~Jeff Rahim Bronner, Sufi U faculty
“With a new year starting, it’s a natural time for reflection, for making a clean start and for really committing and choosing what you want your life to be about. And I think that’s the first thing.
I don’t really think about goal setting in terms of spirituality. I think about it in terms of being effective or making a positive change for yourself and for other people. What I see a lot of people do is they have their spiritual life over here and then their worldly life over here and, like, never the two shall meet.
You want your goals to be meaningful; you want to commit to them and setup a plan and action steps that can help you get somewhere.
When I set a goal I first spend time in prayer and in deep reflection asking God what is the highest and where God would like me to be. From this place of contemplation I have an overall vision of where I want my life to go. It’s been my experience that seeking God’s direction on goals will be very different from setting goals from your ego which focuses primarily about what you want yourself. When you include divine guidance in your goal setting not only are your needs met but there’s usually an element of service, a way to give to people, as well as something that you’re passionate and excited about. This is a winning combination.
The goals are the steps, plateaus or the levels to bring that vision into reality. Some people like to set goals that are so lofty they’ll never reach them. I actually do the opposite. For example, if I think I can do “x” number of something, I actually set my goal a little bit less. When I feel good about the goal and excited, then I get some satisfaction when I do reach it.
As I daily work to manifest this goal, I bring everything in my life before God and I ask God for His blessings, for His support and for His guidance.
For instance, every morning I say a prayer, “My beloved Lord, please open the right doors and please close the wrong doors and put me where you want.” And I’ve been doing that for three months now just because I got to reach the crossroads where I really wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to go left or right.
By doing that prayer every morning, I’ve had one or two businesses drop away. I’ve had a whole new business open up. It has come to me and there hasn’t really been a lot of effort on my part.
Part of the reason this works is that God is the most incredible mysterious force out there somewhere, AND God is also this incredibly wise place inside our own hearts.
By turning to God for mercy, for provision and for guidance, we’re activating the deepest, wisest part of our own knowing. It awakens something inside of us that knows the right way for us to go. You could call that soul wisdom. At our University we call it divine gnosis or divine wisdom. That’s the mercy and the guidance that I’m looking for to bring into every facet of my life.”
We invite you to join us for a teleclass on January 18 called “Set Your Spiritual Direction for 2011” with Dr. John Wadude Laird. Register here.
Jeff Rahim Bronner is a beloved healer and faculty member who serves God with all his heart. He believes in the majesty and awesomeness of God, and that when we turn to God for help, God makes it so that our lives are filled with wonder and awe. After earning a degree in English from UC Riverside, Jeff tried many different spiritual paths. He has personally experienced that the Sufi method of cleaning the heart and returning to God is the fastest, most merciful path available. He has been a professional healer for the past nine years and was named Happy Hairston’s “Top Speaker for the City of Los Angeles.” He is a Spiritual and Medical Healing Practitioner. He leads workshops across the nation, focusing on helping people to heal sexual trauma, overcoming financial debt, and teaching couples how to find the love together.
