There is an interesting show on HBO, by the very name, Enlightened. In this show, a once high-powered executive, played brilliantly by Laura Dern, has a breakdown and is committed to a rehab clinic where she has an Enlightened moment of Supreme Consciousness.

Supreme Consciousness is as if, for a brief moment, (and that is what these moments are many times) a peace and serenity comes over your being. Your every waking moment from that point onward then becomes a re-creation of that moment in your expression of living.

Unfortunately, as Laura Dern’s character comes to find out, everyone is not on the same path as you, and it is unfathomable how anyone could not understand the journey as you are living it. I mean, it is very clear that enlightenment must be something that everyone desires, right? How is it that your new found place in the Universal Stream is not something desired by all?

This, then, becomes the disconnect. This, then, becomes the reason your ego steers you clear from “those” types, for it is not normal, this “enlightened” nonsense, and you certainly don’t ever want to be seen as “not normal”.

Right?

It has always fascinated me how the media paints "normalcy." But here is the thing...it is a moving target that changes by the shifting sands of time and societal nuances. The normal of today becomes the old-fashioned thinking of yesterday, and sometimes virtually overnight. If you want to see that really played out, look at computer magazines from merely five years ago. Heck, go back two years, that should do it. The computing world has changed so dramatically that simply having a cell phone two years old makes you outdated.

The same goes for normalcy as we define it. What does this have to do with enlightenment and the steps to begin the journey?

Everything, for you see this is a journey that leaves the boundaries of normalcy behind, for you are desiring a state of joy. Joy has no boundaries and is never out of fashion. Enlightenment is that journey that always begins within and creates change in a way that becomes your normal, without.

But many fear this journey because of the ego. In your attempts to reconcile even a fraction of enlightenment with your world, you must deal with the egoic world around you and that is the arena that the ego so delights in taking charge for it has had so much experience with it.

So there is this constant battle between the ego, future-based, whats-in it for-me thinking, and enlightenment, the serve-humanity-become-a-creature-of-love-in-all-circumstances thinking. This is definitely two words that cannot coexist in any way and to delude yourself into thinking that you can make them “play nice” together is a thinking that shall not bode well for you.

There is a fork in the road and no part of one can go with the other. Enlightenment and the ego are not partners, friends or symbiotic entities that could serve one another.

So the three steps, as alluded in the previous post, are a simple easy-to-remember trio of Release, Let Go and Flow, but living them is not so easy to do.

Step 1: Providing you have dealt with the ego, if nothing else but to acknowledge the fact that you have let it be the CEO for far too long, this is the easiest and yet, at the same time, the most difficult step. Again, the ego will really rear its ugly head here, but push onward. Release is really an act of forgiveness; of yourself, of the events, people, places and things that may have deposited you in this Now Moment.

There is no judgement here. It is as it is supposed to be and there is no desiring anything else to have happened. There are no “should of’s”, “if only’s” or “what if’s”. There is only Now and it is the moment that all is well.

Release and forgive all.

In the spiritual realm, forgiveness is the key for really moving forward. All spiritual doctrines have at their core the very concept of forgiveness. It is only when they attach some sort of gain or punishment that it becomes deluded and watered down as an ineffective vehicle for enlightenment.

But this is the step that begins the journey in earnest. This is the basis of the allowing the truth about yourself as a true child of the Universal Way. Once you have taken this step of forgiveness, true release can be the only truth that you know. It is as if you take from your eyes the “rose colored glasses” that people say when they (their ego) determines that you are living in some “la-la land” that is the journey of enlightenment. You now see in full color and the beauty of every Now Moment comes cascading to you.

For the clients i serve, i use the analogy of the hit program and movies, ‘The Highlander.”

In the series, there are those who are immortal, except for one small exception, other immortals can make them not-so-much by taking their head and gaining the one who lost their head their soul’s power. The liner from the show was, “There can be only one” meaning that only one Highlander was to remain at the end.

This is the process you must undergo in your path of forgiveness.

