That’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? Had you thought that your passion is your purpose in life? Did you realise you can actually choose your own path in life, choose your purpose?

But that’s how it must be. Your purpose in life is to live your passion.

Your passion is the fire in your belly (figuratively speaking). Your inspiration is (literary) – You breathing in your Soul – and it drives you to do whatever you to do.

Inspiration: the ‘in breath’ of the Soul – it inspires us to reach for greater things: it draws us forward to become more of who we are. And although this sounds wonderful and profound, to live our passion we’ll have to move out of our comfort zone, as it often involves learning new skills and us going to places we’ve never been to before.

When you are inspired to do something, you might already have some skills to draw on, but to get to that place of your dream, you are going to have to find the way. However, when you are working at your passion you don’t have to know how to get all the way there – just have to start to take the first step and you’ll find the way.

It takes courage, perseverance and commitment too. It might well be that these qualities develop alongside the new skills.

Your purpose in life is purely to express your love in life and this is often in service to others: you giving your unique and individual gifts and talent to another: with your love. Our Soul’s purpose (and our sole purpose) is to feel Love. There isn’t only one, defined path we must tread to fulfil our destiny.

It is our own personal and individual choice how we express our passion in life and as long as whatever we do is genuine and from our heart, then that’s our purpose in life.

Can you make a living, doing what you do – of course you can. So long as you are authentic and heart-felt in your service to others (whatever form it takes) the people who need and want your services will find you.

With Rose Todd

TOPIC: Passion and Purpose

Tuesday 28th February 2012 7.30 – 9.30pm

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For some years now, I have written a Journal – not faithfully every day, you understand. But most morning while I have tea in bed, I write about the things that were important about yesterday and about the important things I plan to do that day.

A few days ago, I came across the above quote and I liked it a lot.  It really spoke volumes to me. So I went and bought a brand new note book on New Year’s Eve to record this most monumental year.

2012. The Mayan calendar finished at this year because they could not see any further. The new world is beginning: in fact it’s here now. It is not all peaches and cream; it is still going through the birthing process, and if you have children, you’ll be quite aware of the birthing process – it takes time and it’s painful.

Another analogy is that of a garden. Gardens, like life, change and grow constantly. Some plants die back. Some plants overgrow, perhaps smoothing others. Sometimes, some things don’t work too well at all – isn’t life like that!  You need to pull up and throw out the things that don’t work well: you need to pull up the old to make room for the new. Only then can you plant a new garden.

The old structures of our lives are crumbling. The banks have crumbled and have been remodeled.  Is it enough? Probably not. Many countries’ finances are being restructured too. Those that we elected to power to govern us, didn’t act with integrity and were exposed and so changes have been made. Our newspapers didn’t act with integrity and respect and changes took place.  The old structures are crumbling.

The New World is dawning. Our world needs new dreams. It needs your dreams and visions. Dreams for yourself? Oh yes, very much so. Dreams for your loved ones? Definitely. Dreams and visions for our earth and world? Absolutely!  Dream your dreams of what you desire. Send out your dreams and visions to the future so that we can create a New World today. It won’t be a ‘peaches and cream’ world – and you should be glad of it. Do you know how quickly you’d sicken of peaches and cream? It’s going to be a much better and happier world.

If you keep a Journal, write in your journal how you imagine your life and the world to be. Write of the good things of yesterday and the hope for today and the future.

I have today, sent the first draft of my book to my publisher. (That sounds so grand, doesn’t it). It’s the first step in the publishing process, but certainly not the first step in the whole book-writing process.

I always read the Acknowledgements in every book I read and it amazes me how much is involved in the birthing of a book.

Like so many others, I had been ‘writing a book’ for a very long time, but somehow I never got past that certain point. I can’t describe what that point is, but I kept rewriting the same stuff over and over again, but in different forms. In a nutshell, I was getting nowhere and the book was lifeless.

Early this year whilst I was exhibiting at a Mind Body Spirit event, a publisher came by and we chatted and the result was she said ‘send me what you’ve written and I’ll look at it’. What I’d written (and rewritten) was less than a third of a book, with no life!

I came home in excited shock; but not knowing how to go about writing more. My familiar stumbling block loomed large. Opportunity had knocked and I didn’t know how to answer.

I make tea; did some not very inspiring mind mapping; got some more tea; put on some soothing music and started to type. I’ve always expected the words to just flow through me as if I was taking dictation. Well they didn’t! And they never have done. But my ideas did flow and I just typed.

