When I have time to fully devote myself to a spiritual path, I become financially destitute.  When I work, I become so exhausted and stressed that I don’t pursue a spiritual practice.  I become mentally and physically depleted and unhealthy. This seesawing back and forth seems endless.  I need to make money; yet, I haven’t been able to make it in a way that is nourishing and honoring to me and others.

This morning, during swim team, I did speed intervals.  After the first set of three timed swims, I was exhausted.  I came in even on the second swim; then lost two seconds on the third.  During the second set, I decided not to focus on speed, just technique.  I felt that I wasn’t going very fast.  I wasn’t using much effort.  Yet, I came in 2 seconds faster than my best time in the first set even though I thought I was swimming more slowly.

I told my coach, “This doesn’t make sense.  How can I go faster by swimming more slowly?”  He responded, “When your body is streamlined, you diminish your drag and go through the water more quickly with less effort.”  By the last swim of the third set, I beat my time by four seconds!  This was amazing because I wasn’t killing myself trying to go faster.

As with swimming, struggling to manifest income is creating a drag.  I must relax and focus on my technique.  I am practicing tapping into the Universal Consciousness that has abundance flowing to me without my having to struggle for it.  I don’t want to exhaust myself anymore.  When I tie into the Universal Consciousness, I receive communication according to my capacity and in a language that is understandable to me at that present time.

Improvement involves practice.  When I am learning a better technique, swimming is not as enjoyable.  It is tiring.  My muscles are weak in the new ways in which I want them to work.  My body and my brain want to return to the old ways.  It’s easier to do as I have always done.  Sometimes I don’t want to go to swim team and listen to my coaches encourage me to change.  Change is hard.

Today, I decided to sit and visualize a change in the energy surrounding me.  I began to be conscious of the flow of protection and safety always available to me.  In the midst of uncertainty, I practice feeling content, relaxed, and peaceful.  I notice with wonder things formerly taken for granted: cloud formations in the sky, my breath, thoughts, being able to twist my body.  I begin to have more insights.  What am I capable of doing and being without?  Without money?  Without family and friends?  Without a home?  Who am I without?

I feel the power of being alone, of experiencing the new as I leave old reliances.  Despite what appear to be setbacks, adversity, a lack of progression, I am grateful for the time to be still and to completely focus on what I need to do to open myself more to my truest Self and my highest potential – if only I will welcome change in all of its manifestations.

Perhaps my consistent experiences of lack are to train me, to make me change.  To have me bump my head against a wall so many times that I finally seek another way.  To stop trying my old ways, my effort-filled, struggle-filled ways.

Until I elevate my consciousness, I am not going to attract the type of people and circumstances that will further my expansion.  I have to learn how to expand my vibration level in the midst of chaos, wealth, poverty, love, or hate.  All are fleeting within time’s relativity.  I must continuously train my mind to turn from illusion and towards the forever changing face of Reality.

After months of swimming by myself, of working on my technique, of feeling as though I was getting nowhere, one day I was able to keep up with swimmers in a faster lane.  One day, I didn’t feel as though I was slogging through mud.  I wish that my life would change as quickly (months instead of years).  Nevertheless, I have proof that change does come if I continue to be open to new ways and to practice.