The old man cradled the shotgun in his arms and shouted, “Hey you, come out of there!” He lived in the country house across the road from the field where I was camping after a long day walking on the back roads of the Ozarks in northwestern Arkansas. He had seen me hop the fence to settle in for the night and he didn’t like me camping in this field. On my whole months-long summer trek, this was the only time anyone had ever been angry, suspicious or guarded with me. I packed up my gear and as I walked back to the fence I could clearly see the suspicion on his face wondering who I was and upset that some vagrant would trespass on the property. As I handed him the small kitten I was carrying so I could climb the fence to get back to the road, he had to put his gun to the side, and I saw the lines of suspicion and mistrust melt away from his face. He became apologetic as he mumbled something about how his neighbor wouldn’t like me being on his property, and he offered to take me and the kitten to the next town where I could sleep in a local park for the night.
Just that morning, I was walking along the road and in my head and I was composing a song called, “God Spelled Backwards is Dog”. As I belted out the first few verses of the song, a tiny kitten started mewling pitifully when she heard me start singing. It took me a minute to find her in the grass beside the road. Someone had apparently abandoned her in the middle of nowhere and she was frantic. I tried picking her up, but in her fear she clawed me to get away, so I would put her down, but then she would claw my leg and try to climb my jeans, afraid I was going to leave her. This no win situation continued for some time until I finally settled her into the small nook between my backpack and the back of my neck where she rested peacefully as I continued walking down the road. The laws of synchronicity had given me a kitten to help melt the heart of the old codger who had seen me hop the fence that very same night, and the kitten eventually became my companion for years after. It worked out for both of us and I imagine this little kitten may have taught that old codger to not always assume the worst in his fellow man.
Still on my walkabout during one summer of my college years, I was feeling the amazing clarity and freedom of the stillness of my own heart pulsing in time with the cicadas thrumming in the night night and beating in harmony with the wind in the trees like Thoreau at Walden. Without even having words to understand it, I was in the flow and experiencing the connection of all things. People opened their homes and hearts in response to my energy, a woman called from the porch of her country home asking if I wanted a sandwich and wanting to know if I was a Christian; college fraternity students invited me to their keg party when they met me walking through their campus; a dog down the road saw me from afar and immediately started racing towards me and leaped into my arms and we played and wrestled for a while before I continued on my way. Never for a moment had I doubted the dog’s good intentions as it leaped at me.
Even today, when I release my fears and become fully present in the current moment, this flow of the goodness of life experience energizes around me as I begin to move in harmony with my surroundings. Meetings with people become more true and genuine and synchronistic “coincidences” occur to let me know I am aligned with my source. My connections with others becomes more profound and meaningful, challenges resolve and the things I am intending and working for in life materialize as if summoned by some mystic genie from a bottle.
This phenomenon of being in the flow and being connected to the dance of life is real and is a reliable phenomenon that is reproducible in your life if you want to practice these skills. I’m not saying that you should make poor choices and then expect God to pick up the pieces. There is no substitute for good choices and hard work, but I am saying that letting your choices and your state of mind be influenced by the joy of your inner knowing on a moment to moment basis can open up remarkable possibilities and results in your life when you allow your conscious awareness to be influenced by the deep wisdom and the intuition of your inner knowing that flows from your connection to the Divine. What I am saying is that everything is connected, that like attracts like, and that the energy of your emotions attracts similar life experiences into your life.
When you either ignore your fears and sweep them under the carpet into your unconscious reservoir or allow these same fears to take over your life, your life will become a reflection of this fear. When you practice embracing and releasing your fears and continually step into the present moment with the wonder and abandon of a child, then a beautiful and powerful process of the unfolding of the deepest secret part of yourself emerges as the butterfly from the cocoon and your life evolves to reflect this new reality.
There is a power in you as a child of God that you can tap into to harmonize with the life around you that can produce amazing results and can have a tremendous and positive impact on all your life challenges and all your relationships. I’m not asking you to take my word for any of this. I am simply asking you to try out these principles for yourself and ultimately make your own determinations and form your own opinions based on your own experience rather than letting the limitations and fears of your past decide for you what is and is not possible in your life.
The trick is becoming so fully present in the present moment that you are bringing all the full resources of your humanity, and more fully tapping into the amazing abilities of your brain and opening your mind to what is possible. Tapping into your full potential in this manner provides healing for broken relationships, and leads to forgiving yourself and others, and resolving your current life challenges in a positive manner so you can step into your next greater yet to be. The following steps can be helpful in this process.
1. Recognize your fear-based thinking and the limited beliefs from your past that are causing your current life challenges.
2. Become willing to release your fears and practice re-centering yourself on the present moment over and over again until your focus on the present moment becomes so powerful that you begin to notice it impacts your current state of mind, interactions with others and begins to attract those synchronous experiences to your experience.
3. Always, always, always, act from the best judgement of your intuition and inner knowing. When responding to people, life challenges or your daily experiences, see if you can continually being the best of yourself to the forefront and see what happens.
Create a scientific experiment for yourself. Create a goal for today, and with all your focus practice constantly releasing your fears and being fully present in the present moment. Continually center yourself on the joy of being alive and watch for the fulfillment of your goals either through your own actions or through Divine providence.
Namaste,
Steven Fisher
