Positive Energy Guide

Ideas, beliefs, concepts and assumptions interfere with Guidance. They make head-noise that crowds out Guidance or makes it hard to track. Taking in Guidance is a receptive act. Staying tuned and waiting for Guidance to pop in or arise from within requires willingness to release what’s in your mind.

Internal Guidance surfaces as a clear, sound sense of Inner Knowing. The resonance of Inner Knowing is utterly different than making assumptions or being smug about something you learned. Internal Guidance comes up as if from an inner spring like the mystery it truly is.

Inner Knowing is enhanced by being able to BE WITH Not Knowing. Accepting that we do not know something creates space for something more. Creating this space is like holding a bowl for Guidance to drop into. Not Knowing is a big part of how we create this space.

Not Knowing is a zone free from opinions, beliefs, preconceptions, assumptions, the need to control, and from reactive emotion. Not Knowing removes the limitation of rigid or habitual rational thought. In this zone Guidance can show up with depth and richness like a poem, not a report or dictionary definition.

Guidance that pops in from what seem to be external sources and Guidance from sources we experience as internal are both enhanced by receptivity, humility, surrendering the cognitive mind, and remaining open.

Not Knowing is a very Zen process. Being present in the moment with a clear, quiet mind is an ideal environment for recognizing Guidance. If you cannot still your mind all is not lost. I have a busy busy mind and I recognize Guidance. Skill at differentiating between different ‘energy signatures’ or frequencies and surrender to the Highest Option are good work-arounds if you can’t quiet your mind. We’ll explore Spiritual Surrender and the Highest Option in subsequent posts.

A quiet mind has all kinds of bonus advantages:

• Increased inner peace
• Improved health
• Freedom from conflict and confusion
• Easier to tune in to spiritually developed people
• Easier to notice what is going on with yourself
• Clearer, more accurate observation of others
• Difficult to manipulate
• Greater access to states of meditative awareness

By a quiet mind I am not talking about a mind forced into silence by suppressing thought and feeling but freed from strife through genuine self-acceptance. I have seen a few people who had attained a false sense of quiet through control rather than acceptance. Eventually, when and if they had the benefit of an experience powerful enough to break into this fortress, the shock of freeing previously suppressed inner material was traumatic. Smug hyper-confidence doesn’t crumble pretty.

Being able to clear your mind assists but is not absolutely essential to the skill of Not Knowing. You can Not Know without inner quiet by being open and rigorously avoiding assumptions and presuppositions.

Because I prize and rely on Not Knowing, I habitually make what I think I know unimportant while I explore. In clinical practice, if I think I will probably find a certain thing and I discover something different, I am happy to be finding the actual cause instead of validating an opinion.

Openness to Guidance allows us to discover things we initially know nothing about. Intentionally Not Knowing invites new insights and solutions. Prefabricated interventions are rarely as powerful and may not exist for the issues we are addressing.

What things do YOU think, know, or believe that distract you from clear Guidance?

How do you sense the difference between random thoughts and real Guidance?

Each of us has a general range of guidance. This range refers to the breadth, depth and scope that our perception can run.

Range varies with circumstance, who our energy is linked with, state of mind and heart, brain function, our current internal biochemical cocktail, and so forth. If you’re exhausted, hung over and your mother is in the hospital, your guidance may have a narrower range than it does when you feel good. Or your range of guidance may actually improve under some types of adversity.

The flow of Guidance is not necessarily consistent. I’ve noticed when I am too tired or compromised to function logically my intuition kicks in without being squashed by too much thinking. This began after I intentionally cultivated intuitive arts while my brain was compromised during an extended illness.

I followed an excellent piece of generally-applicable guidance. It comes with a story: My brother studied internal martial arts with the only caucasian to have won the Chinese championship. During prolonged sparring sessions body and mind tired. Students were taught, “When one resource is compromised, use another.”

