Are we our Roles?

Firstly I want to thank those of you who are starting to enter into the conversation and leave comments to the posts. This is what it is about, having a discussion about what it means to live in the bigger picture. Please feel free to invite your friends in too.

I see this as anyone’s blog not necessarily a reflection of just my thoughts and beliefs. Hence wanting you to join the conversation and add your ideas too. But thinking about that also got me thinking about the roles we play in our lives and how we identify not only ourselves by these roles, but also categorise others by the roles we see them play.

I have seen that I have been letting go of some of my roles recently. When I gave up some work, as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, it was a giving up of a role. Not just the work itself, but also how I saw myself in the work: dependable, in charge, knowledgeable, efficient. That’s not to say I can no longer function in these roles but the expression of me as these things in that particular situation has been removed. It feels empty, like a peg I had hung myself on for a while no longer exists. The question that comes next is of course, ”well who am I then?” And that, is the 64 thousand dollar question. As we release our attachments to the roles in our lives we begin to look deeper into who we truly are, what our destiny might be. These can be scary questions but at some time or other I reckon we all ask them.

What roles are you hanging onto to stave off these questions? Do you still need to identify with them? Could you begin to start dropping them as a form of identification and become, simply, you?

P.S. I'm away next week off up to the Picos de Europa mountains in northern Spain coaching a course called The Big Stretch www.thebigstretch.com Take a look, it's a great, life-changing week. That being said there's no posts from me but you can keep the conversation going...

Choices.

Our lives are constant choices. And that’s how it is supposed to be. We have a choice, make a decision and that bears a consequence. Then, in the light of that consequence, we have another choice, and make another decision and on it goes. The question is however, are our choices conscious ones or do we often press the default button? Do we end up actually not making a choice, but rather allowing ourselves to slip into a situation or action because of its ease? A situation that had we been more awake we might have done it differently.

I realised that many of the things that have occurred in my life have happened because of the default button. For example, years ago I’d taken a job because someone called me up and offered it. True, I was looking for a new direction, but I maybe would not have chosen that particular place and job. However, because it was an easy choice I took it. From one level this may look like destiny working in our lives, and on one level it is just that.

What’s wrong with that I hear (some) of you ask. Well actually nothing except for one small detail. If we are the creators of our lives we can actually be more involved the creative process than just pressing the default button. Sure the offer of that job came because I put out to the Universe that I craved change away from the corporate world. But how more powerful would my heartfelt desire had been if I’d craved change towards something rather than away from something?

The more clarity we have about what we want and how we will feel when we get it, the greater the chance we have in manifesting the change we truly desire.

Don’t leave your life up to the default button, wake up and decide for yourself.

The size of our thoughts

This morning in meditation I had the ah-ha experience of two things I have known intellectually for a while come together. I have known that thoughts become things, what we think is what we create. I have also known that it is possible to live in the awareness of unity, non-duality – the enlightened masters do it all the time. I thought that I had to be in that space of enlightenment first, only then would I be able to think from an awareness of unity. Today I realised that it is thinking enlightened thoughts - thoughts that come from a bigger picture perspective - that creates the experience of unity. By thinking non-dual thoughts we create it.

If I think small, my world is small. If I think big, my world is big. In other words, if I think victim, my world is that of a victim. If I think responsibility, my world is that of someone who takes responsibility for all things in my life. Each bigger picture thought always brings me to the present moment wherein lies unity.

What size are your thoughts?