Caring for the Body

For a very long time, our awareness of God has been of a deity out there somewhere, exerting his influence based on criteria we don’t understand, leaving us always looking outside of ourselves for some philosophy that can help us know what we need to do to earn his favor.

At this point in human evolution many are being guided toward a much broader awareness of God, one that recognizes the very real presence of God right here in this physical realm, in the middle of every part of being human. We are just beginning to consider the magnitude and ramifications of the truth that wherever we are, God is, in every situation, every thought and every emotion we’ve ever had or ever will have.

Most importantly, we are realizing that for this to be possible, God must reside within every one of us. Regardless of how we choose to perceive that mind-boggling notion, the bottom line is that we are living God’s life. God is experiencing her God-self through our own experience.

Most of us have heard the much-known maxim that our bodies are temples of the soul, but I’m not sure we’ve caught up with the utter truth of that enough to care for them as sacred expressions of God’s life. Many of us find joy in following a spiritual path and finding a deeper meaning for our existence, but don’t fully consider the role of the body on that path. We seek spiritual truth “out there” without even realizing that what we’re seeking is right here. We live in it 24 hours a day. In body, mind and spirit there is no separation; it is all God.

I’ve realized that caring for the body is a spiritual practice unto itself. I can sit for an hour of meditation and prayer, and connect with divine intelligence within me. I can also choose to eat a meal of healthy food, and honor and validate that divine intelligence that created me. When I choose to exercise or move my body in some way that is fun and healthy, I celebrate God’s life within me.

When I love my body enough to consider what is best for it, and honor it by following through with its needs, I am the embodiment of the holy trinity; I am the lover, the loved, and love itself.

All acts of self-care are ultimately acts of love. They are our prayers of gratitude for our ability, through these precious temples, to be God’s life.

May you practice random and frequent acts of self-care, and may this tool be a blessing. .

Present Time

Lately I’ve been renewing my love affair with present time.  It’s always been a very one-sided relationship; present time being right here with me, always waiting to be savored, me gallivanting off to who-knows-where in my mind, unable to resist my two-timing obsession with the future or the past.

I’m always amazed by how tough it is to stay centered in the now.  No matter how aware I am of the added quality and depth of my moments when I focus on what’s happening in this moment, the pull to worry or reflect about future or past is often irresistible.  I know it’s all perfect, part of a plan that is divine beyond understanding in helping me remember my truth about being human.  I like to think of it as part of the total entertainment package, the perfectly-orchestrated challenges that allow us to choose our best selves.

Playing with being in present time as much as I can is a wonderfully satisfying and creative endeavor.  When my attention is pulled back from future or past, I can place my full attention on being; now I experience what it is like to be a teacher, as I choose to be fully present in that expression.  Now I delight in being female, as my attention rests in what that feels like and how I express it.  Fixing my hair and choosing jewelry is sure a lot more fun when I’m in present time, with my attention on enjoying my femaleness rather than what I I'll be doing at work later.

As I sit here, present in the now, I find joy in very simple things.  My feelings are a validation of myself, being me.  There is no judgment or resistance, only what is.  I am grateful to be able to experience, period.  

I have hands that type these words, and do countless other amazing things.  In present time having a body is a celebration, not always easy or painless but an unspeakable gift nonetheless.

May you be present in your moments, and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Not I, But God Within Me

So many times I've despaired over things that I don’t do well enough, or despite my best intentions still manage to get stuck on!  Human experience being what it is, we all have challenges; some of them are pretty easily solved and some take years and years to navigate through. 

In the middle of our own particular challenges, we can feel unsure about our ability to find a solution.  Whether it’s something new or something we’ve been dealing with for awhile, challenges are challenging exactly because they require us to dig deeply within ourselves and change how we’ve been thinking.  Challenges are opportunities to let go of old patterns and open up to new ways of seeing our experience that better reflect the truth of who we really are.