In the context of martial arts, application would mean that if your legs are tired you use your arms more, if your body is tired you use your mind, if your mind and body are tired you use your energy or your emotions, and so forth. Practicing this principle in circumstances that call for Guidance extends effectiveness and broadens your range by using your best resource in any particular moment.

An unimaginable universe of insight is available to those who can tune in and access it. Recipients of Guidance, however, receive viable Guidance about some aspects of life but not about others. We are better at tracking down or drawing in some types of information than we are at others. With the exception of a truly enlightened being, no one person can access all available Guidance in all dimensions. We each have a slice of the pie of all possible perception.

These considerations help to explore Range and various modes of Guidance:

• How many different aspects and arenas of life does it address?
• What is the reach? Is it just about relationships, or is it about relationships, health, spiritual life, finance, other-dimensional energies, and so forth?
• What is the detail and depth? If it’s about relationships, is it just about getting along, or is it about who you can become through the relationship, how it relates to your life purpose, and how to manage your energy optimally within it?
• How many senses does information come through? Does Guidance show up through sight, sound, scent, body sensation, energy perception, movement, or taste?
• Does Guidance come in as Direct Knowing, where it just shows up in your head whole? Some people excel at this mode and do not recognize that they are receiving Guidance because they do not get images or voices.
• How many levels of experience does the Guidance address? Does it impact just your mind, or your emotions, body, mind, spirit, afterlife, past and parallel lifetimes, displaced energy or parts, energy that doesn’t belong with you, energy grid systems and fields, etc?
• Does it address future or draw from the past when necessary? Does it simply report what is occurring here and now, or take place with respect to the past and future when useful?

• Does it involve perception of unusual energies or dimensions when these have a significant influence?
• Does Guidance reference things about which you have had no prior experience or exposure?

While it is true that an excellent guide often has greater range, range of guidance does not directly equate with quality. Some Guides have a narrow range but operate superbly within that range, with good accuracy and utility. As in any other life arena, specialism has its uses. A trance medium, for example, may have stellar accuracy with the departed–and be clueless or useless with health or relationship guidance.

Some guides have a wide range of guidance yet have patchy quality and accuracy. It is unusual but quite possible to have a very wide range of guidance and excellent quality and accuracy.

These factors increase Range of Guidance:

• Skill with self-observation
• Recognition and acceptance of personal biases
• Ability to make adjustments for our emotional biases to see life more openly, without projecting
• Openness to a wide range of belief systems without necessarily buying in to them
• Courage to explore different realities
• Willingness to admit and correct errors in judgment
• Freedom from needing the approval of others
• Exposure to multiple cultures or systems of thought
• Presence in the moment
• Personal clarity and discernment
• Being in touch with body sensations
• Sensitivity to energy
• Ability to notice and release assumptions
• Compassionate detachment
• Desire to be of service

What is YOUR range of guidance?

How do YOU respond when you receive internal Guidance that touches on things outside of what you normally believe?

“A man’s most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.” ~Greek playwright Euripides (485-406 B.C.)

Yes we all receive internal Guidance but we need help unmasking it and learning to “read” it.

Modern life drowns out many of the conditions that foster healthy intuitive development. Living in nature promotes:

• Being grounded in the body
• Listening
• Silence
• Introspection
• Attending to small signals that indicate other life close by
• Anticipating weather changes
• Noticing exactly which influences strengthen plants or draw animals
• Sensing the importance of timing
• Breathing fully
• Noticing expressions of energy
• Experiencing directly the interconnected nature of all life

Expecting to be adept at accessing Guidance without some type of on-going training and practice is unrealistic. If you were born with innate tracking skills, you would still need to learn the prints and marks of animal activity and how signs show up in various terrain and weather and how much time that had passed since tracks or signs were made. Even those with inborn intuitive skills need life experience and practice.

Intuitive development calls for aptitude, training, and confirmation. Aptitude means being born with or acquiring in childhood neurological software that supports the skill. Training may be formal, or an outcome of committed personal attention. Confirmation is the process of receiving impressions, energy, or information and consistently checking your accuracy.

