Tag Archives: love

The Will to Work is The Will to Live

Life is movement. It has momentum. It has a rhythm and when it stops – life stops. We have to keep playing the game of life otherwise we will fail to exist and this is core to every living thing in the Universe. Atoms have to keep vibrating. Photons have to keep pulsating. Trees have to keep breathing. Animals have to keep beating and humans have to keep creating.

This rhythm is true to everything in the Universe because its counter-point is entropy, which describes the inevitable decline of every system into chaos and disorder. This decline exists because no system is perfectly balanced and so there is always an energy leak. The leak is catered for by this rhythm of life that we all create. It is the desire to keep moving, to push forward. To do the work we have to, to give the system more energy, and even more energy than from where we started. We have to be inspired enough to take another step even when we have nothing left.

Risks lead to good things

Power of Purpose

So often we hear of people who retire and live without passion, without purpose and then they very soon leave this world. Too often we hear about a person, who has fought the good fight and continued to live on only until they decide to rest. Studies have shown that people in there 80’s who had a daily practice of stagnant resting had close to a 50% mortality rate of surviving over a 6 month period, compared to people who actively engaged through a mindfulness practice that had nearly a 100% survival rate over the same period. What this tells us is that we have to continue to be present to our system, continue to work for our life and our lives.

Will is your Life Force

We turn work into energy that can then translate into many different areas of our lives. When we put work into our relationship, and think to bring gifts, provide help and show our appreciation for the loved ones in our lives – those relationships grow stronger. When we do nothing they wither and die. When we put work into our bodies through exercise, eating healthy, and maintaining a consciousness practice – we live longer. When we become lazy and indulgent with our bodies – we put needless stress and pressure on the system causing it to fail sooner. When we work for our job, go the extra mile, and help out our coworkers, letting them know that we are appreciative of them and respect their efforts – we excel at our jobs. Yet if we lounge around and create discord, we no longer progress and often lose our place.

Energetic Credits of Money

Interestingly much of this energy we put back into these systems of our lives – relationships, work, health – is facilitated by money. And what is money, but merely the easiest and most transferable form of energy. We turn work into energy, which we then can transfer through money. It allows us to buy and grow our lives through credits we have done for work. All this work that we do in our lives results in money and this money we can transfer into each system to help maintain the overall human system. So as you can see every system in your life requires work and energy to fight the natural tendency of life to break down. And while its hard it’s up to you to maintain these systems, to keep the plates spinning so they don’t fall, to keep the balls in the air so they don’t drop and break.

But know this: Your will to work starts with you. This work is for you, not for others. Work on yourself and others will reap the rewards. The will to live is generated from the work within and the will to work from you will only then extend beyond the current form. The exciting thing about this work is that it never stops. When we have mastered the current rhythm, we invite ever greater intricacies to the systemic patterns of our life in order that we can continue to expand our repertoire, increase the complexity or our life’s rhythms and grow the breadth of our consciousness to make us ever more creative and effective human systems for the world. So the next time you feel overwhelmed by the work you have to overcome know that you are growing the systems of your life to ever higher places with each and every step forward.

Love the advenure

Crushing the Global Psychological Epidemic: The Hero’s Journey from Child to Adult

For a long time I have thought about this problem that affects every person in the developed world and only recently I am moving to explore that these new revelations are the cause for the greatest epidemic affecting the whole world. This global affliction of the developed world is our feeling of Worthlessness. This manifests in countless ways, destroying people’s lives through self loathing, a lack of self belief and suspicion of the world around, to name only a few. We then see this in destructive behaviours, such as drug abuse, infidelity, suicide, etc.  I originally thought this came from a lack of love but then I had to wonder where did that come from and I believe that I have stumbled upon the path to help lead us to the core of this problem. The Lack of Self.

The Sense of Self 

Without a sense of self, we have no firm ground to stand on, no strength of wisdom to drawn from in times of need. We look to others to fill the void of true identity in order that we can know who we are. Often when we find people we take that this feeling of “filling the void of self” as such an intense relief, we think we are in love. But this relief is short-lived, because the person who has filled us up falters due to the fact that they also are searching for self. They were not able to satisfy every whim that the self demanded in order to feel fully valued. We will later consider that this is because the self is continually looking outward for validation. This leaves the self feeling angry and despondent that this person left us feeling empty or invalidated. All people want is to be seen but how can we be when who we are, our core self, is vapor? And so this leads us to the question where has this epidemic started from? Well it all begins at the edge of childhood.

