I’m Scared of My Good Feelings After a Manifestation

Hi Kelli,

Firstly, I want to thank you. I have been following you for years, and you have been a constant source of inspiration and guidance.

I’d love your insight on the following question. I’ve been working on changing my inner world for a while now and notice that when something good does manifest, I have a hard time letting it in. It’s almost as if I’m scared to allow the good feelings to permeate through my mind and body. However, I have no issue allowing negative thoughts and feelings to hijack the self. 

I realize this is preventing me from cultivating a steady vibration. Have you ever been challenged with allowing the gratitude in?

I think what you experience is very common and there are a few issues at play that I think apply to most people:

The ego mind, which is the part of the mind that has come to dominate the human experience, is very negative, and  fueled by fear, myriad grievances, self-hatred and such. So it is much easier to operate in that state because it is essentially our default. The good news however, is the sort of work you are doing helps change that ‘programming.’ You create space to choose your responses, look at things differently, change habits and behaviors that support the thought system you prefer,etc…

Secondly, there is actually fear of good things happening. I think some part of our mind believes  there must be some sort of ‘balance,’ and if good things happen, it somehow invites bad things in too; and since those ‘bad things’ are an unknown quantity, it just amplifies the fear naturally.

I know for awhile I believed the better the good thing, the worse the bad thing would be. I saw that I preferred to keep certain areas of my life ‘problematic’ because  I believed it offered some sort of ‘protection’. Intellectually we may understand that is not true, and makes little sense, but it won’t ‘compute’ more on an emotional level until we start addressing the various fears we have. 

Thirdly,we tend to have a lot of conflicting energies around the things we consciously claim to want. This truth can be a hard one to really sink our teeth into, and consider more carefully, because given the intense negative feelings we have around circumstances we don’t like , not having things we want, and the focus we may put on acquiring these things, whether through ‘energy work’ or actions of various kinds, this would not seem to track. 

But we must remember the part of us having this experience is kind of screwy and that conflict does exist. For example, many people want more money, but collectively we have a lot of ideas around money that make getting it not seem so great–it will complicate your life, you can only get it if you work hard, you must sacrifice,etc…

Lastly, we tend to be very invested in our identity, no matter how many facets of that identity seem undesirable, serve as obstacles to positive change and create problems in our day to day life,etc… So while intellectually all this positive change internally, and in our external experience, would seem welcome, it could feel quite uncomfortable because it challenges that identity, again, even if on the surface we would seem to want to transform them. 

In my experience, clearing out all this emotional and energetic clutter–even if it may be very uncomfortable–is the easiest route to the changes we seek because it creates space for these new ideas and energies to really take root in our being in a meaningful way. We don’t have to try so hard to exist in these new ways, it just comes more naturally as we remove all the internal barriers to embracing it all.