What does paradise look like to you? Quick…
Write down an answer.
I will get back to you here shortly, and you will see why I
am having you do this now.
Have you given it some thought? Has it changed over the years?
Can you even define what that looks like?
When we explore the meaning of life and life purpose, many people
talk about wanting to find their paradise.
If the Jeopardy music played right now and you had to write
it down swiftly knowing this paradise wish could be granted and you can’t get a
‘do over’ – you might be conflicted with what answer you select… because you
are being asked to CHOOSE WISELY. It is
no longer just one wish granted, it’s your only wish granted.
By my asking you to describe your lifelong quest for whatever
that is, is it more than just a pat answer?
Truthfully, your answer and your ideal ‘paradise’ have
changed and transformed with time more than you realize from the age of say,
FIVE. Granted at FIVE… your ONE ANSWER would
not require you to bend or twist your mind.
You would not be hemming and hawing or getting a ‘thinking’ scowl on
your face trying to think hard.
As you think further about your paradise, your answer may
vary:
- For some of you, it might be defining and continuously redefining your labor of love and how you show up each day, and what you wake up for in life.
- For some of you, paradise might be the ‘ideal’ of how you define happiness a la Charles Schulz, “Happiness is _____________” (fill in the blank as you wish.)
- For others, it might be your own perceived idea of what paradise is based on how you were raised, or how you allowed the world to shape shift you into understanding how simple pleasures are in fact paradise to you.
- For some of you that may be pared down to the very basics you had as a child.
- For those of you dealing with facing mortality, your “paradise” may contain one simple request from your bucket list or your quest for just health, or joy, or love or inner peace.
The older you get, the more life
experience you have, you may discover that the paradigm of paradise will change
with greater self-awareness.
You may have thought I was picking your brain therefore that is the place from where you initially answered
my question.
However, you would be wrong in thinking that…. here is why…
Reality check - you
will not find the answer to your definition of paradise in your brain.
WHY NOT?
When you were a child, your brain was an open slate. It had all the potential, the possibility,
all that you could imagine, dream of and think of.
However, as an adult, that brain – that open field space
becomes cluttered. That’s right –
CLUTTERED with what you believe paradise to be.
Don’t believe me? Let
me give you the psychological and analytical perspective from the world of
advertising: If you are told paradise is
only defined by _______XYZ and have that repeated enough times, you are going
to adopt that belief.
Suddenly as a human, (because you want to fit in) you
believe your version of paradise has to look exactly like that brochure of what
you are told it looks like.
IF YOUR FAMILY said, “Ah, this is what paradise looks like” –
you believe them because you love them and think they know best of how to
define it…. so you say, “Oh, okay, that’s what it is supposed to look like.”
BUT IS IT YOUR TRUTH? If it is NOT your truth and only 'their truth' - then it's not pure.
Therefore your paradise or version of it is not authentically yours. Everyone else's influence becomes embedded in an ideal paradise, it does not belong to you as 100% yours.
Your paradise might be different, unconventional, non-traditional, weird even... and that's okay. It doesn't have to look like everyone else's. It doesn't have to match the ideal of what other people think it is just so they can say, "Oh yes, that sounds perfect."
WHY NOT? Your life is yours. Your journey is yours. So your paradise can be as uniquely different, because your journey is just that...yours. It need not fit some mold. There is no mold. YOU CREATE THE MOLD. Therefore, your paradise has to RESONATE with YOUR SOUL. That's where the passion is. That is where the real deal is.... INSIDE that SOUL.
Therefore your paradise or version of it is not authentically yours. Everyone else's influence becomes embedded in an ideal paradise, it does not belong to you as 100% yours.
Your paradise might be different, unconventional, non-traditional, weird even... and that's okay. It doesn't have to look like everyone else's. It doesn't have to match the ideal of what other people think it is just so they can say, "Oh yes, that sounds perfect."
WHY NOT? Your life is yours. Your journey is yours. So your paradise can be as uniquely different, because your journey is just that...yours. It need not fit some mold. There is no mold. YOU CREATE THE MOLD. Therefore, your paradise has to RESONATE with YOUR SOUL. That's where the passion is. That is where the real deal is.... INSIDE that SOUL.
Sure, your brain has formulated a construct, an idea, a vision
of what paradise looks like… maybe even so in the form where you can articulate
a canned answer for social convention in answer to this question.
Nevertheless, the brain clutter I speak of is a tainted/polluted
idea of paradise. It is not TRUTHFULLY YOUR PARADISE. You think it is… it sounds nice, but if we
were to tell your brain to bow out of it, and instead, not participate in this
exercise, what would that look like now?