Intuitive aptitude and training are rarely across-the-board. This means that most of us perceive better in some realms of experience than in others. We’ll go into Confirmation and Range of Guidance in following posts.

Life consists of many different arenas of potential experience and dimensions. Intuitive perception can be applied to world situations, health, relationships, spiritual experience, clearing energy from rooms or buildings, your next step in personal development, and so forth.

Perception can be focused on body energy systems like chakras, and fields, for example, or on the fields that are much farther out from the body. I’ve had a few clients whose health required an adjustment 300 feet out from their bodies!

Confirmation and practice are necessary in each new arena of attention and experience in which we aspire to perceive clearly.

You may be far more intuitive than you know. If you have not spent a significant amount of time with someone who applies advanced intuitive skills you may not know your own level.

I practiced body therapies for years without any idea of my aptitude. Eventually I met an intensely powerful clairvoyant, clairaudient healer. By tuning in to exactly what he was perceiving as he worked I discovered that I could perceive almost all of it. I found myself working side by side with him with healing clients. Through focus and practice I discovered a vast world of and energy experience outside of my previous scope of vision and my beliefs. Immediate changes in clients served as confirmation.

This healer later disclosed that he had participated in a remote viewing program with the CIA. It is a known if unsavory fact that government agencies have applied psychic skills and remote viewing in military applications.

Some years later I also met a spiritual teacher with unnerving psychic skills who had been in a similar government program. In my observation government training distorts Guidance. The skills have not developed naturally alongside Heart, in a context of respectful ethics.

Before these and other encounters I hadn’t been focusing my attention in the ways that pull forth different types of information. I didn’t know what I was looking for–or that there was anything TO look for, or any reason to look.

Since then I have participated as other people awaken to their capacities by being in environments where energy is noticed and discussed. Comparing notes and experiences about perception is essential to learning to recognize and confirm intuition versus imagination.

In addition to aptitude, training and confirmation, these traits and conditions are conducive to developing skillful Guidance:

• An open mind
• Motivation toward personal development
• Adequate freedom from personal issues that obscure Guidance
• Good self-observation skills
• Courage to confront the unknown
• Courage to confront the hidden recesses of your inner world
• Willingness to welcome knowing it when you are mistaken
• Discipline to maintain a consistent practice throughout different life conditions
• The need or desire to apply your skills in daily life
• Motivation to be of service
• Association with others who have similar or more-developed skills

We will address obstacles to Guidance in detail as we go along in the series.

What experiences, practices, or people have increased YOUR ability to receive and recognize Guidance?

How comfortable do YOU feel with your current level of Guidance?

Distress is a call for Guidance. Use distress as a signal. Use distress to awaken yourself to your true needs. Use distress as an alert and a call to action.

Then gently find ways to notice and manage your needs before distress must arise.

Distress is a form of guidance to those who are willing to respond to their needs. It may not be anybody’s favorite form of guidance, but we can learn to use it well when it shows up. Distress alerts us that we need to do something kind for ourselves or make more loving choices.

Intestinal distress encourages more enlightened eating. The distress of feeling invaded invites better boundaries. Distress about situations suggests positive action toward change.

Turning distress toward benefit is a highly positive skill. The skill works much better when we allow ourselves to feel and explore our distress long enough to understand what is actually called for. Learning to attend to the origins and sources of discomfort is crucial.

Turning away from distress before discovering the underlying need can lead to numbness, dissociation, compartmentalization, artificiality, or superficiality. It is important to honor distress. I am not saying wallow in it, just take a careful look and use it constructively. That is the most positive way to handle it.

Here is a funny little example of using distress as guidance: Once I began coughing as a client entered my office. I could not stop. I left the room for water. The moment I left, the coughing stopped. The moment I went back to my office coughing came back. I figured out that the client had toxic energy in his fields. The moment I cleared the energy I was fine. For some years now I get an odd cough if I’m not noticing energy that needs to be addressed.

