Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world; but to change ourselves.
-Mahatma Ghandi
Always do your best is about the action of the first three agreements. It is the one that allows the other three to become deeply ingrained habits.
Always do your best has nothing to do with being perfect or being the best. It is about fully honouring your life in every moment.
The following passage offers a way of looking at what it means to fully honour your life in every moment. As you hear the words, feel free to substitute the word God with whatever word resonates the deepest with you (energy, source, breath). Remember the actual words are secondary, the essence or feeling they evoke are primary.
God is life. God is life in action. The best way to say, “I love you, God,” is to live your life doing your best. The best way to say, “Thank you, God,” is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now.
You were born with the right to be happy. You were born with the right to love, to enjoy and to share your love. You are alive, so take your life and enjoy it. Don’t resist life passing through you, because that is God passing through you. Just your existence proves the existence of God. Your existence proves the existence of life and energy.
Your own body is a manifestation of God, and if you honour your body everything will change for you. When you practice giving love to every part of your body, you plant seeds of love in your mind, and when they grow, you will love, honour, and respect your body immensely. Every action, every thought, every emotion then becomes a communion with God.
-don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
"I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through. Listen to this music.
- Sufi poet, Hafiz
AWAKENED DOING
Eckhart Tolle’s teachings around the principal of awakened doing align beautifully with the fourth agreement, always do your best. As we have learned, doing your best really means honouring your life in every moment, which means to align your self to the highest form of life energy in all moments, or as Hafiz so eloquently says, to be the hole in which Chirst’s breath moves through to make beautiful music.
“There are three ways in which consciousness can flow into what you do and thus through you into this world, three modalities in which you can align your life with the creative power of the universe. Modality means the underlying energy frequency that flows into what you do and connects your actions with the awakened consciousness that is emerging into this world. What you do will be dysfunctional and of the ego, unless it arises out of one of these three modalities. They may change during the course of a day, although one of them may be dominant during a certain stage in your life.
Each modality is appropriate to certain situations. The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. Each one represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness. You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever you are engaged in doing anything at all–from the most simple task to the most complex. If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.”
“The three modalities of awakened doing are ACCEPTANCE, ENJOYMENT, and ENTHUSIASM”.
Acceptance
“Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can’t argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer. Through allowing, you become what you are: vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.
Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. That peace is a subtle energy vibration which then flows into what you do.
If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do – stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing you can really take responsibility for, which also happens to be one thing that really matters: your state of consciousness.”
Enjoyment
“Joy is the dynamic aspect of Being. When the creative power of the universe becomes conscious of itself, it manifests as joy.
When you make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do – and with it the quality of your life – increases dramatically.
Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you. To be more precise, what you are enjoying is not really the outward action but the inner dimension of consciousness that flows into the action. This is finding the joy of Being in what you are doing.“
Enthusiasm
“Enthusiasm means there is deep enjoyment in what you do plus the added element of a goal or a vision that you work toward.
Through enthusiasm you enter into full alignment with the outgoing creative principle of the universe, but without identifying with its creations, that is to say, without ego.
Sustained enthusiasm brings into existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do then is ‘ride the wave.”
- Eckhart Tolle, “A New Earth”
YOU HAVE BEEN CALLED
“We are the ones we have been waiting for.” - Hopi Wisdom
The world needs more dreamers, artists, peacekeepers and awakeners. More change-makers, creators, poets, and remembers. More visionaries, healers, shamans, and believers.
The world is ready for more empowered, self-assured, potent women. And men who support Her rising. More women who trust their intuition without waver. More women who believe in their own medicine and share it freely. More women who own their power, know their worth and do not dim according to who walks by. More women who aren’t afraid to show the world who they really truly are - no matter how magnificent or inconvenient. More women who recognize that we are all on the same team. More women who understand the true meaning of sisterhood.
Wise women, wild women, boisterous women, fierce women, idealistic women, Priestess women, medicine women, healing women, stubborn women, expressive women, ‘too much’ women, unapologetic women, compassionate women, courageous women, encouraging women, opinionated women, confident women, self-assured women, radiant women.
The world is crying out for more mothers - of the Earth, of the unfortunate, of the unprotected, but mostly of themselves. More mothers regardless of birth and babies.
More nature-walkers. More ocean-swimmers. More bridges-of-the-worlds. More spinners-of-time-and-space. More weavers of the whispers of the ancients and the concerns of our antecedents. More ceremonies. More ritual. More truth. More meaning.
More women knowing - in their bones and their hearts and their souls- that it is possible to heal this wonderful planet by first healing ourselves. More women remembering that they chose to be here at this time. More women finding the courage to rise.
Rise Sister Rise
How are you being called to rise?
- From “Rise Sister Rise” by Rebecca Campbell