Dear Readers,

Periodically, I bear my soul in embarrassing detail here on this blog and give you a glimpse into some of my own struggles. When I do this, it’s not because I want to brag about the roller coaster ride that is my life and not even because I’m trying desperately to make sure you don’t put me on a pedestal, but mostly because I see the value in sharing how I gained valuable insight from falling smack dab on my ass in some way.

Previous examples include a post where I wrote about the wisdom I gained from having my water heater explode and, oh yes, there was that time I got hacked.

I will, as per usual, offer the following disclaimer: I am by no means perfect. I have resistance, just like everyone else and I will continue to have some as long as I’m alive. In fact, I tend to live fast and focus on what I want with a vengeance, which means that when I hit resistance, there’s usually a loud bang and a whole lot of carnage. I’ve learned not to try and avoid the carnage, but instead, I do my best to use the information contained in those manifestations to help me move towards what I want. Today, I’d like to share one such recent example with you.

This is the story of how my teeth tried to kill me. Well, sort of.

It begins…

Regular readers may remember my last Spa holiday in June. I love Spas, and often visit one once or twice a year. They make it easy for me to relax, recharge and just feel like a queen. Spending a week in a quiet, tranquil space also gives me an opportunity to meditate much more than usual, and spend a great deal of time in self-reflection. This means that during this time or shortly after, I tend to have a flood of manifestations, both positive and “negative”, depending on my level of resistance. I’ve learned to just allow this to happen; I’m always better off for it.

So, there I was, having a wonderful Spa holiday. I only had a couple of days left, when I woke up in the middle of the night with a toothache. I was a bit confused, since the tooth that was hurting no longer had a nerve – it had been subjected to a root canal many years ago. But it was aching and there I was, in the middle of the mountains, without a painkiller or any means to get one. I detached from the pain using the Butterfly technique, did a bit of Reiki on it and was able to go back to sleep. In the morning, the pain was gone and I just let it go.

A couple of days later, as we were about to leave the spa, the pain flared up again – this time during the day and quite a bit worse. I was flying back to Barcelona in just under 48 hours, though, and figured I could make it. About 12 hours later, I changed my mind. I hadn’t so much as taken an aspirin in years, but I found myself having to pop Ibuprofen at shorter and shorter intervals. It was time to go to the dentist.  After some back and forth (finding a dentist who would see me on short notice and would be able to charge me directly, considering I don’t have dental insurance which is usually required by law in Germany), I was able to get an appointment with a specialist, no less, just hours before my flight. He took one of those X-Rays where you stand in the machine and it rotates around you, you know, the kind that makes you feel like you’re being scanned for cloning in some futuristic (or not?) Sci-Fi movie. I always kind of expect Arnold Schwarzenegger to pop out and eliminate the real me, once the scans are complete. Considering how much dental work I’ve had in my life, there could be a whole army of Melody’s out there somewhere. We could get one hell of a Spa discount!

The verdict

Once Schwarzenegger had taken my X-rays, he gave me the news: Not one, not two, but three of my teeth were infected due to shoddy root canal work and they were all fixin’ to explode, like nasty, little time bombs just waiting for me let my guard down and do something, like, oh I don’t know, go on Spa holiday and spend every day in a sauna, the heat of which just happens to be to infections what napalm is to a bomb. My first gut reaction was a familiar sinking feeling. I grew up with bad teeth. Cavities were a given and dentists with whizzing drills, Turkey baster sized Novocain needles and maniacal, evil cackles haunted my dreams. In the last few years, I’d been able to get the situation mostly under control. As my energy had shifted and my diet had changed, so had my teeth. New cavities were rare, my gums looked great and checkups were generally a pleasant experience, which represented a huge triumph for me.

But not this time. My stomach clenched as I realized that I had, once again, been totally betrayed by my body and that I was going to be spending the next few months getting treatments. Worse yet, the German dentist informed me that unless I found a highly skilled Endodontist (dentists who specialize in Root Canals), I would most likely lose all three teeth. I was not a happy camper. I received more painkillers and some antibiotics and was sent on my way.

The build up

What followed next was one of the most painful experiences of my entire life, surpassed only by the time, over twenty years ago, that one of my teeth decided to just up and die one day, but decided to go out with a bang. The pain of it nearly drove me insane.

