tao
This week is my birthday. I don't know about you, but I tend to do a lot of thinking and pondering around this time. It's a great opportunity to look back at the last year, consider what went great and how it could have been even better.
It's also a great time to think about what is different now: what have I learned, what do I wish I had learned, and maybe a few things I wish I wouldn't have learned...
I read a lot and have come across many good books and models. One of my favorite models: The Four Levels of Consciousness (Academy of Coaching and NLP):
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My three favorite books this last year would have been:
- Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living The Inner Wisdom of The Tao -- Dr Wayne Dyer
- The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life --Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie MCNally
- A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" --Marianne Williamson
What the model and all 3 of the books have in common is their profound message about creating our own consciousness: believe that you can and relax!
The Tao calls it let go and let god, the Diamond Cutter calls it emptiness, and Marianne Williamson encourages the unlearning of fear as a spiritual journey. All of it links to God or Buddha, a spiritual framework that I had to get comfortable with.
Getting past all the terminology I realized this: we all live by our egos, small separated selves. When we were born, we were programmed perfectly, with love. Life teaches us to focus elsewhere and contradiction, competition, guilt, scarcity and loss become our reality. We are not one with others or god anymore and we live by fear.
For me, it has become as simple as this: lasting change and a lasting shift in perception comes from seeing oneness and love where we used to see separateness and fear. And trusting that there is a force that holds things together, affords me to relax.
There is no faithless person in this world, faith is an act of consciousness. So what are you going to choose? Faith in love or faith in fear? We can and will find whatever we are looking for -- Marianne Williamson