People often want to know how to get started Flowdreaming. So, I’ve put together the simple program that follows.

The technique of Flowdreaming has three components:

1. Awareness of Flow energy

2. Strong, directed emotion

3. Guided daydreaming

First, remember that your mind or consciousness is already adrift in this Flow. After all, it’s made of this energy. Your brain creates, stores, and synthesizes data, but it does so more like a quantum computer would—using quantum Flow energy instead of regular electricity. So your mind is already in the Flow, at all times. But you need to convince yourself of it, so this where guided daydreaming comes in. When you daydream, your mind seems to “detach itself” from your exterior surroundings. It “goes” somewhere, and you often don’t even realize it. Well, instead of “drifting off” unaware into a fantasy, in Flowdreaming, you pay attention to where you’re going. You still drift—but you watch where you’re drifting, similar to having a lucid dream.

This means you close your eyes, and let your mind wander. Daydream. Bring up an image that makes you think about the concept of Flow. Maybe you see a beautiful, winding river of light with an internal “aliveness” so it knows exactly where it’s going. Or, you see a starry sky with a glittering path that weaves through space, surrounded by strings of light energy moving in and out of complex and beautiful patterns all around you. Or maybe you see an ocean of light, with a current that tugs and pulls you gently toward a perfect destination.

Put yourself into this place, and feel this direction, like a bird on the wind. Feel yourself carried. Feel how expansive this place is. Feel how it’s the place “before” everything you see around you. It’s the germination point. The blueprint or matrix of it all.

Give your mind plenty to see and feel here. This isn’t mediation. Don’t clear your mind. Open it—see, feel, and hear whatever images, emotions, or sounds that come to you. People with very busy, creative minds love this aspect of Flowdreaming.

The next part of Flowdreaming has to do with emotion. So, you know what Flow is, and you’ve “daydreamed” what this place is like. Now, how do you communicate with it? What kind of paint do you use on this canvas? You use your emotion.

Emotion is the universal language—not just between all mankind, but within the universe itself. A thousand words can’t describe the immensity of one single, strong feeling. The Flow responds to emotion as if you were to drop food coloring into clear water. What you feel, your Flow becomes. If you feel joy, your Flow radiates that joy all through it, and the physical things that manifest in your future must somehow align or support that joy. If you feel “release,” then your future holds opportunities for you to let go of things. If you feel rich (and the feelings of safely, relief, and excitement the idea of “rich” generates in you), then your future has been coded for more of these feelings and will generate opportunities for you to experience them.

I call this emotional communication method, “pre-action.” Unlike re-action, which is what we do 90% of the time, pre-action means that we’ve given ourselves permission to feel an emotion before there is any triggering event in our life to justify that feeling. For example, in reality, let’s say you’re ill and usually feel tired, heavy, depressed, and sick. You react to your illness with those heavy emotions all day long.

But you want to change that. So, you might go in your Flow and feel radiantly healthy, alive, and full of energy. You are pre-acting what you want to feel in your future. If you feel happy, light, freed, and healthy in your Flow, you are tasking the universe to figure out a way to translate that into your physical life. Your flow must then match you. Your Flow must match your exterior state to your interior state. So changing your interior Flow through pre-action forces your exterior life to match whatever has been pre-acted in the interior. Now you may have heard of this idea before: that you are what you think. However, you’re doing more than just thinking here: you are being it, in your Flow—the genesis point.

So here you are, in a Flowdream. You imagine or daydream what you think the Flow looks like. And unlike most daydreams, at first it feels odd, since you are aware of yourself doing this (whereas daydreams just “happen”). And so you might feel a little self-conscious. You might be saying to yourself, “What do I do next?” You might worry that you’re not “deep enough” in.

I say, relax. Flow. Daydream. Allow yourself a few minutes or however long it takes before your mind lets go of its self-consciousness. Create a picture in your mind of the Flow—however it presents itself to you. Then begin to feel, or pre-act, your goals and desires. Feel the emotions of them, not the actual “things” that you’re desiring.

In other words, if you want a wonderful new romantic relationship, feel how you are deliriously happy. Sense a “presence” with you in your Flow, a partner, and how you’re adored. Don’t spend time on how this person looks. Don’t think about how you’ll meet. Don’t worry that this person hasn’t arrived yet. Let your Flow figure all that out. That’s the job of your Flow—to look at all the infinite possibilities present every moment as our futures are all rolling rapidly forward, and it weaves in the most accurate, perfect route or path to fulfill whatever emotional directive (blueprint) you’ve given it.

This is really important: Flow does the how, where, and when. Your job is to describe the what. You are the designer—your Flow is the builder. You can’t possibly forecast all the potential ways that a situation could develop in your life. The logistics are mind-boggling. But Flow has no physical limitation. It simply hears and responds, using itself as the medium to fulfill your wishes. If you want a better job, it “hears” your desire as a call for security, happiness, appreciation, and abundance in the form of income—then looks at all the flows of possibilities out there. Businesses and corporations all have their individual “flows,” or energy signatures. Every person has their Flow. Events have a flow of energy. Thoughts are flows of energy. Combine people, events, and thoughts . . . and there are so many ways situations can come together.

