June is the month that completes the first half of 2023. Right now is an excellent time for us to assess how our life is going so far this year. Even though it’s June, it’s not too late for us to ring out the old (if it followed us into this new year), and ring in the new! It’s never too late for us to become aware of something new about our self. In fact, now is always the perfect time for newness. Our LEC theme this year is “In 2023 I’m free free free!” So the first question is: “How free free free have you been feeling so far this year?”
Have we felt free to let go old of limiting thoughts, no matter where we learned them or how true they’ve felt about us? Do we feel free to live a life we truly enjoy living, maybe for the first time?” We began the first Sunday of the year by considering that a new year symbolizes boundless possibilities of the “yet to be known of our Self and Life” to become known to us through our living Life with an open mind and a happy heart. We considered that every moment of 2023 would be an opportunity for us to experience more good in our life by asking for more good in our life, and then expecting to receive more good in our life.
What new good experiences have we asked for and actually experienced in some way in our life so far this year? Did we ask for, and then allow for, more good health, more financial freedom, more loving relationships, more peace of mind, more satisfaction in our accomplishments, and more excitement about what’s coming next for us? In other words, has 2023 (so far) turned out be a year that brought a new, more powerful, joyful and freedom-filled YOU into your awareness? We only know how to answer that question by asking our self, “How do I feel about myself and my life right now?”
Existential psychologist, Rolo May, wrote in The Courage to Create, “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and the response” (what we see and how we choose to be) “and in that pause to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness.” That is why we have been focusing these past few Sundays on the practice of mindfulness, the practice of moment to moment self-awareness, the practice of being conscious right where we are, rather than being on automatic pilot in our mind unaware of the vibrational energy we’re emitting.
Eckhart Tolle wrote, “Vigilance in oneself is very important. Vigilance means to be alert to what happens inside, so you can catch an old, collective habit pattern.” Vigilance allows us to pause between stimulus and response so that we can choose what we want to experience in the moment. Being mindful is inner vigilance. It’s paying attention who we are being and how we are being in the moments of our life as we live them. If we decide to practice mindfulness, by the time this not-so-new-year ends, our life will still feel new. In this way, every day we’ll feel enriched and blessed. There won’t be one iota of regret or remorse because we’ll know that in each moment we were free to choose and we did!
Our life is up to us. We’re not in charge of what happens around us, but we are in charge of what happens within us as it happens. We’re the chooser of our choices, and we always have a choice to choose a positive point of view no matter how things may appear to be in any given moment. People may be noisy, or even quarreling, around us. Someone may be unhappy with us and want to quarrel. Maybe we’re not experiencing good health right now, financial freedom right now, or feeling good about some of our relationships right now. But we still get to choose our response to what appears to be right now.
Abraham-Hicks tells us, “Never mind what is. Imagine it the way you want it to be so that your vibration right now becomes a match to your desire.” If 2023 so far hasn’t turned out to be the new year we’d hoped to see, if today so far is below par, as the saying goes, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” We‘re free to imagine right now how we want our life to be for rest of the day, the rest of 2023, and beyond. Regardless of appearances right now, if we keep imagining how good our good life can be, and we feel good about that right now, we’re giving our good spiritual-vibrational passage in our mind and emotions, and a place to land in our life.
John Muir wrote, “The power of imagination makes us infinite.” There’s nothing that we can’t be, do, have, or experience for the rest of this year and rest of our Earth life. The power of imagination is a superpower. Every wonderful thing in this world owes its manifested existence to the imagination of someone. Without imagination nothing new is possible in the world or in our individual life. In fact, without imagination nothing is possible at all. This means that it’s also true that every problematic thing in the world owes its manifested existence to the imagination of someone, and that every problematic thing in our life owes its manifested existence to us. That’s how powerful we are even when we’re imagining the worst!
Remember the saying, “What’s cooking”? It was way of asking “How are things going for you” or “What are you planning?” We used to say in California, “Que Pasa?” (What’s up?) If we want to answer that question for our self, all we need to do is notice what we are expecting is going to happen to us and for us, and how what we’re thinking and expecting is causing us to feel right now.
Abraham-Hicks tells us, “Whatever you’re thinking about is literally like planning a future event. When you’re worrying, you are planning. When you’re appreciating, you are planning…What are you planning?” So the next question is: “What are you planning?What are you imagining? What’s cooking?” Our imagination is cooking up a plan for our life experiences right now. In this very moment we’re cooking up something. Wouldn’t we like to be more aware of what we’re cooking up?
We’re spiritually, energetically and vibrationally cooking with gas all the time with every thought we focus on and imagine is true. All thoughts we focus on for any length of time, all the things we give our attention to and react to in some way (in trust or worry, calm or frustration, love or criticism), all that we actively want and actively don’t want, become our experiences when we give them the time of day long enough to affect our mood and attitude. When we focus on anything long enough to feel good or bad about it, we become a vibrational match to it.
