Summary: “Downstream Living: How to Stop Struggling and Let Life Carry You”
This powerful message teaches that everything you desire is downstream—meaning it’s already flowing toward you effortlessly, like a river carrying you to your destination. The key is to stop resisting (paddling upstream) and instead relax into the natural current of well-being.
Key Lessons:
- The Stream of Creation – Before you were born, you set intentions into motion, and life continuously expands to fulfill them. Your only job is to stop blocking the flow with doubt, struggle, or negative thoughts.
- Emotions as Your Guide –
- Downstream = Ease, clarity, joy (you’re allowing).
- Upstream = Struggle, confusion, frustration (you’re resisting).
- How to Let Go – Stop overthinking, justifying, or forcing outcomes. Instead:
- Release resistance.
- Choose better-feeling thoughts.
- Trust the Universe’s timing.
- You Don’t Need to “Make It Happen” – Like a river raft, you don’t need to paddle upstream or motor downstream. Just let go of the oars (fear, control, doubt) and let life carry you.
- Alignment Over Action – 99% of manifestation happens vibrationally before you see physical results. Focus on feeling good now, and reality will catch up.
Final Takeaway:
Your desires are already on their way. Stop struggling, start allowing. The more you relax into trust, the faster life delivers.
Perfect for readers seeking: the Law of Attraction, effortless manifestation, emotional alignment, and spiritual growth.
Would you like a shorter version for social media or a different tone?
We know that everything that you want is downstream, and the reason that we know that everything that you want is downstream is because we know how the stream is created. We know the genesis of that, which is you. We know the intention that you held before you came into this body. We know how this body caused you to ask for more, and most of all, we know that in that asking, the larger part of you—the God Force within you—has become it. And when you hold thoughts that are contrary to that which you have become, you literally hold yourself apart from who you are, and that in every case is what negative emotion is.
Every single time Jerry and Esther went whitewater river rafting last summer, it was such a wonderful day. As they put their raft in the water, there were six friends that went together and then several other rafts full of high school wrestlers. As they put their rafts in the water, it did not occur to any of them to point the raft upstream and begin paddling.
It was obvious that that fast river was going to have its way with them. It was class four rapids in many parts of the river—they were not going to have any effect paddling upstream. And their river guide said to them, “Friends, this is not Disneyland; we cannot turn this river off.”
And this is the thing that we most want to say to you: This is not Disneyland, and this stream cannot be turned off. This stream that you set into motion before your birth, and this stream that you’ve been contributing to every day of your physical experience, is a fast-moving stream toward the fulfillment of everything that you have become. And when you relax and let yourself go, some of our physical friends say, “Oh well, if everything I want is downstream, then I should turn my boat around, and I should put a motor on it, and I should get down there to where my stuff is.”
And we say, when you feel that you must turn your boat around and put a motor on it, you’ve missed the point of the stream. The stream is moving toward everything that you have become. You don’t have to turn your boat around and put a motor on it. You don’t even have to turn your boat around—just let go of the oars, just let go of the struggle, just let go of the defense, just let go of the justifying, just let go of the rationalizing, just let go of the incessant description of where you are, and start telling the story differently. Start telling a story that feels more downstream to you.
How do you know what’s downstream and what’s upstream? You can tell by the pressure against you. In other words, downstream feels like more ease; upstream feels like less ease. Downstream is ease; upstream is a disease. Downstream is clarity; upstream is confusion. But you’ve got to figure out where you are, and you’ve got to figure out which is upstream and which is downstream. And we have to say to you, it is not hard.
We’re not asking you to stand in the middle of the depression and find bouncing-off-the-wall enthusiasm—you can’t do that. Those frequencies are way too far apart. But you can tell the difference between a thought that you’re thinking that feels a little worse and a thought that you’re thinking that feels a little better. And if you will make a decision to reach, as often as you can be consciously aware of it, for the thought that feels a little better—for the thought that gives you a feeling of relief—that feeling of relief is your indication that you have released resistance. And when you release resistance, the stream carries you.
Sometimes people say, “Well, I don’t know how I feel,” and we say, “Yes, you do. You know how you feel. You might not know how you feel in relationship to everybody else on the planet, so you might not be able to give the best descriptive label to how you feel. But that doesn’t matter because you’re not being measured against everybody else or anybody else on the planet. Your only awareness needs to be between what you’re offering vibrationally because of what you’re chronically thinking and who you really are.”
And we want to say to you: Who you really are is chronically thinking. Do you know who you really are? Do you understand that you are the Source of energy, that you are the best of all that life has produced? As that Source energy being, do you know how kind and loving and surefooted you are? Do you know the depth of the worthiness that that part of you feels?
