Living with Joy:
Keys to Personal Power & Spiritual Transformation
By
Sanaya Roman
Feeling
Inner
Peace
An Excerpt from Living with Joy
What is inner peace? All of you have a picture in your mind of what you think
inner peace is. You have achieved this state many times, sometimes for moments,
even for hours, and so you know what inner peace feels like. Part of growth is
learning to create that feeling without being dependent upon things turning out
a certain way or needing people to respond in a specific way. You want to create
inner peace as something you are and be able to give and share it with others.
You become the center, radiating your soul's
light outward, rather than reacting, or waiting for situations, relationships,
and events in your life to be arranged in such a way that you have peace.
Creating inner peace from the higher levels is learning to open your heart. It
means that you are not focused or attached on an emotional level to things that
happen in the world around you. You know who you are, and you let things flow
around you without touching or affecting your sense of peace. You can learn to
touch and affect the energy in the outer world from that center of energy within
yourself. That is peace.
Opening the heart means remaining open and loving no matter what another person
does, no matter what occurs to you, or what happens in your career. It means
choosing to feel peaceful no matter what your outer life looks like. It is easy
to be loving and open when those around you are loving; the challenge is to be
loving when those around you are closed, afraid, or negative.
Inner
peace comes from within,
not from without.
Anything you are attached to or must have a certain way, any belief or concept
that is inflexible, will be an area in which your inner peace can be affected.
The goal is to take that sense of inner peace and affect everything in the outer
world, touching it with that energy. The first step is to
find that sense of inner peace.
One of the simplest ways is through relaxing your body, which you can do both
through physical touch and through mental relaxation. Your body can be the
receptacle of many thoughts that are not peaceful. If you can bring your body to
a state of peace and rest, the mind can be taught that feeling and learn to
create it. Peace is more than just a feeling of relaxation in the body. It is a
very specific radio wave, a vibration you send out that affects everything in
your outer world.
You can begin to experience various levels of inner peace, down to the deepest
feelings of it. Start by finding a sense of peace within. Give yourself one
opportunity in the next week to feel inner peace. You may want to create a place
of beauty, a sense of timelessness, to play music -- anything that helps you
truly experience what peace means to you. From that space, from that knowing,
you can begin to change everything you see in the outer world.
What is the value of inner peace? It certainly feels better to the emotional
body. However, it is more than that -- it is the ability to affect the outer
world from your highest level, to create and manifest from a focused place of
purpose and an inner sense of who you are. When you are tranquil and calm, when
you slow down and feel relaxed, you are able to create and think at your higher
levels. What you bring to earth and create from this space is your higher good.
You can create things when you feel tense, anxious, or fearful, but those things
may not be for your highest good; in fact, they will probably not be. If, before
you plan your life or think of new ideas, you find a sense of inner peace and
operate from it, you will find your plans reflecting more of your soul's purpose
than your personality's desires. If, before you act or speak, you bring in this
sense of peace, you will find your world changing rapidly into a very different
place.
Inner
peace is a connection
to your deeper self,
and it will assist you
in letting go of fear.
Fear is a lower energy, a vibration of less light, and you can change it with
love. One of the goals of having inner peace is healing fear. It may be a fear
that someone will hurt or reject you, abandon or run away from you. It may be a
fear that you cannot make it in the world, a fear of putting yourself out there
and failing. Inner peace is a connection to the heart and a willingness to let
go of fear. You can achieve inner peace by letting go of feeling you have to
defend yourself, and by being willing to be vulnerable. It is not putting on an
act for other people; it is being willing to shine through as who you are and
knowing you are all right.
Self-Respect,
Self-Esteem,
and
Self-Worth
An Excerpt from Living with Joy
What is required to feel good about yourself is not the same from person to
person. What you require for self-esteem is not necessarily what another person
requires. It is important to discover what makes you feel worthy, confident, and
happy about who you are.
Self-respect at
the highest levels comes from honoring your soul. This means speaking and acting
from a level of integrity and honesty that reflects your higher self. It means
standing by what you believe in (you do not, however, have to convince others to
believe in it), and acting in a way that reflects your values. Many of you
criticize others for not living up to a value system you consider right, but on
closer examination you may not be living up to it yourself. You have seen the
person who is always telling people how they should act, but he or she does
anything he or she pleases. Self-respect means acting on your values and what
you say you believe in.
Professing one
set of values but acting from another leads to a lot of internal conflict. For
instance, you may believe in monogamy deep inside, and yet the person you are
with wants an open relationship. You decide to go along because you want to hold
on to this partner. You believe in one set of values, but you are living by
another, and there will be a lot of conflict and potential pain around this
issue.
