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Being the Difference
by Robert Rabbin
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We are so
pleased to announce that Robert Rabin will again be
contributing articles to Soulful Living. His writing are
deeply profound and speak to the essence of living
Soulfully.
Late last year, I entered a three-week
retreat, during which time I disconnected from everyone
and everything. Something hugely powerful and
irresistible was pulling me away from the outside world,
towards an unknown inner journey of reflection, release,
and renewal. It was as if I had an appointment for which
I was not ready. An alchemical process was going to
catalyze something within me, my intuition told me,
which was going to get me ready by dissolving what might
be in the way, by renovating my mind and heart, and
restoring my soul to wholeness. After the retreat, I
would be able to enter and engage the future that was
calling for a more authentic, free, and powerful self.
One day, resting on the blue couch in my lounge room, my
eyes closed. Shortly after, they opened, but I was no
longer in my home in Richmond; I was sitting on the
banks of the Ganges river in the ancient city of
Varanasi. I was at one of the several "burning ghats,"
stone steps where hundreds of cremations occur every
day. Bodies are placed on wooden pyres, set alight with
ghee, and priests chant sacred mantras while the body
burns to ashes. There I was, in some spirit, astral
form, sitting quietly, watching this, taking it in.
I could feel the whole of the recently-left life of each
person, not in specific ways, but in a general way, as
in remembering a play I had once seen, recalling the
essential drama of it, and a few highlights. I could
feel the many ways in which people lived, the ways in
which they gave themselves too often to things that did
not really matter — to worries and concerns, to
activities and aspirations, to quarrels and squabbles. I
felt how quickly each body journeyed from birth, through
the drama of life, to these burning cradles that were
birthing them out of this world.
Some invisible guide, a kind of unseen presence, asked
me, "What makes life truly worth living? Look how
quickly it all ends. It's just a day, though it seems
like forty, fifty, maybe eighty years. It's a day. What
is important? What makes life worth living? What makes
the difference between a well-lived life, and one
squandered on petty things?"
What I discovered in this shamanic journey to a sacred
city by the banks of a holy river, where they burn to
ashes hundreds of human bodies every day — is that "the
difference" we want to make is about a way of living. It
is a choice between petty concerns, mindlessness,
sadness, negativity, cynicism — and clarity, truth,
meaning, and purpose. And while these last words are
abstract, perhaps idealistic, they are also as real as
the very ground we stand upon.
I already knew that there is something written in each
person's heart, in the scripture of their soul, that is
their map for an authentic life, such that if they
follow it, if they follow the paths of that map, they
will live a well-lived life, a significant life, a life
without regret, or sadness, or meanness. They will live
a full, unique, joyful, exuberant life. I knew that. But
now I know it more fully, as if a brighter light has
been installed in each cell of my being. I came to
understand, with a kind of urgency, that making a
difference is really choosing a way of living. Making a
difference is not something we do, but rather a
lifestyle we choose, one that flows from the words
inscribed in the scripture of our heart, of our soul;
and in this way of purposeful living we are a constant
blessing to ourselves and to others, we are a walking
seed and spark that awakens and fires the imagination of
others towards a similar way of living. Making a
difference may involve community service; it may not.
The ways in which each of us will make a difference by
definition and necessity will flow out from our inner
being. First, we choose the difference between true and
false, between authentic and inauthentic. Then, we act.
Then, we make the difference that has already been made
within us through our choice as to how we are going to
live. In the end, making a difference is not idealistic
or philosophical. It is practical, and inevitable.
I understood that the size and scope of what we do is
not important. Our life may be huge and daring and
world-shaking, or it may be small and quiet and
unrecognized by the masses or media. What matters, what
makes the difference, is the fragrance we emit, the
intoxicating aura we carry, as we fulfill whatever roles
we are called to by the secret that only we know, the
secret revealed to us when we enter the deep and
beautiful sacred place of our heart to read what is
written there for us. That is what counts. That's how we
live a well-lived life. We find the way that is ours
alone, that is the way in which we can bring forth the
most glorious self that is ours alone. And,
paradoxically, we never go on this path alone, for we
are always within the community of others who are making
a difference in the same way — from the center of their
spiritual universe.
