And here the precious dust is layd;
Whose purely temper’d Clay was made
So fine, that it the guest betray’d.

Else the soule grew so fast within,
It broke the outward shell of sinne,
And so was hatch’d a Cherubin.

~Thomas Carew

Many of you may know that I recently moved, but maybe not that I’m living in the same neighborhood or that I’ve been here for the last 12 years. I’d gotten to know a few of my neighbors who were more settled than the mostly transient population of our village. Of those I knew by name, I’ve admired Phyllis a great deal.

Phyllis had created a fairy kingdom of a home, a loving project that spanned a half century or so. Her cottage looks like something from the English countryside. She tended a rare and unique moss in her yard. Her graceful trees sheltered choruses of birds making nests and heralding the passing hours, night and day. Her roof was thatch shingled, and I often swore I’d just seen what had to have been elves or pixies peeking about the rocks or bushes.

And so over the years Phyllis and I would exchange greetings, passing each other coming and going on our morning walks — she always walking more briskly, though I am not known to stroll. Or I’d stop to say hello and admire her handiwork while she gardened, which was almost all the time.

One day, instead of Phyllis, I saw a stranger watering the lawn. I stopped to inquire about my neighbor, for never have I seen another tending her lawn. I learned that it was a friend; it was she who had worried when her ring went unanswered, and it was her lot to find Phyllis out back where she’d been tending her secret garden. Phyllis was 90.

Her passing naturally affects me. It makes me wonder too. How many of us choose to really live, each active and happy in our own garden of life? How many times have we passed on the joys of the moment, choosing instead to put them off for a more ‘appropriate’ time?

I was privileged to have known Phyllis, who always inspired me. Not with her words. She wasn’t much for conversation. But she taught through the magic she created in our neighborhood. And she always struck me, not as someone who lived to die. No, her legacy was loving life enough to have died, truly living.

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Finding meaning in your purpose for life

Meaning of life

However much advice you may get along the way, there is one secret ingredient to the great recipe of life. And that secret ingredient is …you.

First, be careful not to assume that you have to immediately make outer changes. Examine the truth that there’s really no prescribed or ‘best’ path to follow in life. You can determine to find your joy where you are now. Making any changes from this habit of mind helps you choose wisely.

The secret to personal success on all levels and the key to having it, right now, is first to find the unconditional regard within yourself that simply ‘likes’ who you are.  That is the core of your belief no matter what changes occur. When you’ve tapped this, you might also feel like you can overcome any blocks you may encounter to truly liking others–even those who are not so easy to like.

Sounds easy in theory. And you might ask, isn’t ‘unconditional regard’ just another way of saying ‘unconditional love’? It can be. Let’s dig a little deeper to mine a universal truth: at basic levels, almost everyone wants to be appreciated, and to share emotional meaning with someone else. Finding this within yourself makes it possible to create an environment that supports others to do so, and with no strings.

You don’t have to work in customer service to develop and use this type of people-skill. The basic concepts are similar: just as excellent customer service helps people feel good about the company they do business with, it also helps them feel good about themselves. Ideally, a customer service representative truly likes and wants to help people.

The company you represent can be your own or owned by someone else; or just substitute the word ‘company’ for ‘you’, the individual, and see how you are similarly responsible for how you choose to be in relationship with anyone. Treating others the way you want to be treated makes more sense. You feel better. It fosters good will. It makes makes room for spiritual growth, for opportunity and even enjoyment.

What if you don’t know someone well enough to know if you can like them? Even if you can produce evidence to  prove that someone is too difficult to like, or ‘undeserving’, it’s still in your best interest to develop the skill set that helps you look beyond appearances into the heart. Where ‘personality’ doesn’t exist.

Then, even if you make choices that no longer include doing business with someone who is just not worth the time and trouble, or to end unsafe or unhealthy relationships, you can do so with heart. And avoid falling into the trap of having to argue about it or even defend your decision–even to yourself, as I describe in my article on emotional poltergeists.

You may know people who naturally relate through the heart. What’s their secret? They like themselves. They may not be conscious of it, but they do like themselves. This makes it easier to find something to like about those around them, even the small things.

The good news is you can consciously create this habit. When you do, your life holds new meaning. Without this basic need to be liked, even – or especially – by yourself, where is the foundation for your true gifts, talents and skills? It can be undermined when your focus is on what’s not working, instead of on what is working or can be.

When you do focus on what you desire, you also find it’s easier to ‘allow’ others to enjoy their own specialness. Your gifts are enhanced because you are secure in them, and because you also feel good about the unique gifts of others. This is a subtle but powerful way to have more emotional meaning in life.

People are attracted to you when you allow them to be. But it’s more than just enlightened self-interest to appreciate your own individuality, your one-of-a-kind spark of light. Because your message truly is unique, and your idea of the kind of people you want to surround yourself with is magnetic and appealing to those very people.

To embrace the pure idea that your own happiness doesn’t rely on the outer appearances of others takes balance. Not only do you develop the ability to  find something to like, true empowerment comes when you do so without compromising who you are, or without caving in to unreasonable demands.

This is how you begin to create more emotional meaning for yourself. You also create an energy around yourself that supports others to feel good, if they choose to. Some won’t, and you can’t force them. Others may simply need your comfort, they may be going through something so difficult that all they want is your loving support.

