Spring Cleaning

Speak the Word

We live in a generous universe, conspiring for our good, and yet many of us have settled for mediocrity; we settle for just getting by.  Today lets open to a greater abundance and live in the free flow of creation.   The practice for this week is “speaking the word,” sometimes called affirmations.

The first affirmation is I am worthy of all the good I can imagine, and more.  Say that out loud and notice what comes up for you when you say/hear that statement of truth.  Most of us have attached our sense of worthiness to what we do, or what others think of us, or have said about us, or our education or our wealth.  We measure our worthiness by something in the world, outside ourselves.

The truth is our worthiness is attached to only one thing, and that is we are a Divine creation.  We are born worthy.  We can’t earn it and we don’t need to.  No matter how much we can imagine, the universe promises more.  This is a worthiness that’s not based on behavior or history.  It’s a worthiness that’s based on identity as sons and daughters of the force that created all of life.  I am worthy of all the good I can imagine, and more.  That’s the truth.

   The second affirmation this week is I release the past and bless it as a stepping stone to my highest good.   That one might stir something up.  For most of us, there is something that is hard to let go.  What if that one thing is the foundation of all the good awaiting us?  As we hold on to an experience as a failure or injury, the flow of the good that is meant to come through that experience is closed down because we have not yet learned to bless it and call it good.  What is it in your life that most needs to be blessed so it can be released?

   Affirmation 3, I give and receive freely and fully.  Knowing my source is Divine, I give and receive freely and fully.  Well, sort of?  On a scale of 1-10, how am I doing?  Are the channels in my life completely open in both directions or am I limited?  Do I give in relationships and then watch for that person to give back to me?  “I’ve given, now it’s your turn to give.”  Do I financially support the thing I believe in, even practice tithing, then immediately look for that raise at work or a windfall or something else to prove it’s going to come back to me, or do I give  knowing that freely and fully giving opens channels that cannot be blocked?  If I’m stuck in linear thinking, “I’ve given this much here and that much there, so I’m supposed to get this relationship and that lottery winning,” then I’m blocking the flow by limiting the possible channels of good.  But when I know I’m worthy, when I release the past and move into gratitude, I can’t help but express that gratitude by giving, and the universe cannot help but respond with abundance and the good pours in.  The trees in the orchards don’t give just to those who are deserving.  They give to live.

Spring Cleaning

The Pause that Refreshes
This week our spiritual practice is prayer, and discovering what living a prayerful life can mean to each of us individually. In examining prayer, it’s important we consider a basic truth about life. For instance, mind creates what it contemplates. Mind creates what it contemplates? The old Unity phrase is “thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.” Well, almost nearly but not quite hardly. When Emerson was asked, “what is prayer”? he responded, “Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.” That’s an important point but it’s missing something.

Have you ever been handed “the diagnosis?” Some examples might be, “you have cancer,” or, “your grades are not good enough for you to graduate,” or perhaps, “I’m really sorry but I’m not happy. I want a divorce.” Maybe the worst one of all is, “I have some bad news about your kid.” Facing devastating news like this leaves most of us unable to pray in any way other than “Oh, God, please, no!” That is a kind of prayer which focuses on life from the scariest point of view, which is not only less than useful, it can actually be destructive, and I’ll tell you why. “Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind” is only half the formula. The other half of the formula resides in two words, “with feeling.” The sacred marriage of mind and heart, thought and feeling, must take place for prayer to be effective.

Now here is the gift. When we receive “the diagnosis” our loving Creator protects us from manifesting the worst of our fears by sending an angel with numbing juice for our minds. We can’t pray. Our feelings may be running wild and contemplating the worst, but we lose the ability to marry mind and heart, thought and feeling. We can’t even think clearly. How many of us can focus on the highest point of view when faced with a child in trouble or devastation in our relationship? Our answer comes from two directions. The first is to surround ourselves with a trusted circle who can hold a vision of the highest outcome and who will pray with us and for us. Hopefully that circle is a part of our lives before we need it, and never forget the rest of the circle needs us as well.

The second is, in the words of early New Thought leaders, to be “prayed up.” Fill your spiritual tank with your prayer practices when life is calm and you can use your mind for visioning and your heart for filling the vision with love and delight. You wouldn’t attempt a coast to coast trip without putting gas in your car. Please don’t attempt life without gassing up your soul! But we’re all so busy! Where will the time come from? It takes no more time than is required to breathe if you are present in the moment.

As you button your shirt in the morning, use that time to deliberately connect mind and heart, then, reach for Spirit. Waiting for a traffic light or an elevator, holding on the phone, waiting for the microwave to heat your cup of water, standing in line anywhere…..you get the idea. Pause and connect. Pause and connect. Learn to use the time you usually spend on what I call the mindless merry-go-round and create a power pause. You will be amazed at the strength and serenity you will possess when life challenges you. Get prayed up while building your trusted circle of prayer partners, then when life throws you a steep uphill challenge, as it will, you will have the gas to make it.

