True joy is the fulfillment of a need.
Joy is when your work and service answer another person’s need. Fulfilling the need provides meaning and purpose and validates what you are here to do. Joy is found in the realization of your purpose in living.
© Aviv Shahar
Aviv Shahar :: Mar.10.2008 :: Happiness, Spirituality :: No Comments »
(Excerpt from the third Emerald Key: The Roots Nourish and Grow the Fruit)
FDR struggled immensely with polio away from the public eye. Unbeknown to him and to the American people, he was being made ready as he fought to get through his personal despair and depression. Roosevelt’s resolved determination and will power, which was fashioned during his painful ordeal with polio, is what America needed in the White House to overcome its own crippling despair and depression in the early 30s and the beginning of the Second World War. When readiness meets a need, actualization follows. The readiness and the need are invisible to each other until the meeting point brings them into fulfillment and actualization.
The late Pope John Paul the Second was fascinated in his early teen years with acting. He became enthralled with the power of words and especially with how he could deliver them through the characters such that they would powerfully impact his audience. Together with a small group of his friends he maintained underground theater work even under Nazi occupation of Poland. It is said that there he developed that rare skill sometimes seen with great actors to deliver his words with extraordinary persuasion and power. With his on-stage passion, it became common knowledge with his circle of friends that he would likely enjoy a great acting career. To their surprise he enrolled in the seminary. Little did he know he was becoming ready and had fashioned an inner program to take on a much greater acting role and meet his destiny through serving the Vatican as the first Media pope.
As John Paul walked to the balcony to announce his papacy to the world, it is said that his new role literally descended on him and he found his act. The programmed readiness in his case was the amalgamation of his devotional service to the Catholic Church and his on-stage practice. The readiness met its greater need and the outcome was a perfect union through the act of fulfillment and actualization.
What readiness have you been cultivating? What greater need are you facing in which your fuller realization may be found? The answer may lie ahead or right in front of you. Manifesting greatness now is less likely to play out in the same Churchillian or FDR archetype. We have entered the time of the small great heroes who perform their service and at times miracles when no one sees. You may be the next to carry that torch. What greater need are you called to?
© Aviv Shahar
Aviv Shahar :: Jan.15.2008 :: Spirituality :: No Comments »
Prayer is an action petitioning to come into the presence of something. Therefore the best prayer is an action taken when you are already with and in the presence of what you are praying for.
Pray for fitness and health when you exercise, when you enjoy hiking outdoors, when you swim in the ocean or in a cold mountain lake.
Pray for love when you are with your loved ones, when you hug and embrace the people you love.
Pray for peace in the world when you feel peaceful inside.
Pray for success and wealth when you are in the action of fulfilling the needs you came to serve.
Pray for healing power when you take care of another and help them to heal.
Pray for new connection and communion when your life is full of the presence of new possibilities and connections.
You ask: what do I do when I don’t have one of these things above and want it?
Act as though you have it already and pray as you act. Take on a small task and pray as you do this one thing as though your prayers have already been answered.
The greatest prayer in the universe is giving unto others what you seek to find and receive yourself.
© Aviv Shahar
Aviv Shahar :: Jan.01.2008 :: Personal Growth, Spirituality :: 1 Comment »
This post was triggered after reading the Cool Friend interview with Matthew Kelly on Tom Peters! I found Kelly’s reply to the question of why people stop dreaming incomplete and posted a comment. Upon further reflection I found my own comment also incomplete and added the following:
“A person without a dream is like a bird without wings”.
“Take a man away from his dreams and he begins to die slowly”.
It is natural to envision new development and possibilities, to dream of new attainment and capabilities. We are wired to dream of what can be. To wake up in the morning without a dream, a purpose to endeavor toward is to abdicate the charge of living.
Why do people stop dreaming?
People stop dreaming because…
Then there is more. The journey to realizing a dream is not a linear process. As you progress you need to let go and transcend the mindset you had when you started the journey. And then once you realize your dream you may need to give up control as it gains its own life. Most people are afraid to not be in control even for a short period of time. Dreams require trust and faith.
Whatever the case is, let’s do away with excuses. Daring to dream is for the mind what breathing is for the lungs. Here is a question: what is your dream? Yes, I mean this for real – what is your dream?
Here is another way to rekindle this. What would you start dreaming today if you knew you couldn’t fail?
One more dream: who will you help to find their dream today?
© Aviv Shahar
Aviv Shahar :: Nov.12.2007 :: Reflections, Spirituality :: No Comments »
People most often pray when they need something. This is understandable, we want health mostly when it begins to fail; we want friendship when we are lonely, and money becomes much more important when you don’t have it.
But praying from absence is not the most effective way to pray. It is much better to pray for something from within its presence. The best time to pray for good health is when you feel most vital. You can then pray to forward the vitality and strength you feel towards the future, for days when you will need this strength to re-find you.
The best time to pray for fulfilling relationships is in the presence of it, when you are most appreciative of the richness you have. You can then pray to store up some of these good memories to accompany you in days when you may be lonely.
The best time to pray for you to have clients is when you serve a client, when you appreciate the opportunity of serving others with your talent. The best time to pray to find work opportunities that will improve your financial situation is when you are already grateful and enjoy your work for the opportunities it is now providing for you.
Abundance creates greater abundance.
Absence perpetuates wanting.
Presence grows presence.
When To Pray – Part Two
© Aviv Shahar
Aviv Shahar :: Nov.07.2007 :: Personal Growth, Spirituality :: 1 Comment »
The movie Iris about the life of Iris Murdoch, played by Judi Dench and Kate Winslet, portrays the extraordinary journey of Iris from a vivacious young woman to a highly admired author and her descent into the darkness of Alzheimer’s disease. Here are some words spoken by Iris in the movie: “Every human soul has seen, perhaps even before their birth, pure forms such as justice, temperance, beauty and all the great moral qualities which we hold in honor. We are moved towards what is good by the faint memory of these forms, simple and calm and blessed which we saw once in a pure clear light form, being pure ourselves”
Iris captures in this paragraph three eternal truths:
First, that consciousness exists independently of the flesh, in that the spirit was before and will be after the appearance in flesh.
Second, that qualities fashion an energetic form, so that whenever a human anywhere awakens to justice, care, courage, and compassion, their individual experience may be uniquely personal but the pattern and the energetic signature or form is recognizably the same. When you or I embody and become these or any other qualities we fashion a fractal of the universal pattern of that quality.
Third, that the human story consists of the journey of a spirit/soul compound coming into the flesh to experience, feel, discover and make choices and thereby refine and fashion the inner formation into an indestructible gem, a gem that makes a value added return to life itself, to consciousness and to the evolutionary process.
© Aviv Shahar
Aviv Shahar :: Oct.10.2007 :: Movies, Spirituality :: 1 Comment »
