6/3/12 Illumination

I often feel like the meaning of my life, especially in the smaller day-to-day scope, is unclear.  So much seems routine, sometimes rote, often muddled, and rarely meaningful.  I also feel like life is in stages or, as a writer, I prefer the word chapters.  Each chapter starts with a certain sense of meaning and the script is focused and strong.  There is a theme of purpose and direction and I, as the lead character, move forward with determination. 

About a quarter of the way into the chapter, a rhythm is assumed and the details take precedence.  The daily, weekly and monthly tasks set the pace.  The pace may seem slower if the routine is controlled and steady or the pace may feel hectic if the hours are overflowing with responsibilities.  The greater meaning of my life cannot be seen because of the little bits and pieces that make up the moments of each day.

As the close of a chapter begins, I experience confusion, disturbances, sometimes upheaval and emotional distress.  The day-to-day routine loses its importance as I struggle to accept or deny transformation.  If change is rejected (if change ever can truly be rejected),  I will again settle into a routine, but this routine will lack rhythm.  Its pace will be jerky and feel disingenuous like a story with no plot.  The lack of meaning seems more obvious, even to the point of my feeling completely lost.  As I continue to push away the inevitable, health issues will appear - each one more serious than the last.  I imagine if I were to continue on a path to nowhere, death would be the result but, so far, I’ve always experienced some sort of jolting wake-up that shatters my world and pushes me firmly and lovingly toward the needed change.    

If I accept transformation unwillingly, as one led to the gallows, my days will be sorrowful, slow and befuddled.  I will move forward, but tentatively and with distrust.  Because our transformations are always a soul lesson, I will eventually get there but the path will be obscured and uneven.  What could have been, and was meant to be a joyful and exciting  journey, will take on similarities of walking through thick mud - I may reach my destination but in a state of exhaustion, dirty and disheveled, but always with more wisdom.   

If I embrace the change, the pace of my days will quicken as small shifts are made.  Then, before transformation is complete or even in full force, all slows down.  A new rhythm is assumed - slower, but less steady.  I believe this to be a time of acclimation and acceptance, of allowing new conditions to be absorbed.  At times, I may feel like the change has halted and I may even accept and welcome that.  But, inevitably and without warning, the shifts begin again, but greater in force and frequency.  Synchronicity leads the way to make the transformation complete.  Problems that seemed unsolvable are almost magically resolved.  Helpers come into my life unexpectedly and often from unknown sources.  There is an electricity in the air that surrounds me and changes occur quickly, smoothly and with purpose.  This is when illumination happens.  Moments are lit up like fireflies.  My direction, my reason for being is clear and in focus.  Life feels spiritual and I feel as though I am being hugged by angels.  And, maybe I am.  Illumination gives meaning to the smallest of occurrences and all works together in harmony. 

I have recently spent a great deal of time contemplating change and this is what I learned about how change has historically occurred in my life.  Change for others may be, and I am sure is, a completely different experience.  Obviously, some have transformation thrust upon them suddenly, sometimes violently and others seem to travel through the chapters of their lives like riding on a an escalator - the movement is smooth and uneventful and the scenery changes just slightly.  Our journeys are all personal and unique. 

It is the illumination part that intrigues me.  That is the fun part.  When all the moments seem synchronized and harmonized and meaningful.  I believe it is during the periods of illumination that we are able to manifest, when we are the most creative and in tune with the Universe.  The question is: how do we maintain a state of illumination? 

Right now I feel like I am in that second stage of transformation - the one after the chaos and before illumination.  My life has a rhythm but it feels slightly off kilter, like dancing rock-n-roll, rather than a waltz.  I am longing for illumination; searching for it.  And, maybe, that is the problem.  The Law of Attraction says we have to stop struggling, to stop needing.  I realize now that illumination is a gift, not a reward that is earned.  To accept a gift, we have to be open to receiving it and that means letting go of the struggle.  Ironically, I am struggling with letting go of the struggle.  Aren’t we all?  We are told from a young age that life is a struggle, life is hard, we must work hard, we must fight to the finish, we cannot give up, JUST DO IT.  But, what is “it”?  Aren’t we too busy doing an undefined “it”?  Running around chasing “it”?  Searching for “it”?  Finding “it” and then losing “it” and then struggling to regain “it”? 

