Living your dream

Celine’s Neglected Dream
Celine was someone who had been ignoring her dreams for years. She was a strikingly beautiful woman in her mid-forties, with long, flowing black hair that cascaded down her back and contrasted with her porcelain skin and piercing violet eyes. She came to see me in the hope that I could help her find that special something that would give spark to her life and make her feel enthusiastic again.

Celine looked at me with sadness in her eyes as she told me that she had always wanted to become a professional dancer. As a child, she performed in front of her family every chance she got, imagining that she was on the Broadway stage. However, her mother’s disdaining looks made it very apparent that she thought Celine’s dreams of becoming a dancer were frivolous. But it was what Celine wanted more than anything in the world, and it broke her heart that her mother didn’t approve. Still, Celine wouldn’t give up, and when she was sixteen, she landed a job in the chorus line of a Broadway show.

To her deep disappointment, her mother never came to see her perform. After that, she started suffering from anxiety attacks before auditions, and though she forced herself to show up at the calls, she had trouble focusing and became increasingly embarrassed by her inability to do her best. By the time she was twenty-five, she met and fell in love with a wonderful man who asked her to marry him and give up show business. Despite the fact that she was a talented dancer, auditioning had become so anxiety provoking that when she fell in love and had the opportunity to marry, it seemed an easy choice. Celine let go of her dream and hung up her dancing shoes.

After years of being a good wife and traveling companion to her husband, Celine began to feel unfulfilled and restless. Even though she loved her husband, she longed to do something to express herself creatively and define herself separately from her marriage. But she was at a loss as to what that might be.

I intuitively knew that Celine had great dancing ability, even though I had never seen her perform. I suggested that she investigate competitive ballroom dancing, an activity she could enjoy that included her desire to dance and meet new people. Another one of my former clients was an amazing ballroom dancer. She had won the U.S. championship in Latin dance and had opened up her own studio. I knew that she would be a great teacher for Celine, and would inspire her to become a national champion herself.

At first, Celine looked at me as if I had ten heads. “Who goes back into dancing in their mid-forties?”

I said, “You do! You’re talented, you’ve kept in great shape, and I know the perfect dancing coach that you would love. But you have to believe you can do it!”

Celine thought I was crazy at first, but then she decided that maybe I was on to something. She followed my suggestion, started taking lessons with my other client, and reconnected with her love of dancing. After a few months she was up for her first competition, but a week before the event all her insecurities came to the surface and a pestering negative voice said, “You’re not going to remember the routine. Everyone is going to laugh at you. What makes you think you can do this at your age?”

She came back to me, anxious, overwhelmed, and feeling like she had made a mistake. I told Celine that dancing in front of other people stirred up a fear her mother had instilled in her all those years ago: that she wasn’t good enough to dance in public. It was the same performance anxiety that she had experienced right before she gave up her career to get married. I explained to her that the fears you don’t deal with will only come up again and again in other situations until you break through them. I showed Celine how fears create energy blocks, and until she let go of her fear of dancing in front of others, she would never be able to move her internal energy forward so that she could realize her dream of being a great dancer.

Celine decided not to drop out of the competition and began working with me to help her get in touch with her fears and release them so that she could overcome her performance anxiety. As she did this, the competitions became less intimidating for her, and by the end of the year she was winning first-place trophies. Not since she was a child had she felt such deep joy, and it showed in her dancing. No wonder she wowed the judges—she was letting her desire to dance drive her to realize her dream of being a great dancer, and the result was magical. Celine finally claimed who she was and was no longer concerned with her mother’s approval, or anyone else’s.

Follow Your Heart
Before Celine was able to life shift, she desperately sought her mother’s approval to validate her wish to dance. You too may not have been taught to give yourself permission to dream. Maybe you were taught to “be practical,” so you programmed yourself to try to achieve the things you thought you were supposed to achieve, and put aside what lit your fire within. You may feel obligated to live out your parents’ unfulfilled dreams and pursue society’s definition of success, so you go after what you have been told will bring you love, acclaim, and security. Maybe you figure that if you’re “good” and become a people pleaser, you’ll always be safe, loved, and cherished. But it’s not always the case. Regardless of the choices you make, there are unforeseeable circumstances that may alter your path.

