Creating the Life Your Heart Desires (continued)

In some form or other, we all wish for a better life—to find security, comfort, balance, happiness, and fulfillment. These are basic drives of our Material Nature. (As we defined in the previous section, our Material Nature is our animal nature, which includes all our automatic, unconscious, and habitual physical, emotional, and mental functions.)

These drives, whether fulfilled or not in the way we expect, also make up the foundation stone upon which higher consciousness can be built. That's one of their gifts. This is another topic, though...

Are these Material Nature needs what we're talking about when we say "Create the life your Heart desires"?

Notice that we've capitalized "Heart," and consider why we might have done this. We're not talking about the physical heart, and we're also not talking about our Material Nature. We're talking about our potentially higher spiritual self (which, from this point onward, we will call Spiritual Nature, with capital letters).

(Continued below...)

There's a big difference between what our Material Nature needs and wants and what our Spiritual Nature Wishes for. And given that our Material Nature is a slave to conditioning and to its needs and desires, as we discussed in the previous section, does it actually have the possibility of creating anything consciously or intentionally?

The answer is no. For all intents and purposes, our Material Nature—which rules us and our lives until we begin a more conscious and intentional Quest—is an automaton, a machine that's so complex that it gives the illusions of consciousness and free will where none may exist. 99% of all human activity, including most spiritual pursuits, is under the control of this automaton. (Refer to the previous section, "Conscious Living ," for the scientific evidence that supports this assertion.)

So, what in us has the potential to consciously and intentionally create our life? From a Material Nature perspective, we have a long way to travel in terms of the awakening, evolution of consciousness, and development of free will that's required to make conscious creation possible. These three attributes are attributes of our Spiritual Nature—our higher self—which has its home in the energetic Heart.

There's been a lot of publicity lately about the DVD and book, "The Secret," which claims to divulge the secrets of changing ourselves, our lives, and the world around us according to however we desire. Although there are great truths in this offering, it leaves out the most important point: we can't change or create anything if we remain in our current state of unconsciousness, unreality, and illusion of free will—if we remain identified with, and trapped by, our Material Nature.

Our Quest is to break free from our identification with our Material Nature conditioning, needs, and wants as being who we are and awaken to our Spiritual Nature. This takes sustained efforts—more than we might expect. It can't be given to us by any book or even by any other person, although we'll certainly need guides along the way—people who have walked the path before us.

One of the keys to breaking free from our identification with our Material Nature and moving into our Spiritual Nature consciousness is Gratitude—Gratitude for every aspect of our lives, acknowledging that even the smallest aspect is a perfect part of the greater Perfection of our lives. (We talk a lot more about this in the school.)

Only from a place of Spiritual Nature consciousness—from our awakened Heart center, from a place of Presence—can we talk about creating the life our Heart desires, because Spiritual Nature is the whole of us, not just the separate parts. So, this is where S.O.L.A.R.® starts in its teachings. It starts with helping us break through our Material Nature illusions, our conditioning, and our attachment to, and identification with, our Material Nature needs and wants. And it starts with helping us repeatedly and increasingly "come into the Heart" where true consciousness and real will live.

Then we can truly create the life our Heart desires.

Back to beginning of "Creating the Life Your Heart Desires"

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Copyright S.O.L.A.R.® 2008