“Approach life as an art form, creating each day rather than just surviving it. The key to being able to do this and do it on a continuing basis is inspiration.”
​-Unknown
 
Do you fill your life inside and out with what inspires you?

Do you inspire yourself in your thoughts, allowing yourself to travel new, exciting pathways, thoughts you haven’t had before?

What kind of thoughts inspire you?

When you are relaxing do you choose activities that inspire you?

When you watch TV or a movie, read a book or a magazine, do you choose those that uplift you, inspire new thoughts, leave you laughing, create cathartic emotions, inspire creativity?

When you read or listen to social media, do you focus on those postings that inspire you, leave you feeling positive? Do you inspire others with your postings?

And here’s a new one for me. I just cleaned out all the catalogs and old magazines out of the basket in my bathroom and replaced them with magazines and books that I find inspiring. Now, rather than entertaining my brain with fluff while I am otherwise occupied, I’ll be inspiring myself with new thoughts and ideas.

Do you inspire yourself with your surroundings? Look around those places where you spend most of your time. Do they lift your energy and inspire you?
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What is it about your surroundings that inspires you?

Think about places that you have been that lifted your energy and gave you an expansive feeling inside. What is it about those places that you loved?

For me, beauty, order, light, simplicity, healthy plants, and a feeling of peace and sacredness in my surroundings all inspire me.

Then there are the less tangible things that inspire me, the laughter and play of happy grandchildren, the peacefully sleeping cherubic faces of my grandchildren, with their pink cheeks and long curling eyelashes, the laughter of my husband as he chuckles over some story he is enjoying, a community of spiritually minded women gathering together to share and support with love, the delighted play of my dog with her ball as she races back and forth playing catch, the smell of fresh, morning air, a gentle breeze on my cheek, the sound and feel of strong winds approaching through the tree tops and swirling through the yard, sunlight dappling through the leaves, flocks of birds moving as one in the sky, the unexpected sight of a deer grazing in the back yard. All these things inspire and fill me.

What inspires you?

Photo by Nick Owuor on Unsplash

“Namasté means that whatever is precious and beautiful in me honors whatever is precious and beautiful in you.” 
-Debasish Mridha
 
In Western culture, the polite greeting, “How do you do?” or the more casual form, “How’re ‘ya ‘doin?” expresses the importance placed on doing in our society, rather than being. Success is measured in terms of how much one has accomplished in a day, a year, or a lifetime. Celebrities are lauded for the number of their achievements. Lecturers are introduced with a listing of their accomplishments. Professionals receive initials after their names with each degree earned. The more initials listed the more the perception of success. Even our religious leaders are perceived as most successful based upon the number of their followers, the size or monetary worth of their church.

In Indian culture, the polite greeting, “Namasté,” meaning, “I honor the light within you,” expresses the importance placed on being rather than doing. Although Western culture has infiltrated many areas of Eastern life, still the revered spiritual leaders teach the importance of being.

In my own life I swing back and forth between my Western indoctrination with the belief that the more I can do in a day the more successful I am, and my Eastern leanings toward the importance of being.

I generally start my day with a to-do list in mind. As the day progresses I mentally check off my list as I accomplish each item. At the end of the day, the more I’ve done the more successful I feel.

I do this in an habitual way, not thinking about the fact that my focus is upon doing rather than being. Doing is my habit. I have to make a conscious choice to make being my first priority and my determinant of success. This is a choice I need to make over and over throughout each day, because I easily slip back into a doing frame of mind.

Today I choose to do from a being place. 

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“Bliss is that deep, fulfilling, sustainable, driving need you have. That thing that is the true ‘you.’ Your bliss is your life’s purpose.”
Kenneth Benjamin

For much of my life if you asked me what my bliss was my answers would have been changeable. I might have had to think some to answer the question. I might even have said, “I don’t really know.”

I recently asked a friend what she likes to do more than anything. This woman works non-stop. She teaches during the day, then goes home to raise two teenagers. Her husband works constantly so much of the emotional investment of raising children is left to her. She puts her all into it. My friend had to think about my question. “I don’t know. Reading maybe?” Her own happiness is not her first priority.

How many of us don’t really know what our bliss is?

What we most love, what makes us happiest, the areas in our lives which bring us joy and satisfaction, this is our Higher Self speaking to us of our purpose for being here. Guiding us toward our purpose through the emotion of bliss. Who doesn’t want to repeat a pleasant or blissful experience?

Some lucky people already know where their passion is, they pursue it actively, it is their vocation or their job and consumes their life.

Then there are others like me who enjoyed lots of things and tried lots of different jobs, never settling. All the while I pursued my bliss, unaware that I did so. My difficulty with identifying my bliss came from the fact that it was too familiar, too much a part of my inner life. It was my comfort. It was a place of flow and every so often deep joy and love. It certainly didn’t feel like anything that could be my work or my purpose in life. It was too natural to me, like breathing.

