“One truth you must consider. You are only as expansive, successful, joyous, peaceful and free as you truly love and accept yourself.”
~ Joseph
I saw this question in a book that I am reading. I knew immediately it was time to write about desire. There are so many beliefs about this subject that need to be examined.
Desire is a driving force, no question about that. There is however, a wide range of opinions about the pluses and negatives of desire.
I have to admit to a big bias here –
I began my inner journey about 40 years ago. In fact I remember the exact moment when my spirit began to awaken.
After completing my education degree I was looking at different possibilities for my life, I happened upon a class offered at the local college. Without hesitation I signed up for it as if guided from within.
The class was about the human potential and it was filled with the most amazing inspiration. I felt so alive. I knew I was in the right place.
Today that buzz of aliveness is stronger than ever. I have continued to be excited and passionate about the unlimited possibilities we all have.
I suspect many of you have a deep caring for humanity and what is possible or you wouldn’t be here reading my posts. These sensations of aliveness within us are just the tip of the iceberg.
In the last few weeks a shift has taken place.
First a quick summary: You may have noticed that I often revisit ideas. I do that for several reasons:
1. I have discovered that my own journey towards self-realization benefits from looking at ideas and concepts from variety of perspectives. I suspect that is true for you.
2. Reminders seem very helpful in these times filled with such distractions. I am curious what you need to be reminded about as you move towards your highest expression? Please leave comments below.
3. I find that every time I read something I resonate with, I expand in my awareness; I open to a greater understanding. At this blog I explore timely issues for each of us on a path of awakening. What kinds of ideas resonate with you? Comments welcomed.
I hope you find this summary helpful and a good-lead-in to one of my favorite themes – Being and Doing.
This week I want to share several helpful perspectives, which may not seem related but I promise to tie them all together before this post is over.
Each one of these 5 points is worthy of a full post and they may receive that attention in the next few weeks. For now though, I will share these ideas so you can immediately explore what they have to offer:
1. There are no enemies. The only enemies are in your mind.
Over the last few months I have been sharing ideas with you that I find words inadequate in expressing. This writing challenge is tied to ongoing seismic shifting of my inner sense of self and the world.
At this point in my life I’ve committed to leaving a lifetime of programming behind. Now I am on a personal journey of deepening awareness, expanding compassion and realizing the highest levels of potential and expression.
Recently I’ve had a number of insights that have been very helpful. My hope is you can join me in exploring these higher levels of knowing.
My first insight is why joy matters.
Recently I was exploring several ideas about how things in life work or don’t work. After spending time journaling and further exploring my ideas I soon had helpful inspiration and guidance.
The guidance was that what determines how well you and I do things is how well we place our attention on what we are doing. That makes sense doesn’t it?
I want to suggest a more expanded definition than how attention is usually defined – it is not only the focusing of your mind but also of your heart and spirit.
Beyond the ordinary of daily life there is a vast reservoir of possibilities available to you. This potential sits quietly whispering with hope that you will do something special with your life.
Special, not in the standard way dictated by social norms, but in a way that screams look out, ready or not, here I come. With boldness you can be genuinely you and vibrantly alive in all that you do.
For too long you have been getting ready, haven’t you? I know I have. Reading, listening, watching, learning, always hoping the next knowing will leave the self-doubt behind. It never does, does it?
Well today is the day. Put your collection of notes aside. Fire the inner critic. Take no more classes. You have all you need inside. Truth be known, there is everything you will ever need to know available to you right now.
There are no secrets here; just doing what you know will work for you. Let’s call this practice - Life Made Easy and let’s begin with what you need to stop doing:
It’s time to get up and move. Spring has sprung and your body is ready to re-engage with the natural world.
I love to walk. There are many reasons for that. Let me share with you why walking is so important. My hope is that you will join me and make walking part of your daily life.
There are many benefits from walking. Walking is not only good for the body but also super good for the mind, heart and spirit:
In the last post, I shared with you the basic life attitudes of Yes, Maybe and No. I advocated for the importance of living the Yes way. Yes is the very best response to the chaotic world we live in.
I decided to follow up the last post with what to say YES too. I know in my heart Yes is more fun, healthier and what works best for creating the life you want.
This is a long list which is exciting because that means there are so many energizing and joyous ways to say Yes.
If you are willing to play with this list of Yes possibilities, I can make you a promise – You will love living your life this way.
Each day, in every way, say YES to the following:
I realized recently that my journal writing has been much more powerful than I had ever been aware of. Things have shifting in so many ways over the past year.
Those shifts have been powered by the writing I do daily in my journal. This is not some boring account of my day or a discipline I push on myself. It is more a life force vibrating with meaning and aliveness.
The more I explore it the more vital the exploration becomes. Now, I feel an essential piece of life is missing from my day if I don’t sit, tune in and write.
