Most people I know, when they think about their “enemies,” do not talk about loving them. What if we did though? What if we put our “enemies” on the top of our prayer list and blessed them? Why is it that every faith tradition in the world teaches one to love their “enemies”? Is there even an “enemy?”
Iyanla Vanzant once wrote about being grateful for those who got on your last nerve. I could not agree more. I have learned so much from those I had once considered my “enemies.”
Read moreDecoding your Spiritual DNA
Last week, I challenged us to activate our spiritual DNA. The question, however, is how does one do that. While there are some questions we can each meditate on and explore, the journey to activate our spiritual DNA is different for each of us. This is not a one size fits all kind of journey. One of the books I have been reading is called Soul Types by Robert Norton and Richard Southern. They suggest there are four soul types, which are the ways in which we live out our identity, values, purpose, and vision. All four types reside within each of us as possibilities, but most of us choose one or two to focus on more directly. Each one is centered on something different: heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Read moreActivate your DNA
Are you ready to activate your DNA? When I ask about activating your DNA, I am not asking about your genetic DNA, but your spiritual DNA. We are far more then our genetic coding. Our genetic coding also contains spiritual coding from the Divine buried within us, like a treasure in a clay jar. It has always been there waiting for us to choose to connect with it, cultivate it, activate it, and express it in our lives. While our genetic DNA makes us candidates for all kinds of traits in our lives, our spiritual DNA makes a perfect candidate for enlightenment and transformation. Those qualities and traits will lay dormant in us until we choose to activate them. We are the ones who have to choose to engage in a spiritual journey. Until we do, our spiritual DNA lies dormant.
Read moreWhere Joy Resides
During our love and inspiration gathering on Sunday, April 1st one of the women in our gathering suggested that on the 8th (Easter Sunday for those who celebrate Easter) we have a dinner instead of our morning gathering. With the group’s enthusiastic approval, as well as my wife’s endorsement pending my willingness to make my baked ham and seven cheese mac and cheese, we agreed to do so. Shortly after some of our guests arrived and the abundance of food was on the table, one of our guests received a call from a family member in crisis and she needed to call 911. Our guests responded in different ways. One woman asked me for assistance with 911. Another began crying because it stimulated some of her past behavior. A third one felt helpless because she was not sure how to help her niece.
Read moreWhat are you filling up with?
The other night I was watching a commercial with all these people filling their gas tanks. It made me think about how what we put in our car, and the ability to keep the tank full of the right kind of gasoline, will determine how smoothly, if at all, our cars run. If there is no gas in the tank, one is not going anywhere and then winds up reaching out for help.
In some respects, this is like our lives. We are what flows through us.
Read moreWhere do you live?
This past week, I have had a chance to talk with a wide diversity of people with differing attitudes about life. Some of them seem to be living in a garden where life is blooming and others seem to be living in a minefield where they are waiting for the next bomb in life to go off. So where are you living? Are you living in a garden, a minefield, or a prison?
Minefields are loaded with bombs hidden under the terrain. When one steps on a mine, you can be blown up by bombs of worry, doubt, fear, lack, and limitation.
Read moreDon’t Worry, Be Happy!
It’s funny how sometimes those one hit wonders from your past come back and speak to you spiritually. For some reason I have found myself hearing the tune to Don’t Worry, Be Happy playing in my head. It is hard to be fully living when we are spending our time worrying. If I were to write the song today, I would call it Don’t Worry, Live Fully!
I found the lyrics to the song and realized they are just as relevant now as they were then.
Here is a little song I wrote
Read moreIntegrity and Integration
I woke up this morning with this epiphany I had to share with a friend. The funny thing is my epiphanies tend to be things I knew at some level, but then rise to the top of my consciousness. This is what I remembered this morning about truth. We are to be about truth. We are to be about speaking from a place of truth. Not just our truth, but THE truth. Sometimes we might like to say we are the sole possessors of the truth, but like so many others, we are on a journey, which is constantly revealing new understandings and new insights about THE truth. Everyone, even those we do not necessarily agree with can have an insight into truth we do not have. What is important is that we always conduct our search for truth guided by the principles of love
As we conduct our search, we may find ourselves living with greater and more conscious levels of integrity. Integrity is about wholeness and authenticity.
Read more37 Seconds To Read: May Change Your View For A Lifetime
I shared this story on Sunday at Love and Inspiration and it was suggested I post it here as well. I found it one of the websites which I read periodically.
37 Seconds To Read: May Change Your View For A Lifetime
Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room.
One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs.
His bed was next to the room’s only window
The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.
Read moreWhat are you aligned with?
Michael Beckwith once wrote, “The daily headlines describe a global culture that has been cur off from the soul.” One need not look farther then the headlines on any form of news media for stories about violence, whether it is overt, subtle, verbal, physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual. We manifest violence through our words, actions, and thoughts. Violence is associated with power, either the misuse of the power one has or an attempt to feel powerful in a world where they have felt disempowered. Violence can be individual or structural. We hear about individual violence in stories of wars, abuse, neglect, murders, rapes, bombings, terrorism, etc.
Read moreMission Possible
Henry Ford once said “whether you think can or can’t, you’re right.” We have each been created for a purpose. We each have a specific mission we were born to fulfill. Some of us believe that mission is possible and others believe it is impossible. Whether you think you have been assigned mission possible or impossible you are right. Like the team on mission impossible, we are each given a mission should we choose to accept it.
At some point in time, we probably heard the directions directly from the Creator before the tape self-destructed. However, remnants of that directive linger within each of us. You may experience this impulse to manifest something. You might feel compelled to create something. You might feel as if you are being called on a quest of some type. The mission is yours should you choose to accept it. Sometimes one might feel reluctant. One might question as to whether or not we have the skills and gifts to fulfill this mission.
