The Future from Here-Now

Tomorrow depends on today and on the ripples from the past that we allow to affect us in this present Moment, which many spiritual approaches would say is all there IS: Now-Be-Here. John Thomas Dodds expressed a satisfaction with the Present that illuminates the Allness of this awareness quite nicely when he replied to yesterday’s query about What is Your Bliss? finding that his Bliss is exactly what he is already experiencing, Here-Now:

        It’s simple: being exactly where I am right at this very moment, typing these words with love and beauty surrounding me in joy.

        Being where I’ve always wanted to be, with who I always wanted to be with, oh yes, of course, four cats playing in the garden.

That all that IS is complete in the Now can also be seen as a Paradox. Everything exists Now, yet through our memories and our future projection faculties, yesterday is Here and Now when we focus our spotlight of attention upon an elapsed moment, as is a Future potential Here and Now when we view it from the viewpoint of this eternal Present. This means simply that past-present-future is a seamless Whole and all three are inseparably interconnected. The more aware we are of conditions and influences from the Past and in the Present, the better able we are to manifest a future reality state, as it were,  based on consciously chosen values and experiences. You need not simply roll along on the waves to accept “whatever comes”.  You have the capacity to choose and to plan as needed to create the life conditions you desire to express. That is why the motto or ‘tagline’ for the approach to Life Mapping I’ve been developing and sharing with life coaching is: “Live Your Dream, Now!”

 

For Tuesday’s Better Endings prompts list this week, then, around the topic of manifesting Your Life Dream, I offer the following topics:

• Where I am headed as things stand today?
• What do I want in my future that is not present in my life today?
• What shall I carry forward?
• Where to from Here?
• My Life Dream is:
• A Sea Change (then, now or future)
• Stuck patterns; what can I do?
• How might I integrate my future values here and now?
• Inner conflicts about my future prospects (This can be in the form of an Archetypal Dialogue.)
• The plus factor; what I would add/change/modify if I could (and, how)
• At a crossroads/ Multiple paths forward (reflect)
• At the Threshold (What do I see from Here-Now as I look ahead?);  what is around the bend?)
• Threshold Guardians (What factors or self-limiting thoughts appear to block my going forward?)
• Crossing the Threshold
• “Going Home”

I invite you to choose one or more of the above prompts (or use your own) to write about, contemplate/meditate upon, talk about, and or to share about with us here, expressing your insights or stories.

Your Life as Your Works

 

 

Every Tuesday at Better Endings we assemble a set of topical Prompts that you might wish to write/journal about, contemplate/ meditate, talk about, or somehow ACT upon in your daily life. This week’s Better Endings topic is Work & Career. So how might you apply the  principle of Better Endings to issues surrounding your work and/or your career, or perhaps how HAVE you achieved Better Endings in past situations regarding your work or career?

Here are some prompts that come to mind for your possible consideration:

• Job searches
• Job interviews
• Your life mission (To what extent is your work/ career compatible with your life mission?)
• Creativity (How do you express your creativity wt work or through your career; can this be further enhanced?)
• Growth potentials
• Change/ improvements
• Workplace social relations
• Location
• Retirement plans
• Entrepreneurial opportunities
• Job loss
• Retooling
• Identity (Do you identify yourself in relation to your job/ career or otherwise?)
• Integration/ synthesis (How can you integrate your deepest aspirations with your work/ career goals?)
• Are you doing what you love & loving what you do?
• Future envisioning and plan for Action

I invite your Comments and Insights and Stories on these or other work/career related topics. Feel free to suggest additional prompts that come to mind.

Best Possible Endings to You!

Tuning In and Giving Forth: Benefits of Your Spiritual Practice

 

 

There are so many beautiful pathways of Spirit, available to all states of consciousness.  I like to realize how we are each of us exactly where we are meant to be, right now, to benefit from all of the lessons and blessings of Divine Love and Spirit. All we have to remember to do, and to have a method for doing, is to Tune In, so then we fill with Divine Love as the Life Force of creation, and then we may also Give Forth in service and divine love to others. It is a reciprocal relationship, the giving and the receiving as One, like a heartbeat, a Breath.