Metaphorically, you take take the “head” of all the situations in your life that have held you tied to the past or that has kept the present from advancing you into the glorious Now Moments that make up your future Now Moments. You take back the power you have allowed them to have.

Yes, part of the forgiving is that understanding that you cannot be a victim here. Yes, things may have happened that you did not desire, but you are not a victim, but one who overcomes; one who forgives and moves into the next step of Letting Go.

In the next post, we will see how the blending of these steps set you up to set your foot on the path of enlightenment, the Flow of it all.

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

Life Begins When Worry No Longer Impacts Your Journey

In such a climate of fear that we have seemed to allow ourselves to arrive within in this Present Moment of living, one must wonder how it is that we have come to such a place. How is it that souls of love that we are all truly destined to become, allow this fear of living, fear of life to pervade our very existence.

The common thread, it is my belief, is worry.

Let me come at it in a different way than most would. Worry is that common emotion of the soul that has no place, ever, within us, yet we seem to excuse it in ourselves and find it repugnant in everyone else.
My, oh my, the ego is a powerful little beast, is it not?

How often do we tell someone else not to worry, when that is our inclination. It is almost as if we are expected to worry about life in so many ways and if we don’t we, of course, are “flighty” or “cold-hearted” or we are irresponsible in some way. Imagine that, the very act of NOT worrying and staying true to who you are makes you irresponsible.

Can you imagine if you decided to travel the world and, because you set out on a journey of self discovery, you are labeled as irresponsible. Isn’t that the height of responsibility; being labeled as such when truth is what you desire? Isn’t the very act of discovering yourself indicates that you are in search of becoming a better person of love to enrich the human condition?

If you find yourself living is such fear as to not make that journey, then merely look at the program, The Amazing Race, where teams travel around the world in a short amount of time. What most take from the race who participate is the journey within that transforms them and their relationships with not only one another, but with humanity.

By seeing other cultures and participating in tasks that many times test their assumptions about themselves, the individuals find that their fear of truly living was baseless. That their worry about life, in general, was nothing more than the ego’s attempt to “protect” them.
Protect them from what? Not sure, but the ego tells you countless things to worry about in life.

Really, however, the journey is from the allowing of love to enter them. Love of themselves, love of humanity, love of life and love of the journey within that makes the journey without all worthwhile.

Worry is so baseless that it cripples us from truly living life. The sad fact is that society breeds that fear from childhood on. Oh, I'm not saying that we aren’t aware of our surroundings but we don’t live in a constant state of “what if” this or that happens that we have to do this or that to cover the "what if" to begin with.

As i said in the last post, the ego can play out a scenario to its end based on a “what if” so compelling that you actually believe it to be. Sometimes even so much as to manifest the very worry the ego has so cleverly ‘what if’ed” so the ego can say to you, “See, i told you so.” Then once the ego has you there, you actually feel guilt about not worrying.

Do you see the insidiousness of worry?

There is another component of worry that really is at the core. The ego masks it as “making sure you are good with yourself.” It is the “What others think of me and my decisions” thought pattern as a guide for living truth in your life that is your journey alone. Yes, we impact others with our lives, that is the very nature of living. However, if you come from a place of truth, from a place of love, then you will not be a concerned how you impact others. There will be no worry about your actions or the actions of others.

The very thought that your belief that others thoughts the ones that you assign to them, about you, are somehow a determinant for living your life is bizarre.

However, It happens all the time.

Someone gives you a look and you assign that look a series of thoughts, usually based on experiences from the past of a similar look. So then you get angry, do something completely different or think a new series of thoughts all based on a look. The ego goes into full-protection mode to align you to the world as it sees it, which is not reality at all.

In the next post, we will delve into the very nature of the living in such a Now Moment state of love that there is nothing any one can say to take you away from your journey. It is a conscious decision, but a freeing one.

By the way, the thought you must take from the whole “What others think of me” situation is this:

It is none of your business what others think of you!

Just be true to yourself and come from a place of love in all you do and say.

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