Looking To Reach You

Hello there dear blog reader. FYI….rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated. I’ve been occupied of late by changing the blog to a more powerful version that can reach out and touch more people. Although I am not quite up and running over there, you can now find me at:

http://www.howtolivefromtheheart.com

How to Spot Snake Oil

The Real Thing

Some years ago, Coca Cola ran a very successful Advertising campaign pitching their soda pop as the “Real Thing”. Coke was positioned as the “thirst quencher of thirst quenchers”. Millions were convinced that other drinks promised to satisfy, but only Coca Cola delivered. So is Coke the “Real Thing”? Of course not. All the other sugar drinks do exactly what Coke does. The words “Real Thing” should only be used to describe something like a unique key that fits into a lock. Coca Cola wanted us to believe only their product was the key to unlocking our thirst, but in truth, every other soda pop fits just as well.

Bogus Real Things

Coca Cola wasn’t being unscrupulous pretending to be the “Real Thing”. They just launched a great marketing idea that made their brand of soft drink stand out. No harm was done, because Coke wasn’t gasoline pretending to be water in a land where people were dying of thirst. But the Real Thing is such a potent idea, lots of unscrupulous folks have used it. Snake oil salesmen market their elixirs as the Real Cure for cancers for instance. They know full well people desperate to get well will take a chance on their bogus medicines. They also know they can call anything the “Real Thing” and get away with it. When it’s a life or death matter however, calling something the Real Thing….when it isn’t….. is criminal.

Fake “Find Your Passion” Ploys

Snake-oil salesmen aren’t confined to the world of terminal illnesses. People pitch the “Real Thing” pretty much everywhere men and women are hungry for something. Take the self-help world for instance. In this Universe, folks hungry for happiness are offered dozens of “Real Secrets” promising lives filled with passion. As a matter of fact, hundreds of different “Real Things” can be found on the net night or day, each guaranteeing passion-filled lives. And? They don’t work….. because they’re just marketing ploys. They aren’t Real. But is a “Real Thing” even possible? A bona fide map to authentic happiness everyone could follow? Most folks don’t think so anymore.

What If It Showed Up?

Let’s say the Real Thing really was out there somewhere. A simple idea that truly could lead vast numbers to passionate lives. And let’s imagine some everyday soul stumbles into it by fate, accident, or Divine Intervention. An ordinary non-guru citizen perhaps, without a huge following or Oprah’s help to get the word out. How would he or she let the world know? The snake-oil salesmen have really muddied the waters after all. No point trying to explain what the “real Real Thing” is and what it does. Pretty much anything that could be said about it has already been said about every Fake. Maybe if a million people could be convinced to test it, they’d realize it was Real and help convince others.

But why would they? So many people have lied about Real Things for so long, who’d risk wasting their time on “yet another gallon of snake-oil”. It looks a lot like that old “Boy Who Cried Wolf” story. But in this case, it’s not a Boy getting eaten by a Wolf. It’s untold numbers of men and women losing out on passion in their lives. If the Real Thing arrived one day then, how could we tell it from snake-oil?

The Real Thing vs Snake Oil

The Real Thing will pass all three tests below. Snake-oil won’t. Here they are.

• Simplicity

The Real Thing would be the simplest of ideas. It can’t be complicated to understand or difficult to put into practice. Why? It’s meant for everyone. It’s there to let every man, woman, child and creature be themselves. The least capable amongst us must grasp it.

• Equality

The Real Thing would make the life of every single soul on earth equally important and exactly the same value. By another name the Real Thing would be Freedom. Freedom from judgment, intolerance, hatred and violence.

• Tallies With Our Knowledge

The Real Thing would tally with all our knowledge of the world. Scientists, philosophers, and leaders of all religions alike would accept the Real Thing as a basic Truth.

What is the Real Thing?

The Real Thing is called “wholeness”. Wholeness means everything in the world, including you and I, are different parts of one whole…..not separate things. Wholeness means nobody can be more important than anyone else…..because we’re all One. Wholeness means your life and mine have to be equal in value…..because we share the same life.

We Can Choose the Real Thing

To release your potentials, all you have to do is choose to see the world as one whole, instead of many different separate things. Just like you don’t see your own two arms as separate things. If you do, you won’t be afraid to be yourself. Why? You’ll know for sure nobody can judge your life worthless. When you believe in wholeness, you’ll be unafraid to come out of your shell to be YOU. You’ll discover that being yourself is what makes you happy too.

