Peace and Inner Guidance

The past year, I have not listened to my inner guidance on several occasions because of other seemingly important and urgent matters. It made me resentful, unhappy and even depressed. I hope to change all that and start living in peace and harmony within myself. This new year serves as a very good platform for personal rebirth.

According to the Para-Gram PEACE by Paramahansa Yoganada:

Change yourself and you have done your part in changing the world. Every individual must change his own life if he wants to live in a peaceful world. The world  cannot become peaceful unless and until you yourself begin to work toward peace. It is only by removing hate from our hearts that we can live a Christlike life.

But how does one remove hate within himself? Since its source usually comes from the fact that we are always doing what is expected of us rather than what we really want to do, then it just means that when we change ourselves according to the dictates of our inner voice (that voice being of God's or from something greater than all of us), then we will start achieving peace and divinity within ourselves.

This also resonates with a quote I read by Shakti Gawain:

Every time you don't follow your inner guidance you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.

This is why we easily get tired and lethargic when we do things we feel are not meant for us to do; This is why on occasions that we do listen to our inner voice and follow our own bliss, we feel much more alive, powerful and full of unconditional love. A balance can be attained if we don't want to risk everything just yet for that one thing we want to do. We can enjoy the process and continue learning from it while slowly changing the direction of our lives to our true calling.

I now include these quotes in my daily reading to bring me peace, and to guide me in my quest for creativity. You can also use them if you want to bring to the surface your creative spirit rather than remain as a shadow of your divine artist self the coming years.

Morning Pages and Artist Date - Tools of the Artist's Way

As the year is ending, I am reminded once again of projects undone and creative pursuits kept on hold because of lack of time, motivation and the need to earn real money... fast!

So I am embarking on this task of unleashing my inner creativity by taking a 12-week course through "The Artists' Way - a Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity." It is a course in discovering and recovering your creative self written by Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan.



I've gone through the introduction and I was taught how to use two main tools for the duration of the course: Morning Pages and Artist Date

What are morning pages?

Basically, as a student of this course, I am asked to write every morning three pages of whatever comes to my mind. When this course was made, blogging hasn't been born yet. So ideally, this should be written down on a notebook. But I prefer to write it on a separate blog I call Jen's Morning Pages.

Anyway, in terms of its content, there is no right or wrong way of doing this. The things I write about can be negative, positive, boring, wrong grammar, wrong spelling, whatever. It doesn't really matter. The point of this exercise is to be able to write my thoughts the instant I think about them, no matter what I think about the activity, no matter how I feel at the moment, no matter how much I resist doing it, whatever the case may be. No corrections should be made. I just have to do it. This type of discipline will allow me to detach myself from my emotions. Eventually, this act will help unleash my creativity no matter what I feel or think.


What is the Artist date?

This is a set of time (like two hours a week for instance) where I take my own inner artist out on a date. It should just be me and my artist self. Spending time in solitude with my artist child is essential to self-nurturing. It could be anything as long as I do it on my own. I should do what intrigues me, what excites me. In order to have a real relationship with my creativity, I must take the time and care to cultivate it. Generally, the student's creativity will use this time to confront himself, to confide with himself, to bond with himself, and to plan.


These are the two most important things during this whole 12 weeks of unleashing my inner creativity and unblocking my fears and roadblocks. The artists who have taken this course in the past have continued doing these things well beyond the 12-week duration of the course. Many of them have fulfilled their dreams of becoming artists, some have become movie producers (like Steven Spielberg), real authors, painters, etc. I intend to finish this course and continue using the tools afterward. I've already signed my contract and I am committing myself to this.

Wish me luck!

MAGNETISM - A Para-Gram by Paramahansa Yogananda

Spiritual magnetism is a drawing, uplifting, expanding power. It is a quality of the Spirit. By soul magnetism in man, a person draws to himself friends and desired objects, and acquires profound knowledge. You should strive for that magnetic power, which has limitless range and depth. You can develop spiritual magnetism by deep meditation upon Aum (Amen, the Word) and God. Through its divine power, you can accomplish in your life the materialization of all your constructive ambitions. God's magnetic drawing power is in you. If you radiate love and goodwill to others, you will open the channel for God's love to come to you. Through meditation and service to mankind, you will develop divine love, the magnet that draws to you all good.