Loss, prolonged pain, betrayal, and disillusionment are more complicated than mere distress. This kind of intensity can uproot our belief systems until we don’t even know what we believe any more. [link to related Post on Disillusionment.] During difficult life transitions when core beliefs are in question ill-fitting or overly-directive guidance can cause complications. The more intense our distress the greater the call for comprehensive and effective guidance.

We tend to live as if we expect to be the same person from day to day, able to control who we will become over time. When life shakes down the pillars of temporary consistency we discover that our responses to life change in the face of different pressures, circumstances and energies.

New situations, events, and collisions of emotion bring forward fresh and untried self expression. Guidance allows us to use our responses to circumstances and conditions toward our highest good, in partnership with life.

The energies that evoke earthquakes, tsunamis, and world-rocking change also restructure our personal lives. While things we took to be stabile are shifting and coming apart it is important to consider how we might use disruption itself to bring about positive outcomes.

We can use upheaval to help restructure relationships, health, finances, living situations, communities, and global structures. We transform ourselves in the process of doing so.

Here’s a fun quote from the end of a friend’s email: That is my plan –If chaos does not poke its lovely head into my affairs – I will be here.

As we careen into an uncertain future many feel frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, or unclear about how to harness motivation. Motivation can be difficult when we cannot see a clear path or need to alter our goals. Guidance is interaction that assists us to select a meaningful path or purpose with greater clarity and confidence.

These questions may be useful in learning to take guidance from distress:

• How well do you listen to your distress?
• How much distress is required to get your attention?
• Do you respond better to some types of distress than others?
• What do you need learn to respond with compassion to the kinds of distress you try to ignore?
• What changes are supported by any disruption you may be experiencing?
• Do you develop strategies for change or resist change?
• How does your response to change increase or reduce your distress?

Here is a wide range of examples of meaningful ways to contribute. Mix and match:

Does your vision of making a difference include political impact?

• Canvass for a congressperson or someone running for office
• Get signatures for an initiative
• Volunteer at a caucus

Are you passionate about world welfare?

• Join the Peace Corps
• Help with Doctors Without Borders
• Raise awareness about important issues

Do you want to help the Earth?

• Support an environmental cause
• Set up a living will that supports old growth forests
• Send healing energy to problem areas
• Give up using plastic bottles

Do you want to help people?

• Support your neighbors with earthquake or emergency planning
• Volunteer at a hospital, food bank, or crisis line
• Serve in a soup kitchen
• Get involved with Kiva, for microloans to those in need in other countries
• Read to the people or play music at a senior center
• Become a Big Brother or Big Sister
• Learn conflict mediation

Do you love animals?

• Volunteer or get a job at an animal shelter
• Take care of strays or find homes for them
• Adopt Greyhounds that used to race

Do you want to develop your energy, or support others through energy?

• Learn and practice Qi Gong or other techniques to balance, tune, and strengthen your energy
• Learn energy medicine or go to practitioners who use it
• Send the energy of love and support to people and nations under duress

Are you inspired to develop your own or other people’s ability to experience peace and states of grace?

• Meditate
• Practice watching your breath
• Practice random acts of kindness
• Express your love

Are you in a partnership?

• Ask your partner what you can do to improve your relationship
• Offer to take a chore off your partner’s plate when s/he is overwhelmed
• Spend half a day a month doing anything you have avoided that your partner wants you to do

Do you read this blog?

• Work intentionally with the questions.
• Please pass my posts to people who will benefit from them. They take about 7 hours each, and I’d like to see them serving lives!

Here is a loving conversation that occurred between two friends:

Becky told Karen, “I get the impression you have something important to do in the world.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m just a piano teacher,” Becky said. Her tone implied that she could not be important or make a large contribution in this role.

“Stop!,” said Karen. “It’s not about ego; it’s about Path. Don’t minimize who you are and what you do! You are awake and aware. You are touching all the people you work with. Your purpose is just as big as mine—it’s your energy and love. That’s the gift. For all you know you could be teaching the next Beethoven!”

