The New Physics reminds us that we continually dream the world into being with our thoughts and feelings. Up until now, our human collective has been doing this largely unconsciously. As a result, we have dreamed an existence that is fraught with poverty, conflict and fear.

On the other hand, there is a sacred kind of dreaming that shamans throughout time have known and practiced. It involves aligning with compassionate spirits in Nature and learning to look through the lens of the heart. When a person remembers herself or himself back into the fabric of All That Is, she or he is much more likely to “see” a solution that can benefit the whole.

This is not a one-time vision of what is possible, rather it is a kind of dreaming that is done continually to weave the world. Up until now, you may have envisioned yourself and the world in a certain way and so have produced the life that you see around you. The idea of transforming that may, at first, sound very difficult as it does require developing relationships with nature and taking responsibility for your thoughts and feelings. In truth, however, you are already dreaming your reality right now, so why not learn to do it more consciously and with more pleasing results?

The path of becoming a co-creator begins by first by dreaming a new dream for yourself. The steps include the following:

• Developing a gratitude practice.*
• Observing limiting perceptions without judgment of the self.
• Changing your mind/heart.
• Affirmative feelings make the difference.
• Repeating this process everyday!

The practice of gratitude

Gratitude has the power to transform both your inner and outer environments. In a study of organ transplant recipients, researchers from UC Davis and the Mississippi University for Women found that patients who keep “gratitude journals” scored better on measures of mental health, general health and vitality than those who keep only routine notes about their days. Test subjects were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group kept routine daily notes about medication side-effects, how they felt about life overall, how connected they were to others and how they felt about the upcoming day. Patients in the other group answered the same questions but were also asked to list five things or people they were grateful for each day and why they were grateful for them. They were asked to reflect on what they wrote as well. After 21 days, mental health and general well-being scores had risen for patients in the gratitude group but declined for those in the control group. This is particularly important as feeling better emotionally has been proven to actually translate into becoming more physically well! It may seem counter-intuitive, but if you can feel better first, you will be more likely to get better!

Gratitude combined with time spent in Nature is a special salve to the soul that can’t be matched. I find that each time I spend time in the natural world offers me more rich fodder for my gratitude practice. The heron that passes just feet overhead, the ripples of a giant snapping turtle swimming past me, the puff of vapor around a deer’s muzzle on a chilly morning or the garish splashes of a vibrant sunset all get added to my catalog of things, people and experiences for which I feel grateful. This “list” is something I use to help me to re-experience the feelings of gratitude. If one memory doesn’t produce the feeling I desire, I move to the next until I am filled with gratitude and appreciation for my life once again.

There are many other studies that have been done that prove the power of having an “attitude of gratitude” and I’ve listed a few resources at the end of this column to assist you in developing you own gratitude practice.

Thoughts and perceptions

The next step in transforming your inner reality is to begin looking at your limiting perceptions and the unpleasant feelings that they produce. This can start with simply observing your thoughts. Please remember to do this with compassion! If you are like most people, your thoughts are bound by limiting assumptions about who you are and what you are capable of achieving. They were passed to you by your family and the culture as well as through the misperceptions you developed about yourself and the nature of reality when you were still a tiny child. Even though these old ways of being have been with you for a while, it is useful to remember that they can be replaced by new more accurate ways of looking at yourself and the world!

Sometimes these thoughts are no more than excuses. Twelve-step programs refer to these as “stinking thinking” or basically distorted thinking built on incorrect beliefs. Oversimplifying, amplifying, minimizing, justifying, and blaming are a few examples of classic stinking thinking that can keep you in the old, outmoded dream of yourself.

Thoughts like these often come up when you start focusing your future and the idea of change. They include a litany of “reasons” why something can’t be different than it is now, “I can’t because...”, “Nothing good will happen for me...” or even “That’s not possible...” Arising swiftly in the mind, these paralyzing old beliefs restrict you. When you give them power, they can shrink your new vision of yourself even before you’ve given a new idea a chance to fly.

These erroneous patterns of thought were learned through your earliest interactions with other people. These people, in their turn, were playing out their own unconscious messages about reality. In most cases, they did not intend to limit you, but simply passed on their own misperceptions. In some cases they may have also felt so poorly about themselves, they sought to gain power by making you feel even worse. In either case, since the perceptions that were created are learned information—you can learn something new to replace them!

Creating a change of mind/heart

It is clear that these kinds of limiting beliefs and perceptions hold you back from your most marvelous potential and that they are part of a group of human mind “computer viruses” that have restricted your perceptions.