This means that when you Flowdream, don’t say or feel things like, “This is so unrealistic! How can this possibly happen?” Whatever you put in your Flow is what you are telling your Flow to do for you. Put in worry or doubt, and you’ll receive that back in your life. Put in feelings of fulfillment, or that your prayers have been answered, and your Flow can do that just as easily. You can see why so many people’s lives are filled with misery, bitterness, and unhappy events. They expect them, so they receive them.

You have to pretend you are reading a novel. You “daydream” just like you see the characters in your head. You feel or express emotion just like you feel your characters’ thoughts and feelings. You become the story; you believe the story. You don’t sit there the whole time telling yourself “it’s just a pretend story.” No, you give yourself up to it. Do this with your Flowdream.

And that’s it! 1) Flow, 2) strong emotion, and 3) guided daydreaming. Bring all three together, and you have a powerful tool.

If you’re working with one of my CDs, then you’ll notice that each track on the Flowdreaming CD is specifically targeted to an area of your life. The second track on many of the CDs, Positive Flow, is particularly important. This track aligns you with your Flow in every possible good way. This means that whatever is stuck, out of balance, or not working in your life will be impacted in a beneficial way.

The other tracks pinpoint whatever situation you want to focus on. So, you don’t need to play a whole CD at once. You can and should play just one or two tracks at a time, as you work on just one or two situations at a time.

Flowdreaming is flexible. You can do it everyday, or twice a day, or once a week…whatever feels right. The more you do it, however, the more organizing and programming you’re doing. Here is what I suggest:

Days 1, 2 and 3:   Play Positive Flow once a day.

Days 3, 4, 5, 6:   Play any track, twice a day. You can choose the same track for both sessions, or different tracks for each, depending if you want to work on just one or several situations in your life.

Days 7 and beyond. Vary it. Sometimes play Positive Flow, and other times play a different track. Do it once or twice a day depending on your schedule.

You can also move on to other CDs in this series, and mix in tracks from those. You can find a complete list here: www.flowdreaming.com.

And yes, if you have more than one CD, you can Flowdream for several different things at once (such as lots of money and great health). Switch up your focus whenever it feels right.

Now, select a track, and start Flowdreaming! All my best wishes go with you. And please, contact me any time to share your comments and experiences.

Flowdreaming is a technique that lets you reshape your world—literally. It’s not meditation, or hypnosis, or based on positive affirmations or any other kind of program you may already know. It’s unique, and its purpose is to help you access the creative, energetic “underside” of life, so you can sculpt and direct your future.

It’s a big promise, but once you learn this technique, it will feel so simple and natural that you’ll wonder how you never knew about it before.

What Is Flow?

Flow is like a net or ocean of energy that runs over, under, around, and through everything in our Universe. It’s an energy of information, or a giant collection of data about everything that is, was, or potentially may be. And this net of energy or “information” has its own kind of internal, intrinsic awareness.

Imagine if every single thing in our universe had an inner understanding of what it was, or an awareness of its internal structure, or a consciousness of itself, on some very deep level. And all this consciousness put together—all this collected information or awareness— is what everything is actually made of. The physical things in life (apples, TVs, thoughts, wind) are just expressions of this awareness that take a physical form.

Some things, like paper airplanes, have no obvious awareness of what they are, but there’s an intrinsic “something”—a template—that makes the airplane stay an airplane. It has an internal blueprint, so to speak, and this blueprint or template is constantly changing as it continually recreates itself as it moves through time. It is slightly different every second, as the atoms within it move and decay. And so this paper airplane has a trail of information about itself from its past to its future. From the time it was part of a tree (and the tree grew from the earth, and back ever farther) to whatever will happen to it after it’s thrown in the trash—it’s in a state of becoming, and everything that its ever been is recorded. Every single way it has changed is documented in the flow of data. This, then, becomes the information that makes up the personal “flow” of this paper airplane.

Now imagine everything in the universe—even you—with a flow of information about itself, just like this plane. This is your personal Flow, and you can see how all our Flows of “being” are all constantly interacting and changing. This is the stuff we want to affect as we learn to manifest.

The way that we affect this energy is with our minds. Today, there’s a quantum theory of interconnectedness that tells us that when someone thinks about something, they actually affect whatever it is they’re thinking about, or observing. This becomes a problem for scientists who want to objectively measure quantum information. They simply can’t, because by merely observing a phenomena, they become part of the phenomena—a participant in it.

It’s similar to when your friend is thinking about calling you on the phone, and you “sense” it a moment before the call. From the moment she thought about you, your friend becomes part of your phenomena—your Flow. The fact that you register it in your awareness, that you “pick up” on her intention, means that somehow, the two of you are connected. Even though you’re not in the same room, you’re still sharing information, instantly, with one another. Your minds or consciousness are both part of Flow energy, where everything is instant and connected. When you think and feel something, it instantly blooms into existence, both within the Flow (as new data being generated and recorded) and within your physical reality (as a thought inside your head). Your new Flowdreaming practice will show you how to begin creating new data in the Flow that will translate itself into your physical reality.