For example: We can wake up in the morning, get out of bed, stub our toe (and perhaps offer a few choice words to whatever we stubbed it on), and then what we focus on in our mind next will literally plan our day. We can decide to think about the last time we stubbed our toe, how hard it was get our foot in our shoe, how painful it was all day, and how we eventually lost our toenail. And, we’ll be cooking up a day filled with encounters with people, situations and conditions that are a vibrational match to us. We’ll walk into the day as a bad mood waiting to express itself, and as we know there is always someone or something to help us express our self!
The only reason what we don’t want, who we don’t like, and problems we don’t enjoy show up in our day is because we’ve given them our energy and creative power to show up. We’ve given them passage in our mind and a place to land in our experience. And, even though we’re not happy they showed up, we’re not surprised when they do.
The good news is we can decide a stubbed toe is no big deal and won’t define our day; that it’s going to be a great day anyway. When we choose a good mood despite circumstances, when we expect good experiences throughout our day, that’ll be what’s cooking everywhere we go because we’ll be a vibrational match to the good stuff. Our being a vibrational match is all our good needs to manifest in our life.
So, the answer to “what’s cooking” is: Only what we give energy to with our thoughts, imagination, emotional responses, and physical demonstrations. We are always turned on vibrationally, on high or on low, because we are the very flame beneath our choices. Abraham-Hicks tells us, “There is a Life Stream that flows to you, and this is a Stream of clarity, a Stream of wellness, a Stream of abundance, and in any moment, you are allowing it or not.”
I invite us to consider that the practice of mindfulness can ease, and even dissolve, memories we’d be happy to lose; memories we carry in our mind that are heavy and keep us from feeling Joy in Life and Being the Love we are. Lebanese–Canadian author and poet, Najwa Zebian, wrote: “These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.”
Mindfulness is the intention to maintain a moment-to-moment awareness of our thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment with the lightness of an open mind that is aware that anything is possible, and with a curiosity that allows the moment to reveal its newness and expand our awareness of the joyous Life within us and around us. Mindfulness is noticing this Life, and feeling this Life, as Its happening in this moment because this moment is the only place Life is happening and new possibilities for experiencing It are available to us.
In The Way of the Heart we read, “Are you willing to truly be right where you are? The mind will say ‘Well of course, I’m on a spiritual path.’ But rest assured, if you look well into your feelings and find any trace of resistance, you have not yet made the necessary commitment that gives you the power to open the door to Heaven.” If we haven’t yet, how can we make the necessary commitment to awaken to Heaven on Earth? Practicing mindfulness is a commitment that allows us to notice what we’re thinking, and how we’re feeling about what we’re thinking, in the very moment we’re thinking and feeling whatever it is. In this way can release any trace of resistance in us that is keeping us from experiencing peace of mind, financial abundance, a sense of well being, and happy relationships with others.
Being aware of how we’re feeling, whether we feel open and curious or closed and resistant, is not only good to notice, it’s essential if we want to our experience our Power to open the door to Heaven and to Life as It’s meant to be experienced. We all want to live fully before we die, but unless we release hellish thoughts that weigh us down and keep us from feeling free, we might “go” before we’ve had a chance to be the One we came here to be. We read in A Course in Miracles, “In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose.” We all want to feel free to experience a life we enjoy, but sometimes we choose thoughts that are in opposition to the happiness we want.
It’s only at the level of feeling that we know what we’re choosing, and it’s only through choosing Love we discover our Power to open the door to Heaven, which is the door to Joy. We all have dips in our Joy from time to time, and it’s good to notice when it happens. If we’re not paying attention to that feeling indication, we might not notice we’re focused on thoughts that don’t feel good and won’t bring us the manifestations in life we want. And, we’re likely to react to others and situations in ways we regret.
But if we’re paying attention to how we feel, if we’re not feeling emotionally good, we have an opportunity to pause and take time to connect the dots that will lead right to the dippy thought we were thinking just a moment before we felt the dip in our happiness, energy or enthusiasm. If we’re unable to connect the dots, but we want to feel good anyway, we can always find something to focus on that allows our Spirit to rise up in us and lets our happiness, energy and enthusiasm to return. No worries if we don’t connect the dots because that dippy thought will come again if it still needs to be released by us. Until we resolve issues in our mind, we’ll still be carrying them around and making mountains out of mole hills.
No matter what choices we made in the past that brought about a certain mountain in our mind, once we look at it, feel it, and embrace it, we’ve owned it. Then we’re free to climb to the top of it or let it crumble into the sea of Love. But, we can only release thoughts we don’t want if we’re aware they’re there, and that’s where mindfulness is key because we can only interact with Life in the present moment.
In the Book of 2 Corinthians we read, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.” Now is the acceptable time because nothing else, no other Life, is going on on either side of Now. Now is the day of salvation because salvation is freedom, emancipation, liberation, release, and deliverance from the weight of unhappy, unhelpful thoughts. Thoughts about anything that happened before right now have no power right now except the power we give them by bringing them with us, like accessories, into the present moment.
