Notes from the Field – A Lesson in Sensitivity and Visualizing:
Los Angeles to San Antonio, August 23, 2008

Date: August 26, 2008
Author: Cindy Smith

As some of you know, I spent the week of August 16-23 with Eleanor and Marvin. This trip, my daughter Ariel accompanied me on the visit. For me, the hardest part of visiting someone is always the inevitable “goodbye” that marks the end of the journey. It is always difficult and emotional for me to leave people I love and care for so deeply.

As Marvin and Eleanor do every morning, on the day we left, we all sat down to breakfast together and read the Daily Report aloud. It was very timely for me that day. To quote:

“You might find yourself a bit more emotional today than you were yesterday. However, the reason you feel emotional may make more sense to you, i.e., you may be able to put some pieces of its origins and purpose together internally. Avoid pressures that push you to act in ways that may not be exactly what you want to do. Remember that you are very open to the needs and feelings of other people and today part of the cosmic pressure activates clarity in the way you take in emotional needs of others….“

I took this reference to being “a bit more emotional today” as a given. Naturally, I anticipated a more emotional day for myself than usual because “goodbyes” are always so hard for me. At the time, I forgot about my tendency to pick up on and internalize the emotions of others.

Being in crowded places among many agitated people can be the very worst kind of place for me. I found myself in just such a place several hours later at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). You could say it was not a good day to be traveling. LAX was chaos. One woman I encountered had been shuffled from line to line for six hours. Weather delays in other parts of the country caused flight cancellations. There were numerous unhappy, aggressive people all around me.

Earlier in the week, Ariel had two wisdom teeth extracted. During her procedure, it was apparent that as soon as she was sedated, I had trouble thinking and felt very drugged. In all honesty, at the time, I did not even recognize this was happening to me. Fortunately, Eleanor recognized and pointed out to me how I took Ariel’s experience and feelings into my body. What brought this point home even more strongly was that just as Ariel started to awake, I felt difficulty swallowing – something she would have been feeling also. Simply recognizing who “owns” the problem helped me enormously to gain perspective.

While at the airport in the midst now of so many distressed people, I recalled my experience earlier in the week and was able to recognize similar feelings in my body. I began with new perceptiveness to identify what feelings belonged to me and what feelings were ones related to my deep empathic sensitivity. In addition, I knew from the Daily Report and Daily Wisdom Practices how vulnerable the day made me.

Thus, I kept in mind the daily report and my tendency to take on emotions of others as my own. I knew I had to take great care to avoid totally loosing my patience and temper. I faced challenges after challenge in this area for several hours. Loosing my cool became a definite possibility when my daughter and I missed our original flight and had to create a new flight plan.

Our new flight plan had us spending the night in the Dallas airport and continuing our return flight home the following day. The following day, Monday, was scheduled to be Ariel’s first day back to school. Neither she nor I wanted her to miss her first day of school.

In the end, this really turned into a lesson on how to manifest what you need. I needed to be home in time for Ariel to get some sleep and be ready for her first day of high school. The only chance for this to happen was to catch the last plane out of Dallas for San Antonio. This flight was two terminals away from our gate and scheduled to begin boarding before we were scheduled to even land. The airline personnel could not issue a ticket for us on this flight because there was no way we could technically make the connecting flight within airport guidelines. Such a connection was an “illegal booking.”

I called Eleanor to inform her of what was happing and I told her I needed to manifest the flight in Dallas leaving late so we would have time to get to the gate and get a ticket to board the aircraft.

Eleanor’s answer at first kind of stunned me until I realized the beauty and simplicity of what she was saying. Eleanor said, “You do not want to visualize the flight leaving late. When you project manifesting what you need, and you dictate HOW you want something to take place, you LIMIT the manner in which the universe can respond to your need. “

She explained to me that a better way to attain what I needed was to simply visualize getting on a connecting flight. It did not matter HOW it came about. The HOW was actually unimportant. The real need was to be on a flight that got us home safely. She told me to visualize being home safely that night.

We all went to work visualizing being home that night. I did have a small tinge of doubt as we boarded the flight to Dallas; we ended up at the very back row of a large Jet that was completely full with passengers. Anyone who travels understands how long it takes to get off an aircraft when you are as far back as you can get without being in the restroom.

As it happened, our flight landed 15 minutes early. I had already mentioned our plight to the flight attendants and they arranged for Ariel and me to be first people off the jet. They gave us permission to walk to the door of the plane before anyone else was even allowed to unfasten their seat belts. One of the attendants even used her personal cell phone to call ahead when we landed so we would have the correct gate information; she even arranged to hold the flight for us. We got the last two seats on the last plane out of Dallas headed to San Antonio. We arrived in San Antonio, arrived safely home, and Ariel was ready for her first day of school. In fact, she even had a wonderful lesson about balancing emotions and the way visualization and manifestation actually works.

The lesson on manifestation and visualization was extremely important. Equally important, however, was reading the daily report that morning. It helped me be aware of potential RED FLAGS I would face on this journey. Had I allowed myself to slip into the negative emotions of anger, frustration and discouragement, my attitude would have blocked my ability to visualize. Such feelings would have negated any potential desire on the part of other people to help Ariel and me accomplish what we needed.