My purpose with this blog is to provide “personal growth and development” opportunities and insights about or toward anyone’s Better Endings. As such, I want to support and validate everyone’s approach to spirituality this week, as a primary focus for establishing growth and development in our lives.  (For those whose understanding of life and the Universe is more secular, agnostic or even “non-spiritual”, facilitating an existential ‘Aha!’ or a phenomenological focus on creative re-envisioning will do!)

For Tuesday’s Prompts List, I invite you to contemplate, meditate or pray upon, talk about, or create art around one or more of the following topics in relation to the BENEFITS you receive from Tuning In and from your interaction with Spirit/ the Life Force/ Divine Love. I invite and welcome your expressions if you would like to share them with others:

The Prompts:

In what ways do you or have you or might you Benefit from the following forms of spiritual practice:

• Inner Guidance (incl. via Spiritual Teachers, Masters, Guides)
• Outer Guidance (e.g. waking dreams or attending spiritual talks or reading)
• Lucid Dreams & Visionary experience
• Meditation
• Yoga
• Mindfulness
• True Contemplation/ active imagination
• Writing
• Chanting/ Mantras
• Prayer
• Song, Art, Poetic Expression, Photography, Movement, Dance, Music
• archetypal dialogue
• Signs/ synchronicity
• Healing/ “alchemy”
• Illumination
• Prescience
• Exploration of Higher Realities/ Parallel Worlds/ Heavens
• Near-Death or Out of Body Experiences
• Faith
• Divine Love
• Congregational sharing/ Family
• Relationship with and in Nature
• Communion/ Unity with Spirit and the Divine
• Surrender
• Vision Quest
• OTHER…

******   ******

As a Tuesday bonus for readers, I share below a poem that moved me (re-blogged from iithinks.wordpress.com) and that reminds me of Rumi’s intimate communication with his own spiritual Master and with God. Here is a pure expression of gratitude for all that Spirit brings.

MY LIFE: TEARS OF GRATITUDE

(http://iithinks.wordpress.com/)

Each tear trickling down my face
Splashes on the ground
and explodes in gratitude towards you
Darkness consumed my world
Broken and shattered by fear
No matter if I looked within myself or without
I cried that night for death
An escape that seemed so sweet
From the prison holding me captive by my fright
Instead, in your all encompassing mercy
Your love descended and you grasped my hand
And led me gently to the key unlocking truth, beauty and light
You brought me the latihan of Subud
But I was unsure of what to do and how to be
Then the angels sang a song of truth that captivated me:
“In facing He who has All
There is nothing that Man can do
Except empty himself in patient surrender”
On that day, my virginity was cast aside
I was impregnated with your divine power
And for the first time in my existence, my Inner Self came to life
Everything I thought I knew
Was burned to the ground, turned ashes and dust
What else could happen in an experience of your reality?
But it was also an illuminating light
Bringing clarity, understanding and the knowledge of Unity
Here I saw beyond right and wrong and all other forms of duality
I began to accept all that was born of your sacred divinity
Any who climbed the multiplicity of your paths using aught but sincerity
And I began to understand my own way of worship: Its rights and wrongs
Most of all, in my darkness
I was showered with your breathtaking and indescribable Love
It descended from the heavens above and poured forth from the heavens within
Although the darkness still lives with me, it is not of me
Now I am those moments of Peace, moments of Love, moments of Reality
In the end, I have been given that which sustains and nourishes me: hope in your divine mercy
What, oh Sacred Love, have I done for all this?
I know no explanation can be demanded of your overflowing Grace
My forehead kisses the ground in prayer and I simply ask that you always stay
Each tear trickling down my face
Splashes on the ground
and explodes in gratitude towards You
http://iithinks.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/my-life-tears-of-gratitude/

Why Does This Always Seem to Happen to Me? — Writers’ & Artists’ Story Prompts

This week we are focusing on “habitual Better Endings”. Think about it. Do you know of someone (If it’s you, grand!) who always seems to come out on the light side of things, who habitually manifests  success? What do they do (or, you) to establish Better Endings? Is it persistence? “Grit”? Positive affirmations? Or is it simply that they always EXPECT for things to work out for the best, and then they usually do (or, if not, they have learned how to accommodate the results)?

