Enlightened Souls And The Enlightened Journey

Enlightenment is one of those concepts that seems to be a place that many seem to venture carefully. I mean, what is it anyway? Always the image of Buddha comes to mind, meditation and other things “those” people do, but not “average” people, right?

I’ve used humor in my life as a way of shelter me from the storms of life and to get close to people so as to reach into their souls wherein lies enlightenment.

What do i mean?

Well, as an actor, i loved comical roles, for one, i seemed pretty good at them because of the very reason that depth of soul is more compelling in making comedy work that drama. When i started directing, It never failed that I would have a lot of people try our for comedic plays because people thought they were more attuned to doing comedic roles. I mean who doesn’t want to laugh, right, and who doesn’t want to make people laugh. It is a way to connect.

But you see, comedy, the best comedy, has a soul about it that really reaches to enlightenment. Think about your favorite comedians. The ones that really make you laugh are the ones that make you think as well. They are, in a sense, enlightened and yet, they understand that they must use comedy to portray that aspect of themselves that thinks on a deeper level, that part of them that really speaks to the human condition.

What, then, is enlightenment?

It is the state of being enlightened, essentially, the attainment of spiritual knowledge or insight. Here is where many fall down. The mere word “Spiritual” in our society elicits such strong emotions, but at the core of spiritual pursuits are seldom a religious dogma. Instead, it is the very act of seeing and desiring to become a vision larger than your ego desires you to be.

Enlightenment, then, is that perennial state of growth and expansion. You should be desiring this state as you journey from this Present Moment into the next.

There is an old sales expression that goes, “When you are green you are growing, when you are ripe you are rotten.” The way it was explained to me by a sales mentor i once had was that many sales people get to a point where they think they have seen every sales situation there is They seem to know everything about sales and people in general. “Usually,” he would tell me, “these people get to a point that they stagnate and become disillusioned with the joy of sales. They blame everyone who they come into contact with, but seldom look at the real reason in the mirror.”

What he was telling me was that they thought they had become enlightened when it came to their profession, but, in reality, they had stopped growing, learning, and appreciating the journey.
They had become “ripe.”

This is a journey you must take, however. Don’t become “ripe” in your situation. Don’t allow the ego to tell you that it has everything under control; that you should just continue on the way you have been, in the rut that seems well traveled, but safe.

Let us journey together as we go deeper into enlightenment and joy, for they are indeed synonymous. In this series of posts, we shall look at ways to become enlightened and live at an exceptional level for, therein, is where life begins and thrives.

Let me know your thoughts below, get on the newsletter list HERE, and be Social with this Post, for the more people we have living successfully in this Now Moment and discussing the value of doing so, the higher we lift all others around us.

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DA Southern is a Strategic Personal Development Coach, teaching the spirit of living in Now Moments with the principles he experienced during over 35 years as an actor and director in live theatre. DA coaches his clients to rid life of limiting beliefs that have kept them from achieving miracles in all areas of their life by embracing Mindfulness of the Present Moment with a renewed Vision for life. Contact DA Southern for coaching @ directyourownlife@gmail.com

3 Steps to Abate Worry and Live Now

There is nothing that can invade the mindfulness of a true Present Moment thinker such as worry. It is that egoic nature that can take the tranquility of the present Now Moment and give the ego complete and total charge of all that surrounds your Mission. Worry is that ever-present reality, it seems, for most as they travel from Now Moment to Now Moment.

But why is that?

In a study i read recently, it was stated that a mere 8% of things people worried about actually manifested as reality. I would add that of that 8%, probably most things were so desired, so worried about, that they were going to happen no matter what. it is the Law of Attraction in action in a not-so-good use.

So what does that tell us?

It tells us that we are so desperate to desire some unforeseen future that we will manifest it even to the detriment of our very existence. It tells us that the ego will go to extreme lengths to keep a hold on you, because worry is such as life itself. You forget about the actuality of that which might happen for the understanding that it might happen. Essentially, most are in such a common place of worry that when one thing happens that they have indeed worried about, it becomes 100%. It happened just as you thought it would and now the ego can use it to bolster its claim on you as the defender of your safety.

