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See, not with the eyes, but with the heart.

One day, two flower merchants set up shop next to one another. They opened for business on the same day, carried the same lovely selection of aromatic flowers, and maintained similar prices for their marvelous plants. Both merchants took great care with raising their plants and both were kind and courteous to their customers. In fact, their stores appeared to be equal in every way.

At first, the merchants even received equal traffic through their shops, but–as time went on–the first merchant’s shop became more popular among the people. The second merchant noticed this and became concerned. One particularly slow day, he decided to look into the matter. As he stepped out his door to visit his neighbor, he passed one of his regular customers leaving the first merchant’s shop carrying their weekly purchase of flowers. In disbelief, the second merchant hurried into the next store.

Indeed, the store was teeming with customers. The second merchant noticed his competitor wasn’t taking the money himself, as he always did. The first merchant was out among the aisles, talking with his customers. To his amazement, the second merchant watched as the first would chat at great length with the customers and even would occasionally talk to the flowers themselves! The second merchant prided himself on being a serious store owner and could not understand this leisurely approach to running a shop. Yet this behavior seemed to be working for the first merchant, as his thriving store would attest.

When the second merchant could stand it no longer, he approached the first and politely asked to interrupt the conversation. The first merchant smiled, handed his customers to one of his clerks, and turned his attention to his exasperated neighbor.

The second merchant asked, “Brother, I am your humble student. Our stores are nearly the same in all ways, yet your results are doubling while mine are halving. I do not understand.”

“Brother,” the first merchant said, “We are the same in most ways, this is true. The difference lies in what we see with our hearts. You see your store as a store, your plants as plants, and your customers as customers. I see my store as a beloved home and my cherished friends are my customers, clerks and plants, all present to be adored. In that way, we are very, very different.”

When we feel alone in this world, know that feeling of aloneness is just that; a feeling. What do we know about feelings? They are temporary! Contrary to what we might perceive when we’re heightened by a strong emotional reaction, we are not our feelings and our feelings are not us. Feelings are vibrational frequencies generated by judgment. A judgment may occur in an instant, but it must happen in order: event (input), judgment (filter), emotional reaction (output). We must hold an opinion about something before we can have an emotional response to it. Whether we’re receiving good or bad news (input, a.k.a. stimuli or content), we first

1. receive the information (in its pure and free-of-judgment form),
2. process it by running it past the filters through which we view our worlds, by which we access our past experiences related to that information and–pulling from that file–we
3. form the “how I feel about this” response and release it into the world.

Depending on how emotionally-charged we find the information, and depending on many other factors swirling around us in that moment (including our emotional state prior to receiving the information), the severity of our emotional reaction will vary. We may feel happy, pleased, thankful, melancholy, angry, sad–we run the gamut.

Adversely, if we are clear–truly at peace–there is no judgment, and without judgment, we don the role of the “silent observer”, allowing ourselves to step back from information we are receiving, consider it, and let it pass without attachment.

I offer that emotionally-charged responses have their use! They are great for manifesting our intents. The challenge is–unless we’re aware of our judgments and the manner in which we’re directing our emotional energy–we could be manifesting the very things in life we don’t want.

For instance, I went a long time being unaware of how connected I was to my own abundance. I would look at my bank statement and upon seeing the balance, I would believe I only had enough money for this-or-that; seldom did my thoughts include this-and-that. Usually the “or” fell between something I wanted to do and something I felt obliged to do. During an EFT tapping session, a mentor of mine, Dr. Christopher Henley, helped me uncover this. It took me a moment to fully grasp the concept, but once I got it, I really got it. I realized I had been doing this for years! More, I realized I had seen my mother do this when I was a young boy. When it came to buying new clothes for herself or putting my two sisters and I through private school, she worked to achieve the latter and often sacrificed the former. She, herself, was the oldest of seven kids. Her parents had seen the Great Depression. My grandfather worked two and, sometimes, three jobs at a time to support their family as a Detroit fireman, a house-painter, and a purveyor of other odd jobs. My grandmother stayed home and watched the kids. My mother’s family grew up knowing sacrifice. Is it any surprise then that we grew up knowing sacrifice? Is it any surprise that it was many years before I really began caring about my own wardrobe? I believe this is what is meant when certain religions talk about paying for your ancestors’ karma. The thoughts, words and deeds we hold today telescope well into the future through those around us, especially our children. This is the reason I believe raising happy, healthy children is one of the highest responsibilities we have in life.

Well, once I realized I was operating financially from a this-or-that paradigm, I quickly realized I treated my time the same way. I saw myself as only having time for this activity or that. If I spent so much time on web work, it would take away from my spiritual work. If I allowed myself to work on the spiritual efforts, the web work suffered. I had effectively built myself into a construct where I could feel my limits all around me. That would lead to feelings of being overwhelmed, guilt-ridden, torn, depressed, tired, burnt out. Obviously, not where I wanted to be. Once I saw this error of this thinking, however, things began to open up for me. I began seeing possibilities where, before, none seemed to exist. By more fully realizing my connection to Divinity and my own abundance, I was able to shed this-or-that thinking and things began to happen very quickly.

As for getting free and clear of judgment? I think the quieter we can be on the inside, the less we will be affected by the outside. The less we are affected by the outside, the more present we become and the more open we become to receiving Divine inspiration from within.

The prayer is not for greater abundance,
but instead to be made a larger vessel,
better able to allow God’s limitless abundance to flow through you.

So I walked out of the house one frozen morning last Tuesday thinking, “I’m going to be in meetings until 2PM today–I should grab some apples.” Well, we didn’t have any apples to grab on this particular day. We almost always have some in stock at our house and on most days I eat two, but alas, we were out on this day. So what’s a guy (who is already running late for his networking meeting) to do? Well, I wistfully daydreamed of having one of those monster-sized Michigan-grown honeycrisps and made a soft resolution to stop by Kroger’s on the way back to the office after my last meeting ended. Then I forgot about the whole apple affair and drove to my first meeting.

Wouldn’t you know it, but as I sat down for the second meeting (the Mental Makeover class, led by Dr. Christopher Henley,) Dr. Christopher reaches over the table and places a monster-sized apple in front of me!!! I shouted in surprise, held the apple over my head in victory and exclaimed, “I’VE MANIFESTED!”

I mean, how often do you get given an apple during the normal course of your day? Never.

Unless, of course, you call it in.