We all know what happens to a water bottle in the cabin of an airplane. The pressure squeezes the bottle until it buckles. If it’s not flexible enough, it explodes. Now, imagine that your jaw is that bottle. And it’s not that flexible. Yeah. It was like that. As the infection in my lower jaw was put under pressure, the pain increased. In my haziness, I mixed up the medication and instead of dousing myself with painkillers, I was actually giving myself a massive dose of antibiotics. This, as it turned out later, wasn’t actually such a bad thing, except of course that my pain remained at a full 100%.

I focused and detached and was actually able to step completely out of the pain for seconds at a time. Even while in pain, I recognize an opportunity to practice focusing when I see one, damn it, because I’m hard core like that. For several hours, I was able to stave off a complete meltdown by focusing. I also did my best to stay positive. There was a reason for this, I just couldn’t see it yet. Everything would work out. The pain would pass. And it worked. Until I got home.

By this time, I’d been in massive amounts of pain for hours. Landing hadn’t made the pain any better. In fact, it seemed to be even worse than it had been while I was in the air. I held it together on the taxi ride home from the airport, but when I stepped into the sanctuary that is my apartment, I started to cry. I was feeling sorry for myself, was having a really hard time staying positive (I wasn’t positive, I was trying to be but was totally lying to myself at this point), and feeling a bit like a failure for not being able to figure out what the hell was actually going on. I mean, I teach this crap, for crying out loud.

On top of this, I hadn’t been able to get a hold of my dentist in Barcelona, so that I could make an appointment. His office seemed to have been shut down. So, I was going to have to find a new dentist, someone I didn’t know or trust, to fix what the German dentist had told me could only be handled by a highly specialized expert. Oh goody. I figured that I’d log onto the internet and begin the search, but when I tried, my PC, the lifeblood of my business, my entertainment, my main communication device with the rest of the world, wouldn’t boot up.

It was at this point that I totally and completely Lost. My. Shit.

The release

That’s right. I had a total meltdown. I wasn’t just crying anymore, with elegant tears trickling down my carefully arranged face while staring soulfully off into the distance. I was a sobbing, snotty, drooling, red-faced, sweaty mess. I was like a two year old throwing a tantrum – a very foul mouthed two year old, that is. I screamed at the PC, at the Universe, at God and the world. I bargained and pleaded and threatened. Take away the pain God damn it, or I’ll stop helping people. Even as I screamed my anger and desperation to the ethers, I knew I was being ridiculous. I didn’t care. I’d had enough and nothing mattered as much as getting rid of this pain. I called the Universe names, asked what the hell it wanted of me (again, I knew I was being ridiculous, but that really didn’t matter in the moment), asked why it would punish me like this, and wanted to know what the hell was wrong with me that I needed to manifest this much pain to get my own attention. Anger and rage and helplessness and desperation flooded through me and it all came busting out.

I hadn’t been triggered like that in years and quite frankly, it was all encompassing and a bit stunning. I have no idea how much time passed or how long my tantrum lasted, but eventually, I ran out of steam. I felt empty and tired and spent and like my guts had just been ripped out. But I also felt better. I had no solutions yet, the pain was still there, but the rage was gone. The emotional pain had passed.

The shift

The second my release was over, my PC booted right up. There had never been a problem with it, but the manifestation of it not working had been the last little push I’d needed to put me over the edge. I had clearly been holding on to something; something old and ingrained so that I hadn’t been able to tell it was even there. It had taken a lot to break me, to get me to let go, but once I had, my reality changed. And fast. At the time of this writing, I’m still realizing some of the manifestations that came out of all this. The PC turning on was just the first glimmer.

