It is my intention to achieve and maintain a state of balance, bliss, love, rapture, inspiration, and peace; in essence, to live from a higher state of energy.
I believe that this is the ultimate desire of every human being. Regardless of the specifics of the desires and dreams that an individual may have, who among us does not desire for these qualities to infuse our lives?
Therefore the question isn’t if this is what we want or not, because of course it is. The question is how do we attain these six qualities of an extraordinary life?
Acting On Our Creative Desires
It is common, when working towards personal transformation or spiritual practice in general, to assume that habits are the source of these energies in our lives. And to a degree it is true, because when we act in alignment with our genuine self and calling our energy is realigned with Spirit and we become available for heightened states of awareness/energy.
But I have also found that our actions and our thoughts stem from these heightened states even more powerfully than our thoughts and actions are able to produce them.
Therefore it is important to understand the need for balance between action and stillness; between our habits and between simply surrendering and connecting. For it is precisely our insatiable tendency towards always acting, always needing something to be going on, always needing to be distracted by something, that has created these problems for us in the first place.
What I have seen with myself is that when I focus on writing, which is a passion of mine, I achieve all of these states naturally and organically. But it is not just the act of writing itself which helps me personally access this higher state of energy (higher in relative terms according only to my own experience). Of equal importance is the initial impulse to write and the state of connection that is conducive to allowing for and acting on this desire to write.
In the same way that everyone who has ever established an exercise regimen or a yoga practice can tell you, a large part of the difficulty of the continued practice is not just in the actual practice itself. Because we know that so long as we start we are usually guaranteed to compete the session or routine.
The difficulty is in overcoming the fixed course of our internal dialogue which is resistant to this new practice or habit or way of being, and making that internal shift necessary to act on that desire. In other words, overcoming that mental obstacle that is the only thing separating us from acting on our desires and our calling even.
We all have ideas and desires that are powerful and spontaneous – which are truly inspired – but we delay acting on them simply because the fixed course of our internal dialogue takes us in a different, but entirely routine direction. This occurs because our mental and energetic framework is out of alignment with this infinite awareness and powerful force that exists within us.
So the most direct way to change our lives isn’t necessarily to begin establishing new habits hoping that they will raise our level of consciousness, but rather to realign our energy and our attention to connect to this higher level of consciousness and allow our actions and habits to be a spontaneous expression of the higher consciousness that we are already at.
The key then is to synchronize with this force and to establish an open line of communication between this higher consciousness or higher self as it is sometimes called, and our actions. And it is this state which results in the spontaneous and natural embodiment of bliss, balance, love, rapture, inspiration, and peace – the six qualities of an extraordinary life.
Removing Distractions
Now the best practice that I know of to access this higher consciousness and overcome the fixed course of our internal dialogue is the practice of silence. Not meditation specifically, but simply silence: being silent, sitting quietly, observing, not doing anything, but simply allowing our awareness to expand in this silence and becoming open and available to the descent of Spirit and the impulses of intention. In other words, allowing yourself to maintain a state of silence in order to become inspired to do what you know you desire to do.
The effect that this has is that it disrupts our internal dialogue by bringing it into the realm of our conscious mind. So often we go through our lives on autopilot because we are engaged (distracted) by the routine and regular flow of our daily lives.
The downside however is that once our internal dialogue becomes sub-conscious, then it influences us and guides our actions subconsciously. Now that is not really an issue if you are living your dream and your doing what you love every day. However if you are not, then it is your internal dialogue which is subconsciously determining your thoughts, attitudes, emotions, behaviors, and actions and manifesting more of the same into your life.
But between each and every one of our thoughts is an infinite awareness which has inherent within it all of the six qualities of an extraordinary life which I have outlined above. And it is there, ever present, between each of our thoughts. Yet most of us are not living from that space of unlimited and uplifting energy, and are instead caught up in the current of our internal dialogue and in the drama of our lives which it is ultimately repeating again and again until we break free.
