Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Listening

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Choices, Gut feeling, Inner voice, Intuition, Listening, Spiritual Saturday, Warning

Have you ever listened to your inner voice? Some label it conscience; others label it God. My experience with this inner voice has been an interesting one. I remember reading about it The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey mentions that this inner voice gets louder the more you listen to it and quieter when you ignore it. I’ll label this inner voice intuition.

Have you ever gone to a place, and it just felt wrong? You can’t put your finger on why it is wrong; it just is. Have you ever felt a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you did something wrong? Have you ever had your internal alarms go off when you are about to do something you know is too risky? These are all examples of this intuition I’m talking about.

When I look back over my life, my intuition has saved me from some major errors. Whenever I have stepped in it, my inner voice was screaming not to do something and I ignored it. Sometimes the inner voice gives a little warning. Then, if I ignore it, it would give a bigger warning. If I continued to ignore it, it would stop warning me and BAM! The thing it warned me about happened and it was so much more painful than it had to be, all because I ignored the guidance I was getting all along.

Sure. Some could label this as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Who knows? Maybe it was. I believe there is more to it than that. I truly believe that our intuition is our best friend and should be trusted, because at least in my life, it has proven itself over and over and over.

Try this little exercise for yourself. Look back over your life and try to find the times your inner voice, intuition, whatever you call it, tried to warn you about a decision or action you were about to make. Did you follow the advice? How many times did your failure to follow this inner guidance get you in trouble?

Reply in the comments if this exercise helped you identify your own internal voice. Give me some success stories too.

Have a great Saturday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Listening to the Inner Voice

Tags

Awareness, Conscience, going within, Inner guidance, Inner voice, Intuition, Listen, Peace, Quietude, Tranquility

All of us have an inner voice. A voice that advises us. Some call it your conscience, some call it “the muse”, and some don’t know what it is. What I find most interesting about this inner voice is how it reacts to what you do. If you listen to it, it gets more clear over time and gives you more. If you ignore it, it gets very quiet, almost quiet enough that you forget it’s there.

I believe in the inner voice, but it is easy to be fooled from time-to-time. So you have to ask for a confirmation before you jump at something your inner voice tells you. Sometimes we can confuse that inner voice with our own ego. They are dramatically different. If you listen long enough, you recognize the true inner voice and the one that is just you trying to talk you into doing something you shouldn’t do or keep doing. My inner voice is always succinct. When it speaks, it speaks in very short sentences. That’s how I know when the inner voice is the real deal.

You may call this intuition or the subconscious bubbling up, but I think it’s more than that. You may use your intuition to judge or interpret what the inner voice is telling you, but the inner voice is there. It’s like it is coming from deep within you. A place of perfect calm, peace, and tranquility. A voice that has no self-interest, no interest in gain, and no interest in whether you follow it or not. It is just there, providing guidance constantly. If you let it.

It’s the voice that raises a red flag, saying, “You better be careful with that.” It can also provide suggestions, advice, and interesting ideas, particularly if you are trying to create something. Think about Einstein, Edison, or any other great thinker. They all arrived at their novel ideas by just being quiet and going within. Whether it was Edison taking a nap or Einstein’s thought experiments, it was all about going within and getting the answer. How do you get an answer about something that doesn’t exist?

Hopefully, I’ve got you thinking. The inner voice, for those of you who know what I’m talking about, is a huge advantage. It provides you ways to avoid all kinds of self-inflicted trouble. It gives you ideas. It is always there. You just have to listen.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Let Divine Spirit Do It’s Work

Tags

Achievements, answers, Confirmations, Divine Spirit, Faith, Goals, Intuition, Patience, questions, Trust

Image by Dean Moriarty from Pixabay

When you don’t put a definite shape to what you imagine, Divine Spirit can have unlimited freedom to fill that mold. But if you put a limit to it, you often strike out because you’ve allowed for only one possible outcome.

—Harold Klemp

The Language of Soul

Think about the last thing you wanted to do or accomplish. How did you do it? Did you visualize an outcome, did you have a vague idea about what you wanted, or were you trudging along blind?

I began experimenting with what Harold discusses in this quote a few years ago. It came about because I was doing the opposite of what this quote posits. I was putting a definite “how” to accomplishing my goal. As stated, I kept running into problems, frustration, and ultimately gave up in anger.

I don’t know what your beliefs are, but I started to believe this quote when I tried again with achieving something that I wanted. This time, I just kept my eye on the end state of the goal, not on how it would come about. I became relaxed. I knew my daily actions would get me to the goal; I knew I would make mistakes; I knew obstacles would come up during the journey, but I soon discovered that it also provided me with ways to work around these mistakes and obstacles. I followed my instincts or perhaps an inner intuition that said, “Ok, no problem. Do this now.”

