These days, I’m choosing to live my life in a very different way than the way I was raised. No longer do I think of my physical body as something separate from life, as a discrete object that needs to be defended and protected from the insults and problems of a cruel and dangerous world. I’ve shifted my inner attention beyond this body, into the eternal realm of infinite life itself. By doing so, I’m gradually coming to know myself as that which animates this physical body. I AM…life itself, and I’m moving through this world in the form of a temporary human body.
By freeing myself from the mental bondage of temporary form, I’m able to redirect an unimaginable amount of consciousness and energy. Rather than focusing the bulk of my attention on preserving my body from harm, I am instead directing my freed-up attention toward discovering what this amazing tool of a body is able to do. With this body, I’ve discovered I’m able to deliver into this world a virtually infinite spectrum of creative energy – from love, joy, creativity, beauty, sensuality, passion, and intimacy to sorrow, fear, pain, horror, despair and suffering. The choice of what to deliver is ever mine. I’m capable of bringing it all forth. That means my free will to choose is accompanied by an awesome responsibility to choose wisely.
It’s true what all the great avatars of humanity have told us for so many centuries. If you want to experience something in your own life, the best way to do that is to give it away. That’s the beauty of being self-aware. I’m belatedly learning (contrary to what I was taught as a child) that I wasn’t bestowed with the gift of being self-aware solely so I could imagine myself as separate from the world – though a certain amount of prudence in the physical realm makes sense. Rather, I’m discovering that I’m self-aware to ensure that I personally experience the power of all the energies that I birth, as they flow through me and into the larger world. The importance of that realization cannot be understated. It means that whenever I choose to gift love to others, I receive the gift of joy while feeling that boundless love flow through me. When I nurture others, I receive the gift of feeling nurturing as that energy flows through me. When I’m compassionate and kind toward others, or if I express generosity and forgiveness, the self-aware presence occupying this body receives the gift of feeling itself manifesting as that in this moment. What more could a person desire from life, than the opportunity to experience the self as whatever energy the self is manifesting? Talk about receiving perfect feedback for one’s life work!
Because my life’s work has for some time been focused on shifting humanity’s economic paradigm, I’ve been playing with shifting my personal dealings with others over the years. Not surprisingly, I’m finding that focusing on what I’m bringing, instead of on what I’m receiving, is serving me well. As a writer, when I direct my inner attention to what I’m creating and then delivering to be digested by other beings, the joy I feel as I experience the fragrance and flow of those words when they flow smoothly and beautifully through me, and the appreciation I feel for the beauty of whatever ideas are manifesting, has no upper limits. That joy becomes my own precious gift in exchange for having allowed those words to emerge in this world through this body. I need no other gift to feel more complete.
Accolades, fame, fortune, possessions…those are temporal, material cravings of a person who has not yet discovered the joy that arises from fully experiencing the gift of oneself as a life force. Sadly, we’re taught by our own society to imagine that if we can gather enough material things around our bodies then those things can inform us, at last, that we’re okay – that we’re loved by a world whose approval we so deeply crave. Additionally, we’re taught that hoarding material goods will keep us safe from the dangerous world that exists “out there.” And so we embark upon an endless journey to seek material goods and social accolades, and we gather them up to help validate ourselves. And then we hoard our stuff and defend it from being stolen by other people. And we suffer endlessly when, despite our best efforts, material rewards don’t seem to come our way.
That’s because we’re convinced that the more material rewards we receive then the more okay we must be…because material things are the world’s special way of informing us that we have value. But the world can’t make us believe something about ourselves that we don’t really believe. Sure, perhaps for a moment or two we can accept the world’s opinion about who we are…but then self-doubt creeps in once more and our quest for validation begins anew. We need more external validation, ever more, because belief alone won’t keep our self-doubts at bay. Only truth can dispel our doubt; but the truth of who we are can’t be found in the world. It abides within us. Meanwhile, so much of our life’s energy gets wasted on material acquisitiveness and satisfying our endless hunger for external validation. So why not exchange our bottomless thirst for the wonder of self-discovery?
To be able to look into a mirror and gaze into your own eyes, and to then express boundless gratitude for the gift of being you, here in this body, at this time, bringing into the world these gifts that you’re able to bring, acting in ways you are consciously choosing to act, while unconditionally loving all that you are and all that you do…that is fully enough gracious gift for a human lifetime.
Personally, because I am now awakened to the wonder of being alive, I’m able these days to gaze into what was once a bottomless well of neediness and see only infinite abundance and an eternal lightness of being. Certainly it’s nice when other people opt to thank me for being who I am, or for what I’ve shared with them, or for how I’m choosing to show up. I definitely appreciate it when people buy my book and then write me emails telling me how much it’s changed their own lives. But I don’t do what I do in order to receive those validations, or so I can convince myself I have value or my life has meaning. I do what I do because I enjoy the doing too much to consider stopping, at least while I have the breath in me to continue. I deliver the energies I bring because they feel good when they pass through me and into the world.
Loving others feels good. Gifting to others feels good. Expressing compassion and gratitude feels good. Forgiving others feels very, very good. Everything that I’m breathing into life, I gift first to myself and then to the rest of the world. That is the meaning – and the open secret – of self-aware consciousness. Whatever comes into the world through us must first pass through the gates of our own consciousness. We are ourselves forever altered by what we are inviting to pass through that gate. ?
I would invite everyone who reads this to commit to running your own experiment in shifting your attention to being the genuine life force you are. Just for today, find out if you can indeed direct your prodigious and powerful free will toward creating only those experiences you truly wish to have, and those that feel good in your heart for you to create. See how it makes you feel to claim ownership of your own life experiences, and to discover if that in turn can point you to why you’re here. Other people may yell at you or even treat you badly, but see if you can send some silent forgiveness in their direction, and then note how you feel when you do.
Cut off in traffic? Laugh and enjoy the decision not to rush through this precious life. Someone borrows money and fails to pay you back? Experience yourself as generous and loving enough to let go of the debt. Encounter a homeless person? Dig through your pockets and give away some of your change. What does it matter what that person does with it once you’ve gone on your way? You’ll have gotten to experience yourself as fully embodied compassion.
Know this: You are godlike in your power to change the world, merely by changing the way you relate to it all.
Play with your amazing life powers; have fun with developing personal mastery. After all, what’s the point of being in-form, if not to explore and master the highest capacities of that form? And remember while you take this journey to note each time you consciously craft an experience you desire…unbounded by former conditioned beliefs about what your body (or the world) demands that you have for you to be happy. If you’re still alive, then your body has all that it needs in this wondrous moment. It’s your life force that’s knocking on the door of your inner attention, seeking an opening. Let go, let it flow…and discover at last the limitlessness nature of who you truly are.
Image by moonjazz, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