We know this from 9/11 and the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2005. There’s no way to tell what the future holds for you. Every once in a while it’s a good idea to make a mental checklist of your dreams. Are the choices you are making in your life based on what you truly desire or on what’s making you feel safe? Have you let go of certain dreams because you are holding on to disappointments and are afraid of suffering pain again? Are your fears so great that you’re distracting yourself from your desires and stopping yourself from dreaming? The only real security is to stay connected to your desires and keep following your dream, creating and living from your full being.

Destiny
One of the biggest conflicts people struggle with is “What is my purpose?” It doesn’t matter how successful someone is or how much they have accomplished in their lives. There seems to be an underlying nagging feeling that is urging them on to do something more. I call this search the path to destiny. Destiny is one’s life purpose. It is where we are meant to go, the paths we are meant to follow, and the people we are meant to love.

Your desires are the motivating forces that work to help you build and manifest your dreams. Creating and living those dreams place you on your path of destiny. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream...” his desire was to free all people from the bondage of oppression. His dream was his vision of what the world would look like when he had satisfied that desire: Regardless of race, all people should have equal rights and access to good schools and good jobs, and they should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Because Dr. King went after his dream, he lived out his destiny. Pursuing his dream allowed him to keep his eyes on the prize even on the most difficult days.

Destiny doesn’t mean that you have no control over, or input in your life and that you can sit back and let things happen because everything is preordained. When you are on your path of destiny, you are participating 100 percent in creating your dreams and living your life’s purpose. What is predetermined is your potential, because we are all capable of reaching our destiny. It is your task to expand and grow in consciousness so that you can positively harness your energies to express and experience your destiny path.

On your journey you will find that every step, good or bad, is part of destiny’s path. It is our reaction to the obstacles that can derail us. These obstacles you may encounter along the way are expressly there for you to overcome. Some of these “bumps in the road” will actually help to create your destiny. Others are challenges you need to face in order to develop a stronger conviction in your dream.

Many of you may have already realized that your life adventure is not a straight path. You may have started off in business only to switch to something else ten years later. You may have decided to have a family, or retired. Each step of the way is leading you on destiny’s path. That is why it is so important not to be judgmental about another’s life choices. What may seem reckless and impractical to you may be the very choice that another person needs to make in order to fulfill their ultimate destiny.

Discovering our destiny also helps us evolve and aspire to a higher spiritual self and share our gifts with those around us. When we are following our path of destiny, positive signs from the universe show up at times, seemingly from left field. Money comes through for a project, you turn a corner and meet the person whom you eventually marry. You feel discouraged with the success of a project, and then magically all the pieces and players fall together to help bring it to fruition. These are not merely coincidences; these are forces we have drawn to us through our Magnetic Female energy.

You may be saying, “Aleta, I don’t have a destiny. I don’t even have a dream. I’m just a regular person.” I promise you, we all have a destiny. We all have desires that we can craft into a dream. It’s just that most of us aren’t taught to give ourselves the chance to think about what we want most. We become afraid and get distracted by what we think we ought to do, and we repress the voice that comes up from our soul. As a result, we can’t create our dream and start living our destiny.

Why are you here on this earth? What is your purpose? If you don’t know the answer, start by honoring the desires of your heart because whatever you do that excites you and makes you feel most alive is what will lead you to your destiny. If you really love children, your purpose might be to be a mom or to run a day-care center. If you love to help people, your purpose might be to teach or be a doctor or nurse. If you want to change the world we live in, you might find yourself drawn to doing environmental, political, or social work. I want you to start discovering your destiny now, with this exercise.

Determining Your Destiny

In order to properly complete this exercise, read through the entire exercise once. You may want to have someone else read it to you again while you are performing this visualization. Or you can read the exercise into a tape recorder and replay the tape whenever you are ready.

