Angel in Disguise

Have you met an angel?

No, I am not joking.  This is a serious question.

The word "angel" derives from the Greek word "angelos", which means "messenger".  Typically, a messenger from God.  Or, if you prefer, a messenger from the Universe.  One who comes to tell us how we can play our rightful part in the Universal plan, and also how to become open to the good things God, or the Universe, wants to let us have.

Personally I believe in spiritual beings who are "personal angels", just as I believe in a spiritual being who is my "personal God".  But this is really only one small aspect of the concept of an angel, and you do not need to believe in angels as spiritual beings in order to gain enormous benefits through your interaction with angels.

An angel can easily be your next door neighbour.  A work colleague.  A relative.  A close personal friend.  If this person gives you a message from God or from the Universe, even if they do not realize they are giving you this message, then they are most certainly an angel.  An angel in disguise.  An angel who does not even realize he or she is an angel.  An angel who is flesh and blood just like you and me.

Let me answer the question I asked you.  No matter what you think I can assure you that you HAVE met an angel.  Not just one, but many angels.  And you will meet many more.  The angels you have met have probably always been in disguise, so perhaps you have not recognized them.  They have carried messages to you, but either you have not heard the message or, if you heard it, you have rejected it as nonsense.

Do you know the story of the time Abraham and Sarah met with angels?  Those angels promised them that Sarah would have a baby.  This was difficult for Abraham and Sarah to believe, as he was 99 and she was 90.  Imagine that - conceiving and giving birth at the age of 90!  But it happened anyway.

Although they found the message difficult to believe, at least Abraham and Sarah heard the message and knew it was from God.  And what had been promised happened 9 months later when Sarah gave birth to their son Isaac.

Maybe you believe this story from Genesis 18, or maybe you do not.  But whether or not you believe it, know for certain that angels are constantly giving you messages, all of them about very good things and all of them true.  Usually you need to be receptive to those messages in order to receive those good things from the Universe.  If you fail to hear the message, or refuse to believe it, then it is unlikely you will be able to receive the blessings God, or the Universe, really wants to give you.

Be more open.  Be more ready to receive the messages the Universe is constantly sending you.  Change your state in this way and you will be amazed at the way your life can change for the better.

Everyone on earth performs as an angel many times during their lifetime.  Again, usually without realizing that is what they are doing.  So if you feed someone who is hungry, clothe someone who is naked, visit someone who is in prison, you are doing those good things for an angel, a messenger from God.  And the Universe sees this and will bless you even more for doing it.

Finally, if everyone on earth performs as an angel many times, clearly that means that you too are an angel.  You are an angel in disguise.  You carry messages from God to those around you whether or not you realize you are doing so.  If you recognize this is happening, then you can tune yourself more clearly so those messages come through more strongly and so even more messages come through.  Just like tuning a radio properly so there is a clearer signal.  Become more in tune with the Universe, more in tune with your purpose in life and you will find not only are you helping those around you far more than you may have thought possible, but also you are becoming far more receptive to all the good the Universe wishes to give you.  This is perhaps one of the most important secrets of Manifestation, so learn it well!

Reason for Being

Why am I here?

That is a question most of us ask ourselves at least once in our lives.  Actually, I hope it is a lot more than once, because when you ask a question often enough you usually get an answer, and the answer to this question is probably the most important answer you will ever get.

The Japanese call the answer to this question "Ikigai" - the reason for being.  In Okinawa people say that "ikigai" is the reason for getting up in the morning, which I feel is a very good way to think of it.

The answer to the question will change over time.  It is meant to.  Your purpose in life will vary according to many different factors, a lot of which are changing all the time.  The very core of the answer may be the same throughout your life, but the detailed way in which it is expressed will change.

For example, your answer may be "to make the world a better place".  A great answer!  But if you want to create a plan of what to do, it is probably not very helpful.  It is great as a spirit level to check the correctness of something you plan to do, but not actually to generate the idea in the first place.  You therefore need to dig deeper.

One good way of digging deeper, and finding your own true reason for living, is to create a series of 4 lists.  These should be headed as follows:

1 What do I love?

2 What am I good at?

3 What does the world need?

4 What can I be paid for?

Produce the lists in that order.

When you are producing each list, be as open as you possibly can be.  Write down all the ideas that come to you even if they seem silly.  Make sure the list is as long as you can make it.

