Dreams
One my goals this year is to read a book every month while I’m on the race. This month I read the book called The Alchemist, which is absolutely amazing. This book is fiction but has a lot of spiritual undertones that will cause the mind to sink into deep thought. One of my teammates and I were talking about how the book has challenged us to think differently about our everyday lives. While talking to my teammate, I felt like the Holy Spirit was leading me to tell you this. Please take this with love; I truly don’t know how you feel or can’t understand what you are going through completely. I can only relate through my own experiences and what God is teaching me. I hope this helps.
‘What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream. Why?
There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul that it becomes unnoticed. But it’s still there.
If we have the courage to disinter our dream, the second obstacle then faces us: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us from going forward. We don’t realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on the journey.
Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: “Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the personal calling is not easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in the journey. Then, we warriors of light, must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.
I ask myself: are defeats necessary? Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.
So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?
Because, once we have overcome the defeats-and we always do- we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence ( God’s Grace). In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight, We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable: the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul; until one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.
Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spending many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there,
waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all of our lives.
Oscar Wilde said, “Each man kills the things he loves.” And it’s true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, and all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal when it was only a step away.
This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.” – Paulo Coelho
So my challenge for you all is to find your dream/calling in life and pursue it with all your heart. Thank you so much for your support and prayers. You are helping me accomplish my dream! I recently made my next deadline of $11,000. I would appreciate your help to be fully funded by the end of March. I only need $5,000 to reach my goal. Please keep my team and I in your prayers. Thanks!
