“Why does everyone in my life always worry about me?!” She thinks, humored by the bold truth that provoked a mischievous laugh.

That she was me. And everyone in my life is worried about me. And that makes me laugh. Not a mean laugh, just an if-they-only-knew-how-okay-I-really-am laugh. Life is pretty straightforward for some people. Then there are the 3% like me that twist and weave and turn and bend and go with their gut, not their head. I trust my intuition, I look for God everywhere and that is how I discovered this amazing Universe of His. It has taken me some amazing places, and it has taken me some mind-numbingly boring normal places, and it has taken me to some deep, painful, gut-wrenchingly awful places. Guess  what? I will go to all of those places again. That does not mean I will be afraid. That does not mean I will sacrifice my freedom and my dreams in order to avoid them. And I speak not only of the painful places, there are many who fear the amazing. I was one of those people. A martyr mindset, an inability to truly believe that I was worthy of what I wanted, and therefore completely unable to make it manifest.  Still the dream held fast, and I would not let it go. At my lowest points it was the dream that lifted me back up. Yes, indeed, I may have taken the long way, but the destination has always been the same.

Paulo Coehlo calls it the pursuit of your “Personal Legend.” I like that term. It feels so regal. That is exactly how it should feel. We are all children of God and heirs to His kingdom. Freedom, peace, abundance, prosperity are all within our reach. Open yourself up to receive them.

The first step in realizing this is being aware that Everything is a Sign. Get the words random, coincidence, and mistake out of your vocabulary, and start looking at everything. Read the labels, look at numbers everywhere, always look at the moon, observe nature. Take time to stop. We all hate stop signs, I hate stop signs with a passion, so perhaps that has something to do with how we are so conditioned as a people to go, go, go. And going is not just going, constant mental and audio stimulation is going, too. Seek silence. Seek solitude. Seek still. No, I do not mean you must spend an hour amid the lilies and the tulips, at first just take small opportunities throughout the day to take a moment, get out of your head, and look around you or even better, look up. See how everything around you moves together, it is then that you will begin to open yourself up to God’s teachings. You can read, yes, you can go to church every Wednesday, but I believe that you will never truly know God until you begin to see Him in every last facet of your life.

I was raised a Christian, and on my spiritual quest to shed religion and truly find God and only God wherever or whoever he was, I discovered the Universe. At first I wrestled trying to reconcile this seemingly New Age term “Universe” to what I knew of God thus far. Was it a contradiction or an anomaly to believe in a Universe and also in God? What I realized eventually was no way Jose is it at all at odds with a belief in God, because it’s God’s Universe!! Then I began to understand how nature and the forces of the Earth played their pivotal role in creating this undying, unwavering energy force that invades every last microscopic atom of anything and everything in existence, and even the things that are not. Einstein taught us a hundred years ago that time is an allusion, everything exists at the same time it is only a mortal experience that we see one thing at a time. The last thing I saw referring to Einstein was accompanied by a grossly exaggerated caricature that made him look like a fool. Blasphemy. No wonder the underlying themes of his teachings have been so utterly lost. And do not think for one moment that is a coincidence, either. When you open yourself up to the beauty of the Universe in all of its order and brilliance, you will also begin to see the evil. This was intended and designed: know your enemy.

It is with this knowledge that you gain true freedom, for you remain steadfast in your belief that not only does everything and everyone have a purpose, we also have the power within us to be anything that we want to be and do anything we want to do and have anything we want to have. No outside forces, no government, no economy, no oppression, no suppression, no red tape can keep you from accomplishing your goals and living the life you can imagine. But it has to begin inside.

I was debating with a quite practical man this evening and he said to me, “95% of people out there don’t like their jobs and aren’t happy at work.” That was quite simply one of the saddest things I had ever heard, and if that person believes that then it is no wonder why he is miserable at his job. Because he thinks that is the way it is supposed to be.

I am not advising, yet, that everyone should aspire to more and go look for a new job. That again is a detrimental mindset because it still puts too much importance on the job. The issue I am addressing here is that the job has nothing to do with it. You must learn to be grateful for what you already have before you will ever be able to have what you really want. Gratitude emits joy. Joy is not happiness, happiness is derived from the external surroundings, but joy is the real pursuit, because joy is permanent. Joy begets peace and peace is also permanent. Someone remarked once of feeling peaceful around me, and I replied, yes, well, isn’t that the ultimate goal? Peace? And so it is. Joy and peace work harmoniously together within you to produce an unwavering assurance and faith that every step you take is in the right direction, even when it appears to everyone else that you are dancing a jig.