Q- In the current times of economical, spiritual, emotional and rational difficulty and confusion, how can we really know what we want out of life?

S.D. London

A: From the very beginning of our time, due to the limited awareness of ourselves, we have suffered difficulty. We are limited in our understanding of who we are, what we are, how we are functioning, what our capacities and capabilities are, and what our purpose is. As individuals, or a collective that does not know who it is, anything that it may want out of life will always feel somehow disconnected, irrelevant, and will ultimately cause conflict and pain, both individually and collectively.

Without awareness, our goals will only manifest from our personality based subjective needs. To that end we are subject to external conditioning. Ultimately making an effort to fulfill a personality lack, hiding behind economical, environmental, emotional, educational, or whatever else the pressure may pose as. The point is, it will always provide you a good reason to not know who you are and what you are doing here.

What is the answer here? If we do not know who we are, everything else that we do is tainted by insecurity, lack of awareness, uncertainty, and it all translates itself as a weakness, and a limitation. Any purpose following is not filled by the joyous and powerful creative energy of your Heart, but a slow and calculated rational fix, trying desperately to move itself along the path of its identity’s saviour and esteem. It all meets with disappointment eventually, because none of it lasts, none of it brings any real satisfaction of itself, none of it has the power to ignite happiness, love, joy and passion within if it isn’t already realised to begin with.

What we want from life, is the ultimate peace and fulfillment that we thought we could buy, or find in a relationship, or achieve in our jobs and titles, or status, or any one thing or another. Ultimately there is no external realisation, or manifestation that could bring inner this peace or fulfillment to you. There is no one here who has attained lasting peace, fulfillment or happiness truly, sincerely, in anything external to themselves, unless they already felt these things, and then it would all be a secondary pleasure, not essential happiness. If happiness is dependent and conditional upon an external thing, it is not happiness at all, it is merely another identification, and a condition.

True happiness, is unconditional, it is a joy within that is experienced when we recognise that we are not our minds, we are not our thoughts, we are not who we think we are, but rather we are something much more than our intellectual functioning. The truth of it is that what we are is far greater than any of these external forms, which are enjoyable of course, but cannot fulfill us, and do not define us.

Until we have realised our true essence, we will always feel this nagging lack, and will continue to chase our own tails trying to find it. However, when we do find it, we realise that there are not things in life which we want, instead it is the natural expression of ourselves, which joyously pours through in every way that it can interact with, in every area of our life, ultimately creating more and more of itself.

At that point our purpose here can show itself in various way, each of them is represented by each one of us in its own unique way. We can each maintain a natural responsibility and accountability to the large and small societies which we inhabit, our families, communities and companies.  The value and quality of our contributions to those who we share a common purpose with shifts and becomes clearer.

The majority of us believe that life is a gift here for us to do something with, and miss the point that life is already happening and was already happeining by itself all along before we showed up. And we are just another expression of it, within it, with a single powerful opportunity, to realise our true Creative nature in all of this. Other than that life is happening all by itself, even within us. A better way to look at it is what inspires the mind that it has a purpose? That is what we are, that which inspires everything.

Our Egoic way of thinking has led us to indulge in “external gifts” rather than acknowledging the Creative essence within the self. The very basis for our desires, needs, wants and motives in life are based on a limited, subjective perspective of our Egoic identities. We therefore find the “new age race for happiness” is ironically tainted with great dissatisfaction with life. There are of course many out there selling peace, happiness and love. However there is a condition, that will require you to chase and live for fantasies and dreams, whilst the true reality will pass by you, and you will ignore the greatest truth within yourself the whole time.

It is simple, you already are all that you dream about, you already are the Creator being, and have yet believed that they min could somehow mimic this, and by attaining just one more goal, you too will have all that you want, and become all that you already are. Only that which brings you to this realisation is of any real use to us, and after that we realise all we can do is observe as this force manifests and expresses itself through us spontaneously, magically and freely, in wonderful ways that we could not have thought of.

Our true essence,will turn what we think we know about ourselves on it’s head. It will also transform who we believe we are, and what we believe we want. Without it our personal goals can only be described as a stagnation of what we are, as mindless indulgences manifested in economical, educational and emotional resourcing of whatever spiritual, intellectual, inspirational, material food we think we hunger and greed for.

On a conscious level, you may realise that what you really want out of life is not to be passively ignorant of it’s horrors, and subjectively indulgent of it’s beauties, but rather to fulfill the expression of life here consciously. It will lead the way, open the doors, lay out the paths, and everything else that is required, all you have to do, is be a witness to it.

Q – If you have to choose between the head and the heart, what would you choose to make you happy?

A.L. London

A – Happiness occurs rarely for the majority of human beings, this is because they are often in conflict with one another and with themselves. What does it mean to be in conflict with oneself? It means that there is a multiplicity of desires within you and that in satisfying one you are sacrificing another, which ultimately causes you confusion, dissatisfaction and pain.

Your values are the assets that you will assign to the 8 fields which sum up the entirety of the areas of your life, and personal growth which are; body & mind, health & spirit, career & wealth, relationships & community. They determine what goals you have in each field and and how you will achieve those goals. Your beliefs are the rules that you will live  by whilst achieving your values and what you will judge your actions and the actions of others by. They will also determine your boundaries and your limitations in each area.

For each area of our lives, however active we think we may or may not be in that area, we have developed and are living according to our values and beliefs. Often in each area we have developed multiple sets of values and beliefs and sometimes these may be in conflict with one another causing a duality or multiplicity within us. Therefore when we act on them they cause us pain because we are sacrificing one set of values and beliefs for another.

When your centres are aligned, like the mind and the heart, they move forward together, in one direction, with clarity, precision and certainty towards a common goal. Then we can experience true fulfillment and happiness enrich our lives. For the most part the initial common goal of all your centers is self observation, a way of gathering enough data to be able to look at yourself and evaluate yourself objectively.

Like all things happiness will begin in your consciousness. A deep seated gratification for your very existence, for being and for acknowledging your being dwells in your heart, which must be expressed in your own individual way. Through practicing and understanding this gratification, which is an appreciation of your being, you will develop an honest picture of the values and beliefs by which you live and the values and beliefs which truly represent who you are.

In our natural state the bulk of what we think and do is determined by the external world to us. Television, media, schools, peers determine for us by showing us in example who we ought to be and how we ought to live . They educate us on our values and beliefs, the very dear values and beliefs which we hold on to and fight for with our lives, are often determined by external bodies and not by our own efforts. We would have to study ourselves and one another and then evaluate our findings objectively and without judgement before determining our own individual values and beliefs truly.

Instead our brain takes in all the data it is given and we become the things we think about, the dramas and the false ideas, the limited perceptions of our communities and environments and the negative and dark realities that begin to influence who we think we are and the world we think we live in.

The majority of people feel unfulfilled and detached from themselves. They feel a gap between who they are and who they wish to be, this gap is real and it is determined by actions that we take on a daily basis which distance us from ourselves.

If you are not happy, it is because whatever you are doing that is not aligned with your true self, it is causing you to move away from yourself and this distance from the self hurts.

When you are not aligned with your true self, your true desires are not fulfilled and you feel a deep dissatisfaction with the world and yourself in it. This alignment does not occur naturally, this alignment requires a constant work on oneself to become conscious, to re-evaluate ourselves and the world we think we live in and to create a new future for ourselves. It is possible to become completely lost and stuck in this great dissatisfaction for the entirety of our lives. It is also possible to relieve yourself of the great dissatisfaction with the help of those who have done so before you. Ultimately the choice is yours, to get different results, you must act differently.