I believe in Divine Spirit. I believe that it passes on little clues or tidbits of information to achieve what we envision. It doesn’t do this because we are special or particularly holy or worthy. The mechanism is the visualization of what we want and keeping a focus on that picture day-to-day. Whenever I run into a problem or difficulty, I ask, “So what now?” As I wait for the answer to come I continue to plod along with the daily tasks I have set out for myself that will edge me closer to the picture I have in my mind. You know what? The answers come.

I have talked with friends and family about this and they all concur. Each of us gets an answer to our questions. One thing I have discovered is not getting wrapped around the context of what that answer will be or what form it will come in.

Have you ever had a question answered by coming across a website that spells it out? What about a passage in a book? How about a conversation you have with someone or what you overhear someone talks about? Have you ever found an answer coming across in a radio program, podcast, or a billboard?

This is what I am talking about. If you ask a question and remain patient, aware, and open, the answer comes. It will probably not be what you thought it should be. It will be clear. Now comes your ability to have faith in the response. Sometimes, what comes through is something that makes little sense. How do you compensate for that?

You test it. Let’s say you ask about your current job? You recognize some tell-tale signs that things might not be going well with your employer. You read articles in the paper; You see people leave the organization. These signs tell you that your organization is going through some financial stress, despite the positive notes or messages the leadership is passing out to everyone. You ask and wait.

The answer comes and says, “Time to look for a new role.” Before you do that, ask for a confirmation. The confirmation can be anything. I used a yellow bird as a confirmation. I waited patiently.

One morning, as I’m looking through some articles on Flipboard, I see an article about a business laying people off and within the same web page that displayed the article’s headline, was a yellow bird, depicted on the page. I got my answer and a confirmation. I left that job and within two weeks after my leaving that position for a new role in a different state; I heard through the grapevine that company laid off my entire team, including our market president.

Random? Lucky? Unbelievable? Maybe. This is one thing you must prove to yourself. It’s the only way for you to understand what I’m talking about. Experience this for yourself.

Imagine being able to ask these types of questions and getting answers to them. I don’t care what topic they relate to. Maybe you want to find out whether to continue a relationship. Maybe you are considering a move. Maybe you are considering a new project. Whatever that is, ask and figure out if this works for you. It may; It may not. If it works, imagine how powerful that is? It works for me and I trust it more and more.

I’ll stop here. I wish all of you a terrific Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Awareness

Tags

Aeschylus, Awareness, Hump Day, Intuition, Learning, Wednesday, wisdom

“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” — Aeschylus

Credit: Brainyquote

Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is about learning and growth. Look back over your life for a few minutes today. Think about the time you grew the most, learned the most, or made a life-changing decision. I bet these were times of great pain and suffering.

I don’t know why, but these times, although unendurable at the time, are the times we grow the most. The point this quote makes is that it is impossible to grow or learn when things are easy. When things are easy, the human mind likes to live in its repetitiveness. Why change? Everything is wired, and the brain loves repetition. Then–BAM!! You get blindsided.

The blindside could be a financial problem, a friend or loved one that betrays you, your job goes away, or any number of disasters. Immediately you go into “scramble mode”. At these times of high stress and trouble we become very creative. We reach out to friends, we read, we do Internet searches, anything we can to find potential solutions to our pain. It is these times that we truly grow.

We learn the things we did or didn’t do that caused our problem. Sometimes we learn that the things we just lost weren’t that important to begin with. Maybe the relationship you were in was on its way out months or even years ago and you’ve held onto it, even though in your “heart of hearts” you knew it wasn’t working for you or them and neither of you could drum up the courage to end it. Maybe you lose your job, again, knowing the company was having financial problems and ignoring the signs. You see, we ignore these signals because our brains want things to stay the way we are. As human beings, we just don’t like change, even though some changes are needed. We just let things go to maintain the status quo, only to discover that they will change anyway—normally at the worst time possible.

None of us want pain in our lives. None of us want change, but life tends to have a way of forcing change, even if we don’t want it. We get sick because we don’t want to change our diet or exercise. We get blindsided by a layoff when we knew we should have started looking for a new job months ago. We knew our significant other wasn’t really into us anymore but stuck around, anyway.

The pain we suffer results from our attachment to the status quo. We like things the way they are and we don’t want them to change, even if the change is happening right before our eyes. So why not make the change ahead of time? It’s hard. We are so good at telling ourselves lies and procrastinating. So what do we do?

The only advice I can give is to be decisive, ask the hard questions, learn what the right thing is and do it. You know when you’re putting on weight, your job isn’t working out, or even a relationship that isn’t fulfilling anymore. You feel it in your bones. You just know. We all have this intuition. We also get warning signs in advance of a real disaster.