Karen went on to say, “I used to think I would Save the World. I now understand that we can help the world, improve and impact the world. That’s heart. SAVE the world? That’s bravado. No one person can save the world. We can only save ourselves, and help impact those who appear on our path. –And you’re doing it.”

Dive heart first into life! (Comment credit to Evelyn Roberts.)

What are YOUR favorite ways to help, improve, or impact your world?

What do you get out of it?

Great Christmas Gift idea! Simple but potent tools effectively clear out unpleasant energy & promote higher awareness.

We each impact the world at every moment. Life Purpose is about being intentional about this impact.

I recently returned from a spiritual camp in which we used breath, intention, movement, music, and concentration to bring about a very real experience of being safe, loved, and connected with the entire group and with life itself. This had nothing to do with doctrine or belief–just direct experience.

If you have had direct energy experiences of unity with others you will fully understand what I am saying. I am not talking abstraction, theory or concept. I am talking about FEELING a sense of Unity–personally and palpably. When this happens in a group we can discuss the experience with the people who were there and discover that they felt exactly the same thing that we did. If you have not experienced this, remain open and motivated.

Even when we are in distress we are one with the world. We just don’t have our attention focused in a way that allows us to notice.

Personal issues block our access to feeling Unity. We feel isolated, alone, needy, or estranged when we are out of touch with our essential unity with others. Our influence becomes less positive when we are entangled in our issues. Learning to love yourself is service to others.

If you have not done so please read the post on Inner Work as Universal Service.

Working out issues that keep us from loving ourselves IS contribution to the world:

• It strengthens our energy connections with others by making us more available and clear.
• It allows us to effectively support others with issues we have already healed.
• Our impact on everyone we come in contact with is more positive, and their added ease spreads to their contacts as well.
• It makes your energy better as we begin to broadcast happiness and love instead of distress.

What if loving yourself is the one thing you can do that makes the most difference in the world?

Accepting and being larger than our issues is a spiritual act of healing. I have seen advanced spiritual teachers fall from their state of realization and harm their followers due to unresolved inner wounds, and motivated people who were once broken blossom into loving Life Purpose.

In addition to dealing with issues that block our ability to love, we can change the world just by breathing with awareness. Any way that you get good energy flowing you impact everyone who comes in contact with you, and everyone who comes in contact with them. What you do with your energy, at home alone, matters.

Working intentionally with energy strengthens our influence, and we can learn to direct this influence. I have seen masters of energy who can clearly and powerfully impact the state and experience of a roomful of people through the qualities, frequencies, intentions, and awareness they place on their breath. Their prayers pack a wallop. They did not develop these skills by wanting to change people. They developed themselves.

The most important way we make a difference is through Presence, full attention, and our love. BEing in the moment has intrinsic value. When we bring ourselves fully into the current moment in a spirit of contribution the question of Purpose dissolves into direct, internal, moment-to-moment guidance.

Sense of Purpose is a form of internal guidance. Being in touch with your inner sense of purpose from moment to moment–let alone Life Purpose–rests on the same skills necessary to receive all other types of inner guidance.

The next blog series will be about Guidance.

What does it mean to YOU to make a difference in the world?

What have you done that has helped to develop your Sense of Guidance?

This post speaks to additional challenges with Purpose.

The problem with “needing to know” is that intense focus on the mind and on outcome block the processes of feeling and intuition—the channels through which the information you long for might otherwise come.

So many people want to “know” what their Purpose IS. Beyond presupposing that Purpose is like a job, and that it doesn’t change, this prevailing attitude implies that we are equipped to live out Purpose without needing to be in touch from moment to moment.

Life paths are like labyrinths. They twist and wind, and we often cannot tell whether we are getting closer or farther away from our goal of returning to the center. The answer of one moment may not suffice in the next. Each challenge along the way calls for the discernment to commit more deeply, or to establish a new direction.

