Please donate here to support this vital work.
Subscribe here to our free email list
Coming Together to Love, Heal & Empower

Inspiring Stories: What Will Matter, You Were Made For This

Inspirations

August 2005
Issue Number 29

Welcome to Inspirations! Global Community For All sends out this e-zine filled with short, inspiring stories of love, healing, and empowerment once every three months. We share these wonderfully inspiring stories, including "What Will Matter" and "You Were Made for This" to encourage and inspire each other to be the best we can be each day of our lives. Thanks for joining us, and may these words inspire us to ever deepen our commitment to love, heal, and empower; to open to divine guidance; and to choose what's best for all.

The four inspiring stories for this issue are:

Principles of Self-Enlightenment – Translated by Fred Burks
If You're Asking
– Alicia Nicole Altom
What Will Matter – Michael Josephson
You Were Made For This – Clarissa Pinkole Estes


Principles of Self-Englightenment – Translated by Fred Burks

Note from Fred: Though I have worked as a language interpreter for George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and many other world leaders, I am in my core a deeply spiritual being committed to personal and global transformation through love, healing, and empowerment, and to what's best for all of us. Below, I want to share with you a brief summary that I translated of the most profound spiritual writing I have ever encountered. I deeply respect whatever spiritual path you may have chosen for yourself, only offering this profound, inspiring writing as a possible means of enriching your life. Thanks for caring, and I wish you a most wonderful spiritual journey throughout your life.

The self-enlightenment experience is initiated by the realization that you are capable of direct access to the Divine. This is the realization that the wisdom of the Divine is discovered deep within your own soul. There are wide ranges of expressions that can induce the self-enlightenment experience and liberate the soul from external controls. Inasmuch as these expressions can vary, the intent of the expressions is quite narrowly defined as the intent to expand into a state of integration whereby all aspects of your conscious self become increasingly aligned with your divine essence.

There are three particular life principles that help to align your perspective with the perspective of divine essence and thus facilitate the self-enlightenment experience: 1) seeing the Divine in all; 2) nurturance of life; and 3) gratitude. When you apply these principles, a deeper meaning will be revealed to the seemingly random events of your life experience.

This is the principle that the Divine is present and can be seen everywhere and in all manifestations of life. It is interwoven in all things like a mosaic whose pieces adhere to the same wall, and are thus unified. However, it is not the picture that unifies the mosaic, but the wall upon which its pieces adhere. Similarly, the Divine paints a picture so diverse and seemingly unrelated that there appears to be no unification. Yet it is not the outward manifestations that unify. It is the inward center of divine energy that unifies all life.

Seeing the Divine in all is the principle that all manifestations of life convey an expression of All That Is. It does not matter how far the unifying energy has been distorted; the Divine can be observed. It is the action of perceiving unification even when the outward manifestations appear random, distorted, or chaotic. The principle of seeing the Divine in all is the perception that life is perfect in its expression because it flows from perfection, and that no matter how divergent its manifestations are, all life is an extension of the Divine.

In light of the obvious turmoil and destruction that accompanies life on Earth, this is an outlook or perception that may seem naive. How can life in all its forms and expressions be perceived as optimal or perfect? This is the great paradox of life, and it cannot be reconciled with your mental or emotional capabilities. It can only be understood in the context of the soul, which is deathless, timeless, and limitless.

Calling forth the divine perceptions of the soul is actualized through looking for both the inward and outward manifestations of the Divine. It is not only that the Divine is found within you and within every individual manifestation of life; it is also in itself the wholeness of all life. Thus, this principle calls for seeing the Divine in all its diverse forms of manifestation, as well as in the wholeness of life itself.

Nurturance of Life

Life, in this definition, is an individual's sovereign reality. It is subjective and impressionable. Life is the wholeness of experience flowing past the individual's field of perception in the present moment. Nurturance of life is the principle whereby an individual is in alignment with the natural expansion of intelligence inherent within all life. This alignment enhances the life energy that flows past the individual with the clear intent of gentle support. It is the action of opening to the highest motive in all people and in all life and supporting the flow of this highest intention towards its ultimate expression. In so doing, the action is performed without judgment, analysis, or attachment to outcome. It involves simply nurturing the highest energy that flows from all people and all beings, and thus supporting their fullest expression of life.

This is a departure from the normal perception that nurturing support can only be granted when others are in alignment with your personal will and desires. When, instead, you view everything in your life as an integrated energy flowing as an expression of ever-expanding Divine Intelligence, all life is honored as an extension of the Divine. Energy is an element of life that is so subtly interwoven with form that it is one, in much the same manner as space and time are inextricably linked in union. Life energy is always in a state of becoming. It is never static or regressive in its natural state. You are very capable of nurturing this natural expansion of energy to forge new channels of expression and experience.

There are many specific actions that can be taken to nurture life. Each soul can transform energy through a tremendous variety of means. Working through your body, your soul is able to collect and store energy and redirect its purpose or application. This transformation of energy can occur on both personal and universal levels of expression. That is, within an individual's field of awareness, energy can be transformed to conform to a vision of personal welfare, or aligned with a vision of universal welfare and goodwill.

