Follow your heart! An inspirational article from a friend:- The ancient Greeks believed that everyone is born with a lower and a higher destiny. The former is a human being’s fate, the inescapable components in life necessary for existence. For example, one’s birth, schooling, car, house. Higher destiny means not doing what one was expected to do by society, peers or religion but following the dictates of one’s own heart. Such a course often meant facing the resentment of others, condemnation as a social rebel, and even perhaps financial failure. People who have chosen to take ”the hero’s journey” live according to their own values, which share little or nothing in common with popular values. They “follow their bliss,” or moira, a term the Greeks used to define this higher destiny. Following moira means doing what you feel on the inside, most inclined to do.Doing what one really wants to do is hard work, but it is more fulfilling than anything else can be. It is the ultimate key to personal happiness in the physical world. To be so busy doing something you life, you do not have time to realize if you’re happy or not, is the definition of happiness. Most people spend their lives in jobs they either hate of tolerate. They even convince themselves that they enjoy the work by emphasizing the positive details of their employment. They are fulfilling, perhaps out of pressing family necessity, their lower destiny. They may think if they did what they really want to do instead of the work they think society requires them to do, it would not be beneficial for civilization. Actually it is better for civilization that they do. If everyone “followed their bliss,” the world would emerge as an entirely different world whose inhabitants live authentic lives. Two men work side by side as street sweepers. One hates the job, which he took on only because nothing else was available, whilethe other feels entirely fulfilled, because he truly enjoys the work more than anything else he can imagine. One is following his fate, while the other is following his bliss.The difference between these two kinds of destiny was dramatically presented in the 1986 Stanley Kubrick motion picture, 2001: A Space Odyssey. At the end of the film, as the consequence of a failed mission to the planet Jupiter resulting in the death of everyone on board the spaceship, an astronaut is sent careening toward irretrievable oblivion across space and time. He suddenly sees himself back on Earth as an old man living in soft, luxurious accommodations and richly attired, sitting alone at a table and eating a fine meal. Reaching for something, he accidentally knocks over a glass of wine, which shatters and spills on the floor. The old man slowly bends down, sadly staring at the broken crystal fragments, the scarlet pool, then looks up meaningfully at himself as a younger man standing before him in his space suit.The broken glass and spilled wine are classic metaphors for awasted life. The astronaut sees what would have become of himself had he not gone one the Jupiter mission. He would have lived a long, safe, prosperous and unauthentic life. Instead, he chose to follow his bliss along the hero’s journey to fulfill the dictates of his heart. He made a decision for the quality of his years, not their quantity. We are driven to do the things we must by desires although we may be forced into certain behaviors by necessity. Moira is a chance to rise above mere survival and to be true to our inner self. It is our real work, whether it is running a billion-dollar corporation or tending a home garden. Synchronicities or coincidences light the way from our lower to our higher destinies. They also confirm that the activity in which we are engaged does indeed belong to our moira, thus reassuring us that we are on the proper path toward living the authentic life, being true to ourselves.Jung experienced a decisive moira synchronicity during the most crucial period of his life and career, sixteen years after his break with Sigmund Freud, his former idol and mentor. Since then, the younger man had received no support for his unconventional ideas. He was in an intellectual and emotional limbo, trying to systemize his thoughts by writing a new book. Memories, Dreams and Reflections was a radical departure from mainline psychology, and Jung was wracked with self-doubt and fearful of the inevitably savage response from his influential critics. His preoccupation with new ideas had cost him his comfortable university tenure and isolated him from most of his colleagues. He was pursuing the lonely path of the hero’s journey, and now, after so many years of apparent failure to have his theories taken seriously, he wondered if he had made the right decision after all.During this time of internal turmoil, Jung had the particularly vivid dream of a golden castle. So brilliant was its persistent image that he began painting it from memory at the center of a mandala (Sanskrit for a “circular design” used in meditation). As the painting progressed, on a Chinese aspect. He was in the process of finishing it when he received an advance copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower. Its author, Richard Wilhelm, had for the first time translated from the Chinese this one thousand year old text “on the yellow castle,” which paralleled and confirmed the very ideas Jung was just then agonizing over.The effect of this special coincidence restored Jung’s confidence in his work and himself. It acted as a needful reassurance that the solitary way he’d chosen was the right road to his higher destiny. He followed it the rest of his life to become one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. If he had ignored his moira and returned to that cushy job as a teacher and lecturer, and subordinated his own truth in order to avoid offending other people, he would have died without making a larger contribution to civilization. There’s a huge price to pay for not going for our dreams. The price is our life and our dreams fulfilled! Not to mention our happiness, our relationships, our vitality and our creativity. Deep down inside we know what we love to do. Make a commitment that if you succeed at making a living following your deepest purpose, then that’s great, otherwise it doesn’t matter because it is better to fail at your best work than to succeed at a lesser one.For many people who give up the security of lower destiny to follow their moira, their time is more valuable than any monetary compensation. They believe that working for others, if the tasks involved are not compatible with their own inner truth, is to be wasting the true value of their lives. When we barter ourselves for the fulfillment of someone else’s truth we always come up short-changed, no matter how great the material compensation. We sacrifice that which we really most want to achieve because of others’ expectations.Only so many breaths are allowed us from the moment we are born until we die. To squander them on something we cannot call our own is to waste our natural inheritance, the most precious commodity we possess, time. It is better to fail in the pursuit of our real work than to succeed at anything else that isn’t. Success in the later would actually be a betrayal of our own truth, while pursuing the former is living the authentic life. When we accept other people’s notion of what is successful or not, we are putting aside our inner truth. To follow our higher destiny, we must have the strength and courage to be true to ourselves.Men and women who steer the course of their lives with their inner truth travel the hero’s journey. To them, it is less important that some heroes meet tragic ends than that they used their time heroically. Life’s real value is found only in the quest for one’s own truth, regardless of the outcome. Coincidences are not rare, disconnected episodes. They go beyond themselves to form series of interrelating connections between you and your true path in life.They form a subtle guidance nudging you in the direction of your higher self. They direct you along a nobler path toward your moira, the hero’s journey you must take in your quest for the authentic life.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 07:59:18 +0000