if success is getting what we want,
then happiness is liking what we get;
are we liking what we are getting?
A few among us already know that success is a poor substitute for happiness, and some of us might even have advanced far enough to know that happiness without success is not all that fulfilling.
Consider this provocative word combination: loving, lusting, caring, trusting.
I invite you to read these words aloud, in a whisper barely audible even to yourself, and as you do so, I invite you to feel into them, to really and truly feel into them: “loving, lusting, caring, trusting.”
How do they make you feel? What comes up for you?
Are you feeling the harmony, or … does something not feel quite right to you about them? Are you rejoicing in this word combination, so much so that you feel inclined to use it as a mantra as you go about your day, or are you resisting this word combination with a feeling of … ick?
Even if you feel inclined to ignore, dismiss, bypass, avoid, or evade this exercise as not being particularly relevant and significance for you (or as being too painfully relevant and significant for you), collectively speaking, the relevance and significance of finding harmony with loving, lusting, caring, and trusting grows by the day – for you, for me, for anyone who cares to come alive and stay alive to love in life.
Personally, I live to see the day when the words “loving, lusting, caring, trusting” resonate harmoniously with each other, for each other, as a matter of course, for everyone alive on this beautiful planet.
How about you?
INFP: Still Waters Run Deep
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a rather potent instrument for getting to know your preferred style of relating to yourself, others, and the world at large, offering one of sixteen personality types with which to expand and express your preferred way of being in the world.
For myself, INFP best fits who I perceive myself to be in relation to others and the world at large and, in essence, can be summed up in four words: still waters run deep. For someone for whom still waters run deep, unity and harmony are contemplative truly-nice-to-haves.
I bring this up as a confession of my bias in the world of relating, and when I say “relating”, I mean relating in the deepest, broadest, highest sense of the word, one that encompasses depth, breadth, and height of feeling inside a vortex of creation that facilitates bringing opportunity with grace and ease across the entire spectrum of applicability (personal, interpersonal, transpersonal, and impersonal).
So, for me, I feel especially at home with the self, the other, and this world as and when I remain still, as and when I allow “be here now” to arise on a buoyancy of being, as and when I come alive from a space of “being, knowing, and having” above and beyond “feeling, wanting, and lacking”.
Presence, Promise, Patience
I use a simple formula to find and keep my vortex of creation and let it have its way with me, INFP-style.
Before I share, let me give you a quick review of the nature, meaning, and purpose of love in the form of a question that I posed in my most recent post, one that impressed the living heaven out of me:
If I remain present to what arises in my experience, in a body of vitality with a mind of clarity through a heart of buoyancy on a soul of serenity in a spirit of spontaneity, sensing and viewing all that arises with a friendly curiosity, and if I continue to hold the light and the space for the promise of my being, oscillating harmoniously between vulnerability and impeccability, then how can I not remain patient in love?
Certainly, it would be nice if the collective consciousness on this planet could support this frame of reference for anyone who cared to have it support, but then, where would we be if we had no sense of catalyst that served to challenge us into loving, lusting, caring, and trusting?
I invite you to pause and think about this rather deep and profound question for a moment; no one in a space of caring wishes to say this out loud, but it bears saying: this world is full of people who are compromised in one way or another – a body with little or no vitality, a mind with little or no clarity, a heart with little or no buoyancy, a soul with little or no serenity, a spirit with little or no spontaneity.
The energetic chaos that characterizes the vibrational signatures of the souls who live on this planet becomes even more apparent when we can sense and see and feel that their vitality is purchased at the expense of clarity or buoyancy (for example), or that clarity is purchased at the expense of vitality or spontaneity, or that buoyancy is purchased at the expense of clarity or serenity (and so on).
Let me put it this way: do we (collectively) carve six months out of our schedules to ensure that we put ourselves on an optimal timeline that brings a fully realized collective consciousness of peace and prosperity, or do we keep upholding the status quo, business as usual?
I don’t know about you, but I can no longer afford to hold my breath in anticipation of the first option.