Maybe illumination is the “it” of our lives and, unexpectedly and contrary to what we have been taught, that “it” cannot be earned or gained or chased or trapped or caught.  Illumination is an honored guest, not a prisoner who is captured.  As its host, one cannot have expectations because illumination comes with its own agenda.  One need only open the door and wait patiently, peacefully and contentedly.  Maybe illumination does not have to come at the end of my chapters, after the turmoil has brought about transformation.  What if illumination stays, is part of my daily life?  Perhaps, with illumination a permanent resident, turmoil is not needed.  With illumination, transformation may be a state of being.  Rather than cataclysmic, maybe change would be steady and smooth, like breathing. 

4/26/12 Finding and Embracing Your Purpose

From “The Purpose of Your Life” by Carol Adrienne:

“At this moment, you are in a stage of your developing purpose, and you are not off track, no matter how blocked you currently feel.  Your calling has already made itself known through what motivates you (past and present), what attracts you, what you resist, and what frustrates you.  Your calling may have made a brief appearance between the ages of three and eight, or revealed itself in adolescence through a sudden interest.  Your calling can also be glimpsed in what you admire in others.  It can be seen in those abilities you have that you don’t even think are special.”


I feel so strongly that successful manifestation is linked to one’s life’s purpose that I want to explore that subject more.  Do you feel like you are living a purposeful life?  Do you feel you exist for a reason, that you can make a difference by following your purpose? 

Like most people, you may just live.  You get up, go to work or school, run errands, come home, eat, watch TV and go to bed.  On the weekends you may do something a little different or even a little special.  You have a job that pays the bills and may even have a profession for which you studied and for which you possess special skills and training, but the activity that earns a living may not be your true purpose, your passion. 

Of course, what you do for a living could be your life’s purpose.  If you feel passionate about what you do, no matter how trivial the world may judge your work, if you feel you are making a difference and that what you do fulfills a strong need within you, your work may very well be your passion.  If so, consider yourself lucky.  Most likely you identified your purpose at a fairly young age and were able to pursue it through education or work experience.  Or, maybe you tried other careers before you landed in the one that felt purposeful and meaningful.  Either way, you are fortunate to be there. 

Or, perhaps, you lost track of what may have seemed like a purpose when you were young.  Adults and even other children may have ridiculed your passion.  If your passion is unusual or does not seem likely to produce a viable living, others will negatively judge it, cruelly make fun of it or steer you away from it.  Often these are well-meaning adults who urge you to choose a livelihood that will provide a decent salary and allow you to live their idea of a typical “successful” adult life. 

Life itself may have gotten you off track.  You assumed unexpected responsibilities due to financial difficulties, poor health, an accident, the death of a parent, an early marriage or an expected pregnancy or many other possible detours from your path.  Or, are those events really detours?  Perhaps your dream was put on hold so you can further your education - not a school education, but the education of life.  Maybe you needed these experiences to gain the knowledge to one day reunite with your passion.

In Carol Adrienne’s book “Find Your Purpose, Change Your Life”, she gives many exercises to help you identify your passion and just as the quote in the beginning of this post says, that passion most likely revealed itself at a young age.  When I use her workbook to identify my purpose, the answers always have to do with writing, reading and books - all passions that I originally discovered in my childhood.  I remember in my second grade class the students were divided into three groups by our reading skills.  I was in the middle group.  We read boring stories about Spot and Jane and Tom - no plot, no humor - and I was bored and completely uninterested in reading.  Half way through the year we were allowed to start checking books out of the school library and that is when I discovered Dr. Suess and Curious George and so many other fabulous children’s books that actually were interesting and funny!  I read and read and soon moved up to the first reading group and very quickly became the second best reader in my class.  I felt passionate about reading and still do. 

My mother died when I was an infant and through most of my childhood my older sister and I did all the housework on Saturdays.  When I was about nine my job was to dust while my older sister vacuumed.  One Saturday, she finished her work and left me to do mine while she went to a neighbor’s house.  I was dusting my father’s bookshelves as I always did, when, for the first time, I actually started looking at the books, reading the titles, shuffling through the pages.  One of his books was “The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”.  I sat on the floor with my back against the bookcase and read poem after poem until I reached “A Psalm of Life”:

A PSALM OF LIFE
 WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST

    TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
        Life is but an empty dream ! —
    For the soul is dead that slumbers,
        And things are not what they seem.