One of the best methods to transform energy is through exploring one's belief system. All beliefs have energy systems that act like birthing chambers for the manifestation of beliefs. Within these energy systems are currents that direct life experience. Your soul is aware of these currents either consciously or unconsciously and allows them to carry you into the realm of experience that exemplifies your core belief system. By cultivating beliefs that expand and transform energy, you are able to engage energy systems that are nurturing to life in all its myriad forms. When your beliefs are clearly defined as intentions, your life energy engages fully in the present moment. Clarity of intention is essential to engaging the energy system of your core beliefs, and to allowing the nurturance of life to prevail in all activities.

Gratitude

If you are aware – or at least interested in having the awareness – of how perfectly the Divine supports your sovereign reality, there is a powerful and natural sense of gratitude that flows from you to the Divine. It is this wellspring of gratitude that opens the channel of support from the Divine to the individual and establishes a collaboration of purpose to transform the individual soul into a pure expression of divine essence. It is principally gratitude that opens you to connection with your divine essence.

When you project gratitude, regardless of circumstance or condition, life becomes increasingly supportive. This feeling of gratitude coupled with the mental concept of appreciation is expressed like an invisible message in all directions and at all times. Gratitude is an essential facet of love that opens you to redefine your purpose as a supportive extension of the Divine, rather than the whimsical outreach of fate or the exacting reaction of a mechanical, detached universe. Establishing a relationship with the universe through the outflow of gratitude also attracts life experience that is transformative — experience that is richly devoted to uncovering life's deepest meaning and most formative purpose.

When you are aligned with divine essence and live from this perspective as part of an ever-unfolding reality, you attract a natural state of harmony. This does not mean that your life is without problems or discomforts; rather it signifies a perception that there is an integral purpose in what life reveals. Natural harmony perceives that life experience is meaningful to the extent that you are aligned with your divine essence. When your personal reality flows in alignment with divine essence, you create lasting joy and inner peace.

It is the perspective of divine essence that all life is pure love in its fullest expression, and that in this single concept, all life is conceived and forever exists. This becomes the core belief from which all other beliefs arise. And as these beliefs expand outward, this core belief system emerges with a clear intent of supporting a fundamental perspective of seeing, nurturing, and appreciating the universe as the divine cradle from which all life is created and evolves.

These life principles are merely symbols represented in words and served to you as a potential recipe to stir awake the embers of light that tirelessly burn within. There are no specific techniques or rituals that are required to invoke the power of these principles. They are simply perspectives. In a real sense, they are intentions that attract experience that expands consciousness. They do not provide quick fixes or instant realizations. They are amplifiers of personal will and intention that clarify how one lives. Their transformative power is contained exclusively in the intent of their application.

Through these principles of self-enlightenment, you can become a master of empowering your deeper self. If you choose to apply these life principles with clear intent, you have the tools to accelerate the emergence of divine essence within you. Thus, you can feel the perspective, insights, and empowered abilities of your divine essence to create new realms of possibility and shape them as learning adventures that liberate and expand your consciousness. This is the underlying purpose of these principles, and perhaps the best reason to explore them.

For the full 17 pages of these inspiring spiritual writings, see the two links below:
https://www.weboflove.org/wingmakers - Principles of Self-Enlightenment (seven pages)
https://www.weboflove.org/consciousnessparadigms - Shifting Paradigms (ten pages)
For a printable version of this two-page summary - https://www.weboflove.org/self-enlightenment


If You're Asking – Alicia Nicole Altom
[email protected]

Note: This poem is from a 16 year old girl who lost her daddy in a tragic accident.

If you're asking if I love you the answer is forever.

If you're asking if I'll leave you the answer is never.

If you're asking what I value the answer is you.

If you're asking if I love you the answer is "I Do."


What Will Matter – Michael Josephson

Ready or not, someday it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire.

The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived, at the end. It won't matter whether you where beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin colour will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built;
Not what you got, but how you gave.

What will matter is not your success, but your significance.
What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence, but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.

What will matter are not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you.
What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.


You Were Made For This – Clarissa Pinkole Estes
Author of the best seller Women Who Run with the Wolves

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement...

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind... Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency too to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?...

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take "everyone on Earth" to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

This comes with much love and a prayer that you remember who you came from, and why you came to this beautiful, needful Earth.


All the darkness of the world cannot put out the light of a single candle.


Thanks for sharing in these inspiring stories with us. We wish you lots of love, inspiration, and all the very best in the months ahead.


Explore the mind and heart expanding websites managed by the nonprofit PEERS network:

www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment
www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart
www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons
www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups
www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all

Kindly donate here to support this inspiring work of love.

Subscribe to one of our free email lists of inspiration and education.

Global Community for All is a PEERS empowerment website

"Dedicated to the greatest good of all who share our beautiful world"