The Difference Between Getting and Having

The Union Path Podcast

The Difference Between Getting and Having

Transcript:

[0:00:20] John Coleman: One thing that isn't talked about very much, that isn't discussed very much in the world of manifestation, in the world of the intentional getting and achieving and the living of certain experiences is that there really are multiple energies at play. Whenever manifestation of any kind happens with strong desires that we have which then we endeavor to make real, we can get really focused on the getting of things, on the making of the change. But I think it's really important to keep in mind that just getting things, just having things pop into our experience isn't really the whole story. In fact, when it comes to manifestation, when it comes to intentionally bringing people places things into our lives there really are two core states, two core energies at play. That is it's been my experience anyway that there's a big difference between the getting of things and the holding of things, of having something come in, of bringing something into our life and actually continuing our life with whatever that is present. It's making things feel quite a bit more complicated to realize that there are multiple phases involved in manifestation, there are multiple phases involved in bringing what we want into our life and actually keeping it, actually living with it, actually living it. One easy analogy that I think of anyway is in working life, no matter what kind of work we do, there's a difference between getting the job and doing the job. Real simple example of this is take your average politician. How do they get the job that they're trying to get? Well, they run for office, they campaign, they do all the things necessary to secure the majority of votes by the people to whom they aim to serve. But then once elected, now comes the time to actually do the job which often, if not almost entirely, actually takes a different set of skills. It's actually pretty much a completely different job. The first job, the running for office is really more about influence selling, marketing, communication versus doing the job is really more about creation, really more about cooperation, really more about actually doing things and actually getting things done, about creating improvement, creating change, creating a delta between what was and what is. Making the world a little bit different because you were there making the world a little bit different because of the decisions that you made and the things that you did. And no matter what the job is we can see a similar sort of thing happen.

[0:03:55] John Coleman: It takes a completely different set of skills to get a job than to do a job. We think about manifestation, we think about bringing the things we want into our life. A similar dynamic is present and this is something that's really easy to overlook, really easy to miss. In fact, a lot of times the focus when we really want something is on the first part is on just the bringing it in, just making it appear, making it come into our life. But we want these things to appear, we want these things to come into our life because we actually want to live with them, we actually want to be with them, we actually want them to be with us. We're not so much really just trying to create and secure a relationship. We really want to maintain that relationship. We can see a similar dynamic when we get married. We can put a lot of thought and effort and time and resources into the wedding itself. But if what we really want is to be married, then that's actually a completely different experience that takes a completely different perspective, a completely different set of skills, but sometimes it ends up being kind of a thing of well, I put all this energy and effort and thought and time into getting married and know what. And obviously if we look at our experience, the balance of it is actually spent in the experience that we're trying to create rather than the experience trying to create that experience in the first place. And so when we really dive into this idea of intentional manifestation, of trying to bring more of what we want into our life, this dichotomy can be a little difficult to spot. If we started with small things, if we started with far more short term goals which honestly is a great place to start a great place to start to realize and really experience our own creative power, our own agency, our own say over our life to really realize that we are the ones architecting and designing the life we're living. We truly have say, we truly have sway over not only what's happening now, what is likely to happen in the future, but for bigger goals, bigger things, bigger aspirations, bigger desires that feel more like a life we want to live rather than just a point in time achievement. I think it becomes really important, really vital to understand the difference between the energy required to create something and the energy required to keep something, the energy required to bring something in versus the energy required to actually keep it.

[0:07:14] John Coleman: This is where I think ideas like goals and five year plans and those sorts of things can let us down a bit, can be a little incomplete because they're focused on the attainment, they're not so much focused on the living with the living from the living through of the experience we're actually after. When we first start to witness this difference, this dichotomy, I think we can start to understand a little bit more about consciousness itself. That consciousness is the creative force in our life, that consciousness is the thing that's actually bringing things in and actually holding them. That our sense on a deep level, our knowing of who we really are, what we really want, what life we really want to live, really starts to matter, really starts to come into focus. So when there are these bigger things we want, it's more a life we want than just a certain thing just a certain thing to happen. I think those times it's really important to really understand and experience the role of consciousness and all of this, that even from a consciousness perspective, it can be a very different person who achieves something than the person that lives with that very achievement over a long period of time. The kind of person who makes that achievement sustained and durable. We can look at our own consciousness in times where we may be a bit frustrated, when we may feel a bit stuck. We may feel like there's these things we want, there's this life we want. But for some reason, it's remained out of reach. For some reason, it's like we're wandering in the darkness and the life we want is just out there somewhere, out of sight, imperceptible. But we know we want it. And in these times where we're not living the life we really want, it's really important to ask ourselves how truly does that life fit with our conception of ourselves? With our deep seated belief and knowing of who we really are, what we really deserve, what's really right for us, what really fits, what feels natural? Because sometimes we can find through our own power of manifesting, we can actually bring things in.

