The first thing I learned from my teacher, Rudi, is that we are in this world to grow. That is really the only reason we are here. Any other activity that we are engaged in is an unconscious expression of our creative energy, which is responding to the limitation of our circumstances, not the potential that is invested in us.
I talk sometimes about the disappointments of our ancestors. You may or may not believe me, but my own personal experience is that 99% of what each of us do in this world–99% of our longings and our desires and our efforts–is really a reaction to an empty space inside us. That space is empty because our parents could not fill it. They could not fill it because they had a similar empty space that could not be filled by their parents, and so on down the line. This isn’t anyone’s fault. This is the human condition.
Awakening our creative energy changes our understanding of ourselves and our experience. It allows us to find within ourselves, anytime we consciously engage it, a sweetness and a richness that is forever within us. That sweetness and richness, once awakened and cultivated, becomes a power that uplifts and transforms our understanding of ourselves and the experience that we have of our life.
It is our wish to grow that we consciously engage and take ever more deeply inside us. By doing this, we rewire our whole nervous system and the mechanism that is beaming out to the universe. I bring this up because the idea of making a statement to the universe seems to be a popular notion. If we’re going to make a statement, we should state that we want to grow. This wish to grow is an open statement that you make. Any other statement that you make to the universe—“give me money, give me fame, give me whatever, give me this, give me that, give me, give me,”–is really coming from the same empty space as the disappointment of our ancestors. It is not coming from a place that is connected to the fullness of our spiritual potential, which is the only part of us that can actually reach out and engage the universe. If the ultimate reality is joy, then it is only from that joy within ourselves that we can connect to and communicate with the ultimate reality. Everything else is tension, and it will be heard on a lesser frequency.
This wish to grow, the understanding that we are in this world to grow, is consciously cultivated. It makes us perfectly clear about the fact that we are in this world to grow, which transforms our whole life into a conscious endeavor. That doesn’t make it easy. It doesn’t make it free of challenges. It makes it an endless opportunity for learning and for expansion, and endless opportunity for fulfillment on a deeper and deeper level, until there is no tension to be dissolved and we are nothing but pure joy.