Where's my stuff?

I love the excerpts from in-person appearances that are tacked on to the ends of Jerry and Esther's books. One theme that recurs is the question, "Where's my stuff?"

The people who ask that question agree to go along with Abraham's advice to try to feel better to get to their stuff, and Abraham always points out how much better they will feel when they're in vibrational alignment with source. Apparently that's the whole point--to get into vibrational alignment. We just want our stuff, though, and the vibrational alignment is the means, not the end in our minds. This is not the mindset that will actually get anybody feeling better, though, and we hang on to our wanting longer and longer.

I think I understand the reluctance to let go of that feeling of discontent: my fear, in any case, is that if I go ahead and feel better, I won't care anymore if I get my stuff, and then I might not get it. At least, that's my belief.

Somehow I feel this is related to the Buddhist concept of non-attachment, and the Taoist wu wei, the idea of non-doing, or doing without doing. I like to think of it as doing without striving. Neville Goddard said that once you feel you have already accomplished what you want to, already have what you're wishing for, then it will come. It's a hard feeling to come by if you like physical evidence, which most of us do. And while I've romanticized the idea of living in a hunter-gatherer society, I like technology, and I have this weird fear of becoming a happy poverty-stricken child in a 3rd world country.

And I think of myself as a basically logical person.

I like Abraham/Esther's way of describing getting to that feeling better than Neville's. Neville would have me imagine my stuff, feel it all around me and really feel like it's here. I can even give myself a deadline for it getting here. The problem is that once I convince myself that it might come, that's as far as I can get, then the deadline comes and goes and I'm disappointed, moving me farther from the feeling of alignment, and of having my stuff.

Abraham, though, says just reach for a downstream thought. When we fight against how we feel, look at the world through pessimistic eyes and think that it's all up to sheer effort to make our dreams come true, it's like putting a boat in a river and paddling upstream. The current is strong, and the best we can hope for is turbulence. The key is to move downstream, and there are a whole spectrum of emotions we can move through to get to good feelings. How do we move downstream? Look for a feeling of relief.

When someone is in despair, it's a relief to feel angry. When someone is angry, it's a relief to feel frustrated. When someone is frustrated, it's a relief to feel hope, and so forth. When one is frustrated, it's not a relief to move into anger or despair.

I seem to oscillate between hope and frustration. Downstream from hope is belief, which has always been a struggle for me. I wonder whether that's because I tried to believe things that didn't ring true for me for many years of my life.

When I was a Christian, I spent many hours trying to logically explain the disconnect between what I felt was true and what I was told was true. I felt god inside of me, and I was told I was a lowly worm, contaminated with sin and not worthy to see god's face until his son became a blood sacrifice to make atonement. God is love, but he can't stand sin, and demands payment for it, and if you don't accept the credit account his son set up for you, you're going to hell, no matter how nice you are or what your beliefs are. Catholics beliefs are incorrect, so even Mother Theresa is going to burn in hell. Not to mention all the nice gay people minding their own business, whom I for some reason I related to though I didn't know any. It was a lot of work to explain away the inconsistencies I felt.

Luckily I met a lot of nice people over the years and finally decided that if God is love, then he can't be less nice than me, and I'd never send all those people to hell, no matter what they did or believed. That was the beginning of the biggest feeling of relief I've ever had. But it took years, and my fear of going to hell myself resurfaced periodically until it finally faded.

I'm looking forward to letting go of my fear of becoming truly poor, just as I let go of my fear of hell, and the feeling of relief that that will bring. And downstream is where all my stuff is, but I have a feeling that the feeling of relief will be worth more to me than any stuff I might end up with.