Letter #39: How to Take Charge of Your Own Life, Health and Destiny

Low tide causes high tide causes low tide; Varkala Beach in Kerala in India

Dear Friend

In this week’s Letter I ask you to read and contemplate, within the inner landscape of your head and heart, upon what you are reading and what it means to you.

Read it with full your full attention, avoid distractions, and give it due reverence. I totally recommend when you finish reading it to then read it again. Its message reveals a key understanding without which you cannot truly empower yourself and transform the experience of your life to a healthy, harmonious and happy one.

In other words, it underscores one’s journey into A Spiritual Revolution, because ASR is all about making health, harmony and happiness the default in our life.

Read it in full, then contemplate upon its message using my leading questions, and then read it again. Then contemplate on the questions again. Then, back to the other happenings in your life, but, I hope, with a new perspective of this life we’ve all been pitched into. And, another reminder:

we only get the one life that we know of, there are no dress rehearsals, no dummy runs, no second goes, no reruns, this is it, this is your lot. So… whatever you do, do NOT arrive on your deathbed full of regrets.

It’s too late to change anything then.

How you can take charge of your own life, health and destiny

Just imagine for a moment, the following to be true; take an opportunity for a contemplation...

Everything that happens to you in your life, and I mean EVERYTHING, is your own doing. You did it, you attracted it, you created it.

All the good stuff, and all the shit stuff.

It happened to you either...

by your own previous direct actions, meaning you caused something to happen now by your own previous words or deeds,

or...

you got in the way of, and were affected by, other people's actions which were entirely nothing to do with anything you said or did.

Most people can understand and accept the truth of the first situation (even though often they don't want to accept it: bitter pills of truth are hard to swallow!), but not the second.

But, let's just say for a moment that you accept this second scenario be true…

How will this impact on your life?

Usually we will blame the other person for what they did to us, or we blame the 'bad luck' that happened to us. After all, in the second scenario it was, we reason, totally unprovoked by anything we did - we may quite rightly say to ourselves that we were just minding our own business when this provocation or bad situation happened, caused by another person.

Or, if it was a good thing or we like what happens, we praise them, thank them, idolise them, put them on a pedestal and so on. But no real thinking done after the event; on we move with our life.

Something happens to you, you respond in praise or blame. You move onto the next preoccupation or distraction in your life.

(An episode of learning has passed you by, without engaging in it.)

The thing that is the same in both responses - the negative and the positive - is the way in which you respond to the happening:

it's all about what others are doing out there; you are externalised in your reading/perception of things; life happened to you, good or bad, you had no say in the matter. You react and move on.

In this way you are being REACTIVE in your approach to the things that happen in your life.

THE PAST OR VERY RECENT PAST IS DICTATING YOUR LIFE TO YOU.

Here's the big reflection question for you:

How will your life change if you take ownership of EVERYTHING that happens to you, good or bad, caused by you or caused by others upon you? You say to yourself that this was the right thing to happen to you at just the right time; now, how will I respond?

In this way you are being PROACTIVE in your approach to the things that happen in your life. In fact you now have a great degree of being able to create, produce and influence for yourself what you want for you in your life: by proactively choosing your response, you influence the next thing that will happen.

(Life is not a series of separate events and happenings, it's a 'work-in-progress'... nothing is unconnected, everything is interconnected.)

(By way of example, go smile at a complete stranger, or scowl at them, and see if you get a different reaction, and then how you feel in turn. Or… give somebody a heartfelt apology for something you said or did that was not nice, or double down and defend yourself by blaming them, and see the difference in their reaction to you and how you then subsequently feel.)

(If you have read of being a 'sovereign human being', this is that sovereignty in action.)

If you say to yourself that all that happens to you is part of your learning, your self-growth, your evolution, and of the collective evolution of all humankind... then how does your life change?

NOW IT IS THE PRESENT, THE CURRENT MOMENT, THAT IS SHAPING YOUR LIFE FOR YOU.

In the reactive approach to life, life out there controls your life, you are allowing what others do and say to direct and control your own feelings, actions, thoughts, emotions (FATE).

In the proactive approach to life, you are in control of your life by intelligently choosing your proactive response to the things that happen to you, instead of reacting automatically according to your past.

Now you are in charge of your own life. This is putting spirituality into action.

This is true spiritual living, putting YOU in charge of your own life, health and destiny. Your focus, your main objective in life, your whole mindset, says you want to respond to life with full intelligence and wisdom such that you are able to live in harmony and avoid further mental suffering or emotional pain.

Everything that happens, whether you caused it, or others caused it to you, is teaching you about life.

Now you have the keys to empower yourself, now you can finally live with your optimal health and in harmony with others. You get to forge powerful, strong, healthy and loving relationships, or you choose to drop ones that subtract from your life.

This is what I teach.

This is A Spiritual Revolution, learning about this kind of thing and putting it into action in your own life.

Next week I will give you some real life examples to illustrate such proactive living in action. But what you can do meanwhile, is contemplate deeply upon the message of this Letter and start applying it to your own life before you get next week’s Letter. First, read it again…!!

That’s true learning, applying what you read or hear about into your own life to see how it affects you in your own unique context of life.

All the best

Philip