Ultimately, Flowdreaming is the technique that lets us become aware of our constant coding of this data. Like someone writing a computer program, we write the code of our future through our constant interaction with this cosmic, quantum web of information. We aren’t passive bystanders, we are active consciousnesses, helping to create and shape everything around us, all the time, through our thinking.

Incidentally, many physicists have also quietly come to the same conclusion. They believe that we are all connected somehow, to a vast web of life—a kind of cosmic awareness.  Scientists as diverse as founder of Jungian psychology, Carl Jung, to Nobel laureate physicist Eugene Wigner, have all suggested that our universe has within it a kind of cosmic or overarching consciousness—and all our smaller minds, or consciousnesses, are a part of this.

Not only does Flow seem to have an internal awareness, but another distinctive quality is its direction or path. Like most natural phenomena, our Flows are always traveling the path of least resistance in a particular, expansive  and forward-moving direction that mirrors the evolutionary movement of life. Like water to the sea, your life should be easy, flowing, and in tune with this natural rhythm. You should always be expanding and adding to your awareness, as a matter of nature. And like water that never struggles to reach the sea, when you’re in your Flow, you too travel a path of ease and direction. In a riverbed, obstacles are temporary, and there’s a force (gravity) that always realigns the water into the easiest, most direct path to its destination. You’re likewise pulled by the force of your Flow toward your path of ease, evolution, expansion, upward direction, and fulfillment of your desires through any means the Flow has available for you.

Next, the Flow is malleable. This means that it responds to our thoughts and desires. It does what we ask, or think. We can shape or direct Flow energy by filling it with our intention or desire in the form of emotion.

You see, mostly, we go through life not paying any attention to what thoughts, feelings, and directives we’re sending into our Flow, so we get what we get is based on some “default” baseline already present inside ourselves. We give all of our attention to the physical side of life, and very little to programming this interior side. But when you go into your Flow (or open your awareness to it) through Flowdreaming, you enter or become more aligned with this pure, malleable energy, and you can insert your desires into this flowing fabric so that your physical life then has to follow the template you’ve created there. It’s all about making new templates, or blueprints, just how you want them.

So there you have it: Flow energy is the living energy of the cosmos. It’s responsive, aligned, and growth-oriented and expansive. It’s malleable or sculpt-able, and it encompasses all the information that is, was, or ever will be. It includes all of our consciousnesses, and the “awarenesses” or spirits of a vast number of other kinds of “beings” that have also evolved from Source energy. To Christians, it’s is the stuff of God–His toolbox–and it’s for you to use and learn from. To all others, it’s simply the most extraordinary material you can use to paint your existence into being. Become an artist with Flow energy, and make your life your creation.

Keep reading by going to the post , “How to Flowdream.”

You can guess what kind of “go leap off a cliff” look I gave him. When you’re blue, it’s hard to hear any kind of pick-me-up talk, even from people who care about you.

You see, I’ve been feeling passed over a lot lately, like the dish at the picnic that no one tries. The kid not picked for the team, while all her buddies pick each other. The girl waiting to be asked to the dance, while all her best guy friends ask someone else. Rejection is an experience that comes early and the sting stays, no matter how old we get. Psychology Today has a good article that explains why it’s necessary that we carry around such deep emotional responses to rejection.

As professionals and adults, we still encounter it when we’re passed over for a job, or when the person we’re dating kindly lets us know that we’re not “clicking,” or when the bank rejects your loan application, or in any of a myriad of other situations. “What’s wrong with me?” we ask ourselves.

What does the Flow tell us about this? Why are we overlooked, or snubbed, or passed by or not chosen? Let’s take a moment to acknowledge our feelings, first:

To begin with, we have the emotional response. This is the pout, the hurt feelings, the ego that says, “But why not me? Am I not [insert any word here: 'good enough,' 'talented enough,' 'smart enough,' etc.].” The emotional response is based on biology, and it’s actually necessary for our survival. But we don’t have to let it dominate.

This is where the intellectual response comes in, as we try to rationalize the rejection: “Maybe I just wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. Who knows what criteria they really have. Maybe the fit really wouldn’t have been right.”

But finally, there’s the Flow response, and this is where you involve trust. It’s true, trust is hard to come by on the heels of hurt and disappointment, but if you steer your thoughts back to your Flow, you can release both the emotional and intellectual responses, and feel peace again.

When you’re rejected, your Flow is saying: “Listen up! You wanted a great fit, right? You wanted happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, expression and reward from this thing on your list, right? Well I’m telling you is that this path wasn’t it. You thought it was, but you need to consider whomever or whatever it was that rejected you as a cog in the machine, spinning you into a different direction–one that’s better for you. You can’t see it yet, but someday you will. Trust me.”

Think about this for a moment: What areas of your life right now are flowing freely, where you’re experiencing very little rejection? And now, in which areas are you encountering rejection?

