  Steps Towards Achieving
One's Grand Plan
By Jean Houston and Peggy Rubin
Here are 12 steps to achieving the particular
next phase in your Grand Design.
A is for Altar.
Create a sacred space, an altar for this intention. Dedicate
both the altar and your work in the way perhaps that Buddhists
do, "for the enlightenment of all sentient beings." Or
whatever feels appropriate to you.
B is for Blessing. Find some way of noting with appreciation all that has gone before, and creating bouquets of gratitude for all that you have learned, seen, witnessed, done. Place representations of this gratitude on your altar.
C is for Call Out. State aloud your intention, your gratitude for the past and your dedication. Find or create something that represents this intention. Place it in the center of your altar. Your statement may take the form of a prayer; or you may want to state the intention, then ask for that Great Source to assist you in manifesting the intention. Feed the words into your body energy as colors and fragrances and kinesthetic knowings as well as resounding vibrational sounds. As time goes on, move the intention into present tense, and hear the words as already accomplished.
D is for Dedicated Discernment. Seek mentors or beings whose life work has felt similar to yours. Notice the differences, if any, between them and you. From these differences, notice what you may want to change or work with. And what you now need. Take a personal inventory of those traits that will assist you in fulfilling your goals, and what will impede or stop you. Find others who have managed to work through or transcend similar blocks and imitate them. Ask them for help in the subtle energy realms. Ask for help also from the Great Source Energy to remove the impediments or burn through them. Place representations of your mentors on your altar, and also read about them, study them; wherever appropriate ACT as they do or did. Be willing to change those attitudes and beliefs that hinder you from fulfilling your desired goal.
E is for Envision and Enact. Create rich inner imagery of your task; using all your senses and your body's movement, feel and see and taste and touch and smell yourself doing the work of the task through to completion; engage all your powers in imaging how the world will have changed and been enhanced by your work when the task is finished; see help of every kind coming to you, bringing you what is needed; feel, as St. Francis did, the heavenly powers saying Yes! because what you want is for the good of all. Concretize the images by putting out pictures or drawings of the world -- and yourself -- when your task is finished. These images also go on your altar.
F is for Focusing Fuel For the Fire, and For Friends. Join a prayer group with friends to work together on bringing in the Higher Power, and also for practical assistance, because your friends can often see you achieving things you may not be able to dream of. Hang in with your desires, and be willing to shift and adjust the goal if your wanting brains lose energy. Know that the fires may go quiet for a while, but make sure they don't go out. This means you need to pay attention to those things that feed your energy and those things that leech it away. Do more of the first and none of the latter. Add notes about your friends' goals to your altar. Add things which keep you desiring your own goal.
G is for Get Going Gracefully. Know that the journey itself is every bit as important as the accomplishment. May in fact BE the accomplishment. Whatever your form: list making, flow charts, mind maps, gestalt planning, use your glorious left brain and frontal lobes and Plan! Step by Step. Knowing that adventures will come along and change everything, trusting that the Great Power will utilize your energy and effort to create something more stupendous and eternal than you dared dream, that you will have visitations of both grace and grit. If you like, play Margaret Mead's game of imagining several possible paths: "If I do this, then this will follow. . . . But if I do This, then This will follow." Play with time in this plan, but set times so that each day of each week moves you forward by a step. And take the first step NOW. Naturally the Plan goes on the altar. And notice how everything on your altar can change as time changes.
H is for Homework and Hang In. The brain stays alive as we keep learning. What are the things you want to learn to help you achieve this intention? What are the studies that call you and that relate to your goal? What are the things you want to know that seem completely unrelated to your goal, but will help keep you refreshed and surprised by joy during the journey? Keep a record of your learnings on your altar. Dedicate your studies to those same beings to whom you dedicated your intention.
I is for Intensity. I heard a wise woman say recently that one of the purposes for the ancient tradition of adolescent initiation for girls was to train them in the need to be ready to give everything when it was required. (She was relating it to giving birth.) But I think it's true for our lives. We are no longer trained to give everything -- all our attention, our absolute focus, all our power, our effort, our willingness, our presence, our talent, our skill, our energy -- for as long as it takes to see the job done. Knowing there is the risk that one might lose all. But that the more willing we are to devote all we have, the more we are alive in the moment. I think that is why war is so attractive, or used to be. Soldiers devoted their all to the cause. And those at home felt they were participating by giving their all as well. So we need to train ourselves in such intense dedication without war. And that takes practice. What is more worthy of your giving all than the next phase of your life's work? Your unique expression of your soul's purpose? Give yourself, all yourself, unstintingly and generously to your purpose.
J is for Jollity, Joy, Jokes and Just Letting Go. Too much heavy seriousness will spoil the journey to achievement. And too much attachment to the outcome will skew the process to one of unremitting labor and vast efforts to push the river. After all, "it's not brain surgery" as the saying goes. So cartoons and moments of laughter also go into every meeting with your allies and friends, and on your altar. Cultivate a sense of joy, physical joy, in every step along the path, and send that joy to all those around you.
K is for Keep Konscious while you Keep on Keeping on. Choose to spend more time in prayer consciousness, or moment-to-moment awake awareness, so that each decision has new aliveness in it. Become more and more aware of how each choice sends out ripples, affecting the world around you.
L is for Lightness, for Love, for Lingering Laughter. This 12th step to getting where you want to be reminds us to dance with ease, generating more love for ourselves as we go, and basking in the love of others. In the process of moving toward our goals, remembering their purpose, our purpose and the highest good, we will meet so many new ideas, people, friends seen and unseen, find so much to chew on and delight in, that when we arrive at our goal we will find ourselves in a new and greener world. And know ourselves as New Adams and New Eves.
The 13th step takes us to the place we were aiming for:
M, where the Mind of God, in its expression through us, is made Manifest in an absolutely fresh and unique way.
Jean Houston and Peggy Rubin
2004
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