by Darren Starwynn

You can be anything between successful to struggling when you are doing what you are good at.  When you are spending your days doing what you are brilliant at your life changes and you live in a much more unlimited zone.  In this blog post I will share an insight I received this morning about how you can shift your life into expressing more of your brilliance.

You are reading this (my brilliant deduction).  Just that fact would convince me that you know a lot, have been through a lot and have accumulated a whole lot of life experiences.  You have a diverse blend of innate abilities, some of which you have developed into talents and expertise.  You are probably an original thinker and as some would say somewhat out of the box.

How did I score on accuracy so far?

Do we have free will or is the path of our lives predestined?  That has been a big philosophical question for centuries.   What I have observed is that most of what we do as our money-making professions tends to be more on the predestined side than true free will.

Why?  Think about the experiences and connections that originally interested or involved you in your current occupation.  For most people there was some chance meeting, some urgent need or synchonicity that led them to start down that path.   As they started learning about that career path additional resources and energy flowed to them.  That encouraged them to move further in that direction.  Kind of like the donkey who is motivated by the carrot in front and the stick behind.

Two years ago I took a series of courses at Landmark Education in San Francisco.  One teaching I learned there really stuck with me.  It was about how as young children we developed traits to help us survive and get through life.  Some examples of these traits are perseverance, working hard, combativeness, emotional intelligence, athletic abilities, cunning, attractiveness, being good with numbers, being scientifically minded, being a nurturer or being creative.  Because these things worked to help us survive we often ended up going down a career path that drew on these strengths.  We may have been successful expressing these native strengths, but it may not have been highly fulfilling.  Or it may have been in the past but is no longer fulfilling or profitable now.

In my case it was illness that first led me into the path of healer.  When I was 30 I was living in in a house full of guys who worked at a custom aircraft shop in Miami, Florida.  I was working in the cabinet shop of that business, and their safety procedures were close to non-existent.  In the course of my work I was often inhaling poisonous solvents because they did not issue gas masks.  After close to a year of this my health deteriorated and I became unable to work.  The toxins I had been inhaling were not the only factor that collapsed my health.  I had spent most of the previous ten years moving from city to city to participate in various service projects, as part of a spiritual community I was involved in.  The lack of stability and emotional support from all that moving had also run me down, even though I often felt spiritually uplifted.

I went to a M.D. to get an assessment for my fatigue.  After he put me through lab tests he was unable to find anything wrong with me that he could help.  So eventually I was referred to a local acupuncturist named Steve.  Steve was able to diagnose what was going on with me by feeling my pulse and looking at my tongue.  He gave me acupuncture and herbs to build up my liver and kidneys.  At that point I finally started improving.

Steve needed help at his office, so he offered me a job as a receptionist and assistant.  Part of my duties were removing acupuncture needles and applying moxibustion to patients (heat applied to points).  I noticed that I loved doing this and took to it like a fish to water.

At one point Steve went on vacation and allowed me to treat his patients without needles for a week.  The people I cared for had good responses and I was encouraged.  Soon after that Steve opened an informal acupuncture training which I joined.   I was loving learning the craft until Steve started having his own instability problems and moved away from Florida.

I was looking for a new position and in 1983 someone introduced me to another acupuncturist and homeopath named Charles.  Charles also needed an assistant and protégé, so I started working in his office and learned a lot quickly.  Charles opened a more formal college of acupuncture and homeopathy which he registered with the Florida Department of Higher Education.  He appointed me administrator of the new school, so I was a student and faculty member right away.  By 1985, after the birth of my daughter I graduated and took the Florida acupuncture exam and passed.

To make a very long story very short I practiced acupuncture after that for decades, and was drawn into developing vibrational medical equipment and learning the deep arts of emotional and spiritual healing.  I ended up creating a seminar company and led workshops all over the world.