When we focus in any moment on thoughts in a way that causes a dip in our Joy long enough, that dip will turn into a deep valley before we know it. The Law of Attraction is this: “That which is like unto itself is drawn.” Therefore, whatever we’re thinking about attracts other thoughts that are like it. Did you ever have a disturbing thought, and then another one and another one came to mind, not necessarily about the same subject but equal to the same disturbing feeling, until you felt overwhelmed and you just wanted to go back to bed before the day had even begun? Mindfulness will cause us to be aware of that first thought, notice how it feels, and change it before it gets out of hand.
Mark Twain humorously wrote, “Love your enemies. It will scare the hell out of them.” But when we love our enemies, which are thoughts that aren’t true about our self, others and life, we scare the hell out of our self. Love flows where It is free to go, and just by being what It is, It removes anything unlike Itself. Heaven and hell can’t exist in the same place, at the same time. Since Heaven is a choice, if we choose It, It will be our experience. John Milton wrote, “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.”
It has been scientifically proven that we can’t have two opposing thoughts at the same time, believe both are real, and feel good. In psychology the mental stress and discomfort experienced by someone who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas or values at the same time is called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive relates to the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning. Dissonance in the mind is the same as in music: discord, disharmony, a simultaneous combination of tones in a state of unrest and needing completion.
Someone was telling me the other day about a noisy situation that had been going on around him that was causing a state of unrest in his mind, emotions, and body. He told me that he sat there “visualizing peace,” and I wondered what peace looked like in such a state of unrest. When I asked him whether he was feeling peace while he was visualizing it, he said, “I was trying to!” That’s when Gandhi’s words came to mind: “We must be the change we want to see.” We must Be peace if we want to experience it, and we must Be Love in order to love the hell out of our experiences. We must complete the task at hand, which is to bring harmony to our mind where the unrest originates.
We can choose to see anything that occurs around us, and within us, as the doorway to Heaven on Earth. We open the door with the Key of Being. A good question to ask our self is, “Am I willing to accept that I came this far in my life by climbing the stepping stones of my experiences, and that I didn’t come this far not to go farther?” We can choose a better view only from the vantage point of now. Then we can move on.
When we’re Being the Love we are, in the moment we are, we’re truly awake. We don’t have to love everything that’s going on around us or in the world. But if we want to scare the hell out of this world, we can only do it by Being the Love in this world that brings harmony to discord and peace to unrest. Nothing is going to change without a change in us wherever we are. Heaven and hell are states of consciousness. What are we choosing to be conscious of? When we feel peaceful, content, trusting, happy, or just plain good, we know in that moment we’re remembering the Presence of God that lives within us, around us, and through all things always.
When we’re willing to climb every mountain as it comes into view by seeing it as part of Love’s expansion plan through us, we’ll feel a deep sense of gratitude for everything this physical world has brought to us in the past and what it brings to us now. There won’t be a molecule of beingness within us that feels any resentment, any longing, any anger, or any remorse for anything. Matt Kahn wrote, “In a world of endless questions, love is the only answer.” Life is good, and we can prove it by loving the hell out of it!
I invite us to consider how we can dissolve our fears of losing our memory as we age by accepting that our mind is perfect just as it is right now. We can decide to appreciate our mind as the ever-expandable gift of our Spirit that allows us to be aware of the beauty and goodness of life in us, and around us, in every moment wherever we are. We can learn to do this through the practice of mindfulness.
We’ve all heard the word “mindfulness,” but what does it mean? Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote, “Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing,” which is another way of saying “be where your feet are,” which is another way of saying “be fully present right where you are.”
We all want to be spiritually awake. Isn’t that why we read and meditate? Isn’t that why we go out on a walk to commune with nature? We’re hoping to wipe the sleep from our human eyes so that we can truly see Life as It’s meant to be seen. Deep within us we know that being awake is essential to our being alive in the way we’re created to be alive. In the Aramaic Bible, in the Book of Ephesians, we read: “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from among the dead, and The Messiah will illuminate you.”
The Messiah—the Voice of Truth; the Christ of Love; Cosmic Consciousness—shines within our mind and illuminates us every time we are mentally present where it shines. And, It only shines in the present moment because the present moment is where all Life is happening. If we’re not fully present in the moments of our life, we’ll miss the holy happening we came here to experience.
All that is required for us to be spiritually awake is to be present mentally where our feet are physically, paying attention to what’s going on without judging how it should go, and yet being aware of what we’re doing and how we’re feeling as we go. This is the very practice of mindfulness, and mindfulness means being awake.
It may sound like a simple thing for us do, i.e., to know what we’re doing by being mentally present while we’re doing it. But if our habitual intention was to have such a mind/body awareness and connection, if we consistently chose to pay attention to what we were doing in the moment we were doing it, for one thing we’d never trip over or run into anything! But we do because it seems that despite the powerful awareness we’ve heard can be ours when we stay focused right where are, most of us aren’t mentally fully present right where we are most of the time.
