Here’s a tale about ways of dealing with adversity that I find particularly thought provoking and inspiring:
Carrots, Eggs, and Coffee
A young woman complained to her mother about the hardships and difficulties in her life. She didn’t know how she was going to continue and wanted to give up. The young woman said, “I’m tired of fighting and struggling. It seems that as soon as one problem is solved, a new one appears.” In response, her mother took her to the kitchen and filled three pots with water, placing each on the stove over a high flame.
Soon the water came to boil. In the first pot she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word. In about 20 minutes, she turned off the burners. The mother then fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She removed the eggs and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she said, “Tell me what you see.”
“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” the daughter replied. Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After peeling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich flavor.
The daughter then asked, “What does it mean, Mother?” Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity, boiling water, and each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile, its thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior, but after the boiling water, its inside became hardened. But the ground coffee beans were unique—after they were in the boiling water, they’d changed the water itself.
The message? Stay in-Spirit and change adversity into a component of a new, great, and wonderful world, just as the coffee did.
5. When You Are Inspired . . . Dormant Forces, Faculties, and Talents Become Alive
I love Patanjali for teaching me this powerful truth. Essentially, he’s telling us that when we move into an awareness of inspiration, forces that we thought were either dead or unavailable come alive and are available for us to use to manifest our inspired desires. Could this be true? Does the Universe collaborate with us in awakening long-slumbering forces, faculties, and talents? I know it to be true, so my answer is an unqualified yes! I use this particular insight every day of my life—in fact, I’m using it in this very moment.
I’m confident that what I’m supposed to say in these pages will come to me in one form or another, especially since I live and breathe this idea of inspiration—I’m so passionate about helping others learn how important it is to hear their ultimate calling. I sleep with a pad of paper and a pen next to my bed because much of what I wish to convey comes via my dream state. As I walk along the beach here on Maui, watching the humpback whales and dolphins dancing offshore, I ask them for guidance. I receive it, note it, and share it with you.
I know that forces exist to guide me through every stage of this writing. When I pick up a book, I often open it to precisely the right page, and exactly what I need appears before me. I smile inwardly and say aloud, “Thank you, God. You’re always there for me when I write, seemingly alone here in my dining room and looking out at the magnificent ocean.”
I love watching those dormant forces come alive and guide me in my own inspired offerings. I so appreciate the talent that’s rested within me for so long awakening when I do what I know I’m here to do. I certainly couldn’t access the forces if I were living at the ordinary level of consciousness that had been laid out for me by external well-meaning forces. I can only access the dormant forces when I’m inspired—that is, when I let go of my ego demands and reenter that magical realm of Spirit.
These dormant forces will come to all of us—they’re actually alive and well and have been working on our behalf for as long as we’ve been here. Yet they appear to be dead to us because we’ve left behind our Divine purpose, which we decided on long before we took on the insane ego.
I’ve always loved great stories of synchronicity. Here’s one (considered to be an urban legend by some) that illustrates how the Universe conspires to guide those who opt for a life of inspiration:
A poor Scottish farmer named Fleming heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to it. There, mired up to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and trying to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the child from what could have been a slow and horrible death. On the following day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman’s sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved. “I want to repay you,” said the nobleman. “You saved my son’s life.”
“No, I can’t accept payment for what I did,” the Scottish farmer replied, waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer’s son came to the door of the family hovel.
“Is that your son?” the nobleman asked.
“Yes,” the farmer replied proudly.
“I’ll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education that my son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his father, he’ll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of.” And that he did.
Farmer Fleming’s son attended the very best schools and in time, he graduated from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School, London University, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered penicillin.
Years afterward, the same nobleman’s son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia. What saved his life this time? Penicillin. The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill. His son’s name? Sir Winston Churchill.
What force is operating here? It’s the same one that seeks to work with us when we choose to live the inspired life we signed up for.
6. When You Are Inspired . . . You Discover Yourself to Be a Greater Person by Far Than You Ever Dreamed Yourself to Be
The act of being inspired by some great purpose allows us to feel the essence of a spiritual being having a human experience, rather than the other way around. Patanjali suggests that we could never even dream of our greatness because we’ve been imprisoned by our beliefs about who we are. We’ve bought into the idea that we were limited in our ability to create an all-encompassing life, and we were certain that we had no choice in our own destiny. We defended our need to acquire more and to live a scarcity consciousness in which we competed with everyone else for a meager slice of the whole pie. All of these imprisoning thoughts result when we’re not guided by Spirit.