This is the difference every human being wants to make:
to live an authentic life of deep meaning, of
significance, of connection to existence itself. When
the petty preoccupations of unexamined busyness are
struck down and taken apart by our deeper knowing and
feeling, we become expansive and elevated as in those
moments where time gives way to eternity, where
self-concern gives way to a greater belonging, where
things we have no words for become our constant
companions and trusted friends. The difference that we
all want to make, is the difference we make through
choice and devotion and love, by choosing an authentic
life, the life only we can live: the choice between
depth and surface, between significance and pettiness,
between courage and fear, between possibility and
cynicism, between clarity and doubt, between connection
and alienation, between generosity and greed, between
imagination and recitation, between creativity and
repetition. It is certainly a choice between freedom and
bondage, between magic and mundane.
Magic. Yes. There is great magic in choosing an
authentic life. I know this is true, I can tell you this
because I have experienced this directly. When we open
our heart and unshutter our soul, we find unimagined
things are suddenly possible. We uncover creative and
expressive powers that are not from learning and
experience, not from courses and certifications, but
from our very nature. We suddenly feel that the blood
pumping through us, circulates through every living
thing; that's how close, how joined, how similar we
would become with everything else, with all of
existence. We awake to a world that is not fixed and
certain, but one that shape-shifts to fit the contours
of our map, the one drawn in our heart from the
beginning of time. This world, awakened by the magic
within us, becomes a story waiting to be told, about a
life of dimensions and levels and nuances and subtleties
of music and mystery and miracle where anything is
possible, where anything can happen from any place at
any time without reason or cause. This is the difference
that magic makes, and that we make with magic. This
difference comes from who we are, from consciously
choosing to live from that deep place inside us, now
wide open; from that secret being revealed for the first
time, spoken and told with every word, made real and
true with every step, every move, every act. Then, all
our doing is a blessing.
A blessing. We become a blessing. We are a blessing.
When it is our turn to be turned to ashes, and that time
is coming fast for all of us, people who knew us would
both mourn the loss and be wildly joyful that we lived.
They would laugh and cry and spin around like mad little
children too full of excitement and wonder. And those
who didn't know us might, for some inexplicable reason,
stop what they are saying and doing, and feel something
move deep within, as if a comet were streaking across
the sky of their soul.
And we, and our enduring spirit, would be happy, very
happy. Delighted. Ecstatic. Yes, because we would have
chosen a well-lived life, we would have been, and made,
that supreme difference.
© Copyright 2011 Robert Rabbin. All Rights Reserved
Books
by
Robert Rabbin:
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Living)
Robert Rabbin is a groundbreaking public
speaker, author, and self-awareness teacher. His
newest book, Robert Rabbin's Authenticity
Accelerator: How to an Authentic Life in Ten Words,
is available in various formats. Please visit his
website for details:
www.authenticityaccelerator.com.
During the past 25
years, Robert has created a distinctive international
reputation as a groundbreaking and inspirational public
speaker, author, leadership adviser, and self-awareness
teacher. He is the creator of RealTime Speaking and the
Authenticity Accelerator.
The profound
insights and practical wisdom he shares in these various
roles are the harvest of many years of intensive
meditation and personal development. He has traveled
throughout the world, from the ashrams of India to the
forests of Finland, from the Sierra Nevada Mountains of
California to the Sinai desert of Israel, from Puerto
Vallarta, Mexico to Istanbul, Turkey.
Robert has honed
his unique style of public speaking in hundreds of
workshops, meetings, lectures, keynote speeches, and
conference presentations. In addition to presenting more
than 300 of his signature personal growth seminars, his
résumé of speaking engagements includes State of the
World Forum, Institute of Noetic Sciences, JFK
University School of Management, American Management
Association, International Coach Federation, and the
Third International Conference on Enlightenment.
As a sought-after
personal adviser, Robert works individually with a
cultural cross-section of people, including corporate
executives, professionals, rock musicians, best-selling
authors, fashion designers, spiritual teachers,
educators, and entrepreneurs. He also provides
organizational coaching, consulting, facilitation, and
adventure-based retreat services in the areas of
leadership, communication, and individual and team
performance.
Robert has
published seven books and more than 200 articles. He was
commissioned to write original essays for three
leading-edge anthologies and he was interviewed for
The Awakening West, a collection of conversations
with contemporary Western wisdom teachers.
To contact Robert,
and for detailed information about his work, please
visit any of his websites:
www.RobertRabbin.com
www.RealTimeSpeaking.com
www.RobertRabbinSpeaker.com
www.AuthenticityAccelerator.com
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