Living Your Purpose, Living Your Passion

Wednesday, 26 August 2009 00:00 Last Updated on Wednesday, 26 August 2009 22:59 Written by Joselito Laudencia

Tomorrow night, I'll be holding an exciting workshop "Living Your Purpose, Living Your Passion"! If you live in San Francisco, I encourage you to sign up and come on by! http://livingyourpurpose.eventbrite.com

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The Teachings of Drama (or is it dharma?)

Thursday, 06 August 2009 20:14 Written by Joselito Laudencia

After years of spiritual practice...daily meditation, prayer, affirmations, spiritual study, spiritual community...I had an experience yesterday that brought me right back to reality.

There was a mix-up in communication in putting together an event, and the people involved (including me) were operating under certain and different assumptions. Needless to say, there were some hurt feelings involved.

I hate it when these things happen. I don't like hurt feelings. And so I went into a mini-tailspin of feeling bad for what happened, wondering what I could do to help rectify the situation and generally beating myself up.

But then, something happened. As I sat there having my pity party, I was suddenly filled with a feeling of calm and love. And from that place, I realized the solution. I decided to take responsibility for my feelings and actions, and I decided to let the other persons involved be responsible for their feelings and actions. And then the drama was gone.

There's a point of spiritual growth and insight when you realize that drama in your life can be your biggest teacher.

Drama happens when something happens in your life out of the blue that you didn't expect, and it brings up a whole host of crazy, turbulent emotions inside you!

How it shows up can be high drama or low drama, but drama nonetheless.

Some examples of what might be high drama are...finding out that your faithful partner has been cheating on you...walking to your car and finding out it's been towed away...or coming to work and being notified that today is your last day.

Some examples of what might be low drama are...using the last sheets of toilet paper and realizing there's no more toilet paper in the house...going to watch a movie and finding out that it's sold out...or ordering a menu item at a restaurant and being told that they just ran out.

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What do you want to be when you grow up?

Friday, 31 July 2009 19:27 Last Updated on Friday, 31 July 2009 20:11 Written by Joselito Laudencia

Do you remember being a young child and being asked the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

For me, the answer always changed. I wanted to be a baseball player, an astronaut, an airline pilot, even a garbage man! (not that I had any desire to play baseball, steer a spacecraft or an airplane, or even play in garbage...)

It was a fun question because I felt like the possibilities were endless! And there was no real attachment to the answer because it didn't matter at that young age when my main focus was about fun things like learning how to ride a bike or how not to get hit during dodgeball.

But as I grew older, the question grew heavier, with more seriousness, because this question was supposed to be the end all and be all of my ENTIRE LIFE! "What do you want to be when you grow up?" also became attached with other questions, like "How is that going to support you?", "Why of all jobs would you want to do that?" or "Is that really realistic?" It seems like the only respectable answer to the main question was to be a doctor or a lawyer.

As innocent as the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is, it's loaded with potential judgment, from your parents, your relatives, your friends, and society. For some reason, the dominant belief in society is that you are supposed to have a job that guarantees you a regular paycheck, offers you stability and eventually you would retire from that job.

Unfortunately, the world offers very few jobs like that today. And living a life based on this criteria might've brought a regular paycheck, but it didn't necessarily bring passion and happiness with it.

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Make no one responsible for your happiness

Wednesday, 15 July 2009 17:05 Written by Joselito Laudencia

Over this month of July, I'm giving each of the Sunday talks at my Spiritual Center on the topic of Freedom.

One of the secrets to freedom is that we have the power of choice. Because each of us has our own free will, we get to choose whatever experience we want, whether that's freedom or bondage, joy or misery, abundance or lack.

But one of the biggest mistakes that many people make is that you look for your freedom and your happiness outside of you! And you measure your success based on your achievement of certain things that you THINK will make you happy, free and complete.

It's a mentality that starts for many at a young age. "Once I get my first car, then I'll be free. Once I graduate from school, I'll be free. Once I get that relationship, that job, the kids, a real job that makes me happy, then I'll be free." It ends up with the statement of "Once I retire, then I'll be free and happy!" And then once you reach that point, "Once I complete everything on my bucket list, then I'll finally be free and happy!"

The problem embedded in this is the constant searching for, or acquiring, that certain something or someone that you think will make you happy. But for some reason, that feeling of happiness is usually momentary. Yeah, you can think back to that moment and how good you felt when it happened, but in the present moment, there's a feeling of unfulfillment.

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