Spring Cleaning

Fasting

   For a very long time Lent has been a time of repentance, of fasting and sacrifice, of prayerful preparation for the holiest days in the Christian calendar, Easter week.  When I was a kid, I thought Christmas should be the holiest day.  I liked Christmas presents a lot better than Easter baskets.  Yet throughout the world, from time before time was recorded, spring rituals were the most sacred because they prepared for new life.  The greatest wonder of all is that new life arose from the ashes of what had died in the dark of winter.

   All the great religions have times of prayer and fasting and repentance at this time of year, in preparation for their holiest days.  The ritual is not valuable because we are Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu, it is valuable because in the cycles of our lives this inner journey is what brings life’s greatest riches.  Times of community ritual bring structured opportunity to examine what’s happening inside us, and to make wiser choices, leading to greater joy.  Repentance isn’t about beating our breasts and proclaiming we are sinners.  Go back to the Latin roots, “Re,” which means go back, and “Pentare,” which means choose again.  Go back and choose again.  We look at fasting not as a punishment of our sinful bodies, but as a release of what we no longer want.  So we fast from blame, from judgment, from a physical habit that is unhealthy for us.  We fast from fear and other negative thinking.

   We are invited to engage in some major spiritual practices, and really work with them in the next few weeks, taking real steps in growth so that when we gather together for the high holy days of our tradition, it is not a celebration of historical events only, but also a celebration of what is happening in the core of our own lives; that there is a rising up.  There is new light at work in us.  The life that we have known has been laid down, and we are on new ground.  That is the invitation from Spirit to each and every one of us; an invitation that is repeated every spring during our entire lives.  We answer that invitation with the recognition that these are spiritual practices, not just Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu practices, and as such have been used and proven in all the world’s great religions from time immemorial.  Today few are aware that the ancient, forgotten religions and those of indigenous peoples also share this time of rebirth with their own rituals.  Spirit calls us to this season of remembrance and renewal in every time and place.

   I invite you to begin your holy practices in this season by clearing space in your being for a greater reality by fasting.  As you fast from something you no longer want in your life, you make room for a higher expression of your true nature, as a son or daughter of life itself.

Occupy Your Heart

Vibrational Glue

A few years ago I read P.H.D. biologist Bruce Lipton’s book, The Biology of Belief.  My heart soared to learn a traditional scientist was confirming what New Thought has been teaching since the 1890’s; our bodies can be changed as we re-train our thinking.  Now he as a new book, co-authored with Steve Bhaerman, Spontaneous Evolution.  Here is a most hopeful paragraph.

“At the current time, many people find themselves transfixed by disturbing symptoms that seem to mark civilization’s devolution.  However, this myopic focus distracts us from seeing the Light in the darkness.  Whether you call this Light love or knowledge, its flame grows brighter every day.  The Light reveals a birthing process as the old way of life falls away and a new one emerges.”  The book goes on with stories demonstrating how life is in a constant state of perpetual re-creation.

Charles Fillmore the mystic, in The Twelve Powers of Man, called the spiritual power of Love the glue that binds the universe together.  Spontaneous Evolution, a book based on science and education, calls love the vibrational glue that will help manifest our destiny.  I believe one of the things humanity is experiencing in this time of great shift is the unification and balancing of the masculine and feminine principles; the unification and balancing of the powers of mind and heart.

Each of us bears responsibility for this shift.  The more we can come to understand and release past programming, become aware of current reality and open ourselves to future possibilities, the more we will help move humanity through the shift.  It is the individual awakening of a critical mass of humans that is required.  One simple practice can facilitate our awakening by building a bridge between our mind and our heart.

Every time you find yourself thinking about something, pause and check what is going on in your heart.  Every time you find yourself feeling strongly about something, pause and examine your thoughts.  This can be done a hundred times a day in less than a minute’s total time without anyone even noticing you are doing it.  The simple act of noticing will quickly train you to use both mind and heart in every choice you make.  This is the marriage no man can put asunder.

Occupy Your Heart

Get A Life

Rumi the Persian poet says this;  “In times of sudden danger, most people call out, ‘O, my God.’  Why would they keep doing this if it didn’t help?  Only a fool keeps going back where nothing happens.  The whole world lives within a safe guarding.  Fish inside waves, birds up in the sky, the elephant, the wolf, the lion as he hunts, the dragon, the ant, the waiting snake, even the ground, the air the water, every spark flowing up from the fire, all subsist, exist, are held in the divine.  Nothing, no one is ever alone, not even for a single moment.  All giving comes from the divine.  No matter who you think you put your open hand out towards, it is the divine which gives to you.” 

So here’s an invitation to a practice you can use when things aren’t going quite the way you wish.  In whatever you face, you are to say to yourself alone, “get a life!” if you want your life experience to change.  What kind of life?  You are limited only by what you can imagine, focus upon and believe.  So imagine, focus and believe and allow the divine to fill your hand in ways even greater than you dreamed.  You don’t have to create all of it; just open the door and be willing to be filled.

