The underlying belief of many problems is that we are somehow getting it wrong. A lot of people think if they just work harder, things in their life will get better. If I put in more time at work, I will finally make the money. If I love a little more, then I will finally have love. What seems to be missing is that it is all about our Being not our Doing that makes the difference. If you want to be in love, you need to know what it feels like to love yourself first. If you want to feel love you must be love. If you want to have peace, then you need to be at peace first. Buddha says that if you want to lead someone along a path, you first have to BE the path. I help people shift their habitual way of thinking, because, if you really think you are getting life wrong then those thoughts will create negative consequences in your life.
In 2006, I healed myself from debilitating back pain without medicine or the aid of doctors. Though I visited a number of doctors over a period of years, it always seemed that they wanted me to take pain pills, but I knew it would not fix the problem. It just didn’t seem right. I didn’t want to just mask a pain that none of them could diagnose. I wanted to get to the core of what was causing the problem so I could face it and heal it.
It took about ten years for me to figure it out, but I finally got the pain to go away — I had learned the most valuable lesson yet, that if I was waiting for the magic pill to arrive to heal my back pain, it was in my mind. When I directed my attention to healing the pain in my life, my back pain healed as well.
I lived for about twelve more years pain-free and though I thought that I had gotten away scott-free experiencing no pain for so long I figured that I would never have to worry about back pain again. But then just recently on a Tuesday night I woke up in excruciating pain again. I told myself, I have got to sleep tonight. So I reached for the pain medication. But when I looked myself in the mirror, I said to myself, Angie, if you don’t go figure this pain out the way you did in the beginning, then what is the point of you trying to teach others, maybe you are just a fraud? So I went back to bed, turned on the lamp, pulled out some of my resources, and started figuring this out. I noticed that the pain was all on the left side. In my studies, I had learned that this meant I am out of balance. So I started thinking about what in my life was out of balance. If our inner world is out of balance then our outer world will show up that way as well.
You have a balance between your feminine and your masculine energy. For myself, I learned that I have a balance between my past and my present, and pain on the left side involves my past. So I asked myself, what have I been hanging onto this past week that is not serving me? A certain situation came to mind. I had to think about it, and as I did, I told myself, Angie, you are creating in your imagination the worst case scenario.
What if instead, you imagined the best-case situation? As fast as the pain meds would have taken effect, the pain started to go away on its own as I confronted and resolved the emotional causes of the pain, again, I awoke the next morning pain free. We have so much ability to create change, and it comes from going within rather than looking without. It is completely counter-intuitive. You have to reevaluate everything you ever believed, because there could be error in it.
I hear people tell me all of the time: “The doctor told me I have this, the doctor told me I have that.” I tell them, “Do you know that the thing you are dealing with is standard and normal for just about every human being on earth, but you believe that it is a big problem for you because your doctor gave it a label?” Everyone contends with depression or some form of it at times in their lives.
Start asking, “What can I do about this?” The answers will come. Then, the master key is you must BELIEVE the answer. If you have the thought, that is your answer. If you begin to over-think saying to yourself, I should check this and this and this first, it will be a longer road to the answer.
We have to learn to get illogical. God says if you want it, go for it–but you have to be believing first. I had no idea that you have to SAY what you WANT. Ask and it is given.
So I reminded myself: that though there are physical things I desire, I desire them because I am wanting to add beauty to the earth. I found out that I was going to need to move to Utah from Seattle with three weeks notice and yet I got into the house I wanted and the job I desired all in about two weeks time and I had no idea how I was going to do it. You do not need to know the how, you just need to move forward in faith, always being believing.
Before this effortless move I had allowed fear to overcome me for about 24 hours. I could feel that fear starting to shut me down. I looked in the mirror: “Angie, you know better. Think about the possibilities, NOT the impossibilities.” The next day, I had a phone call from a brother-in-law that I did not know very well. He asked if he could stay for a few days. I said sure. He told me that he sold semi trucks so he thought it would be a great way for him to help me out if he just purchased a truck that would fit all of my belongings in it and then he would move it for me for free! How could he know that this was my biggest concern about the move? I had been asking myself, how do I move all of my stuff and not spend $10,000? But he came along, and even had the right license to drive it. Problem solved! In fact the solution came to me. I did not have to go looking for it.
That came about 24 hours after I decided to live in the mindset of allowing possibilities. I was able to secure the job because I took the risk and moved in faith. The very next weekend I bought a ticket down to Utah and went to a group interview. I had come from out of state. I did the illogical there. I took a risk. I just knew – this is what I want and it is showing up, and so I did this interview. They were so impressed that they hired me on the spot.
Then, the house. I knew the price range and location of the house that I desired. I wanted to be within a block of a certain elementary school. But I was having no luck at all. Around this time, I was in the grocery store, and I felt prompted to talk to the lady in front of me. She said she was a rental agent. My eyes got big. I asked her if she could help me. She said yes but that there was a long waiting list. I was not discouraged and I said, can I get on your waiting list? She looked at me and gave me a little wink and said, “I like you, so I am going to bump you to the top of the list.”
Within two days when I was back in Seattle, she called and said, “I have the perfect place for you!” Then the kicker is, she called me later and said, “You aren’t going to believe this but they are moving out early so you can get in right when you want to.”
I was in the Relief Society presidency at the time. My friend who was the president of the Relief Society said to me, “Angie I don’t get it. You should probably have needed more help than anyone, being a single mom. Like, all of this stuff is happening and you haven’t asked for one piece of help for your move.” There were 16 families moving at the same time and they have all had need of assistance. She said to me, “How come everyone else needed lots of help but you didn’t?”
I said, “I was thinking in a certain way.” If we think about negative possibilities we are going to run into bumps and snags. We are predisposed to look at the physical proof.We are trained to look at what we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. But your subconscious cannot tell the real from the imagined. It will go to that image and say, this is what she wanted to show up.
I had something that was insurmountable to me, but I had that move done in no time. My brother-in-law even said I will only charge you for the gas one way. My whole move only cost me $750 to move the whole house and we loaded the truck up with everything.
Buddha says you have to become the path before you can walk the path. I use my experiences to help people look at their lives differently. I tell them to ask questions like: What am I basing my life on? We spend so much time looking outward. We spend so much time basing our value on things that we do. But we are human BE-ings, not human DO-ings.
A lot of people are broken and hurting. They tell me, “Angie, I am checking off all theboxes, but why am I not happy?” I tell them, “You aren’t happy because you are checking off someone else’s boxes.” As soon as we can connect to our own foundation
rather than someone else’s, we can shift our whole lives based on what we want instead of what we don’t want. We can explore our infinite possibility, decide for ourselves what we want to be, to do, and to have, then act in faith that God will workwith us to create it.