It’s been said, “If you want to be happy, don’t dwell in the past, don’t worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.” We may not doubt that it is essential to the health of our mind and body, and to the expansion of our soul and spirit, for us to pay attention to our life as it’s happening. But often even without knowing it, even when we think we’re paying attention, we’re actually distracted (at least in part) by something else. Part of our attention isn’t where our feet are. Our mind is focused partially (or totally) on either a past or future thought.
Almost all of our thoughts are habitual, and because they are we’re not always aware that we’re thinking about something else. Maybe we think we’re fully present, but at the same time we’re also thinking about something that happened just a minute ago, earlier in the day, or even years ago. Or, maybe we’re thinking about something we need to do next, or at some point in the day, or at some point in our life!
Author, Mark Williams, wrote: “Now is the future that you promised yourself last year, last month, last week. Now is the only moment you’ll ever really have. Mindfulness is about waking up to this.” A good question to ask our self might be, “Am I waking up to that? How often do I feel mentally awake and alert? How often do I feel fully tapped into, and fully engaged with, the present moment by being attentive and curious? How often do I accept mental fogginess as natural, and lack of attention and curiosity as part of the aging process?”
Most likely all of us here have walked into a room and forgotten why we’re there. Most of the time we laugh about it, even when no one else is around, and then we go back where we were and start over. It’s really no big deal, right? We’ve been told it’s just one of the signs of getting older. It’s possible, even likely, we were all born mindful. As a child we were fully engaged with each moment, curious about life. We didn’t have enough past to distract us, and we didn’t worry about the future because it didn’t come to mind. When we toddled into a room, we were on a mission to have fun, and we knew we’d find something good—a toy, a pet, a parent, something fun to play with.
But our being fully present to play in each moment of our life changed as we got a little older. As a teenager we had a whole lot more to think about: a boy or girl we’d just met, homework that needed to be done. And, nowadays, with many teenagers constantly focused on their cell phones, they may not have a clue where their feet are, much less where their mind has been! Even so, when a young person walks into a room and forgets why they came into that room, they don’t worry that it’s a sign that something is wrong with their mind. They know they were simply distracted.
So here we are, at the age are now, living in a world that seems to be moving faster and faster, and words seem to come at us more quickly than ever before. How often when we can’t think of the name of a familiar person or object right away, do we start to panic just a bit, or even a lot? As we pause in anxious silence, often if someone is with us they will try to help us by offering a word that may or may not be the one we were searching for. But since we can’t find it anyway, we react with a frustrated, “no that’s not it,” or even if it wasn’t, we often feel relieved the awkward silence is over.
We try to help each other fill in a verbal pause out of love because we believe that pause is something we need to fear at our age. But maybe we don’t need to fill in the silence. Maybe it’s more helpful to each other to wait, at least a heartbeat or two, before we offer to assist. We don’t need to fear a mental pause in others or our self if we don’t see it as a sign of aging. But we panic if we lose a word here and there because we’re concerned as we age it may not be long before we lose a whole lot more them. We’re told by the medical world that for many of us memory loss is inevitable. However, author and therapist, Shannon Alder, wrote: “The true definition of mental illness is when the majority of your time is spent in the past or future, but rarely living in realism of NOW.” Mindfulness, then, is the cure, and all of us have a mind that is capable of being mindful. If we’re here now, our mind can be here now, too.
There is something we might want to consider if we’ve been accepting memory loss as just the way it goes. Is forgetfulness a sign of our aging or a sign of our lack of mindfulness? Is it a signal of inevitable mental decline or a signal that we’re not giving our full attention to what we’re doing in the moment we’re doing it? Is it an indication that we’re headed downhill or an indication of our lack of curiosity and interest in the life we living right now? In The Science of Mind we read, “Man is Birthless, Deathless, Ageless Spirit; This leaves nothing to be born, mature, decay, and die. When this thought shall be made clear in the consciousness of man, people will no longer grow old. Life cannot grow old; It is always the same.” We don’t have to mentally decline before we depart. When we’re finished with this Earth life, we can leave with our mind clear and wide open to the next adventure.
What if slowing down mentally in our life is a good thing, even part of our Divine Plan, because it’s an opportunity for us to pause right where we are and really see what’s important to see? Eckhart Tolle wrote, “In today’s rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much, and forget about the joy of just Being.” We can bring peace to our mind by keeping in mind that we are perfect just as we are, just by Being aware right where we are. Just by being alive, and taking time to live life as it’s happening, puts us in the perfect place, wherever we are, to experience the miracle of being alive.
Sadhguru said, “Every moment there are a million miracles happening around you…There is magic everywhere. If you learn how to live it, life is nothing short of a daily miracle.” That certainly seems enough incentive for us be curious and attentive to the moments of our life! We’ve been given a beautiful expandable mind capable of paying attention.