Read moreAre you an antevasin?
Have you ever had one of those moments when you are reading something and quite unexpectedly you find a word or a sentence, which makes you have one of those “oh my gosh yes moments.” This is what happened to me recently while reading Elizabeth Gilberts book Eat, Pray, Love. Ironically, I had my aha moment in a similar way to her, except mine was in my bedroom curled up under the covers and hers was during her time in India. It was in these respective moments, when we both came to understand we were antevasins. So my question to ponder this week is this. Are you an antevasin?
When I told my spiritual director I had finally found the word to describe where I am in life and what I currently am, she said great and that is. And I said I am an antevasin.
Read moreA Recipe for Self Love and Growth
It was a quiet Sunday morning. As usual, I arose, prepared the space and myself for our weekly Love and Inspiration gathering. I looked for the music I felt called to play to quiet people’s spirits and bring us into a space of reflection and sharing. I prayed about what reading to share and found myself drawn to one particular piece. It was different then what we normally read and discuss, but I knew it was what I was supposed to read. As we gathered, there was, as usual, a moment of informal chatting with each other. The conversations all seemed to center around food and recipes and as I listened to where people were at, I realized the reading I had been drawn to was perfect for what people were discussing. At the request of those gathered yesterday, I am sharing this recipe with all. I encourage you to gather the ingredients, follow the directions carefully and live this each day of your lives. It comes from a book by Iyanla Van Zant called Until Today.
Read more"God Is A DJ"
Over the course of my life, I have heard God referred to in a number of ways, but until this past Saturday night I had never stopped to think about God as a DJ. While I had thought quite a bit about God, I had given little thought to DJ’s. What little I know about DJ’s I can summarize in a few sentences. I know they select and play music for a diversity of audiences and in a diversity of settings. Ok, so maybe I could tell you what I know about DJ’s in one sentence. It was not until I heard Pink’s song, God is a DJ, that I began to think about whether or not I could envision God as my personal DJ.
I have to admit I had this moment when I envisioned this huge radiating heart with arms up in a booth with shades on introducing music. I wondered if anybody else had ever envisioned God as a DJ and was amazed at how many images there were of Jesus, Buddha, God, and other spiritual images as DJ’s. None quite looked like mine, but there was something comforting in knowing that others had similar images as I was having.
Read moreTo agree or not agree, that is the question.
So here is my question for this week? What are you choosing to agree to and what are you choosing not to agree to any more? I have been spending a lot of time the last several months, well maybe years now, reflecting on what I agree to and what I use to agree to and no longer do and what I don’t agree with. Perhaps what got me thinking about this recently are conversations with my students, who even at the beginning of the semester, are comparing themselves to others in the class and assuming that they are inferior to their peers.
What I have been saying, well actually typing, as this is an online class, is that you have to agree you are less and that someone else is more to feel inferior. Others may treat you as if you are inferior, but unless you agree that you are inferior, you are not. How many times in your life have others tried to make you feel inferior? Ok, now how many times have you agreed with them in your mind? How many times have you told yourself that you are not enough of something or too much of something?
Read moreSilencing the monkeys
Have you ever been to the zoo and watched the monkeys swinging from one area to another, making the sounds as they do. On the one hand, it is fascinating to watch, at the same time after a while you need to move on, well at least I do. it is hard for me to stay focused with so much distraction. Perhaps that is why so many people have trouble meditating. Our minds are like monkeys swinging from one tree to the next, moving from one idea to another, from thinking about one thing going on in our life to another. Periodically, our minds might stop, but then we are off to swinging through ideas again.
The two problems people seem to have the most is claiming the time to meditate and silencing those monkeys.
Read moreNo more erasing.
It was late last night, well maybe not so late, when I saw this commercial on television for this new erase stick (really not so new), which is supposed to erase all the “imperfections” from under and around women’s (not men’s) eyes and make women look years younger and healthier. I remember trying those “erase sticks” when I was younger and they never quite “erased” your “imperfections.” What makes them “imperfections” anyway? That is another reflection.
However, watching the commercial made me think about how so often when we want to evolve spiritually and transform our lives, we are looking for the “erase stick,” which we can run over those aspects of our life and somehow make them invisible and make us appear as if we are spiritually healthier then we really are.
Read moreWriting Your Own Prescription
The other day I was at the grocery store and this older woman, well older then me, offered to help me reach a package and then proceeded to tell me how awful my life must be and how seeing people like me made her feel so much better about her life. I was not quite sure how to respond, so I thanked her for her assistance and told her that I prayed God would continue to fill her day with opportunities to feel better about her life.
Her comment to me got me questioning how we describe our lives. Do you describe your life by talking about how hard it is, or as I heard one person say once, “life sucks and then you die.” Or are you more on the attitude of life is good.
Read moreIt’s Your Birthday!
No, I did not get that wrong and no, I did not get it twisted. Today is each of our birthdays, as is tomorrow, as is the day after that and the day after that. Every day is a new day and a fresh birth into our lives.
None of is exactly the same person biologically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually then we were they day before. As Alice Walker once wrote, “It’s never the same river twice.” Our lives are this constant state of evolution and change. Caterpillars spin cocoons, go through a transformation process, and then emerge as butterflies.
Read moreIt is not all about me.
So a many of you know Zoë and I legally were married this past Saturday after having been together for 10 years. Thank you to the State of New York for the great anniversary present. I love being with my wife. I also love being mother to my son Nicholas and all the others who have adopted me as a parent figure in their lives. I know all these relationships are part of who I was created to be and what I was created to do in this world.
However, there are moments when I am not in love with any of these roles and there are even moments when I am not too pleased with life either.
Read more