The sun shone through the window for the first time in what seemed like months. What it revealed was startling. What before had appeared as a clean window, dusted furniture, and swept floors was a very dirty window, dust where I hadn’t noticed it before, and a not so clean floor.
Suddenly the term “spring cleaning” made sense. It is not just the feeling of starting fresh and new after the winter, but the actual awareness that cleaning needs to be done.
Light does that. It reveals.
What happens next is up to us. Either we can let the dirt remain, or we can clean it up.
Here’s where the many choices, or free will, comes into play. It is the choices of what we want to perceive or think about what is revealed, and what we choose to do about it.
If we choose to leave the dirt alone, we can either pretend that it’s not there, or acknowledge that it is present and either punish ourselves for not doing anything about it, or for the fact that it exists at all (we should have known better), or acknowledge that it exists, but it isn’t our problem, or even enjoy the fact we are leaving a mess.
If we choose to clean up the dirt we can either be grateful for the revelation that something exists we don’t want in our lives, or berate ourselves for not seeing it sooner, or be mad because we have to clean it up.
So many choices for cleaning up dirt and each choice we make determines the quality of our day, and eventually our lives.
I am sure you have already applied the symbolism of all this to a much more important issue then the dirt in the living room.
As we each practice spiritual perception, becoming increasingly aware that we are the light of God, that light – like the sun – shines on the “dirt’ in our lives, revealing what before was unseen.
Spring-cleaning our house is the same thing as spring-cleaning the house that is our consciousness.
We have the exact same choices around cleaning the ideas, past events, thoughts, and behaviors that we discover when we shine our light on our lives as we do cleaning the dirt revealed by sunshine.
Whichever choice we make absolutely determines the quality of our lives, the joy of the day, and either brings more light, or rolls in more mist that hides the light.
We are never the dirt that is revealed by the light. No matter how aggressive the temptation is to believe the loud voice that says we are, we can always rest assured that any “dirt” that the light has revealed is a lie about ourselves.
That dirt, or lie, has been there, clouding up our perceptions and once it is revealed, it can be dissolved and washed away.
Instead of dismay, let’s celebrate that the dirt has been uncovered, and bring out our tools to clean our homes and clean our perceptions.
To clean our homes we get dust clothes and cleaners. To clean our perceptions we remind ourselves of our Point Of View and hold steadfast to it.
Choosing the Point Of View that all is Love Loving Itself is the same as knowing that once we clean up the dirt in our house, what remains has always been there, just hidden by the dirt.
As we sweep away false perceptions, we bring our State of Mind into harmony with our Point of View. We have many tools we can choose to do this, from meditation, music, affirmations, 360-degree Soft Vision, walking, sitting quietly in nature, working in the garden – there are endless ways to silence the “monkey voice” and return to an awareness of the innate perfection of all that we see.
The voice within us gently guides us forward, holding us safely in Its Love while we clean.
Listening only to this voice we will find the courage and wisdom to sweep away any lie about ourselves, and to acknowledge ourselves as we are, the Light of the Divine. We remember that we are not the window through which light passes, but the light Itself.
We might even find ourselves “whistling while we work”. In the end, we will feel the delight of a clean home, and the deep joy and peace of a cleaned consciousness.
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Outside my window, there are four doves in the branches of the tree. Their wings lift and flex, they stretch their necks, and fluff their feathers. Nearby a chickadee scratches himself and a few downy woodpeckers race each other around the yard.
At the suet feeder, three bluebirds sit patiently waiting for the red-bellied and downy woodpeckers to break apart the frozen suet. The juncos walk the ground beneath both feeders thankful for the falling suet and sunflower seeds. The nuthatch hangs upside down to eat; the finches flit everywhere, twittering at each other, while the cardinal pairs take turns flying in for seeds.
Across the ravine, I can see tracks of a deer, the neighbor’s cat stretching, and the squirrels hopping from branch to branch. Where the snow has melted, a few bugs rise up into the air. A spider weaves it web, and a leaf twirls beneath it caught by a single strand, dancing in the wind.
(Del caught a video of this leaf dance last summer.)
Leaf
It’s obvious when watching nature that everything in the universe is moving, together and independently, each unique but each dancing as One within and as the qualities of Life.
