Dear friends,

I want to start this month's newsletter with a quote:

For me this quote sums up why it is that so many people feel emptiness in their lives.  We put off playing our song and what we really want because we think we need to keep tuning our instrument.  We hold on to security, to our things, to money and possessions, and we pursue more and more 'stuff' because we are told that is what brings us fulfilment.  But is that really true?  How much money is enough?  How many cars will satisfy?  How many houses do you need to live in?  Too many people are reaching the point of having everything they could want (being in a place of having what they think is a perfectly tuned instrument), but yet they are still unfulfilled.&n! bsp; They may even be playing a song, but it is not the song they came to play.  Society has so many ways of keeping us on this endless treadmill.  It is locked into a model of consumer accumulation, into a belief that getting more 'stuff' is what will eventually bring satisfaction.  But for so many, this is like constantly restringing your instrument (as if it is somehow faulty) but never actually playing it.  We have all said it and done it – this used to be how I lived my whole life:

Even now I still struggle, but I have learned to follow my heart – left the job I hated to do what I love, and married the girl! Still I am amazed at how things that I thought were barriers just melted away – often in ways that I never could have imagined. 

We hold on to things that we think we know for dear life, because we are afraid of the unknown, of what may happen, of what others will think, and of getting hurt.  And ultimately what we are afraid of is our own death.  The problem is, we are taught not to actually sit with that fear and be with it – and we have invented all sorts of ways of avoiding our feelings and distracting ourselves.  That clinging to security covers the instrument that is our heart and what it dares us to be. When we don't actually face the pain that this causes us, it leaves us empty, because we have not had the 'faith' to let go and leap into the unknown and be who we really are underneath all the layers of 'tuning' that we cling onto.  

Can you really imagine someone like Christopher Columbus deciding to put off his voyages because he didn't have a map and know the way, or because he didn't know if he would fall off the edge of what everyone believed was a 'flat earth'? 

People like Columbus, Picasso, Mandela, Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed, or maybe even your mum or dad or your friend down the street – they all lived extraordinary lives that touched others profoundly because they made friends with the darkness of the unknown and their fears about themselves. They gave their gift, however big or small, even when the road ahead was blind, feeling their truth and living it in each and every precious moment regardless of what their fear urged them to do.

And this is the point - when we allow ourselves to fully feel our feelings, even our deepest darkest fears, we are then befriending them, which is often the key to letting them go.  At this point, they begin to lose their hold over us and we are free to play the perfect, unique song that is in our hearts, and which was always there from the beginning!

Don't misunderstand me – I am not saying that having things, status or titles is wrong in any way, just that there is a danger that when we latch on to anything external as a way of making ourselves worthy (or tuned), we are in danger of covering who we are and what we really want.  Even then though, this can be entirely appropriate to helping us see our real essence – after all, would we know what a tuned instrument sounded like without having experienced the 'screeches' of an un-tuned instrument?  The irony is that when we choose to be ourselves first, and act in alignment with that, we will still have the material abundance, but it will flow more effortlessly to us, as the entire universe conspires to give us what we really want.     

So for me, fulfilment and completion c! ome simply from serving who you really are and allowing the fullest expression of what you feel moved to do in your heart in each and every moment, irrespective of whatever 'stringing and restringing' you think you need:

I want to dare you to serve the deepest and fullest truth of your heart – are you doing it right now? 

Does this message inspire or ire?  Would be happy to hear your comments or feelings - drop me a line at:

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With love,

 

John.

©John El-Mokadem 2006 - All Rights Reserved.