Archive for the ‘Divine Purpose’ Category

What’s Wrong with Ambition?

In talking about my new movie The Shift, I’ve had a lot of questions about the nature of ambition. If the shift to a purposeful life is moving from ambition to meaning, why is it that we have to get away from ambition? What’s wrong with ambition? Isn’t that what we need to reach our goals and realize our dreams? I know it sounds contradictory—isn’t life full of seeming contradictions that we have to balance?—but in fact, we don’t have to give up ambition, only shift it toward the things we are here to achieve, the music we are here to play. You can be ambitious about having meaning in your life. I don’t think I’m not ambitious right now. I get more done now than I’ve ever gotten done in my life: creating books, writing all the time, living a very fulfilled life, making money, giving lectures, and doing all the kinds of things I do, but there’s a part of me that is so content and peaceful with who I am and what I’m doing that I know this is the music I came here to play. I’m ambitious, but I’m ambitious not so much about accumulation. It’s not the having but the being—the peace and the joy—that lets you know when your ambitions have meaning.

 

Namaste,

Wayne

The Beatles Were Right

If you ever feel like you are trying too hard, you probably are! Who said that effort and striving are the keys to success? I think the Beatles were on to something in their classic song when they advised that we simply “Let It Be.” Verse 47 of the Tao Te Ching suggests that effort and striving, along with the struggling, worrying, stressing, fretting and agonizing that we can’t seem to resist, are behaviors that actually keep us from experiencing the harmony and sense of completion that are part of our connection to the Divine Order. What if we learned to live by being rather than trying? “Without going out the door, know the world. Without looking out the window, you may see the ways of heaven,” says the Tao. For example, consider how the beating of your heart, the inhaling and exhaling of your breath, and a myriad of other life functions take place without effort from you, even as you are reading these words. You are a single beat in the one heart that is humanity. The Divine is at work within you, moving you toward your life purpose. Let yourself be guided and see what happens when you simply “let it be.”

 

Namaste,

Wayne