Waking Up from the Dream
Many of the ancient wisdom traditions teach that life is an illusion. Our self-image has no solidity to it. The process of awakening is very much like lucid dreaming. You realize that your life is a completely open, spacious and impermanent situation and that you can choose to see it as such in any given moment. You realize that you have been operating under the assumption that life is solid. All of the sudden, it becomes apparent that everything in the phenomenal world is subject to change. It is very much like a dream.
Now, when you realize this, something very interesting begins to happen. You realize that you can use the power of your own mind to navigate through your life with grace and fluidity. Honestly, I attribute much of my success in my business ventures to this exact dynamic. I have always somehow known that I could bend external reality based on what I focused on internally. This can be done because reality is a completely open situation, ripe with infinite potential. When I coach business owners (mainly holistic health practitioners) to achieve more success, I often suggest that they start with their mindset rather than their external marketing plan.
Yes, action is important. In fact, it is crucial. You have to be proactive and initiate the change you want to see happen. But even more fundamental than action is intention, which is a term that summarizes the intutitive sense that your mind has an incredible power to will into reality what it wants. Your intentions and actions must be aligned. I know so many people who are go-getters, high achievers, type A, very ambitious– but they are continuously frustrated by the results they get from all the effort they are putting in. This is because they are excessively focused on action; they are not connected to the invisible world of intention.
If you believe that the world is a real, solid, permanent thing, then stuggle is the inevitable outcome. My best advice here is to train yourself to dance with the illusion of your own self and the external world and to harness the power of your mind to create a foundation of strength for creating the life that you most genuinely desire. In my book The Purpose Principle, I call this ‘being before doing.’ Always start with your inner being. If your circumstances aren’t as you’d like, put your focus on your faculties of perception before you habitually jump into taking action. Yes– do take action, but not before you have internal clarity.
Kevin Doherty
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