The Universe often gives us confirmations that we are on the right track.  After my new family and I moved up to Connecticut in 1986 I got a job in a naturopathic office in Westport.  One of my patients was a well-known local psychic named Mary.  After several acupuncture sessions with me Mary told me that she was very careful about who she lets work on her body because she was super sensitive to energies.  I asked her why she chose me to work with, a novice practitioner.  After all, there were many much more experienced acupuncturists in my area.  Mary told me that the first time she met me she had looked into my soul and saw that I had been a master acupuncturist and healer in many past lifetimes in China and Tibet, and that is why she trusted me!

So how much of my path of acupuncture was from my choice?  When I look back it seems that I was mainly following the gingerbread trail that was laid out in front of me.  I never sat down and mulled over career choices and decided to follow that path.  It all just kind of flowed in that direction.   How much has that been true for you?

If you have followed your path to be doing what you are doing now, how content and fulfilled are you with your current path?  If you love what you do, feel challenged and on your cutting edge, and are inspired much of the time then you are most likely following your path of brilliance.  If you are following a career path that you are skilled at it, but it just doesn’t inspire and motivate you much anymore, then another doorway is beckoning to you.

There is a genius and brilliance in you, even if you don’t see it or believe in it yet.  Or you may know what your area of brilliance is but lack the confidence that you can really make a living or be successful doing that thing.

Here is where free will may have more reality.  Your gingerbread trail has brought you to that doorway of greater expression of your brilliance and expansion of your abundance.  You will need to choose whether you will do what it takes to step through it.

If you are like me you grew up with examples of relatives and friends who never fully did that.  They probably did more of what seemed expedient to get by or support the family.  Or they may have went for their dream and felt like they just couldn’t hack it.  On the other side, you may know people who did step into their brilliance and then crashed and burned because their self-image did not allow them to sustain that level of energy and positivity.

If you are really fortunate you may know people who have courageously chosen to identify and express their brilliance and are now living it moment by moment in faith and surrender.  Those are great role models to spend time around!  Some of that will rub off on you.

The human race is like a giant symphony orchestra with over 7 billion members.  Amazingly each individual member has one part in the symphony that he or she can do better than anyone else.  This is their true divine nature, the spark of brilliance that is the tone of their own true Self.  It is more than worth it to get to know what your brilliant part is and to commit 100% to doing whatever it takes to play that note.  It doesn’t matter if you are a young person starting on your career path or a retired person in a senior community.  You can still play your note and be brilliant.

A few years ago I faced a crisis in my life when I had to admit that by doing what I had been doing I was no longer on my cutting edge.  A new gingerbread path opened before me to lead me into my current occupation as Biofield healer and transformational business coach.  So that sense of predestination was still there.  Yet I have to continue to exercise my (alleged) free will in choosing how I live and think moment by moment and breath by breath.  The only way I can be effective in my new career is if I am being an example of what I mentor others in.  That is a high standard that challenges me daily.

In conclusion, the ultimate place where free will seems to exist is in the choice of where we put our attention in each moment.  The two main choices for that are:

Choice #1:   Default – allowing the monkey mind to jump around, oscillating between concern about the past and anxiety about the future, occasionally feeling good by being in the NOW moment.

or

Choice #2:  Conscious choice – breathing consciously, connecting with your calm center, asking for and listening to the small, still voice of your higher guidance.  Choosing to obey that small, still voice as often as you can.  Doing what it takes to honor your body and be in touch with your heart.

With all the higher dimensional energies intensifying around our planet the choices you make moment by moment will be amplified.  The hurricane analogy I have shared in previous writings is accurate.  Being on the “default” position of the mind is getting more and more like being knocked around in the crazy winds of a hurricane.  People experiencing that use the words “stress”, “overwhelmed” and “tired” a lot!

Choosing to be aware of your calm center opens up more and more blessings for you and those you touch.

Are you aware of a doorway in front of you into expressing more of your brilliance, even if it is not yet crystal clear?  If so making choice #2 as often as you can is the passcode for walking through it.

For your sake, for my sake, for the sake of the Earth and for goodness sake, let us all choose wisely.

If you enjoyed this writing, please comment with your reactions and what you know about this.  To ensure getting my future posts, I suggest that you join as a free member of my site:  www.drstarwynn.com