How can you know
if the values you "think" you want to live by are yours? You often cannot know
until you try. You might think that a good person gets up early in the morning,
yet you always sleep late. Many of you have values you think you should live by
but do not. The best thing to do is to try out these values -- get up early in
the morning for a while. Often, what you think are your values turn out to be
"shoulds" given to you by others, and when you actually live them, you find they
do not work for you. Ask yourself what you value. What do you think
good people do? Are you following these values?
It is difficult to feel good about yourself if you are living in a way that goes
against your underlying values. It is important to examine your values and
either live by them or change them.
Self-respect
means coming from
your power, not your weakness.
When you complain
that someone or something is making you sad or angry, ask yourself, "Why am I
choosing to experience that feeling or to react in that way?" Blaming others
will always take away your power. If you can discover why you are choosing to
feel hurt by other people's actions, you will learn much about yourself. Some of
you are afraid that if you stand up for yourself, you will lose someone's love.
Some people are quite good at convincing you that you are in the wrong when you
do stand up for your beliefs. Thank them silently for providing you with the
opportunity to become strong, for often strength is developed in the face of
opposition. Self-respect means standing by your deepest truth and knowing your
innermost feelings. It means making yourself and not another the authority of
your feelings.
Some of you live
or associate with people who belittle you and make you feel bad. You can end up
focusing so much on their feelings that you lose track of your own. A woman was
married to a man who constantly criticized many of her actions. She became so
focused on his feelings that she never asked herself during all the years they
were together how she felt about the way he treated her. She was always trying
hard to please him, trying to anticipate his moods and whims in order to avoid
his criticism. Yet everything she tried ended with him being angry or irritated
at her. She began to feel she had failed or was in some way a bad person. She
spent so many hours analyzing his feelings that she lost touch with her own.
Many of you try to please people, and as you try to please them, you focus more
on how they feel than how you feel.
Self-worth means
paying attention to how you feel. You do not
need reasons why you choose to do something. You do not need to prove anything
to another person about your worth. Validate your feelings; do not analyze and
question them. Do not go over and over them, asking, "Do I really have a reason
to feel hurt?" Let your feelings be real for you and honor them. Many of you
make other people the authority of what is good for you. When they say you are
bad, you believe them. When they say things are your fault, you believe them. I
am not suggesting that you ignore what other people say, either, but instead
honor what you feel. It is one thing to be open
to constructive criticism and another to constantly try to do what others want
you to do when you do not want it for yourself. Creating self-esteem and
self-worth involves honoring your own feelings and path and direction. It means
honoring yourself with your words, actions, and behavior.
Self-esteem means
believing in yourself, knowing that you did the best you knew how, even though
two days later you might see a better way. It involves making yourself right
rather than wrong and allowing yourself to feel good about who you are. Some of
you try very hard all the time, pushing yourselves, rushing around and feeling
that whatever you do, it is not enough. Trying and working hard to get things
done is not necessarily the road to joy. Respect yourself by following your
inner flow. Rest, play, think, and take time to be silent. Doing those things
that nurture yourself are ways to increase your self-esteem.
Opening to Receive
An Excerpt from Living with Joy
Imagine, if you will, that you are a king, and your treasury is full. In fact,
you have so much you do not know where to begin distributing the wealth. All of
the people in your kingdom are walking around saying how poor they are, but when
you offer them your money, they act as if they do not see you, or they wonder
what is wrong with what you are offering.
I look out and see the storehouses all over -- untapped, unused, and even
unrecognized. You have heard the expression "heaven on earth." There is nothing
that stops you from having it, except your ability to ask for and receive it.
What are these storehouses? What things lie within them that we would love to
pass out?
One is love. We do not measure growth as you do (career advancements, more
money, and so on). We look to spiritual evolution, which includes joy,
self-love, the ability to receive, reframing the negative into the positive, the
refinement of the ego, a willingness to embrace the new, and the ability to work
together for common purpose.
There
is so much love available,
it is as abundant as the air you breathe.
Do you ask for love? The more you give and receive love, the greater your
spiritual growth. Every moment you spend focused on something that is not
working, thinking of someone who does not love you, makes you like the people
who turn away from the king's treasure. You always have the opportunity to think
of times you felt loved, to imagine a future of abundance, and thus to partake
of spiritual wealth.
What do you think of? Every in-breath takes you up to the world of essence where
form is created, and on the out-breath you send to the world your wishes. Every
time you recognize the love you have, you increase it. One of the laws of
receiving is that recognizing when you have gotten something increases it in
your life, and every time you do not acknowledge something you make it so much
harder to have more sent to you.
The more you focus on what is wrong, the more wrong you will create in your
life, and the more it will spread to areas that were
working. The more you concentrate on what is right in your life, on what is
working, the more other areas of your life will work. It is the same in
receiving. The more you acknowledge how much you are receiving, the more you
will have.
There are two kinds of requests: those made by your personality, and those made
by your soul.
