Your Goals

I suspect that you already have an innermost goal and at least a rough idea of how to achieve it. It does not really matter though if you cannot yet see how to make your dream a reality. If you have the will a way will present itself. The important thing is to define your innermost desire and acquire the will to have and act with intent. Intention transforms desire into a concrete goal. Without intention a desire can never be fulfilled. First of all however, you have to be distinctly aware of what you want in life. Obscure wording such as “I want to be rich and happy” will not work. Imagine that you are strolling around town without any particular purpose. You are simply wandering wherever your nose takes you. Where you will end up no-one can say, but if you have somewhere specific in mind, you will eventually end up there, even if you do not know the way. It is the same in life: if you have no goal, you are a paper boat in a raging river. If you have set a goal and are striving towards it, you might achieve it, or you might not… The only one hundred percent guarantee of reaching a goal is if it really is your own innermost goal and you head towards it through your door. No-one and nothing can stop you then because the heart’s fraile key fits the lock to your path perfectly. No-can can take anything from you that is truly yours so there will be no problem in achieving your goal. The only issue is how to find your real goal and your real door. Firstly, your goal cannot be determined by a temporary need. Your goal should be the answer to the question: what do you want most out of life? What will make your life happy and joyful? This is all that matters. You can consider anything else to be pendulum husks. Settle on one main goal. Achieve that goal and the fulfilment of all your others desires will follow on behind. If nothing specific comes to mind, you start by defining a general type of general goal such as comfort and wellbeing in life. Ask yourself what comfort and wellbeing mean to you personally. The need for a house, a car, beautiful clothes and other attributes can be replaced with the single goal to have a high-paying job, but as you know this would not be a goal so much as a door, and a fairly vague one at that. A high-paying job can be replaced by a more specific expression of the goal: to become an excellent or even unique specialist in your field. What is your heart drawn to? The question is whether this job alone will bring complete meaning to your life. If it can then you are lucky because your goal matches your door. You may be drawn towards a certain field of science, culture or art and whilst doing the thing you love, make a brilliant discovery or create a masterpiece. On a life line such as this happiness is to be found right here, right now, not somewhere just around the corner. All the attributes of a comfortable life that other people obtain with great effort will come to you seemingly automatically; for you are following your own path. Even if you love what you do, if your work does not solely represent the one thing that brings you joy and will fill your life with things that make you feel good, it means your work is a door but not strictly speaking a goal. Do not forget that your goal should make your life feel like one continuous holiday with all its accompanying attributes. Do not think about the door i.e. the means to achieve your goal at this stage. The important thing is to define the goal and then with time the door will find itself. Ask yourself the following question: what does your heart long for? What would make your life feel like a continual holiday? Put all thoughts aside that focus on the prestige associated with the goal or how difficult it may be to achieve. You should not be inhibited by any sense of limitation. If you do not believe that anything is possible for you at least pretend you believe it and then you will be free to make a real choice. Do not be shy. Go for it and order whatever you want. If you want to have a boat, what about your own yacht? If you want to have a flat, what about your own mansion? If you want to be head of your department, what about being president of the corporation? If you want to work hard and earn a lot of money, what about not working at all and living a happy life? If you want to purchase a piece of land that is not too expensive and build your own house, what about having your own island in the Mediterranean? The list of ‘what abouts’ goes on forever. You cannot begin to imagine how modest your requests are in comparison to what you could have if you went your own path, through your own door. Do not make a wish with your mind. No time spent trying to clarify what your heart really wants is wasted. The expression that something is “after your own heart’ speaks for itself. It expresses your relationship to something, not your opinion. An opinion is the result of the mind’s intellectual activity. Your relationship to something comes from deep within your heart, and only this can serve to discern between your personal and foreign goals. When you are defining your goal ask yourself: “How comfortable do I feel in the bubble of the goal now that I have achieved it? Once you have made a wish, in order to check whether it is truly meant for you ask yourself two more questions. Firstly: “Do I really need it?” and secondly: “But seriously now, do I really need it?” Try and measure all aspects of a foreign goal up against this wish. Do you really want this thing with all your heart or do you just want to desire it? Are you trying to prove something to yourself or others? Do you really want it? Might it be a tribute to fashion or prestige? An invalid might think that they want to ice skate with all their heart whereas really the goal comes not from the heart but from the pain caused by their handicap. A goal will lure you by being unattainable. If the goal is difficult to achieve try letting go of it and observing how you feel afterwards. If you feel relieved in any way it means that it was a foreign goal. If, however, you feel indignant or find yourself wanting to protest it means that the goal may well be yours. The only reliable criteria you can use when choosing your goal is inner tension, the heart’s negative reaction to a decision that has already been made by the mind. You can only use this test of how comfortable you feel about something after the mind has made a decision about its goal. Imagine that you have already achieved you goal and all this is behind you. As soon as you can feel it must stop discussing the goal and listen to the promptings of the heart. Is your immediate reaction negative or positive? If the feeling of pleasure is mixed with fear, a heavy sense of burden, a sense of urgency or obligation then the heart is clearly saying “no”. The mind might not suspect the troubles the goal hides under its beautiful packaging, but the heart can sense it. The feeling of inner tension can be elusive and vague. Try not to confuse inner inhibition with discomfort. As we mentioned in the previous chapter, it is natural to feel some inhibition or a kind of shyness when we experience an unfamiliar situation: “Can this really all be for me?” Inner tension is an onerous feeling of oppression or strain that appears quietly amid the optimistic reasoning of the mind. Inner inhibition can be overcome with the help of slides but inner tension — never. The worst mistake would be to consider yourself unworthy as a result of the tension. Absolute rubbish! This is a primitive label pendulums have forced you to wear. You deserve the absolute best. At the very least, do not be in a hurry to make a final