I am a Brit living in America who came here with starry eyes looking to make a career in the entertainment industry. Like many other wannabes, I moved to LA and began to look for work of sourcing talent as an agent, and trying to keep the bills under control. I was broke, very broke most of the time. Situation got so bad I seriously thought about catching a plane to go back home and live with my parents. Around that time, my good friend Lily from CIS chatted with me often about keeping the faith. She regularly spoke about how meditation helped her in difficult times so I decided to give Patanjali meditation practice a go.
Not sure if you know how big 'get rich quick' dream is in the US. Every other day you hear about 'million dollars working from home', the 'techniques' to make money flow to you, the 'law of attraction' - used to made me cringe. But as meditation began, something changed. The basic principles of the Yoga Sutras (pretty strange to an atheist at first) kinda made me want to give it a go. Like, thinking that I am me, but am not just my body. Sort of a bigger, safer place where I am bigger than my body and the all the crap that was going on around me was not supposed to get to me that much.
Sooo, what happened? For a month, nothing. I decided to give myself one last shot, and stayed around on a loan. In my head, if I am bigger than all that is around me and if there is this amazing power that can help me find the right way, OK - let's find a way. I didn't stop working or looking of work. That would have been VERY lame. Like eating a sandwich and hoping things will happen on their own. They don't. But I became a lot more intuitive, great ideas started coming to me. I was a happier person who began meeting happy people and was thankful for everything he had - living in a land of opportunities like LA and my ability to give my dream a shot - seriously how many people get to do that?
One evening, I realised I had been stood up by a client (he ended up going to another agent) and I was sitting in this bar, thinking of going home. That's what my frustrated mind wanted to do, but the other side asked me to breathe deep, sit at the table and drink some water. As I sat blinking at nothing, in ten minutes, a young man walked to me looking for an extra chair. He ended up having to sit next to me and turned out he was looking for work and was auditioning for the same thing I was going to put my client (who did a no show) forward for. He was looking for an agent, and I said, I'd take him on. He auditioned and got the part next week.
One thing led to another and I met a great bunch of amazing people in a few weeks. If something didn't feel right, I didn't go ahead with it no matter how good the prospect looked on face value. Six weeks later, I had my second client off working in Hawaii and the money got transferred to my account, getting me out of the overdraft. Just. Rest is history. In sum, what changed? My perspective I guess. Life is bigger than the years we spend on Earth and Patanjali was a very cool dude to understand that.
We are not supposed to be sick and broke. Real spirituality is living your life to the fullest and helping others live to the fullest, enjoying every moment of it. I am a very wealthy man today not because I have money, but because I have a lot of money, but also people who can be part of my experience to enjoy it and to keep the cycle of giving going - giving happiness to other humans, animals, the planet - anyone and everyone. Isn't that what life is all about?
Alex.
courtesy: freedigitalphotos.net
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