Moving into a state of inspiration removes all of those restraining ideas. As Patanjali notes, we’ll discover someone we couldn’t imagine because we were incarcerated in ego’s jail, imprisoned by what we now recognize from our inspired viewpoint is an illusion. The poet Rabindranath Tagore (winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913) writes of those who live exclusively in the false identity of the ego: “He who, in the world of men, goes about singing for alms from door to door, with his one-stringed instrument and long robe of patched-up rags on his back.” Tagore is describing how limited our thoughts and our lives are when we’re not in-Spirit.
As we move toward heeding the ultimate calling, we no longer live exclusively “in the world of men,” so we know that we all have greatness awaiting us. We need to awaken from the bad dream that has stupefied us in the fog of ego, and live from the blissful perspective offered by being in-Spirit.
Some Suggestions for Putting the Ideas in This Chapter to Work for You
— Monitor your thoughts for any that put bonds on your ability to manifest. Even a seemingly insignificant one that questions your resolve to live in-Spirit represents an energy vibration that inhibits you from creating your desires. Change a thought fr
om This is unlikely to happen because I’ve never been lucky before to What I need is on its way; I’m going to look everywhere for evidence that I’m aligned with the same energy vibrations as my desire. Be alert for thoughts that creep in by force of habit and reflect the idea that you can’t manifest your desires.
— Repeat this mantra to yourself as often as you can, making it a ritual that only you are privy to: I have absolutely no limits on what I intend to create. By repeating these words, you’ll find that you slip into the world of Spirit where limitlessness defines all reality.
— Make an attempt to spend some time each day in a state of meditation, wherein you let go of all ideas about time, space, and linear directionality. Just allow yourself to be. . . . Imagine yourself without a body or any possessions and attachments—in this way, you’ll begin to emulate the world of Spirit. It’s out of this nondirectionality, with no backward or forward, up or down, or north and south, that you’ll brush right up against inspiration. Such a feeling may come out of nowhere, but it will appear when you do everything you can to emulate connectedness with Spirit.
— Develop a private trust in your ability to activate and attract dormant forces. Visualize yourself as a being who can command these seemingly inert forces to work with you. Remind yourself of this truth: If I stay in harmony with my originating Spirit, that invisible All-Creating Force will go to work on my behalf. Just know this within. Then begin to look for even the slightest hint that those hibernating forces are awakening from their apparent slumber to work with you. In reality, these forces never sleep; rather, they only work with you when you’re a vibrational match to them. So change your expectations for yourself—expect the best, expect guidance, expect your fortunes to change, expect a miracle!
Remember the words of Michelangelo: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” When you were in-Spirit prior to materializing, your aim was high and your expectations were God-like. Reacquaint yourself with that vision and begin living an inspired life . . . just turn the page to begin.
CHAPTER 5
FINDING YOUR WAY TO AN INSPIRED LIFE
“If we examine every stage of our lives, we find that from our first breath to our last we are under the constraint of circumstances. And yet we still possess the greatest of all freedoms, the power of developing our innermost selves in harmony with the moral order of the Universe, and so winning peace at heart whatever obstacles we meet.
“It is easy to say this and to write this. But it always remains a task to which every day must be devoted. Every morning cries to us: ‘Do what you ought and trust what may be.’”
— JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
WHEN I SPEAK ABOUT INSPIRATION AND PURPOSE, I frequently hear people ask, “But what if I don’t really know what would inspire me?” or “How do I find my purpose when nothing seems to resonate with me at the level of bliss you speak about?” That’s why this chapter and the following one are dedicated to my heartfelt answers to these questions, which seem most bothersome to those who’d really love to heed their ultimate calling.
Just the mere act of questioning our ability to live an inspired life represents resistance that we need to examine because it implies that we’re deficient in our spiritual quest. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth: In the world of Spirit from whence we came, there are no deficits, lacks, or shortages; and there’s definitely no such thing as purposelessness. This is an intelligent system that we’re a part of—we’re Divine beings who are a piece of the entire pie of creation. By questioning our ability to activate a connection to inspiration, we give evidence of our lack of belief in our divinity. With this minor reproach in mind, I’ll now explain ways to believe in, and connect with, our ultimate calling.
First, in order to put to rest any question regarding our personal right to live an inspired life, we must claim our divinity. The fundamental truth each of us needs to affirm is: I am a Divine creation. All creation has purpose. I am here to be like God. We should tattoo this statement on our consciousness and wear it proudly!
We must begin the process of getting in-Spirit with a firm declaration from which we never waver. Here’s a poetic reminder of this truth from Walt Whitman: “. . . perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought latent in the human soul [is] the thought of God, merged in the thoughts of moral right and the immortality of identity. Great, great is this thought—aye, greater than all else.”