Though mindfulness can be practiced at any age, maybe we are at the perfect time in our life to practice mindfulness because we are more aware than ever before that if we’re not fully present right where we are, we’ll miss precious moments of this Earth life. Maybe we’re at the perfect time in our life to practice mindfulness because we’re more ready than ever before to allow silence between words. And, if we do, if we don’t panic but simply let our self mentally Be where our feet are, who knows what new awareness will come to our mind. All the wisdom of the Universe is available in the present moment, and all that’s required of us is to Be there to receive it.
There was a sweet video of a female orangutan that lives in a glass enclosure at the Louisville Zoo. When she saw a human couple with their 2-week-old baby, she went up to the glass, tapped it, pointed to the baby, and then asked through a hand gesture for them to bring the baby closer so that she could see it. And, they did. As she looked at the baby with such a sweet look of curiosity and love, it was easy to see the Divine Mother that lives in her. According to orangutan.org these beautiful animals share a lot of similarities with humans including having a close bond with their mama, and that it is likely only humans have a more intensive relationship with their mothers.
We, human, certainly do seem have an intense relationship with our mother. Whether she’s left this Earth plane or still with us in physical form, when we think of her it’s easy to recognize that no one can invoke from us, or provoke within us, the depth and range of emotions our mother can. There’s a Jewish Proverb that says, “God couldn’t be everywhere, so he created mothers.”
Even though we know there’s really no spot where God is not in all Universe because the Universe is the very expression of God, it does seem many mothers take their assignment of being everywhere in their children’s life seriously. I know my mom did. She seemed to show up and surprise me by unexpectedly being right where I was, especially when I was where I shouldn’t be and doing something I shouldn’t do! But, fortunately for all of us, our mother was right where we wanted her to be, and needed her to be, when we decided to come into this world in physical form.
From moment she felt our heartbeat within her, our birth mother chose to be there for us, to share a journey with us within herself that would lead to our physical arrival. That’s big! In fact, it’s everything in this world. Without our birth mother’s agreement, not one of us would be here right now in our particular human form.
Our birth mother, may she rest in peace or live in peace on Earth still, was the first one willing to go the distance with us. No matter how she expressed herself on the surface as our mother, no matter what she said next once we arrived, she first said “yes” to us, and it made all the difference for us because here we are.
Whether we learned to love our self through our mother’s eyes as we were growing up, or our longing for Love and acceptance caused us to look for Love in all the wrong places until we finally found It within our Self, it’s important for us to remember that the Divine Mother, the Sacred Feminine Energy of Life, the Unconditional Love that gave birth to all life, was and is the only Truth of that One that birthed us into the world. Unconditional Love is everywhere because God is that Love. It remains, in Its purity as All that Is, far beyond personalities and human forms.
As adults we know there’s likely no magical properties in human saliva, even a mother’s. But as children it was clear to us that nothing got the dirt off our face faster than Kleenex anointed with our mother’s saliva. It was also clear that nothing made our skinned knees and cut fingers feel better than her kiss. We felt the healing vibrations of love radiating from lips that, in the moment that kiss was offered, were focused on us. And, for us it was the very manifestation of Love.
However, for many of us, a kiss that made our booboo feel better didn’t always come exclusively from our mom. Our dad knew exactly how to give a healing kiss. Because there is no spot where Unconditional Love is not, both women and men have equal access to It within. Unconditional Love is the Substance of every Soul whether our physical form is female or male. It expresses just as freely, as the Impulse to make things feel better, through a dad for his little girl, as it does through a mom for all her children.
Alan Watts wrote, “We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it. As the ocean ‘waves,’ the universe ‘peoples.’ Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a wave in a Sea of Love, a unique action of the total universe.” Universal Love expresses as the nurturing nature of every individual on Earth. Mother’s Day is not only a wonderful time for us to celebrate our birth mother for the unconditional love she expressed in bringing us into this physical world, it’s a great day for us to remember all those throughout our life who loved us enough to desire to, at least metaphorically, kiss our pain away so we’d feel better.
It’s the Nature of the heart within all that lives to want to nurture all that lives. We’ve all seen at least a video of a dog who adopted a kitten or a cat that adopted a baby chick. Unconditional Love makes no distinction as to where It flows. It just seems to flow more easily in the animal kingdom because there’s no resistance to expressing It.
Often the thoughts in the human mind cause us to believe that only some deserve our care and love. Accessing the Unconditional Love within us requires our relinquishing feelings of unworthiness to give love. It requires our letting go of anger about being hurt when we’ve offered love. And, it requires our abandoning our prized opinions about others.
It’s easy for us to see the innocence of animals, babies and small children, but when we look at other adults—with different life experiences than our own, with so much diversity in self-expression in this world, and lifestyles that keep getting more and more diverse, with politics, religions, and such a vast variety of personal preferences available to all of us—we think that when we find those who seem to think as we do, speak words we like to hear, and act in ways that please us, that it’s enough to be joined head to head. But Unconditional Love can’t be found in the head without inspiration from the heart.