In the world of theatre, it is as i have seen. An actor has an overall great performance and one person out of a hundred tells them that they didn’t like their performance. One person! Guess what happens? That’s correct my young Jedi, they obsess about the one, not taking into context at all why that one person didn’t like it, as if it matters. But i have seen a single bad comment take an actor and make them doubt themselves because they worry about another comment to the point that their performance suffers. So the very thing they worry about does indeed manifest.

Worry, really then, is all about the ego. The funny thing is that we have all done it, have we not? Because worry brings forth doubt in ourselves and our situation, we then define ourselves by the very worry we are in any moment we decide to commit ourselves to it. Even more bizarre is our capacity to see others commit themselves to worry and tell them not to.

But since the ego is really at the heart of worry, how can we make sense of it all? Worry is a natural part of life, is it not? I mean, our very existence is given images of worry in every facet of living by our news media alone. The media feeds on worry and 90% of commercials are worry about some future event happening in your life if you don’t use their product. I have even seen a pill you can take in case you might have heartburn in the future. I am not kidding.

What is the number one cause of heart troubles in the USA alone? Stress. What is stress usually caused by? Worry about some future outcome.

I had a coaching client who recently came to a session in tears. Her daughter was in the midst of a divorce and she was “worried” about the grandchildren and the long-term affect on them. As i probed deeper, as that must always be done with worry, it came out that it her daughter’s divorce was somehow a reflection on her. Her parenting, her life in general. Her ego had so encased her in worry and how it was somehow an attack on her very core, that some perceived outcome with her grandchildren was now keeping her in a state of worry about some unknown future.

You see how clever worry is used by the ego? Ultimately, most worry is somehow an attack on YOU and must be dealt with. Just the absurdity of it all makes most laugh but it is an ever-present danger within us all if we are not vigilant in keeping worry at bay.

Living in the Present Moment is freedom from worry but takes a conscious effort to rid yourself of the egoic nature that inhabits the very core of worry.

3 Steps to Begin the Process of Ending Worry

First, when worry is presented as an option, take it to its end.

What do i mean by that?

Be an actor and write the script. Take the object of worry and make a play out of it, which is what worry is, by the way. The ego makes a whole play out that you actually believe it to be true. This time, however, you write it in your head with whatever far-fetched conclusion that could happen. Make a game of it. There is an old saying that you “illustrate absurdity by being absurd” and this is what is the intent. When you see the ridiculousness of all that must happen for the worry to become manifest, it really is quite amusing.

Second, decide that you are going to be ever-present in this Now Moment and that worry will not determine a future that does not exist. Just the very act of making a solid commitment will alert you when worry rears its ugly head.

Third, acknowledge the egos effort. Now, that might seem a bit strange, but if you treat the ego as it should be, as nothing more than someone from the mailroom, instead of the CEO of the company known as YOU, then you will go far in abating worry.

The ego will tell you all kinds of things to supposedly be in your best interest, but what the ego is trying to do is to be the one who makes all the decisions for you. The sad part is that most allow the ego to be in charge. Take back the night, here. The ego HATES Now Moment living and by keeping you in a constant state of worry about the future gives it full control. Be better than that. Be ever-present in the Now.

Worry is the beast that will rear its ugly head in your life and you must be aware, but it is a beast that can be eradicated for as Benjamin Disraeli was quoted as saying, “Worry (the ego) - a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.”

Let me know your thoughts below, get on the newsletter list HERE, and share with your friends, for the more people we have living successfully in this Now Moment and discussing the value of doing so, the higher we lift all others around us.

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DA Southern is a Strategic Personal Development Coach, teaching the spirit of living in Now Moments with the principles he experienced during over 35 years as an actor and director in live theatre. DA coaches his clients to rid life of limiting beliefs that have kept them from achieving miracles in all areas of their life by embracing Mindfulness of the Present Moment with a renewed Vision for life. Contact DA Southern for coaching @ directyourownlife@gmail.com

The Mission of the Vision

Vision was discussed in relation to goals in the previous post as something to aspire to.