However, when it comes to ourselves we get a little confused. We don’t move. We exercise. Actually, there is nothing wrong with the word exercise; it’s the premise that we have given it that gives us trouble.
Instead of moving, or exercising as an expression of life within the joy of moving, we often are caught up in exercising to make something better.
However, our intent is to remain within the point of view that we are already perfect as the expression of God. So if we exercise aren’t we playing both sides of the fence?
Perhaps we forget that since everything that is present is the presence of God, or Mind, or Spirit then what appears as our body and all its parts is not separate from God. Remembering this we don’t negate our bodies and turn away from them thinking that someday we will vacate them and become spiritual. Instead, we recognize that what appears as a body has its substance in Spirit the same as everything else that we see and experience.
We all get very confused when we divide our world into two parts. Spirit over here, matter over there. In this separation point of view we have to make up rules based on which part of the world we think we are in each moment.
A separation point of view begins with something wrong that needs to be fixed. A spiritual perception begins with the fact that there is nothing wrong now, in the past, or in the future. Everything is perfection because everything is God’s expression.
What appears as a body is not an illusion, it is a misperception of what we are looking at and experiencing. We have all experienced at least one moment when the boundaries of our bodies seems to disappear as the mist clears and in that instant we know the Truth that there is no separation, that dualism is an illusion that is dissolving.
What we perceive as our bodies is no different then what we perceive as a tree, the birds, a flower, our income, or any other object that appears material to us. The key is in the word perceive. As we acknowledge and practice the truth of our being what appears as material to us, is seen for what it is, spiritual, whose substance is the qualities of the omnipresent “force” we call God.
It stands to reason than that acknowledging and enjoying the qualities of movement is an excellent way to begin the experience of our bodies, not as a solid object, or something we own, or something we are, and finally not as our dualist thought perceives them, but as the consciousness of God revealed in another of Its infinite manifestations.
Imagine what a difference it would make if we approached movement from the perception that instead of fixing our body through exercise, we were moving as the grace of God. We would no longer think of movement or exercise as a cure, but instead as a way of being.
We could do yoga, walk, dance, run, climb, leap, swim, play baseball, football, stretch, lift weights – the choices for us are endless. We could do all of this because we are the expression of God, and we could celebrate that fact with each form of movement we make.
Our worldview education shuts us into a tiny, closed-in material thought process, it is necessary that we take up the task of educating ourselves out of it and into the infinite.
The universe breathes with the grace of life. We are one with it. Take a walk with this open awareness of what is really going on. Move muscles, flex joints, stretch out into space, breathe deeply, expand your vision, go within, see the universe and all that it contains, spiritual, moving as One. Experience for yourself the truth of yourself within the grace of movement.
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We were shoveling snow – again. We had so much snow that some of the piles we were tossing snow onto were way over my head. As we shoveled, I thought of my garden buried under the many feet of snow. “Will I ever see it again,” I wondered.
I knew the answer of course. I knew that spring will come, my garden will bloom, and truth be told, by the end of fall I will be yearning again for the white inward quietness of winter.
In that moment of awareness, I stopped wanting it to be spring. Instead, I enjoyed the scrape of the shovel on the driveway, working with Del who I could see in the distance shoveling his way towards me, the beauty of the fallen snow, and the song of the birds in the tree who sing with joy no matter what the season.
In that moment of awareness, I saw things differently. I saw my garden, but this time it was a snow garden. Each flake that fell added to the abundance of the garden. Each flake was free, each flake was an individual idea, unique and special, but one with the rest of its brothers and sisters, dancing in a variety of ways, but always with the same intent.
The weather has given us even more than a snow garden. We have an ice palace on our back porch where we house one of our bird feeders during the winter. It’s stunning. The light glances off and through the huge icicles so that no matter what moment we look at it, it is always beautiful, always unique, and yet always part of the whole.
Snow and ice are wonderful symbols of uniqueness even as they remain one. They are also wonderful symbols of frozen moments of attention.
Each snowflake is a frozen pattern. Frozen moments of attention are also patterns, frozen in our thinking. Frozen moments of attention are those moments we remember as if they were happening right now, never letting them thaw and dissolve away.
The pattern of frozen moments impact our lives by freezing them within our stuck points of view, and frozen ideas of how it was or could be. Our dreams and hopes are often buried beneath frozen memories.