My home sits near Hwy 101 on a rural part of the Oregon Coast. I see huge trailers and RV’s go by every day. So it is no surprise that I would use the following metaphor:
Today I realized that for all my life I have been towing a trailer behind filled with the past, overloaded with faulty programming, jammed with false beliefs and full of trained self-doubt.
For many years I added more and more emotional and mental junk to this trailer. I needed lots of will power just to plod along through life and try to keep my head up.
Too much time was spent thinking I am not enough, good enough or deserving. My mind was trained to be a non-stop judging machine of others and myself. I found it easier to play the blame and complain game than to take responsibility for my own life.
Have you run into any of this? If so, you understand how heavy your trailer can get.
Recently a reader of my blog left a wonderful comment about receiving and it stimulated a flow of ideas that I became very excited about. The excitement sprang from that fresh perspective and experiences his comment stirred in me.
As a result, I went to work journaling about how to be open to receiving. I use my journal to tap into my higher mind and the guidance from my soul. This is what came to me in bright flashes of insight:
Receiving Of Flow
Begins as an opening
With an opening, comes a trickle
That expands into a steady flow
Then a vibrant stream begins to stir
This over time becomes a powerful river
Along the way you remain open, receptive and grateful
Then you and the flow become one in an ocean of abundance
I sensed a shift in a brief moment of awareness. In that moment I realized that experiences never end. They keep flowing through our lives and either we are aware of them or not.
If you take this moment now and expand your awareness you will see what I mean. Right now you are reading this and having responses to these words and ideas. There is the flow of energy in your body as you sit here. There are feelings activated by your thoughts.
You are a stream of experiences flowing through the now. If you pay attention, there are thoughts telling you what is going on and under those thoughts, just experiences.
Your thoughts are you trying to make sense out of the moment. Your experiences don’t need understanding, they just happen.
These never ending experiences represent more of who you are then your thoughts.
After a weekend of deep conversations, moments of bright light and insight and a re-examination of ideas and beliefs, I feel renewed. I also feel very quiet and peaceful.
I am now back at home but life seems altered. I’m not sure how or what it all means but that is all right. I am living in the moment with appreciation for all that is as it is.
My seeing and understanding has expanded. That’s exciting.
I thought I must have some deeply profound things to share.
Truth is what matters. It is what you and I are here in this lifetime to explore. And it is something we each have to find on our own. No one else can know what our truths are.
There are many institutions and organizations that have their opinions about what truth is. Religions, political parties, media, and science all claim to hold the truth.
But they cannot possible know what your truths are. It is not something told to you or found in reading sacred writings. It is an inner experience of awareness.
Your truth is unique to you. It’s most easily found by listening inward to the voice of your soul or higher nature. It’s your sense of inner knowing or it isn’t your truth.
What do you tell yourself about who you are and what your life if about? That is your story. How does your story limit you?
Like computers, you have a set of basic programs that run your life. Many of your programs contain out-of-date stories that too often limit how well you function.
Much of your earliest programming needs serious upgrading. Yet you continue daily to replay that programming with your thoughts.
These programs can be upgraded to expand your life.
By the time we reach adulthood we have very deeply grooved programs about:
My life has moved from a busy doing to a quiet being. I am now living a big experiment of “being” in my life as fully as I can.
Doing life means most days I did a job, exercise, ate, read, wrote, and repeated all this the next day. Life can become a habitual doing more on the level of surviving than thriving.
Being means each day is a new adventure, unplanned, unrehearsed, and unfolding. There is still eating, writing and practices for my well-being but those flow out of a way of life that is not programmed but simply experienced.
An inspirational friend of mind said that living life as an experiment is much more interesting. That made great sense to me but it has taken awhile to fully set this experiment up.
The conscious experiment of being fully in life has now been going on since moving to the Oregon Coast one and a half years ago. This way of being has opened me to a number of interesting discoveries. I want to share them with you because I think we can both learn from what they tell us about life.
Lessons from my life of being present:
There is a growing choir of voices that seems to be abuzz about the need for real change. If you have a questioning mind you most likely have joined this choir. Questioning is powerful because it provokes awareness in you.
With awareness you see beyond the surface. You see where old ideas and false beliefs get in the way. You understand the powerful role emotions play in directing the world and your life.
Presently the dominant paradigm is breaking down. The ego-mind based decisions, that for too long have dictated all our systems, are no longer sustainable. More expanded minds and hearts are called for to lead the way.
When 1% of the population collectively understands the need for real change, the ideas about that change begin to spread across the planet. We are presently beyond that 1%.
When 10% of us understand the need for real change, the ideas promoting change become unstoppable. We appear to be nearing that globally.
Do you ever hold yourself back? Most of us do. How do you get in your own way? Let’s explore why that happens and what you can do about it.
It happens because throughout your life you are being programmed and much of that programming is false. Not only is it false but it goes unquestioned.
What this means is, you have false ideas and beliefs running your life all day, every day and you are not even aware that’s going on.
Are you ready for a healthier expression of you?
You are programmed to think that you:
