” I thought I dealt with this!

I thought it was over and done with!

why did it take so long to deal with it..why Now?

I have wasted all the years, why couldn’t I have dealt with this years ago?’

Because change takes time, like true love, it takes the understanding of time

and the acceptance that change only comes when you are ready..

and often we may think we are ready, but deep within we are not

Change takes time, and time can only be a helper if you see time as agent of change

Time goes in cycles , not in a straight line..

Change goes in cycles, not in a straight line..

There are no straight lines within the growing psyche,

in the inner expression of spiritual change there always is to be found a cycle

of change and time, like two different coloured flowers on one slender plant

Time needs change to give meaning to humanity

and Change needs Time to grow and mature

We are all children of time and change

They are two of  twelve great mysteries that give humanity the impulse of evolution.

Karma is any intentional process, a thought, action, word or gesture or combination of all that is done with intent and focus. This the primary impulse of Karma. It does not matter whether the intent is positive or negative.  Because such activity creates many patterns that replicate themselves beyond measurement, we all are linked in a karmic fish net, that trawls the bottom of our unconscious karmic ocean.

If we wish to change patterns in our life, we need to understand what prompts our thoughts, actions, words and gestures, and what are the drives behind our intentions and focus. We can change karmic patterns by changing the nature of our intentions to the world, our inner world, outer world and to all people and other living creatures.

People often wonder …what  is Rebirth, thinking it the same as Reincarnation.

Rebirth is the process of suddenly been born as soon as you are dead without any understanding or control over the emotional, psychological and spiritual aspects of dying. If you lived a confused life and died with confusion, fear or any other overwhelming emotion that caused you to feel trapped,then it can be that you will be born immediately, as there are endless wombs waiting to be filled with life.

Rebirth is sudden and without understanding, it is a rush an endless flow and pattern. But you can rise out of that pattern by learning how to become conscious and more aware of your inner state so it does not sabotage your mental state as you die. This leads us to Reincarnation.

People often wonder… what Reincarnation is…

Reincarnation is the conscious application of mental , emotional and spiritual insight to yourself as you die, thus clearing away all the inner fears and projections that emanate around you as you die. You create a choice within you as to how you shall be, you enter into a dimension of choices. And when you know it is right, you have an element of choice over how, when and to whom you will be born.

In the death process if you enter into the state of clarity, you can redeem yourself, heal all your regrets, learn as to the whys and hows of your karmic legacy and inheritance and transform yourself.

Death is the great equalizer but in that you have choice and intention and focus.  Whatever you have done, you can heal in the process of death, and stay in the dimensions between the former life and the possibility of a new one, to enhance your inner evolution and well being.

Can you ask yourself and find an answer?

There is no quick answer, only a slow one that evolves as you experience your evolution through the challenges of life .

Happiness comes and goes, but its sweetness is a reminder, that beneath the delights of happiness exists a greater joy and contentment that shows us all, the ‘being’ , within the human..

Happiness improves our health and conscious, but the media has hijacked it, turning it into something ‘aspirational’ like a fashion item or latest gizmo, happiness is for us to see beyond ourselves and to be thankful for the life we can make from the life we have.

Happiness is also a choice, both a belief, as an act of faith and a psychological state that shifts our consciousness.

How do we find happiness?

We need to look within for that is where its foundation lies,

and without, not in things, but in our relationships to people,

the natural world and the place we stand in,

as we express who we think we are.

Happiness is trust, a trust in the goodness of life, people and ones Self.

If you can not trust in these, then happiness takes time to emerge into your daily activities and thinking.

Happiness is waiting for you to claim it as your own.

and of the person who is unafraid of the connection

with the varied experiences of Life.

In a world where people are born unequal,

gentleness has a greater impact than the biggest fanfare.

Gentleness is the opportunity of communication

and is the first step in true intimacy,

of the self, of your inner consciousness and with another.

Gentleness comes about when we listen to the interdependence within ourselves.

When we take the vow of the sacred marriage

between the dark and the light that rumbles through our everyday mind.

When we give up dogma, prejudice and set ideas,

burn away habits back to their original inspiration,

gentleness waits to be experienced.

Gentleness will come when invited.

It is not cautious but has spiritual courtesy.

If you want to experience gentleness

do not be afraid of the love that is revealed

to you in the experience of gentleness.

When the world goes mad and rowdy,

when people became overblown and pollute the world with their lack of care,

when hope seems to evaporate,

gentleness will still be with you.

Gentleness overcomes all things.

It creates renewal and rejuvenation of the heart.

To become gentle and to accept it with you

awakens the impulse within you to embrace all things with out fear.

..to pause.. and recall the moments when we were still, when we laughed,

when we loved and when we had peace, and then promise to ourselves to give ourselves the opportunity..to pause, reflect and change how we react to those things that try to make us caught up in the rush of daily living.

These three dimensions of human experience are emotional and thought energy that create the world and power the lives and progress of all human experience. We make our beliefs and truths based upon perception , projection and the interpretation of possibilities. We each have myriad futures based upon the perceptions and projections of what and how we think, feel and react to our thoughts and feelings.

Anything is possible but only if we understand the forces beneath our perceptions and projections. In a world caught up in a hub bub of projection and perception, the effects of how these create possibilities are little understood.

If you want to change your life or just be still or be happy with what you have then take time to know what motivates your perceptions and projections and how it influences the possibilities in your life.

Three dimensions run through the material experience of human life. They are perception, projection and the interpretation of possibilities.

Pause for a moment and feel them moving through you. Take time to think on how they mould the way you project your feelings, thoughts and experience upon yourself and the World. Then be aware of how the constant change in possibilities are affected.

Each person is a weaver, the loom in possibilties ,the thread perception and projection, the fabric is the colour of your soul and the texture of your heart.

Take time and stop to say hello to a friend.

Take time and stop to say hello to someone you don’t get on with.

Take time to stop to say hello to those less fortunate than yourself.

Take time to stop and say hello to those who have all the money in the world for they know that money can not buy friendship or stop the passing of time.

Take time to stop and say hello to the wise, and the foolish too, for they need human kindness.

Take time to stop and know your Self and let the secrets of time show you the lasting truths of love, kindness and the human experience that we all share.

Take time to stop and share the time you experience so that other’s know that there is always enough time. In this world of rush, we are fed a great lie, that time is running out, time does not run out, only the cycles of time change their frequency.

Take Time to Stop.

Maybe you have done this without really realising it? Maybe you were desperate, unhappy, drunk or alone. Whatever you feel, wherever you are, whatever you are doing or what is been done to you, prayer is already there within you, communicating in a way that you will eventually understand.What is prayer? Prayer is all of everything talking away, whispering to you waiting for you to hear and communicate back, yes prayer is communication with your inner self and that lives and affects every other thing, living, inanimate, the known and the unknown. Prayer is the craft of creative thought.

Some people think that you have to grab life moment by moment and to live in the ‘now.’ Others feel that there is a plan, or a reason for each and every thing that takes place in our lives. Others think that it’s all random and due to chance, while others believe politics or social change gives life significance.

We were born into life but sometimes feel separate from life. We feel observers, looking out at life and not feeling the vibrancy and simplicity of life as it really is.

Have you ever felt life is just passing you by? That no matter what you do, nothing changes and sometimes ‘it’ all seems too much. People say that they live in the moment, grabbing the ‘now’ and that life is beautiful. Essentially it is but sometimes it can be shockingly violent, cruel, full of unhappiness and suffering.

The fact is that there is no one life to be lived, but many lives all intertwined, lives of ease and hardship and lives of fame and infamy, of wealth and poverty and lives of the ordinary and the unknown. All of these are connected, reflections of the same impulse, for human consciousness to express it self in accord with the consciousness that is the foundation of everything.

Life is not just a series of events but also a series of beliefs and how you respond to the beliefs you hold. The world, we are told, is illusory, not real, but of course it feels real, looks solid and is if a bus runs you down. There are wars, starvation, terrorism and global warming; these seem real, don’t they? Yes, they are real with in a slim dimension of the material world, and all of us are influenced by each and every action and thought of the other.

Why is the world so real and yet an illusion, because illusion is real and this is how it happens? Our brains take in billions amounts of information every microsecond, so much so that in order to stop itself from overloading, our brain stops, pauses for a microsecond, and in that miniscule gap, our world is made. The world of cars, TV, money, mortgages, natural beauty and the larger universe.

Everyone’s brain in the world pauses at the same time, we are all connected. So this means that what we think of as the present or ‘now’ is in fact the past. We have a group pause, a making of the past, yet as we are all different we only see a strand of it. The minds that each of us have are wonderful expressions of consciousness and life’s experiences as our bodies but they are the vehicles of the illusory world, the world that we are in to learn how to be more human and more complete.

Because as our brain pauses for even a microsecond processing ‘old’ information, just like the sunlight we feel or the starlight or moonlight we appreciate is already old, we are living in the illusion of the present, all we have is the past, the gap in which our personalities, lives and planet occupy. In order to go beyond this illusion into a transcendental truth we need to learn about prayer and meditation. People often get confused over these.

Prayer is a natural communication with your inner self and multiple layers of the universe. Meditation is not this. Meditation is not something that you can do or practice. The techniques that people do to meditate are merely devices. Meditation exists within you. It already is. It dwells within you.

You can not do it, you can be open to it, the essence of meditation takes you to a place where perception becomes clear and without illusion both human and universal, but on the way to this, the art of meditation is about learning how to be with what and who you are, it is the art of non-judgement and of been free from the traps of time and learning how to live in the world of illusion and love all within it and yet knowing that this world of contradiction is your world.

You are meant to be where you are right now. This though can be changed. Changed by how you connect your will and intent with prayer. Prayer is invocation that creates a stream of understanding to one’s inner self and to the natural and man-made world, where as meditation is the heart of things in its pure unstained state. Prayer is the song, meditation the singer, and you are the vehicle though which both ply their melody.

Prayer does not have to be associated with any religion or faith, this also applies to meditation. In fact, prayer and meditation exist within the universe and us as natural expressions of life. In learning how to pray you unlearn the very things that trap you, in learning the art of meditation you reveal what you have always been.

People are afraid of prayer they think its religious, its to do with a set way of thinking. Prayer has nothing to do with religion. Prayer is an innate communication of the natural world, prayer is the voice of life; its profound communication with your deepest self. Do you know how to communicate in this way; the first stage is about listening.

I will share with you a method of prayer that will assist you to communicate with life. Later we will go over a meditation method that will help you to release the inner meditative state that is within you.

But first on to prayer. Most people think that prayer is about asking for things, but that is only a small part. Prayer is sitting down and talking, entering into dialogue with the forces of humanity, nature and the universe. Every prayer is always heard, because every prayer is a voice of the greater human soul. We all know how to pray but we forget who we are easily.

The first thing that you need to be aware of it is that the act of prayer or communication is constantly going on, in our bodies, our minds, in nature. Our cells metabolising, bees harvesting pollen from flowers, the sea lapping against the shore, the wind in the trees, sunlight caught in the moon, all of this prayer. Prayer is communication. Prayer is also action; it creates access to the energy of the natural world, to divine energy, to manmade energy, making things happen. When we talk from our hearts in love and sincerity to another this too is prayer. Anger and violence is prayer, communication of destruction, a negative prayer. A prayer of fear.

To be open to prayer you need to listen, to listen you need to know what you are listening to, in knowing what you are listening to, you are communicating. The question you must ask yourself is, do you want to be in communication, or do you want to live your life in a solitary box? A boxed-in life with no meaningful communication.

You can live such a life successfully doing things that seem important but eventually fade. In all human endeavours the only thing that lasts is what people have communicated. So I need to ask you how do you communicate?

How do you communicate with your loved ones, friends, colleagues or people that you come across daily? How do communicate with your self? Is there anger, sadness, greed, impatience, lust, confusion in your words, what are you communicating behind and through your words. Whatever exists behind your words becomes the intent even without you knowing it. So the first step in prayer is to know what is your true intent?

You start by listening. Firstly sit comfortably, close your eyes. Listen to the sounds around you, do not judge them, react to them, and just listen. Then let your listening expand through these sounds and listen further until you are hearing everything. Slowly as you listen you start to slow down, this slow place is where intent is borne, made and directed.

In this slow place give up any confusion and pain, any anger or rage, and let yourself become slow and focused. Here at this point, you can start to pray. Let your focus and intent grow then when it becomes to strong to hold, let it go out into the world, and then say, ‘Reveal the intent of the prayer within me.’

You will find that the intent of the prayer is shown to you, at the moment cover it in love and wellbeing and thankfulness and send out into the wider world. As this happens listen to the intent of the prayer and hear it communicate with you. Yes, prayer communicates back to you, prayer is a two-way communication, a dialogue, where faith is made.

Focus upon this sentence; repeat it over again until you feel it:
“ All that which is made communicates with what made it.”

As you communicate and repeat this sentence you start to generate energy within you, mental and emotional energy that gives your prayer more potency. You can start to pray to gather calm and emotional balance. You can pray to still your mind and to be less anxious, you can pray to be less angry, to be kind, humorous and patient. You start with these things to learn the craft of prayer. The more you pray the better and more skilful you become. Examine your life and look at what you wish to improve upon. Start with issues that you regard as spiritual or emotional, things that live within you first, only slowly moving on to do with the everyday world.

Make a list. After you have made the list, start at the top and work your way down using the method of prayer mentioned earlier. Start with the method and focus on it exactly.

Praying for the inner things, for happiness, calm, healing, balance, spiritual growth is the first step. Praying for a lover or partner, for a better job, for more money, a better place to live, praying for material benefits is ok, but be aware that when you pray for these things they can often happen quickly and not always in the way you expect them to.

Prayers for the material world operate on a different process than the inner world. The inner world takes longer to respond; prayers dealing with money are much faster, as you pray give yourself a pause to feel what your prayer is about. You might think you are praying for money, but your underlying intention could be for comfort, security, and safety.

These are not money but people confuse them with money and money cannot really provide these in a lasting way. As you gain skill in prayer you open up your ability to communicate deeply within yourself and too the world around you. As you open yourself, you will inevitable hit that subtle obstacle, the chattering and fearful mind caused by the daily interaction with the world.

This chattering mind does not want to stop its ranting because it knows its time is up, it is fearful of losing its grip, its fearful of becoming something better, constructive, integrated. So it will put up a fight. Imagine it as a dialogue something like this: It’s a dialogue between the foolish and wise part of your self. Sit back and listen to the conversation.

“What is the point of praying, no one listens. What’s the point of meditating I just get a sore bum, trying, and I sometimes feel worse than when I started, I can’t concentrate and when I try a song I really hate starts going around and around in my head!”

“Be still, there is not a point to praying but a communion between your Self and the universe. All of life listens. As you start, all that causes you confusion will boil up and spill, out just like a pot left to boil, but as you take it from the heat, you can heal.”

“Be still!! Its easy for you to say, you don’t have to go to work, or look after the kids or pay the bills, I am to anxious to be still, I am too busy, I don’t have time to be still, this is making me really angry.’

“I am in everything you do, and feel, in your children, in your job and the boss you dislike, in the untrustworthy colleague, in your anxiety, in your problems at home, in your secrets, I am even in your anger, in the loneliness of your heart, I am there.’

“Who are you then?’

“I am the deepest part of you, that which even in your darkest hour you seek, even when you feel far from love or happiness, safety or friendship, I am there. I am there you call to in prayer and that which is when you meditate.’

“Look, I asked you a question…a simple question, who are you?”

“I am you, the all knowing unsullied light of you, as you truly are and always have and will be.’

“That makes no sense at all, I am in the real world, I have things to do, responsibilities, I am a busy person.’

“I am you, the all knowing unsullied light of you, as you truly are and always have and will be.’

“ I have things to do. Things to worry about, concerns, my future, my past, my finances, my relationship, I have things to do.”

“I am you, the all knowing unsullied light of you, as you truly are and always have and will be.’

And so the internal often unheard conversation goes on, until something in our life goes pear-shaped and we are left with only what is within us while everything we thought we had, loved or was disappears as if it never was. In a sense, it really was.
Have you found yourself in a situation like that, even if for a terrible scary moment?
Inside of the exterior that we give to the world what is there? What is within you?
Do you know? Prayer helps you to find out through this sacred process of communication.

Now lets look at meditation. I said earlier it was something that you cannot do. Meditation is…it is within you, waiting to be revealed. The practice you do to reveal meditation is not to be confused with what arises from it. The simple meditation below will help you to become still naturally where meditation will spontaneously arise of its own volition.

Close your eyes. Sit any way you want but make yourself comfortable. With your mind concentrate upon your physical heartbeat. Feel each beat, concentrate upon it as completely as you can.

As you do this, let your day, worries, and then your body dissolve into each and every heartbeat. When you first start, do this for just a short time of say fifteen minutes in the morning before breakfast.

Do this for ten days, and with each day, you will become used to this. After ten days increase the time to twenty-five minutes. After a month increase it to thirty minutes.

This is simple to do. Do not be swayed by the dialogue that will come up, all the reasons not to mediate, if it helps go back and reread the dialogue that was written earlier, and consider it again. That dialogue goes on. The dialogue is a natural process that each of us needs to go through as all that we don’t need fades away.

Also you can in your daily practice start with the method of prayer that I outlined and then move onto your meditation using the method just mentioned.

Deep within us, there is a sway, towards this and away again, like a huge emotional pendulum, swinging back and forth. Either way, you must go there in some form towards your moment of truth. You can go there kicking and screaming and miss the entire thing, the lesson lost, or you can enter it willingly and come out of it, renewed, reborn and alive.

Prayer can help you across the confusion that may arrive. Meditation will show you why you had to make the journey. Prayer will be the light. Meditation will show you where the light and dark come from. Prayer will guide you as you fall into the chasm. Meditation will show you why you had to fall. Prayer will guide you back from your troubles. Meditation will help you to be reborn.

As you gain a better practice in your meditation and in your prayer you will find that those things that troubled you will lose their grip, long standing issues and questions will be answered, forgiveness will come to you and you will be able to forgive. You will discover that prayer affirms life and meditation shows you what life is.

Your suffering will not trap you like it used too as you learn how to suffer less. When you suffer less you live more, in that you allow Life to live through you. Life seeks itself through you and when you get in the way, the troubles that you have had become the blockages to living, but thankfully you can learn from them, turning them to opportunities and stepping stones on the path back to your self.

Whenever life seems too much, pray, communicate. When life seems to have no meaning, slow down and listen to the beat of your heart. When life seems complete and has significance, pray, communicate and listen to the beat of your heart. This offers you the language of prayer and the speech of your soul.

Thank you for reading.”
(ENDS)

Choices, what are they?
Choices are turning points in our lives.

So many choices, but what is it that we can choose? Another car? Another pair of shoes? What mineral water to drink? Another partner? Some time alone? A holiday? To love or not to love? To stay or go? To protect or defend? To trust or not to trust?Choices are markers that define our actions.
Choices can tip the balance in our lives from going nowhere to suddenly arriving where you have always wanted to be.

All the choices are available, except the understanding of what a choice is, and what you can do with it. The power of choice is so huge that it often misses our perceptions entirely. Choices define who we become and who we used to be. Choices change our lives.

The theology of most of the world’s religions dispute the nature of choice under another name, free will.. Adam and Eve got in trouble for the choices they made.. free will is a choice that inhabits the unconscious mind of many of the world’s people, but it creates a submerged collective identity; but personal choice is an emerging spiritual and emotional reality, a child of the mid twentieth century.

Originally formed by moral philosophers of the eighteen and nineteenth centuries but popularised by the movies, advertising, alternative thinking and consumerism. Choice is the essential dogma of the free market, of the capitalist structure that powers all our financial prosperity. Choice is regarded as crucial in nearly every constitution on human rights. From the right to bare arms, which is a choice through to live and prosper as each person sees fit.

Governments, Corporations and many others, are telling us that choice is our right. We have the right to choose. Choice is everywhere.

So much so, that most people do not know what choice really is as they have so many imitations of choice made apparent on a daily basis. After awhile, people switch off and their hearts close down a little, their minds get a little narrower and they think that choice is what to buy for dinner or what is best for them only. It’s not their fault; it’s just a forgetting, an enchantment, cast over the understanding of choice.

I would like to ask you a question: In an age of supposed global freedoms, where people everywhere have the choice to live their lives as they wish, can they really do that? How true is that? Do you believe it is? Do you feel that it is?

We may have more material choices than our forefathers did, but as to whether a wide range of choice is any better is yet to be seen. Mankind has always traded, creating a choice of goods, ideas, options for belief and behaviour, yet if I asked you what you choices do you have in your life today, right now, I wonder what you would say?

Could you give me a list?

Most people would believe that deep within them that they have little freedom of choice, that there are not many choices to be made, and that as far as their life goes, they have to do the best with what they have.

We are told we have choices, but not how to make them. We are encouraged to make choices, but often only within a set framework of our culture, our neighbourhood, our family’s opinions, our views of how the world should be. Often our range of choices are limited because our daily life is beset with the difficulties of daily living or the increasing intolerance and self-destruction of the world around us. Often, we do not know what our choices are made of or where they come from.

Yet, each of us has more choice than we can consciously know, when we make a conscious choice we transform our reality. We get bigger within. When this takes place the world sits up and takes notice, supporting this as the natural evolution of your inner self.

Are you aware of the affect that the choices you have made have had upon your life? Or upon other people?

There may have been choices you made that have made you sad, angry, and isolated or have completely turned your world upside down?

Are you afraid of making choices, so you let other people make them for you?

There comes a time in your life when you must make a choice and take a risk on living. Making a choice is taking a risk. When you make a choice you give birth to the spiritual, emotional and material energies latent within you.

A choice is an act of creation. So if you want to create something good, be prepared to make a choice. The questions you need to ask yourself are:

If I do not make choices for myself then how do I start?

If you make choices already, then ask yourself the following:

What are my choices fuelled by? Are they just a response to my circumstances or do they come from inner change?

What is behind my choices and are they really good for me?

The questions I have just mentioned are really the same thing. But they have different experiences and different outcomes.

The ability to make the right choice or any choice at all comes from knowing where you are in your life and where you are within yourself.

Take a moment, please breathe in and breathe out, slowing down and ask yourself, do you know where you are in your life and where you are within yourself? You can start to find out by slowing down. Slowing down allows you to see choices. Slowing down allows you to see your self.

It’s a bit like this, I knew someone that had lots of pen and ink drawings, and cartoons for magazines done by his friends. One of them depicts the following scene:

The picture is a large aviary full of canaries. On the door is a sign, “Position Available apply within”. In the drawing, the sign pointing to where to knock has fallen off, and so the man makes a choice and knocks on the aviary door. The man keeps on knocking. ..Canaries are not good at opening doors.

Life and the choices we make can be a bit like that. Knocking on the wrong door brings unexpected consequences, when you make the right choices, doors of opportunity just open and often, you do not need to knock, or deal with a bunch of canaries.

Can you make a list of all the things that went right on their own when you made the right choice? I am sure that you can if you think about it. If so write them down in chronological order. Then reflect on when and where you were at that time in your life. Remember the people you knew, the things you did. Then try to recall the choices you made and see how they led you to where you are now.

Now do the same for all the other choices, the ones that didn’t work out and came to nothing and the ones that went wrong and led to difficult consequences.

Do the same for each of these as you did for the positive ones. After doing all of these, see if you can find a link between all three…a chronological link, an emotional link and a circumstantial link.

Take your time to make a series of associations between each link, between each choice and what happened next.

When you can do this you immediately reveal to yourself the pattern of your life. The pattern of your life influences how you made and make choices and what you do with them, when they work out, and what you do with them when they do not become successful.

The first choice that you made was to be born. Yes, your birth was a choice, for which the majority of people truly appreciate but then forget. The next choice was that you started to grow up and have a life, from which lessons are learnt and the next one after that is that you eventually die.

These are the big three choices, which affect all the others you will ever make, even the choices that never happen or remain hidden.

These three big choices are facts of life. The choice you have is whether to understand them directly or just ignore them, living as best you can. A lot of people ignore them, some try to understand these three choices. When you try to understand them, your life changes its nature, energy and path.

The way you regard birth, the process of living and your eventual death affect all the other choices and abilities to make choices. You may say ‘I haven’t really thought about death, I am to young to be concerned, or my birth? I didn’t have anything to do with that! Or, Life, it just happens and you just do the best you can!

All of these are fears, fears that become excuses for not taking responsibility for who you are. These three, birth, living and death are the tripod on which your choice making ability rests. So, think, what do you know about your birth? What did your Mum and Dad say? Relatives or Family friends?

If you were an orphan or had foster parents what do you know about the circumstances around your birth? Is there a feeling inside of you since your were small trying to tell you this important information?

What you know about your birth story influences your ability to set off the impulse behind your choices. This does not mean that you consciously may know every little detail of your birth; you are connected to your birth experience more than you realise. Your birth is relived everyday in your actions and thoughts. Your rebirth takes place every time you make a choice.

The majority of people are cajoled into suppressing the birth experience and the memory, until their birth is taken for granted. Nothing is our life can be taken for granted. Yet we do this very thing when we forget that we have the ability to make a choice that can change our lives.

What about your daily life, the life you have right now? It is full of unseen choices, it’s a tapestry of choices from your past actions to the ones you are making this very moment.

To empower your choices ask yourself this question: Do you make your Life, or does Life make you do things? Some people would say that they make their own life, while others feel that they should just accept what happens.

The answer is both, to know when to act and to know when not to act. In order to know this, you need to make a fundamental choice.

To trust life utterly, and thus gain insight and connection on when to act and when not to; or be pushed around by your reactive mind or circumstances. By making the choice to connect with the Life within you, life then reacts positively and supports your choice.

If you are afraid of death it means you are afraid of the future and of daily experience. If you have no clear feelings or thoughts about death, you need to know why. It may be that without realising it, you have given up your right to make choices and you should claim that back. It may be that you feel powerless.

Death is not the death of Life, but the ending of your body and the unnecessary emotional burdens and the evolution of the essence of your personality. Even in death we have a choice to live again consciously or fall into the treadmill of unconsciousness.

Also as we live day by day we make a thousand choices we are not always conscious of and we do not understand how these influence our own life let alone the lives of others.

Start to think about how much of your daily life runs on automatic, and all the choices you once initiated have now become habits.

To change your life means changing the choices you make. To change your life for the better here is a list of suggestions that you can try to implement.

I call them “The Ten Filters’ as they help to filter out all that stops you from learning how to recognise and make the right choices.

