This past Sunday, after a medically induced hiatus, I was back to doing what I most love to do: allowing the Inspiration of Source to flow through me in the form of conducting a Sunday service. If there is one area of my life in which the infallible Power of Spirit is demonstrated clearly it is in my Dharmic expression. Though I physically didn't yet feel up to expending the amount of energy it requires to stand before a group of people and emit that much Light, I also clearly recognized that the Light that was seeking to shine through me was and is so far beyond the constraints of my personality self. Doing what I am called to do is a perfect act of what I like to term Soulful Co-creation. I do my part. I show up and I open up. I stand up and I surrender In. I watch the personality preferences and I let the One Presence shine beyond them. After lecturing on Spiritual themes for almost eighteen years, I never doubt the Power of Illumination to become usable Inspiration in and through me. The mind may go into some interpretation of the quality of the work after the fact, but that is just what the mind does. It is just ground clutter. I continue to place my Faith in the Power that inspires me to keep doing what I am called to do. And I relish the experience of Union that occurs every time I stand up to speak. It truly is Source as verb.
The talk that I presented on Sunday was entitled THANKS FOR NOTHING. Though I will not try and recreate that content for the purposes of this blog, I do feel led to share the essence of what came through me.
I have for many years kept a Gratitude journal, and it is a treasured practice that I engage in each and every morning. Throughout the years, there are days when the awareness of blessings is acute and overflowing, and there are occasionally days when the mind comes up fairly blank. In retrospect, these are the days that have taught me the most about the deeper levels of gratitude. While I endorse and celebrate the practice of acknowledging and writing down what we are grateful for, I am even more empowered by shifting the focus to a state of being grateful FROM. Spiritual maturity is being in synch with sacredness and blessing when there seems to be little to be grateful for. Gratitude and thanksgiving are contextual and not dependent on content. True thanksgiving is being grateful at an empty table. And when you can feel that, the feast is truly on its way.
Gratitude is causal. Gratitude is primary. Gratitude is formless. And from this state of causal, primal, formless gratitude the blessings miraculously flow forth. We are admonished to be grateful IN ALL THINGS. Not when we have what we think we want and things seem to be going our way. IN ALL THINGS. When you can truly say thank you to the heartbreak, the meltdown, the diagnosis, the divorce, the foreclosure, the death; then you get a sense of being grateful from. This type of thanksgiving is transformational. When you are able to thank the challenge the miracle is on its way. This is spiritual discernment. This is spiritual awakening. This is faith. And for most us it is a process.
So I hear occasionally the somewhat caustic quip “thanks for nothing.” Beyond the sarcasm there is actually a seed of deep truth. When you can say wholeheartedly to the Universe “thanks for nothing,” everything is on its way. “I need absolutely nothing to be grateful this day. You, my Source, are enough.” This humility is the aperture for uncommon abundance. It is the valve that opens the floodgate. It takes our focus off of form and places it in Formless Spirit. It is here that we experientially learn that the moment is always enough for we are always enough. When we are In Synch within our Source, we have access to all of creation. It is holographically already ours. Gratitude opens us to let in the fullness of all that already is. This deeper gratefulness is unchangeable. It is in alignment with the Impulse of Creation Itself: Let there be, and it is good!
And so I hold you in my grateful heart, and I vibrationally know for you a deep, spacious, profound Thanks-Living holiday. Thanks for nothing, my friend. You are everything to me.
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