These warning signs normally start out as gut feelings. Something isn’t right, but you can’t put your finger on it. Then they elevate. They become more blatant. Now you know something isn’t right but you still avoid doing something. Then, it’s a baseball bat to the head or a kick in the gut. You guessed it. You got blindsided again.

Pay attention to these intuitions. They are not crazy or paranoid. We all get them. It’s important to act on these intuitions, even if it is just looking for more information to test them out. Do not ignore them. I’ve learned this hard lesson so many times and it took so many disasters before I woke up and figured it out.

Now I pay attention to all of them. If something happens that doesn’t make sense or I get the feeling that something is going sideways, I immediately begin digging and looking to verify whether this is something real or my imagination is just overactive. More times than not, the intuition is right. By acting on these intuitions we can avoid a lot of pain and suffering. Being blindsided is no fun. It is better to avoid bad situations by circumventing them now instead of letting them fester.

Well, that’s it for today, folks. I hope all of you have a terrific Wednesday.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Finding Truth

Tags

Contemplation, Emotions, Intellect, Intuition, Meditation, memories, Prayer, The Mind, Truth

No matter how much insight we gain about God, there will always be something that lies beyond the horizon of our understanding. That is simply the nature of truth.

—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

If you search for God, you will never find IT. God is within, buried beneath layers of the mind, the emotions, memories, intellect, and intuition. If we look deep enough, we will find God. Looking deep enough is hard because our minds are so dominant in this reality. To experience God, we need to peel back all these layers first. How do we do this?

We meditate, pray, or contemplate. In my religious path we contemplate. Contemplation is like meditation but active. Meditation typically requires us to focus on the breath, chant a mantra, or focus on an object in our mind’s eye. Contemplation requires us to visualize scenes and actively interact within. Prayer can achieve the same things by chanting a verse, focusing on a religious concept. Why do these activities help us? They focus on things other than our immediate environment. This focus projects us to another place. The more we practice prayer, meditation, or contemplation, the easier it becomes to lose ourselves in the act.

We must drop the mind. Some of you are asking, how in the heck do you drop the mind? You drop the mind when you realize that the mind is not you. You are something else. You are that which thinks about thinking. In my religion we call this being soul. Soul is the real you. It is that part of you that can watch your thought stream. Soul is not the ego. Soul is not your emotions. Soul is not your hunger or lust. Soul is not the part of you that thinks or remembers. Soul is not your intuition. Soul is you.

For some, this can be difficult to understand. It is difficult to understand because science and our society has taught us that the brain is us.  It is not. Soul is the real you.

No one will convince you of anything related to truth. Truth is something you find on your own. Finding truth takes work. It requires you to act, to take matters into your own hands. Once you find truth, you soon discover that it changes. This is the nature of things. It isn’t the truth that changes though. You change. As you change, truth takes on new meaning as you look at it through “new” eyes. Truth never changes, only illusion changes.

If you are unsatisfied with your current religious path or seek questions you cannot answer, look around this website: www.eckankar.org This is the website for my religious path. On this website you can request information. You may like what you find. I have been an Eckist for over 40 years. It is the only path I know. It is a blessing to be an Eckist. Check it out. You have nothing to lose.

If you visit this site, get the materials and still have questions, you are welcome to reach out to me directly. Comment on this thread with: “Contact me”. I hope you have a great Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – The Higher You Are, The More You Can See

Tags

Emotional, habits, Intellect, Intuition, memory, Physical, Ruts, spirituality

“As Soul, you are like a balloon that rises above the ground. The higher you go, the farther you can see. And the farther you can see, the better you can plan your life.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

Have you ever observed other people’s lives? Have you ever wondered about the friends you have, the job you ended up with, or the situation you find yourself in? All of us are here to learn. We learn about ourselves. We learn from others. We learn how to do new things.

I notice patterns. I have always possessed an innate ability to recognize patterns and processes within various systems. I notice patterns in other people’s lives. Patterns that help them and patterns that hurt them. The patterns that hurt are self-destructive. Patterns like excuse making. Patterns such as blaming other people or outside circumstances. Patterns of apathy that contribute to a person giving up, accepting their lot in life and doing nothing to improve their circumstances.

If you pay attention, you can uncover destructive habits in yourself too. When I think about or observe myself, I take the view from the real me—soul. Soul is the real you. It is not the ego or your mind. It is that part of you that can view the things you think about. When you can stand back and look at your life or the lives of others, you can see what’s wrong and make changes. You can break down “you” by understanding that each part composes multiple levels of consciousness.