1.The first filter is to change what you eat and wear daily and to get up one hour earlier than you normally do. In that time spend some of it on your own, even if its five minutes.

2.The second filter is to examine your motives behind the way you communicate to others daily.

3.The third filter is to speak and behave with as much openness and compassion as you can regardless of your mood.

4.The fourth filter is listening with your heart instead of your head to everything you see, read, hear and are told.

5. The fifth filter is to change the way you think about, behave to and judge other people.

6.The sixth filter is to appreciate that your life as it currently is, is what you need to have. As part of this, examine if your current work really reflects who you are and can be.

7.The seventh filter is that you can take responsibility for your thoughts, actions and speech and be able to carry this out with care and discipline. Also as part of this forgive all the real and imaginary wrongs done to you by other people and ask forgiveness of others that you have wronged.

8.The eighth filter is to try to trust all that you do and everyone you meet.

9. The ninth filter is to regard your daily life as a lesson in humility and peace. Look to be taught lessons by anyone at anytime. Remember there is no such thing as a stranger. A stranger is a friend that you have yet to know.

10. The tenth filter is to remember each day that you are good inside and a worthy of respect as all other people. Do not confuse the person inside with their actions and behaviour.

Each of these filters is designed for you to be aware pf how to make better choices and carry them out. If you can do each of these over the course of day you will start to become aware of what choices you do make, and what you do not.

Then once you do become aware, you can start to make choices that will create a new life and a new way of being. This is not as easy as it sounds.

The power that comes from making a choice is the realisation that you are the only person who has responsibility for your life. That’s why you have the life you do. This is not as easy at it sounds.

You may have had a shocking terribly unhappy life, but deep within you, you will know why. The choices surrounding your spiritual growth are the most important for they direct the outcome of everything else.

Spiritual growth is anything that helps you to be a better person and has nothing to do with religion, teachers, this week’s guru or prevailing popular attitude. Spiritual change, emotional wellbeing, having a good home and work, a loving relationship, all comes from making the right choices, and all of this is spiritual growth. All choices essentially return to spiritual and straightforward emotional development.

The freer a person is from any rigid or habitual belief has more opportunities for transforming themselves. The freer that person is to make choices. To go from a set belief to an inner connection that affirms your experience of Life gives you the power to make the right choices consistently.

How free are you in regard to what you believe?
Do you know what you believe?

Belief can often reduce your choices, especially when there is a large amount of fear and doubt underpinning the belief, because often we are not sure what we believe or why we believe, whether it be God or in ourselves or that life goes on as usual. Our fear and doubt rob us of the natural innocence and benefits of belief and thus reduces our ability to make intuitive choices.

People think that decisions and choices are the same, but they are not. A choice is an opportunity and you need to know how to recognise which choice is right for you. Decisions, do not create choices, a decision is an intention.

A choice is a complete opportunity that you can intuit, see and act upon. A choice is a gift. How well do you receive gifts? When you know how to make the right choice, its because the choice in a sense ‘talks’ to you, telling you about what life can be like if you act upon its prompting.

But what about making the wrong choice? There are no wrong choices. It is how we relate to the choice we have made and how we learn from the choice. We have many opportunities in one choice. A choice is a life changing experience. A choice is a catalyst of energy that can be used or applied unskilfully thus creating less than positive outcomes.

I want you to look at your life, and see if there was just one choice that you could have over again. Think on it. Now, quietly, speak it out aloud. Describe it out aloud. Feel the connections, regrets and emotions you have around the lost choice.

Follow it back from your life as it is now; see the events, the people, all which flowed out of that choice. As you feel this, see the lesson that you could learn from this. Try to understand it. In doing this, the choice you thought you had passed over is offering you a new choice of learning, acceptance and wisdom.

The past choices that you have made whether they turned out or not offer you a great opportunity to gain the insight of how the choices you made brought you the life you have.

I would now like you to sit quietly and comfortably and close your eyes. See before you a blazing fire, roaring, bright and hot, and in that fire cast away all the significant choices and insignificant choices into the fire. Focus as you do this and feel the energy and emotion that they release within you. As you finish, give thanks to the fire, and slowly open your eyes. Reflect upon what took place and write it down.

Next I would like you to create a ‘Choice Journal’. In the journal write down all the choices that you remember having made and how they turned out, then right down how they made you feel in the past and now. As you record the choices see if the same choices come up in differing forms.

There are times in our lives when it is easier to get stuck make the same unskilful choices over and over again. The above fire exercise and Choice Journal will help you to see if you are trapped in a cycle of poor choice making. Poor choice making comes from emotional confusion; skilful choice making comes from allowing the core of the choice teaching you its essential lessons.
The essential lessons offered by the core of each choice are normally experienced in three ways.