Once you have observed yourself for a time, you will gain awareness of the thinking patterns that need to be changed. The next step is to uncover the feelings that underlie the thoughts. When you find yourself thinking limiting thoughts, ask yourself “What am I feeling?” It may be that you are feeling that you “aren’t good enough,” “I’ll never have enough” or that you feel some other kind of fear. Holding the utmost compassion for yourself, identify those unbeneficial and limiting feelings.

You may find that journaling can be very beneficial in this process. Using the page as a sounding board for your feelings can help you to become more clear.  For some people, a short course of psychotherapy or other counseling can help to further identify and untangle your feelings. You may be one who needs to understand where the feeling come from in order to better release them. Follow your own guidance about the particular support that you might require.

Once you have a clear sense of the underlying feelings that are part of your limiting perceptions/beliefs it is time to create an antidote for them. If, for instance, your particular belief is that “I’ll never have enough,” then you need to generate feelings of being fully satisfied in your life.

Feelings are your prayers

Generating these new feelings can be accomplished best by generating feelings of gratitude first. Once you are feeling really full of gratitude, use your brilliant imagination to create a scenario that produces feelings of your desire being already fulfilled. Remember: the imagery you bring to mind is whatever you need to generate the feelings. It is your feelings that become your tool for manifestation. Feelings are the prayer!

Using the above example, you would imagine ways in which you feel that you have more than enough. You may imagine being able to effortlessly provide for your family’s needs. You may imagine yourself sitting with a loved one in a beautiful place feeling perfectly at ease. Simple affirmations often fail because the underlying feelings haven’t changed. By transforming the feelings, you actually begin transforming your reality. Once you have had this change of heart/mind, you will find that your efforts toward your goal feel more supported. You may see opportunities that you never saw before or draw more like-minded individuals to your inner circle. These shifts are made possible by your change of mind/heart and the energetic signature that they produce in and around your body.

One more thing: remember to feel what you desire happening now—not in some future time. If you feel it as something in the future, it will remain in the future. Using our example it means feeling that you are fulfilled in this present moment, not feeling that you will be satisfied one day.

Another pointer, don’t get locked into the idea that there is only one way of fulfilling your dreams! The spirits of All That Is may have something in mind even more glorious than you can imagine, so always focus on simply feeling it in this present moment. That is the ticket to weaving your new life. More importantly, you will already be having the feelings that you desire most in your life. Having felt them richly every day, you will have the courage to keep going forward and weaving them more and more into reality.

Consistency is important

This step is critical. Your limiting beliefs and the old world they created were around for a long while. To replace your old reality with a new one takes some time and patience, but even more it takes courage. You need to be willing to continue your gratitude practice and your “feeling prayers” for as long as it takes.  Changing one’s life is a warrior’s journey. It is a series of choices that you make each day, in every moment that will eventually reveal your desired results—often in an unexpected form. In making those choices, you are living your new vision of yourself right now!

Let, “I am gratefully changing my perceptions, I am gratefully changing my feelings, I am gratefully changing my world” become your new mantra. Follow the steps, feel the feelings and become the transformation that you want to experience in your world!

* Please see, the Inner Space/Outer World article in the April 2008 issue of Spirit Living (www.spiritliving.org) for more instructions about the power of gratitude and how to make it your spiritual practice. You may also wish to access other resources such as our Becoming the New Human CD found at: www.spiritpassages.com/spiritpassagesstore.html

© 2009 Evelyn C. Rysdyk

Nationally recognized shaman teacher/healer, speaker, and author, Evelyn C. Rysdyk delights in supporting people to remember their sacred place in All That Is.  Whether though face-to-face contact with individual patients, groups and conference participants, or through the printed word in books, columns and articles—Evelyn uses her loving humor and passion to open people’s hearts and inspire them to live more joyful, fulfilling and purposeful lives.

She is the author of Modern Shamanic Living: New Explorations of an Ancient Path (1999), columnist and writer of numerous articles and features. Her writing and artwork have appeared in regional, national and international publications—both in print and online—and she is the executive editor of Spirit Living, an eco-spiritual e-magazine.

In joint practice with C. Allie Knowlton as Spirit Passages since 1991, she offers workshops in advanced experiential shamanism across the USA and Canada.  In addition, as founding members of True North, an integrated medical center in Falmouth, Maine, she and Allie collaborate with physicians, nurses, a psychiatrist, naturopath and other complementary health practitioners.  Evelyn may be contacted through her website: www.spiritpassages.com.