My Power Lies In Responding To Opportunities, Not Chasing
Name: Mercy Brown
Are you currently a Pathway Member?: Yes
What was on your manifestation list?:
-Everything. I was at the lowest rock bottom of my life last June.
-A town to call home, and a home to live in, that felt aligned with my Authentic Code.
-Work and income that would allow me both the freedom (time) and comfort (money) to do this work apply to graduate schools and begin my own business.
-Space and time to go deeper into a relationship with myself so that I could someday be ready to be in an authentic, mature relationship in the next year
What workshops did you use and what blocks did you discover during the DIs & workshops?: I started doing the TBM work every day. I just knew this was an opportunity, but the bottom was so dark I had a hard time imagining what was next. So I dedicated myself and went through the workshops: How to Manifest, Unblocked Shadow, Unblocked Inner Child, Unblocked Money, Rock Bottom, and then I repeated each of them, along with listening to the podcast and Supported almost daily, and the DREs in between. When they came out, I also did the Boundaries workshop and more recently did Unblocked Love.
The blocks I discovered were all linked to feeling "not good enough" (needing to work hard for everything, or if I did receive something easily, I couldn't hold onto it because I didn't deserve it) and loveable but "not wanted" (open to betrayal, abandonment, feeling discarded). This produced (along with all the other elements - astrology, human design, etc.) a creative, highly organized, and highly functional people-pleaser with a strong independent streak and anxious attachment style. Everything I built or attained was stripped away, time and time again.
What expanders did you find?: SO many. Once I tuned into it, I woke up to the fact that so many people in my life were showing me how to expand. This was friends and family, colleagues. They are people that were already in my life, but I didn't realize they were Expanders. Then I made a list of celebrities, from Jada and Will Smith to Brene Brown. And then also business owners like Lacy Phillips and others.
What tests did you face? Which did you pass? Not pass?:
Wow, so many:
1. Home//
Losing my temporary home to wildfires in August, after losing my original home to mold in May, and so went on a six mo search over half the country during a pandemic for what my next home would be - following my intuition, following the pings. I landed in Austin, a place that was nowhere on my radar but has opened its arms to me and taken me in. I have been making friends here quite easily, reconnected with family, and even stumbled into an incredible relationship within the first few days of arriving!
I passed the tests of "this would be so nice if only...": like being offered a house that was ideal and in the same town (Fort Collins, CO) as my best friend and sister. I was offered a quaint apartment in Oregon in an ideal neighborhood, living in my aunt's house in remote Texas with the option to stay through the year for free. I stayed in a Magic Dark for MONTHS while I waited for where to go next.
2. Love//
I had been letting a man court me for six months (he had been pursuing me for over a year). It never felt "right," so I took it at a snail's pace and watched for signs or patterns. When we started courting, he passed every test with flying colors. It felt magical. So when they found toxic mold in my home in LA, I took the opportunity (along with the closing of my business due to the pandemic) to move north to where he lived in Carmel - at his invitation. I stayed with him while I looked for my own place.
Within ten days, we had a massive blowout - he started to show his true colors. What I had sensed intuitively began to show up in his behavior. On the 10th day, he kicked me out of his house. I was devastated. To say this was a rock bottom would be an understatement. I had just lost my business, didn't have an income, moved north to a town where I knew no one, and now I was essentially homeless during a pandemic. The shame I felt consumed me. (Fun fact: I was so ashamed that I couldn't bring myself to use my real name when applying for a scholarship...it felt too humiliating. So Mercy Brown is a name I made up. It's not even my real name! Mercy was what I was praying for and felt like a perfect name to use. Brown, well, I think I was thinking of Mercy, which reminded me of Murphy (am I dating myself?) , so I became Mercy Brown.)
I decided not to date until I had sorted out myself. I didn't care how long that took - 1 month or one decade. I didn't want to attract that drama ever again. Nine months later, hundreds of DIs, journal pages, and all the workshops later, I felt a sense that somebody was coming. A month later, I am in Austin and meet a man who meets everything I put on my list and is 100% committed. I feel seen and loved like I may never have been. It is such a wild feeling. I can't say I am ready for it - but it is here, and I surrender.
3. Work//
I had lost my business in Covid (I owned my own large events production company). This being entirely unplanned and unseen, I had no time to prepare. One day I had a full roster of clients, the next day, I didn't. Thank god for the unemployment benefits! They gave me the space and time to consider my options and do some healing - a big part of that has been TBM work. Then one day, I listened to an interview Lacy did with a woman, and I thought, "I really like her.
She seems grounded, intelligent, and so creative. Let me look her up." I did and saw that she had a job posting. I read it and knew in my bones she was looking for me. But, the deadline for applying had already passed a week hence. I applied anyway - it was exactly the work I wanted to do. And a few days later, I was working with her!
Nine months later, the woman I was working for decided to shut down all the systems I had worked all those months to create for her business and downsized the entire team - essentially getting rid of everyone. I stayed on in a massively reduced role to help her manage small elements of her business. I am now back in a situation with limited income. BUT, I got very excited the other day because an opportunity literally came in from the most random place. It was absolutely perfect in every way EXCEPT what they could pay me.
We went through an entire hour of talking about the role, when I would start, the onboarding process - and when I asked for the salary, he balked. He asked me to tell him what I wanted. I told him, and he said, "Nobody gets paid that much here." It was my opportunity to walk away. So now I'm in a magical dark, knowing something is coming soon. My tests have been both subtle and not subtle. It's been a lot of holding my boundaries, tuning into my own inner Truth, and favoring that over other peoples' opinions.
How did your manifestation come through?: They always come in "randomly" and "out of the blue." I am an MG in Human Design and have learned that my power lies in responding to opportunities (vs. chasing after them). So I go about what I need to do for any given day and trust that things will find me. They do, but it is usually in ways I cannot predict. Moving to Austin, starting a new relationship, even the work I had until recently all came in because I acted on a 'ping' while I was just going about my life. The result of that action was an opportunity that came in so big I only needed to reach my hand out and grab on.
What is your cultural upbringing and background?: White - polish/welsh descent, Texan, upper-middle class
WORKSHOPS
How to Manifest / Shadow / Inner Child / Money / Uplevel / DREs
