5 Tips to create your paradise

It is common to assume paradise is a place other than where you are.  What if you have the power to create your own sense paradise from this very moment? Reflect on these five tips;

1. Clarify what paradise means for you

Is paradise represented by a particular place, climate, vegetation, food, objects, state of mind, interacting with certain people, engaging in certain activities, a feeling of being 'home'? Whatever it entails, write it all down, draw images or collage it, to make the vision more real. 

2. Identify your passions

What you are doing when you feel joyful, loving, lose all sense of time, or feel connected to something beyond yourself?  Pinpoint what sorts of things you do already to evoke such feelings. This may include things like; vocations, sexual encounters, giving of yourself or surrendering to inspiration and giving that creative form in ways that enrich the world. 

3. See the external world as a mirror   

How you feel inside is reflected in your external experience. That is, if you are not experiencing your version of paradise in the external world, this is an invitation to do some inner work.  Clarify a new vision.  Every situation offers lessons in love and points to a flip-side.

4. Recognize the power of emotions

Emotions arise to guide us to our own unique feeling of paradise.  They let us know if we feel balanced or unbalanced, close or far away from our unique frequency of inner harmony. You might feel this as respect, light-heartedness (humor), appreciation, acceptance, self-love, self-confidence, calmness, gentleness, humility, or some combination of similar feelings.

5. Feel the way

As well as the metaphors and examples of heaven depicted in books and movies, paradise is a feeling that we create inside ourselves wherever we are.  As we ease into higher levels of self-love and acceptance, the external world mirrors this in different forms. People seem to appreciate us more.  We feel heard and validated. We act in ways that are increasingly intuitive, fearless.  We grow unafraid to be more fully transparent, candid and vulnerable. For example, you can say you are moving into an environment that feels more like paradise in relation to your vision, but this only happens as you love yourself more as you are, where you are .  Come what may, take responsibility for your creative energy.  Recognize you have unlimited power to live in joy.  Now, what do you do when you find paradise? What if its the moment to create ways to share it?

The root of everything

Getting to the root of who you are involves true courage.  This is not the heroic kind, putting your life or reputation on the line, that western society has come to focus on.  Its about remembering how it feels to speak openly and honestly, fearlessly putting our vulnerability on the line. 

In other words, we must be willing to take responsibility, set an example for living authentically.  Otherwise, we simply create and encounter a mirror of our own deception.  When was the last instance you risked being vulnerable and disappointed? How did that turn out for you? 

Practicing true courage involves selectively sharing your vision with people who support you, not downplaying your dreams. Its about allowing tears or emotions to flow as they will, not hiding your true feelings as society so often teaches.  Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others and relate to them with compassion on equal footing.

If the root of everything is genuine connection, then everything you think, do or say either strengthens or weakens this connection.  The topic certainly merits some attention.  What if you feel energized or drained based on the degree you feel seen, heard and valued, based on the freedom you give yourself to offer input without fear of judgment?

Through her research, Brene Brown reveals that only one thing separates people who feel a deep sense of love and belonging (connection) from people who seem to be struggling for (or running from) it.  This is the depth of belief in worthiness.  True connection arises from an equal exchange of energy. How do you share or exchange energy to derive your self- worth? What are your behavioural patterns telling you about the nature of connection in your life? 

If we want to fully experience connection, we must act as if we know we are worthy of it.  We must also recognize being who we are doesn't require us to change. It simply requires self-acceptance to guide our life choices. Take an inventory of how you feel. Let go of who you think you are supposed to be. Olny seeing through the falseness can you embrace who you are.

What are we here for?

A question more people are asking is, "what am I/ why are we here (for)?" Initial ideas that come to mind include; to nurture meaningful relationships, to create fulfilling career, to find balance, heal a physical illness, or unresolved emotions that surface as a symptom of something deeper.    

Imagine for a moment, what is behind every choice you think you make, every dream or project you conceive, underneath every emotion you feel, repress or hide, mirrored back in every relationship and encounter you have had, is a yen to feel more comfortable with vulnerability. Imagine any loneliness, dissatisfaction and fear you secretly feel inside, is a path to deeper connection with yourself and the world.  Where do boundaries fit in? The clearer and more respected your boundaries, the higher the empathy and compassion you feel for others.

This moment is an opportunity to explore what Brene Brown describes as True Belonging: Believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness as both being part of something and standing alone in the wilderness.  True belonging doesn't require you to change who you are, it requires you to be who you are.

Ask yourself what you are recognizing and celebrating about yourself today. How intimate are you with your own core values? Living in complete integrity with core values allows you to live in harmony with the Soul. Only then are you fully aware of why you are here and being authentic.

Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation you don't belong.  You will always find it if you make it your mission. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart from constant evaluation. No one belongs here more than you.- Brene Brown

Remember courage

Through the process of realizing fear is illusion, you may feel vulnerability before you recall inner courage.  As remembering deepens, accelerates and intensifies, all that is not you is suddenly irrelevant and falls away.  Consciousness is awareness, the experiencer, that which is being experienced and the act of experience itself. This cannot be described or known.  Love is. You cannot know that which is and yet, it is what it is.