Firstly, you will feel an emotional state of knowingness or rightness; also you might feel exhilarated, energised but a little scared, in a good way, as you feel the power of the choice.

Secondly, Images, possibilities, plans may come rushing into your mind. As this happens, slow down and let them all come, let them layer themselves, down, until they are laying one upon the other, each connecting to the other. You then may feel that you have to carry this out, that its right, other people might think you are wrong. Ignore them, take the risk.

Thirdly, trust the inspiration that starts to come from the core of the choice, feel it and identify with the experience, become it. Become the choice in order to make it happen. Choices are actions, actions of intent, inner knowledge and results. A choice seeks a conclusion. Do you want to follow things through in your life to a final outcome?

These three dimensions of choice enable you to be aware of the process that goes on within you as you face the choices in your life. Making the right choices often comes down simply to having the courage to make a choice, regardless of the outcome.

When you next make a choice that you need to consider go through these three aspects of choice, then you will discover that naturally you will apply these three discoveries to all the choices you are consciously aware of.

Choices connect people and make history, your history and history of your friends, family, neighbourhood, and country. The choices our leaders make affect our daily lives; all of us are connected by the energy of choice.

Yet if just one of us decides to make the choice of becoming who we truly can be, our divine innermost self, that alone would change the negativity in our world. Can you imagine if we all made that conscious choice? The world would change completely from what we understand it to be, time, space and the matter that we live in and on that makes our planet would simply change into a higher state of being.

The power of choice that exists within each of us is a thread, a filament of the universe that together weaves the fabric of all things. Each thread, each brilliant filament is a stream of light and consciousness, which dwells in the essence of each choice you make, sometimes seen and other times unrecognised.

You are this thread, this light, this brilliant filament; you exist at the core of each choice. For every time you choose well, you choose your highest Self, you recognise your own brilliance and incandescent being. Creation dwells within you because of choice, and choice holds Life in its centre. You are that centre, that Life, that Creation.

What are we here in the journey of our own life to learn?
That we are made of the choices of our past? That we make our own present by the choices we recognise? That our future lies in the choices we have understood and learnt from?

Yes… we are here on our journey to learn all these things.
By understanding that we are made of the choices of our past and that we can recognise the choices of the moment; and that our future lies in what we learnt from our choices; we capture life in the beat of our hearts and we change from looking at life from the outside looking in, but from within the very thrum and flicker of how each choice joins one to other only if we allow ourselves to do so.

We go from merely looking on at life to having vision that comes from life. You become a visionary concerning your needs, truth and the reason why you are here, blossoming in this progression of choices called your life.

When our choices are taken away from us as can sometimes happen in Life, the first thing that we can do, is to accept everything as a blessing.

Your life may be falling to pieces, it can happen, you may have lost all that had, you may be losing a false identity or security, part of your life may be coming to an end, whatever it is, be glad for what is to come. There is the learning of lessons that the recognition of how to make the right choices brings.

Its not about money or that great career, or the ideal spouse or the perfect relationship which will solve all your problems, it is about taking the step to know that even when we do not know what is to come or we can not see clearly, it is a special kind of choice; the choice of unknowing, the gift of trusting the unknown.

Making the right choices comes from relating to your inner state, of how the quality of your being truly is. The quality and strength of your inner self enables you to sense the continuance of your life’s history. Can you be at peace with your past? Look at the choices you made and do not ask why these all happened, but how. In asking how these things happened, your past gives up the lesson it has for you and you will be at peace.

What does your history mean? What is its significance?
Do you recall it ever helping you to understand today?
All of our lives we make choices, good or bad, and then create ways of trying to escape the choices that reveal who we are.

There is no escape from this, we cannot escape ourselves and if you seek to make the right choices in your life, the time has come to be kind to yourself and accept yourself without judgement of any kind. Take the time to look directly at your choices, as deep as you can and give a heartfelt thanks for each and every one.

Choices and understanding them make us all the more human, revealing our weaknesses and strengths, talents and wisdom, guiding us to living more compassionate and connected lives. Knowing how to make choices is an art, an art that teaches us to live as best we can.

Your life will rise and fall, just like your breath, good and bad will decorate your days, each a testament to your experience and as you live more deeply, each choice you make changes from the recognition of an opportunity, to the profound recognition of your being, of the love and compassion that heals everything and you will discover that the smallest choice is a window, path and sanctuary of the eternal light that blazes in every human being.

(ENDS)