 Child vs Adult

In childhood, lives the child mind. This is true for boy and girl. Here curiosity and wonder live as we explore and learn, not only about the world but also, about our selves in the world. We are working to form who we are as we pummel and push ourselves through life in these formative years. Childhood requires external stimulation whereas adulthood can take from internal reflection. This is because adults have determined a sense of self. Without the sense of self the child mind is left with a deafening silence and looks to the outside to distract it from the silence in the form of tv, sex and drugs, to name a few. Through the external activities the child is free from the silence and the void of self. Whereas the adult self can go inside and reflect on the self. It can use the self as a source of strength and a spring of wisdom in order that it may truly attain the moment and recognize the truth of their happiness.

 

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The Villains of Happiness

Epicurus, a 4th century BC Greek philosopher spoke of happiness as 3 things: community, freedom to pursue your passion, and space to reflect and grow the psyche. The media panders to the child in advertising using the first 2 elements so that we are able to be constantly stimulated and not need to reflect on the self. Reflection is not conducive to media stimulation and therefore our child audience is missing a great opportunity to explore the self. We never see advertising marketed to the child mind to stop and contemplate on self but rather to accrue more friends and do what they want to do (only the first two epicurean parameters of happiness) Additionally, a stigma has begun to form around the person that spends time by themselves. They are anti-social. They are introverts. They are depressed. Are they plotting to harm others?

The Hero’s Journey from Child to Adult

The transition of child to adult mind often requires the child to complete a hero’s journey that begins their move into their adult mind. It is when they die to the security of their self as the coddled dependent and rather they embrace their journey as the solo adult. It is at this point the person now begins to realize that they are the master of their lives and are willing to take sole responsibility for it, without resentment, but with unencumbered love. Through life we have countless opportunities to die to our old selves and embrace the new. In marriage. In parenthood. In our careers. We must constantly surrender our ego and let it die in order that we allow the ever maturing adult mind to shine through. The child needs to push to its limits, feel the fear, and then continue to strive onward. This takes courage because we face our biggest enemy – our scared child selves. The child self that is telling us to go back home and try to be safe. But we must push passed these limitations of the child.  We must let that self die. We must be willing to get burnt by the dragon in order to defeat it. And on the other side of our quest lies the treasure of learning and attaining our true sense of self. We see this over and over in the entrepreneur, the selfless mother, the devoted husband.

The Adult life

How do we find the courage to push passed these limits? We push past our limitations to take responsibility for what we are not responsible for. We pick a dream that is bigger than our life. A dream that takes more than one lifetime to complete. When you find those dreams, you grab onto them and you ride them down the rabbit hole to wherever they may lead you because once on this journey you know you will have travelled a life well lived. So be brave. Embrace your responsibility. Believe in yourself. Take help from your friends. Follow your dreams. And look inward to learn about who you REALLY are. When we take the time to live these simple rules we begin to open ourselves to the wisdom that exists within our adult self and we will begin to truly know ourselves as whole and worthy people. We will begin to accept and love ourselves. And the epidemic that has left us defeated and deflated will be replaced by a global community of conscientious adults that live and learn from love, for themselves, from others and from the gifts of the world around.

 

The Way of Extropy (The Extropist Series – Part I)

There is a road we all must walk. There is no denying it. We each step on it as we are born and we continue to be on it until the day we die. This road is the road of life and we can choose where it will take us or we can go along for the ride and let it take us there. That is up to us. Whether or not we end up where we wanted to or not comes down to choice. A choice of whether we are extropists or entropists.

Entropy comes from the second law of thermodynamics which states that all systems leak energy to spiral down to an inevitable state of chaos and disorder. This is the most common form of existence, as we find that more often than not the things we have created or try to create often end up in disrepair. Whether its relationships, our careers, physical and mental health, these are all systems that are ultimately overcome by the forces of entropy. An example of this may be we fall in love, we get married and then we begin to take our partner for granted. We have put in the amount of energy required to win their hearts and now things should just coast along. Right? Wrong. Entropy states that there will be a natural dissipation of energy that will ultimately cause the system of your relationship dynamic to begin to degrade, collapse and fall into chaos. So how can we stop this from happening? Extropy.

