So...What's Next?!?

Do You Believe in Miracles?

This afternoon I met with a friend for a much needed break/late lunch. She has recently found herself without a permanent position and is considering contracting/starting her own business. I thought I could help, and I simply needed a distraction away from my own business.

Anyway I guess what has been on my mind is "what's next for me?" I mean, the social media landscape is much more crowded today than it was even a year ago. Business is good and picking up (which is needed) but for how long? Am I on the right track for growth and is my business model sustainable for the next 18 months and beyond? What do I need to refocus on or pay more attention to right now? Yeah - you know...basic fleeting thoughts.

Alright so as I am driving in to the parking lot it dawns on me that I have been well taken care of the past three years and there is no reason for me to think that is going to stop anytime soon. What I mean by that is if I looked at the "me" of three years ago I would not recommend that "me" to launch into unknown territory both the industry and the responsibilities that I took on when I had my family to take care of and bills to pay. I mean what in the world was I thinking? But in the end, we have done well. "We" meaning, well, me, my family and friends, peers and coaches who have supported me along the way. I am much better off today to be "doing my own thing"  than ever - why would I worry about my future now?

My friend and I had a 4 hour lunch - apps, lunch, drinks, desert and lots of talk. She asked me if I ever read The Secret - yes and I have it the audio book on my iTunes that I listen to at least once a week and I have a whole library of other similar books. She told me that she recently read it, started applying the whole positive thinking thing and it worked immediately. People she wanted to reconnect with emailed her unexpectedly, the little extra money she needed in the bank came in the form of a late birthday gift.

I was reminded that it was my faith, both the faith I have always relied on in my life and the faith I had to rediscover and uncover that helped me get through the days when it all did not seem possible.

I am needing to rely on that faith again as I continue to push myself more. I realized today that in hindsight EVERYTHING was against me to start this venture and not fall on my face, but the right people and the right events always seemed to show up at the right time. That "right timing" has been keeping me going over the past few months. I need a few bigger mircles right now to get to my next phase in life - and I just need to believe they are coming my way. I am ready to receive...

Something I would like to "read" to you

I have had a couple of friends talk about leaving their jobs and starting their own thing. These are people in jobs that are draining them and keeping them in a rut a good percentage of their life. These are friends who are MORE capable than me of starting and building their own company. Friends who have more assets than I have, with more management experience, with more sales talent.

But these are friends who still talk the talk  while continuing to serve a master that will sign a paycheck for them.

Why? Because they need the money.

I was explaining to my husband tonight that when I left that world it was never because I wanted to be on my own - it was because I had to take more control of the direction of my career. Did I need money - more than I ever needed it in my life - we were moving into a house and were still surviving on my income quite a bit. Was I scared - um panicked would be an understatement. In fact, I got more spiritual than I have ever been in my life. You should see the stacks of spiritual books I acquired.

Three years later I am making more money than I ever made working for someone else, I am in charge of the direction of my career and I am still reading spiritual books. Actually I am re-reading many of them because I am approaching them with a new perspective this time around.

There is a very old book I picked up at a used bookstore called The Secret of the Ages It is very metaphysical and at times may be a little much - even for me - but I read a paragraph tonight that I would like to pass on to my friends and anyone who is reading this that might benefit as well.

    See the things you want as already yours. Know that they will come to you at need. Then LET them       come. Don't fret and worry about them. Don't think about your LACK of them. Think of them as             YOURS, as belonging to you, as already in your possession.

    Look upon money as water that runs the mill of your mind. You are constantly grinding out ideas that     the world needs. Your thoughts, your plans, are necessary to the great scheme of things. Money             provides the power. But it needs YOU, it needs your ideas, before it can be of any use to the world.

    So instead of thinking that you need money, realize that money needs you. Money is just so much         wasted energy without work to do. Your ideas provide the outlet for it, the means by which money     can do things. Develop your ideas, secure in the knowledge that money is always looking for such an     outlet.

Combing Through My Spirituality

I am a spiritual explorer. My dad was Baptist my mom was raised Catholic but was more drawn to the ideologies of the Jehovah's Witness. I spent some of my teen years in a Protestant church and tipped my toes in a couple of Lutheran Churches. In college I became more drawn to Buddhism. Several years ago I found a Unity church which seemed to be a nice blend of Buddhism and Christianity. But for the past couple of years I have become spirituality restless.

Yesterday I took some time to comb through what I have been drawn to, what I have learned, and what might be missing.

