Trusting Your Life to Unfold Perfectly | The Ultimate Spiritual Act

Trust your life to unfold perfectly by Martha Beck is the final segment in Getting your life back on track from Oprah's Spirit Newsletter.  Sign up for it people.

She is the best female coach I have ever encountered; super smart, down-to-earth, incisive, insightful and funny. I love people like that.

Trust and letting go

You can achieve non-attachment by letting go and having faith that that which you yearn for will be fulfilled. It does not mean becoming a martyr and sighing and boring everyone to tears because what you want isn't coming to pass. Believe that what you want will happen.

Most of us were taught that in order to get something we have to "work hard". It is important to recognise therefore that the mental focus and doing what you can to bring you towards your goal, no matter how small, is part of the proces.

Martha says that if we can master letting go and trust in the process, amazing and seemingly miraculous things occur to fulfill our soul's desires.

Learning to see with new eyes

But what happens when we can't trust anymore. With all the hard knocks in life, we become wary and untrusting and usually expect the worst. And when fortune smiles on us, we reject it out of hand.

Because we're coming from a place that cannot see it for what it is or dare not trust what our eyes tell us. We fall back on our doubting, suspicious minds.

Blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams and Ms Beck proposes two exercises to get back us back on the trusting train.

Re-learning trust in the process

Exercise 1: choose something that you know will come true; make sure it's coming from deep within and that it's something simple that you like and want - like flowers or music.

Then deliberately trust that this desire will be fulfilled. Don't spend time thinking about it; just let it go and act as if you already have it. Your trust will be rewarded.

I know it seems silly and you can't figure it out. But you see, when a desire comes from your core, it's a soul desire and it's real. Your subconscious mind knows this and will act to bring you what you desire by the quickest means possible.

Exercise 2: Make a list of every desire you have ever had in the past which was realised. Then try to remember how each of them happened whether by luck, coincidence, the generosity of others, an idea from out of the blue, and so on.

When you through with the list, you will have the proof that your life has been linked to a chain of miraculous delights which you never noticed before.

So what are you waiting for? Go get your life back on track and live it to the hilt!

Here are the three previous posts in this series: Become a well of stillness, Find your inner strength and get free, and Feeling your soul's desires.

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Feeling Your Soul's Desire and Having Yearnings Fulfilled

And here I am again with step 3 Feel Your Soul's Desires from Martha Beck's "Taking Your Life Back". This step is primordial and was key to getting my life back on track.

It felt like returning home to a warm, loving embrace that I hadn't experienced in so long that I'd forgotten about it and now that I'm back, I don't want to leave again.

I hope it's the same for you as well. I strongly advise that you complete the exercise at the bottom of this post.

So, why do we expect so much from others? How could anyone possibly know what we want when we don't express it in clear, unambiguous terms.

People are not mind readers yet there is this constant dissatisfaction when non-verbalized, unspecified needs aren't met.

We don't really know what we want, Beck says. We know that something's missing but we don't know what it is. We're seeking...

The obstacles to our progress are our minds which function within the narrow confines programmed by our families and cultures from the cradle. The soul tells us what we want and need, the mind tells us what we think we need.

At this stage, it is time to clarify and specify our soul's needs and stop listening to our obsessive minds. She puts it like this:

The soul knows I want freedom from worry, the mind thinks I want to win the lottery. 

The soul says I want to feel connected with all things, the mind translates  I need the perfect, romantic soul mate to make me feel connected.

Become still and go within to the silence. There we can feel the deep, abiding passion and conviction of the soul's desire. The mind's needs tend to feel frantic, panicked and grasping.

When you feel this way, breathe deeply a few times  to centre yourself, then let go deep enter your well of stillness to identify what your soul truly desires.

One way to identify your soul's desires

Get a sheet of paper and at the top, write Things I want. Fill the page with everything you want: a better job, to be size 6, win the lottery, etc. When you're finished get a new sheet of paper.

At the top, write Things I yearn for and start writing. When you're finished compare the two lists. Martha says you will find that what appears on this list is completely different from the Things I want list; that was created by your mind.

The logical mind wants a car because – we yearn for freedom and mobility; we want hot sex because – we yearn for intimacy; we want to be beautiful because – we yearn for acceptance.