As beautiful as my snow garden and ice palace are, they must dissolve and evolve into their unfrozen state before they can refuel the earth with the water it needs to bloom within the upcoming seasons.
In the same way, the patterns of our frozen moments of attention must thaw, dissolve, and evolve in order to refuel our lives with the spirit and love we need to bloom our lives.
One way we stay frozen is the wanting to be somewhere different then where we find ourselves. In the snow, shoveling away, I wanted to be standing in spring and green. This kept me from fully enjoying the gift of the moment.
There are many times we want things to be different than they appear to be. We may want to be out of a job into something else, out of a relationship into another, out of one life into a different one, but all of this wanting robs us of the awareness of the beauty of each moment and freezes us into the moment of wanting.
Instead of wanting, we can pause, if just for a breath, and feel the beauty of what is already present. Yes, it can look cold and uninviting, but in a blink of an eye, a shift of a thought, it can be beautiful and comforting.
Shoveling snow, or cleaning up of any kind, can be either joyous or painful. It is not the event, it our idea of it that changes our experience.
The sun will eventually melt my snow garden, and bring out the summer garden. Love, like the sun, will eventually melt our frozen moments of attention, and bring out the beauty of our lives.
It will happen, it always happens, but if we have closed ourselves off to noticing then no matter how brightly the sun may shine, no matter how much love is in our lives, we will not experience it.
Be still in the moment, and instead of wanting it to be different, enjoy its gifts. It is always giving; in fact, we are always the gift itself, so why not embrace each moment with open hearts, thawed and flowing thoughts, and enjoy the beauty it brings.
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Four teenagers went to see a staging of the play called “Our Town” as guests of the show Sunday Morning. The question the show wanted answered was, “would this play resonant with the ‘twitter and instant gratification’ generation”.
After the play the two boys and two girls were interviewed and the question, based on the play, was asked, “Is there enough in just (a blue sky), a sunny day, in just an ordinary day, to fill the need for stimulation?” The answer from one of the boys was a marvel of simplicity and truth. “The question is not – is there enough – but are you looking up?”
With an increasingly instant world comes the risk of not appreciating and enjoying the overflowing gifts of each moment. The sun streaming in our windows, the voice of a loved one, the tips of daffodils emerging through the earth, and the flight of a bird are all enough just in themselves, if we are paying attention.
There are not enough words to describe the richness and overflow of wealth in each moment, no matter where we live, or who we are – it is there if we but “look up”.
(Speaking of abundance in the moment ..Our Ohio family has an annual PJ Movie Day. This is a short clip of the pillow fight that of course had to happen on a PJ Day!)
It’s too easy to be caught up in what is not working, and forget what is just right. It’s too easy to focus on other people’s lives and either admire them or hate them for what they have in life. It’s too easy, and it is dangerous because it blinds us to the richness and abundance found in each moment of life and leaves us in the illusion of “not enough” which is the breeding ground for all forms of fear and greed.
What we call a material world is the objectification of our current highest awareness of each idea, person, or object of its actual spiritual and eternal identity as the effect and idea of the divine infinite Mind.
We are not creating anything with our thinking and our beliefs. We are hiding what is present now as a spiritual fact from our own view, and therefore the ability to experience it in our lives. When we agree with the worldview of lack, and debt, and obligation to matter we are both blinding and binding ourselves.
It may appear to be easy to take off those blinders because they are not who we are, but when the habit, training, and worldview is to wear them at all times, it takes obsessive vigilance to keep them off.
The universe is expanding, not contracting. What we perceive as reality is a tiny speck in what is, in Big R Reality, infinite and always present. Far out of reach of the five senses is the “invisible” universe, the spiritual universe that is here and now. This infinite consciousness is in the mode of constant provision.
We experience this infinite abundance in greater degrees as we shift our perception away from what appears as a limited and problematic materiality, and into the awareness and gratitude for the presence of the abundance in every moment of our lives.
We can refuse to discuss, chew over, be swayed by, and driven by the illusion of lack. We can give up the habit of staring at what isn’t working, and reacting to the problems of the world as if they were real. We can give up demanding that the material world owes us something, and we will give up the habit of debt to get it.