You see, some areas are wide open for you now. Think of a toll road: these are your fast track lanes. If you want to get stuff done, drive there. Those areas may not always be on “fast track.” Take up the opportunity while you can, instead of looking at those lanes where you’re stuck behind the slow moving trucks while the other drivers are honking at you and making rude gestures.

We often take for granted the lanes that move for us, particularly if they’re a lifelong. Maybe you’ve always had an easy time in your career, but never with love. Or vice versa. And so we dwell on what we don’t have, rather than on what we do. The obsession to fix the “delayed” or “dysfunctional”  or “non-flowing” areas can become overwhelming.

But, Flow thinking says, “Trust.” Just let go and trust for awhile. Trust isn’t for wimps. It’s one of the very hardest things to do. So allow the areas where the rejection is roiling to settle and cool. Then return, and begin feeling around the area again. Things are always changing; people, jobs, health, everything. So release it, trust, and return to the game. Consider your time spent on other activities the equivalent of time at the batting cages, warming up. Rejection, as my friend says, means you’re still in the game. At some point, you will be chosen.

Hi Summer,

I am excited to be writing to you. I just discovered Flowdreaming ten minutes ago, and I wanted to ask something. My Flow is equal to my thoughts and my emotions, and they tell the universe what I want. I understand that. I’m at a point in my life where I’m learning about Law of Attraction . . . but I do not fully grasp the difference between what God intends for you compared to what you want and gain for yourself. Could you help me please? —Lavana

Lavana, when you awaken to the idea that you are a powerful creator within your own life, this can bring up a conflict in your mind. You wonder, How can I create if some things were already pre-planned for me? You might think some events or people are there by fate, karma, or because it is God’s plan.

What I’ve seen over the years is this: when you begin looking at your life from a pure energy perspective, it’s like looking out at a super-highway, with a million “lanes” of light in front of you. You’re more likely to speed down some of these lanes than others, based on where you want to go, and what roads you’ve already put yourself on.

So things do come to you with a feeling of inevitability sometimes—because you’ve been cultivating (or driving down) that path, probably unknowingly, for a long, long time. Think of the energy of all your thoughts, actions, and feelings spooling out ahead of you in life. These arcs of energy pull in things complementary to what you’re now experiencing. When you begin to consciously change these arcs or paths of energetic attraction, you’re purposely swerving into a new lane.

If you say, What has God planned for me? then from a full Flowthinking perspective, you would rephrase that question instead to say, What new experiences can I give to God?There’s a lot of depth behind this question, which I fully answer in chapters 8, 9, and 10 of Creative Flowdreaming. God is not planning for you; God is receiving from you. God is curious to know what kinds of experiences you bring to It, and what you’ll make from the sandbox of physical life It has given to you. (You can also learn more about this perspective through this CD, which I made with my mother, Venus.)

If you believe that you are here for a reason, or to meet a soul mate, or for some other destined event, then ask your own Greater Self when, where, and how this desire will fruit for you. Ask God, too, to allow this new experience to flow easily into your life. Don’t wait for God’s plan, make your own and offer it up to God.

It may take awhile for this new understanding of destiny to settle in. But after awhile, you’ll come to see how fate, prophesy, and destiny are merely strong potentials that may or may not come into play in your life, like an ace or a deuce turning up in your hand of cards. This is good thing, because it means you can now work with God and come into an understanding of the godliness in yourself, instead of being at the mercy of God, when designing your own life.

So please grant me this exception…you see, a few weeks ago my second book about Flowdreaming came out. It’s called Creative Flowdreaming. And hot on the book’s heels is my other new project: a 6-month online course called, The Art of Flowdreaming, to teach you how to become a Manifesting Practitioner in your own life.

Between these two, you can learn everything you need to know to make real, concrete changes in your own life. First, it isn’t another “Law of Attraction” book. (LOL, I think just about anything worth being said on that has been said.)

Instead, Creative Flowdreaming takes you deep into what living in the Flow really means. Sure, the first few chapters lay out the nuts and bolts of the technique, and give you a thorough introduction to the art of manifesting in general, but from there, I go into the deeper questions that I’ve encountered over the years. Questions that are usually deal-breakers for the inexperienced manifestor, such as why we have to suffer if we’re supposed to be able to “control” our destinies through manifesting. Or, if those “learning experiences” we supposedly set up for ourselves are real, and how much of our lives are “preplanned?” Or, how does karma fit into a manifestor’s life?

I also talk about why seem to go through the same experiences again and again, and why sometimes it takes so long to receive what we ask for. Many of the answers to these questions are surprising–even to myself. But every answer gives you that “ah ha” feeling, because manifesting is really a philosophy–a  way of living that follows an internal logic. When you become aware of this logic, you move to a deeper level in your practice, and the world stops “happening to you.” Instead, it begins happening for you.

The online course that I’ve put together takes the material in the book and applies it to our lives over the course of six months. I hope that many of you will take up the challenge with me and come together as a highly creative, potent group. We’ll use the course to explore your individual potential for manifesting, and sharpen and develop your skills. Nothing I do is fluffy filler. Like my blogs, every class has an objective, and will have a purpose in your development. (If you’ve taken my Flowdreaming Prosperity Challenge, you know this to be the case.) I’ll even be giving you free Flowdreaming mp3s throughout the series to practice with between classes. There’s so much more I could say about it–but just take a look here at the course outline by scrolling to the bottom.

