Opening Up

IN ORDER TO DISCOVER and know your purpose in life you will have to open up. Most people find this idea frightening. This is because most people live in or carry some kind of fear around with them. Yet a flower doesn't fear opening up. A flower bud finds fulfillment in opening up to the sun.

A newborn baby is fully open to learning. Children are open to learning. Yet as people age most people begin to close themselves off. By this I mean that they accept fear into their consciousness or way of thinking.

Fear causes one to want to protect the Self. This protective thinking creates a barrier around the Self that inhibits and restricts one's ability to receive new learning into the Self. The fear-based person becomes like the flower bud that refuses to open up to the light of day.

All plants need sunlight. If we use the term light as a metaphor for awareness then it becomes obvious that each person needs more light of awareness in order to progress and grow as a spiritual being.

How can one receive greater awareness and understanding? The answer is to decide to choose to be completely open to receive the learning in whatever life presents to us. Our life is a series of choices not only to give but also to receive.

Sharing
Creating a Purpose for One's Life

Purpose provides or creates motivation because purpose is personal benefit. So what does one do to motivate the Self to create a purpose for the life?

To create a purpose for your life,
place your attention on giving or sharing
what you have and what you know.

You can begin your sharing by giving in small ways and then build up to giving in larger ways.

Everyone has a skill, talent, ability, wisdom or learning that can be shared with others. Begin with the area you are most confident with sharing. ASK questions and listen. Find out what people are interested in. Let people know the abilities and awareness you possess.

A higher purpose is always created in conjunction with other people.

Will Power and Determination
Will power is indispensable to achieve your purpose in life. Will power is the continuous choice to go towards the imaged desire that you have been creating. Will power success in life is dependent upon being able to sustain initiative.

People have difficulty completing things.

Most failures are at the end. It may seem difficult to bring your ideas into full manifestation and completion because that would mean or indicate that you would need to admit a greater capacity for creating. You would need to go beyond limitations.

Reasons for Failure
People fail in a number of ways.

1. They fail to have a clear image that they can be committed to achieving. It is difficult to achieve a goal if you do not have a clear image in the mind's eye of what you want to achieve.
2. People fail to recognize enough value in themselves. They, therefore, do not believe they are worthy of achieving and accomplishing.
3. People fail to complete what they begin. They fail at the end. Sometimes they just give up too early.

What is the connection of desires to purpose since this book's subject is purpose?

There are two kinds of desires:

1. Desires generated from outer, environmental stimulus.
2. Desires created from Self created inner purpose.

Outer desires are fleeting and temporary. Desires generated from purpose can give permanent understanding and lasting benefit to the individual creating them. Purpose provides desires and motivation by providing a personal benefit. When you create purpose you have a personal benefit in mind. Desires without the personal motivation to achieve them are helpless wishes floating away in the wind.

• There are physical desires.
• And there are mental desires.

Physical desires give temporary satisfaction. Emotional desires give relief and joy. Mental desires give fulfillment. Mental desires are concerned with fulfilling the real Self, the inner Self, the permanent Self. Mental desires encompass one's learning of the whole Self. As one evolves, one's physical desires evolve more and more into mental needs. Every person has a real need for greater awareness and enlightenment.

Without purpose life has little or no meaning. Without purpose in each experience, that experience has little or no meaning, and even less fulfillment. Without purpose goals are empty. You may achieve a goal but without purpose what lasting satisfaction is there? Without purpose where is the motivation to achieve a goal? In most cases it is lacking. Therefore, it is important to create a purpose for those goals and ideals we desire to achieve in life.

Write your purpose on paper and read it out loud.

True mental, mind or whole Self learning is accomplished through the activity of physical experiences, and physical experiences are perceived and received into the brain through the five senses. Always seek to learn the life lesson, the essence in each experience. Draw that permanent learning, the essence of each experience, into the Self.

Physical experiences exist in order that we may draw the permanent learning from them. Most people only get the temporary sensory gratification.

Will power is needed and required to achieve great things in life. A great thing may be whatever you create that goes beyond your previously accepted limitations. Will power is the continuous choice to go towards the imaged desire that you have been creating.