We have the physical or lowest level. This is the part of you that gets hungry, tired, and horny. Next you have the emotional part of you. The part of you that gets scared, bored, angry, fearful, and lustful. Beyond the emotions is the memory part. The memory contains your past and highlights key events in your life you have learned from. Beyond the memory is the intellect. This part of you represents your ability to think, analyze, and learn. Soul decides on a course of action by using memories and other environmental inputs. Finally, you have the intuition. This is the part of you that gives you little hints or ideas when you are trying to solve a problem or decide after you have analyzed all the things your mental part of you is thinking about or learning.

At the top of all of this is Soul. Soul is the real you. Soul uses these lower parts of you to interact in each sphere of existence. Soul is infinite. Soul can rise above these lower parts to glimpse the whole. When you act at the soul level, you can make better decisions because soul sees the entire picture of you. Soul can also explore beyond you. It can go places your lower parts cannot. When you get an impression or idea, this comes from Soul. Soul can warn you before you make a mistake. Soul can show an idea that might help you solve a problem. This is the analogy of the quote at the top of this posting. The higher soul goes the more it can see.

You can also limit yourself. Have you ever gotten so mad you cannot think? This is when soul has activated your emotions and focuses its attention on this part of you. Soul blinds itself to any higher faculty. When Soul focuses on the past, the same thing occurs. Soul is so entertained by the past it can’t think or analyze new ideas. Instead of rising above these lower parts of you to see the whole, it entertains itself by these lower parts, and restricts itself from the higher view it is capable of.

This leads me back to the statement I made in the initial few paragraphs. People become occupied with one part of themselves and get stuck. Soul gets stuck in the physical, emotional, memory, or mental realms. This prevents soul from seeing all there is to see and prevents soul from providing the ideas or advice these people need. They get caught in an automatic loop that the lowest part of them used for survival. Bad habits rule over them.

Your brain builds habits. It builds neural pathways to perpetuate actions that repeat. The brain does this to conserve energy. This system is automatic. We can exploit this process for good when you recognize a harmful neural pathway or habit. The only way to determine the advantage or disadvantage of any habit is to measure the results a habit produces. How do we do this? We take the time to analyze ourselves. If something we do is destructive, we can identify the specific actions we take and change them.

Changing or altering your habits is difficult. The neural pathways that compose our habits are as strong as steel cables. The longer you have acted out a habit the stronger it will be. Undoing a harmful habit can take as many years to undo as it took to build. Be persistent. Remember the harm this habit causes.

Need outside help? No problem. Research. Look for books, websites, blogs, and research articles that address this problem. You’ll find that there are many people that have run across the same problem and broke their harmful habits. Record as many ideas as you can. Try each one until you find the solution that works. Engage with other people on social media that have had the same problem. Ask them questions. Most will be happy to help you out. In fact, it is highly likely they got help from others the same way.

Remember who and what you are. You are soul. You are not your brain, your emotions, your memories, your intellect, or your intuition. You are above these individual facets.

Until next time.

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Inner voice, Intuition, Micromanagement, Patton

“If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.” – George S. Patton

General Patton is one of my heroes. As we approach Memorial Day, I felt this quote appropriate for today’s Daily Quote.

This quote is about leading people. Have you ever been micromanaged? Do you recall how limiting this type of leadership was when you experienced it? Micromanagers don’t trust anyone. They monitor every single thing their people do because deep down they believe that other people are out to get them. Imagine how frustrating it would be to work for someone like this.

If you are a worker, doing the same tasks every day, you will come upon ways to improve what you do. Something that will achieve better results. Maybe it will help you get the job done more quickly. Maybe it will save your company money. Maybe the idea you have can be marketed and sold. The possibilities are endless unless you have a micromanager for a boss.

Believe it or not, some people micromanage themselves. This is also a really inefficient way to live your life. Take a risk, make a change, listen to your intuition. There is always a better way to do things. If you pay attention you’ll arrive upon one of these solutions that allow you to do the job better, faster, and cheaper than you did initially.

Here’s an example. I have been posting daily quotes to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+ for years. I finally got to the point that there had to be a more efficient way to do this. So, here we are—Daily Quotes on WordPress that I broadcast to each of these social media networks daily. I also get to talk a little to my audience about a quote and what it means to me. Maybe it connects with someone; maybe it doesn’t. The key here is that I didn’t let my internal micromanager get in my way. I trusted my inner voice and went with it.

Well, that’s it for today folks. I hope you enjoyed the quote and my feelings about it.

Until tomorrow…

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quotes

Tags

Buckminster Fuller, Integrity, Intuition, problem-solving

“I call intuition cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you’ve got to hook the fish.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

“Integrity is the essence of everything successful.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

Until tomorrow….