This is how you may believe a lot of people can share the same vision and description of paradise - because all of the brains could be influenced from the same place... i.e. say a large family where all the kids in said family are told one thing and they all believe it.
Your LINK to PARADISE
resides in your heart and soul... the REAL STUFF.
So look at my question again… What does paradise look like to you?
Now consult your heart and soul – I guarantee you your
answer is going to look a heck of a lot different on paper than it did when you
only consulted your brain.
How is this so?
The heart and soul will take ‘preconditioned thinking’ out
of the equation.
When you ask a young child with a blank canvas mind and just
a pure heart and soul – what they desire, FOR REAL, they will give you pure,
honest, truth – no matter how that sounds because they are NOT AFRAID OF BEING
JUDGED.
They are not censored yet, nor told what they wish for is
_______ (ridiculous, unreasonable, impossible, stupid, silly, not practical, not
typical, weird, etc.)
It is not until later, the older a child sets foot on the fast
track to growing into the adult, and we imprison our minds into believing that
paradise is a destination SET WITHIN
PARAMETERS WHICH APPEAR ACCEPTABLE.
Here is your epiphany…PARADISE IS NOT A DESTINATION.
Constructing your JOURNEY NOW
(whatever that contains) is your road to said paradise to experience in the
here and now.
HOW is this true you ask?
CHECK THIS OUT – YOUR LINK OF CONNECTION
Being connected with your own life, your own journey right
now SHOULD feel like PARADISE.
If it is not, then there is some work to do. You need to get back on track with YOUR TRUTH.
This is where most people connect with me to do that work
and we go on a journey of deep excavation to erase those old tapes that
are NOT yours and examine what YOURS look like from your core being, not
influenced by others, NOR their expectations imposed upon you of what your
journey should look like. Stepping into who you really are without having to over compensate to make it okay to be you is a process.
It all starts with your being CONNECTED with yourself. Most of you have that. Part of why I did a video reminder is so you can be with 100% certainty of your own connection to your life.
It is human nature to go on auto-pilot. This is when we are actually disconnected. We don't take emotional 'time-outs' to feel things because we're busy. Sometimes that busyness unconsciously becomes a 'crutch' until we finally have the space to crash and then we have high stress or bad days that seem less manageable.
It is human nature to go on auto-pilot. This is when we are actually disconnected. We don't take emotional 'time-outs' to feel things because we're busy. Sometimes that busyness unconsciously becomes a 'crutch' until we finally have the space to crash and then we have high stress or bad days that seem less manageable.
IF that video did not make sense to you as to how this means
you have paradise right now - chances are it will make more sense to you
browsing some of my August blogs:
https://linkronicity.blogspot.com/2017/08/
and what you see to the right here in September.
You will understand how the JOURNEY LINKS TO DESTINY and how
the links are actually picked up along the way – what you choose to do with
your links is how you unfold them to become your definition of paradise.
Now you will see HOW the theory is applied – that your
paradise is with you already.
I have literally HANDED YOU YOUR
KEY TO PARADISE. Did you pick it up?
As you have seen from my personal experiences, paradise to
peace is a PROCESS.
It is not an ‘instant fix.’ This is not an immediate gratification fix all. Those who try to tell you that are yanking your chain.
Need a tangible example?
GRATITUDE is the only thing that can be immediate, but DEEP GRATITUDE comes from the trenches of appreciation knowing what the alternative looks like from a real place.
It is not an ‘instant fix.’ This is not an immediate gratification fix all. Those who try to tell you that are yanking your chain.
Need a tangible example?
GRATITUDE is the only thing that can be immediate, but DEEP GRATITUDE comes from the trenches of appreciation knowing what the alternative looks like from a real place.
I have picked up my paradise daily – bit by bit, challenge
by challenge, experience by experience, lesson learned through lesson learned, epiphany
through epiphany, movement through life changes, which in turn is a ripple
effect of change including my own transformation along said journey.
Some of this paradise was picked up during journey in the
moment, some of it in hindsight 20/20 with reflection when it LINKED to other experiences,
which repeated to show me. I
demonstrated this to show YOU – your journey connects to itself the same way,
YOUR PARADISE IS WOVEN INTO YOUR JOURNEY
YOUR JOURNEY CONTAINS THE DESTINATION OF PARADISE NOW.
This is why Linkronicity – Where Your Journey & Destiny
Link ™
is not just my tagline… it’s TRUTH.
What I have been trying convey most in being real and raw
sharing with you is for you to see that through every challenge you face every
obstacle you overcome toward a personal milestone in experience….YOUR DESTINY
IS KNITTED TOGETHER in every moment.
This is HOW/WHY I can say, paradise is not a destination…. It
is peppered in moments along your journey, along your epiphanies and
revelations, within every self-discovered moment where you take your culminated
LINKS and link them together in your life chain.