I started journaling as a teenager, living away from home at boarding school in a room with three other girls. A naturally, private person I found the lack of privacy hard. My journal became my private space. A place where I could go to release the adolescent anguish of a fourteen year old learning about herself and others. I wrote furiously of whatever upset took me at the time. As my feelings scrawled over the pages I was able to feel calmer. As I calmed myself, solutions to problems presented themselves and I worked them through in my writing. Always I felt comforted. At times I had an “ah-ha” moment, feeling a sense of enlightenment, like a light bulb coming on in my head. Those were the best times when I felt a tremendous sense of fulfillment, love and connection.
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I am still journaling, fifty years later. My writing has expanded into this blog, and I acknowledge it as having high priority in my daily life. It is my bliss.

​Allow yourself to be guided. Find your bliss and follow it.


Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

“That love, that passion IS the vibration of your true, natural self in the way you were actually created. That's why it's always the beacon to move toward. You're actually moving toward yourself, and more and more and more of yourself every time you are willing to take a step toward your excitement by acting on the situation that contains the most of it without cluttering it up with other things that actually are not a part of that excitement.”

-Bashar, as channeled by Daryl Anka in  Finding your Highest Excitement
 
Do you enjoy how you spend your time? The big picture is not about what you do or do not do, it is about how you feel throughout the process. Are you excited about what you do? Does it feel good to you? Satisfying? Are you happy in what you are doing? If you are, you channel all the benefit, ability and serendipitous timing of your soul into everything you are doing.

It could be simple, it can be simple, and yet it often isn’t because of the conflict between what we innately know and what we are taught.

Society teaches that our inner urgings are hedonistic and self-indulgent. We are socialized to believe we have to be in control of these inner urgings. We believe we must do what it is that we ‘should’ be doing. We believe we must be responsible adults and tow the line.

These dictates of society run in opposition to what could be simple - we are here to do what brings us happiness. Because of this we are conflicted. Our inner urgings tell us one thing and our socialized selves tell us another.

Many people are so well socialized that they have difficulty identifying their inner urgings to happiness. They experience a vague sense of unease and cannot pin point the cause or know what to do about it.

There is a deep anger that comes with long term silencing of the cravings of one's soul. Some respond to this situation by blaming others for their discomfort. Others turn the anger inward.

What could be simple, often is not simple at all.

Our bodies let us know when we need to eat. Eating when we are hungry allows the body to maintain a constant level of energy. It is the same with our souls. Our souls let us know when we need to replenish energetic reserves. Our souls urge us to those activities which bring us joy and feed us energetically. Your soul needs feeding just like your body, according to its own rhythm and urgings. Your soul will let you know when it is hungry if you are listening.


photo credit  Bruce Mars, Unsplash.com

"You gotta' go there!"
-Abraham-Hicks

As I began work on Soul Doors, a project I've had in mind for years, I was so excited to finally make it happen. Yet, fear and self-doubt suddenly reared up. The fear persisted even as I prayed for guidance.  One afternoon, I sat reading over writings for the blog and staring distractedly out the patio doors. There was an opossum, white, raggedy hair standing up on its back, wandering in from the woods and searching the ground under the bird feeder with its sharp nose. It stayed for quite a while eating fallen seeds in the broad daylight. Opossum are nocturnal animals. What’s more, I had never seen one in our yard, even at night.

I believe that an animal that stands out and gets your attention is a message from Spirit. I looked up the message of opossum in Animal Speak, a wonderful resource written by the late author, holistic healer and metaphysical teacher, Ted Andrews. Animal Speak gives detailed descriptions of the specific meanings of animal and bird totems.  

The message of opossum is about the need to act in a way that you do not feel inside. If you are feeling afraid you need to act fearless. If you are feeling unworthy you need to act as though you are full of confidence. The message was to fake it till I made it! Spirit knew how I was feeling and supported me.

​Spirit knows how you are feeling too, and is supporting you in going for your dreams.

Esther Hicks, channeling the group of spiritual masters known as Abraham, says that once your rocket of desire has shot up, “You gotta’ go there.” There’s no recalling it.  Once you’ve identified what it is you want to be, or do, or have, you’ve got to fly with it and allow the unfolding of that which you desire. You’ve got to take the risk.

The truth is,  growth is about taking risks, putting one foot in front of the other when you can’t see how you’re going to get where you want to go. All you can see is the next step. Fortunately, your path is lit up by feelings of excitement and joy, guiding you. What do you desire? What are you excited about? Where is the sweetness? Be willing to take a risk. Be willing to sing a wrong note and sing it loud if it brings you joy. Be willing to fake it till you make it.


Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash