“Every wildly successful thing in this dimension of reality was preceded by a thought.” In this episode, host Lola Wright guides you through the use of affirmations to bring about the things you desire in your life.
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Lola describes her own experience of reading Calling in “The One” by Katherine Woodward Thomas. Years ago, when Lola was single and looking for a partner, she created the affirmation “I am in loving and intimate spiritual partnership with my best friend and husband.” And she worked this affirmation. She prepared her life and her self for this partner she sought. And, it happened! The episode concludes with Lola guiding you through the process of crafting your own affirmation to manifest the things you want in your life.
For more information on Bodhi Center, please visit us at http://bodhicenter.org.
For more information on Lola Wright, please visit her at www.lolawright.com.
Transcript
This “talk” is electronically transcribed. Please excuse any errors or omissions.
Lola Wright: As you may know, I’ve recently launched an incredible new live experience: House of Bodhi with Lola Wright. We convene monthly at iconic music venues throughout Chicago. There is a thought provoking message, a powerful meditation, ridiculous music. It’s intended to really wake up and shake up any fear-based patterns or sleepy states that you and I can find ourselves in and provoke a kind of creativity, aliveness, freedom. Tickets are now available for the December 18th House of Bodhi experience at The Hideout. Visit bodhicenter.org for more information and to get your tickets. I hope to see you there.
Lola Wright: You are more than this meat suit. A feeling lasts 90 seconds. Awakening is for the many, not the few. Hello and welcome to And This is Bodhi. I’m your host, Lola Wright. All of Bodhi’s programming is made available by the incredibly generous human beings that listen to this podcast, enjoy our live experiences, engage with us online and in person and I’d love you to be among those. You can text the word GIVE to (773) 770-8577 or visit bodhicenter.org/giving. On today’s episode, I thought we would talk about this thing called awakening.
Lola Wright: This thing called awakening is a very personal experience. It’s not that is easily measured. It is highly subjective. Certainly we could look to a series of results or outcomes that point to awakening, evolution, awareness, but again, it’s all inside of a whole series of filters that any one individual has. With that in mind, I just want to talk about what I mean and what this place called Bodhi means when we talk about awakening. See, you and I have been wildly conditioned into these very narrow constructs of our own existence. We are made up of a whole series of narratives that stem from our family of origin, the geography in which we were raised, our socioeconomic status, our job title, and we construct all of that and we say, that is who we are. Oh my goodness. That is so far from who you and I are.
Lola Wright: You are this extraordinary, exquisite point of consciousness in this vast universe. Your physical experience is only one dimension of reality. You are this human being, but you are also this essence, this presence that has pressed into this dimension of reality in this thing that we call time and space. You know when I speak about the truth of who I am, the truth of who I am is something that goes way beyond my stats. See, there is an aspect to your being that is that which we call the truth, the essence, your eternal nature, and when you and I become aware of that, we can start to play in this universe in very different and distinct ways. We begin to lift the veil of lack, limitation, our false beliefs. There are actual principles, practices, tools, and techniques that you and I can activate so that we can have a greater awareness of this thing called life. It can sound sort of cheesy or silly or dated, but I am a massive, massive fan and practitioner of this thing called affirmations.
Lola Wright: What is an affirmation? An affirmation is a present tense declarative statement that literally affirms a set of circumstances or condition that you wish to experience. Now, it may not be occurring in this physical reality right now. Many, many years ago, in the first week of December in 2006 I was volunteering at Bodhi and I saw this guy named Nathan Wright, who’s now my husband, and he was unlike any human being I had ever found myself attracted to in a whole variety of ways, energetically, physically. He wasn’t like anyone I had ever dated, but he kept drawing my attention and I was very curious with that. Now simultaneously, I was in my own personal excavation. I was really looking at my inner world. I was looking at the system of beliefs that had created the existence I was in. I was examining all of the allegiances that I had made.
