Your Unfolding Path August 2000	Click Here to See Carol's Current Column
	by Carol Adrienne, Ph.D.

"Manifest Your Dreams"

Do you have a dream business or project that you want to bring into being? Has your intuition been telling you to move on, move up, or move out? Do you wonder how to know when enough is enough? When do you let go, or keep pushing your will?

Francine Kelly, editor and publisher of Conscious Living Magazine and the director of The Center for Conscious Living, had these same questions a few years ago when she made a huge transition from the dissatisfying life as a New York copy writer and journalist to a publisher and owner of a retreat center. "Looking back, I don’t feel my changes were so much voluntary as they were guided," Kelly told me in an interview. "It was while visiting The Monroe Institute in 1998 that I was guided by Spirit to co-create a retreat center."

Kelly explained that she had grown up in an alcoholic family, and often told she was stupid and incompetent. "My father was a violinist and studied at Julliard. My mother told him to quit playing music and get a real job, and he eventually drank himself to death." Kelly herself later became an alcoholic, and went into recovery several years ago. At her bottom she says she made a deal with God to be of service to others.

During her thirties and forties, Kelly worked as a journalist and ghostwriter in the fields of advertising and medical copy writing. "I didn’t believe in what I was doing," she said, "and when jobs started drying up, I kept pushing my will to make them happen. The more it dried up, the more I pushed my will. Obviously, I wasn’t getting the message I shouldn’t be doing this work any more."

As her discouragement grew, within a short time, Kelly’s interest was piqued in a new field. She happened to find a newspaper focusing on health and personal growth, which led to a stint selling advertising for the publication. Although her first try at New Age advertising did not turn out to be the best opportunity for a long term focus, it did put her on the path to being hired by a national magazine. Even though she won an award for her work, however, the situation proved to be abusive.

"After this experience, I made the decision to start my own newspaper, Conscious Living." Kelly said. "At first it was a free local tabloid, and then we became a national magazine with subscriptions. The first issue paid for itself, which is almost impossible in the magazine world. To start a magazine, you usually need between one and three million dollars. We had no money, and we were leasing the computer! Obviously, Spirit wanted this project to succeed."

"I believe that in the beginning of any project, you first have to be dedicated to your mission, and secondly you have to be business-like, rather than the other way around. I’m clear that my mission is to help people move from confusion or despair to wellbeing. A big part of this work is helping people to distinguish between their egos and God’s will."

Again, Kelly reiterates the question we all wonder about. How do we handle our fears and self-doubt when starting a new project? "I have to say," Kelly continued, trusting divine guidance is how I handle the inevitable fears that arise in new territory. My ego-based will presents itself very differently, which is to say that it feel more self-centered. Divine Will is about doing the right thing. We do know the right thing to do but the fear comes in to block us from following God’s will. We tell ourselves things like, ‘This won’t work.’ Or ‘I’m going to lose money.’ Divine Will says, ‘Something will work out.’ even though it may seem to be impossible at the time—especially when everybody tells you it’s impossible! A friend told me she has decided from now on to just hire the unemployed angels!"

When Kelly decided to start a retreat center (by the way, starting a retreat or healing center is a dream I have heard many times from many people), she asked her spirit guides to show her where the retreat should be. She says her eyes were guided to a nearby magazine rack where she saw The Sedona Journal of Emergence. Following this intuition, she booked a flight to Sedona. Before leaving for Arizona, she discussed the qualities of the location that would be necessary with her husband, Bruce and other colleagues at the magazine. Bruce said the center would have to be near a national forest so no one could build around them. Others mentioned having enough acreage, and how nice it would be to be on top of a hill. As it turned out, the property they found met all their parameters.

Kelly said, "When I arrived in Sedona, the miracles continued. While looking at a real estate magazine my hand was guided to a picture of the property. It was as though I was picking a flower essence. I looked up at my broker, and said, "What about this place?" It turned out that this place had been recently owned by a drug dealer from New York, who is now serving time in a prison in Brooklyn, New York. Although it was a place with a past, the ranch had a swimming pool, sauna, hot tub, Jacuzzi, and it was in foreclosure, so the price was right. It would be a perfect place for weekend workshops, and for spiritually oriented people to stay when they were visiting God’s country."

Kelly signed the papers on her fiftieth birthday. After a lot of hard work cleaning up the place and finding the right people for staff, The Center for Conscious Living was born. "A friend of mine keeps reminding me that you have to be impeccable, absolutely impeccable when you are following Divine guidance," Kelly said. "You can’t manipulate and you can’t lie. The law of cause and effect will always show you what you need to pay attention to. For example, one month I didn’t take care of my printing bill and I had all sorts of problems in other areas until I cleaned it up. Another time we were having difficulties, and I realized that it was probably linked to the fact that we were using mailing software we had bootlegged and not paid for. We couldn’t pay for it, so we stopped using it, and did all our mailing by hand. After the decision not to use it, everything started going smoothly again."

Kelly feels her life has completely changed since she has started following her inner guidance and is working at her life’s mission—at least what the mission looks like at this stage of her life. "Since my recovery, I have the confidence I never had as a child. I look to Spirit and Spirit tells me there is nothing to fear because I have my guides. I feel I am living much more from my right mind rather than my "insane" mind (as they say in A Course in Miracles). I feel I am centered in love for what I am doing and centered in integrity, not just from my ego or going only for the money. I really trust my feelings about the energy in any project now. I try to discern the energies of people I work with in business, and if it feels uncomfortable, I move away from it, instead of pursuing it any further.

• Be honest with yourself. Don’t deny who you are and what you feel.
• When you see your shadow or things you don’t love about yourself, acknowledge it, embrace it, and move on. Don’t stay there.
• Be discerning but not judgmental. Recognize that people are where they are for a reason.
• If you’ve had abusive parents as examples of what you don’t want to be, thank them. If it hadn’t been for my parents, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
• Follow the guidance that comes to you even in the most unlikely times and places.

***

Carol Adrienne, Ph.D., is an intuitive counselor, writer and lecturer in the field of self development. She is the author of The Purpose of Your Life; The Purpose of Your Life An Experiential Guide, The Numerology Kit, and co-author of The Celestine Prophecy: An Experiential Guide and the Tenth Insight: An Experiential Guide.

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