You may not always wish or be able to remove yourself from the vicinity of truly difficult people. If so you can keep quietly and sincerely creating the energy of “like” and inviting others who want to be in this space of comfort with you. You might be surprised at how naturally things change for the better. Or at least how differently you feel about being in difficult circumstances or around difficult personalities. And how much your heart can open when true support is the appropriate response.

But what if you must spend hours a day in an environment that, no matter how you try to feel differently, feels like it’s sucking the life out of you? What if you are just not surrounded by people who are to your liking, but it makes no sense to leave them. They may be dependent on you for your support or you for theirs and this is part of the challenge of close relationship. What if you’re where you want to be, or with those you choose to be with, but you’re just feeling stuck on how to even know what your purpose for life is and how enjoy it?

Then you may need more support than this or any article can offer. And I want to emphasize that there are no ‘one-size-fits-all’ techniques. Because if your circumstances are deeply trying, when sad things really do just happen, such as dealing with grief and loss, it does absolutely no good to blame yourself for somehow not having the correct consciousness. That is not why they happen. You are never at fault, even in the less difficult circumstances.

Sometimes things happen no matter what your habitual state of mind–it’s part of the random events of life. You don’t create every circumstance. And you don’t want unrealistic or unkind platitudes. You don’t need inappropriate advice to ‘find the good’ in something that is simply too tragic and painful. When you all you really require is comfort and healing.

Whenever you would like my spiritual healing support in any matter, call me if you have my phone number or if not, click here to learn how to schedule a confidential telephone session with me. I would honor the opportunity to be of service to you in any way I can.

Thrilling to life’s elixir of appreciation

And I am open to miracles even in the mundane experiences of life.

The test came recently when my computer hardware failed and I was told by online techs who tried to help me that I ‘lost’ all the data. Not only the data on my computer hard drive but also that on my external back up drive.

I appreciate how Mind heals

But I never gave up hope. I didn’t lose one wink of sleep over this. Even though that data represented all my creative efforts over most of the last decade.
I remembered the old metaphysical truth, that ”nothing is lost or stolen in the kingdom of heaven.’ The kingdom represents consciousness–the thoughts, feelings and emotions that create new experiences.

Appreciation is spiritual starter fluid

I never once caved in to thoughts that my data was ‘all gone’. Instead I kept appreciating the joy of it all–or its divine equivalent–being in my possession. I kept rehearsing in my mind the exact conversation, someone joyously telling me, “Good news, it’s all here! Your data is restored.”

It was more than hope; I firmly believed it was safe and protected, and could be recovered. And today the new tech I hired just phoned me and we had that conversation. You know, the joyous one telling me my data was safe.

It was. It turned out that what was broken was just a mechanism of the little case, and not its hard drive. It had not failed. The data was extracted and my new external hard drive now holds my precious data.

Preparations only appear to fail

The lesson in being prepared is that sometimes the best preparations can appear to fail. That is just part of the props of the ‘play’ starring you, undergoing your current test.

Another clue that you are still in the preparation phase is when you feel successful or even demonstrate your success, and so are tempted to flirt  with fate. A kind of spiritual bravado that says, I can relax now. So in my scenario, instead of being satisfied that the data is now safe, I am still looking into an encrypted online solution for a secondary backup service.

We live in a world that often demonstrates to us that things can and often do fail. Circumstances can and do unravel at the most inopportune times. People can and invariably do things that end up disappointing us.

But what doesn’t fail, when you condition it so, is the consciousness or faith you have in the subtle but powerful energy that supports your highest intention. In this scenario, my intention was to ‘be prepared’.

Mentally firing the nonbelievers

My first step was to mentally ‘fire’ those other technicians who did not agree with my objective. I really didn’t fire anyone, but I fired what they represented: my own human conditioning that believed in defeat before even trying.

The key was in releasing these fears, and going confidently into the good feeling of just knowing the desired result would come to me. I knew that  there was only ‘one’ person, no matter how many appeared to be involved, and that one was ‘for’ me.

Whenever the thought of my data came to me, I knew that the ‘one’ was with me in the same high plane of thought. That there need be only one person in agreement with my idea of already having my data restored.

How you really change

How you really change is by simply probing deeper into truth. And, from there, enlisting other minds to work together in faith with yours and with higher Mind to support your own unwavering conviction. Then you let go and allow higher Mind to confirm it through experience. It works through your beginning inner experience all the way to the outer.

So my next step, after spiritual treatment to attract the correct computer technician for me, was to be open to not only meeting and hiring him, but also allowing him to do what I would ask. I passed the time in serenity even though it appeared that I was working with only a fraction of the data I needed.

In that space of calm expectancy I met and hired the positive, cheerful technician who freed my data. He is not only a happy being, but one who is also good at what he does. The attitude of the new tech freed me to press on with what I do best.

Even though I had to pause in my creative work to spiritually work on this rather mundane side of my life, it was as important to me as any of my other energy healing work, even the work I do with you in session.

This experience represented not only the rescuing of a large store of my creative ‘output’ to which I could have attached an emotional hysteria, but also the spiritual challenge of treating energy involving strong technical minds. Minds who already pronounced doom on that data. My response was not to fight them or my own thoughts, but to allow the energy to flow around me, as in tai-chi, and then invite it to conform to my more powerful knowing.

There’s no bending of energy in this work, and there’s no boundary in which to confine it. There is only allowing.

Related articles

• The Hathors: Partaking of the Solar Winds (stevebeckow.com)
• More on Lavish Appreciation
• Breathing Appreciation: Meditation Experience
• Appreciating Yourself As You Are