It was going to be a quick trip. Get the eyeglass adjustment. Go home.
Easy peasy.
What it turned into: something far more interesting.
· · ·
During his recent Idaho vacation, Perry wore contact lenses.
That’s because his new glasses, which he ordered well before the trip were not ready. His existing pair wasn’t either. A manufacturer’s defect forced them back to the repair shop.
Perry prefers glasses for many reasons. Napping being one. Napping is more complicated with plastic disks in your eyes.
Glasses are easy. So Perry prefers being bespectacled.
You can imagine his delighted then, when the vision specialist called Perry the first time, two weeks before his vacation. That is, until she told Perry the bad news: his new glasses failed inspection. They’d have to be redone too.
Two different pair of glasses. Two different repair shops. Two warranty problems.
Coincidence?
A long series of “unfortunate events” about Perry’s eyes accented the last few weeks. First came what Perry thought was a scratched cornea.
Nope. Pink eye.
Then he broke his old glasses playing with the family dog. They came back a week later, but just two days after that, broke again. Warranty defect.
Then came his annual vision exam, which prompted the the new glasses order and its attendant manufacturing problems.
That’s when Perry wondered aloud to his wife, just prior to leaving for vacation, that something larger was happening having to do with more than eyeball vision. He wondered -– rightly –– whether his need for clarity, had more to do with his non-physical perception than seeing with his eyes; an expansion of perception which would make more visible the expanding grace Perry –– and every human being –– naturally enjoys.
Perhaps these experiences were leading up to a new experience Perry; an experience that would delight him by making visible what was there all along, but hidden from him in plain sight.
Like “lost” keys you search frantically for only to find them in the exact spot you checked five times.
Everyone has had that experience.
For Perry though, it wasn’t about lost car keys, but keys to questions he had been asking all his life.
· · ·
Your physical reality always, faithfully reflects what is going on with you in the non-physical realm –– that place from which you come, the place from which everything flows from –– through The Moment of Becoming and, finally, into full-blown physical reality. The more you open yourself to this, the more you are able to see and consciously experience both the physical, the non physical and The Moment of Becoming.
It’s a highly satisfying experience to have this experience. And it comes with delightful, practical benefits.
· · ·
(At the time all this was happening Perry didn’t know all this. As he writes this blog post, he is coming into clarity as we share what was happening behind the scenes. So now, as he writes, Perry is delighting in the epiphany, his awareness of what it is we’re sharing now.)
Back to glasses, vision and vacations.
It frustrated Perry to hear his new glasses wouldn’t be ready for another week. The specialist assured him they would be ready the following Tuesday. By then, Perry and his wife would be in Idaho. He asked the specialist if it were possible to ship the glasses to the house where they would be. Of course this was possible, she said.
For a price.
And that’s what happened. On Thursday, as promised, with just days of their vacation remaining, the glasses arrived. Cost: $24. Interestingly, around the same time, the other eyeglass shop repairing his older glasses called. Those frames were ready to pick up too.
The coincidence didn’t escape Perry. Two pair, ready to go, but neither nearby.
When the new glasses arrived, they were beautiful. Their case alone is a work of art. They’re more sturdy than his old ones too. Perry enjoyed looking at them. Though they needed adjustments, he wore them instead of the contacts for the rest of their vacation.
· · ·
Back home Perry wanted to go to the eyeglass shop for adjustments. But, something else vied for his attention: a nap.
As one’s state of grace, one’s invincibility becomes more obvious, a person is less and less comfortable adhering to what Seth calls “assembly-line time”, the idea instilled in humans that you must work straight through from 8-5 (or worse), with your nose to the grindstone “making it happen” and “getting shit done”.
If you let it, your life experience, shows you how All That Is, your Inner Being and the Universe work together to make things you want to happen happen in your life. When you see how this non-physical “trinity” delivers everything you’re wanting –– with perfect timing and in the perfect way –– more and more you want to let them do work.
A person in their state of grace, in their invincibility, becomes like daisies, trees and the rest of nature: she simply allows her trinity to shower her natural abundance upon her.
Part of that delicious experience, is a renewed relationship with napping.
Abraham and Esther Hicks equate sleeping and meditation. Both refresh oneself by immersing one in one’s origins.
