Happiness is Your Destiny: Discover your hidden Name and you can follow its calling.

How to Find Out What Your Destiny Is (and answer the question “What Do You Want?”)

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Conversations begin with a question. Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To have the hard conversations. You are whole and also part of larger and larger circles of wholeness you many not even know about. You are never alone. And you already belong. You belong to humanity. You belong to life. You belong to this moment, this breath.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. The most intimate relationship we will have in our entire lifetime is with ourselves. No one hears our hearts the way we do. No one knows our hurts the way we do. We are the sages of our soft spots and our edges. Self-compassion is showing up to that relationship with honesty and with love.

First, come into the present. Flash on what's happening with you right now. Be fully aware of your body, its energetic quality. Be aware of your thoughts and emotions. Next, feel your heart, literally placing your hand on your chest if you find that helpful. This is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in that moment, a way of saying, "This is my experience right now, and it's okay. Conversation begins with a question. Impermanence is both a process of continual loss, in which things exist and then disappear, and it is also a process of continuous rebirth or creativity, in which things that do not exist suddenly appear.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

A difficulty is a light. An insurmountable difficulty is a sun. Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. If I do not practice one day, I notice it. If I do not practice a second day, the orchestra notices it. If I do not practice a third day, the world notices it. Instead we are going to be looking deeply into each moment with full acceptance and not trying to force ourselves to be different from how we are right now.

In your meditation practice and in your daily life, can you be in touch, not only with the changing content and intensity of your thoughts and feelings, but also with the vast unwavering reservoir of awareness itself, residing below the surface of your mind? The lake can teach this, remind us of the lake within ourselves.

Through it all, the mountain just sits, experiencing change in each moment, constantly changing, yet always just being itself. It remains still as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day, calmness abiding all change… - Jon Kabat-Zinn -. These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life we have refused again and again until now. When flowing water meets with obstacles on its path, a blockage in its journey, it pauses. It increases in volume and strength, filling up in front of the obstacle and eventually spilling past it. You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to the highest advantage to others.

You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day - unless you're too busy - then you should sit for an hour. Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives.

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It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We also gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and healing. Realize that this very body, with its aches and it pleasures… is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive. The range of what we think and do Is limited by what we fail to notice And because we fail to notice There is little we can do To change Until we notice How failing to notice Shapes our thoughts and deeds.

The practice of meditation is not really about establishing inner stillness The moments of stillness are one of meditation's byproducts, not the practice itself.

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If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed. Francis de Sales -. Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. You can have compassion for yourself - which is not self-pity. As simple, and difficult, as that! To listen is to lean in softly With a willingness to be changed By what we hear.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. First, we all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more reliable than anything we can get from a doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, or leader.

Second, we all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern the inner teacher's voice. Everyone else is already taken. It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone.

The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction. This is not an answering machine. This is a questioning machine. You think you understand one. You think you understand two, because one and one make two. But, you must also understand "and".

I am not nearly so interested in what monkey man was derived from as I am in what kind of monkey he is to become. We ourselves cannot put any magic spell on this world. The world is its own magic. There is no enlightenment outside of daily life. There's no problem so great it can't be solved. If it can't be solved, it's not a problem, it's reality. Most of the calls we receive and ignore are Our lives are measured out The great breakthroughs in our lives generally happen only as a result of the accumulation of innumerable small steps and minor achievements.

We're called to reach out to someone, to pick up an odd book on the library shelf, to sign up for a class even though we're convinced we don't have the time or money, to go to our desks each day, to turn left instead of right. These are the fire drills for our bigger calls.

When I do not know who I am, I serve you.

When I know who I am, I am you. Perhaps ultimately, spiritual simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous. If you see in this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense. Doing science is spiritual. So is washing the dishes. Hillel the sage, who was asked to relate the whole of Torah while standing on one foot: All the rest is commentary. The saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else.

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, This is the best season of your life. Today like every other day We wake up empty and scared. Don't open the door of your study And begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do There are hundreds of way to kneel And kiss the earth.

Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are. I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither; then I awoke. Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man? But if they ask me, "Why were you not Zusya? It is only with the heart that one can see rightly: When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that's wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that's love. Between these two my life turns.

