I’m about to turn my life upside down. Again.

The theme we’re exploring in the Wildspire community this month is CHANGE, and it has a particular relevance for me.

Right now, I’m in the process of immigrating to Portugal, leaving my home and beautiful relationship, to embark on a new adventure in life and business.

And it’s been a roller coaster.

Saying goodbye to the familiar. Stepping into an unknown future. Saying yes to a radical change in my environment.

This change was set in motion back in April when I read chapter 28 entitled “Change” in the book Sane: Getting Real With Reality by Clare Dimond. Here’s the bit that blew my mind. (Italics are mine.)

“…we are not ready for what we think we want. We know we are not ready for it because it looks like we don’t have it already.

“It looks like what we want is out there, separate from us, that it will bring the happiness, satisfaction, security or better life we seek. That it is on our shoulders to make it happen…

“We go out there seeking but it changes nothing. The only change is from the dissolving of these fixed ideas of self and separate world. It is in the dissolution that infinite possibilities reveal themselves.

“The promotion, the new business, the money, the good health are revealed not obtained. They appear not because we have created them but because our idea of who we are and what they are has become thin enough that we can finally see them.”

This passage shook me.

I sat with it for weeks, wondering what it would mean if what I’m looking for in the external world is really, really already inside of me.

What would it mean to take responsibility for creating the experience I want to have, rather than hoping and praying for someone or something else to do it for me?

At some point, something inside me changed. Radically.

I felt the shift overnight and knew:

I was leaving my home, my relationship, my life as I knew it.

It took several months for the “how” of all this to unfold. I tortured myself with stories of self-doubt, but here I am, taking the actions necessary to create a life in Portugal.

Here’s the funny thing that just occurred to me:

I’d been describing this shift as if it was somehow happening outside of myself. As if the Universe somehow made me do it.

It seemed so outside my consciousness that it simply happened, as if I had nothing to do with it.

But I awoke at one o’clock in the morning really seeing that I had chosen this change by sitting with the question, “What if I give to myself the thing I seek by realizing it’s already within me?”

I saw that this was something I could do. In fact, it’s the only way change ever manifests, in knowing that I am that which I seek.

Immediately, my life aligned internally with what I desire. Without thinking. Without even noticing the choice. It just became obvious.

I create the experience I desire inside myself.

The impact of this shift was so powerful it sent me into a whirl of thinking, but it was so clear and obvious that it couldn’t be undone. It’s the most radical example of effortless transformation I’ve personally experienced to date, and I almost missed it by saying, “The Universe made me do it.”

Well, I guess in a sense that’s true, except for the fact that the Universe is me.

All this change feels lighter and easier now.

It isn’t all up to me. If I want to change something externally, I need only seek within to find what I’m searching for, and life unfolds exactly as it does.

I realize this is a complete departure from the messages we’re inundated with insisting that we must work hard (and harder) to achieve what we desire. It contradicts the training I had to prove myself and my worth by doing.

There is nothing to do and nowhere to go. It is already done.

I am always the one creating my life according to my internal experience of oneness and separation.

I am the creativity of the universe at play, in every twist and turn, despair and delight, of this life roller coaster.

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” – Rumi

What if the same is true for you?

Yours in love and play,

Steph