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

Appreciation for the Mission in The Present Moment

Appreciation is the core value that manifest a Mission that truly reflects the very nature of the love of life. Appreciation is that beautiful nature that can’t be faked or manufactured, such as you see when Hollywood does with some Thanksgiving feast when a troubled family seemingly comes together and gives feigned appreciation.

For as far as i can remember, i was troubled at something at the way appreciation was portrayed along with the following season. Don’t get me wrong, it is grand to see people become Scrooges for if even for a brief season; the part where Scrooge is transformed, that is.

But only when i took my journey that has set me on my Mission to give people back themselves, did i really understand the depth of appreciation and what it actually does to the soul. It is my belief that at the heart of the very spiritual concept of faith is appreciation. It is appreciation that provides the prism for all of life. It is appreciation for life that we begin to see beyond ourselves.

It goes beyond the concepts of forced “thank yous” we all had to give when our aunt gave us the scarf we didn’t really like, or some other manifested reason appeared that we should be thankful for.

It is in the well-meaning actions of those who loved us that we were given such a skewed look at the very meaning of appreciation in our lives. So many times it comes off as a forced look at a guilt reaction of what someone has done for us. So the appreciation then becomes a bitter pill you swallow that has no meaning outside of the words you utter. Guilt becomes appreciation to the ego and resentment often nest deep within it.

I see it often times with the very act of gift giving where someone gives a gift, expects appreciation, which you have been taught to do, and then proceeds to tell you at some future time, that because they gave you a gift, that a certain action should now be manifest, be it love or some supposed show of love. The ego then drills down to the act of the forced appreciation that you did and begins to feed on the very act of appreciation as a ploy or ruse and bitterness begins to accumulate. Love and appreciation are often time so linked that one would believe that they must coexist together.

Yes and No. For you see, if you come from a place of love, appreciation is at the heart of everything you do, but appreciation must never demand love. Make sense?

This is one of the hardest values to really uncover, for most will tell you that appreciate this and that in their lives, but you can see that appreciation is not their core. To breech this with clients, i often get to the very act of gift giving and have found that most have had (or do) the “weapons of gifts”, as i like to call them, inflicted on them.

What i must first get most over is that a gift, defined in the dictionary as, “A thing given willingly to someone without payment.” is just that.

In the spiritual realm it is often why so many have a hard time with a gift of salvation, in that our ego knows that there are always strings attached, so there is nothing “freely given.” So getting people past that attitude and the very act of doing that to others as well, is the first hurdle. When you can get ego to release the assumptions of gifts, of giving and of the very nature of appreciation, then we can begin to give you back your life starting from that point.

Appreciation is the core value of the Mission for your life and for living from a place of love. Here is where we begin to master looking beyond yourself and seeing that life is indeed a Mission that you are involved in.
Let’s look at three ways to begin the process of Appreciation, but know that we have only touched the surface of having a true Attitude of Gratitude.

In my morning journal practice, i begin with “thank you thank you thank you” and i truly mean it. This is the act of preparation to receive from an attitude of being thankful for all within your life.

First, then, would be to prepare yourself by being thankful form the outset for EVERYTHING. Nothing must exist within your realm that is not appreciated.
In the movie, “A Wonderful Life”, George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, has just discovered that he is back from being “non-existent” and is running down his little street of Bedford Falls. As he is doing so, appreciation for every aspect of his little town spews from his mouth. All of those places he took for granted, now had a new meaning and he appreciated everything for what it was to him. He now lived in an attitude of gratitude and in that light he saw his Mission for living and that he had been on a Mission without really understanding it.

Next, after you have truly given yourself over to appreciation of everything, there is an aspect of release that you must do. Forgiveness must now be your nature. First yourself, and, then, all other people, places and things that the ego has told you have wronged you in any way. This is a process, but one that must take place to move forward. Living free from here means you can now move beyond yourself to a Mission mindset.

Finally, in our simple three step appreciation appreciation manifestation, is to release worry, which is a task in and of itself that affects your Mission, the going beyond yourself to impact humanity.

In the next post we shall proceed form that point and deal with worry as it is a challenge that must have its own discussion.

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

Move Forward With A Great Attitude

As a Now Moment coach, and the obligatory beginning of the New Year, (which I am not so apt to observe as stated in the last post) I thought we would just build a scenario as we posts here within the framework of putting together a theatre production. In so doing, we will have a continuous dialog on the issues that people are dealing with and the way to move forward and how to adapt your life to become more in this Now Moment

 

The Theme Today is Your "Attitude"

It is a place of beginnings of everything you do, for if your attitude is lacking, the task at hand will be lacking along with your attitude.

Let me give you an example.

When a Director sits down with his production staff and they set out to begin the process of producing the next show to be done (usually the plays are chosen in advance, a season at a time, but the process is the same), the very first thing they look at is the attitude of the theatre-going public, and therefore what it is that they will desire; essentially, what will the theatre going public come to see?

From there, they look to the general “attitude” of the show itself. Is it a musical, a drama, a comedy? What are the characters like and what kinds of attitude are they looking to from those who audition?

As a Director, you always have a concept of the part, not of who should be playing the part so much, as every actor brings a different attitude to the role, but the general overall attitude of the role. I have cast people who were not as good of singers in a musical, for example, but brought a tremendous chemistry, an overall attitude, to the role. This could make all the difference in the way a play is perceived.

