Day 181/366 days Towards Self-Mastery.
A number of times I've been asked whether I've taken "A Course in Miracles". I haven't.
Anything that uses language harking back to religious terms is not going to engage me. Perhaps I'm limiting myself. One day I'll take the time to explore that deep discontent with my religious acculturation.
My last post was about synchronicities. To me they are a way of life, the natural way of things, the natural order.
When our lives are complicated by ambition, competition, notions of scarcity, of not good enough, not measuring up, we lose our way from the natural order of things. Our world fills us up with ideas that distract us from the simple fact that we are life itself, and we can trust life to support us.
Last night in a phone conversation with my son, he commented that he was watching poison. I enquired, thinking this was some new series he had discovered on Netflix. "No mum, it's the news. It's poison to my mind. It disturbs my equilibrium and fills my mind with disturbing thoughts."
This is the world that informs our thinking and doing, and while we continue to indulge ourselves with it, we are going to struggle to find our way back to our authentic self.
My journey has taken me far away from the mainstream thinking and acting. I choose to live simply in my own space doing what I enjoy. Contributing to my community as I can, supporting lives that I can touch and relate to.
It's been a journey of exploring all the conditioning that has been dumped upon me by family and traditions, society and the world of money and business and careers and aspirations and competition. It's been a journey of experimenting with the opposites, the other polarity of the rules and regulations that straight-jacket my experiences to discover that the opposite is also true, and sometimes a whole lot more freeing.
I've let go of ambition, of being wealthy in monetary terms, of competing for the top jobs or the most successful business. The model is broken. It doesn't support our humanity. It's degrading. It undermines our talents and pitches people against each other.
There are enough resources to go around.
I'm content with where I am. I've lived debt free for over 20 years now. I've been fortunate enough to follow my intuition and accumulated enough to live in my own debt free home, to study humanities and to offer my natural talents to others. That puts me in the flow of life that is synchronistic with who I am.
Of course "miracles" will happen. Big and small miracles occur naturally, from healing to finding your lost keys. We call them miracles because in the debacle that is our daily lives, any small synchronicity that happens upon us feels so freeing that we think it is god sent.
Miracles are a daily aspect of life. Of a life that is in alignment with my authentic self. A life that values love of self and others, and that has learned to communicate that in a way that is supportive and nourishing for myself and others that I impact.
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.