We can stand still and listen in the pause to the still small voice of Truth, which throughout human history has been the voice of the infinite singing of Its presence. When we listen, it has the power to dissolve the lie of lack. Stand still in that awareness and feel the gratitude for your abundant life that exists now. Stand there in that Truth, and be the inspiration for others to stand with you.
Together we can look up; together we can be aware of each abundant moment, and that surely is more than enough.
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You have permission to reprint The Shift® Ezine as long as it is copied in full without changes and includes the following footer: *Article by Beca Lewis, author of Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception. Visit http://www.theshift.com/ez.html for more ideas to help Shift perception. Reprint permission granted with this footer included.
(Take a moment and watch this video to get a visual of the idea of infinity.)
The world is dissolving, drip, drip, drip, right outside my window. It’s a January thaw. The temperature has risen above freezing, and when the sun comes out its warmth increases the dripping and dissolving.
The tops of the lights along the garden path have appeared where just yesterday they were completely buried beneath the snow. Plants have lost their white covering and the branches of trees are more clearly seen against the sky.
No matter how hard I might have tried to reveal all that was hidden beneath all the snow, I could not have done so; I had to wait until the warmth of the sun revealed what was already there.
However, that is exactly what we do with what we want to see and have in our lives. We try to make it happen, and that – in spite of all attraction theories – is not how it works.
Just as the path lights and the plants were always beneath the snow, so is everything we could want or desire already present, because they have already been created by the One cause and creator. It is not our job to create. It is our job to be the light, and the warmth that light brings.
We all know that when we flip on a light, the darkness dissolves immediately, revealing what was already present. Light in the form of warmth may dissolve elements slower, but it does dissolve eventually.
How long it takes depends on many things: how deep the snow, how hard the ice, and high the heat. With a small change in temperature, things change. Add the warmth of the sun, the dissolving increases.
It is simple, elegant, and easy.
The attraction principle operates within the worldview. It stands within a dualist point of view that there is the power of God, and there is also the power of how things are here on earth. This false premise states that if we pray hard enough, or raise our vibrations high enough, what we want will appear. This takes as much work as if I tried to remove all the snow around our home and the little this work produces continues only as long as I keep working at it.
The dissolving method begins with the correct premise that there is only One, and that One is the only cause and creator. It stands in the point of view that since there is only One, and it is the Principle of intelligent good, then it cares for itself in infinite ways, and provides for itself before the need arises.
We are that One knowing itself.
Ok, I know the human mind boggles at this statement, even though we know it is true. We have to translate this idea to one that we can grasp and then put into action, and the idea of dissolving is one we all understand.
We can’t see what we need, and is always present, when we begin with that duality misperception. Beginning with the correct premise, and bringing our state of mind and point of view into harmony with this correct premise, we shine as the light that we are.
Sometimes when light appears, like switching on a light switch, the dark dissolves instantly. Other times, as when the sun rises, we wait patiently as the darkness dissolves drop by drop.
To “be the light” we need to engage our imagination and allow it to shift our state of mind, until we are filled with light’s qualities, like warmth and love. The qualities of warmth and love dissolves our doubts, dissolves our hardened hearts, dissolves our sorrows, and our egos; and as these dissolve the scenery clears, and we can see what was there for us all along.
Being the light we act with loving and kind intentions. Love and kindness dissolves hatred, and bigotry, sadness, despair, and discouragement. They dissolve that which is not omnipresent good, just as the warmth of the sun dissolves the snow.
Whether the dissolving is instantaneous or a slow melting; we can rest assured that bringing light, warmth, love, and kindness to any situation will reveal what is needed for others and ourselves. “Before they call, I will answer*” gives us that promise, and its truth stands revealed as we dissolve our misperceptions with the warmth of love.
Bible – Isa 65:24
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We were having lunch at a little café during a lunch break at a Utopian Conference where my dad was both a key speaker, and the founder of the conference.
The waitress was either busy, or ignoring us. Either way my dad wanted more coffee and someone else at the table needed mustard. After a decent interval of waiting, I got up and got both the coffee and the mustard myself.
Dad was worried and whispered to me, “Are you allowed to do that?” Although he was a very successful man in his field, he was afraid that he was breaking a rule of dining.
Del and I are attempting to show my mom how to program TV shows so she can watch them later. When I reminded her that she could simply pause a program for 30 minutes and then avoid all the commercials during a football game, she was fast to respond, “I need to watch it live.”