Many years ago, I remember feeling a desperate need for a teacher. I wanted someone to show me my next step, and take responsibility for mentoring my spiritual development. Not long after, the Flow began winding its way into my life, asking me to examine all of my beliefs and forcing me to rebuild my spirituality from practically scratch. It also led me into new areas–changing my career, and even causing me to begin teaching others though books and radio. I realized belatedly that the Flow itself has been my teacher, a vast net of creative intelligence from which our lives are brought into fruition moment by moment.

While working with the Flow since then, I have in fact encountered deeply intelligent “teachers” of the variety I’d been expecting, but overall, to my surprise what I got instead was the whole University, like a campus in which I can walk into any building and ask any question. It’s an open University, though. You don’t need to apply, you don’t need to be accepted–you just need the desire to walk through its door, and the Flow will take you from there.

So…I invite you to class with me. Hope to see you in the front row soon.

With love and blessings,

Summer

P.S. My deep appreciation and thanks to all of you who are beginning to write reviews of Creative Flowdreaming on Amazon.com.

Let’s start with #1. For many years, I’ve been in a position where I’ve offered some excellent business ideas to someone. These are ideas that will really make her business take off—and likewise I’ve told her where she’s made some pretty obvious business blunders. The problem is, my friend never actually asks for my opinion, and this is hard for me, since I think I have such good opinions to give (sound like anyone you know?), and I know her industry well. However, lately I’ve finally had to face the idea that to her, my ideas are always lead—not gold. This hurts me. It hurts that she doesn’t think I can offer her anything of value. It hurts my self-esteem, since somewhere along the way I realize that I’ve tied some of my self-esteem to what she thinks of me. This is because I care about her, and want her to think well of me.

This has probably happened to you, too, somewhere in your life. Someone you care about (it could be your mom, brother, friend, or even your boss) doesn’t value your opinion, and since you judge your own value based on what they think of you, you always lose out. What can you do about this? What can I do about this?

This brings me to #2. Sometimes our ideas are clunkers, but often they aren’t. They may just need a little tweaking to get them right. Or they may need a lot of effort or resources. But if you have an idea and you have the passion to fulfill it, then who, really, is to stop you? You might say that you need help. You need the authority. You need funding. You need emotional support. Your list can get very long of all the things you think you need. You can look at any one of the big obstacles in your life right now and create a nice list of all the things you need to fix it as well as all the ideas you had to fix it that were tossed out. The bottom line is, sometimes you just have to pick something a go for it, and stop thinking that anyone else has to think it’s a good idea too. True, you could be wrong. The idea could be lead. But your only other option is often paralysis—you don’t go for what you think is right because you aren’t supported or are told you can’t and on and on.

So where does #3 fit in? That’s the concept that some things will flow for you, while others won’t. Golden ideas flow. The energy of life is behind them. Clunkers largely sink. Some bad ideas do seem to perpetuate themselves longer than you’d think is possible, but that’s always because they have an enabler involved. The enabler might be a big source of funding, a bad boss, a family member, or someone or something invested in them even as their project or job or relationship is crumbling. Bad ideas don’t heed the Flow, and if viewed correctly are allowed to wash away so good ideas can take their place. So, what if you have an idea for something (a new career, a new way of handling your relationship, or even new hobby you want to take up), but you can’t find support for it? If you were me, I’d go for it anyway. I’d begin to see what happens—do I get resistance or do I get opportunities? And what, you say, if your ideas are blocked? What if my boss or husband or someone who really counts is opposed to it?

If that’s the case, then step back a minute. Ask yourself, are my ideas habitually blocked? Is this a large source of frustration in my life? If the answer is yes, then pull back from your latest greatest idea and begin asking the larger question: Why am I allowing so much blockage in my life?

….and to answer that one, it’ll take a whole other post.

*To support your creative or entrepreneurial idea, I suggest the audio CD Flowdreaming for Enhanced Creativity and Success.

Anyway, she posted recently about how to find your life’s work. Now, this is coming from a woman who’s written for yahoo business, and other fancy big-name sites. Penelope has also worked for corporations—as have I. She’s had start-ups. So have I. And she’s got young kids in the midst of it all. So do I. So I was curious to see her advice, and after I read it, I thought, Gee, what would I say?”

I think most of us have wandered into our careers, rather than chosen them. Few of us set a goal, got a job, and worked our way in our selected field until we found that perfect niche, that ultimate job, that showcases all our talents, and makes us happy and rich.

Instead, we’ve taken what’s offered—the best we can find—in any area we think we might have a talent for. We always keep a burning thought in our mind of what we want or could be doing, but getting from A to Z is too much work amid just keeping it all afloat in our lives. So, I would say this to the question of “What should be doing with my life?”

First, recognize that you may never find that “ultimate” career. Your life may be more like a buffet, where you sample many pleasurable—and some awful—dishes. You’re moving from one experience to the next, “interviewing” each passage or phase of your life to see what it can offer to you. Change will come (it always does), and the good phases will drop away, along with the bad.

