Wednesday Afternoon Quote

"Find something that you love to do, and do it every day. Find something that moves through you choicelessly, effortlessly, naturally, without you ‘doing’ anything at all, something that makes you feel vibrantly alive, something that totally absorbs you, something that makes you forget past and future and the burden of ‘self’, something that feels deeply truthful to the very core of your being, something that makes life worth living, something full of deep connection, and do it. Do it every day. Find a way of making a living out of it, of making your life an expression of it. Remember that when you focus on the destination, you miss the journey, which is where all of life is. True contentment will not come in the future by waiting for it. True contentment is knowing who you truly are today, being that, and living that, and that is how futures are born.

Yes, the fears will come, the doubts, the Buts and the Shouldn’ts and the I Can’ts. Yes, fear is to be expected and embraced and integrated. Yes, the mind will say “but you won’t make any money”, and the mind will say “there’s no security in it”, and the mind will say, “you’ll make a fool of yourself”, and the mind will say, “you’ll fail completely”, and the mind will say, “but what will others think of you?”, and the mind will say all kinds of things because it wants only what it knows and what it can predict, and it fears change and ultimately death, but know that you are not the mind, and mind is fully entitled to say whatever it likes, for it is not in control of the vastness of You. Fear is not a block, resistance cannot stop the unstoppable flow that creates galaxies and makes the birds sing, and the objections of the mind are only objections to change. But change is the way of things, not the enemy, and a life fully lived that ends in glorious failure is infinitely preferable to a life half-lived that ends in empty success, and stagnant pools of unloved cash.

What is success anyway? It is not how much money there is in your bank account - we know that now. It is not a list of achievements and awards and recognition, it is not the string of letters after your name and the certificates on your wall, it is not how many customers or followers you have, it is the fire in your belly, is it what pours naturally out of your heart in the moment, not what pours into your pockets in the future, it is absolute alignment with life, with who and what you are, it is doing what you love and loving what you do, loving it so much that you have no choice but to allow it to be done, loving it so much that the worldly rewards are secondary, even if they come flowing in abundance. Be absolutely aligned with what and who you are, and live out of that alignment, and you will know true prosperity, as you did when you were young and had not yet learned how to conform or fear failure.

We have confused profit with prosperity, success with statistics, and many people now live only for profit and status, but it is an empty profit, a profit haunted by fear and loss and ultimately ruin, a profit dependent on uncontrollable outer circumstances. Do what you love, die into life, and you will know true and dependable prosperity beyond profit, the prosperity that no amount of profit can buy, and no loss of profit can destroy. The mind, which operates in the realm of profit and loss, cause and effect, time and space, will fear loss of profit, loss of image, loss of security, and will always long for more profit. Acknowledge the fear and the greed, do not make them into the enemy, but let your focus be on your prosperity and the prosperity of those around you, on what you love, on your truth, and do not let anything become an excuse to neglect your deepest calling, that which pulls you effortlessly onwards. Do what you love without distraction. Yes, you may lose what you have, what you think is yours. You may have less money than before. You may face criticism and even ridicule from some. That’s possible. But you will be absolutely aligned with life, and you will be open to opportunity, to unexpected help appearing along the way, to e-mails and phone calls out of the blue, to who and what you need appearing on time, and what you don’t need disappearing on time. You will learn to live not by the schedule of the mind and its stories, but by your own inner schedule, the schedule of the comets and stars, an ancient schedule of deep peace and true contentment.

You will be so in love with what you do that you will lose all fear of absence of money altogether, and trust will replace fear, and out of this fertilizer of absolute trust, enough money will grow, or at least the means to support yourself, or at least the willingness to be supported as you find your footing. In unexpected ways, support will come, connections will happen somehow, the right people and circumstances will appear, and things will start to flow, including money, if that is what you are worried about, for money is only energy anyway, and all is energy. Maybe it will come slowly at first. Maybe not to the schedule the mind would like, but it will come, in its own time. The flow is what is important, not the outcome. You will learn patience and trust, and you will be forced to make friends with doubt. You may say “it’s not possible, it will all end in failure”, but you’ll never know until you try. You may make a good living doing what you love. You may even make a great living. It’s possible. Others have done it before you. And from what life gives you, you will be able to give back more than you ever imagined possible, and the cycle of prosperity will keep going and going.

Yes, maybe I am completely wrong. Maybe this is all wishful thinking, New Age nonsense, immature head-in-the-sand spiritual babble, a promise of contentment for the already content. Maybe your fears and doubts are justified. Maybe you’re totally stuck in the life you are living with no hope of escape. But maybe not. And it is this ‘maybe not’, this possibility that cracks open all other possibilities, that so many people refuse to step into, instead allowing fears and doubts and justifications to rule their lives and limit their vastness. And then all that is left is blame, and bitterness, and regret, and the cosmic guilt of smallness and wasted potential, and hope for another life, or waiting for external circumstances to change. We blame anything and anyone for our stuckness and our refusal (which we reframe as our inability) to step into the life we love - our genes, our brain chemistry, our spiritual beliefs, our karma, our personality, our parents, the economy, the government, the weather, the alignment of the planets, our history, our conclusions about what will happen. Once the blame game begins, there is no end to it. But there’s no joy in it either.

I have known people who, in the last few weeks of their lives, suddenly discovered something they were good at, something that made their hearts sing: dying well. Dying in a way that would inspire others. Allowing their dying to be transformative and life-changing. In the last few weeks of their life, they tapped into absolute prosperity. They gave themselves totally to what they loved, without expectation of profit. There is never an excuse. We can always tap into something. Sometimes knowing what we don’t want is the first step. Sometimes not knowing what we want, but giving ourselves the space and time to explore and find out, is a movement of supreme intelligence and courage in itself.

There are no commands here, no ‘shoulds’. I’m not telling you how to live or what to do. There is enough of that in the world. These are only little invitations from one who has walked this path, loving reminders to open up to your own vastness, to set the heart free, to dance and sing and create and be what you have always known yourself to be: Life itself, pregnant with creative potential, the potential that exploded as the Big Bang, the potential that has forever inscribed tales of tremendous adventures on the walls of your heart, the potential that still explodes as every thought, every sensation, every feeling. Live the life you love, because you may only have today, and nobody else can live it for you, and you will get tired of waiting.”

--Jeff Foster