Entropy

Extropy on the other hand is putting a stop to this energy leak caused from entropy by injecting more energy into the system than its losing which results in an evolved system dynamics of using this energy. Extropy may come in the form of a couple in a failing relationship putting the time and effort into build new communication channels which result in a clearer dialogue and a happier time between the couple. Or it may result in a person studying outside of their work in order to have a greater understanding of their job so that they can do their job better which results in a promotion. Extropy ultimately leads the actor towards a system of greater organized complexity, rather than greater disorder and chaos. Ordered complexity here might sound uncomfortable but what it is referring to is ever greater functionality offered to the system with the most effective and efficient use of energy. The system can constantly evolve. There is no limit.

Evolve with love - MLK

The greatest from of energy that we can offer is love. Love comes in many different forms, shapes and colors. Two experiences of love to mention are gratitude and giving. They require the person to actively choose to involve themselves with good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Gratitude is the internal manifestation and experience of love and giving is the external manifestation and experience of love. These forms of love are a way in which to give energy to a entropic system in order to inspire change and elevate it to greater functionality and purpose.

Therefore we need to think about how and where we put our energy and use our time. When we operate unconsciously and automatically we give energy to our habits, which are behavior patterns we apply to try to use the least amount of energy. These autopilot holding patterns may keep us feeling like we are safe but very soon we will run out of fuel (energy) and will be forced to act very fast and put ourselves in very stressful situations. So take control of your destiny and use the free will that you have been granted in order to create the destination for your road rather than have it direct you to a failed destiny. Ensure that you strive to remain a conscious creator of your life in order that you are continuously giving more energy to a situation than letting what you have created leak entropically out into the Universe around. Instead, as an extropist you want to constantly address your life with love and ask how may you give to it in order that it may evolve into a space of ever-greater ordered complexity and profound purpose. Good luck on your Journey!

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Overcoming Obstacles – Strive to Surrender

We strive so hard to create something in this world that we can call our own, that we can be proud of. We come up with the idea, we go out and we work at it to make it happen. Sometimes we get there sometimes we don’t, but always we face one thing – A road that is filled with its ups, and most certainly, its downs. These downs are a trial by fire that has us look into the depths of ourselves. It questions whether we are deserving of this creation to become manifest and real or to fall into the lost shadows of things that could have been.

This decision is not made by a cosmological jury that rests high on some ideological mountain, nor is it a mythical being that weighs up all that you have done which validates your worthiness of birthing this creation. That which that decides is you. You are the person that needs to accept you. You are the person that needs to look deep into the person that you are and decide and define yourself as worthy of receiving.

Believe

So often when we attempt to create these dreams, obstacles come in our way, but why are they there? They are there to strengthen and stretch you. They are there to have you realize that you can do it. That you can say to yourself and the world… “Yes I can!” And that is the point of these troubles. That is the reason that YOU brought them into your life. You must grow into the bigger version of yourself in order to have the strength to handle the bigger version of your life. There is a great saying – “Small life, small problems. Big life, big problems.”

It is interesting to think that if you have asked for these things into your life, ultimately asking for these tests to present themselves, then what else can you ask for and how can you handle them? Do you fight against the fact that they have arrived? Do you try to wrestle them down to the earth and slay them like they are undeserving of existence? Maybe. Another way to handle these situations is with a word. A word that to many people seems like defeat but it’s a word based on faith and trust in the process. That word is… Surrender.

How, some may ask, can surrender result in a win? The answer is trust. When you try to create something, you set in motion a chain of events that results in your dream to be created. The chain of events are the never-ending and interconnected line of cause and effect that results in a continuous stream of action to occur, resulting in something momentous. The butterfly effect states that even from the smallest butterfly wing flap, a giant tsunami can form.

Our thoughts affect the world, not only through our action as an indirect consequence but also as a broadcasting station that reaches out past our bodies. The magnetic field from our heart has been recorded several feet from outside our bodies. Such thoughts and feelings affect the surrounding world and can result in a cascade of events that results in your test, your impasse, in which you struggle to get through.

It is however your resistance and fight that makes this transition a struggle. The same that if you try to stretch and move a tensed muscle, it is not very fluid, movable or mobile. However, when we surrender to the stretch, when we breathe into the experience, accepting it, we allow for movement and change. It is this trust that we have when we stretch and surrender to the movement and hurt, we will grow from it and ultimately be better and bigger by putting ourselves through the experience.