Take a deep breath in through your mouth. Exhale, breathing out with a sigh. Feel your whole body begin to relax. Inhale, imagining your lungs as a pitcher filling with water from the bottom up, and exhale. Breathe in and out slowly; feel each new breath revitalizing every cell in your body. As you exhale, let go of all worries and tensions. Feel your abdomen expanding as your breath goes deeper, and then exhale. Continue this breathing in an even, relaxed rhythm.

Close your eyes and imagine that you are now facing the Violet Temple of your desires and dreams, a temple that seems to be made entirely of translucent material. The walls and domed ceiling of the temple are luminescent, reflecting a soft violet light. You leave your shoes at the entrance to the temple and feel the moist coolness of its marble floors beneath your feet. As you walk up the steps and enter the temple, you see a violet flame of trust burning in the center of the room. Take a deep breath and allow yourself to be drawn to a place in the room that feels comfortable to you, and sit on a pillow. This is your power spot, your sacred space.

Focus your attention on the violet flame that is in the center of the room. As you gaze into this flame, take your left hand and place it on your heart center, the spot between your breasts. Feel the violet light penetrate this center, giving you a sense of warmth and calm. If you are experiencing any restless feelings, take a deep breath, hold it for a count of five, and then release it as you exhale.

Ask yourself if there are any disappointments, hurts, resentments, and betrayals that you are holding on to. Breathe in and out, letting these feelings come up and reveal themselves as you breathe. Do not try to change them, just let these negative thoughts exist, and speak as if you were talking to the person they are connected to: “I feel sad that you...” “I feel angry...” Continue until you are really in touch with any dark feelings of disappointment, hurt, sadness, and the resentments of lost dreams. Take a deep breath and hold those feelings for a count of five and then release. Repeat until your negative feelings have dissipated and you feel calmer.

Then take a deep breath, and exhale. Take another deep breath, and exhale. Place your left hand on your heart center. As you breathe in, imagine breathing in a violet ray of light and let it penetrate your heart center. Continue breathing evenly. Focus on your dreams and desires, and then ask yourself the following question: “If I had no limitations on fulfilling my longings and desires, what would I dream of?” Listen to what comes up, and then either take a mental note of it or write it down in your journal.

Place your right hand on your heart center and breathe your dreams into that center. Now think of someone that you love—your child, your beloved, your best friend, or even a favorite pet. Open your mind to this love and receive it without conditions.

Do this until you’re feeling a sense of peace and calm. Then ask yourself to free your imagination, and let your answers reveal themselves as you breathe the violet light of trust in and out.

Too many people think that destiny is some huge cosmic prize that goes only to a handful of very special people who change millions of lives during the course of their existence. The truth is that it’s not about the numbers of people you affect or the largeness of the legacy you leave behind. What’s important is that you get in touch with your unique set of marvelous talents, create your dream, point your feet in the right direction, and begin walking forward. When you do this, you will discover your destiny, and I promise you, it’s not an insignificant one. You have a unique purpose in this world.

I know a man who is a brilliant mathematician. He is not a tenured professor at a prestigious university, and he’s not a high-paid worker for a large corporation. He drives a bus. Some might say he’s an underachiever, but in my book, he is deeply dedicated to his dream. My friend really loves to solve mathematical problems in his head. This desire requires a lot of time spent just sitting and thinking, which he found that he can do throughout the day each time he pulls the bus up to a stoplight. He is content and mellow, able to support his family, and deeply fulfilled. His joy at being able to live his dream touches everyone in his life, from his wife to his kids, from his friends to the strangers who step onto his bus. If that’s not success, what is? He’s living out his destiny.

Release and Receive
The hardest part of unlocking your dreams is letting go. But that is exactly what you have to do in order to make them happen. Our alpha female nature has adapted to search for security by striving to control any situation, including our dreams. But we must remember that our dreams may be limited by our experiences. Staying in the alpha state of control and remaining attached to a specific plan takes you out of the creative power of the moment and the other options the universe can have in store for you.

