As I said in my previous post, I started practicing the seven spiritual choices on my daily walks and as they came to mind during the day.
Now what that really meant was this… During my walks I contemplated the full meaning of what holding each of the choices means to me. For example, the choice of Awareness has a spectrum of meaning and a spectrum of experiences around being aware of my body, being aware of my thoughts and emotions, being aware of what my senses are telling me about the world around me through my vision, hearing, and so on. (Now I’ve become aware of awareness itself, but I wasn’t when I started this practice.) The contemplation of awareness was fairly broad and both conceptual and experiential.
During the day, when I thought about awareness, it was primarily as a reminder to shift to an expanded awareness of myself and of others in the context of what was happening – for example, during a conversation with someone else, or of the interchange and events during a meeting, or as I was working alone and making judgments about task priorities or performing a task (writing a report, developing a task plan, or speaking to someone on the phone). It was reminding myself to be more aware at those times that the thought came up that I should be more aware. Over months and years, that became more frequent.
So conscious choice-making, done in that way, allows you and helps you to live more consciously more of the time. With the seven spiritual choices, I became more conscious of life, of awareness, of freedom, of love, of expression & creation, of knowing, and of the wholeness of everything. It is an upward spiral of (slowly expanding) consciousness. It is a kind of awakening that grows in steps and stages rather than in one sudden burst, and my book Awakening to Wholeness talks about that.
The result of living more consciously is that my personal and work relationships got better and better, my work results (as a project manager) and income improved, I had a growing sense of peace with the world, and I was happier most of the time. I experienced a continually growing sense of purpose and a knowing of how I was to serve that purpose. And amazingly, where previously I had no real intuitive sense (that I was aware of), my intuition now became my strong inner guidance system steering me toward the future I was heading into.
I began to block out more time, and also find the necessary energy and commitment, to write my book almost every night and on weekends. It took me a year and eight months. The book (Awakening to Wholeness) is now available in both ebook and paperback formats on Amazon.
I know that I am an explorer of sorts and pursuing Life’s Grand Adventures. There’s not one but rather a series of adventures, one for each phase of your life. And if you choose to embrace life, you will come to see it that way.
(To be continued)