Journeying through the Gap

Journeying through the Gap is not a passive state. It requires that we take lots of steps. I have a confession to make. Last year I had a number of challenges, but I had some mega successes as well. I wrote about some of them in the blog entry Ten Steps to Turn Burning Goals into Reaity, and Meditation, Manifestation and the Law of Success.

I received stunning support from the universe for some large requests.

Then I needed to live through the receiving of those things in my life, and it just has not been a piece of cake. The challenges have been so high from having these wonderful things in my life, that sometimes I feel as though I have been brought to my knees.

Frankly, it scared me to receive all that I had asked for, because the accompanying challenges have been equally stunning. I think I lost some courage about asking for anything more because my plate has been so full. It feels as though the Universe has been asking me to live bigger.

Because I haven’t been asking for things, or events, or successes, I haven’t been as focused on the principles that I write about on this blog. So guess what happened? You can see it coming can’t you? My vibration dropped. My spiritual practices have tapered off. And I have forgotten how supportive the Universe can be.

There are stages in the Law of Attraction. I was reminded of that by a recent quote I saw.

God Makes a Promise.
Faith Believes it.
Hope Anticipates it.
Patience quietly awaits it.

These four stanzas echo four of the stages of the Law of Attraction, or manifesting. We are told to “Ask and it is given.” That is the promise we are given.

Then we enter the gap between what we asked for and the receiving of it.

We need to use our Faith to know that the ‘what is’ (current reality) is not the answered request. We have to have Faith to travel through the gap between “what is” and “what is to come.” We humans rely on our eyes and they focus on physical reality-the ‘what is.’ We are on a journey, and we need to take along supplies and reminders that we are on an inner journey of consciousness until we reach our destination. I needed to remember to have Faith, and I forgot for a while.

Hope is necessary. It anticipates our receiving our request. Hope helps us look forward through the dense undergrowth of the forest of “what is” for glimpses of the future that is making its way to us, as we move forward.

Patience is not easy for most of us. Once I am clear about what I want, I want it now. Yet, when I travel to Portland on Amtrak, I am not asking “are we here yet?” Do you remember having kids who kept asking that question when on a trip or remember asking that when you were little? So now why would I let my inner impatient child be in charge of traveling the gap?

What I do when I am on a train trip, I excitedly look forward to watching Puget Sound pass by my window. I watch the other passengers, I talk to some. I might visit the Food car. I always bring a book to pass the time. I bring snacks. I take pictures. I have a great time traveling on that train. I look for signs of towns going by to mark where I am on my journey. Each time I do the trip, I see something different. Seems to me I need to do more planning of what to do while I am waiting for the Universe to answer a request. And this is the rub, we are not just waiting, we are traveling too. Everything in our system is adjusting.

I read several blog entries here that tell me Never to Give up Hope, and Don’t Despair.

As I pondered this last year, I see that the truth is I have already been asking for much bigger things for three years – which will bring my work to more people and make me more visible. So I am in a really big gap, and I am in training to get ready to step forward into what I have asked for – which is not here yet.

The gap is so big, that I forgot while down in the forest of “What is” what my request was. While I have been in ‘training’ I have made several mistakes. I have taken it as personal when I have encountered challenges and gotten sick. Then I have felt shame, I have felt cowardly, I have beaten myself up, and generally judged myself harshly.

I think I need to go read the category called “When You Forget.”

I need to find a way to cope with the fear that of course is coming up, because I am getting closer to reaching my heart’s desire.
………………….
Some time has passed since I began this entry. I realize that I got very lost in the Forest of “What IS’. I lost hope and some faith, and certainly my direction. Then I my inner judge beat myself up unmercifully. No fun. And it helped me stay lost.

Now with some perspective, I can look back on my time of being lost in the Forest of ‘What Is’ and see that many things were percolating under the surface. In order for me to step into my greater vision of myself, I needed to traverse some inner swamps; issues such as overworking, setting boundaries, bouts of low self worth, stepping into my strength when receiving negative feedback, and more.

Now I can see I was gaining some needed resilience by traversing through some of the swamps. Just recently, I remembered the concept of the imaginal cell. When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it spins a cocoon. Inside, that cocoon turns into a soup before imaginal cells begin taking on the new form and emerges as a butterfly. I literally had been in the soup of transformation. I can see clumps of cells that are beginning to take form.

Seems to me our whole world is in that process, and it is not fun. But a powerful amount of restructuring is happerning.

So what do I need to do now?

• I need to realign with my inner compass,
• remember my bigger intention,
• value the journey that is underway through the gap,
• celebrate small steps forward,
• re-energize my faith and hope,
• take some vision trips to get a dragon’s eye view of the territory I am traversing,
• look for signs that the universe is sending help,
• begin having deep gratitude for the journey that is bringing me closer to my goal with every step,
• and relax into Trusting the Process.

I’m have not travelled the whole gap yet, but I see many signs of progress. Fortified with Faith, Hope, and renewed Vision, I do trust the process for I have deep experience with it all working out for me.

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