Who are we? What are we here to do? Why were we put here?
These are questions that I'm sure we have all wondered, I know I have. I especially have reflected on these things when I have come up against conflict or a state of frustration in my life. It seems like at any point in my life when things are not going the way I would like them to, that's when the previous questions start to appear. However, my questions are a little more childish and show up in the form of, "why me?" or "why is life so unfair?"
As I have come to believe, life is not so bleak. Life is good. Albert Einstein said "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." For the most part, I don't really buy into absolutes and black and white ways of being. However, the quote by Einstein really is one of the keys to the kingdom. It leaves no room for error. It takes away the guess work in the Art of Life. And really isn't it the guess work, the shoulda-coulda-woulda that causes us the most pain and distress in our lives. I know for myself that I burn alot of energy being upset and disgruntled in regards to how I wish things were different. I have found that in the long run, seemingly tragic failures are really installments toward true success. I can choose to be imprisoned by the iron bars of a disgruntled state of mind, or I can choose to try and see my current circumstances for what they really are. Merely my current circumstances....nothing more.
If we can begin to see seemingly good and seemingly bad as merely current circumstances that are only temporary, we have shifted our state of being and the Ideal Self will being to emerge. There are religious and philosophical traditions that suggest if we analyze where we are in this exact moment, there is nothing that we are truly lacking. And if we really think about it, isn't life ultimately lives only in the exact moment? I've spent time regretful of the past, reliving painful experiences thousands of times over, and fearful of the future, prophesizing terrible events. As a result, life becomes a living hell. Who wants to live in hell?
To change from a way of being that no longer serves us to the Ideal Self is a huge shift in being, but only takes subtle shifts in thinking and can begin right now. An easy first step is to begin to be grateful for the current things in your life. Gratitude is a way of being that opens the door for more situations to be grateful for. Gratitude is a choice, and most of us have spent so much of our lives focusing on what is lacking and what we consider to be unfair that we have wired our brains to default to that mindset. It is easier and requires not effort for our brains to go there. We don't even have to think about it, our brains just automatically go there. Its familiar and the brain likes familiar. Being grateful requires more thought then not being grateful. Its like exercising, it make require some effort at first, but if we continue to do it will become a more integrated part of who we are. After all, when we first started, being ungrateful took more effort then being grateful. We just continued to do it and began to develop the belief that life would only hand out more reasons to be ungrateful then to be grateful.
As we begin to choose to be more grateful and observe in our lives more things and circumstances to be grateful for, our Ideal Self will begin to solidify and grow stronger. This is where we begin to become aware of the path to our full potential. We can begin to believe in power of possibility. The power of possibility is enormous. If we can shift our thinking from absolutes to possibility, we have opened a door for magic to come into our lives and circumstances begin to appear that are in line with our divine potential. And really our divine potential is what we are here to discover and ultimately reach.
Divine potential can be achieved by the Ideal Self, and the Ideal Self is who we really are underneath all the layers that we have put on while we have lived and explored the Earth plane. If we can begin to question what we have been taught is truth and if we can start to see possibility where we used to see only absolute then the journey has begun.