Lola Wright: I had a money narrative, I had a dating narrative, I had a parenting narrative, I had a career narrative. And the question really became, are those narratives working for me? Am I living into a story of an about myself that is affirming? That is touching on the truth of who I am versus the circumstances and conditions of who I am. At the time, I was taking this class called Calling in “The One”, an incredible book by author Katherine Woodward Thomas. I highly recommend it. It’s a workbook. If you are looking to call in a greater experience of that which you desire. It’s intended for intimate relationship, but honestly you could apply that book to any area of your life if you want to call in the one, the thing that you want that really is a reflection of your desires, your soul. Check out that book.
Lola Wright: I was working with that book. I was taking a class at the time and I really wanted to attract a partner, an intimate partner, or significant other into my world. I was a single mom at the time and I knew that the guy I wanted to spend my life with was not necessarily going to be met at the club. Now I’m not saying you can’t find your one at the club. I’m just saying at that point, I had been looking for a lot of years and that environment was not working out for me in the way that I wanted. I began to go within and really connect with this indwelling presence with this consciousness that is at the center of my being that is infinite, that is eternal.
Lola Wright: It is the presence of love, of peace, of joy, of freedom. It is the presence that resides in you. It is the nature of who you are. It is the truth of who you are. It is free of the trance of your personality. It is free of the seductions of your surroundings. It is something far greater, far vaster than this dimension of reality. It doesn’t exclude this dimension of reality. It just goes way beyond it. I began to examine my inner world, my interior, and I’m going to get deeply curious about the beliefs that I had constructed that were producing the circumstances I was living in. And I started to notice a whole bunch of beliefs around intimacy, around partnership, around marriage, and I started to interrogate those beliefs. Are they serving me? Are they working for me? Are they in alignment with what I say I want? And as I started to untangle the false beliefs that really were oriented much more around my limited sense of self versus the truth of who I am, I started to awaken to new possibilities. My imagination was invoked.
Lola Wright: See you and I have this thing called an imagination. It enables us to create through the unseen realm. That notion used to sound like some kind of airy fairy concept. It’s now profoundly supported by neuroscience. So however you vibe, whether it’s in the more esoteric realm or whether it is in the data realm, you can find evidence to support this framework in either place or space.
Lola Wright: Over the course of this class, while I was taking this class, calling in the one, I started to put together a book of imagery that represented the kind of intimate relationship that I desired. You know, your mind thinks in pictures. It doesn’t think in words. Language comes much later. So when you and I close our eyes and we start to imagine or wonder about the infinite capacity of the universe and the extraordinary capacity that resides in us, we can start to tap into a kind of vividness.
Lola Wright: One of the things that I did during that course was developed, this thing called an affirmation. I am in loving and intimate spiritual partnership with my best friend and husband. You know, I grew up as a little kid saying I’m hungry and my dad would say, “Well, hello Hungry. Nice to meet you. I’m Pat.” And really what he was teaching me at a very young age is that who I am is not hungry. I may have a sensation of hunger, I may have a feeling state occurring, but I am not my feelings. You are not your feelings. So if you are not that, then who are you? I am, in ageless wisdom traditions, is known as your spiritual nature. The aspect of self that is known as your divinity. It is a full sentence in and of itself. I am. You know, you look at different traditions, particularly in the Christian tradition and so much of the teachings of this master teacher, Jesus, I think were wildly taken out of context and misunderstood through a literal lens when in fact the writings are these metaphorical, metaphysical teachings that are encoded with all kinds of wisdom.
Lola Wright: So I am in loving and intimate spiritual partnership with my best friend and husband. That was something that came through me and every single word vibrated in my being. Now, at the time I couldn’t have been more alone. I was not dating anyone. The well had gone dry, so to speak. So in some sense you could say a statement as such is sort of absurd. Like there’s no evidence that you are in intimate and loving spiritual partnership with your best friend and husband. In fact, your ass is laying in home alone most of the time. But see, here’s the thing. Creation does not begin in the manifest realm. Creation begins in the unmanifest realm. Every wildly successful thing in this dimension of reality was preceded by a thought. You and I are creating all of the time. We have this incredible capacity to think, to imagine. Then we have this incredible capacity to amplify those thoughts with feeling.
Lola Wright: So you create a belief system and then your life is an out-picturing of your belief system. I began standing at every bus stop and train stop in the freezing cold because at this time it was December in Chicago and I just remember saying to myself, I am in loving and intimate spiritual partnership with my best friend and husband. And really allowing those words to use me. What comes up when I say that? What fears? What naysayer in me? What cynicism? What apathy shows up when I speak those words, and therein lies my work. Therein lies my work.
Lola Wright: As I began to step more and more into a new field of awareness, a new state of consciousness precipitated by that affirmation, I could literally begin to feel a reorganization of my being. I began aligning my life such that it became available to the very thing I was calling forward. And it can sound silly, but I started doing things like making space in my closet for the partner that I longed for. Because at the time my closet was packed. Where was his stuff going to go? I reorganized my bed. I moved it away from the wall so that when that one arrived, he could easily make his way in. I stopped talking to my three girlfriends every night about the ways we were disappointed with the men we were dating or the lack thereof. I went on a diet. I literally starved myself of patterns that were not in alignment with the thing I was calling forward. Now I will tell you I did that as a devotion. I was disciplined. I really wanted this intimate partnership with a best friend. And I began trusting that there is something greater happening here.
Lola Wright: Set an intention. Become deeply curious about the belief system that’s either supporting or contending with the actualization of that belief system and then devote yourself to the thing you want. The desires of your heart are not wrong. This is a benevolent, friendly, generous, extraordinary universe that you and I are intrinsically connected to. Now, if a desire has come through you that seems bigger than you can comprehend it perhaps is an invitation to look at the things in your life that are ready to be transformed. My home was ready to be transformed. I was readying myself for the thing I said I wanted. I got my finances in order because you know what? I didn’t want to go into an intimate partnership as a hot mess. I couldn’t resolve the debt that I had in the timeframe that I wanted to attract this person, but I could at least have clarity in order around the state of my affairs.
Lola Wright: That was the first week in December that I really got clear about what I wanted. At that same time, I began to become aware of this guy, Nathan. And I was in a deep practice of meditation at the time and I kept seeing his face come up in my meditation practice. I kept seeing us garden in front of this house around the corner from where I lived. I thought, that’s so peculiar. I don’t garden. But I knew that something was being revealed through that reoccurring image. I decided to host a Christmas caroling party at my house. I was really trying to like get myself out of my routines and my patterns and become available to new experiences. And so I thought, well, I’ll have a bunch of people over and we’ll do some Christmas caroling and my kids will like that. And I’m sort obsessed with, um, the joy of the holidays. I saw Nathan one day, not really knowing him. I saw him one day at Bodhi. We were both volunteering and I said, “Hey, you know, I know we don’t know each other, but I’m hosting this Christmas killing party and I wonder if you’d be interested in coming.” And he quickly responded to me, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m very busy.” And I was like, “Really? You just don’t strike me as someone who’s very busy.” [laughs]
Lola Wright: What I later found out was he was in graduate school doing his masters in landscape architecture and he was meditating 12 hours a day. So I guess that was his busy. He was headed to Plum Village, which is Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery in France. Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was a deep source of inspiration for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, and has really been an incredible demonstration of love in action on the planet. Nathan was headed to his monastery for a couple of weeks to have an experience, so he couldn’t come to the Christmas caroling party. And I then said, “Well, I’d love to grab a cup of tea with you when you return.” There again, he said, “I don’t know that I’ll be able to do that. I’m quite busy these days.” Now. Keep in mind he was taking a couple of graduate school classes and meditating many, many hours a day.
