Update on the Sedona Method

Continued from the last posting…

I can’t claim to be an expert at all on the Sedona Method, but it’s been working for me. As I wrote in my last post, it’s kind of a boring, repetitive book, and the concept sounds so simple that it’s not worth doing. The concept is, basically, “let it go.” I decided to try it because after months of reading The Secret (and other similar books), I got frustrated with the fact that it never addresses the fact that we have bad feelings sometimes, and we can’t just ignore them. The Secret, in my opinion, is like a really great trailer. It’s not the movie. Or…say, a beautiful concert poster or something. The Secret, as you probably know, is the Law of Attraction. Thoughts become things. Yes, great, I got it. The movie and the book, however, kind of skim the surface of this. In a way, it’s sort of reassuring because it tells you it’s just that easy—have good thoughts and good feelings and the world is yours. What about when you’re down? Stick a couple “secret shifters” up your sleeve. Those are good memories or thoughts that turn your feelings around.

So, I was feeling down the other day, and sometimes I can get myself out of these funks, but it usually takes a couple of days if all I’m doing is consciously trying to think and feel good—that is, if it works at all. And so, with my financial crisis, car crisis, an extra person in the house (she’s absolutely fabulous, but 1+1 with kids does not equal 2; it’s more like 10), and career crisis, I just couldn’t stop myself from having these bad feelings and thoughts. If I tried to just ignore them, they came back because that is what bad emotions do. They feel like a shell around me. I can’t experience the outside world because there’s this shell of my own world that prevents that. This shell feeds me with “how will you pay for that” and “what if you don’t get the car fixed” and “you’re such a failure” and in the meantime, the world outside lies beyond reach. No way I’m cleaning the house because my emotional shell keeps feeding me lines like “it will be so hard, you’ll never get it done” or “what’s the point; it’ll just get messy again.” You get the point.

So then I decided to check out this Sedona Method. First of all, let me say that I appreciate its acknowledgement of bad emotions and suffering. Many new age books—good ones and bad ones—don’t address this. I grew up Catholic, and so I have always had a spiritual life, though early on it had a different flavor for me, as you can imagine. As I grew up, I realized I could create my universe and my beliefs the way I want, the way that includes what I grew up with in a way that makes sense to me. I am not still Catholic, per se, but I don’t poo poo Christianity at all. I’m a me-ist. And I believe we should all find our own belief systems, and that mine might be different from yours and they can both be completely true. Anyway, what I missed about Chopra and Dyer and The Secret is the compassion for our suffering. There are times when we suffer, and that’s okay, and we need to feel those emotions. If I broke up with a boyfriend and a friend told me to pull out a “secret shifter” I’d probably punch her. The Sedona Method, however, takes these feelings and urges us to dive into them. Let it come through you, let yourself feel it, and then ask yourself if you will let it go. Honestly, it works. It's not a shiny, pretty process like The Secret is, but it's way more practical.

Sometimes a feeling is deeper than what it seems. So, I was feeling upset about the way my career has been going in theatre, and I got some negative news about something that I was kind of feeling I should get. I realized my need for this show, and to be cast in any show at the moment, is not for my desire to act but at this point it’s out of a need for approval. Zwoskin, the writer, talks about the 9 emotional states but also the four basic wants, approval being one. So I tried to release it and I couldn’t. I asked myself why and I realized it was because I was afraid that if I lost my want for approval, I would lose my desire to act, and if I lost my desire, my verve, to be on stage, I REALLY never would be on stage again. I realized that, allowed myself to release it (I had to make a promise that if this didn’t work I could go back to wanting approval), and everything lifted. I feel releasing in my breastbone, and suddenly it didn’t bother my anymore. My shell had dissipated.

As I was walking by the lake near my house, I took about 15 minutes to just be. I felt at peace, and the sensation was so much more remarkable because I hadn’t been at peace for over a week. That was a few days ago, and I continually release to stay grounded, but I have to say, nothing’s been bothering me. I’m much happier, and I can more and more just be in the moment, which is where all life happens anyway.

The book is so boring that I can’t sit down and read it cover to cover, so I take snippets here and snippets there, and eventually pull it all together. Another concept I like is “hootlessness.” That is when you have a goal, and release it to the point where you don’t give a hoot about it. Sounds backwards, but it’s technically the same thing as detachment. I’m not an expert on Eastern religions, but one of my favorite books, The Seven Spritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra, mentions goal-setting in a very similar way. He urges you to meditate, become still, release your desire into the universe and then let it go. Become detached to the point where you don’t care how or when or why it will manifest. I always found this concept very, very hard to actually practice, but I think the Sedona Method is really wonderful at getting down to the nitty gritty of how.

In other words, it lets you sift through your own shit so you can actually start practicing The Secret, or the Law of Attraction, or anything else. It’s very practical and doesn’t actually go into spirituality much; it’s a handbook. If you want something similar, though more on the practical end, check out “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” also an excellent book.

Now to manifest my career…that I really don’t give a shit about. I think I’ll call it “shitlessness;” it’s more fitting to my vocabulary. J