Happiness is: Prickles and Goo

Once again I can’t help but be motivated by Lisis at A Quest For Balance (link below) to write this article about “prickles and goo”.

http://www.questforbalance.com/

For anyone stumbling here by fate, luck, or dizziness, I’d recommend first reading the “Passion Paradox” at A Quest For Balance….followed by “Inspiration from T. Alan Armstrong” at the same site. At this latter post you can watch the “prickles and goo” video to prepare yourself for what’s here. Done? Great. Let’s carry on.

First Things First

Before I get all mired in goo and prickles, I’d like to point out something about the Great Passion Debate. Just so we’re on the same page, I’ll summarize it. In a nutshell it’s all about the question “How do we find our Passion in Life and put it to work?”. It’s fair to say this question has caused a lot of headaches and fuzzy blue spots before the eyes over the Ages.

Self-Help Doesn’t Help

What I’d like to point out is this. As we speak there is a humongous self-help industry dedicated to helping us answer this question….and has been for many generations. But it doesn’t help. Thousands of gurus write hundreds of books every year with ever-newer answers to this question. Still doesn’t help. Don’t believe it? Ask a few million readers of these helpful works if they know why they’re here. You’ll be lucky to find one. Does that strike you as odd? No? That’s O.K., but keep in mind, many of these gurus and bloggers and authors have actually found their Passion and put it to work. They’ve been to the promised land themselves and drawn up maps you and I can follow to get there. So how come you or I can’t just take their hands and go find our Passions and put the doggone things to work? Good question.

Everyone’s Passion is Different

Understanding why we can’t follow somebody else to our Passion is easy. It’s because we’re all absolutely and completely unique. Unique means there never was another us and never will be. The mold was created for our birth and broken when we took our first breath. Certainly there is a map I can follow to my Passion, but it’s no good for you. For you to follow this map, you’d have to be me. That seems to make sense, but it’s a bit depressing if you think about it. Why? It sure looks like nobody….ever…..can help us find what we’re looking for in life. Imagine being lost in the wilderness for instance, and knowing nobody is ever going to come find you. You’ll have to find the way out yourself…..or die lost. Sounds a bit scary doesn’t it? Yes it does, but here’s where the prickles and goo come in.

Uniqueness is Like Prickles and Goo

Uniqueness means you and I are one-of-a-kind of course. But it means more than that. It means, like Lisis said in her post, you and I are…..the same but different. And….”the same but different”…. is just another way of saying you and I aren’t actually separate. You and I aren’t like a gooey guy staring at a prickly gal across the room. We’re actually different parts of One whole…..parts of each other. Just like prickles splattered together with goo. I know it doesn’t seem like it to you. But it is the truth. And prickles and goo are the key to finding your Passion in life as well.

Uniqueness is the Key to Passion

Here’s why prickles and goo can help you. First you have to know this. Your passion is hiding inside you and it’s afraid to come out. Why? Because your Passion is your heart and soul and you don’t want to risk putting that most valued possession out on the table for all to see. Why? If you “come out”, in today’s world every man, woman, and child will score you. Should you be biggest or best, you’ll pass. You’ll be a “winner”. But if you’re like me, you won’t be at the top of any heap. Then what? You’ll be called a “loser/failure/has-been or also-ran”. Sounds good? No? That’s why your Passion and mine stays hidden in its shell. On the other hand, if you can see something simple, your Passion will come out and meet the world. What simple thing am I talking about. You and those folks scoring you are really one big mess of prickles and goo.

How to Let Your Passion Out

How does that work? It’s easy really. If you and I and everyone were different parts of one whole……nobody can be worth less than anybody else. To see how crazy that would be, think like this. Ask yourself a simple question. This one. Is the life of a rabbit’s tail worth less than the life of his ears? Uh….it CAN’T be….because there’s only One Life there…..and it’s Mr. Bunny’s. Same with your life. The truth is, there’s only One life we all share.

BINGO

And so. Imagine your poor Passionate soul was terrified to come out of its shell….because it didn’t want to be judged worthless. Then…….suddenly…your soul realized it was just plain impossible it could be worth less than any soul. Because there’s only One soul we all share. Then what? Like I said above. BINGO. There is no fear. I don’t mean that silly NO FEAR like you see on Tee-shirts either. I mean your soul isn’t afraid to venture out. Your Passion is now ready to flow back into your life. And that Passion is what you’ll want to do with your life too. It’s there to help you grow as a Human Being until you blossom. But don’t forget. You gotta see we’re all prickles and goo.

