WAKING UP TO OURSELVES

A regular review: For those who feel there’s something more.

This month’s topic

MAKING THE MOST OF THE LIFE YOU’VE GOT

When Californian film-maker Jessica Fox was ‘crying for change’, she had a strong vision of working in a second-hand book store by the sea in Scotland. She ‘knew’ that it must be this. She googled ‘bookshop’ and ‘Scotland’ and Wigtown came up. She emailed the owner Shaun Bythell and ‘followed her dream’. She found romance – and the rest is history. The inner world clearly has a lot to say to us if we would only listen.

Guidelines

“The way to understand what is happening in the world today is to see yourself in a vast underground tunnel with only a very small pinprick of light way down the other end. This pinprick of light makes you feel just safe enough not to panic. You may be in a tunnel but you can see the end down there and you know the direction to go.

Now bring that pinpoint of light right down inside you. Stop focussing on it out there, and begin to rest, calm down and find this pinprick of light right there inside your being. Your whole tunnel, your whole being, is deep down there inside you, and now you can realign to that fact. All life is there…

Wait a moment for this realisation to sink in: that the world is within you, not outside you. This isn’t fantasy it is fact. You can discover all you need to know by exploring the vast realms and reaches within your own being. It is there you can know who you are and why you are and how you are to proceed.

When you realise this there is no end to the adventures you can go on in the simplest, truest way possible. You can identify the real you and respond to the things that are truly in your best interests. You cannot start anywhere but where you are, now. Inside it is physically and emotionally impossible not to be who and where you are at any given time.

And you can and should remember that in this way it is you who directs the show in your own best interests.  It is when you allow other peoples’ ambitions and wishes and external moralities to be your guide that things go wrong. That is when you feel the fear, which happens when you are not following the truth within your own being. Only you know what is best for you, who have the information at your fingertips.

It really is quite easy to learn how to be led from the inside rather than the outside. It is a state of grace that comes when you live within your means: the means at your disposal within the framework that is you.

More than anything it means you can love yourself. It means you can be happy to be you, because the direction of your unique story is under your own control.

Once you have found yourself deep down inside there is more and more to explore. There are more things in heaven and earth than you could possibly imagine, and you can direct your thoughts inside your being to explore any of the realms that come to mind.

The most amazing things can happen from the inside out. You see the meaning in things of Earth, the things of Heaven. The sky at night is full of the brightest stars and you can know how the stars shine, how the Earth moves, how we are in relation to all that is.”

If you have a general question do contact me on: info@guidelines.uk.com

What triggered the bigger picture for you and set you on your spiritual journey?

The power of the inner journey is very clear in Lizzie’s story: “A defining moment in my life was when, crossing the Marylebone Road in a taxi on the way back to the gallery where I worked, I had a sudden insight that I chose life. Having suffered from a breakdown in my nervous system and consequently lost my mobility for two years, I had been struggling to keep going as normal. This knowing felt like a light bulb suddenly switched on inside my then dark and dying world. From this moment onwards one fortuitous encounter after another, one enabling experience after another came my way on a journey to healing. It meant I left my work, left my country, let go of what seemed almost everything and everyone familiar and beloved to me.

During this painful process (of dismantling my misunderstandings and fears and awakening through spiritual practices, and more and more refined healing and energetic work), there were three other defining moments over a period of eight years. The first in the thin air of Ladakh, when I understood life was grounded in love, and that through this fearlessness, the beauty of creation could reveal itself.

Five years later in Normandy, guided to pick a pungent pink rose and sit with it on the soft, grassy ground, I felt not only was I sitting on love but also that I am loving-kindness. And a deep knowing of life’s creative forces started to awaken within me.

Three years after, feeling stuck and alone in the Var in the South of France, I was given in my meditation a red balloon to play with to lighten the load of unfamiliarity. And I suddenly knew God’s presence was all around me and within me, and that this presence knew everything about me – no blame and no shame. I knew that I am my very own version of this love, inner as well as outer; that I am, after all, part of Life.

These experiences and the understanding that has come from them, begin to allow me the freedom to feel safe, to trust in my sensibilities and sensitivities as a woman, as part of an interconnected and vast universe of truth and beauty of such huge potential, but right here, down on the ground, ‘just me’ amongst others. I find I am on the cusp of trusting myself once again with the wisdom of creation through these new means and in my small and simple way.”

Do you have a story in 150 words or so? Do contact me on: info@guidelines.uk.com

The next Notebook will be on-line on 15th March.