To experience life more abundanty one must be open hearted and open minded. In this way one is willing to approach life differently every day. Such a one is willing to open the Self up to other people every day. Such a one is willing to share and to both give and receive with others. In some cases one is willing to receive on a level and with a depth that one was not willing to before.

Most people would like to have greater successes. Few realize that greater success often means opening the Self up to the bounty and abundance of the Universe. Success may also mean opening oneself up to greater love. Greater love improves the quality of one’s life. Most everyone wants to improve their station or condition in life.

Sometimes success is a matter of thinking differently. Thinking differently may at times be more important than doing things differently.

Thought is Cause

It is through our thoughts that we change our life. It is through our thoughts that we create our life. It is through our thoughts that we have created our life up to the present time.

Some people want to change the world. If you want to change the world then you must first change yourself. If you would change your Self you must change your thoughts. To change your thoughts is to elevate your thoughts to a higher perspective. This higher perspective is one of Love, Light, Truth and connectedness.

The people and situations in life tend to change over time. People die or move away. You attract to you people of like mind, or similar learning.

A good gauge of whether you are changing is the degree to which the kind of people around you changes. As your thoughts improve people of a more productive or enlightened nature will be drawn into your sphere of influence.

You attract people and other people are attracted to you. People are attracted to what you have to say and offer, and you become attracted or drawn to a different kind of person because of different and more elevated thoughts.

Did you know that you chose your parents before you were born? To someone thinking physically this idea seems preposterous. The thinking goes something like this, “How could I have chosen my parent before birth? I didn’t even exist then!” To which I reply, “Of course you existed before birth! Do you think you are only an animal that lives for a few short years on Earth and then faces annihilation and oblivion?” That doesn’t make any sense. You have the ability to choose now and you had the ability to choose before you were born and you will have the ability to choose after you withdraw your attention from physical life, which is commonly called death.

If everyone in this country would accept that we choose our parents before birth it would totally revolutionize the consciousness of this planet.

It means so much for people to not only realize and accept they chose their parents but also to realize and know why they chose their parents.

The parents you chose for this lifetime are your first teachers. Even if you do not appreciate some of the things they said or did. Remember, your parents not only gave you your early education, they also gave you the stimulus to look for greater understanding. That is why you are reading this book.

The truth that you chose your parents is an idea whose time has come. It is a mental image of the truth that you are an eternal being and you existed before you inhabited this physical body and you will exist after you cease to inhabit and use this physical body. Therefore, you have the ability to choose whether you are in a physical body or not.

Whether a person achieves greatness or mediocrity is a matter of that person’s thoughts.

Whether a person fulfills the purpose of life or their purpose in life, is a matter of that person’s thoughts.

The choices you make are a result of the thoughts you think.

The life you live is a result of the choices you make which are a result of the thoughts you think.

Listen to the words you say for they reveal your thoughts. As you become more aware of your thoughts you can evaluate their value and productivity. Constantly uproot the unproductive weed thoughts and replace them with truth filled and loving fruitful thoughts.

A productive goal can be of help to the individual because it directs the mind in a productive manner.

A goal is something physical that you want to achieve.

You may have a goal to sweep the floor or run a mile or pay your bills. These are all actions that you want to achieve.

An ideal is what you want to become.

A goal is what you want to do and in doing you achieve.

An ideal is what you want to be, and in being you become.

If you want to become enlightened then let that be your ideal. If you say, “I want to be loving,” then let that be your ideal of what you want to be.

Goals don’t provide motivation. Because of this, when someone gives you a goal often there is no motivation. Therefore, a purpose is needed with the goal. Purpose provides motivation because purpose is personal benefit. Purpose provides desire and motivation that wells up from deep within.

The desires that are stimulated from physical objects are usually temporary and only provide temporary satisfaction. The desires that come from within and from purpose are more long lasting and can be constantly regenerated. Desires are endless because each new physical situation or object can provide a new stimulus which creates a new desire. However, desires only provide temporary satisfaction or happiness and then you are left wanting more.

As one creates more purpose in the life the desires begin coming from within. Then these inner desires evolve the need to know Self, Mind and consciousness. In other words, the desires evolve from temporary to the permanent and lasting.

By choosing thoughts that align with Universal Laws and Universal Truths one’s life takes on a more permanent and lasting quality. This is a powerful key to developing the deepening, enlightened, purpose filled life.

Honesty leads to truth which leads to Universal Truth.

Truth overcomes fear because fear is of the darkness and truth brings LIGHT to the world.

Love and truth overcome hatred, anger, and all negativity.

The more you practice purpose,
the more your purpose elevates.
The more your purpose elevates,
the more you understand your purpose in life.