The idea of continuity in our lives is made up. Few people “become something” like a doctor or lawyer and stay that way all their lives. Even doctors and lawyers change their minds. Last week, a woman in a conference I was moderating told me she was in finance (a lawyer), and had just decided to get out. She had no idea where to go next. She just knew she had to end this phase.

A person who understands this—that what we “do” in our lives is always in the making—learns to be especially artful in the Flow. We see ourselves as riding a track, skating along, pausing sometimes for long intervals as we explore something (a teaching career, raising kids, selling real estate, working in the factory), then moving on once the experience is over. We learn that our lives are more like a quilt, with every patch of experience sewn into place—some poorly and haphazardly, while others are crafted with love. But at the end of the day, the quilt is our masterpiece, because we lived it. And every square brings memories to our minds.

When I think about my perfect career, or what I should be doing with my life, I never find the “right” job for me. Sometimes I think spreading the word about the Flow is my ultimate calling—because the Flow found me and often seems to use me for its own ends. And at other times, I think raising my kids is my calling. Sometimes, I look at my talents in my current job, and think, I’m pretty damn good at this. Maybe this is It. And sometimes, I let my mind wander and turn up all kinds of crazy ideas, unrelated to anything I’m doing in my life at all.

My point is that you will be many things. You are here to have many experiences. You won’t go in a straight line. That’s boring. You’ll go in zigzags and backtrack and sometimes even repeat yourself. The only thing you need to do is focus on what makes you feel good. Balance that with what pays your bills. Eventually, those two desires WILL come into alignment, like two roads merging to meet another.

So stop looking. Instead, Flow feelings of joy, appreciation, stability, and creativity when you think of your work or unknown life purpose—whatever it is that flicks your Bic. Pre-act these feelings, and allow your Flow to bring you the next most interesting thing it can find for you. Then explore that for awhile, suck the juice from it . . . and move on toward the next ripe fruit.

This is the second time I’ve hosted a program with Esther and Jerry, while Esther brings forward Abraham (a non-physical group consciousness). We sit in a studio for two hours with headphones, mics, and lots of blinking radio lights while Esther answers callers’ questions. It’s a privileged position to sit only a foot away while this occurs, and watch the truly joyful interaction between Esther, Jerry, and Abraham. 

I first watched Esther from a similarly close viewpoint more than twenty years ago, in the 1980s, when a small group of us gathered in a hotel courtyard to watch Esther bring forward Abraham, when Abraham was far from well-known. My mother and I came home with a dozen hand-copied cassette tapes of Abraham’s teachings.  And now, here I am again, once more learning from them, through absolutely no effort on my part to have arranged it. I’ve often wondered at the complexity and foresight of my Flow, that it has maneuvered me into such a position. 

It turns out that I’m not the only one who noticed the connection between the vortex and the Flow last night. Here is an email from my inbox today:

Hi Summer,

First , thank you for continuing to share Flowdreaming, both the technique and the philosophy have helped bring a sense of peace and control in my life.

I have your book and pre-ordered you new one that is coming out.  I have several CD’s and was part of one of the Flowdreaming classes conducted by you and your mom.  I am trying to learn as much as I can about life and my place in  it.

I have a couple of questions. I was part of the Abraham-Hicks online seminar last night and I am trying to connect Flowdreaming with the material that they teach.  Is being in the Vortex the same as being in the Flow?

If trying to manifest something, do you get into the Vortex or the Flow and then put your intention out there,  or do you just enjoy being in the Vortex or Flow without forcing something?

I remember a class in which you were talking about things that haven’t manifested.  I seem to remember you saying that we are living in a physical world with the limitations of the physical, and some things will not be manifested either because of the laws of nature, or it is not in our best interest, or because we have come to the earth with certain conditions already set up. Yet, as I listened last night, it seemed anything, regardless, could be manifested , if you stay in the vortex as much as possible–including the girl who was paralyzed being able to walk again.

Sincerely,
Dianne ( in Ohio )

Dianne, when Abraham described the vortex last night, I experienced a dawning revelation that what has become Abraham’s new way of phrasing their teachings is eerily similar to what I understand as the Flow. We both call it state of being in which you are in perfect vibrational alignment with your deeper self and all of life’s energies, and when in this state, everything you feel there is drawn to you as life rushes to fulfill your desires by coordinating all the elements needed for your desire to fruit into existence. In fact, I copied down a few lines that struck a nerver, verbatim from Abraham, while sitting with Esther during the live broadcast:

“The vortex is where all cooperative components are being summoned…the vortex is where you rendezvous with all cooperative components.”

Vortex/Flow: they do seem identical in their purpose and makeup. And interestingly, while I’ve always referred to the Flow as a “place” or state of being, the vortex also seems to evoke this idea. Further, like Abraham implies, emotion is the language of the Flow, or the vortex, and by inscribing this place with your emotional desires, you write the script for your future creation. So when in my Flow, I do generate the feeling (or pre-action, as I call it) of the perfect completion of my desire—the perfect, living, present expression of my desire.  