No matter what thoughts we may have in common with others, no matter how many theories we may agree on, being joined in head to head with others will never free us to experience the nurturing nature of being joined heart to heart. Mooji wrote, “Your heart is the light of this world. Don’t cover it with your mind.” Today is the perfect day for all of us, male and female, to consciously uncover more of our heart, and reconnect with the true Power of Unconditional Love that resides there and gives it light. When we feel kissed by the Unconditional Love within us, It makes our personal hurts disappear and we feel better and better about life. Only then are we able to shine our heart light into the world, truly embrace and nurture others, and be a high vibrational healing presence of Love on Earth.
When we reconnect with our heart we become vulnerable to the holy desire within us that urges us to reach out to everyone, no matter who, no matter what, and let the Light of Love reveal itself through us as us in ways that make the world feel better. Alan Watts wrote, “I’ll tell you what hermits realize: If you go off into a far far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.”
Are we ready to enjoy each unique day as it comes? No two days are ever alike in any season. There is a surprise of newness in nature and in us, a gift of experience we haven’t had before if we’re ready to receive it by offering our best to it. Maya Angelou said, “This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.
Today is a wonderful day, not only because it’s one we haven’t seen before. Whatever the date is on the calendar, we won’t see it again for another year. And, when it gets here, it will be nothing like today and neither will we. The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, wrote: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
The Universe is constantly moving forward and outward with everything within It moving in the same direction with It, and that includes all of us. Everything in Life is ever-evolving, and so are we. Nothing remains the same anywhere no matter how “same” it may seem to be to us.
Things only seem the same to us because we feel the same about things. We’re thinking in the same old way that causes us to view a new day as a repeat of yesterday and the day before that. Our focus on the rearview mirror of our mind keeps us from seeing what’s new in front of us. We express our self in the same old way we always have, and get the same results we always have, because when push comes to shove we fall back on habits of behavior.
Here’s a good analogy: You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere. Why did you spill the coffee? “Because someone bumped into me!!!” No, you spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup. Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled tea. Whatever is inside the cup is what will spill out. Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you, which WILL happen, whatever is inside you will come out. It’s easy to be nice, until we get rattled. So we have to ask ourselves, ”What’s in my cup?” When life gets rushed, what spills over? Whatever spills over is what we bring to the day. We can choose to bring peace, patience, joy, and enthusiasm; or we can default to frustration, impatience, and righteous determination. Life provides a clean, empty cup each day. We get to fill it. Today we can to fill our self up with so much gratitude, joy, resilience, positivity, kindness, gentleness, and love for our self and others that if someone bumps into us it will be a pleasure to let our cup spill over. In fact, it will be a beautiful thing!
This day has never happened before in all the history of humankind, and we’re here to experience it any way we choose. We get to decide anew, if we want to, what we’ll bring to the day so that if push threatens to come to shove or we’re bumped or shaken, we can respond through choice rather than habit. Every moment of this day offers us mind-changing evolution that will cause our life to be better and better, if we take it up on its offer.
I have a treadmill at home that includes a computer program called iFit, which offers its members an opportunity to virtually workout all over the world with a trainer who has planned the perfect workout for a particular terrain.The iFit trainers are all so positive and uplifting, I’ve often thought they would make excellent ministers or life coaches. And, in a way they are. They encourage us show up every day because, they tell us, consistency and dedication are the only way to improve health and fitness through exercise. Dedication to our fitness goals will get us to turn on our machine even when we’re not feeling motivated. It is what we do every day, rather than only some of the time, that will make the difference in the way we feel and make actual changes in our body.
My current trainer, a former Denver Broncos cheerleader is full of high energy and positivity. Even while we’re just warming up, she tells us, “This exercise won’t happen again. Even if you do it again, it won’t be the same workout. So don’t let it pass you by, by not giving it your all.” She encourages us to leave our workout stronger than when we started, and to go out with a personal best. So just before our last set of workout, she says, “Last set,” and she has us say, “best set!”
I’ve noticed that there are a lot of parallels between taking care of the health of our physical body and taking care of the health of our mind and spirit. Positive consistency in our thinking every day, rather than only some of the time, will make the difference in the way we feel and make actual changes in our thinking.
Dedication to expressing our best self each day causes us to get up looking forward to the day. Even if we’re not motivated by what may be happening in our life, when we’re dedicated to wonderment in a new day, waking up is enough. Even when it would be much easier to just stay bed, or to get through the day with our head down “getting ‘er done, dedication to life’s wonderment will cause us to give the day our best self, and to look for the good no matter what task is at hand. When we do, we realize that all the moments in the day matter because we feel how precious each moment is.
But so often in our hurry to get things done that we’ve decided must be done in our day because they’re important and necessary to get done, we act as if not all the moments of the day matter. After all, we do get 86,400 seconds each day! Why shouldn’t we just let some of them pass us by without offering a positive thought to what we’re doing or intentionally engaging in a happy interaction with someone who’s there? Why do we need to take time to show thoughtfulness and kindness when it seems more expedient not to because we just need to get a particular task done?