What does paradise look like to you NOW?
For those of you ‘waiting’ for ________ to happen, please don’t
misunderstand me when I say that hey, we humans all have hope, we humans all
have big-picture goals and dreams, but at the end of the day you have to have
what you ‘need’ right now, nothing more, nothing less than what you can handle. However, on some days it may appear to be
more overwhelming or underwhelming depending on your expectations or what you are confronted with in the moment.
Some of you might argue
with me if you are presently enduring hardship, illness, grief, or loss. Hey, I SEE YOU. You have 100% of my empathy and compassion right now – I GET
IT, I know where you are because I’ve been there myself.
Though I can tell you
– I found paradise in those moments because that is where hope, faith and
belief reside, hanging on and in, survival and where the real character
building is… and without it, you cannot begin to appreciate paradise as it FINDS
you (and it will).
Our own paradise is created when we go through the tough stuff. The tough obstacles in life breed greater love, greater hope, and believe it or not, greater peace because of all that we had to fight hard for. You've probably heard a million times from people who come out the other side of things have greater happiness and peace, because they are grateful for enduring what they have to KNOW and APPRECIATE PARADISE when they discover it WITHIN.
Whatever happens from here needs to be examined as a “life enhancement” --- glitter, icing, pick your sparkly additive, particularly if you have walked through fire already. Then you are ready to share your paradise in a healthy fashion with others from a real place, not a manufactured one.Authenticity is key... that is what makes paradise REAL.
Whatever happens from here needs to be examined as a “life enhancement” --- glitter, icing, pick your sparkly additive, particularly if you have walked through fire already. Then you are ready to share your paradise in a healthy fashion with others from a real place, not a manufactured one.Authenticity is key... that is what makes paradise REAL.
However, what if I told you that NO TWO PARADISE
descriptions are exactly alike from the
heart and soul unless it's a shared vision you create together from the same soul space? Where is that soul space?
G - R - A - T- I - T - U - D - E. We already have abundance. Many of us are very lucky with our most fundamental basic needs met. Wants are part of the dream list... and that is what keeps humans going and thriving. Sure, dreams can be part of your paradise, too - but the fundamentals are paradise from the foundation level. Without the foundation, you cannot build further a greater paradise if that is what you seek. One of those fundamentals lies within gratitude, appreciation, respect... these are CORE paradise basics because there is so much JOY within it... how can you not feel like you have paradise if you already have that? Am I right? This is what many take for granted.
Gratitude for where you sit, is not just a humbling experience;
it is a necessary experience to shape you to appreciate where you are right
now. For anyone who has fallen off the planet or radar for awhile, or had to resurrect - you get what I am talking about.
WHY? So that when your
human is finally met with glitter, icing, said sparkly additive from the human
wish list (big dreams, human wishes/pining desires, fantasies-to-become-reality), there is a deeper appreciation to enjoy, cherish, and fully immerse
yourself into whatever it is you are waiting for to happen. But meanwhile, you have paradise now... the one you create as you go along your journey.
OUR LIVES ARE NOT A CHECK LIST even if our dreams are, right?
Your human may make a list, and yes, I may ask you to make
one, just so your human can feel pacified or satisfied with doing this and your brain can quiet down.
However, your SOUL knows better— your soul and your heart
understand that the list is merely a list.
Your SOUL knows there is something far greater and bigger
than that list.
Still with me?
If this is starting to make sense to you, guess what? You are already on your road to paradise, or you have already discovered it - but didn't realize you've arrived.
- Your heart and soul have passion, truth, conviction, and knowledge of what matters.
- When you find truth in your heart, peace finds you!
- When you find peace within, love finds you.
- When you find love in your soul, your belief thrives and all doubt is gone.
- When all doubt is gone, paradise has found you… because it is something you are no longer seeking… IT JUST IS.
So where are you in this equation now?
This is where everything else is just glitter, because you
have everything from the core being of being YOU and not dependent upon
anything to define you, for you have been able to do that for yourself already.
Anything else that comes into the mix is a paradise bonus, which can further enhance your ideal paradise that already exists. Then that is magnification of pulling in mirrors of what is the TRUTH inside your heart and soul, not solely just your brain.
Anything else that comes into the mix is a paradise bonus, which can further enhance your ideal paradise that already exists. Then that is magnification of pulling in mirrors of what is the TRUTH inside your heart and soul, not solely just your brain.
See how this works?
Take a look at the components… see what is missing. If you see something missing, then you know
where you need to start. Moreover, if
you need help, you know you are not alone…
I will help you LINK to your paradise and show you what is in front of
you now so you have something to work with to take on the rest of this glorious
expedition called LIFE in paradise.
Namaste.