When I teach Flowdreaming, I add in the component of guided daydreaming to this experience of Flow and emotion, as this seems to fulfill a basic need in us to keep our minds occupied and engaged with imagery and language. This need is written in to the way our minds are wired, and this tendency of ours to daydream or fantasize serves a higher purpose as the easiest path to lead us into the Flow. The three elements (Flow, emotion, daydreaming) seem to create a perfect trinity for most people that leads them into this state. When I teach my retreat this summer, we will practice each of these components until they become second nature.

Like you, I listened with great interest as Esther spoke with the young paraplegic and gave her advice on how to return to well-being. And yes, I do recall speaking and writing about how some things just aren’t in your Flow. In my new book, I devote a whole chapter to telling people why they simply can’t sprout wings and fly, or grow a third kidney, or why certain life experiences are simply highly unlikely to manifest. I do still hold the understanding that we come here with certain restrictions—I call them “limitations”—that help create the template for our experience. Our limitations are partially what help each of us to create a unique life, and have experiences unlike anyone else to bring back to Source.

In the case of this young paraplegic, I fully believe that nerve damage can and will be understood as an easily changed condition in our future. However, I’ve also sensed in my Flow that although many health conditions can be eased or cured through belief, it doesn’t mean they will be.

Most people have trouble losing ten pounds—how can you ask them to cure their own cancer, for instance? When told to do this, people “lock up” with fear and lack of faith. Then they feel guilt for being unable to cure themselves, and on and on down a road of fear, worry, and self-recrimination about their “imperfect” spirituality. They blame themselves for creating the disease, then blame themselves for not being able to uncreate it. How horribly unfair. 

This is why I’m cautious about telling anyone to use their Flow, exclusively, to treat any health condition. I always advocate a balance of traditional medical and alternative therapies, and that a person use their Flow to bring them exactly the therapies they need, right now, at their level of awareness in this world, to effectively reverse their disease in the easiest, most healthful way. No guilt. No blame. No feelings of inadequacy. And as I think Abraham would state, this is also in alignment with what one feels in the vortex—unrelenting well-being and optimism, which will then find its own way into creating your most perfect health.

I hope this answers your questions, Dianne. 

Stay in your Flow!
Summer 

*Please note that the information and opinion in this blog is not endorsed by Hay House, and does not represent any views of the company.

I took a yoga class this evening with a new teacher. We spent an entire hour doing what felt like a variation of the same standing pose, and the teacher was full of criticism. My butt was too high, my shoulders were drooping, and my feet were not wide enough apart. When I inadvertently stretched in between poses to unkink my aching arms, she scolded me, “We are not doing that stretch right now.”

Twenty minutes into the class, I wanted to leave. And twenty minutes later, I found myself thinking what an awful teacher she was, and how her rigid yoga philosophy was so unlike my own. Twenty minutes after that, I thought, “What is my Flow doing bringing me here?” and so I spent the rest of class thinking about that way I really disliked this teacher, while around her the other students were happily chirping that this was the best class in town, since you really got to learn each yoga pose so well.

Not long ago, I made the decision to finally begin teaching workshops in person. My biggest fear about intimate presentations and workshops is that I won’t give my attendees all that they come to learn. That somehow I’ll fail to communicate what I intend to, and they’ll be disappointed. I worry that they won’t like me. I will be like this yoga teacher with a half a dozen huffing, puffing, happy students doing headstands, and one sulky disappointed one like me.

I know this is silly. I know that some people just don’t energetically match up. And I think my Flow is bringing me into contact with a lot of people right now who don’t energetically match with me, just so I’ll be sure to get the point. It’s not their fault; it’s not my fault. We just don’t look at the world the same way, and the accumulation of experiences we each carry from our lives is so different that we have little to relate to each other with.

However, my Flow heard my desire to teach, so it’s bringing me experiences right now that will help my teaching become a smooth, enjoyable act. Apparently, I can start by watching other “bad” teachers and realizing that they are only “bad” to my way of relating to the world—the happy class around her reminds me that my judgements are only applicable to my own feelings.

Somewhere along the way of my life, I became a people-pleaser. And now I am unlearning that trait, because when I spend so much of my time trying to make that one or two sulky people happy, it means I’m ignoring (or not concentrating my energy) on those people with whom I do match, and who can learn from me, or with whom I can be a good friend, or a good employee to, or share myself with. 

It’s like in your family: if you worry constantly about that one person in your family with whom you don’t get along, then you’re giving over “X” amount of your energy—your precious moments of life—to that disharmony.

What about all the people in your family who do love you and want to have more good times with you? Like this teacher, don’t give all your attention and obsessive thoughts to the one angry student (or lover, friend, employer, coworker, teacher, parent, child, etc.) in your life. Some people just won’t like you, and no matter how you try to please them, or how much you rail about not liking them, your energy signatures will just never match up, and you won’t ever see the world the same way or look eye to eye.