And while meditation is a direct and effective method of shutting off the internal dialogue, or at least interrupting it so that silence can infuse our lives with these qualities for a time (the length of which increases by degrees as you practice), we also need to do this same thing within our lives as well.
We need also to find this silence on another level in order to translate our inspiration and our ideas into our lives and into the world. So in the same way that it is important to interrupt the incessant internal dialogue of our minds in order to create space for creativity, inspiration, and transformation, we also need to do so on another level: the daily routines of our lives.
Our lives and our daily routines are the manifestation of our internal dialogue. So, as hard as it may be to accept, your life is a projection of your internal reality. Therefore just as it is important to create space in our minds for inspiration and such to come through, it is also important to create space in our lives to translate some of that new energy into action so that we can make direct changes to our lives, and so spontaneous inspired action can come through as well.
Overcoming Procrastination
So next time you find yourself procrastinating doing something that you know you want to do, and enjoy doing, try creating space and just being silent. Much of the time when we are procrastinating acting on our inspirations and our heart centered desires, it is because the are not a part of our habitual energetic alignment and corresponding internal dialogue.
Therefore while sitting in front of the T.V. and guiltily knowing that we would rather be [meditating/writing/reading/whatever it is that you like to do], it takes a lot of effort to shift right from that deeply ingrained habit to something else. So instead of trying to do that, simply commit yourself to sitting in silence for a bit.
Instead of turning off the TV to get up and run or meditate or whatever, simply commit to turning off the television and going somewhere quiet to sit for a little bit. This is much less of a shift and a commitment, thus it is easier to do. Yet when you enter into silence and create space in this fashion something truly magical happens.
The longer that you sit for, even if it is just 15 minutes, you will find yourself slowly and naturally actually wanting to do what before seemed like such an enormous task. And all it takes is that little time of silence, because as soon as silence is established and our attention is no longer directed at something which is very distracting, then our energy begins to realign with ourselves – our genuine self and higher self – and our mental dialogue changes accordingly, and the urge to act in alignment with this new and higher energy begins to guide us.
This is all such a natural process, and for this reason it is not only useful for overcoming our mental obstacles to acting upon our passions and our inspiration, it is also essential for discovering our passion and our calling. Because once we get into this space, whatever desires compel us into action are automatically in tune with who we are at a much deeper level.
Creating Space In Your Life
Therefore in your day, apart from your meditation practice, I encourage you to cultivate space. You could start your day off with a silence, or simply take a few minutes in between task to see what you are inspired to do in that moment, or you could use silence to shift into a higher state so that you can pierce the veil between you and higher consciousness as I suggested above. The length of time is irrelevant. Just long enough to center yourself in a place where you feel good, and feel good about what you are doing and how you are using your time.
This space is time when you are not meditating, or reading a book, or doing yoga, or eating, or cooking, or exercising, but simply being. And if you create this space every day, then eventually a time will come when you find yourself spontaneously inspired into action. This is the effect desired and it is guaranteed if you are consistent in your practice of creating space.
The famous musician David Crosby (of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) had a practice where he would leave a space of an hour open every day where he would sit and wait for lyrics to come. He wouldn’t coax them to come, he would just sit and wait. And sometimes a tune would spontaneously appear in his mind and he would write it down, but if it didn’t, then he wasn’t stressed and he would sit patiently in silence all the same and simply wait, ideally without expectations.
Franz Kafka had a similar observation:
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
And in this space we become available for this force that is behind us at higher levels of our awareness to come through and create and to express the truest essence of ourselves. And one day we may learn to live from this force in each moment of our lives and have it guide our every action and endeavor, our creativity, our choices, spontaneously and correctly because this guidance is in the most perfect alignment with who we really are and with the universe that it is possible to achieve. Because these actions emanate through us from our higher consciousness which is at the level of universal consciousness itself.
Ultimately we can live from this force in every moment of our lives. For many of us our lives are obstructing this force, but that statement is not exactly true. What is really occurring is that we are obstructing this force working through us, and our minds are simply a reflection of this internal obstruction.
