Greeting the Day

I woke this morning with a prayer of gratitude, as I do on most days. It is one of the ways that I say hello to the gift of another day. Greeting the day in whatever way feels right is a wonderful way to consciously set the energy for what awaits me.

It can take my breath away, and did this morning, acknowledging the bounty that is mine in each day, in the middle of living my very ordinary but utterly phenomenal life. In those moments there sometimes aren’t adequate words, but I can feel my immense gratitude for being, and say “Thank you, God, thank you.”

The awareness of gratitude changes our perception and our experience as we open to the light of God within us. Let us cultivate gratitude!

It doesn’t matter if I’m tired or had an upsetting dream, or have a busy day ahead of me. Beginning the day by connecting with the profound truth of the perfection that I am born of puts things in perspective. I have another day on this earth, and I want to spend my day appreciating it.

There are many ways to welcome the day. My husband spends time in the early morning hours in our hot tub, doing his meditation and prayer as the sky lightens and the birds awaken with their song. Some people have specific rituals that validate being alive for the coming day, lighting a candle, or just sitting in the silence.  Whatever you choose to do to greet the day, cultivate gratitude.

May you revel in each precious day, and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Approaching Your Feelings

A wise person reminded me recently of the importance of not overriding my feelings. In my focus on maintaining my thoughts in a healthy and productive place, I often try to think through the emotional issues that I’m facing, rather than really, truly feeling them.

Feeling feelings can be inconvenient. It can be painful. In the short run it can stir things up and make us less comfortable than if we had just chosen to let them go. It can also feel very unproductive, especially around situations that are past, or that we cannot change.

I deeply believe that choosing how I think about the ongoing events of my life, expecting good, and trusting God’s divine hand in all of it, mold my experience in a way that reflects my expectations, and my trust.

I’m finding, though, that some things have an emotional life of their own. My good intentions and positive thoughts help to a very large degree, but the only way through emotions is through them. And that means being fully present not with my thoughts, or how I want things to be, but with my honest feelings, messy as they might be in the moment.

When I approach my feelings rather than think them away, my body is healthier, and I am more at ease. There is a big sigh of relief when I touch on what is really going on, deep within me. Sometimes just acknowledging the depth of my feelings is all I need. That makes sense to me, because I always find that touching truth is a healing.

There is a technique called C.O.A.L., in which we approach a situation that is having an emotional impact on us by being curious, open, accepting and loving. With it we are not judging the fact that we are having an emotional reaction, but being ever so gentle with ourselves as we seek to understand and honor our feelings about it. I am finding it helpful.

I am, as always, grateful for the many tools that I’ve learned to help me embrace the miracle that is my life. And today, I remember to approach and honor my feelings.

May this tool be a blessing. . .

Adjusting Your Sails

Inspiration comes from unexpected places! I did a post a while back on some words of wisdom that I found on the foil wrapper of my Dove dark chocolate. It made my day to bump into the simple words that were just what I needed to hear. I’m happy to report that it happened again today.

This morning's foil wrapper reminded me that while we can’t control the ever-changing winds that blow through life, we can control how we move through them. Rather than doggedly holding firm to our expected course, doing our best to hold on as the rolling waves threaten to swamp our vessel, we can adjust our course.

The winds of change have been blowing through my life lately, and I’ve realized that trying to stop that change is much like trying to keep my boat steady on a course that threatens to overtake it. As much as I might like to keep my status quo, change is going to barrel through anyway.

Things are going to be different, and in some ways that scares me. I like things the way they are. I let myself become afraid of vague what-ifs that haven’t even happened yet. I’ve worked hard to construct my world into one that is peaceful and nurturing, and stable.

It’s sometimes easy to resist change, but without change our creativity would be stifled. We would never have the opportunity to move beyond our outdated concepts of the world and our place in it. We would not be challenged. Without challenge everything remains static, and that stands in the way of growth.

There’s no way to really know what unanticipated gifts will blow in with these changing winds. But I’ve learned that life unfailingly provides me with the experiences that I need to grow into my best self. So bring on the wind.

I might not be able to control it, but I can adjust the sails. And for that I am grateful.

May this tool be a blessing. . .

Filling Up With a Gold Sun

Filling up with a gold sun is a simple tool that I use often to reset my body’s vibration to my own truth. It is yet another way to take advantage of the connection between the mind and the body, and also of the effect that our intention has on our life experience.

In the middle of just about anything, I can stop and fill up with a gold sun. For me, gold represents the vibration of God’s love expressing in all things. In filling myself with golden light I am making a conscious choice to align my body with what is highest within me.

What we think, our bodies respond to as if it is real. This happens on a moment-to-moment basis, and is the reason why our thoughts have such a dramatic effect on our physical well-being. So as I picture in my mind the color gold enfusing every cell in my body, my body responds by relaxing into an awareness of peace, remembering that all is well and there is nothing my body needs to work against.

Also, because what we expect tends to show up in how our lives play out, our clear intention to align our bodies with awareness of God consciousness at work in all things allows that to be what we ultimately call to ourselves, and experience in our lives.

To fill up with a gold sun:

1. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and quiet your thoughts as much as possible.
2. In your mind’s eye, picture a large, bright, shining gold sun up above your head.
3. Acknowledge your intention that the color gold represents the truth of God consciousness in all things.
4. Watch in your mind’s eye as the gold sun comes in through the top of your head and cascades down through your body, bringing every cell of your body to gold.

This simple and powerful tool helps us remember that there really is no limit to what we can create as unbounded spirit having a divine in-the-body experience!

May this tool be a blessing. . .

It's Just Energy

Choosing to remember that it's just energy has saved my biscuit countless times.  Every single thing that happens in life is at its core an energy vibration that is moving through our personal space.  The choices that we make about which of those energies we attend to, and which we release, very much create our life experience.