We are not troubled by things, but by the opinions we have about things. The trees before you and the bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is a place called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. It answers, I have made this place around you, If you leave it you may come back again saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Buckminster Fuller himself was fond of stating that what seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on. He liked to point out that for the honey bee, it is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature's vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers.

Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature. Each event connects with others. I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, most of which never happened - anonymous sometimes attributed to Mark Twain -. We see things not as they are, but as we are. The birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. In some ways, this is a mystery we can't fully understand, but that doesn't mean it's not true. We can choose to do things that will bring us more joy and give us more of a sense of purpose. That's where we're headed in this post.

We want to help you identify those choices you can make to bring more excitement and God-given purpose into your life.

Let's start with the obvious here. If you're blatantly disobeying the Bible, you're not living in God's purpose and you will certainly experience a sense of aimlessness in your life. This one is pretty straightforward so we don't need to spends too much time here.

If you wake up every day filled with apathy or dread or total boredom, you're probably not doing what you were meant to do. God has created you uniquely, has really good things planned for you and one of the fruits of the Spirit is joy Galatians 5: Sure, there will be difficult things you encounter that require patience and persistence, but overall you should have a sense of joy and excitement that fills your days, your work and your relationships.

In his book " Desiring God ," John Piper says:. The pursuit of joy in God is not optional. It is not an "extra" that a person might grow into after he comes to faith. If you go about your days experiencing little fulfillment, you may be wandering from your God-given purpose. Fulfillment comes from doing rewarding, meaningful, purposeful things.

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From a job that taps into your skills and passions. From a relationship that involves giving and receiving. From hobbies that are invigorating instead of mind-numbing. Yes, you'll have to do certain things that are boring and unfulfilling, but if you're entire life is gray, you probably need a change.

You know the feeling of pointless work. You go to the office, clock in, do your job, then go home and collapse in front of the television. You work for the weekends and for retirement. All true joy you experience comes from things outside of work. From hobbies or friends or side jobs. Would you say that this kind of joy characterizes your life and work? If not, you may need to rethink where you're headed. If you desperately want a change but also feel totally stuck in your life, that's almost certainly a sign that you're not walking according to God's purpose.

Those who are stuck want to go in a particular direction but don't know how to get there. So they spin their wheels, feeling endlessly frustrated but unsure of how to make the frustration end. Do you feel trapped? If you don't know God's purpose for your life, you constantly feel a sense of aimlessness. You feel as though you're wandering from thing to thing without any forward progress.

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Nothing excites you and you don't have any specific goals you're working toward. Unlike the Israelites, who wandered for 40 years yet still had a goal the Promised Land , you don't even have a goal in front of you. In his classic book " The Lord of the Rings ," J. Tolkien wrote poem that included the line, "Not all who wander are lost. Even though you feel like you're wandering without any true purpose, that doesn't mean you're lost.

You can regain your sense of purpose and discover what God has for your life. Again, let's start with the obvious. If you feel purposeless, ask God to give you wisdom and direction. That's incredibly good news. God wants to give you a purpose. He wants to bestow divine wisdom on you. Sin, as it turns out, is not some demonic quality of our soul; the word is an archery term that means to miss the mark.

The only original sin we were born with is this false belief about who we are. This human incarnation is a magnificent thing, like a work of art, with the potential to reveal great beauty and meaning. Your true Self is, as Genesis 1: Everything you need for your total fulfillment is already within you, constituted as a part of this essential Self. And when you are more identified with your true Self—and learn to depend on it for everything—all your needs will emerge without the effort and struggle so common to the human experience.

I remember the first time this true self principle became real for me. It was before I stood on that stage I spoke about in the beginning of this book, and before I had the words to explain it. It was an initiation, something we all have at a certain point—often many points—on the path of personal growth. At a certain point, I had gone through my savings, had no work or future prospects, and had exhausted all external means of support.

I was left with nothing but my spiritual insights—literally living on a prayer. As I was losing sight of my true self, I was also, to be honest, pretty pissed off at God. One day, after groveling for another rent extension from my landlord, I sat in my worn faux-leather meditation chair and laid down the gauntlet: God, either there really is a true spiritual Self with everything it needs to fulfill its purpose, or this is all a bunch of bull.

