Release: The Eighth Key to Happiness
The Eighth Key to Happiness: In order to transform our dreams into reality we release all that sabotages our efforts in order to claim our dreams in the everyday world.
Our essential self does not care how much time or work it takes to bring our dreams into reality—one year, ten years, or a lifetime. I’m not positive but I think time and timelessness are identical to the essential self. Purpose and meaning; engaging life with positive purpose, this is at the heart of the teachings of the Fairy Godmother. Engaging life with positive purpose is the metaphoric heart of the essential self. To claim purpose we need to release distractions, addictions, melodrama.
Look at Cinderella’s fate before she had the crucial interaction with the Fairy Godmother that changed the course of her life. Cinderella spent years in the Great Silence sweeping, dusting, scrubbing, sewing, running errands and carrying water. Her bleak days are filled with endless back-breaking labor and she suffered a primitive emotional isolation. Unless there was a chore to perform Cinderella remained invisible to all but the mice and rats, which I think is a metaphor for the instinctual self-grounded in Mother Nature. Even in the Great Silence Cinderella is resourceful. She finds cleaning her home keeps her parent’s memory alive. Nature becomes her best friend. And she keeps her head down, moving forward, one foot in front of the other.
Cinderella’s quest for giving and receiving love went seemingly unanswered for an eternity of days dedicated to drudgery. She kept those skills alive, giving and receiving, with Mother Nature. What made Cinderella’s life different from a life filled with hopelessness and despair was her bond with her Deepest Desires and Nature. Cinderella walked through drudgery with her heart on fire for the hidden quest of her Deepest Desires. Ironically, to experience the life she dreamed of Cinderella will have to release her isolation and drudgery. Circumstances did not define Cinderella. She passed the tests of her quest by staying grounded in her ability communicate with nature, to give and receive love. As a result she was open, vulnerable, and alive to the moment. She was able to perceive the Fairy Godmother and act on her instructions. Would she be able to take the next step? Could she release all of her life as she knew it? Would she cling to the known circumstances rather than venture into the uncharted territories of living her Deepest Desires?
All around Cinderella were examples of people clinging to the safety of the familiar. Her stepsisters chose life disconnected from their native talents and strength to dwell in the mind numbing panaceas that are familiar. Her stepmother wore dissatisfaction like a shabby winter coat. Disillusioned she endlessly criticizes and beats everyone in the vicinity with her word stick. Once a promising healer, versed in herbal lore, Cinderella’s stepmother disappointed in life, used those skills disconnected from greater good and lost her way in manipulations and greed.
Look. I know I’m asking a lot of you. I’m asking you to believe in the possibility of your personal happy ending. I’m asking you to believe in your Deepest Desires in the face of your own version of impossible odds. Where is the Way of the Fairy Godmother amidst this ongoing turmoil? This is such a diverse yet acute answer I don’t know how to access the words. I find the Fairy Godmother in the signature sound my big, white goldendoodle makes, glump-glump- glump, down the stairs each morning. I find her brand of happiness in his levitating joy at the prospect of a walk. Outside, reminders of the Fairy Godmother reverberate in the soft air, bird song, streaked sky at twilight, creosote fragrance after dessert rains. I fall in love with the profusion of gardenia blossoms, in bushes scattered across my yard, each spring. The teachings of the Fairy Godmother are in this book and I learn with each reading and rewrite. The Way of the Fairy Godmother is in the daily practices for serenity. The hard won battles to access the truth. The prolonged lessons distilled from toxic people or circumstances. The Way of the Fairy Godmother is found throughout home as we persistently cling to beauty. Most profoundly of all the Way of the Fairy Godmother is in the method not the outcome. It is the commitment to create beauty wherever we can. These are the building blocks of our happy ending.
Make a list of all you hope you will become. The Way of the Fairy Godmother is in every quality you list. The Way of the Fairy Godmother is attributes you’ll embody through the work toward and the realization of your Deepest Desires. Use your list of hopes and dreams and delineate their opposites. Now you have the list of obstacles, characteristics of what you’ll need to release to achieve your Deepest Desires. I warn you, most people enchanted by their list of qualities, will stall out when asked to delineate their opposite. Don’t let yourself off the hook. Of course you know, for example, the opposite of love. There are many words for love’s opposite. Feel free to pick the one that best suits you. Your list is comprehensive of all you need to release. It is your map to achieving Deepest Desires.
Some smoke endless cigarettes or drink countless bottles of wine to avoid their inner work. Others retreat from life, sleeping or escaping into the one dimensional land of TV. One of Cinderella’s stepsisters utilized a strategy to deal with her despair I am familiar with. She suffocated the bitterness of her disconnection from her authentic self with sweet cookies and fluffy confections of frosting. In the process of releasing the indulgence in sugar the stepsister would be required to face bitterness and its sources in her life. This work is not for sissies. Coming to terms with bitterness is the stuff of transformation. Cinderella’s stepsister and wicked stepmother are examples of people clinging to superficial dreams disconnected from their strengths and a greater good. Alienated from their Deepest Desires nothing pleases them. Life separated from the essential self is barren. Use your list of what you need to release as a map back to your authentic self.
Every quest requires us to release what doesn’t serve our strengths and greater purpose. Cinderella had to release inhabiting the fireplace to live in the Palace. She had to let go of her rags and embrace wearing a ball gown. Grief was transformed to make room for joy. Cleaning and scrubbing changed into time spent exchanging love and embracing the duties of a wife and mother. To embrace the duties of Queen, to become the CEO of the Palace, required her to release what? Let me be blunt. She had to let go of various types of stupidity born of denial, grievances, rationalizations, minimizing… Cinderella had to release her job as the servant to an evil serial murderer to become Queen, servant to the public and the wife of the Prince. We never regret choices made with love. These are the choices of the authentic self. Conversely, our choices based on fear of the unknown can become lifetime traps, filled with regrets. Our lives in the modern world are not fairy tales. All but an exceptional few will be confronted with the Great Silence. On the road to manifesting dreams and desires we’ll confront myths and limitations. Limitations are the fuel of innovation.
Living Deepest Desires we become vibrantly alive. At the ball everyone saw Cinderella’s essential self-shining brightly, creating a nimbus of light around her body. Her clothes and her bearing matched her inner radiance. Freed from her fears and limitations Cinderella touched every single person in the room with the beauty of her Deepest Desires. The Prince was magnetized by the radiant love shimmering around Cinderella. He asked her to dance. I invite you to ask yourself: Am I ready to experience this kind of vulnerability? Am I ready to let go of every defense that keeps me stuck? The search for happiness is a faceted, multidimensional phenomenon taking place within the context of Deepest Desires, bringing joy to our life and the lives of others. What will it feel like in our spirits to live our dreams?
Once we have a glimmer of what it will feel like to achieve our dreams, practice feeling that way! It is impossible to do harm when our focus and commitment is to outwardly express inward desires with beauty and purpose. True power is reflected in how much beauty we can create, for ourselves, others, and the world.
The Eighth Key to Happiness: In order to transform our dreams into reality we release all that sabotages our efforts in order to claim our dreams in the everyday world.