What I Believe About Passion

I’ve been motivated to write this article by Lisis at “A Quest For Balance”, http://www.questforbalance.com/ whose post about the “Passion Paradox” is near and dear to my own heart.

I Got-A-Good-Job

I don’t know about you, but I was brought up to “get-a-good-job” that would put food on the table, pay the bills, and earn enough to raise a family. The goal was money for food, shelter and a few toys. Work was nothing but a means to those ends. If cutting down trees with a feather paid enough, it would do fine….never mind the pointless frustration of it. If I could get a “government job” slaying trees with my downy axe, so much the better. It’d come with a good pension. Come retirement time I might be brain-dead from whipping trees with wet noodles…..but so what. My keepers would appreciate the good pension that kept me fed. Needless to say, work for work’s sake was pretty much foreign in the family I grew up in. Of course, like all moms and dads, mine told me to choose a career I loved. Unless it was something that didn’t pay much. In that case I was supposed to “get real” and forget it. “Fun, passion, or a love for what you’re doing is a luxury” they said. “We couldn’t do what we wanted to do with our lives either” they’d often add, “because we had to make a living and so do you”.

“Good Jobs” Aren’t Real Work

I did. I went to school, got good jobs and made some nice figure money. But eventually I discovered things about “work” my parents didn’t tell me. The first is this. There are two kinds of work, real and unreal. Unreal work I just described. It’s about making money. Real work is a lot different. Real work is all about making….ourselves. Real work is all about creating a fully blossomed unique human being. To put it bluntly, if we don’t find “real work” we’ll stay stunted all our lives, never realizing the potentials we came with. If people were houses, those without real work would be little more than a hole in the ground where the basement goes at the end of their lives.

How Do You Get Real Work?

So how do you get Real work? You have to have a Vision of who you are and can be. You must “know thyself”. Considering Real work is making yourself…this makes sense. You can’t make anything if you don’t know what it is after all….including you. This is where the word “passion” comes in. Everyone’s passion in life is for creating……themselves. Work is how we can exercise our unique skills and talents to grow the potentials we came with. Our passion in life is for becoming all we can become. Nobody’s passion in life is for a “thing”. It’s for growing human, otherwise called “growing up”. Someone “passionate about art” isn’t passionate about paintings or sculptures or other artistic creations. They’re passionate about growing their artistic soul. A person “passionate about cars” is passionate about becoming knowledgeable about autos or discovering their unique mechanical, pop-cultural, adventurous person.

How Do You Find Your Passion?

How do you find this passion? It’s “inside” you right now as we speak. To understand how to know your passion (thyself) imagine there’s a pipe going from your mind down “inside” you, with a tap on top. There’s no way you can go “inside” yourself….but you can make what’s inside come to you. How? You learn how to open the tap. If you educate yourself on how to open this tap, ideas about who you are come to you. They give you a Vision of who you are and can be. They tell you what your passion in life is.

What I Believe About Passion

This brings us to what I believe about real passion. Real passion is a stunning and magical thing that literally makes dreams real. Real passion is a gigantic power at your center and mine that drives us to be ourselves. True passion is strong enough keep you and I trucking ‘til we find a way to make a living being ourselves. It’s this kind of strength of “Cosmic Will” that has put men on the moon and invented lightbulbs.

Authentic Passion has enough strength to get to the top of Everest and Make Abraham Lincoln president after failing dozens of times to be elected to office. If your passion doesn’t feel like a bulldozer at your back then, maybe it’s not your real passion. Passion is big and strong for a reason too.

The Way Ahead is Tough

Make no mistake. Finding a way to make a living being ourselves (living our passion) is not easy. In fact, it’s not supposed to be. It’s tough so we struggle and stretch and try and claim failure as true success. It has to be hard to exercise our own unique skills and talents to make them grow. Do you think weight lifters would get stronger if weights weren’t tough to lift? Would marathon runners get more fit if training for the long run didn’t push their lungs and legs hard? Even mathematicians must struggle for years to learn their craft to prepare themselves for their own creative work. Same holds with growing the unique person that is you or I. Our passions come with tough assignments and even parts we don’t really enjoy. Why is that? Because we’re all multi-faceted human beings. Nobody is a one note song or flower with a single petal. Yes your aim in life may be in one direction…..like becoming a writer or fireman. But the person you are and can be is much more like an amazing quilt of many colors, aligned with a single purpose. To perfect this fabulous creation then, writers may have to learn computer skills, editing skills, marketing skills and other things less fun than banging out words. Firemen don’t just heroically enter buildings and save people either. They have to bone up on medical lessons and read scientific books on how fire behaves.