The same exists in our experience of life. We are stretching our consciousness. We are making ourselves bigger, because we asked for it. Because of what we are trying to create in the world, like with growing pains, as we grow we must surrender to the inevitable result of letting go of the past versions of ourselves and accepting the new bigger and better. Allow yourself to be your best, trust in the process and you will find yourself earning your rites of passage.

Emerson Quote

Head to the Heart – the fastest journey to fulfillment

We as humans seek for the highest experiences of life. We strive in many different ways through many different activities, all in the name of reaching our highest peaks.

But what are these peaks made of? And how do we get there? Peaks are made up of highs and lows, the valleys as well as the mountains. If they weren’t, then everything would be flat. So too are our personal peaks made up of polar opposites. These poles exist in our body and given the names the Heart and the Mind. The mind is the active pole and is the engine that drives us toward an end. The heart is the passive pole that stores the passion of our dreams and fuels our drive. These are the polar opposites that have been spoken about for thousands of years across hundreds of cultures. The Yin and the Yang, Shakti and Shiva, etc. These two poles have different requirements to satisfy in order to reach our peak experiences.

Go with the flow

Mind: Emptiness is Freedom
Let us first look at the active force. In a battery this is considered the positive pole and its role is to send the electric current to the negative pole. This is also considered the masculine energy and its pinnacle is freedom and is experienced through emptiness. As a person strives for a goal in their activity and works hard in order to complete the task, once they have finished the task they have started they are deserving of a break, of a moment of peace and freedom. A space where they don’t have to think but they simply can revel in the joy of what they have created or completed. This active force opens us up to an empty space in which we can truly experience freedom. A good example of this is in sex for men in which they are often the active force of the task and once they have reached their climax of the experience they move into an empty space, one of freedom, where the built up tension has been released and they can go to sleep.

Freedom is the Mind
Emptiness and freedom is an action of the mind. It is a place where we realize there are no limitations and we embrace abundance and true potential. Our conscious minds role is to constrict, to limit and to process. It weighs up options and says what can and can’t work. Upon reaching a freedom state, people often don’t remember the experience, they feel like they have transcended time and space. This is often called Flow or in the zone and it is here that we move out of our mind and the freest we can ever be.

Filled freedom leads to anxiety
When we are not in a freedom state we feel anxious, we feel overwhelmed and constricted. People often express they are feeling physically squeezed. This is because their minds have the tightest hold on them and they are as far away from freedom as possible. They are wearing the weight of the world on their shoulders. They are obliged and responsible. Of course this is all in the mind.

Freedom Practice
We can begin our journey to freedom through the practice of meditation. It is here that you can observe your thoughts and understand the limitations that you place on yourself. When you are quiet you will literally hear the stream of chatter in which you are telling yourself about how limited you are. About how much responsibility you have. About how you are surely going to fail.

Start with 10 mins, 5 mins, or whatever you feel comfortable with and begin to add a minute a day. Sit or lie down, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Slow it down and take long deep breaths. Count each breath up to 10 and then start your counting again. You will notice your mind wander to limiting thoughts. Catch your mind and understand these are not real but only thoughts and then bring your mind back to counting your breath. We can look at any experience and feel free in what we are doing. When are free we don’t have those limitations anymore. Anything is possible and we can be anyone, anywhere at anytime.

joy

Heart: Surrender is Love
The second domain is a little different. This is the negative pole in the battery and its role is to receive the energy from the positive pole. It’s akin to the feminine energy and its pinnacle is love, which we experience through surrender. Surrender is the complete experience of receiving without any resistance. When we can truly receive we can fill ourselves up. We are deserving of what we are given and we take it completely and wholly with thanks. This feeling of love is a feeling of whole-ment of fulfillment, where we are full and whole from life and what we were doing.

Love in the Heart
Love and surrender is an action of the heart. It is the opposite of the mind. As the mind is a limited channel that strives for emptiness and freedom, the heart is a truly abundant channel that requires you to open it up as much as you can – To have the courage to be vulnerable. To be free, to love as big as you can, because the bigger you love the fuller you’ll be.

Limiting love leads to Depression
We often see this love and fulfillment stop when a person is in depression. Here a person has closed themselves off from their hearts and they feel empty and worthless. Their life is now without purpose or fulfillment. They block out the light in their life. They block themselves from receiving anything and anyone that they would let into their heart. This is a dark experience and one that hides a person away from experiencing their life to the fullest.