It is is same as you begin to look at an opportunity or challenge that you face. As stated previously, it is the questions you ask at the beginning that help you frame the task ahead. The key here is the attitude you bring to the questions, as well as the answers, and it is crucial that you approach opportunities and challenges with a superb attitude.

There is an old maxim that goes, “Your Attitude determines your Altitude” and it goes without saying that if you don’t bring a great attitude into the challenge/opportunity, then there is not much chance that you will succeed at the task.

Why? Because if you are not fully invested with an incredible passion for the answers your questions pose, then why bother in the first place?

Hey, I am speaking from experience here, trust me. I’ve learned the hard way that by not being honest with yourself and by not living in this Now Moment by asking great questions and having an attitude that accompanies the answers you know the universe will give you, then there is an expectation that will never be fulfilled. Inevitably, there will be failure, which leads to a myriad of domino-like attitudes about yourself that doom Now Moment living.

Here are three ways to adopt a New Attitude.

First, find the parts of the challenge/opportunity that create a passion in you.

(Yes, even with challenges there are elements that inspire you. It may be nothing more than the person that is involved with you. Whatever, find that part and seize it.)

Second, after aligning your passion point, now frame it as a pursuit.

Let me explain. I have developed within myself a disdain for the word....work. I no longer look towards work but, instead, look to the word, Pursuit. Reason being is that within the word pursuit is the definition, “the act of striving” and one dictionary has attached to it, zeal. So no longer are you working at something. Instead, have a “zeal” for it. Find that part hat drives you and pursue it

Third, after zoning in on your zeal, “audition” the people and other aspects needed to get you to opening night with style.

Remember, it is all about the attitude and not always is the most obvious choice the right one for you. Look at the attitude of whoever you bring on and will they bring that same attitude to the part you give them. Consequently, will you be able to derive a sense of attitude from other elements of the challenge/opportunity. Is that attitude suitable to you? Again, the most obvious choice is not always the one that brings you a great attitude. It is all about creating an attitude of gratitude for the zeal of the challenge/opportunity at hand.

Create a great attitude and the results will be manifest from the universal realm. It is a universal law.

Let me know your thoughts and share with your friends. The greater the conversation, the better we move forward in this Now Moment.

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DA Southern is a Now Moment coach, teaching the spirit of living in Now Moments with the principles he experienced during over 30 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 the beauty of this Now Moment with a renewed passion for life. Contact DA Southern for coaching @ directyourownlife@gmail.com

Worthy, Do you Feel Your Now Moments Are Filled With Worth?

Worth.
Being Worthy.
Worthiness.

Strange concepts that many fashion in the face of any challenging situation, are they not? Yet, we have all faced these exact emotions of the soul in living our lives; being worthy of anything, deserving anything.

 

To Be Worthy

Where have we come as a species if we question the ability to function on any level as a person who is supposed to exist? What has happened to us that, for some reason, we have decided that we are not worthy of some thing, some person in our life or some form of abundance?

I am questioned constantly about the very nature of being worthy and really it goes back to a previous post written about the past and fear. For some reason circumstances in the past have deemed you unfit for this Now Moment, as you see it, or, in reality, someone else has seen it as a rule of life for you.

 

Feeling Inferior

When I hear someone talk this way, it always draws me back to one of my favorite quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt, who said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” In this quote, you find the seeds of riding yourself of the past that seeks to bind you and fill you with self-doubt and unworthiness. Essentially, your ego, which is the bane of all existence as you will come to learn from me, is trying to hold you back from living truly in this Now Moment by making you think you are not truly deserving of it.

Face it, if you are still breathing, you are worthy as deemed by the creator of the universe. Now if that doesn’t make you feel a bit worthy, I am not sure exactly what will.

 

The Ego Is In Charge Way Too Much

Now with that being said, shame and guilt also play into a feeling of worthiness as well. There will be much discussion on each topics, but suffice it to say this is the Now Moment you have to live and being worthy is always...ALWAYS...an attitude of the heart and soul. You use the past as but the place that holds experience that gives you input into this Now Moment but never shall it be anything more than a guide. Do not allow it to give you any sort of worthiness issues as you are here for a reason.

Remember, the universe makes no mistakes, everything is perfect in its own time and place. No matter what you have done up to this Now Moment that you have deemed (or someone else has deemed) “unworthy” is not a reflection of what you will plant as seeds for the next Now Moments you exist.

 

Attitude of Gratitude

You are to give this Now Moment its dynamic place in your life as the one that is the place of change, hope and love that you seek to be within. Living in a state of gratitude in this Now Moment will give you a sense of worth to carry you into the next Now Moment and by simply releasing yourself to gratitude, you will find the gift of who you are and who you are to be.

It is your Now Moment to affect change for yourself and to see the positive aspect of living Now, so give this Now Moment its place as the one that matters most, because it does.

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DA Southern is a Now Moment coach, teaching the spirit of living in Now Moments with the principles he experienced during over 30 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 the beauty of this Now Moment with a renewed passion for life. If you desire one-on-one coaching contact DA Southern @ directyourownlife@gmail.com