Happy New Year! - Goals Vs. Intentions

Happy New Year! 

Goals.  Why do we set them?  Is it to attain the vision that we have or create for ourselves? Or, is it the process of getting there that is important?   I think that it is a little of both, actually.

Let’s try on some different terminology around these “New Years” or “New Moment” or “New Life” goals… intentions. 
The word “goal” seems comes from the mind's designations of what we “should” do.  We should lose 5 pounds.  We should give back more.  We should  call home more.  I think we get confused about what we feel that we  "should' do and the power of what we are doing in this present moment.  I believe that what we are doing now, could be all and more of what we often think that we "should" do in the future. 

Let's explore this.

What does our soul say, our spirit say?  Our internal compass, our soul's voice,  provides us access to our highest destiny or our Path.

There are many people who tell me that they don’t know his or her path. That they are looking...  

Here is a little activity to try:

I would ask that you disregard the “I should” and to begin to day dream:   “what is possible for me” ,  "what do I want in my life" ?  Try all of those possibilities and dreams on, see how they feel in your body, try another possibility on, see how it feels in your body, until you find a few possibilities that seem to ignite you, to provide a joy,  a lightness, a levity, and happiness.  You might even have a few dreams that make you smile.  I might ask that you use that possibility as a good place to start when defining your destiny, your path, and see where it takes you.

 Visualize this destiny as an island, tucked in the most perfect climate, with the most beautiful of palm trees, golden sand, fresh fruits, the Eden of our imagination, our most perfect place. The place that represents our most perfect self, our most healthy self, our most perfect path, the place of joy and of light that is inside us.    

And there you are, beginning the new moment, in a little boat, with your little sail, heading towards this perfect Island. The water becomes choppy.  The winds pick up. Then, you see rocks.  And then, you look at your island and you think, “Is it worth it for me to go this way?”  “Should I turn around?”  “Should I give way to a new route, by making a quick turn here?" 

It is not required that you weather any storm, if that is not what you feel is the right thing to get you to your perfect Island.  It doesn't matter which way you get there.  The truth is that there are many ways to get there and the one that you choose is the one that you are on.  There is no sense dwelling on where you have been and certainly no sense in trying to predict and worry about what is to come.  The rocks might come when you can't predict them or the water may be calm once you arrive.

It is these decisions that allow for us to find more about ourselves, to get new tools. We judge these storms in relationship to the island, to our Destiny, our Path.  Perhaps it is time to make a turn?  And then, whatever you decide allows for you to expand.

After whichever turn we took, we look again to that Eden of our life.  Perhaps we find that channel of communication to our soul’s voice has shifted and cleared in a new way.  Perhaps that whatever turn we took was not very pleasant and we will avoid that route the next time. We have allowed for the possibility to view that path again from a new set of more intelligent eyes. 

It is the beauty of choosing our way, in every moment an opportunity to grow. It makes the idea of what we "should" do become that sparkling dream  that comes from the present. It doesn't bring in judgement of where we were or how we got here and most of the time it feels very effortless and perfect. 

And when that next moment comes, when you do find that there is a treacherous storm brewing in front of you and  you see beyond it to your soul’s greatest Eden, you know the difference between feeling what you "should" do and what you dream to be.

So this “New Year” define your island over and over and over and celebrate every moment of the journey.  There is powerful intelligence in these moments, each a powerful opportunity for our greatest self to navigate our greatest life and grow the relationship with our greatest Path.

We are One - A Lesson In Communicating With the Pain Body

Twice in 20 hours, I have heard that we are all One. That we are here together to be with each other to learn from each other and to teach each other.  We are the One.

Sometimes the way that we learn together is painful. Then we learn ways to make the pain less and discover that the growth reward of that shift is huge . Sometimes the time contract is short and sometimes the time contract is long, either way - the soul contract is quite profound, regardless of the time it takes on the time/space continuum.  Either way, regardless of time, we are all One.  We are all the same. We are all here together. We are all exploring the common Truth.

A lesson in communicating with the pain body:

There are many ways to be in relationship with all of those who make up the One.  And there are many ways to feel and think about being these relationships.

When we have pain, it is a message that our thinking is not rooted in that which is True,  but is rooted in feeling as a response to a thought. This thought is usually an awareness that is "off" in some way.   An example is when we find ourselves feeling things like fear, selfishness, sadness, or pain.   It is through experiencing the "offness" that we learn to redirect, to understand, to grow, and to express deep gratitude and discover the Truth that connects us with the One.

Be mindful. 

As it is in embracing the "offness" that can create patterns of poor thinking, poor judgment, and opinion.   "Off" thinking can strip us from the togetherness that is available to us and make us an island. 

The Beginning

"The only good decisions come to us when we hold the consciousness of the eternity of the moment

and go within ourself for the answer. "  -Gurudeva 

(Picture and quote from www.http://himalayanacademy.com) 

Part of each work day, I spend writing technical documentation at a local computer company. It's an amazing gift to have a secondary job that excites and challenges my left brain. Daily it seems to fumble through the methods and rhythms of applied statistics. 

This morning, I was asked, "How many real numbers are there?"
I replied, "They go on forever, so there must be an infinite number."
I was then asked, "How many integers are there?"
I replied, "An infinite number, but more than the first infinite number."

And just like that, I started thinking about the fact that there are varying degrees of the infinite.  (And, that was before 9:30am!) 
 
By 3:00 that afternoon, I was on the table because my shoulder had been bothering me.  My healing touch practitioner squeezed me in before her regular clients.

During the session, I felt the surge of something enormous, something that felt greater than full, from inside my heart and abdomen region.  This was an unfamiliar unit of expansion in me, the most great or the biggest full or the largest amount. 

I asked her about what she thought was happening and she replied that occasionally she felt it possible to surge into something greater, a greater dimension of the energy and the potential.    

I remembered  my conversation earlier in the day.

I always believe that in each moment all is perfect and is how it should be.  In that moment, I felt so strongly that I was being given a gift in this new dimension of that infinite.

The "amount" of light and joy and divine and love that was available to me at that moment taught me that there is a potential much greater than what my linear mind had previously tried to assign value to.

This journey that we are living here is so much larger than what we can measure with the rudimentary tooling that we are equiped with in our consciousness.

It was a new and powerful awakening for me and I look forward in working with this energy and knowing in the days and weeks and months and moments to come.  I know that it was supposed to be and I feel in my heart it was something very important.

I am not sure though that this was truly the beginning; I just believe that it was how it was to begin again.