Still, slogging through difficult and confusing situations is uncomfortable, especially if they’re those “core” beliefs that seem to take an act of God to finally see the truth about.  But I’ve learned, and keep remembering, that an act of God is exactly what’s needed.

In each act of remembering and in every moment of grace, it is not I, but God within me, who does the work.  In my most sad, confused or frustrated moments, when I feel like I’m going to feel this way forever because I just can’t seem to figure out how to do it differently, if I can place my awareness back to God within me, I no longer need to figure anything out, because there is nothing that I lack.  Any sense of lack or forgetting is swept aside by a much larger truth that perfect and divine consciousness guides my thoughts and actions, and I know just what to do. 

When I remember that God within me is doing the work, my burden is light and my path is clear.  I realize that in each moment everything I require is available to me, and I am whole and complete.  All I need do is claim it!

The change in thinking that I sought today was this:  I know what to do because there is no idea or answer that I lack.  It can be no other way. 

And as is the case when I get back to remembering, I was brought again to heaven, right here on Earth.   I love that we can do that!

May this tool be a blessing. . .

Celebrating!

There is always something to celebrate. Celebration is a form of gratitude; it's a way of acknowledging our unlimited ability to create and opening ourselves up to our best and highest expression. To me, celebrating is a form of prayer, a way of saying “Thank you, God” for the gifts we’ve been given. It’s a validation of the goodness and God-ness that makes up our human experience.

I’m a fan of the happy dance. When my mom recently got good news after having trouble getting her car smogged, I did the happy dance. When my husband got a bonus check yesterday that was unexpected, we did a big, loud high-five in celebration. In my family we often toast each other over dinner, with our glasses of water or whatever we are drinking, just to celebrate sitting there eating, and being together. “Tuesday” is a wonderful reason to celebrate. Random acts of gratitude can be large or small in expression, and they reconnect us with the truth of all that we can do, be and have.

Today is my birthday, and that is something to celebrate. I don’t think grown-ups have nearly enough permission to celebrate their own birthdays. This morning driving to work I danced to the radio, sitting there behind the wheel looking very foolish, I’m sure, to others driving by, happy in the awareness that I have experienced another year being me. Happy, too, knowing that today begins another year growing in my awareness of the perfect good from which this existence is created.

As my family sang happy birthday to me last weekend over the lighted candles on the birthday cake, I felt tremendous gratitude, for all of them, and for my precious life. The happy birthday song was a celebration of all of us, for being here now, filling the world with our own unique voices.

May you celebrate all of the large and small things in your life (especially your birthday!), and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Finding the Life in Your Life Situation

I love the wisdom of Eckhart Tolle.  I am currently reading for the second time his book, "The Power of Now," and am discovering some wonderful insights that I somehow missed the first time through.

Tolle, and many others, teach that the ego-driven mind is the basis for all that separates us from knowing ourselves, and all others, as God.  It's an interesting and powerful idea.  The mind, which is the cause of all suffering, is also our most powerful vehicle for getting out of suffering.  It is through the fearful thoughts of forgetting that we are provided the grace of remembering who we are.

In the Now all is well, for in this very moment, what is lacking?  Lack exists only as a construct of time, in the future or from the past.

What delights me and puts it into great perspective is that regardless of life circumstances, regardless of what we've carried from the past or are concerned about in the future, underlying all is that we are here.  We live.

Situations exist in our thinking, and are subject to change from moment to moment depending on the random places our thoughts travel to.  In the middle of all of those engrossing thoughts we could spend an entire lifetime so focused on the details of living that we forget that we are life.

That mysterious, vibrant being is us, as we move through our days choosing our course and experiencing the effects of our decisions.  In every moment our unique voice adds its resonance to the harmony of ongoing creation.  The whole is forever changed because we are.

Underneath life's situations we breathe; we feel and learn and grow.  Time moves on and situations change, but through it all, God sings her song of infinite joy through our beating hearts.

May this tool be a blessing. . .

Hearing God's Whisper

As we move through this blessed life, growing in love and wisdom and in truth, the situations we encounter to help us along on our path can be complicated, confusing, and sometimes painful. These challenges provide our perfect opportunities to remember the highest in ourselves.