    Life is real !   Life is earnest!
        And the grave is not its goal ;
    Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
        Was not spoken of the soul.

    Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
        Is our destined end or way ;
    But to act, that each to-morrow
        Find us farther than to-day.

    Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
        And our hearts, though stout and brave,
    Still, like muffled drums, are beating
        Funeral marches to the grave.

    In the world's broad field of battle,
        In the bivouac of Life,
    Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
        Be a hero in the strife !

    Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
        Let the dead Past bury its dead !
    Act,— act in the living Present !
        Heart within, and God o'erhead !

    Lives of great men all remind us
        We can make our lives sublime,
    And, departing, leave behind us
        Footprints on the sands of time ;

    Footprints, that perhaps another,
        Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
    A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
        Seeing, shall take heart again.

    Let us, then, be up and doing,
        With a heart for any fate ;
    Still achieving, still pursuing,
        Learn to labor and to wait.


By the time my sister returned home, I had completely memorized the poem.  She was incensed that I was “lazing around” and did not complete my work.  She later told my father who gruffly interrogated me on what I chose to do when I was supposed to be dusting.  I told him I was reading the poems of Longfellow in his book.  He wrinkled his brow in disbelief.  Who ever heard of a nine-year-old willingly reading Longfellow?  My sister called me a liar, but then I started reciting “A Psalm of Life”.  Complete silence followed my recitation.  My father, an avid reader and lover of literature, actually praised me for my memorization of that poem, much to my sister’s dismay, and he allowed me to take that collection of poems as well a book of Wadsworth’s poems to my room so I could read them whenever I wanted. That day I discovered a passion for poetry and literature beyond childhood books.

During the same year, I was reading “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” when I noticed the lyrical titles of the chapters and imagined them as titles of poems.  I spent the afternoon writing a poem for each chapter title - I believe there were nine or ten of them.  And, that is how I discovered that I could write poetry.  In fifth and sixth grades I excelled at all forms of writing - poetry, essays, stories.  By then I knew my passion was the written word and I intended to be a writer.  But, life got in the way.  I was told that writers rarely can support themselves with their craft, that writing as a professional was impractical.  I adjusted my dream a little and went to college to become a teacher, figuring I would write on the side.  Due to financial problems I never finished school.  Needing to support myself I worked at whatever jobs I could get.  I married and still needed to keep working.  I found I had a knack for bookkeeping and found my niche in the business world doing that and eventually came to establish my own bookkeeping service.  I like what I do, but cannot say that I am passionate about it.

After getting married and all during my 20's, I continued to write - a little bit - poems for my husband or for friends on their birthdays.  Back then we still wrote letters and I could write a darn good letter!  But, by my 30's the writing stopped.  I still read, but I veered away from literature and poetry and spent my time on best-sellers.  I not only lost my passion for the written word, but for life in general.  As I have undergone great changes in the last nine years, my passion for life has returned and with it my love of the written word.  Slowly I’ve been reacquainting myself with writing and that has led to this blog. 

One way to identify your purpose, your passion is to think of the one activity that makes you lose all track of time.  The one thing you love to do, or once loved to do, that makes you feel as if time is standing still.  Writing does that for me.  And now I am using my writing to activate my newer passion of Manifesting Mount Dora! 

Many people have not found a way to turn their passion into a living and some prefer that their passion not become as ordinary as a method to pay the bills.  I don’t make a living writing and that is okay for now.  Maybe some day I will, but for today I enjoy exercising my passion this way.  What is your passion, your purpose?  Are you living it in some fashion right now?  If not, can you find a way to incorporate your passion into your present life?  Try and see how much happier you will be. 

4/20/12 Focus On Purpose

I mentioned before that we are always manifesting, whether we do it on purpose or unintentionally.  Without our awareness, we may attract negative events into our lives or we may experience the negative events that others close to us have attracted.  And, I also said that I believe purposeful manifesting only works when we are on our path to our true purpose in life.  You may learn otherwise from books and DVD’s, but that is my belief.  We are here for a purpose and I believe focused and conscious manifesting is the way we discover and activate our purpose.  I see it as the action that leads us to our higher selves.  That does not mean less-than-grand desires or perhaps even shallow wishes, like jewelry or a car or a vacation, cannot be manifested.  As we move along our path, we should have some fun, too.  But, for me, the true basis of successful implementation of the Law of Attraction should be rooted in a desire to discover what we are meant to do, who we are meant to be, what legacy we will leave. 

