Is The Universe Testing Me?

And is it a bad thing?

Something has been happening lately, that I can’t explain.

In the matter of two days, a number of very weird and surprising scenarios have been occurring in my life.

1 - I finally found the courage to do something important but scary, that I had been needing to do for months - only to be unable to complete the task because of technical issues. I cleansed the space, meditated, invited my spirit team to be with me, felt so much gratitude and love, looked at the letter I needed to send with so much pride in myself for what I was about to do, about to send it to where it needs to go and… “An error occurred.”

2 - I was about to head out when I received a message from one of the nursery teachers whose nursery I teach music at, saying if I heard the rumours that all the extra-curricular clubs were being suddenly discontinued, including mine. Umm… what? No, I hadn’t heard of that. And apparently, it’s true - half of my income for the next two months is being slashed in half due to the city council not having been smart with their budget. I was given a weeks notice.

3 - I’m on my way to teaching a private music club in a location outside, needing to send messages to all of the other nursery teachers whose nurseries I teach music at, and my phone spontaneously decided to enter a loop of: I’m shutting down => I’m rebooting => I’m shutting down => I’m rebooting => I’m… …all without my input and without responding to attempts at getting it under control.

I’m a lover of the Eurovision Song Contest and the UK has a great song this year called What The Hell Just Happened. The beginning of the chorus starts with that sentence and it builds up so nicely, exactly how it would if you were truly shocked at what was going on.

What. The. Hell. Just. HAPPENED?

This is me right now.

So many things have been going wrong, out of nowhere and it’s been incredibly perplexing.

But you know what the most perplexing thing has been about it? - I’ve actually not been freaking out about it too much. Mentally, I’ve been asking myself this question with all the crescendo it deserves. But emotionally? Meh.

I mean, sure, when I was about to send the letter and all of a sudden couldn’t, that did threw me for a bit of a tailspin. But I called the next day to check what had happened and the worst case scenario I could think of, wasn’t what had happened. So I easily put a plan in place that I was comfortable with, to take care of things.

When I got news that half of my income was suddenly being slashed in half, the half that I had always considered the most stable, my nervous system was weirdly kind of fine about it. “Fine, I have some savings that will keep me steady, and I’ll maybe pick up some odd jobs. I could definitely use this time to gear up towards the launch of my debut novel The Source of The Wind, which I haven’t had much time for in recent weeks.”

And when my phone decided to just go spastic and stop working, although I needed it to send messages and emails etc, my only response was, “Really? You think I’m going to get upset about this? Fine, have it your way. I’m going to eat my lunch in peace, then.“

I’ve been weirdly calm about these events; I don’t tend to be calm about much in life. I exude calm to others, based on the feedback I tend to get from loved ones and strangers. But inside, I’m usually a ball of nerves.

And yet, here I’m finding myself being very blasé about all of these happenings.

Is this a sign of growth? Seems like it. But why are these things happening at all?

Why am I experiencing technical difficulties, when I finally found the courage to do something scary that I need to do? Something that took me months to prepare myself for. Why is my income being cut in half and I only got a week’s notice? A week where I also have to plan goodbye lessons for all the kids at every nursery I teach. And why is my phone… just being weird?

What it might mean

A couple of years ago, I had a year’s subscription to To Be Magnetic, which is a program that teaches you how to manifest, based on neuroscience. The formula is that if you unblock your negative subconscious programming and beliefs, prove to your subconscious that what you want to manifest is possible to you, via seeing other people who you relate to have what you want (coined as “expanders”), and you take aligned action - you will end up manifesting what you authentically desire.

It came into my life back then in a very organic way and I could definitely see the formula in action in my own life. I discontinued it, because I realised I wasn’t committing to it as much as I would have liked. But I still think about that formula and make notes to myself when something pops up.

Like now.

In this formula, there’s something called “tests”, which is when the Universe sends us situations that are meant to test our sense of self worth for what we want. It sounds mean or ominous, but it’s not.

Because it’s not wanting for us to fail; it wants for us to pass.

It wants to see if we can handle when things go wrong, so that it knows if we can handle when things go right. If we’re ready to receive what’s meant for us. Because despite what we think, we often hold many limiting subconscious beliefs that sabotage our success and being able to hold what we truly want in life. And it only wants to give us these blessings when we’re ready to receive them, so that we don’t accidentally sabotage them.

Tests usually touch on a wound or negative subconscious belief you have, to see if you’ll respond to them in the way you would have previously (with low self worth), or in a way that matches what you want to manifest (requiring high self worth).

Some of my wounds centre around the ability to speak up for myself, my sense of security in life, and the need to stay on top of things as a way to control troubling situations.

So these weird annoyances have been happening and I’m wondering if they’re tests. Because they’re usually the kind of things that would deeply annoy me or shake my sense of security. And if they are tests, does that mean that I’m actually upleveling? Is the universe ready to give me something that I authentically desire, but it wants to make sure that I’m truly ready?

What’s been going on for me

I’ve been feeling for a while lately that I’m in some sort of transition period and that big things are about to happen.

Some of these things are things that I’m fully conscious of. My wife and I have begun the apartment hunt and we’ll be moving out soon, after having lived in our first rental apartment for four years - this is transition #1. We're moving, because we're going to need more space for when we eventually become a family of 3 - this is definitely transition #2. These are big transitions all onto themselves.

And then there are big things that are happening that I'm either still just debating whether to do or not (returning to the pursuit of achieving my masters in music therapy), or they're simply monumental for me and they're accompanied by the vague sense that something is going to change as a result (publishing my novel).

These are just the external and physical examples that I can think of. But in truth, I feel like I’m going through a big change energetically, too. I’m expanding in some way. Able to carry more and (hopefully) better at setting stronger boundaries.

Something is happening. I can feel it intuitively, even though I don’t fully understand what.

So… what now?

The truth is, I don’t know what all of this means or might mean. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, and these strange occurrences are just a string of weird and unfortunate events that life throws at you.

But maybe it really is the Universe ‘testing’ me, before some big uplevel. It’s not the first time that I got thrown some major tests, right before something spectacularly wonderful entered my life.

I don’t think there’s much I need to do, other than continue staying centred in the face of all of these ground-shaking scenarios. Trusting that I’m possibly in the middle of some sort of beautiful whirlwind. It’s whisking away everything that is no longer aligned, to clear space for what’s about to come in. And it may even be whisking me away to a land that is foreign, but is also where I need to be. It doesn’t need to shake the inner sense of security that I’ve been working hard to build.

The wind is picking up, but that’s actually a good thing.

Have you had a series of weird and troubling situations that you saw as tests from the universe? How did you respond and what happened as a result? Feel free to comment below!

Speak soon,

Love, Ella x