Passion Makes Tough a “Challenge”

Real passion makes the mountain ahead a challenge rather than a daunting nightmare. It makes the hard stuff a kind of fun. Why? Because the mountain challenges us to grow. With every tough step in the long climb ahead….comes more growth. Imagine climbing a ladder and getting a delicious treat at every new rung. It’s something like that, except each hard obstacle overcome pursuing our passion in life treats us to becoming a more mature human being. This makes the way up a real adventure, because the very purpose of passion is growth. The difficult struggle to become all we can become is “pain with a purpose”. It’s hard work done to create ourselves. If obstacles feel like punishment to you then, perhaps you’re going the wrong way.

Your Passion Can’t Fail You

If you know your passion, but despair of ever “making a living at it”….don’t give up. Surround yourself with like-minded people trying to grow up. Seek encouragement from those who have went before you. Be inspired by men and women of every Age who have stuck it out until they’ve found their place in the sun. Here’s something encouraging about true passion as well. You can’t fail by following it. Here’s what I mean. Say you know you’re an “Elvis on velvet” painter at heart. You quit your job in a retail store to paint Elvis but can’t support yourself. Reluctantly you get another job. Did you fail? No. You tried something, and….hopefully….learned from it.

Now what? Try something else. How about “Elvis house parties”. Maybe you can become the “Mary Kay of velvet paintings”. And? Flops big time. Alright, so perhaps this time you research on the net and find communities interested in Elvis. You try to build a little business speaking to small groups about Elvis and selling paintings from the back of the room. Works a bit. But not enough to support you full-time. But your little bit of progress is encouraging, so you keep on exploring and failing and trying. Your passion keeps on pushing you. And, eventually something good will become of it. Like what? Nobody will know until you make it happen. But don’t forget. Every single step of the way you are….. being yourself. It is not possible to fail by growing more human. The only way you can fail is by not trying.

NOW BACK TO THE CONTINUING STORY

As always, I should mention this is a continuing story….so it might be worthwhile going back and getting a hint of what’s happening. What’s that? You don’t want to go back and read anything? Jeepers mister or missus. It’s like a free book. Why not snap the darn thing up before I start charging? Still not interested? Okay, I’ll give you a BINGO synopsis to help you out this time. What’s a bingo summary? It’s so quick and dirty it’ll make you yell BINGO! Then we’ll carry on where I left off last blog. Here we go. Here’s some things you missed.

• Is This Blog For You?

If you want Bliss, you came to the right place.

• Do You Know What To Do With Your Life?

Hardly anyone does, that’s why there’s a self-help industry.

• Does the Self-Help Industry Help?

Hardly ever, but this blog will tell you what to fix so it can.

• Don’t Want to Listen to Me?

No problem, you can pick goals off the shelf like I did and go get ‘em.

• What Happens if You Adopt Dreams?

You can die never knowing who you are, or turn to booze, or go postal. Your choice.

• Did I Scare You With That Last One?

Good. Maybe it’ll make you want to follow me to find your calling.

• What’s a Calling?

A calling is growing yourself your way until you blossom into a fully mature unique person who’s fulfilled all their potential….by listening to your inner voice.

• How Do You Discover the Way to Grow Yourself?

You follow the Plan you came with.

• Pardon Me?

You heard me.

• What the Heck Plan Am I Talking About?

If you don’t know the Plan I’m talking about, you have to dissolve fears of being judged to have it released back into your life. Yes I’ll teach you how here.

• “Who Cares!” You Say?

Fine. Do what I did. Give up Growing Completely by the age of ten. Which brings us back to the story. Now we’ll carry on with me lost in space.

• Yes I Left A Bunch of Stuff Out

Ticks you off does it? Gee whiz lazy-bones…..go read the doggone other blogs. Still don’t want to? Alright, come back tomorrow and continue watching me wander aimlessly.

TODAY IS A HEARTSHOT DAY!

THE POWER OF INTENTION

Have you ever heard people talking about the “power of intention?” If you’ve been wandering the universe of “success and happiness” blogs and gurus for a while, chances are you have. Or maybe you’ve read books about it, like Wayne Dyer’s book by that name. So what exactly is “intention” and what makes it powerful? That is a very good question indeed. Today’s heartshot will give you some idea. More to the point, it promises you this: Learn how to be yourself and you will find this power in your life.

