Whose Life Are You Living?

“All that we see or seems is but a dream within a dream.”
-Edgar Allan Poe

The Hawk Prince permission © Jena DellaGrottaglia-Maldonado www.autumnsgoddess.com

I was bombing down the main street in Bucerias on a Townie bicycle last month when I ran into a friend’s sister. I stopped to say hello and commented on her pregnant-less state. Six years ago, we met on a small yacht that a group of us had rented for the day. When we anchored for a swim, she bobbed on the ocean, her swollen belly breaching above the waves like a giant turtle. She was carrying twins for another couple.

Andrea* has a wife and is a professional surrogate. She has had 14 children for other people and on this trip she was in Mexico with one of her biological children. My curiosity was piqued.

As it stands, three of the children she has given birth to were conceived from her own eggs and are fathered by gay men. Two of these men wanted their children to know her as their biological mother and she consented. They also wanted the children to know each other as siblings. While in Bucerias she was going to have her uterus scanned to see if it is in shape for more babies.

The next night I perched myself at the bar in my favorite Italian restaurant, La Dolce Vita, situated on the Malecón in Puerto Vallarta. Charro, the veteran bartender who has worked there for 20 years, made me his signature margarita on the rocks. Soon the vacant seats surrounding me were filled.

I was reading a book about an uncommon cancer remission story, one that I have promised to review in return for a review of my soon-to-be-published cancer book. A chic ex-pat couple speaking excellent Spanish sat next to me. The man complimented me for my ability to read in such a loud and busy place.

I learned that they have lived in Mexico for 15 years, are happily married, and live in separate condos (a bit like the conjoining houses Liz Taylor and Richard Burton had built right in Puerto Vallarta while on location for Night of the Iguana), one above the other. They share six rescue dogs between them as well. She was a successful news journalist in New York and he told me they’d had the good fortune to retire early and leave behind the crazy pace of NYC. They wore Mexican life well.

A friend was in town at the same time as I was, on a break from her work in Guadalajara. She was offered a contract to train personal development facilitators with excellent pay and a luxury condo to stay in, complete with a maid while she’s there working. She has a driver to take her wherever she desires and her delectable Guadalajara-level meals are covered. It’s an improbable opportunity—and proof that impossible things happen every day.

A delightful Canadian couple (of British descent) living in the town of Bucerias invited me to stay for a writing getaway. They had lived a typical Alberta life, but the siren song of Mexico captured them after a visit. They sold some belongings and moved everything else—burned the bridges—so to speak, bought a home in the quiet town outside of Vallarta, and moved as permanent, year-round residents. She is an editor and ghostwriter and works for people from different parts of North America. He retired from his high stress corporate career and helps with the editing. They’ve devised a brilliant system of working remotely and have created a life that is perfectly suited for their temperaments and desires.

I reluctantly returned home to the cold and was slammed back into the land of the “practical” again. But what I was loudly reminded of on my sojourn was that we can live completely contrary to how we were raised and what we were taught, and not just survive but thrive doing so.

We all have places where we flourish and shine and we all have places where we die a slow death of the spirit. Those happy whereabouts can bring us enchantment. We can live in excitement and with unbridled joie de vivre. We all have vocations that would bring out the best of us. Our work could be our play. However, if we hear the call, there can be a lot of excuses and justifications and rationalizations blockading the road to a vastly different life than we are living.

After a review of my 2017 intentions, which first and foremost include an unconventional and more “boho” lifestyle, my coaching homework this month was:

What thoughts and actions will support these intentions?
From what or whose perspective will these goals and wishes most likely be achieved?

I had to think long and hard about whose perspective would best support my vision. I knew that viewing life from lenses covered in layers of the past isn’t the ideal outlook. Then it struck me: from the vantage point of my guardian angel. He sees the grand overview of my life, the divine plan. He is wisdom and compassion incarnate.

He’d show me the parallel realities that exist and that I get to choose.

He’d say that each small decision matters and determines the trajectory of my life.

He’d reiterate that with a little mindset shifting, anything is possible.

He’d remind me that everything, including money, is energy and that financial setbacks are only a small piece of the cosmic puzzle.

He’d tell me that you cannot perceive or receive brilliant solutions from a low vibration and he’d push me to keep raising mine by believing, by doing the work, and by opening my heart wide to all kinds of love—because love is the highest vibration there is.

He’d say that happiness is only a thought away.

He’d explain how things can happen in ways I can’t even fathom, so just trust.

He’d remind me that I am a powerful being and have incredible manifesting abilities.

He’d instruct me to stop relying on appearances and live as though it is already done.

He’d prompt me to be grateful before the event.

He’d coach me to clear the path and remove all extraneous “junk” blocking the way, be it of the mind or of the material.

He’d share with me the number of unseen helpers I have at my disposal, if only I remember to ask.

He’d jog my memory of my innate knowing that I am a spiritual being having a human experience and that I am intimately connected to the divine quantum field of all things at all times.

He’d reveal to me how he holds no judgements of me or my life, or anyone else’s for that matter.

He’d tell me to follow my excitement, my joy, my passion—always—and to imagine and create my life anew each day.

He’d prod me to be playful and to laugh every day.

He’d know the reason for the detours and difficulties of my life and how they were not placed to destroy me, but to bring me to my destiny.

And he’d tell me that I am the miracle I seek.

Whose perspective would support your dreams? Einstein? Ghandi? Your wise grandfather? Or maybe even a happy, playful dog’s viewpoint? Just a little food for thought as you hunker into 2017.

Post © Wanda St.Hilaire

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An Exceptional Guidebook for Navigating Your Way to Health and Happiness