Staying Up in the Economic Downturn – Everything Changed when I Realized That My Inner Life Creates My Experience of LIfe

Here’s a report from a client who was really struggling with challenges from the economic downturn, and then turned the whole thing around:

I’ve been going through a very challenging period – probably the hardest time of my life. The economic downturn hit me and my family hard. I’m having to move out of the dreamhouse I just spent a year building, and re-locate, as there’s no work where I live at this time. I’ve been feeling really bad and so tired of feeling bad and wanting to know why I was feeling so bad. I felt insecure, and I had self pity about my own insecurity.

No wonder I was feeling that way – I was letting the external determine how I was feeling internally. And no wonder I was feeling bad, because my circumstances were really difficult, & I was making them even more difficult with the way I was responding to them. And then it just dawned on me. It was as if my wisdom was trying to get through to me the whole time, but I was jamming it with my own insecurity. It suddenly dawned on me that the inner creates the outer & I had the whole thing upside down; I was letting the outer affect my inner life. When the impact of that insight hit me it was as if everything stopped – all my insecure thinking, all my anxiety, my working on my agendas – and I felt this incredible sense of relief.

A sense of clearness and cleanness opened before me. I could see that it was a beautiful day, and that I was in a beautiful place, and that I might be in the middle of challenging circumstances but I didn’t need to let that run my entire emotional life. It was as if I became changed from an insane person to a sane person. The insane person was running & running, chasing its own thoughts, & then the sane person was totally content with the present that I felt . It changed my whole perspective .
It Happened Again. Later that day, my thoughts started getting funky & I started to feel insecure & anxious again. Then I realized that this is what I do – I get tired & hungry and chase my insecure thoughts around . So I ate something, and reflected on the insight I had earlier about how the inner affects the outer. I started asking myself for more clarity on that experience – how can my inner reach the outer – & I had this incredible experience of peace that came over me, and satisfaction, and a very simple gratitude, and I felt myself in my body – I felt my toes, and the fibers of the muscles in my legs – things I’m not normally aware of. This presence brought all my different faculties into the moment. I was experiencing the divine intelligence of life within. To me it came like a feeling of the long lost beloved – we spend so much time seeking things externally, and then when we get something internally, it’s like the answer to the ultimate question, whatever that is. I hear people say when you get really deep you can’t be alone because you have this experience of god in your body. And I’ve had thoughts like that but I’ve also experienced being alone, or lonely. This experience was so rich I was completely not lonely for the first time in my life. Even though I was alone I had this great satisfaction and wasn’t lonely.
I just have to remember that this is the most important thing in life, that the challenge of having to live with bills is no comparison to this experience of the inner life.