Love Practice
So it is so important to be brave. To have the courage to take a step forward towards being vulnerable and opening yourself to experiences. To life. To love. To learn. By trying new things and being open to the unknown we will most certainly make mistakes. This of course is not saying go from depression to universal love because that is a dangerous and somewhat difficult task. Instead, work out the step that is the right size for you. What can you do today that opens you up one step closer to Love. Write a love letter to someone – you don’t even have to give it to them. Say thank you to a stranger. Smile at the teller at the market. By giving you are opening yourself up to receive. And remember… You deserve it. You are worthy of it all.

Head to Hearts
You may have noticed that there is a natural movement from the head to the heart. This is the same as the energy flow from the positive pole to the negative pole of the battery is the masculine pole of the mind to the negative pole of the heart. The energy naturally wants to flow towards a space that can harness and handle copious amounts of good flowing to it we just need to stop restricting the channel. A wise Native American proverb states the longest journey we will ever travel is from our head to our hearts. I find it amazing because our minds and hearts are truly the yin and yang. We are moving to fill up our hearts and we moving to empty our minds but everything and nothing are the same thing and both have an unlimited capacity for abundance. So move towards freedom by becoming aware of your mind and give to yourself and your world and you will fill up your heart. And with each step you take you will be one step closer to your dreams filled with freedom and love.

Follow your Bliss…The hero’s journey always reaches their dreams

Everything that we do in life is a journey. It is in fact a hero’s journey. A journey of growth and learning on how to better ourselves by tackling the darkest aspects of ourselves. These can be fraught with dark moments of doubt and shame. But we must remember to hold strong to our dreams and know what are the essential characteristics that will allow the hero to vanquish the demons that lie before us on the road to a hero’s victory.

We can think of any task that lies before us as all part of the hero’s journey. Relationships work the same way we think of exams, and the same way we think of making money, these are a means to an end. These are tasks set before the hero to prove their worth on the road to his dreams. They are a currency that we use to reach our dream. They are the things that give us security and feed our egos but they aren’t our dreams. I have not heard of any person in their life saying, “when I grow up, I want to be a person that gets the best grades”. No, typically people dream of being a doctor or an architect or a fireman. These are of course arbitrary. The point is that they dream about becoming someone who does something of worth and provides something, whether it is their love, or something or service to the rest of the world.

When you define ‘why’ you want your dream, you elicit emotional responses deep in your physiology that will drive and motivate you with the joy you receive from your dreams to reach the person you want to be. So, who do you want to be when you grow up? Don’t think about the “how”, focus on the “what” and the “why”? What do you want to be? A doctor. Great! Why? A designer. Great! Why? A wonderful partner. Great! Why?

Your “why” will also give you an armour to protect you on this treacherous path. It will give you a resilience to keep on charging forward when you have taken a blow to your psyche and your dreams. Our love for a dream is what has every hero reach their goal, no matter what the challenge that falls before them. So give energy to define who you will be in your future and you will be able to reach whatever dream you have in your mind. The definition gives a context for why you are doing the things that precede the dream so that you can reach it. It means that when you are working on a relationship, studying, working hard to get a business started or putting in a big effort as an intern, you can use your passion for your dream to motivate you and understand that this is one step closer to becoming a reality.

Which leads me to the second part of the hero’s story. Once you understand your dream and have defined why you are taking the long journey to its gates, you then need to bring your head back from out of the clouds and focus back on your task. Whether you are studying, working, or paying your dues. You must give to the task with everything you’ve got, like this is the only step on your journey, and then you will take another step with the next task, class or client and you will give to that with everything you’ve got. Eventually, you will have taken the thousand-mile journey and walked the path one step at a time with integrity and grace. You will have learnt all that you need to prepare you to open the doors and walk through the gates of your dream.

The best thing about all of this is that originally you will begin your journey on the promise of the glory of your riches but ultimately the real treasure will have come from the journey you took to reach your dream rather than the dream itself. This is something to remember and hold in a prominent position in your mind because when you begin to feel overwhelmed by the task at hand, you can be thankful that you will overcome this obstacle, and when you do, reaching the ultimate goal will mean so much more than if it was given to you on a silver platter. So I ask that you enjoy the difficult times, remember why you are doing them to give them a context that motivates you. Give to the task at hand like it is the only task that you have to do and give to it with all your might, energy and love.