If you have been pregnant (or are close to someone who’s been pregnant) you’ll know that during the fourth month there is the slight fluttering and ‘Quickening’ happens. The child’s heart begins to beat. It is such a soft, gentle flutter that you can miss it.

Unbeknownst to me, the same happened with my book – it just suddenly seemed to have a life of its own. Looking back over the last six or eight weeks it’s almost as if the heart of the book started to beat without me noticing.

I happily type and edited and typed some more. I have enjoyed watching it’s unfolding. Instead of being the stress and strain that I had faced with the early writing, it now just seemed to flow where it was going, in the most natural way.

And here’s the philosophy – there’s always philosophy isn’t there? The philosophy of this story is: my intention was to write a book. I’d reached as far as I’d always reach and when I went back to it, without me noticing, it ‘quickened’. It was as if I’d got out of my own way and its small heart began to beat and the book unfolded naturally.

I’ve decided that this is how all manifestation should come to pass: elegantly, without stress or strain and in just the right form, and with the excited contentment I now feel.

The short story (and there is a long story, believe me) is that all sorts of things came to me that demanded immediate attention and the clear and ordered mind I was relying on to pack for the weekend was receding into the far distance.  I started juggling, and ducking and diving as the saying goes.

I ended up doing several things at the same time, but no matter how good we think we are at multi-tasking, it is not possible to give your full attention to more than one thing at once.  I was all over the place – totally scattered, flitting from one thing to another, not completing anything, and the day was getting steadily worse. The feeling was one of rising panic.  Do you recognise this?

Then I had an idea. ‘Hold it’! I thought. ‘You create your own reality.  You are regenerating this stuff – so stop it now’. One must be firm in stressful situations and I made a cup of tea (always essential in times of crisis).  I thought, ‘I think I’ll read a book while I stop for tea. No I won’t. I could listen to a talk on my MP3 Player. No I won’t.’ I couldn’t even decide what to do when I was supposed to be doing nothing except having tea!

So I did just that, nothing, while I had tea.  To slow down my mind, initially I watched my breath.  Then I let my mind play with nice things – every time it went back into crisis mode, I brought it back to something pleasant.  By the time I’d finished my tea, all was calm again, I focused on packing all the goods for the weekend and the rest was done easily.

I took control of breathing, then my mind and The Law of Attraction did the rest.

The true philosophy of his work only becomes apparent as we age. Consider the pastime playing Pooh Sticks, which is a seemingly mindless game for a lazy summer day. If you are unfamiliar with this story, you need to find yourself a convenient river (preferably one as lazy as your summer day) with a bridge. Then you gather old twigs and, looking up stream, hang over the side of the bridge and drop the sticks into the river and watch them slowly disappear under the bridge.

If you are playing with a friend, then the child in you will run to the other side of the bridge to see whose stick came through first. We are so competitive! And then of course you run back and play the next round.

However, if in some way you have grown up (lots of people have grown up – it’s a biological thing, as against becoming an adult which is optional!) – you might just throw your sticks into the river and watch them disappear.

If you imagine that every stick is one of your troubles as you drop it, you can imagine it disappearing from your life as it slow slips under the bridge. You can just let your troubles float away. The river doesn’t care about your troubles and it is very happy to carry them away.

A word of warning – keep a tight rein on ‘your child’ and don’t let it go running to watch your troubles surfacing on the other side, as this negates the therapeutic effect of playing Pooh Sticks on a warm summer day.

Time once again for tea and a little philosophy of the Law of Attraction.   However, there is nothing deep and meaningful that has sprung to mind today, so you have something light and frothy instead.  Perhaps we should be having cappuccinos instead of tea?

The other day while doing some serious work, I had the Beatles playing on the stereo (loud, of course).  Now I bet you are thinking that I’m going to write about music and vibrations and how we have to align our vibrations with what we want.  Well, I wasn’t, but I can if you like, perhaps another time. 

It was just that I had a very nifty thought!  Their song ‘No Reply’ was playing and I thought – ‘they’ve got it all wrong’!  The Law of Attraction always replies.  There is always a ‘reply’ to every thought we think.  And I realised that Elvis has got it right – ‘Return to Sender’ – and whatever you think, does!

There are times when it seems as if life is rushing passed us and we get lost in swirls and twirls of frantic energy and feel we cannot cope. At times like these, the best way to get some perspective in life is to ask yourself ‘How do you eat an elephant?’