Yes, as Whitman says, this thought of being merged with God is greater than any we could ever have. Once we’ve accepted this, we can move on to knowing why we’re here and what inspires us. We can begin to trust in the intelligence that beats our heart 50 or 60 times every minute and at the same time turns the earth once every 24 hours, keeps the planets aligned, and creates every millisecond. Our job is to be as much like the Source of All Being as we can, and the nagging questions about what inspires us and why we’re here dissolve in this grand desire. Once we declare our holy, Divine nature to be our essence, rather than something to be verified, it all seems so obvious: The journey to feeling purposeful and inspired begins by seeking to be like God in all of our thoughts and actions.
I quoted Goethe at the beginning of the chapter because I consider him to be among the most intellectually and spiritually gifted Renaissance men who ever lived. Study his words thoughtfully as you read this chapter, and keep in mind that every one of us is capable of being inspired every day of our life; after all, this is our entitlement offered by God, with Whom we collaborated before ever arriving here.
Sharing Is Inspiration
Oneness with our Source is achieved by becoming like It, and Its essence is giving and sharing. Therefore, in order to know our purpose and heed our ultimate call to inspiration, we must also become a being who’s more focused on sharing than on receiving.
This Universe works on the Law of Attraction—so the more we shift the focus from our desires to wanting more for others, the richer we become. When we tell the Universe to “Gimme, gimme, gimme,” it responds in like fashion, and we find ourselves feeling put upon and out of balance. But when we ask the Universe, “How may I share?” it will ask, “How may I share with you? You are a being of sharing, and I return the same energy back to you.”
Now this may at first seem absurd, particularly if we’ve been raised on an ego consciousness that’s stressed the need to “look out for number one,” and “get what I can before someone else does.” But I assure you that when we make the transformation to a being of sharing, the question of how to become inspired will disappear. So whenever we find ourselves “wanting more,” the solution is to do more for society, for humanity, or for the environment. Any act of sharing as a response to our wants leads to feeling inspired. The fact is, it just plain feels good to do something for others.
When I completed writing The Power of Intention a couple of years ago, for instance, I had such a glorious feeling of having been guided through the writing that I wanted to express my gratitude in some way other than taking credit for it or thinking about myself. That’s when I thought of my personal editor, Joanna Pyle, who has taken my disjointed thoughts and ramblings and turned them into cohesive books for over three decades. I knew that in all of her 65 years, my friend had never known the joy of owning a new car—it simply hadn’t been a priority in her life. So I arranged for Joanna to receive a brand-new camper van as an expression of my gratitude for all of her brilliant editing, going back to the 1970s. In that single act of sharing, I received as much joy and fulfillment as I did from writing the contents of a book that consumed me for almost a year.
Understand that this isn’t necessarily about giving our possessions or money away; rather, it’s about living in the same vibrational energy as our Source and attracting that energy in each other. It’s about thinking of others before ourselves and offering the love we feel for all of life, first in our thoughts and then in our acti
ons . . . and that’s how we make a connection to inspiration. This is because we’ve become one with our Source in thought and then action, or as Goethe puts it so perfectly, “[W]e still possess the greatest of all freedoms, the power of developing our innermost selves in harmony with the moral order of the Universe, and so winning peace at heart.” A being of sharing frequently thinks in those terms.
When we contemplate our Creator, we realize that God simply gives and imparts without demanding anything in return. We aren’t required to give to, pay homage to, or do anything for God. It’s our demands that distance us from feeling inspired—so we need to let go of them and extend ourselves in an attitude of sharing. I speak here of an inner transformation in which extending love outward is our predominant disposition. This can take the form of a silent blessing toward someone we might have previously judged, a loving greeting, a kind remark, or a thought wishing the highest good for all concerned. As simple as it sounds, this is the ultimate impetus for feeling inspired.
Blocking the Bliss of Inspiration
The most frequent lament I hear from people who want to feel inspired is, “I don’t have any idea what I should be doing, so how can I find my inspiration?” My answer is always the same: “Inspiration isn’t what we receive from what we do—it’s what we bring to our actions.” In other words, when we’re living in-Spirit, we can feel inspired doing anything. Our job is to stay connected to our spiritual essence, rather than looking for a position that we think will provide us with that connection.
When we feel confused about what we should do to feel inspired, it’s time to go to a quiet place. It could be in our home, down by the sea, in a meadow, or deep in the woods—it just needs to be a place where we can be alone with God. Once there, we can imagine talking to our beloved Creator, Who’s trusted more than anyone else. Conversing with God will just affirm the answers we already have within us, and we can then awaken to a realization of what we’re to do. It isn’t about getting the right job—whatever we’re doing at the moment provides us with a unique opportunity to bring inspiration to our workplace. We can do this by becoming a being of sharing and extending the love we came from to everyone we encounter, particularly those who seem to be the most annoying or those we tend to blame for our absence of inspiration.
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