Perry strives to heed impulses to take naps. But in this case, he wasn’t willing. Everyone has free will. And everyone’s trinity knows how to work with your free will to surprise and delight you.
That is, if you are aware enough to receive the surprise and delight.
Which Perry certainly is.
A person can’t act contrary to one’s state of grace. But it can feel that way. As you’ll soon see.
So Perry went to the shop, feeling tired. When he arrived, there were two people ahead of him and only one person behind the counter. She said everyone had gone to lunch but her. She would be with him as soon as possible.
This was not the person who helped Perry before. Perry felt frustration mixed with his fatigue. But he was committed to not vent his frustration on his reality.
He knows better.
Instead, he sat patiently, expecting everything would work out.
He thought about bagging the whole idea and returning another day. But just before he got up, the woman behind the counter called him over.
She took his new glasses into a back room. Then she returned and put them on Perry’s face. They looked even better than before. They fit better too, which the woman confirmed aloud. Then Perry noticed something strange.
While they did fit better, he noticed the lenses were not symmetrically aligned and the nose bridge was crooked.
The woman noticed this too, but tried to avoid it. When Perry pointed it out, she acknowledged the problem saying the lenses were flawed.
They’d have to go back for a warranty repair. Perry’s frustration returned.
Now Perry knows “frustration” has nothing to do with what is happening in front of him. Instead, it always has to do with what is going on inside him. His physical world simply reflects back to him his internal realitiy…with 100 percent experiential acuity.
This is so with every human. No exceptions.
So when the woman behind the counter apologized for the inconvenience, knowing Perry had been waiting a while for these glasses, Perry took a deep breath, then smiled and said “It’s ok”.
She wondered aloud if he had a spare. Which reminded him: his other glasses were ready to be picked up. Perry had forgotten about that.
What perfect timing, he thought. Even when it feels like things are going wrong, it’s actually working out with perfect timing. Perry left his new glasses feeling lighter.
Back home he again felt the urge to take a nap. But by now, the momentum of Perry’s frustration had a hold of him and his life experience. Taking a nap was a possibility, but it was much more probable Perry would continue along his frustration path.
This is why it is important to cultivate positive expectations.
Not only does one’s physical reality represent the perceiver’s internal experience, with 100 percent fidelity, physical reality’s consistency depends on momentum created by the act of perceiving, making it much more likely one will continue having experiences consistent with one’s dominant perceptual focus.
Momentum equals experience probability.
Taking a nap would have reset Perry’s positive momentum, thus affording him a better rest of his day. What happened instead was both clarifying and hilarious.
He decided to take the car to the other repair shop and get his old glasses. The other repair shop is across town. Not walking distance like the first shop.
Now Perry doesn’t like to drive in traffic. This was all happening after lunch on a week day. So he could expect traffic to be less than it would have been in the morning, evening or at lunch. But guess what?
That’s right.
Not only did Perry get stopped by virtually every traffic light, he also got “stuck” behind every slow driver, bus, tractor trailer…you name it…it came into Perry’s path.
When he finally got to the repair shop, a woman was just getting into her car to leave. Her street-side parking spot was choice. Perry pulled just behind her, turned on his signal and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The more he waited, the more Perry could feel his frustration rise. What the hell was the woman doing in there?
Considering the drive over, Perry’s frustration could be cut with a knife. And the more he focused on his frustration, the more frustrated he got.
Meanwhile, the woman was not leaving.
That’s when two guys came out of the shop and jumped in their pick up sitting in a curbside parking spot across the street from the parked woman.
The truck started. Perry turned his other turn signal on.
But they didn’t move either. Instead, the driver and passenger started smoking!
Unbelievable!
Just when his frustration was peaking, Perry had a cathartic epiphany about this day the last two-weeks, and he his and his wife’s experiences on their vacation. Then, in that realization, something in him gave way.
The peace and well-being Perry knew to be his norm returned in a flood of relief, clarity and awareness.
And in that moment, Perry looked to the left. Inside the repair shop parking lot: there right next to the front door…
…was an open parking space.
No one had left. It had been open all this time.
Perry laugh out loud as he pulled in, went into the shop, got his glasses, then drove home….
….and then took a nap.
It was the best nap ever.