From the birth of Manifesting Mount Dora, I believed that living in Mount Dora is a step in my journey to self-discovery.  But, rather than focusing only on the place I want to live, I want to also explore my path and my purpose.  I’ve decided to devote at least part of my writing to books I am reading and studying about self-awareness and the discovery of purpose.  I hope I can share what I am learning and help someone else who is on a  journey of self-discovery. 

Right now I am reading “Find Your Purpose, Change Your Life - Getting to the Heart of Your Life’s Mission” by Carol Adrienne.  As you may recall, the first step in my discovery of the Law of Attraction began with reading the “Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield.  That led to my reading a book he co-authored with Carol Adrienne titled “The Purpose of Your Life Finding Your Place in the World Using Synchronicity,  Intuition, and Common Sense”.  That book was life-changing for me, so I decided to start this next chapter of my adventure with another of her books. 

“Find Your Purpose” is more of a workbook than a book, allowing the reader to immediately begin self-exploration through writing and other activities to help awaken and identify your true purpose in life.  I have reached Chapter 4 and am already impressed with the depth and intensity of the activities she suggests.  This book is for those who are serious, really serious, about moving forward on their paths. 

The first section is “Starting Where You Are” and the title alone is a meaningful message.  We are always waiting for something to change in our lives before we can change or even move in the direction of change.  We need to be older, or healthier, or married, or free from marriage, or wealthier, or less tied down by family.  We need to have less work or more supportive family or friends.  Tomorrow when things are better and life is calmer and I am healthier and the kids are older and. . .  Always tomorrow.  And, as they say, tomorrow never comes. 

Through a series of questions, the author helps to guide your mind to identifying what you like, what is important to you and what you want.  We tend to think that our likes are trivial and have nothing to do with a greater purpose in life, but if you make a list of what you enjoy doing, what interests you and what brings you happiness, you will see a pattern that is the first step to finding your purpose.  The author says, “. . .anything that catches our interest is part of our life purpose.” 

Perhaps you are so involved with the needs and wants of others, especially if you are raising a family, you have lost touch with what you want and like.  In that case, think back to your childhood - what were your favorite games, what did you like to read, what was your favorite class in school, did you have hobbies, who were your friends, did you have pets, what was your favorite TV show or movie?  Answers to those questions will help you get in touch with the authentic you that existed before you forgot “you”. 

As part of starting where you are, Ms. Adrienne encourages gratitude for where you are, what you have and who you are now.  I wrote before about the importance and the power of gratitude and she confirms that.  You will not and cannot move forward without a sense of gratefulness for NOW.  Now may not represent what you want or who you truly are, but it is your reality at this time and you did help to create it, so be grateful, if not for the situation, at least for the lessons learned.  Look for gratitude and you will find it, even in the most dire of experiences. 

“When you procrastinate, especially when you know what the next stop should be, you drain your energy.”  Thank you, Ms. Adrienne, for covering one of my weaknesses - procrastination.  Most of my life I was almost compulsive in my dedication in getting things done on time and to completion.  Somewhere in the midst of my unhappy marriage and clinical depression, I lost that sense of purpose and responsibility and often put off important tasks that needed immediate attention.  Once I began procrastinating, I could not seem to stop, even though putting off my obligations created anxiety and just made me feel worse.  Procrastination drained my energy! The less energy I had, the less I wanted to do and the more I procrastinated.  Quickly the smallest tasks, when ignored, grow into very large problems.  Once I got back on track and started attending to what needed to be done, my energy increased and I was able to do more.  I felt better and when you feel better, you are more in alignment with the Law of Attraction. 

In only recent years have I felt a sense of intuition.  Perhaps when I was much younger, I worked from a place of intuition without realizing it, but I know, for a fact, as I aged whatever connection I had with intuition was lost.  My actions were dictated by the needs and desires of others and my need and desire to please others.  I’ve struggled to get in touch with those gut feelings that push us along on our paths.  One practice the author suggests is to “walk a living prayer. . start each day by asking ‘What do I do first?’” I like the idea, but find it hard to put into practice.  Most of what we do is because we have to do it, but certainly we can find many daily activities that could be influenced by intuition and by “walking in living prayer”.  Definitely an interesting concept to work on this weekend.