by Marc Allen
Once we have a plan clearly in mind, important work on that plan continues to be done whether we’re working away on it or sitting on a warm beach — and sometimes we make quantum leaps during a vacation that wouldn’t have occurred to us if we were working as usual.
Take a vacation!
It’s good for business, pleasure, and health.
THE JOY OF BEING A SEMI-HERMIT
From the very first ideal scene I imagined at age thirty, an important part of it all was living a life of ease and relaxation — a slower-paced life, with lots of time for my family and for myself as well. What good is having a beautiful home if you’re working constantly and don’t have time to enjoy it?
Over the years, the personal part of my ideal became even clearer to me, and I realized I wanted to be on a retreat about half the time. To me, it’s a perfect balance: half the time retreating quietly, half the time in action.
This goal has come true for me — I have now realized my dream of becoming a half-time hermit. I have plenty of time alone, plenty of time for meditation, relaxation, sleep, reading, goofing off.
These rules have evolved for my retreats: I am alone. I don’t go anywhere. I have no plans. I don’t get on the Internet or do e-mail (I keep my Internet access at the office, and don’t even have it at home). I meditate sometime during the day, and sleep whenever I want to. I write, and wander around the yard. I take a sauna or hot tub, usually, in the evening.
After even just a day or two of retreat, I’m always rested, energized, and ready to go wherever I want or need to go — in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way.
A CALL TO INACTION
I’ve said it before: This is a call to inaction as well as a call to action.
For thousands of years in China, the leading philosophers and teachers have clearly understood the great polarities that are always at work in our lives and our world. I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears reflecting on again as we close this chapter.
Each polarity contains the seed of the other. Each defines the other: Without dark, there is no light. The universe is an endless dance of light and dark, creation and destruction, activity and stillness — yang and yin.
There is a great polarity of action and stillness at work in the universe. In our culture, most of us have gotten very good at focusing on the active part of the polarity, but ignore the other part: inaction, rest, relaxation, meditation, receptivity, stillness.
Within this side of the polarity we find tremendous rejuvenation, light, and meaning in our lives.
Be still,
and you will find tremendous rejuvenation,
understanding, and light.
Think about these words, then let those thoughts take you beyond all thought, into a quiet, calm stillness. It is one of the very best things you can do for your physical, mental, and emotional health.
Add any notes or quotes from this lesson that you particularly want to remember into your folder. Review it often.
SUMMARY
• We are spiritual beings as well as physical beings. We know this at birth, we know it at death, but sometimes we forget in between.
• When we witness someone dying, we touch the sacred; if we’ve had a near-death experience ourselves, we know we have a spirit that lives forever. Call it what you will; it is beyond any label we can give it.
• We’re vastly complex and multifaceted, with four different levels of being: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. It’s good to reflect on this, because there are truly powerful keys to be discovered here — life-altering keys, tools for transformation.
• We are all psychic, to some degree. We just need to tune in to our feelings for a wealth of intuitive knowledge and psychic information.
• As the poet John Milton wrote, “The mind is its own place, and can create a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” The mind is a wonderful tool, a great servant, but not a good master. The mind needs to be guided by the spirit.
• Prayer, in whatever form you choose, gives you access to the creative forces of the universe. This is the power of prayer. When you pray you connect with spirit, and set in motion the mysterious forces that answer your prayer.
• It is a very good practice to start the day with a ritual of some kind that acknowledges and remembers your spirit. It’s good to have an afternoon or evening ritual as well. And it’s very good to have something that reminds you of spirit throughout the day.
• The effects of meditation are endless. They are subtle and quiet, yet they can be extremely powerful, even life-changing in major ways. Meditation has great benefits for us physically, emotionally, and mentally.
• Simply sit and relax, without expectation, for any period of time, and you’ll discover for yourself why meditation is important.
• There are great benefits to relaxation as well, whether in brief moments throughout the day or in longer periods of rest at home or on vacation.
• Here’s a good assignment: Find some moments to regularly breathe deeply and relax, even if just for one or two breaths, throughout the day. Relax more and you’ll stay healthier. Make Sunday or some day a day of rest. Even God needed a day of rest.
• We all need vacations! Our souls need vacations. Important soul work gets done on vacation. Vacations are good for business, pleasure, and health. Take your own form of retreats, as well, as often as you need.
• This Course is a call to inaction as well as a call to action: Go forth and do nothing — at least for a while.
• Be still, and you will find tremendous rejuvenation — as well as understanding and light.
