From Abraham through Esther Hicks:
You say I want this and then you often remain in a state of dissatisfaction until you see it. And your attitude is, I’ll believe that when I see it. And we want you to come to know, you’ve got to believe it before you see it.. You’ve [got to] believe in it because you’re basing it on different criteria than its full manifestation.. How do you begin to believe something that you don’t believe, when [as you say], “My eyes are not deceiving me. This is the truth of my reality. How do I create other than that?” But here’s the thing. A thing is only true because someone has focused upon it until it became a reality. We would use different criteria – not is it true, but does it feel good to me when I think about it.

Some of you ask .. “How much can I really expect to change my life?” And when you ask that you’re sort of asking if there are any practical limits to this Law Of Attraction stuff. Are you really in charge of everything or are there some things you can change and others you can’t? And we say the answer lies within the words of your question. You’re asking what your expectations should be, and you have it backwards. The belief choices you make define your expectations, and those expectations define everything about you and your world. By Law Of Attraction, there’s nothing you cannot be, do or have, but for as long as you focus on so-called reality, and base your beliefs solely on those observations, you will change nothing of significance.

And then you say “But there are others in this world making decisions that I have no control over?” And we say, once again your words point to a misconception. When you say “this world” you are talking as if it’s one shared physical reality. It is not. It is an imagined reality and it exists in many versions. Yes you’re mixing it up with those other people in your life and that’s a fun part of the game, but in this one version of reality that seems to be the only version, this one version of you is intersecting with matching versions of everything. Those other people always show up within the possibility boundaries you have set – in general for people everywhere, and in particular for those more directly in your life.

There’s nothing you cannot change. You can change small things – how your day unfolds, whether you find your “lost” car keys, whether you get a good parking space, how good the service is at the restaurant. You can change big things – the well being of your physical apparatus, the amount of disposable income you enjoy, and the way in which that seemingly difficult person in your life shows up as loving and considerate. You can change “impossible” things – you can change the weather, you can go sit on the moon, you can have the sun rise in the west.

Be it a little change, a big change, or something “impossible”, the mechanism is the same. You choose to believe something new about you or your world which changes your expectation of it. A new expectation means you step into a literally new version of you, and that new version attracts a new matching context, a new version of your virtual reality.
So let’s explore a little here today, the way in which you can change your expectations and your life. You can think of it as having three steps. All of these are important. Some of you will focus more on one than another – you each have your own path of course, but let’s talk a little about the change mechanism.

Step 1 – Background awareness . Practice being aware of who you are and how it all works, because If you experience yourself only through activity, you miss the deeper silent part of you. Remember that this physical avatar you think of as you, is just what you’ve dressed up in to play this game. Underneath that costume, the only thing about you that is fundamentally true, timelessly true, is that you are an always connected extension of Source. Know this, because knowing who you are breeds confidence. Confidence helps you focus – helps you to stay consistent with the choices you make. Confidence helps you stay away from second guessing yourself.

This Step 1, is of course, the subject of many of our discussions, and we encourage you to find places like this community where you can ask your questions and get answers that make sense to you. We also encourage you to regularly visit that deeper silent place – with meditation or with guided visualization. Remember who you are. Know who you are.

Step 2 – Foreground awareness. What we’re calling foreground awareness is an ongoing ever-present awareness of where you are right now in this game of Life On Earth, of how you feel right now, and how you’re responding to the world right now. Foreground awareness acknowledges that what you’re experiencing right now, is what you’ve chosen to expect. Foreground awareness means that you could precede every declaration about your world with the words .. “In this version of the world that I am creating”. In this version of the world that I am creating, I’ve lost my car keys, or this thing or that thing is happening, or that person is being loving or difficult .. and so on.

Foreground awareness includes knowing how you feel in every moment. Feeling good means that you’re right there and then creating more of what you want. Feeling bad means that right there and then you’re choosing to head away from what you want. Feeling good is hugely important. Feeling good means being easy about it all. Feeling good means you’re staying away from “it must be this way” because that can feel like desperation. Feel good means being in eager anticipation of good things to come. Eager anticipation is high-confidence. “Where’s my stuff?” is low-confidence. If you know it’s coming, and all-is-well, you don’t have to keep score. Nothing is more important than simply choosing to feel good.

Step 3 – Then comes the question – what do I want now? The answer to that question is your new choice. And here’s where that focus we talked about in Step 1 becomes important. You need to practice that choice into all levels of your consciousness until it just becomes part of the fabric of who you are. This is what Abraham calls “lining up” with your choices. We suggest you develop some DODOs as we call them – Descriptions Of Desired Outcomes. Put some words to your desires and practice saying those words and thinking those thoughts because the biggest mistake many people make with the Law Of Attraction, is to think that a one-time conscious choice is all it takes.

Just because you make a conscious decision today doesn’t mean you have a new vibrational set point. The truth is, if you’ve spent a lot of time practicing the thought that “money doesn’t grow on trees”, it’s probable that some ongoing focus is going to be needed to build a new story into that tapestry on the topic of abundance. You cannot live with a mind that knows and accepts the certainty of scarcity, and at he same time, allow abundance. Even as you are surrounded by what seems like the truth of scarcity, you must get to be OK with all of that, and then choose to vibrate in a different way. You must be happy where you are while you’re on the way to where you want to be.

