Archived Articles: Soul
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Jacquie has many articles available for reprinting in your company newsletter or e-zine, or to pass on to your friends. You are welcome to reproduce these articles, provided the article is printed in its entirety, a link is provided to www.wiseways.com.au and the following acknowledgment is included at the end:
© Jacquie Wise – Coach, Counsellor, Speaker, Trainer and Author, specialising in personal, professional and spiritual development
Be in Your Own Power
The '80s was a decade in which to discover our blockages and fix them, the '90s was a decade in which to discover our strengths and use them. This decade is the one in which we are waking up to what power and responsibility really means–that we do create our own reality, and that it is time to put our spiritual awareness into use.
So why does everything seem to be speeding up?
Because, as Julian Lennon says: 'Time is not a friend, and friends, we're out of time.'
We are running the imminent risk of destroying our own planet with all the various species it supports, including ourselves. Perhaps now our sense of urgency is motivating us to learn, pretty quickly, to take responsibility for what is going on, and put a stop to it. It is still possible to change the path we are on, but we can't let things take their natural course. We don't have that long. So 'fate' is giving us a much-needed push to act.
We are good at saying 'Someone should do something', but not so good at acknowledging 'I am someone'
The lesson we are facing right now is to take responsibility. To stop waiting for 'someone' to fix things for us. We need to have flexibility–to lose rigid patterns of thinking and living.
We are learning that it is the decisions we make, not the conditions in our life, that shape our destiny. I am reminded of the story someone told me of a hardened criminal who had two sons. One became a criminal and spent most of his life in jail, just like his father. The other became a successful businessman and happy family man. When asked what factor had contributed to their current situation, they both said: 'With a father like mine, how else could I have turned out?'
As more people make the right choices as individuals, we teach others to make the right choices and so establish new codes of behaviour, It will spread. We can speed up the process, not necessarily by trying to change everyone else, but just by making new choices about our own behaviour and reactions.
Yet to come–inner and global peace.
There are three things we can do to know the way, go the way and show the way:
1. We can search for the reasons–identify the purpose.
This we can do with exercises designed to help people find the major purpose of their life, be it:
• to learn and grow to be a better person, having a more constructive impact on the world around us;
• to teach others, perhaps by example, so enabling them to grow;
• to accomplish something, or contribute to the creation of good, and finally,
• to rest, perhaps to allow ourselves to recoup our strength after some hardship, perhaps in preparation for a task yet to be accomplished.
Every major turning point or influence changes us in some way. The changes can be positive or negative, depending on how we choose to react to that experience. Understanding the conditions brings courage and peace.
If we feel blocked, we need to assume it's for good reason, even if we don't see it at the time. Perhaps the necessary conditions are not yet in place and we need to wait for them. Perhaps we are not yet ready for faster progress and we will remain in this unpleasant situation until we learn something or develop new strengths.
Looking back, it's often easier to see that things turned out for the best, no matter how painful they were at the time. Sometimes the benefits are indirect, so we can't readily see the connection. For instance, a new law, beneficial to many, is passed as a result of a buildup of small events to a few individuals.
2. We can take responsibility for the choices we make - and for the consequences.We are making choices every day - little decisions about who we spend our time with, what we study, what we give priority to. The problem is that many of our decisions are being controlled by beliefs and values that, for the most part, we did not consciously select. The only way to make a change is to align our beliefs and values with our actions, so that we can control the direction we go in.
When I get bogged, the one thought which always motivates me is the reminder that we have only four choices in life, and it's up to me to make the right one.
The first choice is to jump off. (Well some people mistakenly perceive it as a solution!)
The second choice is to do nothing to improve conditions–but blame, complain, regret, and while we're at it, make everyone else miserable too.
Or, if we decide that a priority is to tolerate the situation, we can choose to adapt to it by modifying our attitude or expectations, so that we can find happiness within those constraints.
The fourth and last choice, it to choose to change.
But change means risk, and risk takes courage. It also takes work! Thinking about areas to be improved and even deciding how to go about it may be a good beginning, but will remain just that unless such thoughts are translated into concrete action. In our vision of what things could be, we need to include a realistic action plan.
3. We can learn to go with the flow–stop swimming against the current.
Whenever I get stuck, or frustrated with the way things are going in my life, I think of a mountain stream and try to behave according to its example.
Like water, we have only to proceed along the line of least resistance. If a steam meets a boulder in its path, it will search until it finds a way around, over, or under the obstacle, but it will find the easiest way, which is not necessarily the most direct.
A stream reaches its goal by flowing continually, never giving up, never losing sight of the goal ahead. It doesn't have to know where it will end up, it just keeps flowing wherever is most natural at the time, never shrinking from any dangerous spot nor from any plunge. It fills up every depression before it flows on, even if it means side–tracking a little on its journey.
There is hope!
A spring is only a tiny trickle at first, and has to travel some distance before it can gush forth with force. It knows that only with time and persistence, it will be able to carve a track in even the hardest earth. A track that will one day become a river bed, perhaps with other springs that join the flow.
Wise Words
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things.
Robert Brault