As I write these words, I am watching the sun descend behind the hills for yet another day. Darkness will soon cast its evening blanket of shadows over the valley and trees, and if I’m really lucky, I’ll get to gaze up at an infinite sky sparkling with the light of the moon and the stars.  My heart is full tonight. I am pointing the compass back home. I have returned to safety.

It’s the kind of safety we can always feel when the mind is quiet and still, when we’ve lost our way for a time, but then somehow find the road back home again. Home to the self.

As I look out my window, I can feel the hush of nightfall. The wind dies down, the birds stop singing. Stillness happens.

For the past fifteen months I have been forcing my mind and creativity to move in directions it didn’t really want to go. I was attempting to write for a very specific outcome, one connected to money, security, and the freedom I believed it would offer me through affiliate marketing. I told myself that as long as what I wrote helped others in some way, then I was moving forward in the right direction on my path.

The only part of that which felt authentic to me was the part about helping others. Whether I did end up helping others or not, the point remains that I tried to force a boundless spiritual voice into a box, one that often left me feeling frustrated, resentful, and void of the inspiration to let that spirit soar.

I ended up feeling like I was prostituting my soul, and fearing that the voice of my inner being would stop communing with me. And it did.

It’s no different than a recording artist writing and performing songs that their money hungry, mainstream recording studio demands of them. Think Lady Gaga, who eventually pointed her own compass back home. On the other hand, expressing our creative genius unabashedly without rules or boundaries or the need for approval from anyone, is music to the soul. Think Prince, who vaporized any boxes, restrictions, or boundaries that the music industry or society tried to put around his creative expression.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with affiliate marketing. On the contrary, I learned an incredible amount about building a website based on my passion, how to monetize it, and how to drive traffic to it by writing consistent, quality content based on a specific format and set of proven affiliate marketing rules. I also made some beautiful friends for life in the process. In fact, that turned out to be the greatest blessing of my little “off-road” adventure.

There are many hugely successful affiliate marketers who have taken their knowledge all the way to the top, and I had the privilege to rub shoulders with many of them while receiving training of the highest integrity from one of the best affiliate marketing universities in the business.  Through much hard work and dedication, these people are earning limitless incomes from their niche market internet businesses. These are people for whom this kind of business is well suited.  I’m not one of them, and I discovered that.

I don’t feel it would be amiss to say that the niche for consciousness and the evolution of the soul is rather slim and not too profitable in the world of internet marketing in comparison say, to diets, weight loss, or health issues. Even hobbies take up a huge chunk of the affiliate marketing world, as does anything related to learning how to earn an income as an affiliate marketer. I was learning how to solve people’s problems in a specific niche and hopefully earn an income from doing so. It became pretty clear that there are not a whole lot of people who think living unconsciously is a problem to be solved.  As much as I tried to twist and bend my spiritual voice to suit the affiliate marketing world without altering the integrity of the message, it always seemed too forced…too catered…too un-creative.

The way I understand consciousness and the evolution of the soul, which is the path I have chosen to walk in this world, is that the foundation of our motivation and inspiration for creative expression must be pure and free from any thought of remuneration or reward.

To be sure, I am not saying we should not receive money from our creative expressions, it just should not be the motive to create. I dream of a life where my natural expression of the beauty, wonder, divinity, passion, peace, and the deep love I have for existence will pay me well one day, and not necessarily monetarily. I have no idea what that looks like and I don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure it out anymore. Instead, I do my best to live each day in a state of wonder and gratitude. If I am somehow, or in some way, to be rewarded for this kind of authentic living…for just being myself, then so be it. And if not, then so be it too. My job is to simply rejoice in becoming ever divine while I’m here.

The same energy that sets the sun, lights up the moon, makes the trees flower and come alive in the spring, makes it snow and rain and hail, causes the birds and whales and salmon and butterflies to migrate and the heart to start beating, is the same creative energy that we also possess within, and yet no part of existence expresses itself for any other reason than expression itself. The salmon do not say, “I’ll only migrate if…” The moon does not say, “I’ll only become full if…” The trees and flowers do not say, “I’ll only unfurl my beauty if…”  The heart does not say, “I’ll only begin beating if…”

We exist. Period.

It’s an unfathomable mystery, one the mind will never be able to grasp, but oh, the heart….the heart knows all.

As a result, we have the freedom of choice to joyfully celebrate our creative expression through our unique and individual energies…or not. We may also never be rewarded or remunerated for this expression.

Our joy must come from the miracle that we are part of existence, and however we express that outwardly, it should be as natural and beautiful as breathing in and out.

How much of existence passes us by or goes unnoticed while we are fretting over ‘our purpose in life’  or whether we are ever going to make a living ‘doing what we love?”

The mind is so full of beliefs, concepts, and deep patterns that block out the true play of existence. We only see with a mind and eyes that are filtered through the murky, thick haze of mass hypnosis and social and psychological conditioning.

Our very existence is love.

Is that not purpose enough?

Is that not more than enough cause to celebrate?

This is true safety.

Solid, unshakeable, unbendable, and unbreakable.

It is silent and benevolent.

I exist, therefore, I am love.

What could possibly feel safer than this?

If we can build a life based on this foundation of awareness, (no matter how late in life we remember this), then we have made the greatest contribution to life, and to existence, that any human being can ever make.

This is living.  This is purpose.  This is love. This is freedom.

This is pointing the compass home.

 

With love,

Heather xo