Initiating Change: Escaping Misery, Creating Dreams

Have you ever reached some point in your life, a point at which nothing seems right, where you feel that everything is unsettled, disoriented, and out of sync? I have on various occasions. When we continue on in those sort of circumstances, it hurts the mind, drains the body, and agonizes the soul — not a good position to be in. Sometimes we just go through the motions and look forward to the time where we won’t be in the distressing situation;we find ourselves not enjoying the present but rather incessantly looking forward to the weekend, summer, vacation, bar, or chocolate.

What courses of action are available in such a situation? Many, very many, but sometimes I have been in such distress of soul that the only action available to me personally, the only one that allowed me to keep my sanity, was to walk away. Eckhardt Tolle’s famous quote about three choices that are available is that you can change things, accept things, or leave them. Sometimes, I have just had to leave.

However, when those times came, I know that I evaluated the other two options — changing and accepting — and I did not consider that they were possibilities for me. Every one of us is unique in the ways we think. The choice of the source for processing the thoughts of the mind — ego or heart — is the one thing we definitely share, but what happens once either of those modes is engaged creates a you unlike anyone else.

Honestly, I doubt that I have always chosen heart, and I know that even if I listen to my heart that ego can always be trying to poke its nose in, which is why I talk about the choice of heart being the choice of a primary filter, primary source.

I mention this because I never made a choice to engage in what would become a liminal journey without an essential, absolutely essential, element: faith. I knew that in the depths of my mind and heart that I was brooding over some spirit, ideas, plans, and possibilities that were incubating in my brain; however, conditions were just not warm enough for them to hatch. Walking away provided the necessary heat. I KNEW that I would create something, make something happen. I believed in myself and had faith that if I moved, everything else would move.

At those times where I knew that I had tried to re-energize, to get re-enthused, and re-invigorated and neither acceptance nor change was possible, the heat needed to hatch some new part of my life was produced by walking away. Faith in self and Spirit, some sort of ideas incubating, and walking away created new growth and added new dimensions to my life.

This process of choice concerning larger life decisions calls for an intensely personal evaluation. While counsel can be extremely beneficial, too many of us want some external force or dynamic to make the decision for us — at least that’s what is really going on. Whenever that happens, I am pretty sure it’s ego, because ego focuses on how we look in the setting of our world.

If I may, I encourage you to garner whatever is available to you when you find yourself miserable, thinking of some vague future when you can be free, frustrated because you can’t change things or because in your soul you can’t accept it. From the moment that you start gathering your ideas and pursuing a course of action, choose to use your heart and ask the questions and listen, listen, listen to your heart and the soul and spirit of life as filtered through your heart. Who am I as core Self? How can I, in this situation, best express that core Self, my heart? How can I experience that life now that I dream of when in I’m in the throes of my misery? How clear is the life I want in my mind? What is it? Start listing and mapping it out, as vague as it may be or as detailed as it may be.

​We could continue, but I hope that these examples of questions and consideration are significant to you. I had intended to do some more character background and dialog tonight from my novel, but I will do that tomorrow, illustrating these things in fiction form.