What
are the requests
of your soul?
A request for spiritual evolution is a soul request, as is a request for higher
purpose, clarity, love, and focus. A desire to find your higher path or for more
light in your life is also a soul request.
Personality requests can have the clothing of a soul request. They are usually
more specific, such as a request for a new car or a material object, for
instance. If you are willing to look at the deeper motivation behind what you
want, and what you expect to get from having it, then you will open up many more
ways and forms in which your request can come to you.
A personality request is very specific, so it often takes longer for the
Universe to find ways to get it to you. If, however, instead of asking for
money, you ask for what the money would bring you -- such as more security or
the ability to travel, to take time off from your job, or to pay your bills
every month with ease -- the Universe and your soul can bring these to you more
easily.
Learning
to receive is learning
to ask for the essence of what you want,
rather than the form.
Often the Universe brings what you specifically ask for, and you find it is not
what you want. This wastes much time. Before you say that you want something,
ask, "Is there any broader or more accurate way I can state that request?"
When you say, "I want this man or woman to love me" or "I want this person to
bring me joy," then you have made it very difficult for the Universe to give you
what you want, especially if that person does not love you or bring you joy. If
instead you say, "I am open to receiving love from a man or woman who will love
me," then it is much easier to have it, for you are not attached to the form (a
specific person) but rather to the essence (love and joy).
If you want something to appear in a specific way, it may take longer than if
you let the Universe create magic and miracles and bring you the soul request,
rather than the personality desire. Often, this requires the ability to let go
and detach.
You may have experienced picturing something and having it come to you. Yet many
of you do not know how to let go of the old and open to the new. Be willing to
be open to new forms if you want to receive.
If you are cluttering your life with many relationships, for instance, or if you
are filling your time with an unsatisfying relationship, then there is no room
left in your life for a fulfilling one. If you are asking for more money but you
are spending all your time giving away your services, or pursuing activities
that do not bring you money, it will be much more difficult to attract it.
Be
willing to do what your soul directs
you to do if you want to create
what you are asking for.
Often when you ask for something, you will find yourself going through
unexpected changes to prepare yourself for having it. Your attitude may need to
change, or the viewpoint you are holding may be creating an energy block that is
keeping you from having what you asked for. The Universe will immediately send
you many experiences to open up and change your attitude, so that you can have
what you requested.
Sometimes you must let go of certain things to have what you have asked for. You
may need to release a thought, friend, useless activity, or a high level of
worry. It is not that the Universe is punishing you, or trying to make it hard
for you to get what you want, but that you have a gentle and loving inner
teacher that wants to give things to you only when you are ready and it will be
for your highest good.
Your innermost self and the Universe may not make a lot of money available to
you, for instance, if you are not ready to handle it and it would not be for
your higher good. Your higher self may bring you many lessons to change and
shift your attitudes before money comes, so that it will truly benefit your
growth. Many requests for fame and great amounts of money are not actually to
your benefit, so your soul may slow down the arrival of these things, while it
brings you other opportunities that are more appropriate for you, and while it
strengthens you and builds a foundation for you to have these things.
You ask for so little, and that is what saddens us as we look over the minds of
humanity. We see the limited focus of your thoughts, looking so close at hand
rather than reaching for the heights.
There
are ways to have more in your life.
One way to have more in your life is to use your imagination, for it is a great
gift the Universe has given you. Every time you imagine having something,
challenge yourself -- imagine having even more! If you want a house, a friend, a
lover or any relationship, a car, a life of leisure -- fantasize about it and
enlarge the vision.
Fantasy can lead to higher purpose. For many of the things you fantasize about
the most (even those you feel furthest from having) can be pictures of your
higher purpose and the life you will lead as you reach it.
What can you ask for? You can ask for spiritual evolution and more light, for
that is a general request that your soul will utilize to bring you many
unexpected gifts. (You will want to acknowledge these gifts when they come.)
Trust
yourself and believe
you can create what you want.
Having faith in yourself, and letting go of memories when things did not work,
will help you open to more abundance. If you must think of the past, think of
those times you were powerful and creative. Go into your heart and ask whether
you feel you deserve all the joy and love that is awaiting you on your path of
higher purpose.
You can begin to imagine joy, peace, and harmony as your birthright. Focus,
clarity, and love are available for the asking. Request a vision of your higher
purpose, and be willing to recognize the gifts every day as they come, even the
small things. The more you acknowledge what the Universe is sending you, the
more you can bring into your life.
Ask! We cannot give you anything unless you ask. The Universe waits for you to
ask. When you see it coming, be willing to take and receive it. When the
opportunity comes, grab it! Thank and acknowledge the Universe for it, and you
can create heaven on earth.
*Excerpted from the book
Living with Joy Copyright C
2011 by Sanaya Roman. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA.
www.newworldlibrary.com