The first half dozen ideas should be very easy and should come very quickly.  The next dozen or so probably won't come so quickly but should still not be too difficult.  But don't stop there.  Keep going.  You may find after you have produced a list of 20 you struggle to find any more.  Or perhaps that will happen when you get to 30.  Or maybe it happened even earlier at 10 or 15.  This will be different for each list and different for each person.  If you are an athlete you will know what I mean when I say you have reached "the wall".  You have got to that place where it seems impossible to go any further.  And it is by crossing that wall that an athlete really gets into the zone and goes on to win.  So cross the wall - spend time digging deep, as you may well find that the ideas that come up the other side of the wall are the most fruitful.

Produce all 4 lists in this way, but it is actually the first 2 that are key.  Three and four are vital, but you may find once you have produced one and two you can fill in three and four from ideas in one and two.

Take the first two lists, "What do I Love?" and "What am I Good at", and try to find items that are on both lists.  If you spent enough time and crossed the wall for both lists you will find a large number that are on both.  While you are doing this you are also allowed to cheat.  By this, I mean if you see an item on one list and cannot find it on the other, but feel instinctively it belongs there, then add it!

You are now going to create more lists.  Sorry about all these lists, but it is really important!  The first of these new lists is headed "Passion".  On your "Passion" list, write down everything that you have just identified are in lists one and two.

Now take lists 1 "What do I Love?" and 3 "What does the World Need?" and find any shared items on both these lists.  Copy these into a new list headed "Mission".

So, you now have a number of things that you love and that you are good at, which are all your passions, and a number of things you love and you believe the world needs, which are your missions.

Take list 2 now, "What am I good at?", and compare it with list 4 "What can I be paid for?".  Copy these into a new list, headed "Profession".

Then take list 3, "What does the world need?", and compare it with list 4 "What can I be paid for?".  Copy these into a new list, headed "Vocation".

Now you have 4 new lists:

a Passion

b Mission

c Profession

d Vocation

Look at all four of the new lists.  What items are on all 4?  Write each of these on a list headed "Reason for Being".

Some of the items that have ended up on "Reason for Being" may well surprise you.  You may never have thought of putting effort into them, but this "Reason for Being" exercise has highlighted them as very important.

What you do with this list is up to you.  Maybe it will prompt you to start a new career or a new business.  Maybe you will start a new hobby that ends up giving you some "pocket money".  Perhaps you will not make any radical changes but just slightly modify what you do and how you do it.  You may meditate, focussing on your "Reason for Being" list and see what arises from your meditation session.

I cannot promise you will suddenly make loads more money, or feel much more needed, or completely change your career.  But I can promise you that in one way or another you will change, subtly perhaps or maybe quite obviously, and that you will be better as a result.  And once you have performed this exercise, don't think the job is now done and never need be done again.  As I said at the outset, things change over time, and this "Reason for Being" process can be very valuably repeated many times over your life.

Why You Need a Life Coach

Why do you need a life coach?  What does a life coach actually do?

Many people completely misunderstand the main purposes of a coach, and how the right coach can really help them achieve whatever it is they want to achieve.

First and foremost, a coach is not there to tell you what to do.  A good coach knows it is important for YOU to realize what you need to do.  At the stage where you are working out what to do, the coach will help you discover from inside yourself what it is you really want to do.

You may well think that is an unneccesary step.  After all, you already know what you want to achieve, don't you?

Well I would suggest you probably don't yet.  In earlier posts I have gone into great depth about ways to unearth your true desires.  You may now realize that very often (in fact, I would go as far as to say in most cases) what you initially think you want to achieve does not properly reflect your true inner desires.  As long as you are striving for something that is not fully aligned with your true inner desires it is like trying to swim or paddle against a very strong tide - maybe you will eventually get there, but only after a great deal of immensely hard struggle.  And when you DO get there you don't feel as satisfied as you ought to, as you haven't achieved what you really wanted anyway.

A good coach will therefore start with that.  What exactly is it that you want to achieve?  Is it truly aligned with your inner desires?  Each coach will have quite different ways of doing this, and often you will not even realize this is what they are doing, but the end result is the same: you recognize what you really want to achieve.

Even if this was all a coach did for you it would be well worth the time and money invested.  But for most coaches this is just the first step.