As long as you have mostly physical purposes you will probably have mostly physical goals and you probably won’t have many ideals. So the solution is to always strive to elevate your thoughts. Elevate your giving and receiving. This requires discipline.

How to Use the Mind and the Brain

It requires discipline to choose a thought other than the ones you are habituated to.

To choose a different thought is to use your mind.

To think the same thoughts, day after day is to be engrossed and entrapped in your physical brain. Which do you choose to use, the brain or the mind?

If you choose the brain you will rely mostly on memory.

If you rely mostly on the mind you will know and value the present moment. You will also create a different and greater future.

If you choose to use both the mind and the brain you will reason well because you will effectively use memory, attention, and imagination. You will use the senses correctly. You will use attention correctly. You will receive the most truth-filled learning from every situation and experience.

To become more awake to life is to increase one’s choices
while decreasing one’s unconscious functioning from habit.

The degree to which one functions from habit is the degree to which one is asleep. Habits are faint memories from the past. The past is not the same as the present. To treat the past the same as the present is to lack or be ineffective at reasoning because the past is not the same as the present. Each moment is unique to itself.

Therefore, the only truly effective and reasoning way to function is to be in the present moment. It is in the present moment that one finds, creates and fulfills purpose. It is in the present moment that one has a productive use of memory. It is in the present moment that one imagines and therefore creates a greater future.

One who functions from habit is, to that degree, unconscious and therefore misinterprets the now, the present.

To choose to discipline the mind and to cause greater awareness may at times seem difficult. Why make a choice to grow in awareness or enlightenment when it seems difficult? Because what you receive will be more than worth the effort.

Comfortableness never caused growth in awareness or expansion of consciousness. Comfortableness never caused enlightenment. Comfortableness never caused one to understand the purpose of life.

To discipline one’s Self and one’s mind creates the possibility of creating one’s fondest desires, needs and dreams. To discipline one’s mind gives one a much greater opportunity to fulfill one’s purpose. To discipline one’s mind gives the capability to use each moment, the present moment, to the fullest.

When the environment stimulates the desire it is sometimes called stimulus and response. An animal often acts according to stimulus and response.

When creating a purpose you make a choice that comes from deep within. This way a desire from within is achieved.

There is fulfillment that can be achieved through new experience. To make the same choice based upon memory is to create the same or similar experiences over and over.

Use the imagination, the imaginative faculty, to create a greater purpose.

The brain and conscious ego rebel against discipline because they receive less sensory stimulation. The brain and conscious ego work with or function with the physical body. The physical body or animal body wants and seeks pleasure and attempts to avoid pain. It is important to make something other than sensory stimulation your highest priority in life.

Concentration and meditation do not necessarily offer physical sensory pleasure. While practicing concentration the individual attention is not on sensory pleasure. Instead the attention is directed to a single point of focus in concentration or a single point of stillness in meditation.

To be awake is to not only know one’s thoughts
but also to choose one’s thoughts or to choose no thought
by stilling the mind.

To function from habits, which are brain pathways, is to be unconscious of one’s thoughts and motives. To function from environmental stimulus is to be compulsive. Stimulus and response puts the power outside the Self in the environment.

To create a desire from a Self created purpose is to be conscious and to have the power of choice. This power of choice comes from within you.

Why make a choice that is difficult or seems difficult? It seems easier to be comfortable and to stay the same. There is fulfillment that can be experienced through thinking a new thought and making a different decision. Use the imagination, the imaginative faculty, to create a greater purpose for an uncomfortable choice.

Evaluate your thoughts. What is your main limitation in consciousness?

Fear, doubt, anger, jealousy, greed, and resentment are limitations in consciousness. Becoming Self absorbed and dwelling in negative thinking only slows one’s progress in understanding and fulfilling life’s purpose. If left alone, the passivity of self can lead to isolation, depression and prolonged suffering.

Most Self absorption comes from dwelling in the past. You don’t always need to figure out the past in order to fulfill your purpose in the present, although at times it may help. By choosing to place one’s attention on the present experience one can learn, change, grow and thereby release the limitations of the past.

The only place to learn and to expand one’s consciousness is in the present. The only time to fulfill one’s purpose is in the now.

In placing the attention fully in the present the limitations of one’s past are released.

The mind loves to create problems and then try to find solutions to those problems. So therefore, when the mind is still, the mind stops creating problems to be solved. The mind will not do this on its own because the mind wants to get to do things. It wants to create problems and solve them.

To allow the mind to become busy is to create a main limitation in consciousness. The lack of having a still mind is the cause of all great limitations in life. The scattered mind may seem to function as a defense or barrier between oneself and others, yet it only isolates you. A scattered mind enables one to avoid looking at what one finds unpleasant or fearful. A scattered mind is a fearful mind.

The scattered mind causes you to forget who you really are and to miss the purpose of life.

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.

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.