Hope Street: Navigating My Way Through Homelessness (Part 4) ~ Retrospect is wonderful, isn’t it? When I’m deeply honest with myself, it causes me to think about what my role is in bringing situations to my life. We are all powerful beings, beyond measure. What we think and what we do has a profound effect on our lives, like it or not. So, why not use that to our advantage? Even people like me who have habits of sometimes thinking the worse can turn things around.
In retrospect, when I was homeless, I went through the five stages of grief, as put forth by Elisabeth Kubler Ross: 1. Denial and isolation; 2 . Anger; 3. Bargaining; 4. Depression; and 5. Acceptance. I was fortunate that I was pigheaded enough to work myself through the whole process. It was only after I had accepted my homelessness that I was able to “put out” what I wanted to happen in my life at the time. Many people who are homeless don’t ever work themselves all the way through. Many stay in Anger. Many stay in Depression. Whether homeless or not, Depression can keep you down unless you discipline yourself inside. When you have a lot of other homeless people you see on a daily basis, you must find a way to rise above that feeling that nothing is ever going to get better. It takes inner strength.
Being Stripped Bare
Homelessness has a way of stripping you bare. It’s scary, but very effective if you use it as a tool to learn how to use the Law of Attraction to change your circumstances. Remember A Knight’s Tale with Heath Ledger? It still remains one of my favorite films. In the movie, Ledger’s character, William, asked repeatedly, “Can a man really change his stars?” When he first asked, he didn’t know if it was possible. But, as he held his goal out in front of himself to transform himself from a peasant to a knight, and took the challenge to heart, day by day, his dream to be a knight came true. Though one doesn’t have to go as far as I did and actually become homeless, everyone can learn the lessons that come from starting at Ground Zero.
Being homeless strips one bare. You have nothing, or very little, in terms of possessions, money, or often resources. Being homeless is a great empty slate to try your hand at creating from scratch, at manifesting good into one’s life. According to successconsciousness.com, The Law of Attraction is defined as the “magnetic power of the Universe that draws similar energies together. It manifests through the power of creation, everywhere and in many ways. This law attracts thoughts, ideas, people, situations and circumstances.” Another way to put it is: What you think about and say grows and manifests itself into physical form. One of the most basic demonstrations of the Law is: “You are what you eat.” You are what you “feed” yourself daily, in every sense of the word.
It’s All in Your POV
So, when someone is homeless, and they are buying into the negativity around them, it’s quite difficult to get out of the situation. You can see and hear misery all around you, or you can give yourself a vision of the good coming into your life – and perhap carry a few others up with you, as well. It’s all in ones point of view and each person can change their POV in a moment. Though I had created $100,000 executive jobs for myself earlier in my life, I accepted the fact that I was homeless and began looking for an “entry level,” a job to get me from Point A (on the street) to Point B (into a small apartment).
I started helping out at the mission where we went for food each Tuesday night. I would serve other homeless people and then eat myself. It showed me the true Circle of Life. It made me feel good about myself. It was my way of saying thank you to those who were going out of their way to help us, and my way of placing myself out into the world again.
Active Envisioning
In March 2013, I met a woman at the mission who gave me a call center job at $12.00 a hour. I “accepted” it. I set my goal at being off the street by June 1. I worked a lot of overtime. I would work all day and then meet my friends back at the park just before 9:00 p.m. to find a safe, dry place to sleep. I did that for three month, focusing on my goal. When I went to sleep at night, I’d envision an apartment, with a kitchen and a bed again, and a bathroom. I’d envision my personal items scattered throughout the place. I’d envision cooking dinner and reading a book by lamplight at night. I’d lay there on the ground with the clouds moving above me, and count backwards from 100 to 0 slowly, until I could actually see each and every detail. By June 17, I was off the street, along with James and Curious George.
I allowed homelessness to teach me how to create. Make no mistake, “allow” is the operative word here. I realized that I had to stop resisting and allow good to flow into my life. I needed to learn how to receive just as much as I give. Among other realizations, homelessness taught me to trust in the power of my own creation. Anyone can do it. We do it all the time, without noticing.
It’s when we become conscious of this fact and begin living on purpose – using our imagination and actions to create magic – that we change, and “our” world follows suit.
(This article was originally published in Spring 2017. It received more than a million views.)
About The Author