You need to get clear on one thing: the needs of soul or Inner Being is always right.

Don't get caught up in how your yearnings will be fulfilled. Accept them for what they are for now and relax. Whatever you try in your current mindset probably won't work... because cars, sex and beauty don't automatically lead to freedom, intimacy and acceptance. 

Allow yourself to be comfortable with not knowing and the more you let go of the "how", the faster your deepest desires will come to you, and they will. It seems like magic but it is very natural indeed.

I'm having some amazing experiences from following Martha Beck's advice; they are incredibly satisfying.

Now go to it people and then continue with the last in the 4-part series, Trust your life to unfold perfectly.


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Find Your Inner Strength and Get Free

This is Martha Beck's second of four articles on Getting your life back on track, Know the Truth.

In truth, no pun intended, it's all about conquering your fear in order to begin the healing process and become who you are. Inner strength can only be found on the inside.

What is your truth and why is it necessary to face it, own it and express it? Martha says it represents freedom and I'm sure many of you can relate to that, scary though it sounds. It's important to accept one's self.

It doesn't matter how uncomfortable you feel you know, just the fact of saying "I am responsible for ..." lifts a weight off your shoulder and starts a positive change reaction in your life.

I had just such an experience which I describe in Schlepping to the well of stillness.

Hidden truths cement negative situations.

How often have you lied just to keep the peace, remained silent when someone was cruel, or said that you were okay in a particular situation when in fact you were not?

Making others feel alright when you are not is the worst of lies. Don't you think it's time you stopped and owned up to your feelings?

Truth is always scary.

Change feels scary too and yet, only good comes from both but you won't know until you take that first step. Open up to the truths that are affecting your life.

Were you an abused child; are you nurturing a long-held grudge against someone; do you suspect your spouse is being unfaithful but you're afraid to bring it up? Whatever it is, let it out!

Go within - to your well of stillness.

Being quiet is the only way to get to the real heart of the matter. When you're there write down these statements and complete them honestly:

1. What I really don't want to know is that ...
2. I'm avoiding looking at the fact that ...
3. The absolute bottom line truth about my life is...
4. The thing I'm avoiding thinking about is...

The feelings are going to rise, your heart is going to hurt and the tears are going to fall and you're going to feel like running away; don't.

Stay with the feelings in the stillness; they will peak then gently fade away. The cleansing and the feeling of peace at the end is amazing.



So end's Martha's wisdom. It is all about you honey, no one else. You'll soon be tapping into an inner strength you didn't know you had!

See the truth of your life with an honest eye.

Here's step 3, Feeling your soul's desires.

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Becoming A Well of Stillness: Go Within and Let Go

I have just finished reading Martha Beck's article Your best life is waiting in Oprah's Spirit Newsletter.

She is so smart, down-to-earth and funny, I gobble up everything she writes.

Her article covers a theme close to my heart reconnecting to self and getting your life back on track. She covers this in 4 steps:

• becoming still

• know the "truth"

• feel your soul's desires, and

• trust your life to unfold perfectly.

Going within and becoming still

Let's talk about the first step. Why is becoming still or going within so important? Because we can't hear ourselves think, feel, need and yearn for our true heart's desires with all the noise around us

Martha Beck says that a lot of us try to flee ourselves by doing busy work or talk, talk, talking in order not to be alone with silence or with ourselves. Our biggest hurdle to reconnecting with self is our emotions.

 
Become the observer, go within to your well of stillness, and let go.

None of us want to feel things which make us uncomfortable. But Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth advises that we do exactly that. Let those feelings out. Don't hang onto them.  Step back and become the observer.

Watch those painful feelings rise, expand and then gradually fade away into nothingness: they will if you let them be. It feels so great to let that garbage go!

I experience this when I meditate or just sit or lie somewhere quietly for twenty minutes or so. That is what I call my "well of stillness".

Martha Beck has a wonderful visualization technique to guide you inward and it's worth trying. It's in the same article under the heading Get Still.

Feel free to go on to step two, find your inner strength (know your truth).

In closing, I'll leave you with this very apt quote from Mother Teresa.

We need to find god, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence … We need silence to be able to touch souls.

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