We are not physical beings
who may have a spiritual experience;
We are spiritual beings
having a physical experience.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
* The clearest version of The Bhagavad Gita that I’ve found is the beautiful prose version by Jack Hawley, The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners (New World Library, 2000).
* This meditation and the one that follows are reprinted, with permission, from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Both are also in Practicing the Power of Now.
*For much more on these forms of meditation, see Creative Visualization and other works of Shakti Gawain; also see The Art of True Healing by Israel Regardie.
LESSON 12
DO WHAT YOU LOVE TO DO, AND SUCCESS WILL FOLLOW; YOU CAN TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE AND YOUR WORLD BY DOING WHAT YOU LOVE TO DO
DISCOVER WHAT YOU LOVE TO DO
Some of the material in this final lesson is similar to what we’ve discussed in Lesson 3, but with a different emphasis. In Lesson 3, we focused on the powerful words vocation and purpose. Here we’ll simplify, and put this great key in these words: Find what you truly love to do, and do it.
You already know what you really love to do, though you may have to do a bit of soul searching to recollect it. It’s in your heart, it’s in your soul. It’s in your fantasies.
What do you really enjoy doing in your spare time?
What kind of work has fascinated you?
What things excite you? Is there something that gets you as excited as a puppy or a baby can be?
If you could do anything, what would it be?
If, even after answering these questions, you’re still not sure what your passion is, you may have to go on some kind of quest. (We covered this earlier, in Lesson 3.) Or this simple little exercise (also mentioned in the same lesson) might do it for you:
Imagine you just won the lottery.
Lack of money is no longer a factor at all.
What will you do?
Think it through. A lot of people will say, “I’d go relax on a beach,” or “I’d travel around the world.”
Stay with it. Ask yourself: And then what?
After relaxing and traveling for a while, what do you want to do?
Can you imagine the next five years of your life? Can you imagine the entire scope of a
possible lifetime stretched out before you?
What kind of person do you want to be? What do you want to have accomplished at the end of it all? What do you want to be remembered for?
Within the answers to these questions are the things you love to do.
THE ANSWERS ARE WITHIN YOU
No one else can tell you what you love to do. The answer is in your dreams and fantasies — what do you sometimes imagine yourself doing? The answer is in your ideal scene. The answer is even in the people you envy — do you find yourself jealous of someone’s success? If you do, it’s usually because they’re doing what you would like to be doing. Otherwise, why would you be jealous of them?
Remember what Ralph Waldo Emerson said: You would not have a deep, driving desire or recurring fantasy if you didn’t also have the capability of fulfilling it.
Remember what Deepak Chopra said: Within every desire is the seed and mechanics for its fulfillment.
Do what you love to do.
Keep doing it.
Make it an intention that it will
support you abundantly.
Look for a way to do it
and you will be led to it, step by step.
Can it really be this simple? Yes, it can — and, oddly enough, the reason it remains so elusive for most people seems to be because of its simplicity. It takes very few words to speak the truth — and here’s the simple truth, something you’ve heard many times before:
Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find.
CAN THIS REALLY WORK FOR YOU?
If you understand this simple key and apply it in your life, you’ll find it working wonders: Keep thinking about your dreams — what you think about expands. The next step to take becomes clear to you, and you move, easily and effortlessly, toward realization of your goal, your dream.
It’s obvious when we see it — and when we do what we love to do, we find life works out perfectly, in extraordinary ways we couldn’t even have imagined before. There are a great many people who have built successful careers doing whatever it is you love to do. Look at the ones who are successful, and reflect on the unique way or ways you too can be successful.
Take the first step you can toward doing what you love to do. That step will lead you to the next step. Opportunities will appear. You will find support in new and unexpected ways. You are on your way.
THE ATTITUDE THAT BRINGS SUCCESS
Having the right attitude will bring you success: Acknowledge — and celebrate! — that you have something unique to offer the world. There is no one like you. You have unique abilities, talents, and gifts.
Keep remembering that many others have been successful doing whatever it is you want to do, and applaud them and learn from them, taking what works for you. They are your mentors, and they can show you a great number of very different ways to be successful doing what you love to do.
Through it all, keep more attention on the full half of the glass than the empty half. Remember: What you think about expands.
WHY AREN’T MORE PEOPLE SUCCESSFUL?
Why don’t more people succeed in doing what they love to do? Isn’t it because, underneath it all, it’s so hard to succeed? Aren’t the odds really against us? There’s so much competition out there, after all, and so many others who are so good at what they’re doing.
