Jacqui Macdonald - The Lost Art of Being: Secrets to a Calm, Happy, Easy Life

Copyright 2018 Jacqui Macdonald The moral right of the author has been asserted. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. Matador 9 Priory Business Park, Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicestershire. LE8 0RX Tel: 0116 279 2299 Email: books@troubador.co.uk Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador Twitter: @matadorbooks ISBN 978 1789011 401 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd I wrote this book for you.

Thank you to all my teachers, in particular Christine Arylo, Kristine Carlson, Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, Rupert Spira and my beloved Mooji. Thank you to my family, my babies, my fur babies, my PB and all my friends you too have taught me more than you will ever know. Thank you to my beautiful students who have embraced and embodied the teachings to make powerful discoveries for themselves. Thank you to the trees for inspiring me every day and showing me how to be. And thank you to the Universe for well, everything really.

Contents A Brief Note Dearest Fabulous Reader, Im excited to be sharing this centuries-old wisdom about the art of being. What you hold in your hands is a little book about slowing down, screwing the rules, following your heart and allowing the Universe to take care of your entire life. It is the long-lost secret to effortless happiness and tremendous inner peace. I cannot claim to have written this book because, in truth, it wrote itself. I was meant to go shopping that day. As I was gathering my bag and purse, I became aware of words and phrases swirling impatiently within me, wanting to be written down.

Thinking they would be nothing more than a few sentences, I pulled out my iPad and began typing on the Notes page. Eight hours later, I was still there. I then spent the entire weekend at my laptop and the book came to life on the screen. Over the following fortnight I dipped in and out adding and editing whenever inspiration prompted. And, whoops I wrote a book. Even. Trying. Trying.

This book emerged from me without any effort, other than my time spent at the keyboard. There was no forward planning. No strategising. No agenda. No end goal in mind. This is the perfect illustration of the lost art of being and will hopefully dispel any fears you might have that doing less results in under-achieving.

Quite the opposite. Doing less enables you to become more. I had been trying to write a book for over twenty years. I attended workshops and read books about how to write books. I followed all the advice and stuck to all the rules. And I worked really hard.

But somehow it never quite happened. But having learned over recent years how to slow down, do less, give up goals and listen to my heart I simply allowed this book to be written. This is the beauty of the art of being. It is a natural, effortless way to live and is the polar opposite to how convention dictates we should achieve our potential. It is time to question convention. AKA screw the rules.

Because the rules are obscuring the truth. The Universe flows through each of us in mystical, unfathomable, powerful ways when we allow it. The sacred secrets that you will find within the following pages will reveal everything the Universe wants you to know about how to give up the struggle and enjoy a calm, happy, easy life. You will be encouraged to drop a belief system that prescribes hard work and effort. It will be exposed as nothing more than a set of thoughts that you have unwittingly bought in to. Fake rules that you are unconsciously following.

It is time to be liberated from such warped thinking and phony rules. Because we all want an easy life, dont we? Likewise, we all want happiness. Granted, calm is not an aspiration for the young but as we mature we appreciate it, and long for it more and more. Calm is your birth right. As is happiness and ease. Life should not be a struggle.

Its time to shatter the myth that the key to success is to do more. What a topsy-turvy philosophy that is. My hope is that this book will turn your world upside down and in doing so will return it to its rightful position. The truth is simple: The less you do, the more you become. Thats because you allow the Universe to make it happen rather than trying to do everything yourself. After all, a Universe that keeps planets spinning and tides turning is surely more intelligent and powerful than we humans are? And yet we cut ourselves off from that power.

What muppets we can be. The reality is you dont have to struggle, drive or push to make your best life happen. Isnt it a relief just to know that? Your life is already programmed to be magnificent. Its just that you cant see that right now because youre letting your human perspective over-rule your being. Your human is highly conditioned by society and is locked into belief systems and invisible rules that you never think to question, meaning you dont even know that you dont know. You have become all human, no being - and this is the root of all your problems.

The moment you realise this, you set yourself free and access your unlimited potential. The being is the part of you thats full of the and magic and power. You will soon come to experience this truth for yourself. So relax. Everything is about to change without you having to do a thing. Other than to read this book, of course.

But thats all you have to do. Just take the next step. Turn the next page. No over-thinking, no planning, no rules or regimes. You do less, and yet you become so much more. May your discovery of this truth be thrilling.

My being is tingling for your being. See you on the other side. Much love. Jacqui PRELUDE

Once upon a time, in its vast and infinite wisdom, the Universe decided to express itself through individual beings who could experience, for a limited time, a physical reality. It created many beings tree beings, fish beings, dinosaur beings, ape beings - and over time they evolved and became more sophisticated until one day the human being arrived on the planet. The human being was truly amazing.

Its strength lay in its enormous capacity for thinking. Far beyond the capabilities of other beings, the human being was able to plan, strategize, imagine and create. It learned to make fire and it invented the wheel, and as centuries passed and new humans arrived in the physical realm, their brain-power enabled them to send rockets up to space and build computers that could rule the world. This was a remarkable achievement and, to this day, human beings remain the most intelligent expression of the known Universe. But they paid a sorry price for this superiority. Somewhere along the line, human beings become so enthralled by their mental capabilities they lost sight of what was most important.

They forget they were beings. In doing so they overlooked their greatest gift their connection to a Universe that is naturally abundant and supportive, providing happiness no matter what. Dazzled by their individual capacity for thinking and doing, they burned with ambition and took power into their own hands (and heads) to achieve their dreams. This was the moment they cut themselves off from the place within that was already encoded to enable them to reach their highest potential, effortlessly. Instead they chose to strive. The memory of themselves as an expression of the Universe was lost to all but a few, and so life for humans became highly fearful.