Fate into Destiny in Six Easy Steps
No one I know likes to feel fated, to feel that fate has gotten the better deal. Everyone I know likes to exercise a measure of control in crafting destinies that favor a love of quality for a life of vitality.
The difference among us, with respect to fate and destiny, is this: how ready and willing am I to abandon myself to fate and how willing and able am I to entitle myself to a fate transformed by destiny?
Aside: these are questions that can be posed and answered collectively, as well as individually, especially in light of the horrific crimes being committed against the children of this world (hint: it helps to view most everyone in this world either as a spiritual infant or a spiritual child; the rest of us are spiritual adolescents – and I mean this is the best possible sense; spiritual adulthood is not currently possible in this world – the world will cease to be a stage when a tipping point is reached and more people than not have reached a matured spiritual adulthood).
Before I share my formula to find and keep my vortex of creation, to draw on my fate to craft and shape a destiny, please keep these primary colors in mind: blue, green, and red – blue for presence inside a vortex of creation surrounded by a field of infinite possibilities, where anything and everything is possible; the evergreen promise of holding presence in service to grace; and red for passion transmuted by patience.
Three facets of love with two practical steps each to keep you in a space of love:
presence
1. stay present
2. find your calm
promise
3. hold your space
4. receive with grace
patience
5. express with heart
6. follow your bliss
Before I share my formula, allow me to elaborate on these facets and their steps …
Energy flows where attention goes; by placing your focus on presence, promise, and patience, you are well placed to seek and find and keep your love in all of the right spaces. If this world offered you no catalyst for growth, it would be a simple matter of remaining present, but with the benefit of catalyst to throw you off course, you have opportunity to appreciate the meaning to be found in “find your calm”.
If presence is the taproot of your love at the base of your spine, then promise is the essence of your love at the heart of your soul: to receive anyone or anything with grace, you must be able to hold your space – no exceptions. The more you can bless others, the more easily you can hold your space, and the more inclined you are to give and give and give, the more attuned you need to be to receive, receive, receive.
If promise is the essence of your love at the heart of your soul, then patience is the fruit of your love at the crown of your being: to follow your bliss with intuitive insight, you need to be ready, willing, and able to express with heart, through writing or speaking: are you ready to find your calm, as and when the need arises; are you willing to hold your space, as required; and are you able to receive with grace, as desired?
Through it all, it pays to be present, to stay present, to practice being present “here now.”
Any situation or relation carries potential to challenge you beyond your capacity to meet and greet it; just do the best you can. To this end, it helps to know when to be vulnerable or impeccable with your word, when not to make assumptions, and when not to take things personally.
Here’s the formula, with affirmations for bringing love to fruition with presence, promise, and patience:
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stay present (“I am, so glad, to be, here now”); find your calm (“I am, here now, at peace”); hold your space (“may all of us everywhere be happy, and at peace”); receive with grace (“ask, listen; act, listen”); express with heart (“I am, I can, I will”); follow your bliss (“I am”)
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Feeling the feelings, especially around a personal mandate of “loving, lusting, caring, trusting”, affords both the opportunity and the facility to gauge quality of encounter and vitality of experience.
The space of “here now” is a reference to the space inside your vortex of creation, by which, with which, and from which you can extend and receive fields of resonance with others of like mind and heart.
Commas have been inserted in some of these affirmations to facilitate conscious breath. For example, on the inhale, “I”; on the exhale, “am”; on the inhale, “so”; on the exhale, “glad”; and so on …
Again, it’s not always possible to follow these steps in the chaos of daily life. Be forgiving of yourself and others whenever you perceive a failure, and whenever and wherever possible, step away from the chaos to follow these steps in the privacy of your own heart, where such privacy is still possible.
In my next post, I begin to explore in depth the dynamics of a fate transformed by destiny.
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To share information and inspiration on what is happening on this troubled yet promising world, I drew up two lists of sites that are serving the causes of personal, global and/or cosmic awakening.
This post has been filed under Application in the Ultimate Outline.
Note: my evolving outline on approaching a realization of the ultimate in personal fulfillment can be found here, accessible from the nav menu under the page “Be Here Now”.
Note: this ever growing perspective began here: Ultimate Perspective