[0:10:01] John Coleman: We're not really ready for things that we're not really being yet. And when this happens, when we bring something in really meaningful and then over time, it just seems to fade away or seems to flip and shift and end up being something unwelcome, something of a burden or just something so tenuous that you just can't really hang on to it. That we continue to chase and pursue, and it keeps managing to elude us, keeps managing to never really feel like ours, to keep feeling like something we're just continually trying to get, trying to capture, trying to control, trying to force, to make ours. Trying to exert a sense of ownership, a sense of domination, a sense of forceful claiming in order to have it and to keep it. But these energies, these behaviors, this need to force and control and capture can tell us a really important truth, can tell us that we're pursuing things that our consciousness isn't really aligned with, that on some level, deep down, we don't believe we actually are. We don't believe is actually for us, we don't believe is actually natural. We don't believe is something we actually deserve. We don't see it as our right to occupy and inhabit. We look at it. Something that has to constantly be earned, constantly be proven is ours. Instead of having the deep internal knowing that it's already ours, that it's already ours because it's already who we are, these can be difficult times to endure because that sense of loss we brought something unimportant to us and watched it just float away or even worse, watch it just sort of kind of go down in flames. That really hurts our heart, that hurts our soul. To feel like this thing we really wanted, we got to experience it a little bit and then it went away. In some ways, that can almost be worse than ever having experienced it at all. It could be a lot of pain there.

[0:12:48] John Coleman: There can be a lot of grief there. There could be a lot of self recrimination there. We can use that as an opportunity to feel worse about ourselves to feel somehow deficient, somehow faulty, somehow flawed would cast all sorts of judgments on ourselves when we lose the thing we want. But I believe it's my assertion that these judgments, this criticism isn't really necessary. If we look at this loss from the perspective of consciousness, if we look at our outer world, if we look at our lives and know that the expression of our life, the experience of our life is a mirror to our consciousness if we've tried, we've gotten something and it's gone away. Can use that as an opportunity to try again, to try differently, to try with a bit more knowing, a bit more experience. We can absorb whatever learning and wisdom is available from the loss. After time, after grieving or acceptance, we can begin again. These things matter to us if they really matter to us. It's worth trying again. It's worth trying better. It's worth trying from a place more informed by consciousness and knowing rather than striving after something at least partially unaware. Being truly aware of our lives isn't always the most comfortable experience. Sometimes it can be pretty grueling. Sometimes it can be pretty jarring.

[0:14:46] John Coleman: Sometimes it can be pretty painful. Sometimes it can be pretty hard to just kind of take the gut punch of hard truths. These hard truths confront us. It's something we need to know. It's the illumination of some obstacle in the way of where we're trying to go. Some limitation, some incompleteness in ourselves that's holding us from the life that we really want. This is really useful information. This is really handy information. We may not feel very welcome at first but if we can just sit with this a bit and reflect with it for a bit we can really come to appreciate it because how else would we know how else would we know what we need if we didn't try? How else would we know what ways we need to develop if we didn't try to get what we really want? It would also be a difficult truth to sit with to know that our real work is on our consciousness. It can feel so much clearer, perhaps much easier to just look at manifestation. It's simply a series of steps, simply a linear process. It's simply a plan from A to Z. And as soon as we've completed Z poof, we've got it.

[0:16:12] John Coleman: It's ours. A lot of times this linear, logical, plan based path can be very effortful, very unsatisfying, very unreliable especially with big change in our life. It can be really easy to think that we know all of the steps, we know all of the things required in order to make that life ours. But if we haven't done it yet, we don't actually know. We think we know more than that. If we haven't done it yet we haven't used the feedback through the experience itself to help us find our way, to help us find our path towards and to the life we actually want. And it's in this loss what I think we could easily call these failures. We can learn something really vital that if what we really want is a particular type of life then what really matters is that that life actually fits with our consciousness, that life actually fits with our knowing our deep down bedrock, knowing of who we really are. And if we've been striving after something especially if we've been frantically striving after something doing as much as we can and going as fast as we can then maybe we've chosen that level of intensity to try to overwhelm. Our own doubts, to try to overwhelm our own fears, to try to overwhelm those places inside of ourselves that didn't really believe this is actually us. Or perhaps we're trying to frantically make things happen, make things a part of our life because we're trying to use that achievement as leverage to make us believe something we actually don't. To instill a sense of confidence, to instill a sense of clarity, to instill a sense of creative power and agency that we desperately want to feel in our own life. These are hard things to live through, these are hard things to live with. Especially if we've had times in our life where we just seemed to get whatever we wanted. I can feel like a pretty huge loss too that if we look back on our life and think boy, I really had things wired for a while.