In the middle of our biggest challenges it can be pretty tough to see that we are being given exactly what we need to choose our best selves. We work hard to find an answer so that we can be comfortable again.

We give the issue at hand a lot of energy by trying to reason our way through it, talk our way through it, or worry our way through it. We get stuck in what happened in the past, or what might happen in the future. Whatever the issue is, it grows stronger with all of the attention we place on it.

By grace, and through divine order, the profound answers we seek make their way through the clamor, often in the most gentle ways. Sometimes in the middle of chaos our answers come from unexpected places, a few sentences in a book, words from a friend, or the quiet voice of our own deep knowing.

I was reminded this morning of a song that I heard at Unity recently, sung by our very talented music director, David, whose music is always an inspiration and a healing.

The song is entitled “More Like a Whisper”, by Scott Krippayne and Steve Siler.

“Sometimes the mountain moves and is thrown into the sea,
Sometimes the lightning strikes and a vision comes to me,
Sometimes the waters part and the path ahead is clear,
Sometimes the angels sing and it’s music to my ears.

Sometimes it’s more like a whisper, quiet and gentle, peaceful and still,
When questions rain down like thunder, sometimes the answer is more like a whisper.

Sometimes one candle burns and a light glows in the dark,
Sometimes a flower blooms, bringing hope into my heart.

Lord, help me listen whenever You speak,
If the river runs wild or is silent and deep.

Sometimes it’s more like a whisper, quiet and gentle, peaceful and still,
When questions rain down like thunder, sometimes the answer is more like a whisper.”

May you know the ever-present grace that provides all of the answers you seek, and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Seeing Yourself Through the Eyes of God

I haven’t written in a few weeks, and I have missed it.  After some suggestions from friends, I took a short break to begin the process of turning Daily Spiritual Tools into a book.  I’m excited by the prospect of having these tools in one physical place where a person can actually flip through the pages of something solid.  Wish me luck!

I discovered a new tool a few weeks ago, when I was feeling very cranky.  I think all of us go through times when nothing seems right, and it was my time.  I was feeling worn out in my job and out-of-sorts in my relationships.  I felt like I was struggling with the same old things that I’ve struggled with for years, and not getting anywhere.  It was a pretty depressing state of mind.

I know that what I think is not always the truth, and I’m learning to loosen my attachment to the thoughts going by in my mind.  Still, sometimes they take on a life of their own, grab me and take me down a very unhelpful road.

I sat down in my favorite spot to meditate, with the intention of settling myself and finding my way back to the truth.  At first, I just sat and let myself hear the pessimistic dialog that was taking place in my head.  In that moment, everything was a problem.  Nothing was right with my life, or with me.  So I sat there, reminding myself to just notice what I was thinking and feeling without trying to talk myself out of it.

As I focused my attention on the thoughts and feelings that were moving through me, I noticed how my grumpy thoughts were feeding the jangling emotions, and the emotions in turn were continuing the negative thinking.  What a vicious cycle.  Somebody, stop me!

Thank Goodness for awareness, for as I continued to focus my attention on where I was without trying to change anything, a thought came to me in the form of a question, which was “If my life is an expression of God, if this is really God in the middle of these thoughts and feelings, what does God think about living as Sherry?”

God laughed, a big belly-laugh of delight, and I experienced again the miracle that comes every time the light of truth finds a new way to shine on me, and to remind me of who I am, and who we all are.

I knew in that moment an all-encompassing love that I truly have no words for, and I felt God’s joy in every single thing that goes along with being me.  I was reminded of the unfathomable depth of love that created this existence, and guides and supports us throughout every breath we take.  We are perfection in every moment, in every thought we have and every emotion we feel, and in every single experience we have.  

 To remember this always (or at least as often as possible), and to help others remember it too. . .That is my quest!

May you see yourself through the eyes of God within you, and may this tool be a blessing. . .