With these tools at your hand, you will be able to tackle any troubling times to reach any goal that you have and bring a new richness to any and every task that lies before you. You are the hero of your life and the only person that needs to believe in you… is you. Good LucK and Follow Your Bliss!

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Dream Big, Think Small

So often we find ourselves asking the question what does it all mean? Why am I here and what am I doing? We usually find ourselves asking this same question in the same place. A place that is the most relevant to be asking and more often than not the most depressing space, and that is… our job. So often our careers are the most dissatisfying element of our lives, yet they are where we spend the most amount of time. We spend in fact, outside of sleeping, the majority of our day at work. So what is work and what can it be for us? It can be that which truly fulfills and nourishes who we are inside. It is not just a proxy to our dreams, it is the real thing. Our work is the space where we can step forward and fulfill our purpose. This is a very important idea, because it answers the age-old question why are we here? Well each person is here to answer their own question. Another way of saying this is that there is no meaning to life except for the meaning that you give it. That meaning is your dream!

The bigger the dream you choose the harder it will be to fulfill, but also the more meaning you will receive from life. Taking meaning from life fulfills you as you step towards that dream. For instance, if your dream goal is to make $1000, you will work towards it and reach that goal and then what? You will have to make another goal. There is nothing wrong with this and it is actually a very effective method, when you know what the FINAL outcome is. The big dream that you are trying to reach. This may be daunting to think what this dream could be, but once you select it you can then begin to take steps towards it. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the father of optimal functioning, said initially the goal justifies the means but ultimately the means justifies the goal. What this means is that while you originally thought the luster of the treasure at the end of the rainbow is what will give you the satisfaction in life, in fact it’s the journey that you went on to get to the that makes the dream and the life all worthwhile.

So why tell you all this? It’s because while you have to dream big you have to also think small. Because if you try to contemplate the magnitude of your dreams you will become overwhelmed and literally become nauseas from the great heights you will have to climb. What I mean by ‘think small’ is only focus on the step in front of you and give everything you have to that one step. Think about everything that you will need to do and break them up into smaller packets of events. If those seem too big then break those down. Each one is like a brick in the wall. Instead of focusing on the wall and the thousands of bricks you have to lift up and put in place only focus on the brick itself and make sure that you really put it in place properly. If the brick is too big break it up. It’s more important that you can handle the brick than get to your goal quickly. As my friend said to me, “you don’t have to eat the elephant in one go”.

Remember what Aesop told us about the hare and the tortoise. Life is not a race, you are running only for yourself. Find patience and pace yourself by what you need to accomplish to reach the finishing line of your dream. If you compare yourself with those faster than you, you will be overwhelmed and doubt yourself and your chances. If you compare yourself with those slower than you, you will become arrogant and sloppy. Focus only on the tasks in front of you and give to them. You won’t waste your resources thinking about other people or your performance capabilities. Keep your attention outside on what you have to accomplish.

Slow and steady wins the race.
Aesop (Greek slave & fable author, 620 BC – 560 BC)

What does this mean in a real-life application? If you were talking about a dream job? What are the things you need to do to get the job? Know the job you want. Know the person you need to be for that job emotionally, mentally and physically. See yourself in that job and understand the things that you will do. Know the reason why you want the job. Understand that it is in your planning that you will become clear on who we need to be now to reach our dreams. Sun Tzu (Chinese General – The Art of War, 500 BC) said “Now, the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought.”

We must understand the person we need to be for our dream. Whilst we have patience for the dream we have to embody the person that we will become. We have to take an active role in our transformation of becoming the hero of our journey. To take the planning further and create a greater belief of the hero in you. So know what you will do when you get the job. Know who you will tell and how you will feel. Know what this job means to you and write it down. Write it all down and take action where you can. Take action and give powerfully to every life detail of your big life dreams. Life wants you to take the reins and give the meaning that only you know it can have for you, because when you are the main actor in your life… Well then, all the world is your stage!

Gratitude Lets you Lift a Light amongst your Shadows

So often we find ourselves lost in the stormy seas of our emotions. These ominous feelings tower over us, leaving us blinded by a fog of uncertainty. We try to clamour our way through the shadows but we aren’t able to get a grasp on anything. Who is there? Who are we fighting? We are fighting ourselves – our made up monsters of the past that we are too afraid to look at. We lash out or turn away, we numb and distract ourselves in order to be free from vulnerability. But there is a way to move through these dark moments powerfully. Pick yourself up and shine a light. A light of gratitude.