Briefly we discussed goals as merely a subset of the larger vision of a life with a purpose, a Mission for your eternal pursuits.

However, in this ego-driven culture, Mission is often left to those ‘starving artist” and those who dedicate their selves to helping those in need in some remote part of the world or in some place of dire need in our own country.

A Mission often seems to be left to politicians that supposedly have the social good in mind, which we usually discover is seldom the case. Even the very definition of Mission from the dictionary alludes to missions from a standpoint of political and humanitarian efforts.

Therein lies the disconnect.

When we look at Mission then in the eyes of a cynical world, and with an ego that is constantly looking out for your own interest, it seems that a Mission is not really something that everyone is involved in, or should be, for far too many have corrupted the very meaning of the word.

The eternal creator of the universe did not set us adrift to be at the whim of a society that cares not but, in the eternal scheme of it all, desires nothing more than people with vision to lead them into a new age of enlightenment.

Here is where the ego usually shuts the discussion down as Enlightenment, Vision and Missions are certainly not practical. The egoic mind desires only to keep you forever tied to the past and worried about the future in a way to keep you focused on self-preservation, there will certainly be no talk of a Mission outside of yourself, for that is the very act of acknowledging an eternal presence that has no place in the ego-centric mind. Mission stuff is “out there” and reality is nothing more than your failures of the past and of the future, which is always to be worried about.

Often the heartaches of the past, the ego will tell you, would not even allow you to think that YOU, of all people, could have a Mission that could impact the world. This is precisely why you should think of a Mission for your life. Yes, it is tied to Vision and the two are usually so interwoven that it seems to be a daunting task to even conceive of it.

The ego tells you that you are not worthy for greatness, that you cant change the world, that “out there” pursuits are best left to those who are rich, or are crafty or whatever else the ego tells you to disavow that need within divinely given to you to create. The ego is crafty as them all by telling you that until you get to a certain status, income or whatever, that this Mission stuff be best left to those who have the ability to do so.

In the theatre, there is a much heralded saying that says, “There are no small parts, only small actors.” Of course, it has been misused as a quote used to those who get small parts in a production who desired bigger roles, but the concept is not without merit. I learned that early on when i, too, desired a bigger part and got a smaller role. In a sense, it was that role that turned on a switch for me as i discovered the power of a smaller role and the truth about all parts of a production.

I even illustrated this point to a cast of actors during a production once. It seemed that they were being a bit disrespectful to the backstage crew, essentially being talent-snobs, as i would call them, and i set out to prove the dynamic of that saying. I told the actors that they would do the show at the rehearsal with the crew watching. As the show progressed, the actors struggled doing all of the things they took for granted that the crew did to make them look good.

It proved a point that those actors learned about appreciation for all who were involved in the show at every level.

There is even a larger lesson that came from that lesson, and that was appreciation for the Mission in general. The ego is such a controlling core concept that appreciation is lost for living in general. Life is a struggle, the ego tells you, and there is no way to appreciate EVERYTHING.

This is at the very core of your Mission. Appreciation for the journey and for the freedom to allow the Mission to become you.

In the next post, come back for the ways to manifest that within yourself and maybe you will find that your Mission has been in front of your eyes without your knowledge.

Let me know your thoughts below, get on the newsletter list HERE, and share with your friends, for the more people we have living successfully in this Now Moment and discussing the value of doing so, the higher we lift all others around us.

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DA Southern is a Strategic Personal Development Coach, teaching the spirit of living in Now Moments with the principles he experienced during over 35 years as an actor and director in live theatre. DA coaches his clients to rid life of limiting beliefs that have kept them from achieving miracles in all areas of their life by embracing Mindfulness of the Present Moment with a renewed Vision for life. Contact DA Southern for coaching @ directyourownlife@gmail.com