget. When I’m counting every penny, it’s like they all count waaaay more than the should.

My new philosophy, “Fuck a Budget,” has only gotten me so far.

But, it’s getting me through, with a better state of mind than I usually carry. So I call that a win. Like I told my wife, it’s not that these periods of financial tightness don’t happen. It’s how we deal with them when they do.

I’ve also gotten better at identifying when the periods of scarcity end.  I made a sacrifice of my favorite vices (beer and pot) until I got through this period.

And then, aha, I realized how to get out of this state.

I had a beer and smoked some pot.

And wouldn’t you know it, today I have much more money.

It’s a funny manifestation structural crutch: by defining, internally, what the characteristics of two different states will be, then when you change those characteristics, you can successfully change your state.

I was driving back from a client meeting this morning, and my car started having heave-ho problems going up the mountain. I listened to my intuition; which I will always follow, especially when it leads me to a bar.

A drinking lunch on a school day, with $8 to my name, of course I’ll have a beer!

I did, and met some potential new clients. Got home, and said, yes, intuition, I will have a bit of pot. It is, after all, the literal last few leaves I can scrounge together, packed into the bottom of my pipe.

(Nothing like rock bottom to clear you out, energetically.)

So I don’t interpret this as a breaking of my own vow to myself, I interpret it as a recognition that yes, my period of financial scarcity is over. Because those were the boundaries that I set for the change between states, and bam, it happened.

I had two loans come in today (and when you’re a bankrupt with no credit lines, thats a feat, let me tell you). The month will now take care of itself. You’ve got money coming to you in the next 24 hours, and the short term loans I’ve used to bolster myself up over the past two weeks can get paid back.

Now, I’m working at digging myself out of this financial hole. And I do this with a greater knowledge about the truth of myself.

(It took me awhile, but I started this ramble in mind of eventually getting to the subject of this blog.)

The big thing I learned about myself is that I have serious hungers. My two favored vices (beer and pot) are strong, deep hungers within me. After having one beer today, I really wonted another. Like, really wanted another. I could have drank four, happily, and then finished my drive home – mostly straight.

So, I log this in the inventory about what I know of myself. I have strong hunger for my two favored vices.

I understood this before, but didn’t recognize it as a truth about myself. Hod is all about recognizing the inner truths, and I’m grateful for this recognition.

I’ve also come to face my full understanding of my own root. On a resource level, I have scarcity issues. I have no contact with my ancestry or my childhood. This isn’t something to be overcome, but something to recognize and adapt to, which I can do better now that I see this as a truth about myself.

Before moving into Netzach, I felt way off balance with only Hod. I expected some sort of symbiosis, a collaborative energy like when we moved into Air in the Elements class, where I felt most at home.

This was different, though; with Hod, the realm of the intellect, I’ve got plenty of cylinders firing there. By immersing myself in that energy, I am imbalanced.

So when you sent over the expansion on the correspondences for Netzach, I was able to put the intellect in its proper place. By using these two energies in tandem, I can fully focus on areas in which I am deficient (the root chakra).

I have enough intellect in my daily existence, so much that I don’t really need to invoke more of it. (I’m not deficient there, at all.) But I am deficient, on a lot of levels, in incorporating emotion into my daily experience, and into my manifestations.

So, Netzach. I want some more. Whattaya got?