I meditated and prayed and beseeched and surrendered, trying to reconnect to this essential Self I had touched in my brush-with-death experience in that coral reef. Wave after wave of emotion rolled through me, threatening to drown me again, with no end in sight. And in that moment, it was like a pressure valve opened inside my body, draining me of all anxiety. I crawled into bed and fell asleep. For the next few days, I went about my business, actually forgetting that I had a problem.

It was my former acting agent, calling me with an audition. I immediately knew it was the answer my true self had trusted would come and accepted the audition. There are a few key elements to this experience that I want to highlight. I just reconnected to that part of me that was already whole, my true self, had a feeling of my innate completeness, and then surrendered my control of the outcome. By making this connection, I cultivated the conditions in consciousness that allowed it to naturally emerge. Had I tried to visualize the outcome, I might have fantasized a variety of things, from getting a job as a spiritual teacher or writer for which I was unqualified , to winning the lottery or receiving an inheritance from a long-lost uncle one can always dream.

At first, as in my case, doing so might help you pay your rent and put food on the table—meeting your basic survival needs is often one of the initial results of making this connection. But the underlying principle has more profound implications. The realization of your essential Self, and the resulting activation of the Law of Emergence, can transform every aspect of your life—and those lives that touch you—ending conflict, dissolving fear, and creating a world that works for the highest good of everyone. We spin our wheels trying to come up with solutions to all of our social, political, personal, and professional problems.

We create new policies, more restrictive laws, bigger prisons, and more powerful weapons to attack the issues—or just twist ourselves into knots trying to solve things. Besides these broader implications, an understanding of our true Self versus our human self is a primary condition in the successful activation of the Law of Emergence. To the extent you identify with the part of you that is changing—the human self—you create resistance to the part of you that is emerging—the true spiritual Self—much the way an acorn would if it identified with its shell instead of the oak.

This prevents our evolution. We keep trying to solve the problems created by the human mind and its limited or distorted perceptions—problems such as separation, self-preservation, competition, and conflict—using the same mind-set that created them. But you can never solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it.

When, however, you identify more with your changeless, boundless True Self, you stay rooted in your core, even as your human incarnation and external world continue to change form and reveal your ever-expanding good. You no longer live from the level on which the problems were created. You stop doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. You enter into a peace and fulfillment no longer dependent on external conditions, but supported and fueled by the whole universe.

While this is a liberating truth for our true selves and a great step up the evolutionary ladder, it can also be an overwhelming realization. A lot of causes have been set in motion—how will we ever reverse all their effects? Mercifully, there is a higher law: From this consciousness, your past does not determine your future—neither past mistakes nor past lives.

Things are not linear or bound by space and time. This underlying intelligence seems to be simultaneously everywhere omnipresent , with a knowledge of everything omniscient , and is the only power there is omnipotent. In short, it could be described as an omni-active intelligence with infinite organizing power in a field of unbounded potentiality. That also happens to be how many mystics, prophets, and, to some extent, religions have described God—and how many cutting-edge scientists are describing consciousness.

Rather than there being interactivity among all things—the basis of cause and effect—there is an omni-activity. Here we arrive back at our central idea: Things are not unfolding by chance. You are not at the mercy of other causes—things are not happening to you; they are happening through you. There is an underlying order or pattern that is already perfect and is seeking to emerge from within your soul, just waiting for the right conditions. Grace is the realization that no matter what appears on the surface of life—no matter what has come before, or what appears to be lost, when you tap back into this perfect seed pattern, into your true self, it will emerge again, fresh, vital, overflowing with new possibilities.

Furthermore, whereas traditional thinking often dictates that the effects you experience are limited by the causes you can personally set in motion at a human level—usually determined by external conditions seemingly beyond your control—when you align with the perfect pattern seeking to emerge from within, it will not only move you personally into right action, but move your entire world if necessary to reveal your greater purpose. A familiar Old Testament passage in Isaiah As we consider how Grace works, we arrive at an inescapable conclusion: In other words, you are this infinite, omnipresent something that is forever unfolding.

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