Since I was a kid, I've always been interested in spirituality,the concept of the divine, the higher power if you will. This curiosity got me interested in becoming a nun when I was ten years old, then experimenting with another religion as an adolescent. I am Roman Catholic on paper. Then some time back in college, I was baptized a born-again Christian. Somewhere along the way, I lost my faith and became an atheist. But that just brought me nothing but misery, and so I turned agnostic instead. I've been an agnostic my whole young adult life. I do believe in what most people call "God", a higher power which I believe we will never ever fully understand, but it's there. I even have this theory (which I got from my husband, and which he got from Stan Lee) that after this higher power, this God, created all that there is, He just simply moved on and abandoned us (in a non-negative kind of way). I mean, think about it. The Catholic Bible says that we are all created in His own image and likeness. Therefore it means, that we all have the capacity within us to be Gods ourselves, to create our own worlds too, our own reality. And many of us have been doing that for the longest time that's why our species keep surviving, we keep discovering better things for us. I mean, He is God after all. He can choose to abandon us and move on to greater things if He wants to. This higher power has already given us everything that we could possibly ever need to thrive and live in peaceful bliss. We have this beautiful Earth in which we live in (it's just too bad that we are destroying it in the process too), we have our free will to be able to do what we want, we have our conscience and intuition to help guide us to the right path (it's just too bad also that most of us choose to ignore them), we can become magnets (we actually already are and many of us just don't know how to use it) so we can attract and gravitate towards us the things, people, and events that we want. So what else can we yearn for?

I've tested this theory a few times recently. Through meditation upon this higher power, I was able to get some simple things I want. Simple things like having the house renovated (all of a sudden, I got three jobs to help pay for it), wanting to travel on weekends (I've been doing that almost every other weekend since January came in), wanting to just laze around the house and relax (I easily let go of my two jobs without any no fuss), then an opportunity came for me to help my siblings financially (I easily got one job back as if on will). It's as if, whatever it was that I needed at that particular moment (without the greed and just purely out of love and search for inner bliss), the universe simply gave it to me. Other people out there don't have it this good. Perhaps, if we all just learn to tap into this spiritual magnetism in all of us, the lives that we all have now can be so much better.

ACCOMPLISHMENT

The following is a "Para-Gram" by Paramahansa Yogananda. I picked this card when I woke up today and pondered upon it during my meditation:

Efficiency that leads to success is developed through concentration and meditation. The unlimited Creative Principle within you is the source of all art and wisdom. When you want to create something important, sit quietly and meditate deeply upon it. You will be guided by the creative Spirit, but you should also exercise determination in accomplishing your objective. Awaken initiative, which is the creative faculty within you -- a spark from the divine Creator. You must do something which will show that God's creative principle is active within you. With unflinching steadiness go forward on your path, knowing that the Infinite Power sustains you.

I chose this card because of the many things I want to accomplish this day, this week, this month, this year. My JenAdamsProject blog will describe to you in detail these personal goals I've set out for this year. And I realized that the more tasks and projects I have/need/want to do, the longer and deeper I should meditate. I do that now... since the first week of this year, I started meditating some more. It amazes me how being in touch with myself through meditation can give me so much more energy and determination. Reaching out to the divine inside of me aides me in taking the initiative to start the things I need to finish. It helps me banish laziness, complacency and the so-called "Manyana habit" among Filipinos. Meditation greatly helps me focus all my energy... the creative stuff that is working inside of me, to produce results while at the same time nurturing my spirit. Today alone, I was able to accomplish many things on my list to think that I've only been awake for 6 hours. On any ordinary day like before, this wouldn't have been possible. God is great! By doing something that shows God's creative principle actively working within me, I become more efficient in accomplishing my goals.