Leonard Szymczak believes that our purpose during our travels on planet earth is the quest of inner peace.

In his new book The Roadmap Home: Your GPS to Inner Peace, he shares with us how we can access the Guiding Power of Spirit each day to awaken to a consciously lived life, and transform by observing, accepting, forgiving, asking, listening and receiving.

I must admit that my ego mind loved hearing from Leonard that, at 49, I’m just a youngster on my life path. It gave me this great sense of expansiveness out in front of me. Leonard has this positive effect in conversation. You catch his enthusiasm for the life process we are all engaged in. And, you easily sense our connection to one another.

“I’m 62 and my life is just beginning to open up!” says Szymczak with childlike glee. Retirement is about stopping what you don’t want to do and starting something you do. “I’m living my passion and I’m at peace with that.”

The Wizard of Oz connection

During our conversation, I kept noticing ways in which we had similar path “attractions.” After growing up in Chicago and living in Australia, he now lives in Dana Point, where I grew up. We share a dream of starting a retreat center with an ocean view. And, for both of us, our imaginations and hearts were engaged in childhood by a beloved source of inspiration that would be significant to our life quests. For me it was Disneyland’s Carousel of Progress, which led me to my dream life work. For Leonard, it was “The Wizard of Oz.”

It seems natural that “The Wizard of Oz” should have captured Szymczak’s attention as a child. After all, his life path to inner peace is focused on the quest to get back “home.” Leonard’s tough childhood created the impression that home was a tenuous place that could be taken from him at any moment. So, it’s easy to understand how a movie with the theme “there’s no place like home” could ignite his desire to identify or accurately name what home actually is, and to find a way to empower himself and others to get there.

Moving past limited living by consciously being

“It’s remarkable that Glenda, the good witch, gets Dorothy to leave a colorful world and return home to a black and white reality,” he notes. Szymczak compares Dorothy’s family reality — that Oz doesn’t exist — to people who are living unconscious. “She still loved them and forgave them their black and white thinking,” he explains.

In his book he writes, “Once awakened to a heightened state of awareness, we can distinguish the stark contrast between limited living and consciously being. Our internal GPS, the Guiding Power of Spirit, beckons us back to our True Self.”

We all take our own journey home and “our mission is to become conscious beings,” according to Szymczak. As he sees it, it’s not that we begin to manifest more as we awaken, it’s just that we become more aware of the manifesting process that’s always in play.

Your flowering life

In The Roadmap Home, Szymczak uses the concept of the “flowering life” to discuss the stages of awakening that we go through and to offer his tools for becoming better GPS receivers.

“Once we recognize we are in process, we can rest assured that our GPS will direct us along the awakening path,” he states. Chapters describing this process include: Meaning of Home, Wake-Up Calls and Signposts, Staying Awake (where you leave the familiar and enter the tunnel of transformation), Heartbeat of Connection, Conscious Creation, and Homecoming.

At the end of the process one comes home to inner peace and feels the childlike innocence of “delight in being.” It’s a celebration of welcome, abundance and faith. Leonard helps readers along this process with mapping exercises and guided visualizations. He also recommends journal writing.

The six petals of flowering creation

“Children think about the excitement of learning, there’s no doubt or fear, they don’t wonder ‘can I learn a language,’ they leap into it!” he states. At times though even Leonard can become too serious minded .” Us entrepreneurs do that,” he admits. “I have to make sure that I’m balanced in the six petals of flowering creation.”

The six petals of flowering creation are:

1. body — staying in the body through breathing, stretching, etc.
2. emotions — asking: “how am I feeling?”
3. mind — noting: “What am I thinking?” “Are my thoughts positive or negative?” “How fast are my thoughts going?”
4. heart — being aware of whether it is opening or closing.
5. voice — communicating your truth.
6. vision — checking in: “Am I living today on purpose?”

“As we recognize self, we watch for resonance and dissonance,” says Szymczak. This helps anyone know whether or not they are is in alignment with their life purpose. As a point of illustration, he points out that when he is writing he feels a sense of calm; he feels spirit working through his life. This is the essence of being home.

What to do if you feel lost

When I ask Leonard what advice he gives people who feel off track and out of alignment with their life purpose, Leonard replies with enthusiasm, “Congratulations!” This means they realize they are lost. It also means that they realize they are getting a calling toward satisfaction and beginning to wake up.”

At this point, he recommends using a process that attracts you, like his journaling and mapping exercises. Write a one-page bio. Szymczak believes that by telling your “story” you will find your quest. I reply that’s what happens when people start to decode their dream boards. They relate it to their current life “story” in the first reading which gives them clarity. He says, “Yes, like an Indian who knows how to follow tracks. We all get nuggets (clues) along our life path.”

Look for the clues that will lead you home to inner peace

Leonard’s nuggets consisted of family, friends, and clients giving him pen and pencil sets throughout his life. “What is this!” Leonard asked himself until the thunderbolt of knowing hit him. “Leonard…Hello! You’re meant to write!”

Leonard Szymczak wrote The Roadmap Home:Your GPS to Inner Peace with great courage, heart and wisdom (think the lion, tin man and scarecrow). The book launches today with 75 fantastic bonus gifts, including one from me. Take a look and consider giving it as a gift to anyone who could use some inner peace.

Melissa Wadsworth is an inspiration speaker, potential empowerment coach and intuitive dream board expert.