Keep Your Spirit Open
“Keep your spirit open” were the last words he shared with me as I departed on my journey. Reading those words touched me. They highlighted the following:
We are all connected.
The people in my life serve as mirrors to assist my self-assessment and growth processes.
My life is evolving in the right way.
I am traveling to Thailand for spiritual, physical, and mental reasons, in addition to my goal of being a Wealthy Yogi by living a fabulous life. Part of keeping my spirit open is allowing myself to experience life fully in real-time. To be honest, I am undergoing a bit of suffering now as I try to translate my thoughts into something that makes sense in this post. Yet, I know that I want to share my journey with the world. Beyond the beauty of Thailand and the physical challenge of becoming a yoga teacher, the wisdom and compassion aspects of nurturing my spirit are of the utmost importance for this trip. I have been undergoing a pilgrimage to rest fully in my happiness as I navigate through life. So far I know how much I’ve learned from my community and how instrumental others have been in my life.
Some people in my life have voiced concerns that they fear I will not come back from my trip. I find this funny as I actually have no interest in being isolated from the world. I love my community and an integral part of my life is my relationships with others. Sometimes I need to remove myself from the chaos of daily commitments and have time alone to really dive deep inside and grow more as a person. For this reason, I look forward to time away to mediate, grow and reward myself for the milestones that I’ve reached so far in this life. I talk a lot about Knowledge, Wisdom and Insight. Please review the definitions below:
Knowledge is the accumulation of facts and data that you have learned about or experienced. It’s being aware of something, and having information. Knowledge is really about facts and ideas that we acquire through study, research, investigation, observation, or experience.
Wisdom is the ability to discern and judge which aspects of that knowledge are true, right, lasting, and applicable to your life. It’s the ability to apply that knowledge to the greater scheme of life. It’s also deeper; knowing the meaning or reason; about knowing why something is, and what it means to your life.
Insight is the deepest level of knowing and the most meaningful to your life. Insight is a deeper and clearer perception of life, of knowledge, of wisdom. It’s grasping the underlying nature of knowledge, and the essence of wisdom. Insight is a truer understanding of your life and the bigger picture of how things intertwine.
As I mentioned in my Fabulous Life Inspiration, I have been on a dedicated path to learning how to navigate through life fully. Although I enjoy the pursuit of credentials and knowledge, relationships are of the utmost importance to my life. It took me a while to redirect some of the energy spent toward learning technical theory to figure out how to cultivate wisdom in order to interact better with others in the world. I must admit that it has been easier for me to figure out platonic friendships than love relationships. I realize that while boundaries must be present in every relationship, all everyone wants is to feel valued, supported and loved. Everyone is navigating through life in the most skillful way that they can. Once we see and understand this fact about others, it’s easier to feel a sense of compassion for them.
Although romantic love hasn’t been a seamless experience for me, learning from each experience has served as a catalyst to push me toward deeper insight and understanding. I feel like my path to love has been a slow movement from one chapter of life to the next. This concept is most accurately described in the Autobiography in Five Short Chapters. Although my disappointments in the love department have been painful, this pain has opened up the path to growth, wisdom, insight and happiness. I do believe that this path was necessary for me to grow in the way that I have. I have luckily experienced romantic love several times. I have experienced the beauty of having my normal speech sound like a song. I have witnessed myself becoming more giving than I thought possible. I have also experienced the intense sorrow and disappointment when the gamble didn’t last. I have learned that love is sometimes personal and may or may not have anything to do with anyone else. I trust that the experience is always worth the courage of overcoming fear of failure. I know that it’s worth taking a chance on loving the right person. I know that life is often about the lesson and not the actor in the scenario. I feel awesome to be able look at these pictures of the men that I’ve loved over the last 20 years and realize that they all have helped me navigate my personal development.
It’s interesting to look back and remember how I thought that the love I felt would last forever. I was so attached to each one of these people as I thought that the moments of bliss would last for the rest of my life. Because of my attachment to this impossibility, I experienced great difficultly letting go at the natural conclusion of these relationships. But I also know that I was given the gift of intense love. I am able to really accept someone for who they are and see all the beauty the universe has imparted into them. But I now know this does not mean that the person needs to stay in my life past the natural conclusion. As I look back, I appreciate that I had the courage to let go, the courage to be uncertain and the courage to grow. After my last relationship I decided to enhance my metta practice and dharma studies. I spent up to four hours per day studying teachings about love, compassion, impermanence, happiness and wisdom. Throughout my studies, I experienced flashes of clarity and learned techniques on how to navigate through life. I learned more about right speech, right action, right livelihood, and right mindfulness. After being deeply reflective for a while, I decided that I was ready to return to my mission of living a full, fabulous life. Part of this full life includes my intention to share my life with someone else. My goal for 2014 was to try to get to know potential candidates without clinging to expectations. In 2014 the universe sent me two test cases. My goals with each of these cases were the following:
To try to take an approach of understanding that did not include my personal baggage and point of view.
To try to accept them as being in my life for a reason that was not in my control. This required making the simple decision of if I wanted to experience more with them or not. That was really it.
To try to maintain my own internal loving nature regardless of my expectations of them.
I met Case Study 1 at the first networking event I attended in 2014. I would come to learn that we had a great deal in common in terms of our philosophy towards work, fitness, travel and meditation. I can honestly say that I’d never met anyone like him before. We talked about the path to internal happiness, the joy of fitness challenges, and the importance of navigating life in the right way.
I met Case Study 2 at a community event. I would learn that meditation is an integral non-negotiable part of his daily practice. I witnessed his mastery of delivering his personal happiness through being present and his practice of non-judgment. I understood his perspective of culture, history and progress.
My intuition told me that both of these individuals would play a role in my life as soon as I met them. As the year comes to a close, I realize that they both helped me confirm that:
There are other people out there with a similar life path.
The mirror that I experienced in their company confirmed that I’m growing in my studies.
I am continuing to grow and becoming more like myself.
As I keep my spirit open for this journey, I appreciate how my pursuit of romantic love and loving kindness has allowed me to be where I am today. I am so grateful to be on the other side of the world living my dream life. This moment right now is priceless.
THAILAND COMPLETE EXPERIENCE
My Love Hate Relationship with Fun
Karma Yoga & My Thai Massage Epiphany
Thailand Yoga Retirement Journey Conclusion
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About: Dr. Roshawnna Novellus, known as the Wealthy Yogi, is a mindful wealth multiplier, business strategist, and author of Budgeting is More Liberation than Limitation. She has developed a 5-step blueprint for mindful money management to show any entrepreneur how to create a stress free wealthy lifestyle. Through her books, programs and retreats, she has helped thousands of entrepreneurs achieve intentional personal success. She is currently booking speaking engagements for corporations and corporate groups. If your company or group has workshops around these topics for your employees, please contact her.
Freebies : For my readers, I am giving you my Wealthy Yogi Mindmap that is regularly priced at $97 for FREE.