Lola Wright: And I just thought, okay, well, you know, I put myself out there. Maybe he’s not my guy, but I trusted my intuition. I expressed my curiosity and I am continuing to work this affirmation. Now, several weeks went by and one of my dear, dear friends and longtime mentors, Michael Beckwith, was coming to Chicago. He was on the Oprah show, you know, back to back to back at the time, this was 2006, 2007. And we were hosting him at Bodhi. We had this 900 person sold out ticketed event. It was going to be amazing. The Bodhi House Band was there. It was just this magical, magical creation. The night before we were doing this small group gathering for volunteer leaders of the organization to have some time of practice and conversation with Michael Beckwith. I was actually not invited to that small group gathering. I was a volunteer at Bodhi at the time, but you know, i was relatively low key and this was for a pretty small group of human beings.
Lola Wright: I sort of finagled my way in to that small group gathering by saying I’d be happy to provide hospitality services that evening. I could create the space. Here’s the bottom line. I am someone who when a desire comes through me, I become incredibly creative on how to actualize that desire. If some desire is coming through you, I want to say be relentless. Resistance is not bad. Expect resistance. It will refine what you’re up to. You and I are not here to the these like lethargic beings. You know when you and I work out, we experienced resistance and that develops results. I am not endorsing a painful life of suffering, but healthy tension that yields the fruit of the desires you hold. Hell yeah! So I was just very persistent. I was going to be at the small group gathering with Michael Beckwith. Now it turned out that Nathan was also there, so keep in mind, the first week in December, I set an intention.
Lola Wright: I am in loving and intimate spiritual partnership with my best friend and husband. I had invited him to tea. I had invited him to Christmas caroling. I got a big fat no. And then he was gone for a number of weeks. And so I sort of let it go. But I stayed true to that which I desired. On February 15th, 2007 Bodhi hosted Michael Beckwith for the small group gathering. And Nathan and I were both there. We had this very profound connection that occurred after a meditation that Michael Beckwith had led. And in that evening, Nathan said to me, “You know, I know you don’t really know who I am and I don’t really know who you are. And you know, we’ve never really spent any kind of meaningful time together, but I gotta tell you something.” And I said, “Yeah, what is it?” And he said, “Well, I think you might already know.”
Speaker 1:: And I said, well, “What do you know?” And he said, “You’re going to be my wife. Did you know that?” Now I realize this sounds crazy. I had never even gone out with this human being. And all of a sudden he was declaring post meditation that we were to be together. But remember, I had had those sort of mystical meditative experiences of he and I gardening in front of a home and I was attracted to him in a way that made no kind of logical sense. So the only rebuttal I had was, “Yeah, I did know that actually.” That evening he insisted on coming home with me, which could sound a little creepy, but it was actually quite charming. My brother was with me. He thought it was totally weird. It was, but also charming and you know, Hey, this girl is always up for an adventure.
Lola Wright: So he came home with me that night. I of course had two kids at home with a babysitter. I said, you’re going to sleep on the couch, but let’s talk about this thing because we’re obviously both having an experience. I share this with you because the experience that we had was not of this world, and I don’t mean a kind of like juvenile. There was an innocence to it, but it wasn’t, Oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Like it was lead. I guess that’s what I would say. The encounter that he and I had that evening, that which proceeded it and that which followed it was led by our intuitive nature. There was something that he and I had developed within our own selves, a deep practice of listening, so you have your outer ear that is listening to the world around you, but you also have an inner ear that is always available to the still small voice that is at the center of your being.
Lola Wright: The more you listen to that still small voice, the more easily you will hear it and the more easily you can hear it, the more gracefully it can serve you. You will begin to become more comfortable and confident in that still small voice as you listen and discern what it’s leading, guiding and directing you towards. Nathan basically moved in two weeks later. That affirmation, I am in loving and intimate spiritual partnership with my best friend and husband was materialized in like approximately eight weeks. He moved in two weeks later. Four weeks after that we got married. Two weeks after that we closed on our house. I can’t even begin to tell you all of the nuances and like insane, crazy, wild, extraordinary twists and turns along the way. We were led, guided and directed to be in relationship with one another. It didn’t make any sense and yet both of us had a highly developed practice and commitment to listening to the still small voice. And then it got really hard.
