Be your own expert

I want to tell you about three lines of words that I hold in great esteem:

__________

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. __________

You master those three things and life is sorted for you. Truly. I think serenity, acceptance, courage is pretty self-explanatory, so lets talk wisdom.

Wisdom is learning from your mistakes, and everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes aren’t the deal, it’s always what you do with them.

But the lesser known - and probably more powerful - source of wisdom comes the ability to tune into this moment in time and see what it needs. Seeing what it needs you do or don’t do, as the case maybe.

In helping others, for example, sometimes they need a fish, sometimes they need you to teach them how to fish.

Being present with expectations, prepared, if necessary, to jettison any plans means you can meet the need of this moment in time.

It also means you get to live the life you were born to live, and not the life you think you should live.

Do you see the difference?

You become a source of your own wisdom and guidance. You make take inspiration and guidance from outside sources, true, but you become the expert in your own life.

Instead of waiting for permission for example, you get down and get going on that thing.

Instead of finding out what the right thing is, you learn to know that for yourself.

It’s kind of the part of growing up that we’re not taught - instead often clinging to the apron of someone else’s opinion.

And I don’t mean that in an insulting way, not at all, but stepping up and stepping free means a lot for your life, it really does.

Become the expert of your own life, get super good at being present and wise. It is the best thing you can do for yourself, and everyone around you.

Promise! And what have you got to lose?

Go well, Arjuna

PS. Here’s how to make wisdom part of every single moment. A simple, idea packed free guide: https://mailchi.mp/60dbe4ffeccf/freedom-from-thinking-so-much

The wisdom of a child is a wondrous thing

Every morning I sit with Bubba and have breakfast. I used to cover her in a kind of backward shirt so she wouldn’t get food stains all over her, now I cover myself. Proximity to someone who is learning how to throw is a dangerous business. <---- This one IS trouble, I can tell you.

But to get to my point. One day I found myself - in a moment of awareness - repeating parental mantras. These have little to do with meditation and everything to do with desperation … “But you LIKE avocado!!”

I have realised Bubs will not eat what she does not want to. Being a female, and related very closely to Sumati, she knows her own mind. One day egg is the flavour of the day, the next I’m dodging as it’s being flung at me.

There is no routine is what I’m trying to say. And I may be giving lofty spiritual attributes to something that has none - but it would seem she eats according to an inner wisdom - what she needs not what she wants. Some days she eats nothing at all, some days she eats like a rugby team.

It’s not about “its breakfast time, I SHOULD eat” but more like “what do I really need right now?”

We all have this inner wisdom, down deep beneath all the accumulated layers of belief and cultural instruction and past experience. It’s whispering to us all the time, it just gets swamped by everything else. Your ideal life comes from listening to and living from your innate wisdom. Trouble and strife only comes when you start listening to those second and third thoughts that doubt. “But what will everyone else think?” …

That is why I don’t put much stock in moral codes of behaviour. As soon as someone starts telling you to live this way and not that way, you’re getting quite divisive. How about this moment and that moment? How about these people? There’s always an exception, always an "us and them" is created and then what? What does your moral code say then?

I was told I should always eat breakfast. How’s that for a moral imperative? Turns out my body often functions better without it. Especially when I’m coming down with a flu or whatever - a quick fast can heal things quite nicely before it gets worse.

Bubba shows me that all the time.

So meditate - one of the greatest things it will give you is the awareness and the clarity of your own course of wisdom that is precisely matched to the moment you find yourself in. You become super familiar with it - and it’s always there, meditation gives you the space and the silence to tune into it.

What is possible for you - yes, you - is an ideal life, lived in perfect response to now, in perfect flow with - and never against - this moment. And you have to do so little to gain so much.

Alrighty? Go well! Arjuna

PS. I’m chuckling to myself because the book I'm finishing off is a kind of instructional manual to end overwhelm and negativity, be the best version of yourself, and have a darn tooting great life.

It could be seen as a set of moral guidelines - and yet! I start with Buddha who talks about being a scientist about everything. Listen to advice, test it out if it seems like something you agree with, but don’t agree simply because of authority. Fully try it and see if it works for you. And in all the best moral guidelines and practices will always point the finger back at your own heart: What do YOU really know?

PPS.

You'd like to know how to meditate? How to be more aware and tune into your own inner source of wisdom, avoiding struggle and overwhelm and negativity?

Here you go:

www.arjunaishaya.com/freestuff