What creates your life…the circumstances or your dreams?

Author: Mary Westley

Are you where you want to be?

Are you doing what you want to be doing?

These are good questions to stop and ask ourselves occasionally.

I walk around the Ashram these days with an incredible sense of gratitude because I am exactly where I want to be, doing what I want to be doing. That doesn’t mean life is ‘perfect’. There is still the inevitable rollercoaster of ups and downs, however the basic knowing that where I am and what I am doing is right for me at this time certainly smooths the ride.
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I did a course last year with the beautiful Saraswati Calder called Dream Building. In the first week we were told that in every moment our thoughts, feelings and actions create our life. The choice lies in whether the life we create is dictated by the circumstances in which we find ourselves or the dreams we hold for ourselves.

A life that is created by circumstances is usually a reactionary life, a life in which we generally feel out of control and unsatisfied. If we stop and ask ourselves however, what is it that I want, how do I want to express myself in this amazing gift of a human life, we open ourselves up to the possibility of moving outside the dictates of those circumstances. These questions create a space in our life to explore exactly what it is we want.

A little word of warning however, the answers may be confronting. We may have to acknowledge that what we want is not what we are doing. Initially that can be quite unsettling, however, knowing what we don’t want, is often a helpful first step in becoming clear on what we do want.

Another thing to be aware of is the tendency to limit our dreams to what we think is possible, because we think we have to know HOW to make it happen. Wrong! When it comes to creating our life we don’t have to know ‘how’, we just need to know what and why.

If we know what and why, Universal energy takes care of the ‘how’. I can hear you say “sure sure…but!” Hopefully the following analogy, another wonderful gift from Saraswati’s Dream Builder course, will help get past the blocks that just popped up. I share this whenever I can simply because I have experienced it to be true.

If we want to build a new house we image and dream about what we want in our new house. We get excited because a new house is something to be excited about. Then we find a builder and tell him what we want. We find a builder because even though we know what we want in our new house we don’t actually know how to build it. The builder does because that’s his job.

Our job is to tell him what we want and then be an active participant in the process. The builder will come back with questions, some things will need to be clarified, and others refined. Sometimes the builder will say that something can’t happen, sometimes he will suggest something new that will work even better. It’s our new house so we are completely engaged in the process, watching, listening, learning and responding as we need to. With the right builder our new home turns out even better than we originally dreamed.

So, when we are creating our life the Universe is the builder. The first step is to acknowledge that we want to stop letting circumstances dictate our life, that we want something more. Then we dream and create a vision of the life we want. If the dream includes things that we don’t know how to do or get, and if it is a worthy dream it will, we trust the ‘builder’ to have the answers. It’s not that they are not possible, we just don’t know how to do them or make them happen, so we think it’s not possible. The Universal builder however is guiding and supporting us. It has the energy that created life at its disposal, so really, anything is possible. That’s why when creating a dream it’s a good idea to finish with…”this or something better“. The Universe may have ideas that are simply outside the realms of our imagination.

So when you ask yourself the questions, where do I want to be, what do I want to be doing, how do I want to be feeling…don’t be afraid to answer those questions truthfully, this is meant to be a soul searching exercise. It’s not something you ask once or write down once. This is about your life, every aspect of it: where do I want to be; what relationships do I want; how do I want to be in those relationships; where do I want to be living; how do I want to express myself in the world; how do I want my health to be; and what do I want materially. Don’t be afraid to ask for abundance, a spiritual life can be filled with abundance, using that abundance for the good of everyone.

How do you want to live your life? Where are you? What are you doing?

The life I am living today hasn’t just happened, it’s been a focused process of getting to know myself, learning what brings me joy, understanding my gifts and wanting to offer them to the world.

Over 10 years ago when I began to practice Ayurveda, I was excited and there was a deep desire to share this amazing knowledge with people, to create an Ayurveda Community. I was the only practitioner in Newcastle for over 6 years so it was a lonely time from that perspective. Slowly over years l built up a database of over 600 people, saw a few hundred clients, ran workshops, courses and retreats and started an Ayurveda Sangha (Sangha means community).

I had great plans for the Sangha but it never really took off in the way I wanted. I envisaged a room full of people and it never even came close to that. There was however, a small core group of people, who kept coming back and every month there would be someone new. I nearly let it go a few times because it wasn’t ‘working’, but part of me knew that was my ego talking, and so I kept going. I kept going because it was part of my dream.

Now I find myself living at Mangrove Yoga Ashram standing in the doorway of much bigger version of my dream than I ever imagined. The Ashram is working with me to explore the possibility of developing a formal qualification in Ayurveda, I am providing regular information sessions for visitors, volunteers & residents, setting up a little treatment space, running weekend Ayurveda retreats, surrounded by people saying more please. Just this morning a visitor asked me if I would be interested in running an outside course for them and in 3 weeks Coralie and I return to Bali for our next 2WiseWomen retreat.

I am literally living my dream. 10 years ago was this what I envisaged? No! 5 years ago? No!Looking back I can see that a myriad of circumstances have supported and guided me to this point, however I can’t say exactly HOW I got here…I just did.

That’s the Universal builder at work.

That is why it is important not to get caught up in limiting your dream based on what you think you can or can’t do. You just never know where it is going to take you, and mine is certainly acting out in a much bigger way than I would have ever thought possible.

So let yourself dream and dream big. Then give yourself permission to follow that dream regardless of the circumstances. Anyone who has achieved great things in their life did not let the circumstances decide what they would do. They did it in spite of the circumstances. Ghandi did. Nelson Mandela did. Who are we to limit what we have to offer the world.

Happy dreaming.
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