Blog – Meaning over Money, Beauty and Truth, Depth and Breath

I have chosen to cultivate a life filled with meaning rather than money.
I have chosen to seek truth over power.

Truth and meaning are the core values of a life despite what our society constantly shows us and wants us to believe.

Everyone is attracted to various forms of beauty. For each person beauty has a different and varied set of parameters and requirements. What we define as beautiful has within it some form of truth that we can relate to and long to merge with.

Everything about this world has obvious and hidden elements of beauty within it. Some of us see great beauty in authenticity. I look at Pema Chodron’s face and I see the wrinkles that remind me of a Sharpei puppy. That face is so unguarded and real. Her eyes twinkle with wisdom and compassion. And to me she is beautiful.

I think souls of artists see more beauty in the world. We hunger for that beauty and are willing to take the time, effort, intelligence, and energy to seek it out where it hides and thrives.

Most souls are so self-consumed with their own issues, fears, and habits that they cannot see beyond the blinders that they have over their own eyes.

Since I was a child, people have remarked on my ability to pay attention and to focus completely on a subject and situation. I am not just watching a situation unfold, I am seeking to understand how that person or thing operates and what is the motivating force that is instigating that ability or talent. I marvel at the creative instincts in others but what is more interesting to me is why. I am curious as to what inside that soul, initiates that creative genius to see if I too can find something similar in my soul and unlock its secrets.

I do believe that some are born with great talents that (in this lifetime) have perfectly aligned from other incarnations to become the magnificence that I am witnessing.

But more often than not, I see a soul who has been captivated by an idea or a dream. And they began a journey that they did not see would eventually define them in this lifetime.

The reality I see is a person who loved something so much that they devoted their life, energy, money, and time to learning as much about that thing as possible. These are the souls that validate again and again a truth that I discovered early in my life. And that truth is that people can have talent. But talent is not enough in the long run.

What works is to have a bit of talent and a lot of determination and focus. What carries us to great things is that determination to not quit but to keep refining and trying various methods until one finds the manner in which something can work in our reality.

Success is a deeply personal thing. It is about the willingness to embrace all trials and errors and find the mindset and body memory that can allow something special to evolve.

That is why I fully understand that one’s IQ is actually a form of measurement. It is a measurement of one’s ability to focus on an item or task in order to understand it and find a solution.

Everyone has intelligence but it is about a desire to cultivate intelligence that is of greatest interest to me. That is where I find that other souls are also seeking meaning rather than money.

Money has never been the primary motivation of my life. Money is convenient but those whose only goal is wealth and power are quite boring to me.

I have been around the super wealthy and while I find their minds interesting, they are also out of touch with things that they could cultivate to have also a life filled with deeper meaning.

The ability to see that something has value and potential is to be able to see its depth. But I see finding the meaning in life is like the aperture of a camera. When one can have the focus to see the depth but also can widen the angle of that lens of intelligence so that you can also see how something has breath, and can expand to become even more … That is what then holds the greatest value to me personally.

~Suzanne Wagner~