So when you choose, for some nutty reason, to beat up on yourself or somebody else, you cause a vibrational separation between who you really are and who you’re being—because who you really are always, always, always loves.
No matter what you say—”Well now, that’s ridiculous, that the Source within me would look at bad things and like them”—that’s not what we said. The Source within you always loves, which means the Source within you looks for improvement. You’re banging around in the contrast—you know what you don’t want—but when you ask for what you do want, the Source within you gives undivided attention to that.
So when you are feeling some negative emotion, just stop and say, “How can I rephrase this or rethink this that will give me a little feeling of release? How can I let go of the oars relative to this?” And it isn’t hard.
Jerry and Esther have a little granddaughter, Kate—one of four delightful little grandchildren—and Kate is five. When she comes to play with them, she brings a little toy car, and the first thing she wants to do is hide it somewhere while Jerry and Esther go out of the room. Then she gives them clues so that they can find it. She tells them when they’re getting warmer and when they’re getting colder: “Warmer, warmer, warmer… hot, hot, hot!” They find it every single time because Kate knows where it is, and as she gives them clues and they follow the clues, there’s no possible way that they would not find it.
Kate is like the Law of Attraction—she’s not squirrely; she never messes around with them; she always gives them the guidance that is accurate. Since your life has caused you to become, and the larger part of you holds that vibration and is calling you, when you begin to consciously reach for the thought and you feel the relief in finding the improved thought before you know it, you will have reactivated within yourself the guidance system that you were born with—the guidance system of all guidance systems that lets you know in every moment which direction to move toward what you want.
As Jerry and Esther are moving from Phoenix to San Diego (they move through there quite often), they know the way—it’s 400 miles, point west, keep going, and they’ll get there. And they never are confused or worried that they won’t make it. They don’t get out there in the Arizona desert and get all uncomfortable because they have not arrived in San Diego yet, and then get confused and turn around accidentally and go back to Phoenix. Can you imagine? Phoenix, Yuma, Phoenix, Yuma, Phoenix, Yuma—and then they announce to each other or to the world, “San Diego is an impossible dream! San Diego is incurable!”
They don’t do that because that journey is easy to understand—it is a quantifiable journey, and they know what they’re doing. But sometimes we see our physical friends: You’re sick, you want to be well, you get feeling pretty hopeful about it, and you’re really on your way toward wellness. And then you stop and take score—you don’t like the results because you’re not where you want to be, and you freak out and go back to Phoenix. And so then, in time, you begin to lose your way.
If you will pay attention to the way you feel, if you will understand the concept of this stream, if you will accept that Law of Attraction is responding to this new and evolved, expanded version of you as far as life has taken you to the place of wanting it (and that’s huge, because your Source energy expanded into this physical body, and you care about how you feel), and so you start listening for a better-feeling thought—before you know it, you’ll be leaning in the direction of everything that you want.
And once you get the hang of that, what begins to happen is, in the moment that you begin to turn upstream, you recognize it so that you can do something about it. You’ll reach the place where you’ll feel complete control of your experience. The most important thing that we want you to leave here with today is: It does not matter where you are putting your boat into the stream.
If you’re putting it in a depression or bankruptcy or in the middle of a bad relationship, if you’re putting it in hopefulness or an appreciation—it does not matter where you’re putting your boat into the stream, because the stream’s moving toward everything that you want.
So what possible difference does it make where you’re putting it in? Just put it in, and then resist the urge to turn and paddle upstream. Think about the idea of healing something: “I’m going to heal it” is almost without exception an upstream thought, whereas “I’m going to allow well-being” is a much more soft, downstream thought. “I’m going to make it happen” is upstream; “I’m going to allow it to happen” is downstream. “I’m inappropriate, and I’ve got to change my ways” is upstream; “I’m appropriate, and all good things are coming to me” is downstream.
You’ll begin to get the sense in every moment whether your thought, word, or deed is in an upstream or downstream direction. And once you understand that, you will have quantified your journey. More than 99% of all of your creation is completed vibrationally before you even see any evidence about it. So if you’re waiting to take score with the evidence, you could be well on your way back in the opposite direction of where you want to go.
You could have been beating the drum without even realizing it is the illness that you don’t want—and in doing so, preventing wellness. Do you know that your illnesses are not caused because of your attention to illness? (Though you can keep them going pretty well once you begin to turn your attention to them.) But your illnesses are not created because of your attention to illness—your illnesses are created because you are holding yourselves in upstream thoughts long enough that it takes this toll on your physical body.
It’s vibrational resistance that is at the heart of everything you do not want. So we are eager to talk with you about anything important to you.
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