The Eyes of the Heart
The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men - between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant - is energy, invincible determination - a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory. That quality will do anything that can be done in this world, and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will make a two-legged creature a man without it. There are hindrances without and within, but the outer hindrances could effect nothing if there were no inner surrender to them. Fear of opinion, timidity, dread of change, love of ease, indolence, unfaithfulness: these are the great hindrances.· Sam Jones
Connect with your soul's plan for your life. Following is a guided meditation to help you tune into your highest-good spiritual path and contact your soul's plan for your life. It combines meditation and imagery techniques from several professionals I've worked with over the years. I've found this one helpful in encouraging active communication between my conscious mind and my soul. It can help you find the answer to the question What's next? It calms your conscious mind by calming fears. Read the meditation over until you're familiar with the steps. Then go someplace quiet and take yourself through the visualization. This is a good one to do while lying down. I like to do it at night, right before I fall asleep.
First, focus on your question and clarify it. It might be about the highest-good path to take in a particular relationship; it may be a career question; it may be a concern you have about the best place to live. Be as clear as you can about what you'd like to understand. It may be a question about why you're going through a particular experience now and how you can use that experience to help shape you and your life in the best possible way. It might be a question about what your next step should be.
Lie down. Close your eyes. Now, imagine yourself walking down a stairway. Each step is numbered: 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. See yourself planting your feet on each step and walking down until you reach the bottom of the stairs. At the bottom of the stairway is a room with your name on it. If you've been married, it contains all your names; your birth name is printed before your married name. Open the door, go in, and quickly close the door behind you. See yourself in a small room completely filled with pure white light. On the walls are bookshelves, filled with volumes and volumes of information about your life. Ask to see the book containing the information about the area you have questions about. You might want to see the book on relationships. You might use the name of the person you have in mind - for instance, think to yourself you want to read the book about your relationship and destiny with this particular person. If the question concerns how to proceed with a particular task, ask to read the volume about the finished outcome of that project. You are now deliberately gaining access to the information encoded in your soul. You can ask to read the book about your business, your family, the lesson you're learning with any particular person. You can ask to read the book about where things will be five or ten years in the future, or ultimately how a particular event will work out. All the data and information pertaining to your life is written and encoded in this room. See yourself accepting the book, opening it, and reading the pages you want to read. Let your soul register its reaction: it may be joy, laughter, delight, or a surprised Oh, I didn't know that was what I had planned. When you have spent all the time you need reading the pages of the book of your life, go back out the door, close it, and walk back up the stairs. Or, if you do this meditation at night, you can let yourself fall asleep in the room with white light while reading about the story of your life. Don't try to remember answers or force yourself into knowing what you don't know. Just go naturally about the business of living. Your conscious mind will now receive the information about what your soul came here to do and wants to accomplish. It will naturally translate that data to you in daily bits and pieces that come out in emotions, ideas, intuitions, and inklings about the lesson you're learning and where your soul wants to go next.
- Melody Beattie - Finding Your Way Home: A Soul Survival Kit. © 1998
Through true stories and take-action exercises, including journaling, visualizations, affirmations, meditations, and prayers, bestselling author Melody Beattie provides the essential tools to help us discover our own sense of home. Finding Your Way Home talks about buying back our souls, and inspires everyone to begin seeking the soul's purpose (their home) and learning to live one's life guided by spirit. Other books by this author include Journey to the Heart, Stop Being Mean to Yourself, and The Lessons of Love. Her insightful books are highly recommended to assist one to discover new levels of personal integrity, and to break through our self-erected barriers that have blocked us for too long.
Don't grasp and grab for magic and miracles. When you find the place of stillness [within you], the joy, miracles and magic you're seeking will find you... See with the eyes of your heart.
· Melody Beattie
As above, so below. It is a concept that was perhaps first recorded in the ancient writings of the Jewish Kabballa, a study of the Tree of Life and how mankind sought to explain the miracle of the Creation, to understand the purpose of life, and to define the undefinable Creator. This ancient course of philosophic inquiry postulates that things do not come into physical or temporal being without first being created in thought. So it is in my life. I have tried, and failed miserably, to accomplish something before it was fully envisioned. Simply being busy at a task is not the same as making progress.
Nor is solitude the same thing as isolation or solitary confinement. Being still and seeking my center takes time, practice, desire and committment. If there is to be some order and true progress in my life, what harm can there be in slowing down my pace, gathering energy and then engaging my actions on a course which has been clearly developed, firmly visualized? From the place of stillness within me will emerge the answers I need. I ask for clarity of purpose - show me, guide me, lead me, help me. It is necessary to feel an alignment with my soul's path, to connect to my deepest self, to know that it is there for me.
It is vital for me to see and honor my connectedness with the Universe and with the love and growth that is stored up for me, waiting to bless me with lessons. It is important to know that my head speaks a different language than my heart. It is necessary, in a successful and productive life, to let my inner vision guide me, and when I need answers to life's problems, to seek that vision. My soul knows its purpose. I need only relax, and seek the energy and the love that is there. The answers to my questions will resonate with the soul's purpose when my head is firmly connected to my heart, when I quiet my thoughts enough that I am ready to listen to what it has to say.
At the age of 35, I started a new career. I learned and progressed, and after three years, I began to look for a new employer and a new opportunity to further my career. I was hired by another firm, and after the first day on the job, I realized that I probably didn't have as much experience and knowledge as I needed to fill the position. That night I tried something, and it worked. How, I don't know, but it is a tool I have used from that day to this, when I find myself in a similar spot.
Self-hypnosis and meditation is something that, once explained, can be done by anyone with patience. Going through a relaxation technique, I then followed that by imagining myself going into a library. In that library were all the things I needed to do my job well, all the experience and knowledge I would need to be successful. I visualized a book on the shelf, the one which had text and complete diagrams that explained my work for the next day. I envisioned myself reading, learning and acquiring all the necessary tools to complete the job before me. I saw myself smiling, feeling good about what I had accomplished, because I was successful in what I needed to do.
The next day, and all the days at work that followed, went just as well as I had imagined them. To this day, I truly love what I do. Next Monday, I start a new job, and do so without a single fear. I know that I know all that is necessary for my success. I have a whole library to work with!
Some may dismiss a process such as this as silly and pointless, but who are they to say, difinitively, what will work and what won't? We rely, perhaps too much, on our five senses to define reality.
Love yourself, and your life, enough to see with the eyes of the heart. Connect to your soul's purpose, and let it lead you, and all the magic and miracles you seek will come and find you!
Michael
email: Michael@N-Spire.com
