Dear Meli,

I’m new to this whole ‘you create your life’ thing. Not surprisingly, I have some questions. Do I really create everything in my life? My dad died a couple years ago. Did I create that? I was born with a congenital heart issue. Did I create that? I understand that I have an effect on some of the events of my life. But everything? I find that difficult to believe. Can you help me out?

Cautious Creator

Dear Cautious,

Welcome to the world of creating your life consciously! And thank you for your questions.

I believe that we co-create our lives together with Spirit. I also believe that Spirit gives us opportunities to grow. Sometimes, It does so by gifting us experiences – we might see them as gifts or we might see them as challenges – that will grow our souls in just the right way for our evolution. I also believe that our soul chooses some of our life’s experiences before we embody. Those experiences are also just the thing for our soul’s evolution.

There is a potential pitfall with this philosophy. It’s tempting to use it to blame or shame yourself (or others) for “creating their experience”. This can be especially harmful when referring to an unpleasant circumstance. Your congenital heart condition might fall into this category. There are some folks (I do my best to avoid them, but they do exist) who might say, “What’s in your consciousness that created this?” I won’t print here what I might say to someone who asked me such a question. Their question is evidence of a belief that our egoic self, our conscious thinking self, does all the creating of our life. I don’t agree.

One practice Z and I have is to look at the circumstances in our life that we don’t appreciate. We look at those things and find aspects about them that are blessings. We started this practice over a decade ago when I was in a particularly challenging financial situation, a situation that resulted in toxic shame. Z was trying to find a way to support me. I wasn’t having it.

Then they reminded me that Spirit is always for my good. This I believe completely. So they were able to convince me to look for the perfection in my situation. At the time, I was coming out of a divorce and had just started graduate school. I was heavy on expenses and low on income. It was very difficult to find anything good about it at first. But then I began to look more deeply.

I was clearly being given an opportunity to master finances, and managing money, in a way I hadn’t done before. I was being forced by my circumstances to learn to budget and live within (or beneath) my means. What a fabulous thing for me to learn and master! It has blessed my life every day since! That alone would’ve been enough to make me feel better about the situation. But I kept looking.

I also realized that I was being given an opportunity to trust Spirit in a way I hadn’t before. I had relied on my own will, and my “power to create” my finances. But this time that wasn’t working for me. So I needed to surrender in a way I hadn’t before. And, when I did, things shifted for me quickly!

If you’re thinking, “But wait! That was something that shifted from the appreciation. I can’t just shift my congenital heart condition away. Can I?”

Let me give you two other examples. Let’s talk about my being an addict, and my being gay.

First example: I am in recovery for drug addiction. Do I think I could pray that away? Well, I’m not saying that’s impossible. But I’m not gonna mess with my sobriety, either! Just a .1% chance it wouldn’t work – and that I could return to the suffering I lived in before – keeps me from trying.

I believe I chose my addiction for my soul’s journey. It is a part of my personality structure, my egoic self, to want to overconsume. The whole, “more is better” phenomenon. I’ve seen this play out in many aspects of my life. I can see that needing to ask Spirit for help, and surrender to that help, has been the best journey for my being. I would not have chosen that journey unless I had to. Addiction made things so bad, I had to.

Second example: I’m gay. Homophobia is so deep in our culture, and was so deep in me, that I didn’t even know it until I was 50. But now I see, very clearly, when I look back. I’m gay. Always have been. Always will be. And oh the blessings of that journey! I didn’t even wake up about my sexual orientation until I’d done so much healing work that I could allow myself to realize it. And still, I needed to choose whether to allow myself to be me in the world, or be who society would prefer me to be. I could be authentic, or I could be miserable. (Some of the journey of being authentic was miserable, but that was other people’s reactions making me sad, not me suffering because I was not being me. That is a very different kind of pain.)

I am forever grateful for all the therapists and teachers I’ve had along the way. They each gave me a key piece that allowed me to learn to love me enough that, at 50, I could wake up about myself, and choose me. And I can certainly see that this journey was the best for my soul’s evolution. I had never had to make a choice like that before, one that required I turn away away from familial and societal approvals and expectations. It was a tremendous blessing for me!

I’m hoping these examples will allow you to be gentle with yourself in this process of learning to create, including seeing what you created when you weren’t doing so consciously. It is one of the best choices I made in my life, to take this road of conscious creation. It’s not for sissies. But it needn’t be a means to bully yourself either.

All the very best to you in the process of every creation!

In Joy, Melissa

What is your experience with conscious – and less than conscious – creation? Share your comments below!

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