• I finally managed to take a real painkiller and slept soundly through the night. When I woke up the next day, the pain was gone. Sure, my face had swollen up, but the pain was totally gone.
• Through a series of amazing circumstances, which would take too long to go into here, I found an incredible Endodontist in Barcelona. She speaks English (my dental Spanish is incredibly limited, although I’m now learning), is incredibly positive and as it turns out, totally believes in energy work.
• She was able to save two of my teeth. The third was so messed up (three dentists couldn’t figure out what had been done to it), it had to go. I made my peace with that. Another specialist who does nothing but implants pulled the tooth. Incidentally, the tooth that had to go was the same one that had died and caused me all that trouble over twenty years earlier. I saw its departure as a kind of closing of the circle.
• The process of fixing a botched and infected root canal is not easy or short. Before each appointment, I visualized the procedure going incredibly well and being as pleasant as possible. My reality complied. More than once my new and wonderful dentist exclaimed that the procedure had gone better than she could’ve dreamed. That’s LOA for ya, baby!
• It also turned out that while these three teeth needed work, there was absolutely no other decay present. This was huge news for me, since it meant that I’d pretty much completely stopped my teeth from deteriorating any further. Considering a lifetime of cavities, this was HUGE news for me.
• On top of all of this, all of this work was going to cost me a tiny fraction of what it would’ve in the US (like, 1/4 the price). Halle-fricken-lulia.

The lesson

It wasn’t until after my first visit to the dentist that I turned my attention to figuring out what had REALLY happened. What had I been holding on to? As I meditated and relaxed and intended to figure it out without putting pressure on myself, I remembered that a couple of weeks before my holiday, I’d been poking about at my money vibration. I’d realized that abundance was not flowing into my reality as much as I felt it should and that something was blocking it. I tried out different visualizations but couldn’t discern any emotions. I was so used to them that I couldn’t tell the difference. So, I focused on what I wanted in order to increase the energy flow. Basically, I sped up the energy so that whatever resistance I had would become big enough for me to notice it.  Well, it did.

The release of this energy was not a psychological process. I had set the intention to release it, not even really knowing what it was. I just knew what it was standing in the way of. I knew I was dealing with beliefs that I’d most likely picked up at birth. There were feelings of powerlessness in there, but I couldn’t get a whole lot more specific than that.

For me, personally, there are few things that make me feel more powerless than dental issues. Sitting in that dentist’s chair and enduring the pain is not dissimilar to being tortured. It suddenly made total sense that my rate of tooth decay had declined and my dentist visits had become much easier, as I’d become more empowered over the years. But here was this old energy, being represented by old dental work gone bad. And there was nothing I could do to stop the pain, nothing I could do to remedy the situation. I just had to put up with it. It had been the perfect manifestation of total powerlessness. And when I surrendered to it, when I gave up, when I let go of my anger and rage and just let it out so that the energy could shift, I released the belief right along with it.

The aftermath

The changes that have resulted from the release of this energy have been phenomenal. I’d been searching for a coach who could help me figure out the next steps, and although I’d resonated with a couple, I just couldn’t seem to book a session. After this shift, circumstances led me to an amazing coach and before I knew it, I’d whipped out my credit card. It felt like the most natural decision in the world. It was like I was suddenly running on pure intuition.

The session led to several key insights, which have caused me to completely restructure my business to not only take some of the pressure off of me, but get it ready for the next level (more on this shortly). Blockages I hadn’t even been aware of were falling by the wayside, and suddenly, my thoughts around money were not only much more positive but much, much bigger. Ideas continue to flood in faster than I can even capture them. People and opportunities are coming into my life at a pace that’s nearly overwhelming. The visions for my business are now on a whole different level. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s not just a new ballpark, it’s a new game.

Are all of my shifts this volatile? God, no. In fact, as I said, I haven’t had one like this in years. But I think it beautifully illustrates the perfection of our manifestations. The tooth pain, for me, was the ideal way to mirror the powerlessness I felt around money past a certain income level, and also the perfect vehicle to drive me to the point where I was willing to let it go. The process works whether we are aware of it or not. I didn’t even need to know exactly what the belief was. I just had to intend to release it and then let it happen (not that I had much choice with this one). Hell, I even made sure I didn’t numb the pain with painkillers, by manifesting a mix up in medication. Looking back on it, the whole situation couldn’t have been any more perfect. And because of this, I don’t regret a single painful second of the ordeal. My teeth are healing nicely, the dental treatments are now a really pleasant experience, and old, shoddy work is being expertly cleaned up once and for all. My business is evolving to a place where I’ll be able to help more people, while eventually working less and making more money. All in all, I’d say it was a huge win for me.

So, whattaya think? Is it helpful to you to get a glimpse into the inner workings of my vibrational life? Have you been able to see the value in some of your “negative” manifestations?