Intention vs Inspiration

This morning, I woke up inspired to write a post about the difference between living by intention and living by inspiration.   My ‘goal’ is to live by inspiration, however I still find that my habit is to live by intention.  It is a tough habit to break.    However, living by intention is light years ahead of living by default.   Let me explain…

The majority people on earth are living unconsciously by default.  Their life is created for them by other people.   They are unaware that they can change their situation, so they feel like victims of other people’s actions and desires.   They have no control over the direction their life is going and they only change when the circumstances around them change, they lose a job, a loved one dies, they have a romantic breakup, or they get sick.   Then they are forced to make adjustments in their lives in order to fit into the new circumstances.   I believe each of these new (and sometimes painful) circumstances are an opportunity to wake up and become conscious of our ability to create change in our own lives. These opportunities help us break free from our old habits of reacting to life as if we are a victim of circumstance and allow us to consciously dream up a new set of circumstances so we can live our life with intention.

Living by Intention is light years ahead of living by default.   When we live by intention we take control of our life.  We consciously decide what we want, where we want to go, how we want to be, what we want to experience, and how we want to go about living our life.  This doesn’t mean that bad things don’t happen in our lives, we simply no longer feel like a victim to circumstance, we begin to take responsibility for our part (if any) in creating it.   When we live by intention we live by choice.  We get to choose what we want and pursue our goals and desires with as much gusto as we want.  Life seems to bend to our will when we are living by intention.

Why would anyone want to stop living by intention?

It is interesting how the more conscious and awake we are about how we are creating our life, the more consciousness we have of how asleep we still are!

For me living by intention, setting goals, and choosing how I want my life to be, started to become really hard.   I still felt like I was living my life in a way that I unconsciously thought I ‘should’ live, not necessarily how I was designed to live.   I live by a motto, “Easy & Effortless!”  I tell my clients to print out sign and hang it in their office space, “It’s so much easier than you think!” I suggest they use beautiful font that looks easy and flowing.  The thing is, I just couldn’t seem to make my intentions happen easily any more and that was a complete red flag for me that I wasn’t aligned with my higher self.  I became more and more aware that my intentions were still programs that I was running based on old habits of thought about what I should want, what I should do, and what I should be in order to be successful.   My intentions and goals no longer fulfilled me because I was aware they were not MINE!   I was looking for something more than goals based on other people’s ideas about success and failure to give meaning to my life.

The more I practiced The Sacred Art of Self-Appreciation the more I could feel this shift happening in me.  The more I appreciated myself the less I was interested in goals and the more I was interested in growing my inner space.   My inner space of wants and desires slowly became a void of emptiness. And at my core, I knew this feeling of no desires and no wants was the beginning of something much more magical.

Living by inspiration means letting go of our need to control the conditional outcomes (if …then…, in order for you to… you need to …)  and truly trusting that the Divine knows much better than we do what is best for us at any given point in time.  Living by inspiration is allowing yourself to get out of the way and receive the abundant blessing the universe has to offer. Living by inspiration is another benefit of doing the work of self-appreciation.

In September of  2015, I was inspired (I appreciate my connection to the divine!)  to create a Wealth DNA community with the soul purpose of going deeper with the work of self-appreciation in an intimate community.  My guidance was clear.   While we wanted to activate our Wealth DNA,  what we were really doing was “creating the space of possibility to receive abundance.”   Three months into the experiment changes and shifts started to happen.  Our hearts were more open, our eyes could see more clearly.   We began o see appreciate some limiting beliefs about money, wealth and power and we began to feel our inner truth being activated.  Was our ambition fading?  Something was and continues to shift for all of us.  We are evolving beyond our own intentions.  We were moving to a space beyond intention, we were transformed into the space of inspiration.

One member of the community sort of led the way with living by inspiration.   She was inspired to clear out her house and prepare to move.  In her case inspiration came from within her, as it always does from a still small voice within.   Not only did she move out of her home, she donated most of her furniture, and now lives in the void without a permanent place to live.  She wasn’t sure where she was going to live other than an inner knowing, confirmed by a few intuitive friends, that she would soon be living in house behind a house in Beverly Hills.   She didn’t go out looking for a place to live in Beverly Hills, she is still in the space of possibility to receive an invitation or another piece of inspiration that will bring her closer to ‘home.’

That is the kind of trust I want.  I want to be inspired to do everything!  I love the feeling I get when I remember all the times I acted on inspiration and did some pretty crazy things.  It felt like I was on an adventure.   Setting intentions and watching things manifest is an adventure too, but it is an ego based adventure where we get to set our course and go where we intend.  Pamelah is listening to guidance and doing what she is inspired and guided to do.

To me it feels like she is playing “Marco Polo” or the “Hot Cold” game where she is blindfolded and she is trusting the universe to lead the way to the treasured location that is just perfect for her to live.   This is living by Inspiration.  It is not for everyone to jump into blindly, and if you haven’t developed your ability to listen and act on guidance, living this way can feel like struggle too.   Fortunately for Pamelah, she trusts her guidance.   As much as living by inspiration feels really risky to me, my desires have shifted from material wants and intentions based on what I think I should want to this sort of deep spiritual connection of oneness.    Well, let me re-evaluate that.  I have always wanted and desired that more and more moments of ‘oneness’ where I feel connected and lead by my higher self, by God, by the universe so I could become who I am meant to be, but I haven’t always been willing to let go of control in order to allow myself to receive the inspiration and guidance I was receiving.    The more I practice The Sacred Art of Self-Appreciation the more I trust that I am always divinely and naturally aligned with the Source of creation.  And the more I trust myself to follow through and take action on the inspirations I receive,  the more I trust that I am activated and turned on to BE the person I am meant to be and live the life I am designed to live.  This BEING that I am is more than I could have intended on my own.

Intentions seem to be limited to our beliefs about what is possible.  Inspiration seems to guide us into the realm of greater possibility than we could ever imagine on our own.

I want to live in the space of possibility and be free from limitations, when I feel myself moving backward into thinking I know what is best for me, I do my work.  I appreciate myself for noticing where I am.  I appreciate myself for feeling the habit of needing to control the outcome or get the result taking over.  I appreciate my awareness that something more wants to emerge from the feeling of ‘needing to control.’  I appreciate myself for waking up to the moment, being fully aware of where I am, and the pattern I am running.  I appreciate the pattern, the program, the habit and I appreciate myself as I let it go.  I appreciate myself for remembering that there is something so much bigger than me that knows so much better than I do what the divine plan is for my life.  I appreciate myself for surrendering the pattern that created this habit of limitation to the Divine.  I appreciate myself for surrendering.  I appreciate myself for relaxing and allowing the divine flow of the universe to be my guide.