Being whole-hearted whenever we possibly can is one of the best investments we can make. Even if we make mistakes with more vigor, we then learn quickly and do not repeat them.

I have been deeply touched and honored to be present as clients discover Life Purpose. At times Purpose pops up quickly and clearly, like a revelation or an insight. When this occurs we are communing together in a state of grace, perceiving together.

If someone else tells you what your supposed Purpose is and you cannot feel it for yourself this can cause intense and painful confusion. That person has no way to assume responsibility for their effects on your life if they mislead you.

A healer once told me I had a strong and abiding connection with and should be following a certain Master, she with whom she was connected. After checking in and finding I felt no internal connection with this man I felt kind of slimed. Fortunately I was intuitive enough to sort this out easily for myself.

Occasionally I meet someone who cannot seem to keep alight the fire of inspiration or make anything matter enough to fully engage themselves. We’ve probably all had days when nothing trumps anything else. We stir around wishing we wanted something enough to feel connected with a goal or take purposeful action. This feels worse than being really hungry and not being able to find anything you feel like eating, and can go on and on for weeks, months and perhaps years.

Remember the time between high school and college when grownups always asked, “Are you working or are you in school?” Without purpose or plan you may feel useless and flat yet intensely frustrated, tied up with too many choices you don’t relate to, looking ahead at the daunting task of making a critically important choice, without information or inspiration. Where to start eating that elephant?

Lack or loss of goals and dreams can be devastating. I have wished I could do their work for them, but even when I have found and lit a spark, they themselves need to keep the fire going.

If you still have trouble developing a relationship to Purpose, here are some serious suggestions:

• Rule out physical causes such as clinical depression, low thyroid, adrenal hypofunction, low testosterone, neurotransmitter imbalances, blood sugar and chronic occult (hidden) viral issues.
• Then address feelings, beliefs, and the intersection of the two, as discussed in Post #2. Do this with a proficient therapist or healer.
• Answer the questions that have come up through this series.
• Read the Inner Work series. [link]
• Get help to clear out energy that does not belong with you, that you may be carrying from a parent or other source.
• Find ways to increase your physical and spiritual energy.
• If it works for you ask the Universe or pray for Life Purpose, remember to stay in humility, openness, and surrender.

Remember: Purpose is a sense. Hence: Sense of Purpose.

Use sense about your purposes.

When you heal yourself you can attract and sustain what is best for you. If you do not, you are likely to undermine what you want.

Remember: We need to be in partnership with life, not control it.

Like any other type of sense, Sense of Purpose is a skill to nurture and develop.

Sense of Purpose and ultimately Sense of Guidance are developed by making a daily habit out of paying attention to what we really feel and need and what life is currently inviting, making choices that support our best interests.

What do YOU do to get in touch with your feelings, senses, or intuition?

What is your worst fear about being in touch with your intuition?

Let’s take a tour through common misconceptions about Life Purpose. Part of this is summary and review, heading into fresh insights about the things we’ve covered. We will also break new ground:

• Success and Life Purpose are the same thing
• Life Purpose refers to your entire life
• You will be known and seen in the world by doing your Life Purpose
• The status and magnitude of your activities reflects your worth
• Your purpose has to be something in the outer world
• You need a particular job or role to serve others
• The status and magnitude of your activities reflects your worth
• What you do for meaning should provide money and security
• Getting what you want leads to happiness
• Life Purpose comes with a time line and a plan
• Being good at something means you are supposed to do it
• Your purpose means living up to your full potential

We’ll pick through these misconceptions one by one.

Success and Life Purpose are the same thing:

What is the difference between success and Life Purpose?

Success is generally defined against the backdrop of superficial, societal values. You are comparing yourself to other people, or to an external standard of accomplishment.

Life Purpose (also known as Soul Purpose) is that which actualizes not the brightest, best, and most recognized potential, but the elements of heart and character that invite authenticity, joy, balance, and expression of core values.