The rule is, “Watch football games live.”
Don’t we all do this? Rules are everywhere. There are rules of how to eat, sleep, love, play, and work.
There is a difference between a rule designed to protect our safety, or provide for our welfare, and those rules that imprison us and limit or remove our freedom. The rules of “this is how it is” are bars in our prisons, and yet they are beliefs only. One year those rules are one way, the next year they are another.
Together we could list hundreds and hundreds of rules that not only can be broken, but also must be broken.
Let’s break rules this year. Let’s sing a new tune, “Out with the old, in with the True.
Growing up in an English Professor’s household, I often heard the phrase when referring to writing, “You have to know the rules before you can break them.”
Translating that to the broader picture, it means we must become aware of the rules that we live by, before we can choose the ones to break. One way to discover the rules that are limiting us is to look at how we label ourselves. When we label ourselves or others in any way: sex, religion, age, country, family, intelligence, husband, wife, employer, employee etc. we are also accepting the “rules” that go with that label.
As we break rules, there are a few guidelines to help decide our path. Pay attention to whom it affects if you break, or don’t break, the rules. Following the rule, or guideline, “to love our neighbors as ourselves” would keep us away from breaking rules out of greed or survival.
The rule we are ultimately breaking is the rule that we must remain in the prison of human and material perception, which will leave us free to walk in the limitlessness of spiritual perception.
The signs are before us that light the way out of this point of view. Realizing that we have actually never lived in the illusion of materiality, breaking the bond of its limitations becomes much easier, and we behave with more wisdom.
Practice breaking a rule a day. Do you have to eat at a certain time, why not eat when you are hungry? Do you have to go to the store on Tuesday nights, or wash the dishes before having dessert?
This will pave your way to more profound rules to break. Do you have to suffer before being happy, is success defined by how much money you make, must you feel guilty when you choose your own path, or be a certain age before you feel wise?
And the most important rule of all to break: “To believe and act as if you are human until someday you pass through the portal where you will be a spiritual being. “
What are you waiting for, permission? You have always had the permission to live free as you choose, while not harming another in the process.
After all, all the advances that we so freely use today, from flying to internet use, are the result of someone breaking a rule. Someone asked, “What if, what if it didn’t have to be this way? What if it was different than I thought? What if we could?”
Ask yourself the “what if” question often this year. As you become aware of a rule of limitation, break it wisely. Expand and fly and be a leader into the infinite world of spiritual perception and limitless possibilities.
You have permission to reprint The Shift® Ezine as long as it is copied in full without changes and includes the following footer: *Article by Beca Lewis, author of Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception. Visit http://www.theshift.com/ez.html for more ideas to help Shift perception. Reprint permission granted with this footer included.
Instead of giving our future self a problem, wouldn’t it be more fun to give our future self a gift? Future self – as in tomorrow, later today, next year, or 10 years from now.
We all do it sometimes. We make enough in one meal to have it later. We save some money to spend it later. We mow the grass during the week so that we can go away on the weekend.
But, more often we give our future self a problem instead of a gift. We spend more money then we have, we don’t clean up our mess, we cover up problems, we don’t take good care of ourselves, we don’t learn new skills to keep up, we don’t read the instructions on something we are putting together, we don’t listen when someone is telling us something.
Oh yes, this list could go on and on. Instead of making resolutions about what we are going to do, which for the most part is giving our future self a chance to feel guilty because we don’t do it; why not switch it up and think instead, “How can I give my future self a gift?”
Of course we will be asking our future self to pass it on to its future self. These gifts are not designed to make our future self less, but more.
Since our habit is to not gift our future self, I developed a few ways for breaking that habit. For example, I notice that I often give my future self a problem because I put things off until there is enough pressure to get it done, either external or internal. Noticing that, I found a few ways to make use of that habit, and gift my future self in the process.
Here’s the first trick I use for myself. I give myself a “curtain going up” event. In preparing for theatre and dance events we always knew the exact moment in time when we were expected to be ready. The curtain would go up, and the audience would be waiting. There were no excuses or reasons why we weren’t ready, we had to be, and if we had any honor at all, we wanted to be the best we could ever be at that moment.
I loved the thrill of that moment of sharing what we did with the audience who wanted to see it.