OK so let’s explore these components a little more, and we’re going to use the metaphor of your local library – the one with the books in it. Even if you’ve never been inside it, what do you know about it? As with many of the questions we are going to pose in this discussion, your first response might be, “Well until I’ve visited it and looked around, not much”. We suggest you know a lot about that library. There’s going to be a lot of books on shelves. It will be quiet. There’ll be a checkout desk, reading areas, and an Internet access area. Can you see that as you think about it, you know a lot about this place before you even step inside?

Let’s look now at the “library” in your mind, the one that contains the definitions of Your World – what we have variously called your points of attraction, your blueprint, your screenplay, your tapestry of expectations.
What do you know about this information store without even looking into it? Well .. you and you alone, built it and its contents. It’s the record of every belief choice you’ve ever made. It’s the store of information that describes everything around you. It contains the possibility boundaries that define everything you ever experience.

Now let’s go into that local library and explore. There are sections. There is Fiction and Non-fiction. There are books of many shapes and sizes. If we ask you what you know about one of these particular books, once again you might say, “Until I read it, nothing”. But in fact you know many things – in general about books, about books in libraries and books in different sections of libraries. If you take that book down and begin to read, then of course you know more and more about it as you proceed.

Now let’s step into that record store in your mind. What sections are there? Well once again there’s Fiction and Non-fiction except that this time the Non-fiction section is very small. It has only two books –
1. Who You Are And Why You’re Here, and
2. The Law Of Attraction – The Organizing Principle Of Everything.
The rest is Fiction, and within that there are sections about physical stuff (Your World and the physical you), and about your non-physical world, and your non-physical you.

In that huge section labelled Fiction, there’s a book on every topic you know about. If you don’t know it exists, then in Your World it doesn’t. If you know it exists but know very little detail, then in your world, those pages remain to be filled in, and without them being filled in, there is no such detail that exists. As you go through life, as you attract and intersect with those others out there, you are filling in the pages of one book after another. But remember, all of these are in the Fiction section. And as with all of your “books”, you can create a new edition with a changed story about any of them.

Let’s go back to that local library of yours. Look around at the Fiction and non-fiction sections. Can you see that in reality, the most inaccurate description in this place is the label “Non-fiction” because this very library is itself one of the books on the shelves in your mind, and even right now as you are thinking about it, you’re creating it. You are writing in that book, and everything in it is fictional. So how do you know what’s written in your “books”?” You get quiet. You go within. You ask .. what do I really .. truly .. expect? You listen. You will know. If you truly want to know, if you’re committed to not kidding yourself, ask, listen and you will know.

So part of Step 2 is knowing that which has already been written. Then in Step 3, pick up the keyboard, begin a new edition and submit it for publication. And re-submit. And re-submit – until you get the sense that it’s deep, and it’s in-place. You expect it to be as you’ve chosen it to be, and you feel good about it. We recommend starting with little changes, then moving to big changes, and then by the time you’re ready for the “impossible” changes, you will have discovered at your core who you are. You will be an enlightened master. But then again, you always were, and you always are. Let’s finish here by going back over some of what we’ve just described.

We encourage you into balancing your thinking. Many of you spend all of your thinking energy engaged with what you observe as reality, and as you do that, you reinforce the status quo. You reinforce the idea that it’s real which means the vibration you’re sending out is attracting more of what you’re already getting. You have to practice less the idea that seeing is believing, and start thinking more that believing creates what I see. If change is what you’re seeking, balance is what you’re needing.

And change IS what you’re seeking because at your core you’re all creators and the main tent for you creative geniuses is the process itself. You think you want new creations out there, and yes you sort of do, but you’re not really interested in creaTIONS. You’re interested in creaTING. CreaTING is why you’re here.

The three steps in conscious creation are:
Step1 – Practice background awareness. Remember who you are. Know who you are.
Step 2 – Practice foreground awareness. Be in the stands and watch yourself on the field. Choose to feel good.
Step 3 – Practice asking yourself .. What do I want now.
In other words, live life within the context of a statement and two questions.
I am God. How do I feel? What do I want now?

What you choose to believe becomes the world you experience. To change that world you must change what you believe. How do you begin to believe something you don’t believe? Only by recognizing and acknowledging who you are and the true nature of so-called reality. As in that Abraham quote we began with .. A thing is only true because someone focused upon it until it became a reality. Reality is an illusion. It’s all an inside job. We would use different criteria – not is it true, but does it feel good to me when I think about it. You see it matters not at all what that external world looks like. What matters is .. I am God, How do I feel” And what do I want now?

You’ve got to believe it before you see it. You have to feel your way to the vibrational space of Peace and power, and Fun and Freedom. You’ve got to be happy even in the absence of what you want because your desire will always be shifting, and new creations will always be calling you, and if you cannot feel good on the journey, you will always be on the wrong road.
From our artist Giora..
The critical thing is to disregard reality based on knowing who we really are. If we really experience that, then it becomes easier because we see clearly that the reality we’re in is self made.
So how much can you really change your life? Well you must tell us, because as with just about everything, it’s really your decision. We would simply reaffirm that all of it is limited only by your imagination, and that has no limits. The only limits that can possibly exist are those you’ve created for yourself by choosing to believe in them.
You are God. How do you feel? What do you want now?