From my studies of judeo-christianity I strongly believe in a higher organizing power. I may not always use the term God. More often I will say Universe, "the Force" or energy. But there is a higher creative power that I believe maintains a level of balance.

From my metaphysical studies I truly believe that we are each creators of our own little world. We are part of the higher power, connected to the higher power, and therefore are in charge of our own powers.

Although I have never really studied Paganism with the exception of being exposed to the ideas in passing, I do believe we have a relationship with nature, one that we tend to not only ignore, but more often than not, abuse.

The ideas taught in Buddhism of nonattachment and nirvana can be a challenge to grasp. My understanding of the Buddhist theories relate to other areas, such as metaphysics ideas of nonattachment to the outcome, but to me Buddhism enlightment is a return to a higher order of energy (nirvana) and I am not sure that I am ready to strive toward that kind of goal.

So, I am restless and pondering which direction to explore next. I am curious about the ideas of a pure race. I do not believe in the ideas of a pure race, but so many religions protect their lineage with such discipline and strict rules and pride that I find myself curious about the logic and reasoning.

I feel that I need to understand paganism more. It is an ideology that has received a bad rap for so long because of the manipulation of the Church, the same Church that adopted many ideas and rituals from Paganism, but I digress. I want to learn more about our connection to nature.

I also realized that through my years of exploration I often reject the ideas symbolism and rituals. But there may be something to symbolism and rituals and I think I am open to learn more.

So, I do not know where to go from here. I think I might find myself walking into a number of different spiritual centers and looking through many various books. If anyone has recommendations, please share.

reflecting

This morning I got to attend the largest networking event in Atlanta, the High Tech Prayer Breakfast, which attracts over 1600 people in the city. With that many people in the room you would think that I would have the opportunity to meet some new contacts, but I spent the morning catching up with people I already know. Everywhere  I turned I saw people I knew...

Those who know me well would know this is not an event they would expect me to attend. I consider myself highly spiritual and possibly could be described as a spiritual explorer, but I am also someone who feels I  have already "been there done that" with the more traditional Christian faiths. In fact, I think for too long I have held a bit of contempt for some of the more traditional faiths. I find that I judge them harshly for being so judgmental.

Wait - huh? Yeah

I have done to others what I did not feel they had a right to do to others.

So I was actually invited to this event twice. If that is not a sign...well, I guess it could be that I am in the circle of the people who attend this event, maybe not so much a sign.

Anyway I attended and it was a really amazing experience. Again, 1600 people in the room and knowing so many people there, that was crazy. The lines for coffee were a bit to reminiscent of gas lines though.  When we went into the dining area for breakfast we were greeted by a pretty good band that performed that song "Life is a Highway." I have never listened to a live band play a rock song at 7am.

The keynote speaker was the CIO of Walmart who shared his story and lessons about trust, relationships, and accountability. OK...

Then William Leonard, the founder of high tech ministries stepped up to the microphone. By this time I am sitting next to my host, Paul Arne of Morris, Manning, and Martin and across from Les Ottolenghi, founder of Fuzebox, and again in a room with many, many successful people in this city and many of whom I know that if I wanted to have lunch with them to pick their brain, all I have to do is call.  As William spoke of his blessings and calling I looked around and enjoyed reflecting on the path I have traveled, the blessings of those who have supported me along the way and the joy of what is coming up in the future.

So William tells his story of how he found Christ and the life that God had planned for him, and I am looking around thinking, yep...I know what you mean. My words are different than William's. I say Universe, spirit, higher-self. My orientation is a bit different in that I believe we manifest our life through our thoughts and energy, but again, that is very similar to prayer. William talked about prayer and bible study each morning, I believe in meditation, looking within as well as spiritual study each night...so really, not a lot of differences here. The host/mc of the event opened with a comment that "God is within," and those words mean something different to each person in the room. That is so true, and if we can acknowledge and respect that we are each on our own path we can then be able to share our stories of success, expand out perspectives, and grow in many various different ways.

It was a cool event and I am very honored to have been invited (twice) and very happy that I allowed myself to withhold judgment and open up to a new experience.

Intuition vs Manifestation

Alright so not long ago I tackled the Destiny vs Freewill question. I think I have that figured out, at least for me, but I still struggle with intuition vs manifestation which is similar to the destiny vs freewill question.

