Give your life meaning

You exert a lot of energy in your life.  How do you give your life meaning? Notice how the meanings of life and success evolve at different stages.  What do you see?

As a child, you are a spontaneous, free spirit who laughs and smiles freely. You read your own heart with clarity, share, care for others and notice the changes you make as you love. Life has a resonance you can feel.  You respond based on innate nature until conditioned to ignore the heart.  Recall how being around children feels like.

As a student, you may think success relates to getting good grades, being noticed by teachers and accepted by peers. Your work ethic reflects what you are trying to prove.  Hard work and struggle are the assumed path to success. Does a diploma, certificate or qualification itself represent success? Let go of beliefs and reflect on life's meaning.

As an adult in the working world, success is often defined for you by your employer or your job environment. At some stage, you may begin to sense when you work against people, you cannot know real success. Have you ever turned down a raise, promotion, job transfer or opportunity because you honestly feel you already do and have enough? Have you ever sensed competition is unimportant? Have you ever felt success has nothing to do with completing any projects or fulfilling duties? What if you had nowhere to go, no appointments or commitments? What if you had no constraints? 

As you watch films and the media, success is portrayed as power, fame, material wealth, public acceptance and admiration. And yet, still, you may feel like something is missing. Part of you asks is this what life is really all about? Notice how thoughts can imprison you.  Another perspective is true fulfillment is unrelated to doing things.

Another view of success is beyond the fault-finding mind.  It is that part of you that sees and appreciates things as they are.  Recall what it feels like to serve others. Ever do any charity work?  Its remarkable how those you serve intuit how you feel and help you find new meaning in interactions. When you give non-judgmental energy, you find life is not about "me." Its not personal. From the moment you no longer feel separate from other beings, a different sense of success arises.  Only when the mind is quiet, do you stop thinking success requires activities. Then, you taste freedom, see life clearly.

Appreciate the little things

Whatever situations are unfolding in your life, you choose where to focus your attention.  You decide how to interpret your unique  experiences, whether you get something meaningful out of each stage of your life journey.  Notice the true nature of any restlessness you feel.  Why find anything wrong where you are, doing what you do? Be creative.  Love something about where you are now. 

Notice your conditioned ways of thinking.  Notice whether you focus on thoughts that trigger sadness, joy or evoke other emotions like anger and fear.  Notice when you focus on gratitude or allow discomfort or dissatisfaction to cloud your focus.

This said, you can always renew appreciation for 'the little things.'   This brings clarity. They may be people, aspects of nature or the environment, conditions or anything that uplifts your spirit. Notice whether you view the glass of life as half full, half empty, or as something else. What happens as you are kind to yourself and show kindness to others? The sun always shines.  You see, you take it with you wherever you go.

Take a few moments to reflect on little things that  bring joy.  What stands out? Share your perspective of 'the little things' that truly make life feel worthwhile.

"It is good to appreciate that life is now. Whatever it offers, little or much, life is now - this day - this hour."  - Charles Macomb Flandrau

"None of us has gotten where we are solely by pulling ourselves up from our own bootstraps. We got here because somebody bent down and helped us." - Thurgood Marshall

Train your attention

Mindfulness is training your attention to be awake and aware of what goes on inside and outside yourself.  It is a sharpening of the senses.  Notice what you are creating and adding to your experiences.  Notice also what ideas you cling to and also those attachments you are willing to let go. Notice the feelings that arise and dissipate as you decide nothing matters.

What do you sense about your own observation and evolving behaviour in this moment? How does your life perspective (the nature of seeing) shift as you only speak to people who are truly present? What do you see in common with people you encounter and those you don't?

"If you first fortify yourself with the true knowledge of the Universal Self, and then live in the midst of wealth and worldliness, surely they will in no way affect you." -Ramakrishna

Celebrate every dream

Notice how you hear, see and know things on a deep level that nothing can actually shake. You view this as intuition, gut feeling, inner knowing or something else. Why shake it off?

Let's say everything you encounter is a layer of a dream, itself a reflection of the divine that takes form to invite you to respond. Its like a cosmic holodeck. You design the program and play the virtual game. Imagine that each person, place or thing you encounter is a different version of you inviting you to see something more clearly or to learn about yourself. All you notice in the external world is what you do not yet consciously know yourself to be.  You are not only what you are becoming, but what you already are, like a tribe of many colours.

Notice whether you feel things out or think your way along. You have intelligence and insight to make conscious choices.  What happens when every moment feels the same to you?

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” -Henry David Thoreau

Reminders of unlimited power

Dreams remind you of unlimited being. Are you aware? You may hear you hold untapped abilities, resources and brain power, but do you really take this to heart? 

Look closely. During dreamtime, you do not question how it is you are able to fly, have superhuman powers, breathe under water, walk through walls, feel suffering or pain of other creatures as if it is your own, activate invisibility, or do other things that the human mind says you cannot. Imagine your doubt dissipates.   Let go of fear you nurture from childhood.

As you strengthen your conscious dream recall, you begin to sense how it feels to be in more than one place, to adopt more than one form, gender, and role, and to participate in more than one story. Each level of reality has its own relevance to your beliefs.  Notice what is being offered.  You are not here to assume, but to be open to exploring.  Part of you observes all stories, deepens insight into emotion, bilocates and more.  Watch your wings unfold.

The curtains of the mind slowly open to reveal what it is to be omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.  Notice the shakti energy, what emerges naturally, and how you attune to it. Notice what you are allowing to penetrate and what you resist accepting about "you." It all points to the witness that sees through your eyes. This witness observes through all other bodies.  You see within your own direct experience how barriers to receptivity break down. 

Follow the impulse of curiosity. Based on what feels natural to you, integrate into it as a living reality.  Notice who is supporting you during your evolution. You are educated to measure and to judge yourself and to disregard innate knowing.  Nobody can give you who you are.  Open up to the heart of sincerity.  Be willing to explore without limitations.  Nobody exists.  You still feel what its like to be the characters you watch and imagine.

To recall the essence of unlimited power then, contemplate why are you searching, why the mind tells you to reach for the unattainable.  Notice your vision of fulfillment is feeling alone, but grounded in multi-sensual, multi-dimensional experience.  Notice possibilities you may be excluding.  Your reality is opening into a bigger world. Your perspective is shifting.

"I love to think of nature as an unlimited braodcasting station, through which God speaks to us evert hour, if we will only tune in." - George Washington Carver

“Our greatest strength lies not in how much we differ from each other but in how much-how very much-we are the same.” - Eknath Easwaran, The Compassionate Universe