My Autobiography of Self-Transformation

In the past year or so, I have heard of something called "The Law of Attraction." I believe it is from a movie called The Secret. I haven't seen the movie or read the book, so I can't really comment in detail on the law, but from what I have heard it basically means that if you focus on the things you want in your life, you will start to attract those things towards you.

The basic concept behind the law sounds too simple on the face of it. Yet, in general, the law sounds like the tiny seed that sprouted into the blossoming lifestyle I have found myself in today. I would call it basically a type of "getting your sh-t together" mentality. Of course it all starts with knowing what you want and focusing your attention; but there is a heck of a lot of work involved first and all along the way, both inside one's heart/mind/spirit, and outside in the world where one lives, one's lifestyle. It is too easy to say you can just focus on something and everything you want will magically appear out of thin air. Work! Work! There must be several ongoing layers of action before manifestation.

Here is a simple outline of my own path towards inner and outer transformation.

When I think back on who I was in the year 2000, the year I got married, I can almost not recognize myself at all. I carried so much baggage with me: years of depression, low self-esteem, dysfunctional ways of thinking and behaving, etc. I saw the world not as my oyster but as a torture chamber, set up on purpose to make me miserable. My very outlook on life itself was the biggest obstacle keeping me from living my life.

The first step that helped me move forward was to keep a journal. Since the late 1990s I started writing almost every day to record my thoughts and experiences. Through this process of inner examination, slowly learning about myself, how I was thinking, analyzing how I was interacting with others, watching myself make the same mistakes over and over until I could finally stop and catch myself, it ultimately dawned on me that through this process of writing and self-analysis I had an enormous power. Almost by accident I must have learned to harness the journal as a mighty rope to drag myself out of myself, into a new world.

In the second step, going to therapy (with an awesome middle-aged Buddhist woman), I acquired an outside objective opinion to reveal to me the deeper functioning of my thoughts and behaviors. This worked very well in conjunction with the journal writing. I was able to examine past traumas in my life, see how they were still influencing my thoughts and behaviors, and then take conscious charge to change those thoughts and behaviors to create new outcomes. By this point, late 2002(?), I had really succeeded in pulling myself out of the decades of depression and negativity that had almost swallowed me up. I was still not perfect, but I was well on the way to becoming a well-adjusted, functioning adult (around age 27!).

The third step was finding A Course in Miracles around the middle of 2003. Coming from a cynical-atheist/scientific-materialism background as a child, I still constantly hungered for spirituality and for some path that would give me deeper answers or a meaning to my life and existence. From 2000 onwards I was already slowly opening myself to the spiritual realm. I was realizing that the cynical-atheist attitude of the past 25 years was really not getting me anywhere fun in life, so I threw a question out to the universe: "What else? Show me some alternative ways of seeing!" The Course finally unlocked a door for me that my previous forays into Taoism, Buddhism, and other philosophies/spiritualities just hadn't quite achieved up to that point. I still dearly love Eastern philosophy and religion, but it was the Course that gave me that cosmic "Ah ha!" moment. It finally gave me an explanation for the world, an explanation for the existence of evil, and a great overall comprehensive picture of my own place within everything; A Course in Miracles really truly "clicked" (and does so to this day).

Meanwhile, my husband and I gradually found ourselves gravitating towards a simpler outward lifestyle. We realized we didn't really need a lot of material things to keep us happy. We were content to have a smallish (700 to 800 square foot) place to live in, one car, a bunch of books, the Internet, our friends, and our little hobbies. And then somehow, one by one, certain once formerly-critical things fell out of our life: the television broke and we decided not to replace it (what did we need that distraction and noise for?). The car got totaled when we hit a deer (we live in a city with great public transit and we were already in a position to walk a few blocks to work, school, the grocery, etc.). One by one, the TV and the car disappeared, and were exchanged by realizing, even more profoundly than before, the value of time and silence, which in turn led to further self-examination and self-improvement. (And we still get by just great today without the TV or the car!)

The fourth concrete step, again with all these things rather falling together simultaneously over a course of years, was the discovery of the book Your Money or Your Life, written by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin (thanks to our friend, Dave, for giving us that book!). In the middle of our gradual lifestyle simplification we discovered that we had the capability to save up our resources and eventually quit our "day jobs" if we wanted to. And not just quit our day jobs early, as in, say, by the time we got to age 50, but rather (for me) age 37! The key principle rested in realizing that money represented our "life energy." We worked 40 hours a week to trade our life energy (time) to make a resource (money). This is not just realizing the importance of money; this is not just some get-rich-quick-scheme or "save $10 a week for x number of years and you'll be fine." It is a fundamental realization of how everything is interconnected in one's life and bringing it all together in alignment; of realizing when you have reached a stabilized definition of "enough" based on your criteria for happiness. Suddenly our lifestyle was coming into alignment with our values. The inner self-transformation led to an outer simplification and focusing on what truly mattered to us most (time). We didn't need a car, lots of things, or a big house, which also meant we didn't need a million dollars to be able to reach an early retirement. By the year 2012, if all goes according to plan, we won't need to worry about the day-to-day necessity of having a day job to pay the bills. This amazing coming together of our inner and outer development, of valuing the interconnection and wise usage of time, money, and life energy, would also allow us to bring all of our other goals to fruition.

The fifth step on my self-transformation road, around May 2006, was the purchase and daily practice of Holosync in building my own meditation and spiritual practice. This has really cleared up some more mental cobwebs and given me real inner energy to accelerate the pursuit of my goals (plus it also helped give me a new inner strength to deal with the various health problems I encountered in 2007). I must really also credit Holosync with opening my spirit to God. To showing me, within myself, that there are new worlds to explore and that God is shining in there somewhere and has been all the time. It is still yet only a glimmer but I see the crack widening each day. With the step into Catholicism I am looking forward to deepening my spiritual path further. I can hardly imagine where I might be ten years from now, as at the moment I am still in my spiritual infancy.

The last step, which my husband and I are still in the process of perfecting and refining together, is the cultivation of true discipline. We're well on our way there in certain segments of our life. We've had our goals for a long time, kept them in the forefront, set a concrete time frame for early retirement, etc. but it's not yet 100% in motion. Not all wheels are spinning together yet. There are still aspects of ourselves that fall through the cracks and get neglected (especially, as of late, my own health). I am now working towards a more holistic, integrated vision of a lifestyle of discipline, that includes making the most of each and every day on multiple levels (spirit, mind, body, life's work). Ultimately we hope to enter retirement in the year 2012 (and I mean retirement from the "day job," not retirement from Life) ready to open another new chapter in our lives, living each moment to the fullest, not squandering a second, and awakening to our numinous joy.