Defending Against Abundance

After initial success led to setbacks and scarcity-thinking, I am being asked to witness — and lovingly accept — the parts of me who have feared prosperity and abundance.

A few short weeks ago, I launched a new soul-joy endeavor by combining three things I love — nature, writing and hiking — into Write-and-Hike Retreats.

Sunrise from Deer Park, Olympic Mountains

I had no idea what others would make of it, but I took a leap of faith and publicly announced a few retreat offerings in August. To my surprise, they were well received, and 12 brave people attended three initial retreats, with many more subscribing to my newsletter.

It felt like a sign that I was on the right track — that my soul was aligning with right livelihood — so with a grateful heart, I launched a second month of offerings:

September Schedule: Retreats, Classes and Write-Hike Flash Mobs!

Not surprisingly, in this new venture I have been learning a great deal! What has been surprising, however, is the kind of learning that is arising. My mind — filled with so many ideas about how to make this venture work — is being asked to take a backseat: I am to allow my soul to lead.

As it turns out, soul leadership is an entirely different ballgame.

Soul-Level Beliefs

After the first two weeks of feeling grateful for being joyfully received — as well as encouraged that this venture would be a success! — contradictory feelings began to emerge that my brain could not make sense of. Where before I had felt joyful and open-hearted, hopeful and positive, I felt anxious and fearful, my mind spinning various doomsday scenarios. As these were inconvenient (to say the least), I first tried quashing the unpleasant thoughts and feelings, but they simply turned up the volume.

It was at that point that I realized my soul was trying to get my attention.

So with the second month of offerings, I am witnessing something very different from that initial joyous launch:

I am starting to see the ways in which parts of my soul actually fear prosperity and abundance.

“Fear prosperity and abundance!” you might say. “That’s crazy! Why would you fear a bounty of good and wonderful things?”

“Yes!” part of me says. “Soul-Carrie, get it together! Just relax and receive!”

But these other parts of me — deeper, magical, past-life parts — are saying something else entirely. Having lived many a lifetime in scarcity and lack, they’re finding it hard to let go of the trauma of those experiences…not to mention the beliefs that go with them.

So with the help of my higher self, I am naming these beliefs, as labeling them is the first step in healing them:

• “If I am successful and prosperous, it will attract negative attention (spite, resentment, envy).”

• “Affluence and success will make me into a bad person (becoming arrogant, aloof, out of touch, ungenerous, stingy, hoarding, unsympathetic).”

• “I will be punished for shining too brightly.” (this one is STRONG!)

• “Leading from a place of heart-consciousness is too vulnerable.”

• “I have to use my knowledge and skillsets from prior experience, even if that means overriding my intuition.”

• “I am not worthy of abundance because of _______ (fill in blank with any number of past-life actions that these soul aspects feel remorse about).”

Ooof! That’s a lot, right? No wonder I’ve been feeling “success stress” — these parts of my soul are imagining all the terrible things that could go wrong when attracting prosperity! Because even though I don’t have conscious memories of the traumatic experiences that shaped these beliefs, parts of my soul do, and they don’t ever want to experience those traumas again. They’ve developed some comprehensive strategies to protect me from the trigger for those traumas, which is — you guessed it! — prosperity and abundance.

As such, I’m also witnessing some rather effective defenses to keep myself “safe”:

• Self-sabotage — unconscious behavior that helps to “prove” these limiting beliefs to my conscious self.

• Procrastination — avoiding / delaying doing things that attract the energies of abundance (this shows up as not prioritizing deep self-care)

• Overthinking / obsessive thinking — replaying stories in my head that distract me from being heart-centered (because to these parts, a heart-centered place feels dangerously vulnerable)

• Fear-mongering — an external event (that I unconsciously manifest) triggers fear (another way of moving me out of heart-consciousness)

(I need to pause to breathe for a moment. These parts feel very exposed, so I need to sit with them.)

Healing at a Soul Level

Happily, my higher self is completely on top of the situation. In fact, she tells me that she has orchestrated it all so that I can compassionately witness these beliefs and defensive strategies! She is asking me to send loving acceptance to these parts of my soul. And then: I am to let the beliefs (and strategies) go.

So I am doing exactly that! Every time a new one arises, I stop what I’m doing and:

1. Name the feeling. “I am feeling anxious! …worried! …completely panicked omg get me outta here!” This helps give my mind something to focus on, which makes it feel helpful. (The mind loves to feel needed!)

2. Breathe into the feeling. When a challenging feeling arises, the last thing I want to do is feel it fully. But when I deny it or shove it to the back of my mind, it just creates more of itself over time, eventually manifesting as the very thing I most fear to get my full attention. So by feeling it when it arises, I am able to simply sit with it, not push it away.

3. Breathe out loving acceptance. It helps to tell my mind to label the out-breath: “I am breathing out loving acceptance.” In truth, this first out-breath is often a compete fake. I am usually NOT feeling loving acceptance — I’m too busy feeling the negative feeling! However, if I stick with it, doing the breath cycle over and over, I eventually start to feel a warmth in my heart, and a sense of peaceful acceptance.

Amazingly, this really works! Even within a few short minutes, my feelings towards my feelings have totally changed — I am welcoming them, not rejecting them, which leads to a new kind of spaciousness within me.

Finding balance on Indian Island.

Letting Go of Limiting Soul-Beliefs

Once I’m fully in the heart-space of loving acceptance, it becomes so much easier to see my limiting beliefs for what they are: coping strategies for earlier versions of myself. Just knowing this makes me feel so much compassion for these soul parts! So when I’m letting a belief go, I am able to do it in a loving way, respecting and validating this earlier soul experience.

One could make a little ceremony out of it (light a candle, ignite some incense), but I prefer to do it on the spot, while I’m really feeling its potency.

There is great power in words backed by open-hearted intention, so I choose my statement carefully (writing it down helps).

For example:

Thank you, Soul Self, for showing me that parts of my soul don’t think they are worthy of prosperity. I lovingly accept their experience as a part of my past, and am grateful for all that their experiences have taught me.

I release the belief that I am unworthy of prosperity, as I now I know I am the embodiment of divine abundance, and prosperity is my true nature.

Once I have crafted my intention statement (I usually get a little shimmer of confirmation from my body when to let me know it is the right phrasing), I read it out loud three times to really solidify the feeling.

Sometimes that’s all I need to do, and other times, I need to revisit the feeling with more breath-work as another parallel belief is surfacing. And then I do it all again!

Gratitude, Endless Gratitude

Something the soul really appreciates is gratitude. Not lip-service gratitude but genuine, feel it in your heart appreciation. Heartfelt gratitude is the language of the universe, and one that the soul fully understands.

And my soul is sensitive! So if I want her to continue to show up and courageously lead, gratitude is what is called for…even when the curve is steep, the learnings challenging.

“See the bigger picture,” says my higher self. “Your soul has a plan.”

So even though my mind might resist these lessons, at the core of my being, I am grateful. I appreciate this crash-course in soul learning, and I am thankful to my higher self for guiding me through it! I am also grateful to know that I am being guided by an awareness greater than my conscious self, one that has my highest good as its top priority.

Most of all, I am grateful to my soul — my sensitive, beautiful eternal soul — for being willing to show up for deep-level healing, so that she can lead from a place of wholeness. I am doing my best to let go of the reins and follow her lead.

And just as I wrote that (at 4:44pm), the following notification popped up on my phone:

So it seems my soul is reminding me of what makes her grateful, too.

May all souls know true happiness, prosperity and abundance.

💜🍃🙏🏼🍃💜