[0:18:56] John Coleman: Boy, things really used to be great. That juxtaposition of our past remembered life in our current experienced one causes some amount of frustration or pain or grief. Those were feelings that's really important to look at because the current expression of our life is directly relative to wherever our consciousness is right now. Whatever the conception of ourselves is right now we can't go back and relive the past. Our only access, our only power, our only agency is in the present moment taking the next step forward and we take the next step forward from wherever our consciousness is right now. One of the really unfortunate things that can happen to experiencing this kind of disappointment, this kind of loss of bringing something in and then losing it. The pain can be so severe that part of us, out of a sense of self protection, just wants to give up, just wants to let it go. Just wants to want smaller things, easier things, more accessible things. Then there's a conflict there as well. Because if we're wanting after things, if we're pursuing things that we don't actually want, that aren't actually us, then that just sets up the same sort of conflict. A life lived out of balance, out of synergy with our own consciousness will be frustrating, will be difficult. We'll be effortful, we'll be disappointing, we'll be uncomfortable. That just seems to be the way it works. Seems to be the way it works because we always have free will. We always get to decide everything we do.

[0:20:57] John Coleman: We always get to decide everything we think. We always get to decide everything we believe. We can use our free will, we can use our agency, we can use our freedom to our own advantage. We can always modify and change and enhance and evolve and align our own behaviors and thoughts and actions and beliefs in any direction we like. We have full agency over ourselves and when we've taken full responsibility for ourselves and that's the point where we can live far more intentionally, live with a far greater sense of awareness because ultimately this loss, this dissatisfaction, this frustration is leading us back to us. It's encouraging us to go internal a little more. It's encouraging us to explore ourselves a little more, encouraging us to get to know ourselves a little more. It's encouraging our own self awareness. It's encouraging our own growth through really getting to know ourselves, getting to know ourselves on a deep, fundamental level, getting to know who we really are when we do. Integrating that with who we're really being. Give up these ideas of thinking anything outside of us can make us into who we want to be and instead being who we want to be. And then aligning our outside with that going out in the world with that sense of true, deep, authentic, self knowing, making decisions that resonate with that knowing. Because the truth is if we want to live any certain type of life we need to first be the person who lives that life. It doesn't work the other way around. We can't expect achievements and attainments to change us.

[0:23:11] John Coleman: We have to change first. All change starts with us. All change starts with our consciousness, with our knowing, with our awareness. And so when we really want to engage our incredible creative power intentionally to create big change in our life, it's really important to remember that our consciousness will always dictate and craft our experience, our sense, our knowing of who we really are will always be reflected back to us in our life. And if there are areas that we find through the feedback of life, through our own introspection that aren't quite aligned with that life yet, that aren't quite there, there's still a little bit of fear, a little bit of doubt, a little bit of illusion, a little bit of hubris, a little bit of arrogance, a little bit of ignorance. Well, then that's our work. That's the change that we need to make in order for the bigger change that we want to see can manifest in our life, especially over a longer term. We'll never live a life that really isn't ours. It may feel like it isn't ours, it may feel pretty uncomfortable, maybe even pretty excruciating, but that life is always a reflection of who we're currently being, of what our entire consciousness really is. The benefit of this discomfort, the benefit of not being comfortable, not being free, not being whole, not being fulfilled in our own lives is really good feedback that part of us is out of alignment. It's really good feedback that there's something inside of us, usually deep inside of us, that knows we're different than this, that knows we're more than this, that wants something better, that feels better. It's encouraging the rest of us to align with us too. There's no easy way to do this. There's no formula and there's no set of steps. This is a highly individual process, but it's a process we can discover and we can work by discovering it one step at a time, by going through it one step at a time, by having the intention to bring ourselves into alignment from the deepest, most fundamental part of ourselves to the most superficial.

[0:26:09] John Coleman: To learn how to stack those rocks in a balanced way, to learn to line our behavior, our expression, our thoughts, our speech, our motivations, our aspirations, our wanting all the way down find alignment all the way down to the deepest, truest, most fundamental parts of ourselves. And if we've lost something truly meaningful to us, that can be devastating. But it doesn't mean that that was wrong. It actually doesn't mean anything has gone wrong. It usually just means you've encountered the truth. And we've experienced this loss because we weren't really living truthfully, we weren't really aligned with truth. Perhaps we were deceiving ourselves, perhaps we were trying to deceive others, perhaps we were trying to cut some corners, take some shortcuts. But the expression and the experience of our ideal life will always flow out of us. Connecting with and expressing the most ideal part of ourself, that most ideal part of ourselves is who and what we really are deep on the inside. Connecting with that feeling, that feeling that glow, feeling that warmth, feeling that energy and expressing fully from that place, identifying ourselves with it, knowing this is who and what we really are. If we've really gone down the spiritual path, what we find at the base level, at the foundation, at the core is spirit our lives, our spirit expressing itself through our behavior, through the prism of our own beliefs, our own thoughts, our own values, our own priorities, our own personality. In our job, our work. To live a more idealized life is to let the spirit flow through us as purely and cleanly and completely as possible. And if there are things in the way there are things about ourselves that we need to change well, then that's our work. We can't go into life expecting life to change us.