I noticed without consciously choosing (rather than being pressured into) that “curtain going up” moment I could come up with lots of reasons why I couldn’t ,or wouldn’t, or didn’t do, what in my heart I really wanted to do. To consciously choose “curtain going up events” I make sure I schedule enough things in my life where someone else is “expecting to see the show” and I anticipate the thrill of sharing together.
How is this a gift and not a problem for my future self? First it is a conscious choice rather than an unconscious pressure that builds until I have to do it. Also, when I know that someone else is expecting the show and the show is something I really want to do, I start preparing early, enjoy the preparation more, and love the experience of doing a “good show.”
Or in really drastic cases when I find myself stalling, or hiding from what I know I really want to be doing, I ask myself, “What if you died today, would you be happy with what you have left undone?“ This can be applied to anything from cleaning the house to writing the next Ezine or book.
“Have a place” is another trick I use for making sure I am thinking of my future self. Packing for trips is a good example of this. As I think what I need for a trip, long before I go on it, I drop that “thing” into a bag that sits on top of my suitcase. A few days before the trip, the suitcase gets opened, and I willy-nilly toss into it what I think I need to travel. The day I actually pack, most of what I need is already there.
There are many more ways to provide for our future self. The interesting outcome is that as we gift our future self, we find that we are also gifting our current self too. We live more in the moment, not the past, we find ourselves less stressed and more excited about life.
How does this all fit into Spiritual Perception which is of course always the theme? Here it is.
Love providing for its future “self” is the Principle of big R Reality. It’s not how our five senses report it to be, but how we know it to be, using both logic and awareness.
God – I know I am temporarily making God “human like” – lives as the moment of “curtain going up” and “having a place.” God has to have every star in its right place, bird feathers attached, insect feelers operational, flower buds prepared, tree roots anchored, and every hair on our head numbered at all times.
As we gift our future self with small and large acts of kindness, it is a constant reminder that we are the recipients of Love gifting itself in all Its unique forms and ways. Not because it has to, but because that is how it works.
Knowing this, and living from it, is the best gift we can give our future selves, and as an outcome of this gift to ourselves we gift everyone our lives touch.
Gift your future self by living in your present self, and pass it on.
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You have permission to reprint The Shift Ezine as long as it is copied in full without changes and includes the following footer: *Article by Beca Lewis, author of Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception. Visit http://www.theshift.com/ez.html for more ideas to help Shift perception. Reprint permission granted with this footer included.
During one of our early morning talks in the dark, Del with his coffee and me with my honey and vinegar, we sat watching the fire in our stove.
The fire was doing something we had never seen before. It would quiet down so that all that we saw were very hot logs, and then a spurt or whiff of fire would rise and immediately blink out, as the entire roof of the stove would suddenly be alive with flame. Within moments it would quiet down and repeat the process, but never the same way twice.
Fire is like that, it is never the same way twice, and yet the essence of it is always the same. Everyone knows fire when they see it even though it has an infinite variety of ways to express itself.
This made me think of plans and making lists. Yes, I know that on the surface it appears to be a strange connection. But, just a moment before we were talking about plans and lists, and the fire’s show that morning was the perfect symbol of the difference between how we think things should be, and how it is when we are aware instead of how life flows.
I thought, “What if we were more like fire when we made plans and lists?” What if instead of saying this is exactly how my day, my work, my party, my dinner, my life—my anything—is going to go, what if instead we accepted that the essence of our plans will always be perfect, and then let the outcome be expressed in a variety of interesting, and yes, beautiful ways.
What if we flowed like fire? Then instead of feeling remorse, or guilt, or anger, or emotion of any kind when our plans do not go as we expect, or we don’t finish our to-do lists, we flowed like fire and lived within the awareness of the beauty and uniqueness of each moment.
What if instead of seeing ourselves as limited humans, we saw ourselves as a unique expression of consciousness, then no matter what happens, we would be aware of our innate, individual perfection of being.
When we study fire it is easy to see that no matter what shape it takes, it remains fire. We can see the same thing with anything in nature. A tree remains a tree, a squirrel remains a squirrel.
It is when we get to ourselves that we often stop having this basic awareness. We think if we haven’t done this or that, or the situation we are in is not as we planned, that we ourselves have been impacted and become someone else.