Lola Wright: When he and I got together, it was like two worlds had collided. Talk about oil and water. It became the greatest test of this thing called the vision. I have huge, huge appreciation for Nathan over those eight years he just kept affirming and knowing that the essence of our relationship had a transformative quality to it. You know, one of my mentors is a guy named Jim Morningstar and he said to Nathan and I at some point in those first eight years, “Intimacy is the final frontier. When you start to work through your egoic construct, your fear, your lack, your limitation, the sense of scarcity, you will rub up against all of your most unconscious parts in your most intimate relationships. So do not be discouraged.”
Lola Wright: What I understand now is that Nathan and I were perfectly designed for one another. We drove each other crazy in a lot of ways, but we had a vision for something greater than our suffering. We had a context for living that was greater than this finite realm. We knew that who we are, who we were was more than this meat suit. The truth of who I am is whole, Holy, perfect and complete. I am the presence of all that is. I am the individualized manifestation of the divine. As that is true for me I absolutely know that that is true for you. And Nathan and I were these crazy mirrors for one another. I want for you to know yourself deeply.
Lola Wright: My experience is that most human beings are profoundly familiar with what we call our flaws or our character defects, but have you gotten acquainted with your essence, with the truth of who you are and how available are you to amplifying that presence, to contributing that presence? If we were to audit the relationships in your life, if we were to write your eulogy today, what would be the headlines? What would be the highlights? Celebrate the I am presence. The infinite nature that resides in you and watch that expand. You are an incredible human being. You are in this dimension of reality for a right and perfect reason. There are no accidents or coincidences. You are intrinsically connected to this vast universe. The desires that come through you are rightly designed. Trust yourself. Clear out the belief systems that no longer serve you.
Lola Wright: I’d love to continue this conversation. Write an affirmation this week. Here is the formula or the sentence stem that I love to use. I am so happy and grateful now that, fill in the blank. The trick with affirmations is they’re present tense. They’re affirmative. You don’t need to tell us what you don’t want. We got that. Be brief and concise so that you can memorize it. Have every word generate an experience of inspiration and a liveliness in your being. I said to someone today, I want you to start walking on the planet saying, I do work that I love and I am paid generously for it. Here’s the thing. You will always seek evidence of that which you believe. You may as well construct a belief system that is in alignment with what you say you want. Otherwise, you, my friend, are a master chef of suffering and I promise you that is not what you are here for. I want to hear your affirmations this week. I’m going to write one. I’ll put it out there and I’d love for you to engage with me in the comments on Instagram and Facebook so that I can hear your affirmation. I’m happy to provide you with coaching. If you give me your affirmation @lolapwright on Instagram or at Lola P Wright on Facebook, I will help you tweak it and create it in such a way that is potent.
Lola Wright: You are a magnet. Your word is your wand. Speak the life you desire into existence.
Lola Wright: And This is Bodhi, is a production of Bodhi Center. Funding comes from our incredibly generous contributors. If you’re not already one of them, I’d love for you to join that crew. As a reminder, all of Bodhi’s programs are funded by people who believe in the work. If this podcast means something to you, if our live experience House of Bodhi with Lola Wright means something to you, support these efforts financially. We’re able to reach thousands of people around the world because a group of people say, we’re committed to making this conversation available. So if you’re one of those people, text the word, GIVE to (773) 770-8577 or visit bodhicenter.org/giving. Every gift matters and you get the gift of generosity. I’m your host, Lola Wright. This podcast is produced by Katie Klocksin, with editorial guidance from Bodhi’s creative producer Tyler Greene. Our theme music is by Trey Royal, independent music producer. Thanks for joining us and have a fabulous walk on this planet are worthy of that.
Speaker 2:: Really? You just don’t strike me as someone who’s very busy.