Manifestation is like freewill. You decide what you want, you "visualize" and do all the other feeling and thinking exercises to draw to you the things and experiences you desire. Intuition is when you "just know" you don't know why you know, sometimes you are not even sure what you know, but you know. I wonder if intuition is the universe's way of making things manifest in people's life. It is planting "seeds" in fertile minds so that things can happen.

Am I getting too deep here? Eh..let's see. It's as if one person is trying to manifest a car and another person gets the gut feeling that it is time to sell their car. So the overall question between Destiny vs Freewill and Intuition vs Manifestation is how much are we really in control and what happens when we ignore or fight our intuition?

Let me put it one more way. You have to make a choice, one you can stick with. Logic tells you to go one way, your "gut" tells you to go the other. Now logic usually has the BEST argument and very valid points whereas your gut has the experience, you know, "you should always go with your gut." But why should you go with your gut when it seems so logical to go with logic?

That is what I am talking about. It's all still a mystery, and no I have not been drinking.

Energy Beings

I buy in to the quantum physics theories, not  that I can completely claim I understand them. Of course, I buy into biology and chemistry and I don't always completely understand those sciences either.

What I do understand is that humans are beings made of energy, chemistry and follow the laws of biology. When I was young and initially exposed to the science vs religion debate, I could not understand why there was a debate. To me science was the hand of God. My personal debate was to try to understand the roles of destiny, personal freewill and the affects of the freewill of others.

If we just throw our hands up and say everything is destined, well that makes everything simple and we don't have to be accountable for anything. If we say there is no such thing as destiny and everything is freewill, then we have to become accountable for everything. But if we start to understand that the entire Universe, every galaxy, every star, every being is really just a part of the whole, then you might be able to come to the same conclusion that Forest Gump did.

I don't know if
we each have a destiny,

    
                   
or if we're all just floating around
accidental-like on a breeze.

    
                   
But I think maybe it's both.

    
                   
Maybe both is happening

at the same time.

This could be understood by accepting, what most of us have learned to accept, or innately understand, that we are part of something greater than our little world. But we also still have choices. However each choice we make starts a chain reaction that ripples through the universe that we are connected to. The Universe itself has it's own agenda which is programmed to expand and create. Oftentimes that means destruction and violence. From our small perspectives natural disasters are a tragedy, but we have to stop and realize that we have evolved from a long history of natural disasters. We are not in charge of the whole universe, but we are part of it. The universe, or on a smaller scale, the planet will respond to us just as we respond to it. Destiny and freewill is a dance.

I have come to terms with this question, now I am working on the next big philosophical question in my life. In Buddhism it is call Karmic connection, others call it soul mates, in quantum physics there is actually a scientific explanation. Apparently if you divide a particle of energy in half and send each half far far away, they each will still respond to what is happening to the other. We have heard stories about the psychic connection of identical twins.

Alright, follow me down the rabbit hole a little bit here. Identical Twins is one thing. We know they started out as one cell that split into two. But what if we go with Einstein's theory that energy has never been created and can never be destroyed, it only changes forms. For the Fundamentalist  that might be reading this, substitute the word energy for God and then add in the idea that we are all God's children, meaning we all come from this energy source. If we believe this then we have each existed in some form for an eternity. So if we go through the ages as energy beings, expanding and creating in different forms, we may also be dividing the way the cell of Identical Twins divide. So, in the much grander scheme of things we may have a cosmic/psychic connection with many energy beings.

Have you ever experienced "knowing" when someone is thinking about you, "experiencing" someone else's emotions, constantly thinking the same as another person,  or an unexplainable connection to another person?  Again, Buddhism will tell you that it is because there is some sort of Karmic baggage from past lives that needs to be worked out, others will tell you that you are soul mates and quantum physics will say that you were once connected to each other. But if we go all the way back to the big bang theory, prior to the big bang, we were all connected, we were all one, or for the Fundamentalist, we are all God's children coming from one source.

I know this post is a little deep, but these are the kinds of thoughts I have pondered since I was very young. I think about this stuff every day. More recently I see a need for other people to look beyond the ideas of the invisible man in the sky who created the world in 7 days, has a list of laws and can destroy or fix everything as he pleases. I think it is time that we start seeing our role in the Universe and  how our actions directed toward others ultimately comes back to affect our lives. Throughout history humans have continued to advance their understanding of the universe and our place in it. There are people today who would like to think we have it all figured out and what we don't know is beyond our reach. I fear that what we don't know and refuse to look for will ultimately become our downfall. We need to understand that our freewill affects our destiny and far reaching destinies that expand beyond what we can yet understand.