I was really happy. I have been working on my business for a long time. I have been making adjustments here and there to try to find the best execution of my time. And after months of intense focus (remember, priority management was the goal this year), I finally had a week that was really successful. All my hard work was finally paying off. Tangibly. For the first time in a long time I met almost all my time goals for the week. And I met my financial goals also. Basically I made more money without working more. So, huge! A great success!

I was feeling really happy. And also very grateful. So I thanked God for the great week.

And then almost immediately I felt Spirit tell me I should thank myself. That I am the one who has been working so hard. I am the one who day after day has been evaluating every little detail of my performance. Making adjustments here and there to fine-tune the use of my time.

Specifically that the success of the week wasn’t some magical gift from outer space. I really earned it. And I felt like God was telling me it was good to feel proud of myself for how all my hard work is paying off.

To be honest, it’s really difficult for me to type those words. And they have been years in the making. I still have ghosts of religious guilt that haunt me heavily on this topic. But the only way I’ve even gotten to this point is because I’ve been battling them daily. Wrestling with all that is related to this topic. Which is so much, but mainly the question of do my actions matter or is everything just fate?

I see the whole answer as way more nuanced now than just a heavy-handed black or white, yes or now. And that makes sense seeing as God is infinitely nuanced. God has the capacity to see every millisecond for everything that is created. Even the number of hairs on our head.

And we of course do not. We are extremely limited on what we can conceptualize.

But I am learning. Lots. But some of the several lessons that relate to this success business is:

1. All I have is now. I get all messed up if I am trying to live in a future moment that has not yet happened.
2. God kinda gives me the final say. And I think I reap accordingly.
3. But God is all about healing. So I see Trinity interrupt me constantly in order to direct me certain ways.
4. I no longer think there is necessarily some mysterious path I need to take. I am getting way better at this. Forever when I’d ask God what to do, Spirit would respond back over and over, “What do you want?”
5. I still get tripped up because of decades of living in the former religious ways that were obsessively focused on finding out “God’s will” for every little decision in my life. So, usually when I am stressed, I unconsciously revert back to basically what I am now referring to as superstitious thinking. Based out of the knowledge that I am not qualified to judge anything. I am just God’s kid. I don’t know anything really. Except what I want (as I return to myself). So then my job as I see it now is to get in touch with what I want, do what I think is best, and then trust everything to God.

This is opposite of how I made decisions before. I never asked myself what I wanted before. I just played all these mental mind games and mental gymnastics to try to judge everything as from God or not. And I was swimming in fear that way. Paralyzed.

Versus now. I’ll give you an example. It was raining. And I was T-boned in a very bad accident on a rainy day a few years ago. When I went out to work. While I was debating whether God wanted me to work.

So over the years, I have learned through a lot of situations where honestly God allowed me to follow that thinking until I decided that it was okay to work if I wanted to work. I didn’t have to try to figure out of God wanted me to work or not.

But it was raining and that triggered some residual unconscious fears from the accident. So I was feeling scared deep in myself and the old thoughts started: “You shouldn’t work. God might punish you for working in the rain and not trusting Him. You might get in an accident again if you go work in the rain. God might do it to you to teach you a lesson since you didn’t learn last time.”

But thankfully as I return to my body and myself, I am not so reactive to blindly following those thoughts and feelings anymore like I have done in the past. So thankfully I was able to “hear” the fear inside of me. And pause long enough to objectively consider what I wanted to do.

So I had this talk with myself: “You are not able to judge why you were T-boned in the accident. God allowed that, but you don’t know why. And you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out. No matter how much you try, you are not God, so you will never know unless God makes it clear to you. Even then it’s okay if you have doubts because you’re just a kid, God’s kid. And Trinity totally understands you and loves you so much. You are safe in God’s love. So, you can make whatever decision you think is best right now.”

And so I decided, “I want to work. I can get in an accident in the rain or not in the rain. It really doesn’t matter. I have the same odds either way. Because it’s like the fallacy of the Russian roulette game to think otherwise. Like people think, oh it’s landed on red so many times so it must now land on black. That’s really what I’m doing when I’m saying I’m going to get in an accident just because it’s raining. That’s not a for sure thing. So I am going to go work and trust God to keep me safe if that is what is best.”

So, I went to work. Fighting those fears. Honestly, hardcore. The anxiety at full peak. Having to talk myself out of the catastrophic future-tripping. Working really hard to stay present in the current moment and at least consider that things could turn out how I want. That I’m not automatically cursed just because I decide to pursue what I really want.

And guess what? I made over $70 in that hour. My hard work paid off.

And yet that damn religious and abusive mind-fuckery doesn’t let up for a second. I can’t even enjoy the win as the protector in me, overwhelmed for so many years, starts worrying that success and enjoyment of it will guarantee a disaster will happen immediately after.

But there again, I have to talk myself down out of that thinking. And even if only intellectually, admit that God wants what is best for me. God wants me to enjoy life. That it isn’t wrong to be happy and have money. To be successful. That I don’t always have to worry about the other shoe dropping.

Just because I didn’t get what I wanted in the past, that doesn’t mean I can’t ever get what I want.

Sometimes we get blessed with God giving us insight into why They allow some prayers to go unanswered. As I return to myself, more and more I start to see how they were blessings, not getting what I thought I wanted. And not some mind-trick fuckery like when we were religious. Where you had to constantly convince yourself that you enjoyed pain. No, none of that shit. In contrast, these explains from Spirit actually make common sense.

For example, I was driving by my old apartment in downtown Austin that I had so badly wanted back. So frustrated by that unanswered prayer. And then Spirit showed me recently that a very large and unruly homeless population was camping and walking all around that neighborhood. And there was no garage or driveway parking. So it is highly likely that my vehicle would be broken into if I moved back to my old apartment.

Then all my resentment went away as I saw Spirit’s perspective.

Now, there’s no cavalier blanket explanation that we can just smack on people’s pain and dismiss them accordingly with, “Go and be well”. No, a parent losing their child. Or the brand new mom losing her husband. I would be an imbecile to speak to their situations. Again, a fool to judge. Anyone or anything.

Just sharing though on what has been working for me. To help me break through a ton of religious and abusive crap. And get my life back. My happiness. And even financial success. Just speaking on my individual circumstances in case it resonates with anyone and they find it helpful or encouraging for something they are going through.

To everyone else who it’s not for, God bless you.