The Greatest Advice of All Time?

So why are you interested in the Secret?

Obviously, it’s about doing what you really want to do with your life, right?
We’ve said it repeatedly, quoting the wise man’s adage:

Money and fame do not happiness make.

Of course, they may help in being happy. For example, it’s pretty nice not having to worry about money. Let’s face it… Most people love money. And others like fame, and many love both.

The thing is… money and fame are usually just exte
al confirmations of the fact that you’re being already happy with your life.

If you are, money and fame are usually no issues anymore. You either don’t care about them because you’re being happy anyway. Or (many times) they may come as side-effects, or symptoms caused by the fact that you’re already happy with yourself and your life.

That’s where the principle of being happy and grateful for what happens to you and the situation you’re in is relevant.

Obviously, money and fame are really different things compared to the desire for money and fame. The desire for implies that you’re not being happy and grateful right now, thinking you need money and/or fame in order to be happy and do what you want with your life.

This feeling of needing (and thus the deeply-ingrained feeling of lack) determines what you send out… the frequency you broadcast if you will. And this frequency ‘attracts’ a like frequency, and this is the mechanism through which needing pushes things away in a very small nutshell.

Anyway, this is something I've talked about more at length in other articles, so we’re not going to repeat this again.

In this article we want to get into something a bit more concrete… something more practical to use in your life. This might sound straightforward, but upon deeper thought it may just be the greatest word of advice of all time…

You know, according to the American physicist, philosopher and management expert Danah Zohar, doing what you really want with your life requires what she calls ‘Spiritual Intelligence’. It’s about your own, personal, deeper motives.

Zohar says that self-development and purpose/meaning are principles that are central to spiritual intelligence. When you’re in touch with your own ‘inner universe’, you can develop your talents and give full scope to your natural gifts.

As such, you’ll live the life that fully matches who you are (which is not necessarily the life that others think you’re supposed to live). Within yourself, you’ll discover your own actuating motives and what really inspires and animates you.

Zohar says that when you manage to live your life from that inspiration, you’re quite a happy person. This pretty much connects to what the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (who came up with the so-called ‘hierarchy of needs’ aiming to explain human motivation) called ‘self actualization’.

According to Maslow, self-actualization is the ultimate state of human development, a spiritual condition in which people are creative, ‘playful’, and tolerant. And if you’ve read the myriad of books and articles, you know that these are the very conditions that facilitate the extent to which you can ‘work’ the ‘laws of the universe’ (if you want to call them that).

And you know what? There’s actually a specific group of people who can teach us a lot about this state of ‘creativity’, ‘playfulness’ and ‘tolerance’, or rather ‘spiritual intelligence’...

These people are children. Kids are almost the very paragon of spiritual intelligence.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean we should all start behaving in infantile ways. However, we can start to look at the world more like they do. We could start to re-invent and re-discover the qualities that we so often lose in the process of what’s called ‘growing up’ and ‘becoming adults’.

Those qualities are:

Being openr
Trustr
Sincerity
Being genuiner
Curiosityr
Eager to lea

Generosityr
Feeling adventurousr
Wonder and astonishment on the least things…
And not to forget: unconditional love.

Let’s face it… People who are living life like this are pleasant company, both to themselves and to others.

Spiritual intelligence has got nothing to do with religion or faith. Of course, both are fine if pursuing them makes you feel good inside, if pursuing them is your own choice if it’s not imposed on you by others.

No, spiritual intelligence is about self-reflection and intuition. There’s a difference between what many consider ‘being spiritual’ and ‘spiritual intelligence’.

You can do reiki, qigong, meditation, burn incense, do rain dances in wildlife outfits all day and read books about ‘spirituality’. And of course that’s all fine if that makes you feel good.

However, ‘spiritual intelligence’ rather refers to making the choices that suit you and actually consciously experiencing and feeling the satisfaction and feeling of fulfillment and self-realization that come with that.

That’s what’ll make you happy.

So what’s possibly the greatest advice of all time?

REMAIN CHILDLIKE.

Be open. Be adventurous. Be curious. Be eager to learn. Be genuine, not least to yourself. Don’t judge. Acknowledge the wonder of life and the amazing experience it brings.

After all, it seems so real, doesn’t it?

In the words of the late comedia
Bill Hicks:

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park". And when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while.

Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, “Hey – don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride...”

And we kill those people.

“We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.”

Just a ride... But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok.

But it doesn’t matter, it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money.

A choice, right now, between fear and love.”

So what’s your choice?

Remain childlike. Hold on and enjoy the ride!