Life Purpose is that which gives your life meaning and value—to YOU. We are social creatures in an energy web of oneness, so our experience of meaning and value is not separate from our contributions and relationships with others. Since Purpose is personal, when it is lived in the outer world, authenticity is required.

Life Purpose refers to your entire life:

Motivations, values, and attitudes transform during the course of life. Even when you commit “your life” to something, what you are committing is your life energy, full participation, will, and intention. You are not placing the years your body will live in a trust for that commitment. You cannot count on having years. Your life is your life force, not your years.

Life Purpose does not refer to one thing you have to do or else you have failed. It refers to the way you bring yourself to what you choose to do. There are many different ways this can play out, according to the unique requirements of an individual life.

Purpose can change. You may have many purposes.

You will be known and seen in the world by doing your Life Purpose:

Being in public view does not measure either success or Life Purpose, just as money is no indication of our worth as individuals. If money equaled worth, Mother Teresa had no worth. We know this is not true.

The status and magnitude of your activities reflects your worth:

Gandhi used to require all of his followers to take shifts cleaning the latrines. Humility and willingness to do whatever is needed has always been the mark of the truly great.

Your purpose has to be something in the outer world:

Life Purpose may be as simple (not easy) as:

• Learning to love yourself as you are
• Mastering a tendency to project blame onto others
• Becoming able to maintain body awareness instead of getting spacey
• Discovering how to feel safe inside yourself
• Becoming able to trust yourself
• Standing in love or peace no matter what happens
• Bringing to the planet a specific, necessary energy; being a connecting point for that energy, broadcasting or receiving it

I believe in the possibility that people exist who have influence the workings of the entire planet through their profound mastery of energy. Can you say that such a person has no purpose because no one sees it?

You need a particular job or role to serve others:

Balanced, powerful people penetrate and permeate the energy of those we touch or engage with, whether professionally or in the line at the bank. You may impact players on the world stage, set the stage, or influence how the audience receives the play in the course of your normal life.

Cynthia felt no meaning in her job answering emails for an insurance agency. I suggested she send, from her heart, a specific and personal blessing with each email, invisibly. She began to love her job.

We’ll finish the other misconceptions in Part 2 . . .

Here is the complete quote with which we began the series:
“Your work in this life is to find your work, and to give yourself to it with your whole heart. And not to do the work of another no matter how great their need.” Buddha

Inspired contribution to the Greater Whole is meaningful and fulfilling. Giving, without respect for the context can interfere or distract, making it all about you instead of helping out. The word “giving” does not imply what happens with the receiver. “Contribution” implies that we are
participating in something larger than our own efforts; making a difference.

‘Sensing into’ the situations we seek to enhance improves our assessment of when and what to contribute, so that giving may be fully of benefit. This skill complements being in touch with what and when it works for us to give.

The skill consists of paying attention to the potential results of our participation, and aiming to maximize the outcome for others. Without this sensibility we may give what is not needed while overlooking something absolutely necessary, like shipping in crates of Coke when the people need a new well.

Aim to sustain your vital forces and enhance your ability to give by honing discernment.

Contributing to the world by participating in loving service is the most meaningful thing we can do. Love or service cannot be forced as acts of self-assertion. We do not need to be in any way perfect before we set out to help. By involving ourselves we learn who we are and what to develop in order to actualize our values.

Pure service includes exercising wisdom to consider the results of receiving a gift or service. When we do for others things they are able to do and need to do for themselves we weaken them or interfere.

We cannot exercise, eat or eliminate for someone else, and we cannot do their Inner Work. We cannot open another person’s heart, motivate them, or give them insight without their willing participation.

The old maxim about teaching a man to fish instead of fishing for him comes to mind.

I was in a relationship in which I attempted to get the other person to take care of himself better, and to develop greater insight and inspiration. That failed. Of course, it ended in resentment on his part and exhaustion on mine.