If you think or feel you do not have enough will power then you may be lacking in imagination. For if you can imagine something greater or better for yourself then you may begin to believe you can achieve it. By identifying one's purpose the clarity of seeing the personal benefit of something greater in one's life becomes apparent.

By imagining a purpose, the desire and greater motivation will be yours. Self dislike or Self degradation can keep one from achieving a goal or receiving a desire.

It is important to understand the difference between believing and knowing.

• Believing is the act of accepting an idea into yourself.
• Knowing is the action of using that belief to create and become through experience a better person.

A good way to practice identifying the difference between believing and knowing is to ask yourself, "How do I know this or how do I know that?" Merely separating and identifying what you believe from what you know can aid in clarifying what one needs to learn. It is productive in learning to know your purpose in life to gain greater awareness of believing, knowing and the difference between the two.

The more you understand the power of belief the more you can understand the power of the quality of knowing. Most people want to know their purpose in life instead of just believing they have a purpose.

When you hear yourself saying, "I know this or I know that," say, "What is it I believe about this?" Then describe out loud all the things you believe about what you just said that you know.

After you have described everything you believe about an object or subject then describe in detail what you know about that object or subject. From this practice you will learn to identify clearly the difference between believing and knowing which will enable you to use both of them more effectively.

The more one learns about the qualities of believing and knowing the more one will be able to use them to come to know the purpose of life.

By separating and identifying what one believes from what one knows there can be a greater commitment to what one wants to know in life. And purpose is perhaps the greatest or one of the greatest things one can know in life.

Commitment is very powerful.
Until one has committed to a goal, ideal,
desire or purpose in life there will always be
the scattering of one's energies and attention.

Once one is committed to a principal or ideal all or most of one's energies, be they mental, emotional, or physical,0 can be directed toward achieving the goal desired.

Once one has commitment, all kinds of wonderful, seemingly chance or coincidental happenings occur to further one's movement towards receiving one's most heartfelt desires.

Successful people always have commitment in one form or another. How can one have success if there is no decision as to what will bring success. To believe or know what will bring success one must have an image, ideal, idea, or goal to be committed to achieving.

Negative or limiting thoughts indicate that one's mind does not have intelligent direction. It is not intelligent to create mental pictures or images that tear the Self down or degrade the Self.

Instead replace negative thoughts with positive productive mental images. Remember this, "the hallmark of adulthood in reasoning is that you produce more than you consume."

It is important to replace all limiting thoughts with higher truth. As you replace negative or limiting thoughts with thoughts that are in alignment with the Universal Truths and Universal Laws, your consciousness will move to greater heights of Self knowing and Self awareness.

Don't avoid. Do not avoid looking at yourself, your life, your thoughts, and your experiences. Then decide what is productive and what is unproductive. Always be ready and willing to receive a higher truth.

We are here on this Earth for the purpose of coming to know ourselves. To know the Real Self one must master one's mind. To master one's mind, one must master one's thoughts. To master one's thoughts, one must choose all thoughts and achieve a still mind. To achieve a still mind, one must practice mental disciplines such as concentration, meditation, imaging and breathwork.

Do not avoid finding out about yourself. That is the only way you will come to know who you really are. Any perceived ugliness and negativity is only temporary. Therefore, identify it and choose something more productive.

Once you can acknowledge the limited thinking you have the ability to identify and choose something more productive.

By facing and acknowledging what is temporary in yourself you can have the awareness to begin building the permanent wisdom and understanding within.

Thought to remember:
Learn the universal from the specific. Stop making up your own little rules of life and realize there are Universal Laws of life already in place. The quicker you align your consciousness with the Universal framework and structure of creation the quicker will you find, discover, and know your purpose for this lifetime.

What to do:
Be specific in creating purposes each day. Receive at least one new idea into yourself each day.

© Daniel R. Condron, 2009

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Throughout this lifetime, Daniel R. Condron has strived to understand the secrets of life and to explain them in a form that is understandable to all. He first accomplished this as a young boy when he gained a connectedness with nature being in the woods and pastures while growing up on the family farm in northwest Missouri. He has devoted his life to understanding what is permanent, lasting, knowing the true reality, and the purpose of life. This he teaches to others through the understanding of the still mind. He resides with his wife Barbara and son Hezekiah on the campus of the College of Metaphysics.