Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment. Barbara Angelis De

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СКАЧАТЬ “Barbara, who is robbing you of your ecstasy right now?” Of course, I ultimately arrive at the same answer: “I am.” And that begins to point me back in the right direction, and reminds me that everything I need to be happy is, indeed, inside of me.

      This is what’s so exciting about Secret Number One:

       The only thing wrong with you is that you don’t understand that there is nothing wrong with you, that there is nothing essential missing.

      Nothing is going to make you more perfect or more whole than you already are now. You could finally find the right partner or get the right job or lose the right amount of weight or make the right amount of money, but it still wouldn’t add to your perfection. It still wouldn’t improve the essence of your soul. Who you really are inside doesn’t need any improvement—it just needs to be recognized and understood.

      So what is this place inside of you that is the source of happiness, of contentment, of your own ecstasy? Every religious and spiritual tradition in the world refers to this Perfect Self within us, that which is beyond our personality, our actions, our thoughts, and feelings. The Bible calls it the Kingdom of Heaven. In Eastern traditions, it is called the atman or the Buddha Nature. It is the essential, unchanging core within you. It is your consciousness, the part that knows you exist, and identifies you as you, and not someone else. It is your goodness, it is your passion, it is your peace, it is your love.

      You already are familiar with this part of yourself. You have moments when you experience it, when you’re in touch with yourself in a deep and meaningful way. Perhaps you’re watching a breathtaking sunset, or giving a hug to a friend or family member, or doing a simple task like arranging flowers in a vase or making a salad, when suddenly you feel a surge of love rise up in your heart, and you’re overcome with a recognition of rightness about the moment, as if everything is as it should be, as if everything makes sense.

      What is it that you are feeling in these magical moments? Your own love. Your own self. Your own source of happiness. It’s already and always there inside of you. In fact, it is the real you, the you underneath all of your fears and patterns and emotional wounds and forgetfulness.

      Secret Number One says that when you learn how to drink from your own well of quiet inner joy, you will begin to experience a self-reliance that you could never achieve through any outer accomplishment or circumstance. It’s not that you don’t enjoy what comes to you on the outside in the form of your relationships and your daily pleasures. But you are no longer dependent on these to make you happy. You are no longer a prisoner of circumstances. You know that, ultimately, you are your own source of fulfillment And this is when you become really free as a human being.

      You Can’t Prevent the Flood

      But You Can Learn to Build an Ark

      I never cease to be amazed at the extent to which the forces of life will go to make sure we get the essential lessons we need to learn. In my case, the lessons I’ve been confronted with have always been somewhat dramatic, probably to insure that as someone who teaches others, I always practice what I preach. So I will share with you something that happened to me while I was writing this book.

      One night about ten o’clock, I was sitting upstairs in my home office working on this very chapter about happiness. It was late, but I was behind on my deadline, and I needed to use every spare minute in the days to come to complete the book on time. Needless to say, I was feeling like I was under a lot of pressure.

      For weeks, I’d been writing and rewriting my thoughts on this first secret about happiness. I was particularly excited about the idea that each of us has the choice to be unhappy or happy in a given moment. In fact, I was enjoying this concept so much that when I heard a strange noise coming from downstairs, I ignored it, and kept writing. As I tried to find examples that would help me explain this understanding to you, I was aware in some part of my brain that there seemed to be a sound of gushing water in the background of my consciousness, but I assumed it was raining out, or that the dishwasher was on.

      An hour and a half passed, and it was time to take a break. “That’s odd,” I commented to myself as I got up and began walking down the stairs. “That sound is still going on.” As I put my foot down from the last step onto the living room floor, I was shocked to discover that I was stepping into six inches of water! The whole downstairs of my house was flooded, and what had been a faint noise of water now sounded like the roar of Niagara Falls coming from the pantry off the kitchen. I waded through the cold water as fast as I could, and when I opened the door into the pantry, a huge waterfall that was cascading from the ceiling came crashing down on me, instantly drenching my body from head to toe.

      “Oh my God,” I thought. “My whole house is flooding!” My next thought was, “Oh no, this can’t be happening now.” You see, I had just decided to move, and had put my house up for sale. We had a big open house scheduled in two days. And here I was in the middle of a flood.

      I waded back into the kitchen, called 911, which connected me with the fire department, and then ran around assessing the situation. I could hardly believe my eyes. Half a foot of water covered everything—the bottom of the furniture, the carpets, anything that was on the floor. A strong current of water continued to pour from the pantry through the kitchen, into the living room, and all the way down the hall, carrying all kinds of items with it. I just shook my head in shock and amazement as I saw my dogs’ beds floating by like boats on a stream.

      I got the dogs and cat safely into a dry room just in time to answer the door. Three long, red fire trucks had arrived, and there on my doorstep stood twelve tall, muscular firemen all dressed in their hats and coats and loaded down with ropes, hoses, axes, and special equipment of every sort. I could tell from the looks on their faces that they were just as amazed at my appearance as I was at theirs—I resembled a drowned rat. My hair was plastered down on my head, my clothes were soaked all the way through, and my glasses were so wet that I could barely see.

      Within two minutes, the supervisor had located the source of the problem—a hose that connected the water supply to the washing machine had developed a tiny crack, and the hundreds of pounds of water pressure that ran through the pipes had burst through the small tear and obviously had been pouring through my house for the past hour and a half. “You’re lucky you were home,” he shouted over the loud roar. “A few more hours, and your whole house could have been ruined, or you could have had an electrical fire.” He turned off the valve and the water mercifully stopped.

      Suddenly, everything was quiet, except for the sloshing sounds of the firemen walking through the rooms to determine how many pumps they would need to remove the water from my house. And then, I noticed something that completely amazed me: I was totally calm. In fact, I had been totally calm the whole time. Concerned, yes. Worried, definitely. But when I checked, I could still feel this sense of well-being and warmth inside of me.

      “This is weird,” I remember thinking. “I should be really upset about this! My house is flooded. I’m standing here soaking wet in the middle of the night with firemen pumping gallons of water from my home. There is going to be major damage to my possessions and the structure. I am going to have to spend all kinds of time and money repairing it. The house sale will be delayed. I’ll have to take time from my writing to do all this, and my book won’t be finished in time.”

      The longer I thought about what was happening, the more suspicious I got about my state of mind. Maybe I was in shock. Maybe the severity of the situation just hadn’t sunk in yet. But in the hours that followed, I became aware of something even more strange than my lack of unhappiness about the flood—I was actually enjoying myself! The firemen were all very СКАЧАТЬ