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Living an Inspired Life

By Sheri Rosenthal

Don Miguel Ruiz, author of “The Four Agreements” and my personal mentor, spoke on more than one occasion about living one’s life in a totally different way than we had been taught to live; what he called ”living the will of God.” He asked us to imagine what living the will of God might look like. At that time, my highly educated and analytical brain had a field day tearing apart his lecture. I could not begin to imagine what the heck he was talking about, it sounded vague and religious. Past experience taught me that my teacher was normally correct about things and I was the confused one! So I took the lecture in and filed it away into the recesses of my mind for exploration at a later date.

As life would have it, many opportunities soon followed that gave me the chance to put those new possibilities into action in my life. What he was asking us to imagine, was living our lives from the heart, to explore and open up to all of the opportunities life has to offer. For myself, a woman with a regimented and analytical mind, this was quite a stretch. My life had revolved around 5 year plans and long discussions with my accountant regarding the best approach for whatever I was involved in. Now some cute little brown man was suggesting I just wing it and experience my life in the moment every single day! I can tell you that this was something my mind had a very difficult time grasping.

Since then I have learned to set my intent for the bigger picture and let life show me all the possibilities that exist before me. Opportunities come all the time but I had never noticed them. My mind (frequently referred to as a “program” for its computer like qualities) immediately crossed them off the list of available strategies, not allowing me to see anything out there beyond what was comfortable, familiar and expected. As a result I found myself recreating my life in a pattern that was in perpetual repeat mode. Of course the results of that methodology have been less than successful!

Recently, a dear friend of mine was sharing how she wanted to have fun in her life but was not interested in creating an empire like another good friend had. I immediately said to her, look at how your mind, by judging an empire to be a “bad” thing, is eliminating something grand that may be coming your way. If Spirit wants to create an empire through you, who are you to refuse?

Of course the answer is that the mind is frightened at the possibility of greatness and uses the excuse of “so much work” as a justification for its fear. The truth is that if Spirit/God sends you an empire, Spirit/God will also send you the people to man that empire. If your heart and eyes are open to the magic occurring around you, you will be able to see what I am talking about. Of course when I say Spirit/God I am talking about you. You are the manifest acting on behalf of the desire of the unmanifest to create and have fun. Another way of saying this is that your higher self is directing you all the time, but rather than paying attention to your heart, you have all your attention on a restrictive, frightened, non-imaginative program that has spent its life crimping down on the expression of your creativity out of fear! Well, that said, what are we going to do about it? Get off our butts, move through our fear and create those empires with love, excitement, total abandon, and a whole lot of fun. To me this is living an inspired life, “living the will of God”. Inspired by whom? The real you as Spirit/God of course!

Sheri Rosenthal DPM is a master Toltec teacher and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Toltec Wisdom. Having trained with don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, she currently takes students on spiritual journeys, works with personal apprentices and enjoys being extremely happy. You can reach her at info@sherirosenthal.com or http://www.sherirosenthal.com.