Conversely, do you know anyone (again, it could be you) who just seems to magnetize drama, trauma or disaster into their world? How do they do that? For them, what new habits might we recommend for them to try, to break through a sense of inevitability of misfortune occurring in their lives?

Have you ever known someone (it could still be you) who has turned this around; someone who maybe used to attract misfortune habitually but who now seems to have obtained a “Midas touch” of success and positivity, instead? What did they do to transform their approach that we can all learn from?

Instead of our usual weekly “writer’s/artist’s prompts list”, this week I invite you to ponder the above three scenarios with regard to our topic of “habitual Better Endings”.

I invite, welcome and encourage all responses and I will publish your stories or creative expressions.

Better Endings to You!

Survivors of Heroic Trials: Prompts for Reflection

As I sit down to generate a Tuesday list of writing prompts for this week’s topic of Surviving Disasters, guess what’s on TV: the movie “Poseidon” (the remake of “The Poseidon Adventure”); to be followed by “Twister”. I will watch them then, while contemplating this week’s topic of surviving disasters from a Better Endings perspective.

Disaster films and novels are a very popular genre. Even Classical mythology and Greek (and later) tragic dramas often center around tales of surviving either natural or supernaturally induced disasters.  In the mythic story of “Theseus and the Minotaur,” for example, Theseus—as part of his trials by the Gods to replace his father as King–sails to the island of Crete to free Athenian brethren taken prisoner there who are being fed to the monstrous half bull/ half human Minotaur. Theseus must use his warrior instincts and creativity and he must be receptive to Ariadne’s suggestion to unroll a ball of string as he descends into the depths of the Labyrinth where the monster lives. This way, after defeating the Minotaur in combat, Theseus is able to lead the freed captives back out from the Labyrinth to safety. Theseus displays heroism: he sacrifices his own safety to rescue others in a selfless act.  He is aided by the Gods in this worthy venture, and with a bit more mythic story twisting (his father dies in a battle that ensues when Theseus’ own boat is mistaken as an enemy ship from Crete), he returns to assume his throne.

Disaster survivors have much of value to teach us. Their stories often reflect the sort of spiritual or divine intervention underlying mythic tales of obstacles and triumph. A student whose parents lost their homes to the Colorado Springs wildfire in the Mountain Shadows neighborhood two years ago shared that when she and her family sifted through the ashes of their family home, nothing at all remained, EXCEPT an unframed, paper photograph of my student (the homeowners’ daughter) when she was an infant. How could that be? Also this past year, a good friend who is a therapist lost her home and her beloved wolf hybrid pet to the raging Black Forest wildfire. She showed me a picture of the only surviving structure on her property: a limb-framed Sweat Lodge she used for therapy retreats! This structure was only some 30 yards or so away from the house, forest trees and garage that burned to the ground. How and why would this structure be saved?

The stories above—and the countless others I am sure you can think of—are food for thought. May the following list of disaster topics inspire you to write, or talk about, or actively contemplate what we can learn from surviving disasters.

• Triumph
• Surviving Disasters  (student: baby photo; friend: twig frame sweat lodge)
• Fires
• Floods
• Hurricanes (Katrina, Sandy)
• Earthquakes
• Fear
• Terrorist attacks/ (including mass shootings)
• PTSD
• War
• Car accidents
• Airplane crashes

I welcome your insights via the Comments box below. You may share your stories by sending them as either a Guest Blog or for Sunday’s Story of the Week.