[0:29:06] John Coleman: We're the ones who are changing life. We're the ones going into life with a specific consciousness and then life is reflecting that right back to us. That's why we can't wait for things to happen in order to change. That's why we can't wait for circumstances to alter until we can be different. We have to change first. We have to align first. We have to integrate first and our life will flow from that. And if there's some sort of big change that we want, if there's some sort of different life than we want to live then that change has to start with our own awareness, our own knowing of ourselves. That change has to start with the person we're actually being not the person we're being based on what we're currently getting but the person we're being because we're aligned with the spirit within us, because we're aligned with the wholeness within us, because we're aligned with the truth within us. And when we are what we want, then we'll be able to hold it. When we are what we want, then what we want will often flow to us almost effortlessly, almost automatically. Because of course it will. If life is a reflection of who we really are beyond who we think we are, beyond who we want to be, but who we really are and there's nothing that can stop it. This is always a balanced and reciprocal process. Our lives, our experience of our lives are a direct result of who we actually are, who we truly are.

[0:31:08] John Coleman: We want change in our life, when we want our lives to be different, when we want to live a life we actually want when we actually want to manifest a life that matters as a deeply fulfilling, deeply rewarding deeply energizing, deeply sublime and the responsibility is ours to become the consciousness that lives that life. To be the consciousness that lives that life to be the person who lives that life. And when we have setbacks, when we have loss, we have frustration, when we have stagnation, we can use that information, we can use that feedback as clues to where there's still more work to be done, there's still more alignment to be done. And the thing is this never changes. Our lives are not a static state. Our lives are not something that we need to just first achieve and then we'll have from now on. It's always moving, it's always changing. It's always a reflection of our consciousness. And our consciousness is always being modified, is always being added to. And when we want our life to grow in a certain way those are the areas that we need to add to our own consciousness, our own knowing of who and what we really are. This isn't something to just get done. Life isn't something to be accomplished. Life is something to be lived. Change and all challenge and all suffering and all joy and all. A complete life is a life that's lived completely.

[0:32:57] John Coleman: And because it's always changing, because it's always dynamic, because it's always responding and reflecting the consciousness of who and what we really are, then there's always opportunity to align our own consciousness more, to make modifications, to create change. Because if change is ultimately our responsibility, then it's always our opportunity too. It's always available. If no one else can change our lives except us, we can change our lives whenever we wish. That's our agency. That's the beauty of our own absolute free will in our life. That we can create change whenever we wish. But first we have to have that wish. First we have to be conscious and aware of changes that we want to make. This is all a circle. This is all a repeating spiral that goes on and on and on and on. And that's the beauty of it. There's always more life to live, there's always better change to make. There's always growth that happens and we're the ones who get to experience it all. We're the ones who can create the change and we're the ones who get to experience that change.

[0:34:25] John Coleman: If the change in our life hasn't been moving in the direction that we actually want, hasn't been moving in the direction of who we really know ourselves to be well, then we have the ability to modify that, that's manifestation, that's creative power to create change. And we're always doing it. We're always creating change in our life even if we're unconscious of it because life is always reflecting our consciousness back to us and our consciousness is always changing. What an amazing gift. What an amazing thing to know that through the intentional growth and expansion of our consciousness we can create intentional growth and expansion in our life. That our job largely is in the prep work. Our job largely is preparing and creating the environment for the life that we want to grow. Life will supply the growth we need to supply the direction we need to supply the content and the ideas of where we want our life to grow and where we want our life to go. What do we want our life to be? And life always fulfills who we really are. Life is fulfilling who we really are right this moment and every moment from now on. And the beauty is we get to choose what we do with that information. We get to choose how we affect and grow our own consciousness. And by virtue of that, we get to choose the way our life goes. This is an amazing power, this creative power that is within all of us really is astounding.

[0:36:26] John Coleman: It can't feel, overwhelming at times. But the important thing is the solace we can take is that change is always possible and we're the ones who create it. When we go into our lives wanting to create a certain type of change, first aligning our consciousness with the kind of change that we're trying to create. Then we can know, we can have faith, we can be confident that that's actually the life we will encounter and we will live.