Last month, I began reading Gabby Bernstein’s Spirit Junkie and while I had been winding my way through a spiritual journey for years, I had never really put in the work or made the commitment to live out the principles and practices that I knew would be transformative in my life and soul and experience. I suppose that I tiptoed around the subject for all that time because I just wasn’t ready; I was busy, I didn’t have the time, I was constantly finding other distractions, I was too far lost, it hurt. But for whatever reason, be it the gut wrenching, soul crushing break up that I was living through or the example that I wanted so badly to portray for my children, this time was different. I picked up that book and I could barely put it down. Sometimes, the words on the pages felt as if they were screaming at me; reaching out to me, forcing me to read them, take them in, breath them, live them, WAKE UP! I hadn’t even finished the book before I started telling people “This book changed my life.” It was as if I had woken up and suddenly, things began to change. My mindset was aligning with love and I was witnessing all of the areas in my life which desperately needed spirit and I was finally able to surrender to that inner guidance that I had always heard, teeny tiny in the back of my mind, but had usually managed to brush off. I was transforming and I was hooked. Then, one night while I was snuggled in bed, reading through the last few chapters of Spirit Junkie (for the second time) I felt compelled to look at Gabby’s website. Judgment Detox was soon to be released and there, in screaming color, was a banner advertising the book tour, which was already in progress. I was full of excitement at the thought of seeing her speak live; how incredible the energy must be in the middle of an entire room full of like minded spirit junkies. My excitement though, turned quickly to disappointment as I read the cities that were scheduled on the tour: Boston, New York, L.A., San Francisco, a couple places in Canada… Nowhere near the South or Florida or Central Florida, to be exact. I sighed and put my phone down, turning my concentration back to the book once again.
“But MAYBE…” my tiny inner voice whispered. The fact that I am a single mom who had just finished Christmas shopping and had recently bought a house and was in the process of nearly gutting said house barked loudly over the tiny thoughts. “There’s no way I can afford that trip.” I said to myself, trying again to bring my thoughts back to the present moment.
“But MAYBE…” Okay, fine. I pulled up my Hopper ap and typed in a search for flights to L.A. I completely expected the flight to be outrageous and unattainable but, you know… just for fun… I had to look because even though it was all the way across the country, the L.A. event was on a Saturday and I could be there and back without even missing a day of work. Imagine my surprise when I found a ridiculously low priced flight at only $122 round trip. “Buy now!” the little Hopper bunny yelled at me, further stating that he hadn’t seen a fare that cheap in months. Yeah, bunny, great, but I still don’t have $122. Eventually, I put all the maybes to rest and went to bed. Not this time; not this tour, I surrendered.
I woke up the next morning with a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach; I was hungry for breakfast and for the next leg of my spiritual journey. Against my better judgment and with absolutely no idea how I was going to afford the spontaneous trip, I booked the flight to L.A. I bought my ticket to the book tour. I wasn’t sure where the money was going to come from or which part of December’s budget I would have to cut, but I was going to L.A. and I knew in my soul that I had made the right choice.
Two days after I booked that flight with “borrowed” money and blind faith, I received a refund check in the mail that I had completely forgotten about. It was an overpayment from an insurance policy that I had canceled a few months prior and the amount of that check covered my flight, my ticket to the book tour and almost all of my air bnb for the weekend. And that, my friends, sealed my belief in the power of manifesting and the idea that if you truly want something and go after it with all of your heart, the universe will help you get there; both figuratively and literally. Thank you, inner guide; I hear you and I am on my way.