Still think you would like to change someone else?  Change the environment to one that supports their highest good; the environment you are offering them with your thoughts, your words and your personal energy.  You don’t need to say a word and certainly should avoid criticism or even suggestions about what you would like to see them do.  Not a word!  Appreciate what is, and appreciate the best they can possibly be as though it already is a fact whether you ever get to see it or not.

This is using your personal power of seeing/visioning the very best to pour the energy of positive change into the world.  That’s a gift you can give every day, but remember you are not on earth to change other people.  You are here on the planet to create a life!  A fabulous life.

Occupy Your Heart

Love’s Energy

Do you know that people can feel you?  It may not be conscious but they will respond to the feeling.  The energy we send out will repel or attract and those around us will behave accordingly.  Our job is to offer the energy of love.  That’s it.  That’s how we each transform our own little corner of the world and co-create a world that works for all.  Where do we start?  With our relationships

Dr Michael Beckwith once said,  “All the love your heart can hold, all the success you are meant to experience is already within you, begging to be released through your love energy. Today, open the floodgates of your heart and pour out a blessing of Love into your own life. Then see how outrageously rich you are in the gifts of the Spirit.”  There are a couple of things worth noting here.  First, you already are all that you need; love, success, joy.  All of it.  Second, open your heart and pour out all that energy and you are outrageously blessed.

The first relationship we have is the eternal one between our Spirit and our Creator.  That is why we already are all that we need.  Our next relationship is between our Spirit and our human self.  Our human self must come to realize the truth of our nature and once it does, the pouring out of love can begin.  This comes gradually, over time and with practice, but it is there for every one of us.  The more in touch we are with our own love nature, the better all our relationships will be. 

I heard this story of a man overcome with joy during a great Sunday service and he began dancing up and down the aisles shouting, “Lord, fill me.  Fill me Lord, fill me now.  And he hears a voice say, “I am filling you, but you keep leaking.”  That’s exactly what happens, it’s an energy leak in us.  When we have a relationship rift with someone, the energy of love is leaking out of us.  There’s a place in us where darkness is, where love cannot live and we bring light into that darkness by healing the relationships within ourselves then with others.

I think that’s the kind of thing Jesus was saying.  Our whole life is on the line.  “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly,” and when the energy of separation begins to build in me, he’s saying, “make this primary.”  Make it primary in your life that you don’t allow this stuff in you.  Reschedule your day if you have to.  If you recognize a breach in love, climb all over it right now.  It’s primary to heal that because if you don’t, it leaves another measure of darkness in both of you.  “Oh there’s a relationship hurt, I feel something, I feel separation, what am I going to do?”  Allow your Spirit to shine through your humanity and radiate the love that you are.

Occupy Your Heart

The Power of Love

   February is love month, and I’m living proof that is true because Christopher and I met on Feb. 10^th, 1998.  The love we share has grown every day since then.  So, what does love do?  Take the loved one out for Sunday brunch, and have a nice nap in the afternoon?  I don't think so.  Today, love discovers its power.  Today love recognizes that it alone calls this world and all reality into existence by its very longing for itself.  Love's longing for itself; isn't that a soul stirring thought?  All the love that's in you, longs for love.  All the love anywhere is seeking more of its own kind.  Our longing is our call to life.  The longing in our hearts is God, by whatever name we understand, calling us to our true joy, our right relationships, and our passion for life.

   There are some things I deeply believe.  There is only one presence and one power in the universe and each one of us arises out of and lives through that power.  This is the very foundation of our oneness with each other.  We each carry the creative power of the Divine and as such we are each responsible for what we contribute to life and how we experience life.

   Some would argue, “I didn’t ask for THAT to happen to me!”  No, you probably didn’t.  Karun Gandhi, the grandson of MK Gandhi didn’t ask to be beaten twice in one week, once by a white person who hated him for his dark skin, then again by a gang of black boys who hated him for his light skin.  He was only twelve.   After 18 months with his grandfather he came to understand that hatred arises from fear and responding with hatred only increases the fear.  He made a choice in his spirit for peace and says now that nothing could ever steal his peace again.  He takes responsibility for what he contributes to life and for how he experiences it.

   The same is required of each of us.  We must take full responsibility for our lives and come to peace through the power of our spirits before we can feel the longing and the passion that arises from the love that we are.  As we connect with the power of love, we attract the love in others.  As we become firmly grounded in our true joy, our right relationships and our passion for life, we discover the power love has to change reality, and we become a creative force for a world of beauty and unity.

   We are not alone in this journey.  More and more of our sisters and brothers are recognizing that finding our unity and caring for each other is the next great evolutionary leap we must make.  Go to You Tube.com and key this phrase into their search bar at the top. 

Occupy Wall St - The Revolution Is Love 

Then imagine how much more love you have the power to bring into your immediate world.

   May you be blessed with true joy, right relationships and passion for life.