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Nicks: What does a dead battery have to do with growth?

Bi-weekly column on all things holistic health related
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Creation and growth are two concepts that if examined can lead to a different understanding of how we collaborate with the life force moving in everything and everyone. Over the past five years of working closely with a mentor, many of the words and experiences I share flow out of what I’ve heard from and learned with her.

This past weekend, I had planned to drive up to Edmonton to attend a workshop I had been looking forward to for over a month. Friday morning, I was packed early. However, the moment I called my mentor to let her know I was on the road, something felt “off.” I had nothing logical to base the feeling on.

I turned on my car and heard an AMA advertisement reminding me to renew my membership. Uneasiness started to grow inside my stomach. Starting to drive, a thought popped in that maybe I should grab the phone number of a fellow journalist in Wetaskiwin “just in case.” I brushed it all off, even telling myself I could potentially create a problematic scenario by giving energy to the unwanted but persistent thoughts (yay, crappy law of attraction propaganda!).

About 15 minutes south of the Wetaskiwin turn off, I stopped at the one highway side rest stop area between Red Deer and Edmonton. When I got back in my car, it wouldn’t turn over, even after several tries. Lamenting not updating my AMA membership sooner, I made a few calls to family members and started looking up things that could potentially be wrong with my car.

After my research and a few phone calls, I realized it was most likely my battery, something I had put off replacing as it had been working pretty decently even though it was close to seven years old. I tried starting the car again and it finally turned over. Now that I knew what was up I realized it was wiser to head back to Lacombe and get the battery replaced there rather than potentially having a more expensive car fixing adventure in Edmonton.

When I explained the situation to my mentor, she said she’d felt hesitant about going ahead and making supper but again had no evidence for why. What the experience led to was a conversation about listening to prompts like we both experienced; no matter how subtle. We might not have any clue why we are nervous or hesitant but simply having the conversation can give the floor to those impulses and potentially give way to us being more sensitive to the myriad feedback loops we’re connected into.

It can also mean the person we share with cuts us off because there’s no evidence for our concern. Or we cut ourselves off like I did by telling myself that I didn’t have any reason for concern because I just wanted to get on the road. Next time I feel that sense in anything though, I’m listening. I’m paying attention. Even if I don’t have proof.

We’re constantly getting feedback that is very personalized. It might not make sense to anyone else, but it’s there specifically and in a way we’re not looking for or creating. The only way we grow in this way is by listening and implementing what we hear, not by focusing our intention and attempting to create a specific experience like misguided law of attraction “experts” would have us believe.

Let’s go back to my story as an illustration. There was nothing wrong with me wanting to go to Edmonton. But where I missed making a correction in my experience was in shutting down the messages coming my way because I didn’t want them to be true. I didn’t create my experience because my focus was on my car breaking down. The messages came “out of the blue.” But I had the experience of my car breaking down when I didn’t listen to the inner sense that something was off.

The experience isn’t the issue, the listening is the issue. We’re only given life a moment at a time. In the same way, we’re only given the information for the next steps in increments. This way we’re not in constant judgement because we have no idea what’s next in the growth process. How can you judge something that is growing?

That’s not to say that we don’t take aim at where we’d like to go or at what we’d like to experience. Aiming upwards as a plant as opposed to downwards is vital to the growth and eventual fruit-bearing of a plant. The same illustration can be applied to human growth. But when we move our focus to the growth process rather than on creating something before we know the truth of it, we can start to collaborate with creation rather than attempting to force our will on creation.



myra.nicks@sylvanlakenews.com

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