Maybe we’re thinking, if we’re thinking about it at all, that we’ll have a chance for a redo some other time. Maybe next time we’ll take time to choose to be more patient, considerate, understanding, loving, or gracious. But not this time because we just don’t have the time to do that all the time. We might be thinking “Everyone has moments like that, so what?” But consider these words by Wayne Dyer: “Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.”
Only our dedication to being our best self in each day will allow us to experience the best in each moment. Unlike a workout on a treadmill, we don’t know what set is going to be our last set in this human environment. If we want to discover the depth of our peace and the extent of our ability to be Love while we here, we don’t have a second to throw away being anything else. Our obsession with getting things right in the world at any cost, often by trying to control everything and everyone around us, causes us to miss getting it right with our Spirit.
So how do we calm down when things seem crazy, and what we need to get done has a timeline? How can we get to a place of peace and spiritual presence in a moment when we feel rushed, hurried and uncentered? When exercising on a treadmill, no matter how fast our feet may be going or how steep the incline might be, slowing our down breathing, especially if we’re panting, actually gives us more energy. Breathing slowly and deeply sends more oxygen to the whole body and energizes it. In the same way, no matter what we’re doing in any moment, no matter how fast our body or mind seem to be racing, taking the time to breathe deeply and slowly, right then and there, will center us and send spiritual energy to every part of us, and even to those around us.
We know how good it feels to feel good about our self and everyone else, and how bad it feels not to. It’s energy sucking! When we toss out an interaction with anyone, friend or stranger, by not taking the time to breathe spiritual energy into the moment, we lose out on a deeper experience of our Self and a holy encounter with another that we won’t get back again. We’re the creator of our own reality. The one we choose to be in any moment will be all we see and experience. The Power of a Universe created by Love is within us in every moment, and available to us all the time. But we have to let It be us before we can experience It.
What miracles might we pass up in a day if we toss away even one moment as unimportant? Stephen Grellet, a prominent French-American Quaker missionary in the early 1800s, wrote: “I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
This is a wonderful day, a one of kind day that will unfold for us in any way we allow it to. But however we allow it to unfold, whether we savor each moment or let most of the moments pass by unnoticed, it is a day that won’t happen again for us, as we are here and now. Today is the only day that’s guaranteed. It’s up to us to choose whether or not we’ll let it pass us by—by not giving it our all.
As they say, “Time flies when you’re having fun,” and seems to go so slow when you’re not! Though time happens one minute at a time, either way, it’s our attitude in each minute that determines whether or not our life adds up to a good time on Earth. So, if it seems to you like April has gone by in the twinkling of an eye, you must have been having the time of your life!
Best-selling author, Harvey Mackay, wrote: “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.” It’s up to each of us to decide how we will use our time on Earth. We can choose to use it to discover the spiritual power within us, and then spend our time allowing that spiritual awareness to fill our mind and inspire our thoughts so that we create a life we enjoy living each day. Or we can decide to waste this gift of time and, in no time, it will seem as if time has passed us by.
Another saying for us to contemplate this day, no matter what today’s date may be or how many days we’ve spent on Earth wondering what life is all about or not wondering at all: “Today is first day of the rest of your life.” It’s never too late for us to live the life we came here to live. In fact, we could say that today is “Day One.” Where there is breath, there is Life, and where there is Life there are unlimited possibilities for expressing It. Trust in the Unseen—trust in God, trust in Spirit, trust in the Universe, and trust in the Holy One that lives within us as the greater part of who we are—is the pathway to Self discovery. If we were to consciously live in partnership with the Holiness Inside of us, It would express on the outside of us as us, and there would be nothing we could not be, do, have, or experience.
If that partnership sounds impossible in a world where we appear separate from everything around us and within us; if a partnership with our Divine Self while we’re living as a human self seems more like a dream than reality; and, if we believe that a partnership with our divinity can be kept separate from our humanity, then we’re missing out on the Presence of joy, peace and love that are within us Now, and ready to express through us minute-by-minute.
It takes deliberate intention to live from the Inside out and to respond to life in a way that feels good to us, when all around us the world is calling to us to react to it, judge those within it, and fight against what we don’t like about it. Are you ready this day to make it your deliberate intention to live from the Inside out minute-by-minute? It takes spiritual determination to choose to feel good in those moments when feeling bad would be so much easier. But if we focus in opposition to the life we want to live, we can’t experience that life steadily unfolding through us while we live.
We can prove to our self that the better we feel in the moments of our life, the better our moments get until the joy within us sings through full time. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” It’s never too late to let our song out, to sing “I gotta me, what else can I be, the dream that I see makes me what I am.” We all came with an unseen dream within us and apparently it’s a musical!
But we can only live our dream by trusting our Inner guidance to direct us in all our ways, rather than asking others what we should do, or if we’re doing it right, or explaining why we’re doing what we’re doing. When we own our dream as if God gave It to us and the power of the Universe is backing It, when we have no other desire but to live it here and now, then when we leave this Earth life we’ll have no regrets that we left with our song unsung.