Worse, if you can’t picture how a dream will manifest, you will assume that it can’t happen. Fears and anxieties can block our ability to use our innate energetic powers when we feel that our dreams are impossible and out of reach. You might begin to fear that you don’t have the ability or the resources to bring your desires to fruition, leaving you to bury your dreams until you can figure out how they will happen. Meanwhile, you are suffering the emotional consequences of not having what you long for. For example, if your dream is to have a wonderful relationship, get married, and have children, but you just went on yet another really bad date, your anxiety level will start to rise. You may begin to worry that this particular bad date is really an indication that you will be single for the rest of your life. So you might stop dating for a while or subconsciously distance yourself from men who are interested in getting to know you.

True dream manifestation is created by working as though your life depends on the outcome, while maintaining the perspec-tive that you are not in control of the results. Wanting something badly is not enough to make your dreams and desires realities. Neither is going after your dreams with only your alpha energy. In order to really manifest them, you need to set your intentions, feel that you deserve to receive, and let the universe take care of how it is going to happen.

I can guarantee that you will have your big, deep dream, although it may not come in the way you are currently imagining. Whether you are trying to own a house, have a job that you are truly excited about, start your own business, or become an artist, these dreams will most likely take you out of your comfort zone. You need more than ever to align your dynamic and magnetic energies. The key to harnessing these resources is for you to relax, let go, and detach from the outcome.

Think about what happens to your energy when you make a fist and squeeze tight. It gets bottled up and can’t flow. When you open your grip, you relax your energy, and it begins to flow, leaving your hand free to touch and receive what comes to you. This is the power of release. When you learn how to harness this power of release, you will no longer feel that you have to force solutions and brandish your will to make things happen. You will see that out of chaos, clarity will come, and you will be led to the channels you need to manifest your dreams.

When you use the power of release, you step into the unknown, which I know can be very frightening. But remember, you are not alone. When we detach from controlling the outcome, we are practicing divine indifference. Divine indifference frees up our energy and allows us to create from the idea of uncertainty, trusting that things will ultimately work out for the best. When you let go of your preconceived plan, you open up your most spiritual self to help you manifest out of the realm of possibility.

So much of my work rests on teaching my clients the power of release. To release your desires and dreams, you need to have your focus and intention on what you want to create. Start by getting in touch with your desire and then send out the energy and see how it manifests. For example, I wanted to have children, and I thought the way to go about fulfilling that dream was to fall in love, get married, and have babies. That didn’t happen. Instead, I had to switch my intention to think of alternative ways for me to make the dream come alive. Because I let go of the control of how it was to happen, I was ultimately blessed with my two beautiful babies.

Release the Day

It’s important to release the tensions, worries, resentments, and disappointments that can pile up during the day, and focus your energy on what you feel grateful for, even if the only good thing you can see is that the day is over. When you release the day, you will create a place of inner peace and calm that allows you to rest and use your energy during the night to rejuvenate, recharge, and begin to align yourself with positive manifesting energy.

When you are in bed and ready to turn off the lights, take three deep breaths, or breathe until you feel relaxed. Then begin to think about the things that might have upset you during the day, including any resentments, worries, fears, or insecurities about your future. Let them come up as you breathe, and exhale them out of your body. Visualize an open window, and as you exhale, release each of your negative feelings out the window and watch them drift away. When you are done, say to yourself, “I let go and release my day. Today was just a short-term situation. Tomorrow will be better.” Continue repeating this phrase until you feel that you are in a calmer and more peaceful place. Notice how your body begins to relax. Letting go opens us up to listen and receive the counsel of our inner voice: our higher spiritual self.

It is important to absorb the positive things that happen daily, and store their energy in your reserves. Take a deep breath and exhale. As you inhale again, acknowledge what you felt went well during the day and hold in that breath with a sense of gratitude and accomplishment, letting the feeling of it absorb and vibrate throughout your body. Release your breath, and say, “Thank you for the beautiful moments that happened today. I’m grateful for the joy and happiness I received and for everything I have accomplished."

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