To stay positive when you are surrounded by negativity, try finding what you can be grateful for about the situation and what you are grateful for in your life. If you can lift yourself higher than the situation then the negativity naturally falls away. If you have ended a relationship, have poor health or lost a job, when we give thanks with every moment to the life and love surrounding us, we will have love and support of life reflected back to us. We see how wonderful the world is by the inspiration we see in the world and in people. It is in others actions that we realize who we are. So I say this to you. You have not lost anything, you have only changed your mirror that reflected how beautiful the love inside you is.

When you are aware of this, the Universe will naturally present an opportunity that you are able to see because you are in the space that will be able to be aware of a more joyous and opportune reality. If you connect into the negativity or even if you resist it rather than reframe it you will not be able to lift above the clouds. It requires you to take a step towards change, a step in which you must exert a moment of effort beyond wallowing in the natural despair of any negative situation. A step of gratitude will infuse the situation with new, fresh energy that will reverse the cycle of chaos toward one of new growth and creation.

It is your Gratitude that will transform the dire situations in your life to shine like gold and open you up to experiences that the average person would close themselves off to because of the fear of letting go from what they have grown to know. These experiences of fear are what typically move us to our more primitive and lower states of consciousness rather than toward our higher selves which is what we need to move to, in order to reach an evolution in our own psyche and person.

These experiences of chaos can be invited as messengers of growth. Were you really happy in that relationship, with that job. Were you really treating your body with love and respect? It is when we act from our highest states of consciousness that we transform dire situations. When people stand tall, true and vulnerable in the face of despair, it is during these darkest hours that people make the greatest leaps in their lives and become the greatest versions of themselves. Our highest versions of ourselves are bred from love and trust. Hold to your gratitude and you are well on your way to success.

Success is not how much you have, but how far you traveled. You might have a million dollars but if you started with 10 million you might not feel that successful. But if you started on the streets and created a life of love, gratitude and respect for the world around, with a roof over your head, food on the table and you end the day with a smile. Then you are one of the most successful people in the world and you are the true 1%.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_urxI9L5Ak&w=560&h=315]

The Love Spell: Attracting Love with Love

Since the time of the 12th century troubadour poets, the concept of romantic love has thrived in the western world. From these early times, Love existed synchronistically with a spiritual connection to something greater than the two individuals. Love was something that connected us all and lead to fantastic adventures and impossible outcomes. Although we now live in a more cynical world that has led us to believe we live in a world without mystery and magic, some things are still left unexplained. One thing in particular is the magic of love, its unbelievable coincidence, its power of connection and attraction over impossible distances, its strength and knowing that is share between partners.

This magic still exists in the world. We have heard story after story about it. We have experienced it first hand having seen the most powerful feats and transformations. The magic of Love is the highest potential of the human spirit with limitless creative possibilities open to it. Therefore, we can learn how to use the power of Love to create our lives in the ways that best guide us to our dream lives. What better way to start than to learn how to use love to attract love.

Before I go on, I must mention a disclaimer. I call Love and all its feats ‘magical’ only out of ignorance of the true science and psychology that underlies this great capacity we have evolved over the millennia to become the greatest creators on Earth.

“Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.” Saint Augustine (354-430) Ancient Latin Father of the Church.

This teaching helps you to attract your perfect partner by writing the oldest known spell. The love poem. There is a reason why these great troubadorian masters of love were also great creators of it, because they knew exactly what was in their hearts. We must be certain of our creations and feel it deep within our own hearts. Intention is using your imagination to dream up the experience that you want to move into. When you don’t intend its like driving without a steering wheel, you will end up crashing and not making it to your dream destination.

THE LOVE SPELL

This practice involves you writing a love poem about your potential dream partner as if they are already in your life and in your room. Write all the things that you are grateful for in them as if they have already done them. Really feel what you are writing. You will not only get clear but you will help reprogram your mind to become aware of that amazing partner when they present themselves to you in the world. And you will be ready to welcome them into your life and your heart. If you want to take it a step further write a love poem about yourself. We are only able to accept the amount of love into our lives that is equal to the love that we have for ourselves. Write about how wonderful they make you feel and that you feel confident in, and deserving of, their love. By acknowledging yourself as a person worthy of love, you are widening that connection and allowing a greater experience of love into your life.