Courage to be all we can be in this physical environment comes from the Unseen Forces of life that live in us. The Vibration of the God of our creation, the Energy of Spirit, and the Laws of the Universe are all right where we are. Ever notice most people look up when they say “God,” as if God was somewhere “up there” rather than right here? Even those who believe in a personal interaction with the Universe often look up when they say things like “The Universe is testing me!” Such a concept of “up” makes God seem above the clouds and far away, and the Universe a place outside of us that is doing things to us rather than through us.
“Up” and “down” are concepts when it comes to the unseen vibrations within us and all around us. But, even in the physical world there is no real “up.” We’re living on a round planet suspended in space. If “up” were a real thing, then if we were to jump “up” at the same time someone on the other side of the world jumped, they would have to be jumping “down.” We live on a planet, which is flying through an infinitely expanding Universe, with nothing visible above or beneath us to hold us in place. The Laws of the Universe are unseen. Only Their manifestations are visible to us. There is no “up” in the expanding Universe in which we live. There is only “out.” Often when we talk about raising our vibration, we think it requires an effort on our part to get to someplace else. If a raised vibration actually caused us to elevate, then whenever we felt happy or in love, we’d be walking on air!
We are immersed in an Infinite Endless Spiritual Vibrational Universe that is everywhere all at once, up, down, around, and through everything. The Universe is full of vibrational currents like the ocean is full of currents of seawater that may move differently (fast or slow), and feel different (warm or cold), but still are the ocean. We could say that in this world we’re cared for like fish in the ocean. And, even though we may not allow our self to receive Universal care from within us, we’re never a fish out of water because it’s impossible for us not to be immersed in the loving currents of an Infinite Universe. There can be no place outside of Infinity! We read in the Book of Psalms, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there also.”
Most of the time when we hear the phrase “double up,” we don’t think of “up,” we think of “in.” We think of contraction of our body, of pain or fear of harm that can cause us to double up physically. But pain and fear can cause us to double up, or contract, mentally; to close our self off vibrationally to the warm currents of Love so that we are unable to receive the good we’ve asked for or prayed for, even though that good is there for us vibrationally.
There is another way for us to look at concept of “double up” that is not about contraction. In fact, it’s the opposite of contraction. We can look at it as expansion. We double up on our good by opening up. When a good thought comes into our awareness, or a good feeling moves through us, if we give it the time of day by staying with it and focusing on it, we double up on its potential to expand our life. Staying with a good thought or feeling long enough causes us to unfold our resistance to our good, to open to something better that is ready to express in our life. When we double up on a positive vibration we’re open to receiving our good. We allow our prayer to show in our physical experience because there is nothing within us to stop it.
When our life causes us to ask for something, we may say words, but the language of the Universe is Vibration. The Universe understands and responds only to the vibration we emit. Because the Universe is filled with the givingness of God’s Love, our asking vibration is always answered right away with a “Yes.” But we don’t always trust that the “Yes” is there because the answer is vibrational, spiritual, and purely energetic. And, most of time, most of us are focused on the solid forms of the world. We’re not tuned in to Within. We’re not paying attention to the vibrational reality that has occurred on our behalf. We’re unaware of the synergy that is taking place as the Law of Attraction gathers everything necessary for the fulfillment of what we’re asking for.
In this physical environment it seems to take time for things to appear to us, and therefore the Holy Vibration of “Yes” may seem to take awhile to get to us in our physical life. Often during the gap between the time we have a desire, i.e., when we want something that appears not to be present yet, we think we have to ask again and again, unaware that what we’ve asked for is already ours vibrationally. We stay focused on the situation that caused us to ask for what we want in first place, and so it stays in our view. It is our attention to the physical absence of what we want that gets us more of the same because we’re still contracted. We’re unable to feel the vibrational proximity of the good, which is already in within us, to its physical expression.
If what we’ve got is less than what we want, then we need to tune into the vibration of answered prayer. We must fearlessly unfold so we can become aware of the improved version that is vibrationally present right where we are and paradoxically on its way. There is a process by which our thoughts become things, and that is where trust comes in. Trust allows us to open up to the vibration of “Yes” so it can turn into thoughts within us, and those thoughts can turn into a feeling within us that our good is becoming manifested. There is a vibrational intimacy between the Presence within us of whatever we’ve asked for and its presence in our physical life. When we tune into that intimacy, and feel how good it feels as a desire in our mind is becoming a thing in our life, we double up on our prayer by looking for the appearance of good everywhere.
How we feel is our indicator of the gap (or no gap) between our desire and when it is able to appear to us physically. The most important thing for us as our Earth life unfolds is to open “out” to our good as if it is right where we are, because it is. Ernest Holmes write, “Act as though it is and it shall be.” When a desire, no matter how crazy it may seem, feels good when it comes to mind, we know we’re aligned with our dream and our song. And, all that’s left for us is to have the courage to sing it like nobody’s business!