Common Wisdom

The standard, vanilla, everyday idea of “intention” is…..”fierce willpower”. Imagine you saw someone achieving a goal that took many years for instance. It looks like they intended to go there and kept at it like a demented pit bull trying to swallow an elephant. “Boy…that gal sure has stick-to-it power” you might say, observing this huge force of will being played out.

Bystanders watching some guy or gal make a big dream real would realize something powerful kept pushing them there. They might even coin the expression “power of intention” to explain how this super-achiever pushed through so many roadblocks. That’d be the common sense “power of intention”. In short, big willpower = the everyday power of intention. But in truth, there’s a whole lot more to it than this.

Uncommon Wisdom

The real “power of intention” is heaps different from its everyday companion. How different? Thanks for asking. To get an idea, let’s think like this. Some time ago, men and women everywhere believed the earth was flat like Aunt Angela’s terrible paper thin potato skin pancakes. People literally believed you’d fall off the edge if you happened to walk to the end of the earth one day in the dark. Explorers heading out into the ocean were a bit wary because of it. Wouldn’t you be? I mean maybe there’d be no warning at all before you just fell off the planet.

Like paddling down a river and suddenly going over the falls. Holy scary paths in the forest Batman! You better be careful when running away from home. Seemed to make sense back then too, because everywhere everyone went the world was…..uh…. flat. But today we don’t believe that at all. The world today is a big round ball in empty space.

A very different animal altogether you might say. Same sized difference between the “real power of intention” and it’s smaller vanilla counterpart. Matter of fact, to really see the real power of intention up close and personal in all its glory, you have to change your view of the world. Like changing it from flat to round. Not to worry though. It’s not as hard as it sounds. We won’t do that here, but I’ll give you an idea what the real thing is about.

Real Intention

Imagine for a moment the Universe from the beginning of time to the very end was one big whole thing. The future is “already out there somewhere” and the past is “still hanging around somewhere” too. We think time flows like a river through our lives, but that’s just an illusion. If you want a simple analogy to get your head around it, think movie film. A movie is a strip of pictures. It’s one long piece of plastic stuff. The beginning of the movie is always there and so is the end. But roll that sucker through a projector and the beginning is over in an instant and the end doesn’t show up until the super-hero kills off all the bad guys. If you didn’t already know how film works, would you think the beginning and end just sat there at either end of the film strip? Probably not. Anyhow, let’s use that analogy to get closer to seeing what “real intention” is.

Is the Movie Destined to End?

Let’s run that movie now. It will relentlessly follow its story and be driven to accomplish its end. One frame at a time it moves decisively ahead without hesitation. It was always intended that the film play out….just like it did. Whomever created the movie intended it have that beginning and that end. The sheer amazing inevitable and purposeful movement of that film to its end is really quite something to see. You might even say there’s power of the creator’s intention being played out here. And you’d be right. But what has that got to do with your own life?

The True Power of Intention

In today’s world we don’t believe our “future is already sitting out there”. Nor do we think “our past is still hanging around somewhere”. Why? Because we have freedom to choose whatever future we want. Every moment of our lives we make choices after all. This morning you chose those pink socks with Mickey Mouse ears to put on for example and decided to have six breakfast sandwiches on the way to work. All day you chose one path after another. But if the path ahead was already determined, what the heck was all that choosing about. Even worse, if our future was already fixed, would that make us big meaty robots, some in three-piece suits and others in bikinis? No. It would make us Divine.

Divine?

Imagine for a moment it was your life being played out on that film strip. You’d feel the amazing power of the creator’s intention as you relentlessly worked your way to your dream goals. You’d revel in the way you were absolutely driven to keep at your Mission…..come hell or high water. Right? Yes you would. “But I’m not a robot and I don’t want to be” you say? No kidding. Me neither. But would you want to be The Creator? Wouldn’t you want to be the author of that film strip…so you could FEEL the power of the Creator’s intention? Wouldn’t you want to feel this Divine sense of absolute purpose by knowing your dreams were made real…..somewhere ahead in your life? Ten bucks says you would. But how?

