Extraordinary is doing the ordinary things, well

‘There’s something extraordinary in thee’ – Shakespeare

You know how, when you run or cycle up a hill, the higher you get the harder it gets? Just recently, I’ve been feeling that. Maybe you have, too. We’ve come through the tough ride of 2012 brighter and stronger and, now that we’re further into this year, we find ourselves all the more driven to live out our soul’s purpose. Step by step, we are moving forward, dealing with the obstacles and maintaining faith in our direction. We see ourselves clearer and, in our recognition of the value of unconditional love, we reflect the truth in each other. If you spend time on social networking sites such as Facebook, you’ll see that Marianne Williamson’s quote (from her book A Return to Love) is spreading like wild fire. Maybe we are beginning to understand the message beyond principle, at the core of ourselves, and to truly identify. Here is the famous quote I refer to, I’m confident you’ll recognise it:

‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.’

Getting Closer

I am getting closer to the top of the hill but I have to admit I’m finding it so very hard. I’m tired of jumping hurdles and sometimes wonder if I have the stamina to keep going for it. I have less money than I’ve ever had and am facing a potential practical necessity to postpone my dream.

What to do?

I’ve been asking myself this. The idea of changing direction feels wrong and when I look ahead towards my soul’s purpose the future is bright. I’ve written, in more than one of these newsletters, about rising above the worries of the crossroads and so this time I’m looking at it from another perception. I’ve decided that I will keep going for it – I will muster every bit of energy I have and take on whatever hurdles and challenges come my way. If I don’t find what I envisioned, at the summit, I will trust that in trying ‘you get what you need’ (as Mick Jagger so boldly reminds us). So I will try, with everything I am, and I will let my light shine. Whatever the outcome, I know that changing one direction doesn’t mean giving up on my soul’s purpose.

Wherever we go 

I think it is important to keep this in check. Our souls are eager for us to pursue the course of our true purpose; we should be careful not to misperceive this as an urgency to ‘get to the right place’ or ‘achieve the right goals’. We know it’s not really about the outcome and achievements – it’s about how we live our lives, it’s about being true to our intuitions, it’s about integrity, faith and being our full potential, it’s about being in the present. We ‘make manifest the glory of God’ from a checkout, an office desk, our kitchen or even from a sickbed.

Being extraordinary

I find great encouragement in the The Importance of Being Extraordinary. This recording of a live lecture between Dr Wayne Dyer and Eckart Tolle addresses a wide variety of subjects including who we are and what we can do with our lives, living at an extraordinary level of consciousness. The friendship between the two is evident, during the programme where they have a lot of fun, and yet they also talk seriously about ways to change our world. I’d like to share a part that I find particularly helpful right now:

Wayne Dyer – ‘Perhaps everybody here can feel within that yes you want to do things, but you also want to be. So try not to lose ‘being’ while you do and not lose yourself in the ‘doing’ or get stressed about getting the fruit of the action. Like in the Bhagavad Gita not to always look to the next thing to obtain – so that we remain rooted in being and then we act from there, from that rootedness and not from the need to have but from the fullness.’

Eckhart Tolle – ‘One of the major problems for us is that we really aren’t raised to believe in our extraordinariness, about how divine we are – and how we’re not just pieces of God but we are all God. This ordinary part of us, the part of us that is called the ego, the part of us that believes that who we are is what we accumulate, what we accomplish and what people think of us, it’s the part of us that is separate from everyone else and the part of us that feels like we have to own things and so on. The tao does nothing and it leaves nothing undone; part of us is snatched out of that perfection and programmed to a life of accumulating and achieving. We start to believe that this is who we are and we never get to the part of us that is extraordinary because the ordinary part of us feels that we’re having a successful life if we go through the motions, we go through school, we get good grades, we meet the right person, if we fill out the forms, we pay our taxes and follow the rules.’

The two highly regarded spiritual authors go on to discuss how the extraordinary does have the ordinary in it and how we can fill out the forms and pay our taxes while ‘being extraordinary’. It is a thought provoking and thoroughly enjoyable listen.

One love,

Louisa