To change this is a simple yet consistent process akin to the practice of yoga. Through yoga we enter poses that unblock energy that has been either trapped or become stagnant within us, and by doing so it increases the flow of energy within our body (by removing these blocks) but also by helping us to align with and connect to universal energy which, over time, begins to flow throughout our bodies and animate us on a much higher frequency, as it is meant to. For we are cosmic, spiritual, universal, or galactic beings. Whichever word resonates most closely with you.
We are the focal point of infinite, universal consciousness, and our bodies and our individuality is a projection of that consciousness. And that consciousness is accessible within us all and is an immeasurable and enormous force that is waiting to act through each of us to accomplish and manifest all that we already desire to be and become.
We only need to awaken to this higher consciousness and come into alignment with it. And through us it will work miracles exactly in alignment with who we knew we were and could become all along, and yet in ways beyond what we could imagine.
So just like in the practice of yoga, all that we need to do is practice creating space in our lives, and then from this space the true expression of ourselves – and much higher energy/consciousness – emanates. And it gradually unblocks the energy that is stagnant in our lives, thereby restructuring our lives, as it guides us (our energy) into new actions, new habits, new thoughts, new emotions, new experiences, new relationships, and possibly even to new paths altogether.
Realizing An Extraordinary Life
About 80% of people dislike what they do every day, and this is why, because they never create the space for their true nature to come through and inspire them to a new course of action and to a new path that is their true calling. And this would spontaneously and irreparably break that daily routine that presently defines them, but which really distorts and imprisons them because it obstructs their true nature and their true purpose.
To a degree we are imprisoned by our actions and our habits because so much of the time they are arbitrarily chosen from our habitual internal dialogue instead of from higher consciousness and a place of inspiration. Or we simply repeat what we did yesterday because that’s is how we learned to live, behave, think, feel and act when we were young, even though it didn’t satisfy us then nor is it bringing us closer towards our dreams. And sometimes we become so stuck in our ways and our routines and there is no outside force that is acting upon us which will dislodge our routines and set us on a new path towards self-realization and self-actualization of the deepest dreams and most enormous power that is lying at wait within each and every one of us.
Creating space, both through meditation and through a literal space in our daily lives, opens us up to just such a force. Except that force is really an internal force, and it is higher consciousness. And when we become available for higher consciousness by creating space and allowing for it, then our actions truly change because instead of working towards bliss, balance, inspiration, exhilaration, and enthusiasm, we live from it.
All our actions are then infused with these energetic/emotional qualities because those qualities where what inspired that action. This is precisely what Wayne Dyer meant when he said:
“There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.”
Your thoughts, emotions, and actions determines your life. Of that there is no question. But your habits alone are not the most important thing. Establishing habits for the sake of establishing them and because you think they will get you to where you desire to go is not the most effective course of action and it probably won’t work.
Instead strive to achieve higher consciousness and then create space for this higher consciousness to spontaneously inspire you to a course of action. And when you get in this universal creative flow, all the bonds of your life will be broken and you will find yourself living an extraordinary life and experiencing the six qualities of an extraordinary life at levels you never thought where possible for you.
Just like in yoga however, this is a gradual process. And it is one which will take place over a period of time, therefore it requires your commit to it. Your life will not change in a day. But if you begin to open up to higher consciousness, this new energy will begin to slowly and incrementally infuse your life and help you to express your energy in such a way that unblocks the energetic blocks and stagnant energy in your life to allow energy to flow as it is directed where it needs to be directed for you to grow.
You too can achieve these six qualities of balance, bliss, love, rapture, inspiration and peace. It is your birthright, and it is in your very nature to live from these emotions. Indeed it is your fundamental nature. And to do so, above all other potential habits, establish the daily practice of silence. And when inspiration calls, when genius whispers to you in the space between your thoughts, listen to it.
“I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When Genius Calls: The Six Qualities of an Extraordinary Life” by Brandon West, May 29, 2015 at https://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/05/29/when-genius-calls-the-six-qualities-of-an-extraordinary-life/
Original link: When Genius Calls: The Six Qualities of an Extraordinary Life