Here’s Where Choice Comes In

To feel the real power of true intention in your life, all you have to do is choose to be bigger than yourself. What the heck does that mean? This. Learn how to see everything around you is a different part of you, like your own fingers and toes are. Yes….I know….that’s a different way of seeing the world. As different as a flat earth is from one big ball. But if you do, it will take away fears that are keeping the real power of intention from you. It will make YOU the Creator of your own life. From personal experience I can tell you this. Learn how to do what I’m talking about here and you will know what Destiny feels like. You can do that by following this blog (or the book behind it).

NOW ON TO THE CONTINUING STORY

Millions Have Lost Their Compass

If you’re new to the story, you might want to go back and read up on it. Don’t want to? That’s O.K. too. Just jump right in. Right now I’m reflecting on what happens if you lose your “inner compass” and have no idea what to do with your life.

Quite a few folks are in this boat as we speak. How many? Two hundred million in North America maybe. Complete and utter balderdash you say? Yes indeed it is…..but true nonetheless. So how can you figure out which way to take your life if you’ve lost your inner direction? Easy. Ask others. Lots of folks will be happy to tell you what to do. Bosses for instance. Does it help? No it doesn’t. If you’ve lost touch with who you are and can’t hear your inner voice anymore, even the best boss or mentor in the world can’t help you find your way. I just happen to know someone who’d back me up on this if he was scrupulously honest about it. Me.

Who Can Help Me Find Mine?

When young I thought bosses were special people who could read me like a book and tell me which way to go. Wrong. All they could read was my cover…and it was an artfully designed disguise. I believed mentors could give me their formula for success and soon I’d be right behind them. They can….but as everyone eventually discovers, your formula for success is different from everyone who ever lived or will live. Follow someone else and you’ll soon be up to your neck in deep doo doo without a snorkel.

I figured there were experts out there somewhere who could analyze me down to my nuts and bolts and put me back together again….. pointed in the right direction.

Can Powerhouse People Help?

Sure enough. There are powerhouse people out there who can tear you apart and push you somewhere. Somewhere you’ll regret going some day. Even so, many people might say I wasn’t too far off looking to these fine furry folks for help though. Why? Because bosses, mentors and experts really can help us do all sorts of things. Matter of fact, of the billions of questions out there, they can help us answer all but one. Holy geniuses on the moon Batman! One out of billions is a pretty decent track record. Isn’t it? It certainly is. Pardon me? Which little question can’t they answer? What to do with your life.

I Listened to Experts and Mentors

Take me for instance. I watched bosses, mentors and experts closely and learned all kinds of tricks for “getting ahead”. In fact, I climbed to the top of the corporate ladder so quickly it was plain scary to me and anyone witnessing it. Bystanders, acquaintances and best friends alike thought something had to be wrong somewhere. How come? They still thought you had to be smart, talented, and capable of planning a career like a military campaign to get to the top. None of which described me in the least. But I digress. The point is….bosses, mentors and experts helped me do anything but….figure out who I was and which way I should be headed. And….I hate to say it, but it’s true….the very same thing applies to you. There is only one person in the known Universe who can answer the most important question you’ll ever be faced with. You. And the question? Who am I?

And You?

O.K., so now let’s summarize before we carry on with me getting lost very early and aimlessly wandering for decades. Ready? Here we go. If you don’t have a clue what to do with your life right now, and you’re hoping more knowledge and experts will help, I have news for you. Ain’t gonna happen. You may as well bend over and kiss your hind assembly goodbye….because you’ve lost yourself. Maybe forever. But I do have some good news. You can find yourself….and I can tell you how. Pardon me? Didn’t I just say nobody can help you find yourself? Yes I did. Does that make me nuts? Maybe it does. But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. It means I can show you a door, give you a key and….hopefully….watch you go through it to find yourself yourself. Nobody knows what your Path in Life is, including me. But I do know how you can discover it. Don’t believe me? That’s fine. Go to your grave never knowing who you are if you want. Just don’t come back to haunt me after you’re gone. Enough said about that for the moment. Next blog we’ll watch me getting completely lost by about ten years of age.

CONTINUING STORY….DON’T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE

Today is a Heartshot Day!

What is True Vision?

If you’ve happened upon this site for the first time, you might want to know what “Heartshots” are. You can go to the tab above entitled “Why Read This Blog?” for a description if you’d like. But, in essence, Heartshots are happy things you can aspire to having in your life by learning how to be yourself. You might say that heartshots belong on that Great List of Things called “Happiness Is…..”. Clear away the clutter of teensy kitties, cash, coins, bucks and money on this huge list, and you’ll find Heartshots.