decision. Try testing your goal against the slide technique. If after some time the onerous feeling has not passed it means that you are dealing with inner tension. If you experience inner tension because of some aspect connected with the goal itself this means that it is a foreign goal. If you experience inner tension from the awareness that the goal is difficult to achieve this means that it lies beyond the limits of your current comfort zone or that you have chosen a foreign door. Do not think about the means of achieving your goal until you have firmly decided on what the goal should be. If you cannot see yourself clearly in your imagined role it might be that you are not ready for it yet. The limits of your personal comfort zone can be widened with the help of slides and there is no need to worry about doors. All that is required of you is the will to have and then sooner or later outer intention will lead you to the right door. Do not be tempted to make money your goal as if all your problems would disappear if only you had more money because after all, you know what to spend it on. Remember the suitcase full of notes in the chapter on slides. There we said that money of itself cannot serve as a goal and can only serve as an accompanying attribute to another goal. You may readily agree, but the statement is less trivial that it appears. We are so accustomed to money that we can translate almost anything into a monetary equivalent. Money is an abstract category designed to help the mind, but in no way intended for the heart. The heart has no idea what to do with money because it is not capable of abstract thinking. The thing is that your end goal has to be comprehensible to the heart. The heart has to know what you want to buy with the amount you have requested, be it a house, casino or private island etc. It’s not a matter of the means, but the heart must like it. All the time that your inner accountant is calculating the means to the end you will not be able to determine your goal or attune your energy to your target life line. Activate your inner Guardian and give yourself a nudge every time you catch your mind trying to evade the question: “What do I want in life?” The stereotype of the unattainable goal is the most deeply ingrained and so you will need to be patient. The mind will be trying to find the answer a different question: “But how do I achieve it? Here your heart needs to tell the mind to “be quiet. That’s not your problem. We are choosing a toy!” It is important to strive for freedom from destructive pendulums but this does not mean that you have to isolate yourself entirely. All society is constructed on pendulums and so you are left with no choice other than to seek out your own pendulum or disappear to the Himalayas. It is easy for hermits to “converse with Eternity” when they are living in distant solitude but as soon as they return to the aggressive environment where pendulums function they instantly lose their inner balance and meditative detachment. Your goal will also belong to a pendulum but that will not be a threat as long as the goal truly represents your innermost desire. Find your goal and the pendulum will be obliged to make you its favourite. You can even create a new pendulum. The important thing is to practice your right to freedom of choice and not allow pendulums to establish control over you. You cannot determine your goal through analysis and reasoning because analysis is the activity of the mind. Only your heart can identify a true goal and the heart is not capable of thinking. It can only see and feel. It is not the task of the mind to do the searching in your process of choosing a goal. The mind will search in its usual way, by method of analysis and the construction of logical connection based on common stereotypes and clichés. If a person’s true path in life could be determined in this way everyone would be happy without exception. It is the task of the mind to process all external information, at the same time as paying particular attention to the inner voice. The mind has only to establish the precept that it is looking for what will make life feel like a holiday, then allow in external information and observe the inner feelings of the heart within the context of that precept. Active searching for your path will lead to nothing. Do not worry about it; wait and observe. If the instruction for the search has been given, the right information will present itself. A moment will come when you will receive certain information that inspires your interest. At this point simply pay attention to your inner voice. Do not let the mind get involved. You can quicken the coming of the necessary information by extending your circle of interests. Visit places you have never been to before: the museum, an excursion, the cinema, trekking, a different part of town, a bookshop, wherever. There is no need to actively search for information; simply widen the diapason of external information you receive and observe. Do not set any particular timescale. Do not pressure yourself with temporal limitations or turn the search into a chore. Simply hold the following statement in mind: I am looking for the thing that will make my life feel like a holiday. Be more attentive to your inner feelings than you have been before. Have the statement working constantly in the background of your mind. Pass any information that comes to you through the questioning filter: how do I feel about this, do I like it or not? Sooner or later you will come across a sign or some information that makes something inside reverberate: “Oh! I like it!” Think the information through from all angles remaining carefully attentive to the small voice inside. So finally, you will have succeeded in resisting the temptation of obsessing about the means and can concentrate on defining your goal. When your desire to have with intent and act in the name of achieving your goal your world layer will undergo an amazing transformation and when it does, this is what will happen… Your chest will breathe freely having freed yourself from the burden of false goals. You will be no longer feel that you have to force yourself to do things your heart does not feel drawn towards. You will give yourself permission to be happy right here, right now having abandoned the struggle for an illusory happiness that only exists in the future. The mind will let the heart out of its box and discover the wonderful feeling of lightness and freedom that comes with the onset of spring after a long hibernation instead of trying desperately to fill the spiritual emptiness with cheap pendulum surrogates. The onerous feelings of depression and strain will be gone. It is much more pleasurable, is it not, to head towards your own goal knowing that it comes from within you than to search in vain for your goal in the outside world. Your mind will have rid itself of useless junk and things that belong to others. It will abandon the futile search for the means and simply launch the necessary task into the layer of your world. The heart will choose its own toy and jump up and down clapping its hands in delight. You will have broken through the conditioned stereotype giving yourself permission to have, despite the seeming unattainability of the goal. As a result, doors will fly open before you that previously had been closed. The mind will at last have accepted the idea that the goal can be realistically achieved. Life will be transformed into an ongoing holiday. The heart will skip joyfully after the mind. The heart and mind will walk hand in hand together along the smooth, cheery road to the kind of happiness that exists right here, right now