NOTHING YOU WANT IS UPSTREAM

“Imagine putting your canoe, with oars already inside, in a river and floating on the current, and then deliberately turning your canoe upstream and paddling with all of your strength against the flow. And as we see you in your boat, paddling very hard against the current, we ask, ‘What do you think about turning your canoe downstream and going with the current?”

And most reply, ‘Turn downstream? Oh, that just seems lazy.’

‘But how long can you keep that up?’ we ask.

‘I’m not sure,’ most answer, ‘but it is my duty or responsibility to figure that out.’

… We watch you getting more efficient at fighting the current. Your muscles get stronger, your boats become sleeker, and you discover more effective oars. And, always, we listen patiently as we hear a variety of versions on this same general theme of justification for paddling upstream, but then we always explain what we consider to be the most important thing that our physical friends could ever hear from us: Nothing that you want is upstream!..

Just Let Go of the Oars

Most people continually try to calculate the distance from where they are to where they want to be. ‘How much farther do I need to travel? How much more do I need to do? How much more weight do I need to lose? How much more money do I need?’ And this is primarily because, in your physical format, you tend to be action oriented.

We would like you to understand, however, that as you being to approach your world in terms of vibration rather than action, and in terms of thought rather than in terms of time and space and distance, your ability to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be will be much more efficient.

Sometimes, even when we are offering analogies such as this one about you in your canoe in the Stream, you want to apply your usual action-oriented tendencies. In other words, often our physical friends accept our premise that what they want is downstream, so they want to get pointed in that right direction and then they want to hurry downstream. ‘How can I get downstream to the things that I desire faster? I’ll focus better. I’ll try harder. I will work longer.’ But we want you to understand that those determined attitudes only cause you to again turn upstream. Once you are pointed downstream in this Current of Life, it is not necessary to put a motor on your boat in an attempt to make it go faster. The Current will carry you… just let go of the oars.”

- Abraham-Hicks, The Astonishing Power of Emotions