Today’s Heartshot is all about real, bona fide, true-blue….Vision. Just so you know, Vision isn’t make-it-up, imagined things you might conjure in your head….like becoming King of America….unless you’re destined to wear that crown. It’s not having Big Gold-Plated Stuff either….unless fate really has this in mind for you. Real Vision is a totally different thing from fantasizing or imagining or visualizing something that’ll make you feel important. To receive the gift of True Vision, you have to learn how to let heart-song back into your life once more. You must dissolve inhibiting fears of having your Life judged that keep Vision from you. So what exactly is True Vision? To make a long story short, Vision is ideas.

Yep. Just ideas, albeit really special ones. Vision ideas are spectacular things that make you say…… “I see!”. And what exactly will you see with real Vision? Who you are…. and…. what to do with your life. Like I said, I’m talking spectacular here.

Here’s something that follows from what I just said above about Vision….that you might not have noticed. The kind of real Vision you’ve read about Saints or World Leaders or Famous Folks having…..can be had by anyone. Why? Everyone comes with seeds of this special insight, because everyone needs to know who they are and what to do with their life. Vision is a natural sense that’s supposed to show us how to grow ourselves until we blossom. Vision is what each of us needs to “manifest our destiny”.

Put another way, to become all we can become, the Path to follow must be clear to us. Vision is the only thing that lets us see our own Road Less Traveled ahead. The thing is, unless you and I can go about our lives….being ourselves….living authentically…following our Truth….we can’t be happy. That’s one reason Vision is such a spectacular thing. It shows us the Path to take to be happy. And Vision is restored in any life the same way. Those special ideas needed to let “our own unique Truth” back into our lives are always held back by fears of having our lives judged.

 Take away the fears and out come the ideas….like a kind of Divine Magic. Remove the inhibiting Force of Fear and our potentials are released….just like water potential is released when you open a tap.

Just to whet your appetite for having Vision in your life again then, here’s a few things you will be able to see with it.

• Opportunities that are right for you.
• Your soul-mate
• Yourself in others (makes you send good Karma out to enrich your life)
• Why you are here
• Life lessons galore at every turn (where you noticed nothing before)
• The value of friendship, love, and beauty (first-hand….instead of from books)

Here’s a few things Vision isn’t

• Visualizing “wants” you think will make you important (Vision ideas come from the heart…..make-me-important “wants” come from T.V.)
• Imagining yourself being better than others (With Vision you don’t need to do this, because you SEE your life is equal in value to any life)
• Hoping (Vision brings with it hope for Happiness….but just plain hoping for happiness brings only sorrow)

Next Blog we’ll carry on with the continuing story.

NOW BACK TO THE CONTINUING STORY

First a quick review. You and I and every single soul on earth arrives here with a plan for growing human. In the beginning, when egg meets sperm, we call this plan “DNA”. It directs all sorts of nifty chemicals to come together to start building a unique baby person. It keeps on showing us which Way to grow for at least nine months. But of course, after birth, each of us continues growing Human in a unique way for quite some time. Then…..like I said last blog….something happens that stops us growing the Way we were meant to grow. It makes us blind to the right Path.

If this bad thing didn’t happen, we’d keep on getting ideas about who we are and how to grow ourselves Our Way. We’d stick to the Path we’ve been on since conception, and eventually blossom into a unique Human Being. But…… sadly… somewhere in our early lives, we learn a simple lesson of fear from parents, teachers, friends and others.

The Bad Lesson

Here’s the bad lesson many learn by ten years of age. If we venture out of our shell to be ourselves, we’ll be judged. Everyone and their uncle’s short-haired spaniel will measure our size, color, strength and smarts and rank us on the “Great Scale of Worthiness”. And what happens if we’re at the bottom of this scale? You got it. We’ll be pronounced… WORTHLESS. But we don’t have to hit bottom to feel bad about ourselves. Soon we’ll discover that guys or gals at the top are “winners”. And we lesser folk somewhere further down that Big Scale of Human Value? We have big signs on our backs on which it is written….”I AM A LOSER….PLEASE DO ME A FAVOR AND KICK ME”.

The Result

So what you say? So this. Nobody wants to discover their life is “worthless”. Who wants to be called a “loser” by man, woman and child alike? Way down deep where our hearts live, the idea we have no value at all is scary with a capital S. The result of all this judgment passed on our Life is predictable. We don’t want to be ourselves. We stop growing that way. We cease and desist with becoming all we can become. Why? Too risky. So what’s the alternative?

