Monday, June 21, 2010

Blooming Where You're Planted

Bloom where you're planted is another very wisdom-filled saying of my grandmother's.  We are here. We can waste a lot of energy and miss a lot of life wishing we were somewhere else, doing something else, but that only accomplishes stealing our moments.

My husband’s elderly aunt died this morning, and he said it makes him remember that he doesn’t want to wait to live. It’s much too easy to live in the future, waiting to find the real enjoyment of our lives when the kids are grown or we’re retired or we find the perfect job or partner. He and I catch ourselves doing that now, fantasizing about how things will be when we retire. We’re both very clear about not wanting to live in the future, but get caught up in that thinking sometimes.

When that future comes, there will be another future, and something new to look forward to. In the meantime, life is lived now. It seems such an obvious notion, but I find that I need to remind myself often, in many different ways, to stay in present time. When my thoughts are in the future, or the past, I miss all of the delicious possibilities that are here to experience now. I don’t think there’s anything more important than at the end of our days, having fully experienced being here.

When we bloom where we’re planted, right here in the present moment, we are exercising that most holy of all God-given human attributes, the ability to choose who we will be in the middle of all of it. Right now, I am here, having an effect on this world as my own unique expression of God.

The Berkeley Psychic Institute teaches that it doesn’t matter what we’re doing; what matters is the energy that we’re in when we're doing it. We can be miserable in the world’s most glamorous and high-paying job, and happy as a clam in the lowliest job, depending on how we choose to experience it. We can express God within us in the middle of anything.

This takes a great deal of pressure off of making perfect decisions in life, because they are all perfect. In the present moment, we can bloom, resting in the knowledge that who we are is enough.  Being present in each moment as our own bright light is all that is expected of us. The only variable is how we choose to feel about it.  When we choose to know ourselves as God, we bloom.

Life’s path will take its twists and turns, and we may end up in some places that we didn’t expect, but the destination is never in question. How we get there is sometimes a mystery and always a mighty adventure, so we might as well bloom along the way.
May this tool be a blessing...

7 comments:

  1. Thank you, Sherry.
    May you be blessed.
    Joy >i<

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  2. This is such an important point. I spend way too much time thinking of where I'm trying to go. I could read this every day and benefit from it. Thank you!

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  3. Living in the present moment is the only way to truly enjoy life. All we have is "now" we're not promised the next moment. Thanks for your thoughts...I've been away for a couple of weeks so I'm trying to catch-up with everyone's blog.

    Hugs,

    Bill

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  4. I hope the last two weeks have been a blessing. When I visited my grandson for a vacation, I was swamped with reading on my return. Blessings, Sherry

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  5. This is a lovely post.

    My granny used to say "Those people who tell you the grass is greener on the other side have never been there"

    same sort of sentiment as your grandmothers quote and both give the same message. Live in a spirit of gratitude for what you have, rather than feel resentful at what you don't have.

    This life isn't a practice run - it's all we have. Love the day you are in - its always a gift - that's why they call it 'the present'

    smiles and blessings.

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  6. In my garden, there are vegetables, flowers, and weeds, all blooming where they were planted (some intentionally, some not...). The vegetables will feed me, the flowers will feed the bees, and the weeds will eventually decay and feed the soil. All performing as ordained.
    Then, to realize we can choose to be where we are, to bloom where we are - how wonderful to be human!

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