This might seem like a simple question to you, but being a family of ‘mostly’ vegetarians, it can be a little tricky to answer. After all, ‘How do you eat a soya bean plant?’ somehow does have the same impact, does it?

Well – how do you eat an elephant? A bite at a time. You move a sand dune one shovel at a time. You build a house one brick at a time.

Chunk down the stresses in your life. Chunk them down into groups of three. Do you know that a baboon can count up to three, So surely if an ape can, we can too. You will be able to look at life more calmly when it is in small chunks as it is easier to prioritize and regain control.

And that’s how you eat an elephant, the same way you live life: slowly, a bite at a time, savouring each morsel.

I’ve had a conundrum, which although is not directly about the Law of Attraction, it certainly does involve tea.

Have you ever been very sure of where you are going and have been happily travelling along that path with a destination in sight, albeit far down the line only to find out you’ve actually been looking about 10 degrees off? And that another destination is possibly the ‘right’ destination, after all?

Today, I realised that I had possibly been about 10 degrees off my mark. Now I realise this, it all seems so very obvious and how did I miss it in the first place, I ask myself? (I always ask myself the important questions in life, as I am the only one that gives me reasonable answers!)

So I started to think: were there two paths available to me in the first place? Did the second path only come into being because of the first? These are tough questions and ones that definitely need tea to help with the pondering.

Now I’m sure. The second path only came into being as a result of the first. It was sort of ‘shadowing’ the first. Without the first path, I might never have seen a second one, which now has the possibility of being the more ‘true’ path – at this time.

So in effect, the first path was not the ‘wrong’ path but it was absolutely essential for me to travel it, to be able to see the second path, lying so close beside it.

The moral of this story is, the things we want are often under our nose and we don’t notice.  So when you are  unsure, look around you, the answer might be there.

January has come and gone, almost without me noticing it (although it has been really cold!) And here it is February with the major event of the month being Valentine’s Day. So love is definitely in the air this month.

While I was chopping carrots the other day, listening to the radio, I heard a song about a man who was searching for a very special love, a love that could ‘turn bread into buttered toast’. I think being able to turn the ordinary ‘staff of life’ into something so delicious and satisfying as buttered toast, is alchemy. It takes the magic of a very special kind of love. It’s the kind of love we all dream about.

We all can create and attract this kind of love when we consciously use The Law of Attraction. By putting our own love and enjoyment into everything we do, every conversation we have, every carrot we chop and every slice of bread we toast, we are sending it out into the Universe, saying I am Love.

The trick to using this magic is, you have to live it first. If you are looking for someone whose eyes you can gaze into lovingly over buttered toast, you first have to be loving yourself. I mean, you have to feel happy and joyful about everything you are doing, even carrot chopping gets your vote of confidence; you have to ‘exude’ love from every pore. That is the magic that attracts more love. That is the alchemy that turns the ordinary into something special. That is the magic that can turn bread into buttered toast.

Remember, like attracts like. The moral of this story is if you want to attract buttered toast, you must first become buttered toast.
Happy ‘toasty’ Valentine’s Day.

I’m stumped. I’ve thought and thought about something to write for the momentous occasion of the New Year, the beginning of 2011. (Golly only 367 days to 2012; the year that has really cast the cat among the pigeons for many). I’ve been on the look-out for a suitable double-meaning phrase that I can turn to my advantage and found nothing! I’ve woken up each morning and thought ‘today it is my intention to find some every-day philosophy for the blog’ – and found nothing! I’ve asked for miracles and not noticed them coming!
I’ve started several; one about squirrels digging holes in the lawn looking for their forgotten treasures; another about living in the ‘in between’ – between Christmas and New Year. Thought about how we all eat too much at Christmas and then regret it afterwards, but still do it anyway. I’ve paged through books looking for just that one phrase that will trigger something, turning on the light bulb of inspiration. And still nothing. 

However, I was given several remarkable books at Christmas, one was ‘Positively Pooh – the Timeless Wisdom of Pooh’ (Bear – Winnie-the-Pooh by A A Milne). And there, in the last chapter of Pooh Philosophy is ‘Start with small talk to brighten up conversations’ – so I have done just that!
I hope you all have a wonderful new year. Be bold: dream dreams that surprise you. Let your imagination run free, hold your focus on the dreams and then settle down to bring them into your life.
See you next year.