In order to get from where you are to where you want to be you have to take some action.  Yes, the Universe wants you to get there, and will provide an enormous amount of help for you to get there, but first you have to take action yourself.  What action?  Well here is where a good coach will help you take the next steps.  The coach will work with you to help you identify where you are starting from and what steps you need to take in order to move in the right direction.  It is not the case, though, that the coach will have a pre-prepared plan and simply give you that plan to follow.  Everyone has a slightly different goal from everyone else, even if the goals look quite similar, and everyone is starting from a different place.  By this, I don't just mean your own personal circumstances, albeit those circumstances are certainly extremely important.  But I also mean your state of mind, the strength of your desires, the spiritual strength you have.  What the coach will do is work with you to help you identify all these key factors so you start moving in the right direction.

Finally, but just as important as all the earlier steps, your coach will be there with you in spirit on your journey.  He or she will help you stay focussed, help you negotiate the many unexpected obstacles you will undoubtedly find along the way, help you prime yourself with the right motivation to continue that journey even when you may despair of ever reaching the goal you have defined.  The coach will be someone who will make you accountable.  We all need to be accountable to someone, even if that someone is just ourselves.  But having a coach makes it much less likely you will give up along the way and forget to be accountable.

I hope this article has helped you recognize the value a good coach can add to anyone's life.  Perhaps it has also made you recognize that you, too, could become a good coach and earn a very good living by helping others achieve their goals.  Let me know if this is the case and I will be happy to put you in touch with someone who can help you do exactly that!  Or try this page:

https://www.betterhelp.com/

Limitless

No, this is not a blog about the 2011 film, or the follow-up 2015 television series.

I guess, though you could say those fictional entertainments share one thing with what I am about to say.  That is that none of us is using even a fraction of the power we have within us.

I am not talking about the unused fraction of our brains though, a fraction that is often stated to be nine tenths.  Particularly because most scientists would completely disagree that we only use 10% of our brain.  Those scientists say that we do actually use all of our brain, but that there is a lot of deliberate redundancy there.  So, depending on exactly where in the brain you do this, you may be able to cut out one part of the brain and still not lose any mental capacity.

I am not talking about the brain, which is physical, but I AM talking about the mind, which is not physical.  Some believe the mind is entirely based in the brain and is simply our experience of electrical activity in the brain.  I do not believe this.  I believe our mind is a spark of the Divine mind.  The power of the entire universe is within the mind.  It would be difficult to imagine this if the mind were simply electrical activity in the brain, as there would be clear physical limits.  If you believe you have no soul and when this life is extinguished so are you, then you may continue to believe that your mind is contained within the brain, and is in fact just a reflection of the electrical impulses passing through the brain.  But if, like me, you believe there is more to life than this, then you also believe that some part of you, whether you call it your mind, your soul, your spirit, or all three, is not constrained by the physical limits of the brain.  It is no big step from that belief to a belief that there is a Universal mind, which is limitless.

Jung touched on this a little when he wrote about the collective unconscious.  Our conscious mind is only the surface of a vast unconscious mind.  The conscious mind seems to be individual and separate, but the collective unconscious is what it says - collective.  It belongs to all of us.  Within it are "archetytpes", or universal symbols we all recognize and to which we all react in a similar way.  In some societies those archetypes are expressed as the gods, with a lower case "g".  Followers of the monotheist semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) either do not believe in these "gods", or believe they are evil, but this is really a misunderstanding of what they really are - archetypes.

Think of this collective unconscious as an ocean.  You can dive deeper and deeper in this ocean.  The deeper you dive the wider you find it becomes.  At shallower depths it may encompass only the unconscious mind of one part of mankind, but as you go deeper it includes the unconscious mind of the entire human race throughout the whole of time.  Eventually, if you were able to keep diving, you would find yourself face to face with God, not "gods".  Because in its entirety it IS God.

I have used the word God here, but if you prefer you can call it the Universe.  It is the collective unconscious of the Universe.  The entire power of the Universe is here.  And "here" is the depths of your unconscious mind.

Intellectually this is not something you can "know".  There is no scientific proof I can give you, because this kind of thinking is not subject to scientific proof.  You can neither prove this to be right nor to be wrong.  But it is something you can intuitively know.  Not through study, but just through convincement.  It is something that you will just "know" when you are ready for that knowledge.  An article such as this may bring you to that state, not through logical analysis, but rather as a catalyst.

When you know that the entire power of the Universe is deep within your mind (your mind, not your brain!) you will also know that you really are limitless.  Not like Eddie Morra in the film "Limitless"; despite the title he was still limited to a degree.  But the power of the Universe has no limits at all.  The Universe is limitless - and so are you!