One important way that I use the tool of "it's just energy" is in my relationship with my husband.  There are times in our very harmonious partnership when we get really annoyed at each other.  Thank Goodness for experience, that most effective teacher, from which we have both learned that when we are fighting, it's rarely about us.  When we are in conflict, it doesn't reflect at all on the amount of love, commitment or happiness we experience together.  It's a reflection of how much we're being caught up in the energies around us.

We have learned over time that when one of us can remember that simple truth, and then remind the other, we can step back, take a deep breath, and wait for the flurry to pass.  It's not about us.  We may be stressed over something that happened at work, or stirred up by something unresolved from the past, or many other things, making us more grouchy or sensitive.  But grouchy and sensitive are temporary states of affairs.  They are vibrations passing by, and not the truth of us.  We have agreed to believe in the face of whatever is passing by that our relationship is sacred, and our belief makes it so.

Someone once told me that it's all energy mechanics, and I'm starting to understand the truth of that.  In seeing a situation as the fleeting and mutable vibration that it is, rather than a solid thing that we are forced to endure for as long as it chooses to stick around, we are able to choose to be proactive rather than reactive in our response to it. We can manage it rather than let it control our experience.

How do we manage the energies that we encounter in our lives, and turn them to our good?  Meditation is one way, but there are many others.  Prayer, affirmations, turning it over to the God within us, or choosing to see God within another; probably all of the tools discussed in this blog and elsewhere help us change the energy.  Anything that helps us take a step up from the problem, and connect with our higher truth, allows us to remember that we are unlimited creators of our life's divine melody.

May this tool be a blessing. . .

Sympathy vs. Empathy

I’m finding a lot of help lately in remembering to be more empathetic than sympathetic in my interactions with others. The subtle but important difference in the intent that these two words convey impacts how I feel, how much help I can be to others, and how centered in my own truth I am able to be. For me, responding with empathy is infinitely more healthy and productive.

A number of my family members and friends, like so many others in the world, are facing big challenges in their lives. I help them as much as I can, but there is only so much that I can do, and I feel sad about it. I have realized that my sadness doesn’t help them, and it certainly doesn’t help me. My husband reminded me yesterday about empathy rather than sympathy. Bless him.

Both sympathy and empathy express how we deal with the feelings of others, and there are numerous ways to define both words. I view sympathy as sharing the feelings of another, especially in sorrow or trouble.  I have noticed that people can sympathize with another enough to actually take on their physical symptoms.  Empathy, on the other hand,  is more recognizing or understanding the feelings of another but not sharing in their suffering.

I can, and have, been brought to my knees by sympathy. My truth takes an automatic back seat to how badly I feel about what someone else is going through, and I suffer, and it doesn’t help.  My knee-jerk reaction is to forget my most basic truth, which is that God has it all. I can't always see how, but it's covered, end of story.  I’m not sure where that deeply-heartfelt truth hides when I’m suffering for someone.  I just know that I have to dig it out from behind some very old, pervasive fear.

I believe that all that happens is contained in a divine order so perfect that we can just barely imagine it. Only with faith can we even begin to accept into our hearts the love that designed our being, with all of its ups and downs.

Through all of their struggles and changing circumstances, my loved ones remain who they are, eternal expressions of perfect love. Temporary challenges create the dichotomies that allow us, by first experiencing darkness, to know ourselves as light.

When I choose empathy rather than sympathy, I am able to offer my support in a way that serves the truth of their highest selves, instead of validating perceived limitations. Rather than succumbing to the fear that their circumstances are bigger than they are, I can support them in recognizing their dominion over their own lives.  In empathy I can let them know they are loved and not alone, and capable of more than they may be able to recognize in the moment.

May we all have people in our lives who understand what we're going through but also see the true power that we embody.  And may this tool be a blessing. . .

Knowing Your Power

I read recently that "Our personal power is a direct reflection of our own sense of compassion and inner voice."  This very much describes power as I've experienced it in my own life, but I don't think it's commonly thought of in this way.

Power is found in our connection with what is highest within ourselves.  It is that place that allows us to respond with compassion to all that we encounter, because we know that nothing can diminish the truth of infinite good within us.  When someone treats us less than kindly, we can respond with power in our compassionate and honest communication back to them.  When bad things happen or when circumstances cause us to feel vulnerable, we can respond with power in affirming that we are calling to ourselves an opportunity to know fully the loving and divine order that steers all of life.

People often perceive power as the ability to override others and by sheer will get our own way.  We wrongly believe that in most situations someone wins and someone loses, and so power comes from exerting enough force to win.  But the truth is, power is not born of competition but of communication.  Only in communication can we understand and cooperate, and thereby raise the energy of our interactions with others to one that serves the best and highest for all.  In doing so, we express God within us, and that is true power.  Living as our Godselves is the highest power there is.

We are often taught that power comes from living with a good offense as our best defense, remaining ever-vigilant and always ready to respond to another's jab with an even stronger punch.  Within this dynamic, the over-riding lie that controls communication and prevents any type of harmony is that we are not safe, therefore we have to spend a good deal of energy warding off what other people might do to us.  We end up creating, through our own false belief, our own victimization.

Power has nothing to do with how others perceive us, but with how we stop to hear the quiet voice of spirit within us.  It is not a reaction to what we fear will be invalidated in us, but rather a decision we make again and again to share the truth of who we are, and all that we have to give.

I am reminded of a prayer from Unity: "There is only one presence and one power in the universe and in my life, God the Good."  That, to me, is what power is all about, in our ability to know the truth of our own limitless good.

May this tool be a blessing. . .