What Would You Do If There Was Nothing You Had To Do?

What Would You Do If There Was Nothing You Had To Do?

Practices to Create Your Life

the Way You Want It to Be

Winslow Eliot

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Copyright 2012 by Winslow Eliot. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

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ISBN: 978-0-9857184-5-9 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-0-9857184-6-6 (paperback)

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Acknowledgments

With enormous gratitude and love to my wise mother.

Also, to Sheilaa Hite and her Tarot Circle: Louise Rossi, Ralston Edwards, Ginny Guenette, Linda Farmer, Robin Hare, and many others we met, parted from, and merrily met again.

Billie Chernicoff, Nancy Crompton, May Paddock, and Samantha Stier for being willing readers and editors.

My many students over the years, who are also my best teachers.

And to all my teachers, past, present, future. I honor you and am so grateful to you! I am especially grateful to Vanelle Maunalei Love who inspired this book, and to Tracey Brennan for the Practice, Listen, and Improvise concept.

Claudia Jackson, John Locke, and Tom Stier, always.

Foreword

Introduction

0. Beginning: Where do I start?

Part I—Thinking

1. Flowing: The art of effortless concentration

2. Knowing: Accessing your inner voice

3. Creating: You are the artist of your life

4. Empowering: Who’s In Charge?

5. Committing: The initiation of the daily life

6. Choosing: Be guided by your inner compass

7. Traveling: Going on an adventure

Part II—Feeling

8. Discerning: Using your head, heart, and hands

9. Retreating: Going inward

10. Responding. Destiny and luck

11. Encouraging: You’re braver than you think

12. Surrendering: Having patience

13. Transforming: The cycle of nature

14. Being calm: The gift of equanimity

Part III—Living

15. Experiencing: Your sensual and curious self

16. Leaving behind: Everything that no longer serves you

17. Friendship: Who matters?

18. Dreaming: Mysteries of the unconscious

19. Illuminating: Seeing what is really there

20. Consciousness: What it means to be free

21. Being in the world: Writing your story

Blessings on your journey

Foreword

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass themselves by without wondering.—St. Augustine

What would you do if there was nothing you had to do?

Would you take the express, or the local?

Would you order coffee to go, or grind the beans yourself and enjoy the fragrance of fresh coffee wafting through the house and onto the terrace?

Would you set off on an adventure into the unknown or would you wander slowly to the hammock to rest?

What would you do if there was nothing you had to do?

In order to be able to answer that question, you have to know your heart’s desire. That knowing may be a harder task than it first seems. Often it’s easier to go about daily tasks and meet scheduled obligations than it is to know what you really want.

If you are ready to go on a path of self-discovery, to learn what your authentic self is truly asking of you in this life, then here’s your opportunity. This book shows you how.

You don’t have to give up anything in order to find out what you really want out of life. This is an inward journey, and it may have little to do with quitting your job, leaving your spouse, or spending less time with your children. You are going to travel a road that, as the Sufis say, is in the world but not of the world. This journey will take you through a deeply personal process so that you emerge into your ‘real’ world in a spirit of mindful self-creation and joy.

The mystic and psychologist Carl G. Jung called this process individuation. Others refer to it as self-actualization, self-integration, or finding yourself.

Know thyself and know the world, was the ancient Greek adage. You cannot truly know what your soul needs you to be doing in the world unless you know yourself.

If you expect this to be an easy journey, think again. It’s work. This path from where you are now through surrender through nothingness to joy is one of the hardest anyone undertakes. Usually we’re forced into it, through life’s experiences, challenges, tragedy, or change.

I’m offering a short cut.

I’m offering a way that transforms the work into play.

What would it be like to wake up with nothing to do? Imagine the birds are singing outside your window, and the garden is filled with dawn. Your house is pristine. Your mate—if you have or want one—is content. Your coffers are full, so you don’t have to earn money today. Your children or other relatives are happy. Your parents don’t need you. Your friends are fine. You are care-free. You have no responsibilities, obligations, duties, shoulds, have-tos, musts … Nothing you have to do.

There’s only you, just beautiful you, in the universe.

What would you choose to do with you—just you?

Maybe you’d re-read a beloved novel?

Maybe have a long bath scented with rosemary?

Take a walk?

Do you long to talk with someone or are you glad of the silence?

Would you call a friend because the loneliness is a bit scary?

Do you prefer to lie in bed and daydream, or do you jump up, eager for an activity, greeting the day with energy and action?

How do you know what kind of person you really are, what your soul thirsts for, if you don’t give it a chance to find out?

Most of our lives are measured out in coffee spoons—meaning we wake up, brush our teeth, have our coffee, go to work, recover from the day, then it’s time for dinner, time to go to bed … there’s family-and-friend time in there, and, if you’re lucky, perhaps a vacation—which means vacation from work. And, typically, vacations are not excellent opportunities to find yourself. When you wake up in a strange hotel room or sip a margarita by the pool, you’re recovering from work, not finding your inner peace. You’re saying to yourself, I’m so glad I’m here—what a relief—it’s snowing up north … nice getaway.

So I’m wondering this: why would you want to get away from your daily life?

When I first began telling people that I was writing this book, the response was typically startled surprise. The immediate interest, curiosity, and the intense longing for a map to this kind of self-discovery were palpable. One young woman asked urgently, "Do you know?"

I responded by saying, "I know how to help you to know. That’s what my book is about."

Only you have your own answers. I’m giving you a map, a compass, and solid walking shoes. The map is your powerful mind; your compass is your authentic feeling-nature. The shoes are your physical body and the time and space in which you live.

Most importantly, I’m giving you twenty-two keys that will open twenty-two doors, each one going deeper into discovering your heart’s desire.

If you do the practices I outline in this book, and accept the process taking as long as it needs to take, I believe you will find out not only what you would do if there was nothing you had to do, but who you really are and your soul’s purpose.

Introduction

Choose the freedom of now. For you are not your mind or your memories or thought-pictures that torment you. You are an undying spirit that can be fanned like a fire and renewed. —Kristin Zambucka

We all experience turning points in our lives, sometimes several times in a decade or even within a year. My biggest turning point took place in Hawai‘i. I was offered a position at the Honolulu Waldorf School, I grabbed my good-natured children and reluctant husband, and we left Massachusetts behind.

Around my fiftieth birthday, on the island of O‘ahu, I met a wise woman called Vanelle Maunalei Love. I told her I had visited all the sacred places on as many islands as I could, I said I had read pretty much everything Maxwell Freedom Long and others had written about Hawaiian huna, the ancient sacred teachings of the Pacific islanders. I was in the process of learning the magical language, which I had discovered was at the heart of huna. I was also taking hula dance lessons, that I understood as much as I could about ancient Hawaiian mysticism, but that I had not been able to penetrate its essence.

To be honest, I did not think she could help me. In all my spiritual seeking, I had not yet found a teacher or guide who did not toss my earnest seeking back into my lap and tell me to find out for myself. I appreciated all those teachers for the faith they had in me to do just that, but still I longed for one who would really open a door for me in some way.

With polite enthusiasm and inner skepticism, I agreed to accompany Maunalei on an expedition to some of O‘ahu’s sacred places where she generously offered to share what she could.

This is what happened: We drove along the Pali to one of the most famous tourist look-out points on O‘ahu: where Kamehameha fought a crucial battle in his task of unifying all the Hawaiian islands two centuries ago. The place was swarming with busloads of tourists, the air was filled with the chatter of dozens of foreign languages, and the relentless clicks of cameras and iPhones. My heart sank—I did not want to hear again about Kamehameha’s victory, at the cost of so many lives of men, the men who fell off the edge of that high, windy cliff. It is said that sometimes you can still hear the shrieks of the dying soldiers as they plummeted 300 feet to their doom.

It’s also said that on windy days you can lean over the cliff and balance against the wind, and some have died that way, too.

But Maunalei told me that the place was much more than a historical site. It had a sacred energy all its own, completely apart from politics, tragedy, or foolhardiness.

I followed docilely through the exhaust fumes near the stairs leading to the lookout. There, Maunalei paused and said quietly, This is where we need to chant an ‘oli to let the spirit of the ‘aina know we are visiting with respect for the area. We are asking to be welcomed. We are also acknowledging who we are and letting them know our intentions are pono. 

And, standing with a matter-of-fact inward stillness, oblivious to the people swarming around us, she began to chant quietly in Hawaiian.

As she chanted the strangest thing happened. Everything around us grew quiet, except for her low voice. I couldn’t hear the chatter, the camera clicks, footsteps—nothing. I could still see the people, but they seemed in a different dimension. They were as innocuous as lovely flowers. That was it: I felt I was in a meadow of lovely flowers—but I couldn’t hear them or communicate with them in any way. Maunalei and I were completely alone, there on the cliff top, outside the realm of space or time.

I blinked, thinking I could revert back to my more familiar dimension, but it would not come. She and I were still isolated.

What is fascinating about the power of knowing is that you can’t tell someone else what you know and expect them to get it. It has to be your own experience. I can repeat, word for word, what Maunalei told me after she had finished chanting and took me along some dirt paths beyond the lookout point, and the answers she gave to my many questions, but unless you were there, in her presence, high up on the Pali, in another dimension, they remain just concepts.

But what I can share with you is how you, too, can come to that same knowing in your own life.

Because when Maunalei spoke, everything fell into place for me: I knew that I really could create my own reality.

***

Also, I can tell you a little about Hawaiian mysticism.

Hawaiian spirituality is based on a complicated and rich ten-fold view of the human being. The three basic aspects of each of us are our thinking, feeling, and physical natures. Each of these is divided into three parts, which creates a nine-fold human being. The tenth being is the integration of all the others.

Here’s a description of how the ancient Hawaiians viewed your thinking self or mind:

Like many of our modern-day psychologists, ancient Hawaiians believed that human beings have three ‘minds’: the rational mind, the subconscious/ unconscious mind, and spirit or higher-self mind.

Hawaiians called those three minds your three spirits, and your task in life is to integrate them, so each can nurture and care for each other. The first