When someone wants to learn to fish they motivate themselves. You can show them and give them tips, but they need to be pulling for it, and to take up readily what they are able to do themselves.

When we attempt to do the work of another, it’s like being a mother who wakes her child up for school every day, never passing along this responsibility as the child grows. As an adult, this person lacks the wherewithal to get to work on time.

Buddhists and several other spiritual groups customarily offer the results of spiritual practice for the benefit of all beings, everywhere. Is this doing their work?

It is not.

Generating positive energy and making it available to those who need it is constructive (except specifically for those who habitually feed off of others). So is praying for others. As long as you are not attached to how or whether specific people take it up you are okay. When you want or need someone to respond in a particular manner it is time to question your motivations. That is not love.

How do YOU FEEL when you are trying to do the work of another?

What if the things you do to try and make a difference interfere with experiences others require to develop strength and compassion?

What if getting your energy strong and balanced by taking care of yourself with respect and compassion helps the world, not only through everyone you encounter but by bringing helpful energy into the world through the portal that is YOU?

What if your love and self-acceptance empower your prayers and positive intentions to enhance the energy-pool we all share?

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill

With respect to Life Purpose, it is natural to consider not only what we want to GET from life, but what we can bring to it. Giving allows us to receive in special ways that put us more deeply in touch with our values, qualities, and other people.

How and why we give is a window to motivation—and to Purpose. What do you enjoy contributing? What does it do for you to contribute?

Like so many essential life skills, learning what and when to give depends on sensing inside ourselves.

Once we are able to tune in to our inner voices and body sensations, we can sense inside whether or not we are called to contribute in any given moment. Learning to notice this call is crucial to spiritual and emotional health. The same skill tells us where we need our boundaries to be in any moment or situation.

Knowing how much to give and being comfortable with our decisions makes for ease and clarity in personal relationships. It allows us to feel good about our contributions instead of feeling like we can never give enough to be acceptable, or that we might be selfish and insular.

Most of us over-give, under-give, or both in different situations. Balanced giving builds self-esteem, boundaries, spiritual values, and the wonderful feeling of Purpose and meaning that accompany heartfelt contribution.

Giving for the wrong reasons interferes with the ability to be on track with Life Purpose.

Giving to appease, please, or protect ourselves from criticism is toxic to Purpose. Over-giving tends to oblige and bind others. It is usually about control, and is therefore detrimental to intimacy. Over-giving is draining. Bleeding out energy to “contribute” to people who are not receptive is invasive.

Giving too little can lead to feeling small, stingy, disconnected, meaningless, emotionally impoverished, hard, and/or defensive.

If you over-give:

• Try altering the way that you give, even just a bit.
• Try giving different things or in different ways than you usually do.
• Change WHEN you give, even by a few minutes or seconds.
• Give to different recipients, even once.
• The feelings and insights that accompany these changes will enable you to explore your patterns gently.

If you under-give:

• Catch yourself at moments during when you are withholding or resist giving.
• Pay close attention to what you feel at these moments.
• Listen closely to your internal dialog. What is the nature of your conflict? What motivates each side of the conflict? How do your feelings change with each side? Which side do you like better?
• Try giving just a little bit more is comfortable, like stretching tight muscles. This can feel freeing and oddly relieving, and it gets more interesting as you practice.

Over- and under-givers:

• Study your discomfort, consider what you get when you give.
• What are you trying to preserve and why?
• Has your life changed since you began these patterns?
• How would giving differently impact your life?

Once you are in touch with and have done some regular work with your patterns you will be able to bypass all this by simply turning to your heart and going by what FEELS right in the moment.

What if who you need to be to live your Life Purpose requires being able to sense exactly who you really are, what motivates you, and what you can and cannot give?

What if success is measured not by external goals but by giving exactly the right amount in any situation, from nothing at all to your entire life?

How would this model of success change what you do or how you live?

How do you sense what is called for from you?

What happens when you shift your aim from trying to succeed to making a contribution?