The reason why this process is so powerful is because the flow of writing a poem has the ability to be more conversational which works more in line with the way that we relate to the world and people. Dealing with your subconscious in a more natural style helps to better integrate your intentions into your psyche so that you can align your actions with your intentions of the poem more easily. To better integrate your intentions re-read your letter every day with conviction and with a knowing of it’s truth. When you begin to become involved with someone, you can refer back to the list and see not only how well they fit your ideal, but also how your ideal may have slightly shifted (or how you may be willing to bend on certain things after being presented with a live person).

I’ve found this to be a very useful exercise in helping to determine not only what you are seeking in a long-term relationship, but also in helping oneself become more self-aware. The amazing thing about the love poem is that you don’t have to use it on people that aren’t in your life but for relationships that are already there and watch the transformation that you will see. You can even use it for material dreams or for jobs and goals in your life. We are all travelling the great journeys of life and as long as we live it with love and passion we can create great moments of triumph that we would have never dreamed possible by ordinary people.

Happy writing 🙂

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Attract Love – Not a Stranger

Whether you have a crush or want back your ex, by trying to attract a specific person you are limiting Love. You are telling the world and yourself that there is only one person out there that can complete you, that can have you truly experience love. There is only one particular person out of 7 billion. You are telling the Universe that they are the only person that can BE Love. But the Universe knows better and so does your higher understandings.

By thinking that another person is Love you are limiting the experience of Love because you can only ever partly know another person and therefore you will only ever partly know Love. It is hard enough to know yourself so imagine trying to understand and be in control of Love if it is another completely different person. Think back to how broken-hearted you have been when the person you thought is your Love treats you poorly and you feel like Life and Love is broken. You feel like this because of your misconceptions about who and what Love is. So then if another person isn’t Love then who or what is? The answer is simple… YOU!

Love is You

Love is generated in you. You are the person that creates it inside of you and you are the person that feels it. When you recenter Love within yourself you will see that Love is infinite and limitless. You will see that you don’t need a specific person for the creation of Love but instead you only want to share the Love that you have created and feel with someone. And that someone who you ultimately choose to share your experience of Love with, and build an even greater experiences of Love with, is someone who is a very blessed and lucky individual.

Love is Inspiration

That feeling of love is inspiration. Inspiration to be the best person that you can imagine yourself to be. We are communal creatures and we create best as families not as cowboys. When we meet someone who we can see the possibility of creating the best version of the world with, we are inspired to be with that person and build that world. We feel excited by that possibility and want it to be real, so we work with that person to build it. Sometimes we get confused into believing it is that person that is the inspiration rather than our own excitement and passion. We each only hold our own passions and our own Love and not another’s. And in that we are free to attract the many possibilities of many exciting and wonderful worlds.

So don’t think that your Love is unworthy because the person you have tried to attract is not coming. Our idea of love is based on the experiences we have had with love. It’s richness comes from how we open ourselves to it. Sometimes we get hurt and stop ourselves from being vulnerable but it is only by opening yourself to love and all the possibilities that you open yourself to the greatest probabilities. Love is not a game to be calculated, it is a leap of faith requiring trust in yourself and another. To open yourself to the experience of Love, Focus on Love itself. Get clear on what Love is for you – inside and outside of you. About how you want to experience it, The ways that you want to inspire the experience of love in your life and how you want to share it. Don’t focus on a person, focus on the experience of Love.

Love Exercise

A good exercise is to think about your last relationship and give thanks for all the things that you appreciated about your partner and the relationship. Give thanks for how they made you feel and all the great times you had together. Then make a list of all the things that you want to experience in and with your next partner that you are attracting into your life. You may have noticed some things that your last partner didn’t do, well take this as an amazing opportunity to give them thanks for that because now you can ask for what you do want in your next relationship. By now knowing what you want your mind is more aware and perceptive of possible partners that align with your new and richer experience of Love. It might be the person you are currently interested in or you may soon realize that they do not meet your needs and instead you meet someone who is even better suited to creating your dream world with you.

The Love Revolution

Know this – when you are familiar with Love you can move into any situation with an air of confidence and familiarity. You are no longer attached to the result and thereby remove the fear of losing something. When you can walk through the shadows without worry you are much more able to respond and receive whatever is presented to you with the greatest clarity and wisdom. This is your Love Revolution because it will no longer be you looking out at others to be your Love, because it is YOU that is LOVE. With this clarity and wisdom you will inspire the greatest experiences in your life that will have you realize that Love isn’t one person but is part of everything in your Universe.