Be choosy where you expend your energy—focus on areas of harmony first, where your Flow carries you effortlessly forward. These are probably areas that you habitually ignore—you overlook them since they are so mellow and easy. Maybe it’s your marriage. Or your relationship with a parent, or good friend. Maybe it’s a good customer or client, or some other aspect of work where you’re always rewarded. 

Stop trying to please everyone, and simply please those with whom you create the most mutual benefit. Take a moment now to think about the people who don’t like you, and the people who do. Now send the people who love you a little note or email telling them that you love them too: “I love you and I’m glad you’re in my life.” “I always enjoy doing business with you.” “I had such a good time the last time we went out—we should do it again.” “I love your class and think you’re great at teaching this material.” And so on.

Thank you, yoga teacher, for reminding me that I won’t like everyone, and they won’t like me, and that’s perfectly okay.

“I have been listening to the Prosperity Challenge for awhile now. . . . And prosperity is starting to appear in my life!  . . . As of late, I’m listening to tracks from Prosperity Challenge at work, on the train, in the car, during emails, multi-tasking. I know it’s not the same as participating and creating in the Flowdream, but I feel your words and am sort of assimilating them thru osmosis. And it’s GOOD. I am much more self-aware of my thoughts, projections, intentions, possibilities than ever before. 

My question is: Do we need to be careful when listening and multi-tasking? If I found I’m irritated by my co-worker or get impatient with something while listening casually, are these things going into my flowdream and creating more of that outcome? I feel I can go into the flowdream a lot quicker now than in the beginning so it seems easier to put any thought and feeling into the flowdream, even when not fully engaged. What do you think? Should one be careful with that?”

Here is my answer, Dina. I’ll share it as a story.

Last week, I returned from a work-related radio taping in Massachusetts. My employees and I were in the airport, waiting for our connecting flight. Problem was, our first plane had had mechanical failure, and we’d missed it the connection, and were now on standby for the next flight out.

During the two hour wait, we drank some beers and talked. At one point, we had a really interesting conversation about CERN, the giant Hadron collider in that spans the borders of Switzerland and France. Basically, it’s a giant atom smasher that recently went offline due to mechanical problems. 

I love this kind of thing. Physics fascinates me, and I became quite emotionally involved in the conversation. 

Shortly after this, we all decided that we should Flowdream that the rest of our flight home would be easy, joyful, and work out just the way we wanted. We held hands in the bar and closed our eyes, and I’m sure to everyone we looked like a kooky prayer circle with me talking aloud, while having beers. (I can only imagine!)

Then the airport PA announced that we would not be flying out home that evening—we’d be stranded in Chicago. What was going on, we wondered? Were we in our flow or not?

We chose flights out the next day. I chose the earliest flight out, even though I had to make two connections en route. My other employee chose a later, direct flight.

As I sat in my airplane’s seat the next morning, I casually glanced at the passenger next to me. His work was open before him, and there it was in big government-y looking letters: CERN. You are kidding, I said to myself.

So I had to ask, and yep, you guessed it, he was a particle physicist whose work involved the giant Hadron collider. In fact, his trip directly involved active work with this collider. He even made a phone call, in Swiss or possibly German, to a colleague while he sat by me.

Now, what are the chances…millions to one, maybe? What confluence of events made me miss two planes, and shortly after, with thousands of flights and passengers to possibly schedule me on, plopped me right beside a man whose profession embodied the spirt of my very emotional conversation, which I’d had immediately prior to Flowdreaming?

I can see now what happened. While I had wanted a smooth, quick trip home, what my Flow really heard from me was the excitement of my conversation. It heard my feelings, and like I always say, emotion is the language of Flow. My words said one thing, but my feelings had said another, so my Flow rounded up a matching situation by offering me a direct experience of talking with this physicist about the Hadron collider.

Now it gets even weirder…my coworker and his wife told me the next day about what an excellent flight home they’d had! “Fantastic! We went first class!” he said.

“What do you mean,” I said, “did you get an upgrade? Did you ask?!”

Anyone who flies today knows that airlines never just bump you up to first class anymore.

“No,” he said, “the ticket just spit out that way. It was an accident. We, uh, didn’t say anything about that to the airline.”

So there you go, Dina. Your answer is Yes. Flowdreaming is powerful, and potent. If you listen passively but unemotionally, you’re going to stimulate your subconscious to be open to receive all that you generate for yourself in the Flow. But if you enter the Flow when feeling emotion, then what you broadcast will be picked up to sprout for you, like dandelion seeds in the wind finding fertile ground.

What usually happens is that people only begin to enter the Flow state so easily and quickly when it becomes habitual…this means a certain amount of practice, familiarity, and control. So making mistakes in it is rare. However, if you do enter it, and accidentally broadcast irritation or upset, like you mentioned, then cultivate the ability to release. When you become aware of whatever negative feelings you accidentally sent out, do a correcting measure by feeling those same feelings flowing away behind you, disappearing and being washed away. Then, you’ve set up or conditioned a new energetic response to irritation in your life: You’ve said, When I experience fear, worry, or irritability, it washes away from me, and never impacts my life.

Good luck with your Flowdreaming Dina! And keep me posted.