The simple reason why more people aren’t more successful is that, because of the conditioning most of us got in our education, home lives, and culture in general, most of us picked up a large bundle of limiting beliefs, and we habitually see the half-empty part of the glass. Most of us are so acutely aware of our shortcomings and of the problems and difficulties inherent in any expansive goal that we don’t even dare to dream, much less take some steps toward fulfilling our dreams.
Most of us fear failure, and most of us don’t even try. Instead of fearing failure, we should celebrate it! We have an invaluable skill when we can learn how to fail with grace, ease, and lightness. Everyone who has succeeded has had failures along the way. They are an essential part of our education.
Those that try and keep trying usually have some failures, but they inevitably succeed. We’ve all heard this so often it feels like a cliché: If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.
Or, as the great comic actor Burt Lahr (who played the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz) put it:
Stay on the merry-go-round long enough,
and you’re bound to get the brass ring.
It is inevitable, if you keep trying. You’ll probably fail at first, but then you’ll get the hang of it and eventually get that brass ring or Olympic gold or royalty check or whatever it may be that acknowledges you have attained the dream you have affirmed and intended in your heart.
Keep affirming your dreams will manifest, in an easy and relaxed manner, for the highest good of all.
WHAT ABOUT SERVICE?
As soon as we have a dream, the steps we take toward it inevitably involve work and service of some kind. But if we’re really doing what we love, work becomes rewarding and enjoyable — and service becomes the greatest joy of all, because we are serving ourselves as well as all humanity and God.
Earlier (in Lesson 9) we saw the great insight into service that the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore had — it is worth repeating and remembering:
I slept and dreamt that life was joy,
I awoke and found that life was service.
I acted, and behold! Service became joy.
— Rabindranath Tagore
THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE
Occasionally it’s good to sit down and take the longest perspective possible. We can do this by asking a few good questions:
What is our purpose, ultimately? Were we born to fulfill something? To grow in a certain way?
You can only find the answers in your own words, of course. If not now, maybe they’ll come when you overhear someone’s casual remark, or see a striking ad somewhere, or in a dream. This is the answer I get, tailored to my life and way of looking at the world:
Our purpose is to evolve into something greater,
to transform our lives and our world for the better.
Your answer may be quite different. But I’m sure in some way it contains expansion, growth, fulfillment.
This Course contains not only the keys for all the monetary success we wish for, but for fulfillment of our ultimate purpose as well. And that’s what is truly important in life, isn’t it? It is far beyond money, beyond wealth. Money is only a tool to use to create something far more important than the tool itself.
The important thing is to live a life we can look back on with satisfaction and affection and love, and even with grace, ease, and lightness.
A DREAM
I had a dream, as I was completing the first draft of this manuscript. A year later, it still often comes to mind:
There are thousands of us, all working together in a smooth, easy partnership, building a vast new structure. The foundations have already been laid; we are beginning to build the walls that reached upward.
The building is going quickly, with ease and lightness, and as we build we listen to the words of the greatest visionaries of all times. It’s almost as if they’re being broadcast in some way, and we’re hearing them together. Yet it is also very quiet, and it seems as if the words of the prophets are a whisper within us.
We are being guided by the greatest lights of our time: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, the great authors of the Vedas, the Torah, the Bible, indigenous peoples the world over, and the modern teachers, Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Eckhart Tolle, Riane Eisler, Shakti Gawain, the list goes on and on....
We are creating a new world, finding new ways to live in harmony with each other — a world where we work in partnership, with love and compassion for each other, and for the earth itself.
As we learn what all the great teachers of the perennial philosophy have to tell us, we can create a world where hunger and poverty are myths from the past,
and we can discover better ways to take care of each other.
We can finish building the structure — it is a work in progress — necessary to fulfill Buckminster Fuller’s goal of a world in which everyone on Earth improves their standard of living, and we all have an ever-better quality of life as we move up the pyramid of evolution.
It’s time to be guided by a vision and spirit that brings us all together in partnership. After all, we’re stuck with each other — we’re one big global dysfunctional family, and we’ve got to learn to live together without killing each other, or abusing each other in any way. Only by having respect for each other and by living and working in partnership can we have a life of peace and plenty, which is what we all want.
It’s happening now: As soon as we see it, as soon as we begin to imagine this new world, it begins to happen in our lives. Then it spreads out to the world.
It is happening already, and it will happen more and more extensively as more people have the dream and see the vision — the vision of a great number of us working in partnership to make our lives far more satisfying and to make the world a far better place. This is a key worth repeating:
It is happening already, more and more extensively
as more people have the dream or see the vision —
the vision of a great number of us working in partnership
to make our lives far more satisfying
and the world a far better place.