The Sad Alternative

Now what? Terrified of being ourselves, we try to be something else. Down where our heart is, we figure we can put out a kind of “dummy us”. If this fake persona is shot down and burned…..it’s not so bad….because the real person is still safe and sound in its shell. So what kind of “dummy” might we become? Anything that gets kudos. Doctors, lawyers or businessmen are “important people” for instance…..so let’s be one of those.

But what if we’re a poet or fireman or farmer at heart? Too bad for us. We ain’t risking being “unimportant”. Or being called a “loser” by someone. On the other hand, maybe we don’t have doctor, lawyer or business smarts. Then what? We’ll try to “get a good job” and forget the world thinks we’re a loser.

What Does That Mean?

All that means we give up growing ourselves in the unique Way we began life with. Instead we grow ourselves some other way. We pick goals off the shelf, designed to make us feel important (according to others)…..and go get ‘em. We grow without proper direction. Which is….. if you recall…..cancerous. We become Huge Human Tumors.

Stop, Look, and Listen

Now I want you to stop for a moment and reflect on what I’ve just said. Imagine someone or something following a Plan from conception. He, she, or it is heading like an atomic arrow to some distant destination. Then, suddenly, for reasons unknown, this person or creature veers off and heads somewhere else. Or perhaps this unfortunate soul begins wandering around in circles.

You’d have to wonder what happened…..wouldn’t you? Imagine you were “looking down on high” at this life before you. From your privileged position you can see this life has veered from the Path it was meant to take….to take a direction that will make its life a mere shadow of what it could be. That is exactly what happens to millions of people.

Real Life Examples

To flesh out this sad state of affairs we’ll pick some real life examples. Me and others. We’ll begin with a real, actual, living person. A youngster I know by the name of Erin. I’ve changed his name, but I can assure you he is live and kicking as we speak. From the time this kid could crawl downhill, he wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Just mention the word helicopter and he’d light up like the moon hit by an asteroid! To say he was passionate about ‘copters would be the Mother of All Understatements. This boy was born to fly, with or without wings. But he was about to run into a bit of trouble. Why? My friends his parents had other ideas. Simple, ready-made ideas like …..“that, my little funny flying friend….is totally unrealistic”. Ideas like…..“Fly copters and you’ll have to move to the North Pole to get-a-good-job”. Even worse, they laid this on him. “You’re an idiot if you go for helicopters”.

The Training Works

Eventually their training worked and Erin gave up on helicopters. Instead of listening to his heart, he listened to his parents. And? Now he’s dropping in and out of one college course after another, aimlessly wandering and totally lost. Poor guy doesn’t know it yet, but he’s given up the love of his life……and he’ll pay dearly for it. Holy cats in the ocean Batman! What just happened here? Fear of having his life judged and found worthless stopped Erin from sticking to the Plan he came with. A Plan that would grow him into who he could be. A Plan that would make him happy by fulfilling his potentials. Next blog I’ll give you another example of how to grow some Way you weren’t meant to. By listening to bosses instead of heart-song.

Today is a HEARTSHOT day.

True Love is a Window

Imagine a heavenly place that every soul on earth has heard about. A place of beauty and warmth and peace. A mystical place where all men and women feel equally worthy and the true miracle of life is fully appreciated by everyone. This amazing land of hope and happiness can be likened to a Garden of Eden too, because all who live there grow like wondrous flowers until they blossom.

Surely every man, woman, and child would want to go to this place, if it was absolutely real and the Way there was known. But in our world of the twenty-first century, this legendary place is only a dream at best. At worst it’s nothing but a myth. Wishful thinking by irrational people. Hopeful thoughts of folks out of touch with reality. Right? Dead wrong. Heaven is more real than the reality most of us live in. Heaven is the reality you and I can grow our way into if we learn the Art of Being Ourselves…..otherwise known as Being Human. The best, most powerful Way to do exactly this, is to find your soulmate. Hint: go back a few blogs for an intro….then follow this blog until you learn what’s keeping you from being yourself. Why is it that finding your soulmate will lead you to Heaven? Because true love is a Window to this Miraculous place.

It’s a window you can look through at first, but open up as wide as the night sky too…..to step right through to a far greater reality called “Heaven”. Don’t believe a word of it? A word of caution. That kind of disbelief will keep you in a very unhappy kind of reality. I’ll bet you can guess what name I would give it as well. No? C’mon now….it’s the opposite of Heaven.

Next blog we’ll continue on learning about your calling and how to get it back.