"Life has to be lived so totally, so intensely that you can squeeze each minute’s juice without leaving a single drop behind’" - Osho
There was a time in my life when I was constantly striving and focussing on the future.
I had loads of great ideas and worked day in and day out to make things happen. My mind was always thinking about how great things would be when I achieved what I desired.
What I didn’t know then, what I know now, was that the very experience I was seeking to create for myself, was available to me right where I was.
There is an experience behind everything that you desire to achieve in life. The purpose for which you desire to make your ideas real, lies within you, even though you may be unconscious of it.
When I began running my first business, my primary motivation was to become financially free - I made a promise to myself that I would become a millionaire within five years.
Freedom to me was about being able to have what I wanted; to do what I wanted in order to be what I wanted.
Over the last few years through my own personal and spiritual development, I have become aware of what was driving my desire to become a millionaire. I asked myself two simple questions;
*For what purpose do I desire to become a millionaire?
*What will becoming a millionaire do for me?
After asking myself over and over, the answers that kept coming up were - freedom, happiness, and fulfilment. Then it dawned on me that if this is what I am truly seeking to experience, then…
first and foremost nothing outside of myself can make me feel this way, because freedom, happiness and fulfilment are states of mind.
building a large business and being successful in financial terms, may actually take me way from what I was seeking rather than towards it.
I was sacrificing my current sense of freedom, happiness and fulfilment for some future big pay-off.
‘Life is the greatest thing that existence has given to you, for nothing. Just because you have not paid for it, you don’t recognise its value’ - Osho
When you are living, survival is no longer an issue, yet when you are surviving you are not living. Your life can seem like a walking and waking death sentence.
How do you know that you are alive? Your breath, your heartbeat etc. Let’s call these the ’symptoms’ of life.
True living goes beyond these symptoms - living requires you to embrace each and every moment as a present. Life is given, so you can make the most out of it.
Society tries to determine how life should be lived and dictates the things we should attain, in order to be free, happy, fulfilled etc. Yet the things that are valued are the very things that often prevent people from experiencing these states.
For example, depending on how you view things, having a mortgage, car, marriage, children etc - can either be a hindrance as well as a blessing.
If you are surviving, you are moving from day to day for the sake of either; getting through each day, or rarely living each moment as the necessary unfolding of your life - that can be appreciated right now.
Choose to be an active participant in the living of your life, for the sake of life itself, rather than for a future pay-off.
The key thing that has changed for me is not the goals that I am seeking to achieve, but the intention behind them.
Rather than attempting to experience something that I thought I could only get from the outside world. I now allow myself to express and experience outside of myself the beauty of my inner world.
I still have big dreams and take action to make things happen - yet the drive behind them is different. I am driven by my purpose of awakening and freeing hearts and minds - which I am already achieving. I now have the choice of how big I would like this dream to become.
Surviving is for those who have stopped living, living is for those who have stopped surviving. What do you choose next?
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