Peace, Joy, Love, & Passion

Are these experiences and feelings ones that you’ve craved in your life, in your relationships?  Have you longed for more love?  Hoped for more passion?  Wished for more peace?  Dreamed of more happiness and joy?  … and then sometimes wondered if those experiences were  really possible for you?

We all long for certain feelings… yet usually are longings are driven by other feelings we wish we weren’t experiencing. We crave relaxation when we feel stressed, peace when we feel turmoil, love when we feel unloved, connection when we feel lonely.  We want to avoid, even run from confusion, loneliness, boredom, hurt, anger, stupid, unfulfilled, disconnected, and a host of other less-than-desirable feelings.

What if your longings were actually a call to action?  What if you could have every experience you wanted?  Feel every feeling for which your heart longed?

You can…  you have the power...yes… you have that power.  You may not know it.  You may not feel it in this moment, but I know it’s there.  As Tony Robbins, one of my first great teachers, said “Everything you need is within you now.”

It took me years to really get the truth of that statement, yet I know that truth on every level now.  There is nothing you can imagine that you don’t have access to.  It doesn’t matter whether you long for more intimacy, passion, and romance in your life or more peace, rest, and happiness in your being.  You can have it.  You can experience it.

Now, I’m not saying you can walk over to the wall, flip the switch, and voila “happiness.”  And, it’s within your reach… if you want it.

Many, many times in my life I’ve walked the path from longing and wanting to having and feeling.  It’s why I took much of the last year off from living the work I’m so passionate about.  I stepped back to go within because there was a deeper desire in me to know happiness on a depth I’d yet to know it.  I wanted… I desired… abiding happiness…happiness that did not come and did not go.

Last year as I was deciding to take this time, my fabulous coach Sheri and I were reviewing all the business and life goals I’d set – and hadn’t achieved! I wanted to set more goals, do a better job of working on them!  She said, “Wait…if you could only have one thing… one thing… what would it be?”  I immediately heard the answer in my being…”Happiness… happiness that doesn’t come and go with what I’m doing or experiencing… an inner contentment, an inner peace, an inner joy.”

 

Let this be your guiding light this week…

So when I heard my longing… I knew it was possible and so the journey began.  I quickly saw with a little inner looking that happiness was in there… all the time… when I really looked I could touch it.  It was simply that I disconnected from it.  I could stop seeing it.  I could stop feeling it.

I noticed it was almost always a thought or a belief from my mind that “took me out,” knocked me down, left me unhappy, discouraged, or feeling lonely.  About that same time I was ready a book by spiritual guru Adyashanti who wrote about his students and their spiritual awakening.  Once the students experienced the “enlightened” state, they would ask, “How do I stay here?  How do I hold on to this?”  His response was, “Ask yourself not how do I stay here, but what takes me away?  This is always here.  This is your natural state.”   I got it.

Just as Adya spoke of our natural state of enlightenment, your natural state is peace, joy, love, passion…

 

 

The stories of your mind, “I’m not good enough,” “I don’t deserve it,” “I don’t matter,” “I don’t know how,” … and the beliefs to which you hold, “It’s not safe to love… to relax… to be free…” or “I can’t” or “Nobody cares”… even the behaviors you take on “I can handle it.  I don’t need anyone.  I’ll keep fighting.  I’ll take control.  I’ll protect myself”…   all of these lead you away in the opposite direction.

Your beliefs, your thoughts, your behaviors take you out.  They are YOURS.  You can hold onto them.  You can let them go. This is not a sentence of blame, but a sentence of empowerment.  You are no longer a victim of life, no longer  a victim of your partner’s choices or behaviors, no longer a victim of your boss’ or your parent’s judgements or inabilities.

 

 

I set down, I left behind the stories… that I didn’t deserve happiness, that it wasn’t safe, that it would hurt or upset others, that it would make me fail.

 

 

Then begin your adventure to seeing what takes you out, what separates you from this that you always have… this that you always are.  I did it and you can too… and I’m here to help, if that’s what you want. I’m committed to your life and your relationship being filled with peace, joy, love and passion – everything you want it to be.

May all of this and more be yours – in this and every moment.