Jacquelyn Small LCSWLife’s usual predicaments take so much out of us and cause us to become so fragmented, it’s important to realize that our Spiritual Intent will always bring us back to our senses anytime we feel tossed about by fate.
If, for example, my Spiritual Intention is to grow and evolve, I know I can undergo whatever temporary sadness, conflict, or even relational confrontation that may be necessary for my growth and evolution to proceed. My Intention will give me courage, even sustenance, as I undergo the trials that must occur for me to be whole. Other such intentions might be as follows:
When I hold this attitude, I can always see that whatever happens in the outer world that makes me be more courageous, compassionate, or understanding will have a sacred purpose for my life. I can spiritualize all my activities in this manner.
On the other hand, if my Intention is to always be happy, or if I equate materialistic possessions with happiness, you can see where this could lead. It would mean I would always be striving for this happiness or material wealth, perhaps even at others’ expense–and certainly at my own. I would be convinced I am a failure in life if I don’t achieve total happiness or high financial success. And since life automatically contains both success and failure, pain and pleasure, sickness and health, life and death, I will find no gratification. I’m setting myself up to be a failure if I pursue some unrealistic goal my ego may crave–when, in fact, it’s all an illusion. We must learn to accept it all as good, and see the beautiful and sacred in it all, no matter what.
So I must be willing to have a big enough Intention to take in life’s dualities, both the shadow and the light, the high times and the low. For this is just how life is and how fulfillment really comes. To take on a superficial intention, such as “I’m here to gratify my needs”. or “to always be young” will eventually bring disaster. This comes from an ego-driven personality, not imbued with spiritual force at all.
Our creative minds, our intuition, and our dreams can make new creations. We can even decide all together to create a whole new world where the sacred is once more honored! Knowing we have this power, our true tasks begin to clarify:
1. remember that thought is creative.
2. create what we want with clear intention through our powerful active imaginations.
3. stick with the original intent and our highest ideals, no matter how we might struggle through the ordeals of any new formulation.
4. recognize and work with whatever comes when we invoke our deepest spiritual desires.
5. when something is finished, let go and move on toward what is unfolding.
6. strive to become effortless “demonstrators of the divine.”
When we choose to invoke something from a Higher Order, we are taking a stand as co-creators in the Divine Plan and giving our lives a sacred purpose. We can either do this consciously nowand awaken, or unconsciously, as we’ve done in the past. But participate, we do! So we may as well take responsibility for our part and not simply throw ourselves haphazardly into the spirals of fate.
Keeping a Spiritual Journal
The most powerful inner work I’ve done over the past twenty years has been keeping a spiritual journal, which includes all my revelations, inspirations, poetry, artwork, and invocations that pertain to my greater story. I only document what is essential–the times when I know some major soul event is taking shape in my life.
It is very important to date every entry. For when you look back, you will see so clearly how your soul’s journey through time unfolds along a larger trajectory than this one mere ego’s biography. You may have past life recalls, mystical experiences, or “big” dreams that are prophetic; or you may be able to chart how your invocations are always answered over time.
But when one event happens when you are twenty-nine, not to be picked up on consciously until you are thirty-three, and not again until you are fortytwoÑyou can see how you would miss this stream of unfolding storyline if you were attempting to recall through your ordinary memory.
Your spiritual journal will become your most cherished companion and will be a constant recorder that “you are more than what you look like.”
The soul is big! It treks through its “grades in school” spread out over many lifetimes–from the beginning of time until now–always unfolding, always taking on life afresh, in every generation. You don’t have to believe in reincarnation to know this. Our DNA is a “time traveler,” having been us since time began. So you can go about this scientifically, through the generations in your family chain if you so choose.
But the important thing is not to miss what is happening in your very essence. You came here on purpose. And your life has counted for something grand–though much of it seems to pass you right by. It helps, of course, to have traveling companions, lovers, friends, and teachers along the way. But the real work is within you! You are an amazing work of art–so beautiful a design that God actually made you utterly unique.
It’s important to honor yourself for your courage, understanding, and growing compassion as you mature into your whole Self. And never forget that you are both human and divine–a member of a true “hybrid species” at this particular stage in your unfolding–on your way to full blossoming. It’s up to each of us what type of future we wish to co-create and then share with one another in harmony and delight. For anything is possible when we can believe it, invoke it, recognize it, and then make it so.
Our only qualification is that we must know exactly what we wish to create because if we focus intently upon something, it will manifest in some fashion in our lives. When we are willing to take on life fully, as many of the great Beings who came before us have done, we fall into our natural state
as co-creaters, which is bliss. Then all our suffering ceases. This does not mean we won’t still experience times of pain or distress with our times of pleasure: the complementary opposites are both real and essential to keep us “on the mark.” But pain and pleasure are mere states of consciousness, intense experiences that can be entered into and not feared at all. Suffering, however, is another thing. It is the failure to let go of something that’s no longer working. It is holding on to the past. Suffering takes us into victimhood and feelings of powerlessness over our lives. And this is the opposite of the practical mystic’s way.
Trusting our native instincts and following our bliss is an actual felt experience where we learn to reside on a higher frequency than that of our ego’s worrisome life. We shift our focus inwardly and take on the life of our Ideal, where a sense of meaning and sacred purpose abound. In this way we participate in our own creation story.
A great big door may have opened for you now, as it has done for me. For once you empower your own abilities as a co-creater, your life becomes magically imbued with Spirit. From now on, you’ll feel guided every step of the way, for you’ll be “on line,” doing your part. And never again will you be without a deep connection to your own Source, who is all-knowing and Divine.
Elliott Dacher MD
Dr. Judith Orloff MD
