Orient Your Consciousness

It is unwise to sail to sea without a navigation system. Likewise, navigating the intricacies and challenges of life also needs special guidance. For your soul wisdom grows from your consecration.

My consecration is to release any thought that closes my heart even in the slightest and to always begin my life right where I am. It is to refuse to allow fear or suffering, even physical pain, to make me self-involved.

Consecration is the pole star by which you invent yourself as a spiritually oriented conscious person. But how do you know or discover your consecration? Ask yourself: What is it that brings tears of recognition: tears of joy, compassion, forgiveness, or inspiration?

Is it hearing Martin Luther King’s dream of brotherhood? Is it witnessing a person rise above their circumstances and demonstrate courage, wisdom, and love? Or is it seeing someone selflessly risk their lives to assist another? Do you cry in romantic films when love eventually triumphs?

Who do you deeply admire? Is it a technology pioneer like Steve Jobs? Is it Nelson Mandela who after 27 years of imprisonment by a brutal government led a new government in a policy of reconciliation instead of retribution?

The people who you most want to emulate, the things that move your heart, this is your soul telling you what is sacred to you. When you choose to embody these qualities to the best of your ability, you have found your consecration. Now you have your pole star to guide you through the darkness, to lead you to become someone who perhaps you never imagined you could be.

But to embody your consecration, you need consciousness practices, particularly practices that teach you how to live consistently in the Now. For example, stop polluting your body with angry, judgmental thoughts. Don’t believe any image or belief about your past that hurts you in the present. Learn to let go of any future imagining that poisons you with sensations of fearfulness or deludes you with false hope.

There is still hope, but the hope is in the quality of your attention and presence. Take this breath. Open your senses. Whatever life brings, let every perception be vivid and your mind spacious. Let your whole body be a living “Yes” to whatever is happening right now. Now you are flowing with life like a river flows. This is true abundance.

True security and real happiness never come from outside. Consecrate yourself to practices that free you from mind-made suffering and begin to invent yourself as the human being you want to be. This is the greatest of all of life’s opportunities: to invent yourself. Decide that you will not let your heart stay closed when you feel abandoned or afraid. Decide to find a way to celebrate whatever life brings.

Does this sound like aiming for sainthood? Why not? Saints were not born; they invented themselves. They chose their beliefs. They chose their behaviors. This is the greatest form of freedom, the greatest aspect of free will. Who do you want to invent yourself to be?