However, the Truth is, that we remain who we have been and always will be.
Even if we don’t know who we are, it doesn’t change who we are. As we let go of expectations and fears and judgments the view of ourselves begins to clear up. When that happens we often think that we have changed, but we haven’t. Instead, we have begun to see the face of our own fire, the Truth of our being.
In his excellent book, The War of Art Stephen Pressfield makes the point that we must always be about our work. Yes, we must. Just as fire must be doing fire, we must be doing who we are.
However, if we make the mistake of measuring that idea in human, linear, and stilted terms we miss the fact that when we are aware of the essence of ourselves, like the fire, whatever we are doing we are doing “our work.”
I love making lists and plans. I have a list by my computer I check every hour. I have plans for today and plans for next year. However, if my plans change either in the next moment or the next month it will not change who I am. And if I don’t let emotions cloud my awareness, it will also not change the quality of my day or my life.
As we strip off expectations and judgments and discover the infinite ways that we express the essence of our being, we discover that we have always been an individual expression of the Divine Mind.
We are like the fire. The only real plan of fire is to be fire. Like fire, we flow into and as our life in an infinite variety of ways, always remaining ourselves. We will become increasingly aware of this fact when we let joy be our guide, and gratitude light our flame. Then our lives become what they are, a spectacular show of infinite expression. Never the same, always beautiful.
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(Instead of putting pictures or videos in this ezine, we made a special one for Thanksgiving. Just click here to view it. I hope you enjoy it!)
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*Article by Beca Lewis, author of Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception. Visit http://www.theshift.com/ez.html for more ideas to help Shift perception. Reprint permission granted with this footer included.
Last summer, after we had moved into in our new home, my gardener daughter and I walked the property to see what plants already lived there, and to check on which ones seemed happy and which ones did not.
In the back yard we both noticed a spruce tree that had a slight lean to it. We talked about the fact that something about the tree didn’t feel right, and we chalked it up to another plant that might need extra attention.
At the beginning of this summer I thought the tree was leaning a bit more and I felt more disquieted by it, but I still didn’t really pay much attention to that feeling.
After a walk a few weeks ago I came to our back yard and sat on the bench by the leaning tree. It was a quiet beautiful morning, but as I listened within I noticed that I was feeling pure terror. Terror? On a bench in our back yard? What was there to feel terrified about?
I glanced at the tree and realized that I was terrified of the tree. In a very real sense it was telling me that it was going to fall, and either we chose to take it down ourselves, or it would fall on our house. It told me it didn’t want to do damage to our home, but it was an inevitable fact that it was going to fall.
I was tempted to table this feeling and wait it out, but I started thinking of how many times in my life I have heard this still small voice of a warning of some kind and ignored it because I didn’t want to deal with it at the time. I recalled the messes that ignoring the message always left for me to clean up, and a tree falling on our house would obviously be a major mess.
Del listened when I told him what the tree told me, and he also looked for other signs to confirm what I had heard. Although on the surface there didn’t appear to be a problem he did notice an abnormal yellowing of a lower branch. He immediately made plans to cut down the tree.
However, he didn’t just run out and cut it down. Instead, he listened and waited for the perfect day with the right wind so that the wind would help him could control where it would fall. This was extremely important because if it fell in the direction it was leaning, it would fall on the house.
When the right day arrived he made a deep notch in the correct spot on the tree to direct its fall. After completing the notch he moved to the back side of the tree for the actual cutting. As he started to cut the tree it began falling even before the cut was complete.
We realized why this had happened as the trunk of the tree lay on the ground. The entire back side of the tree had died, and most certainly it would have fallen in the next big storm.
Felling The Spruce Tree (Del had already cut off all the lower limbs to make the cut easier.)
This is a two part message about listening. First the listening and then the action based on what we heard. Listening and then acting on what we heard saved us from trouble. Yet so often most of us do not listen, or act without listening, or listen and do not act.
Recently we experienced what is often called “Indian Summer.” But, there is
another name for this kind of weather called ‘Saint Martin’s Summer,’ referring to St. Martin’s day on November 11th when the spurt of summer like weather is “supposed” to end, and St. Martin’s day or Martinmas is celebrated.
But, it is St. Martin who is the interesting story, because he too listened.
He listened when he met a beggar who was freezing so he cut his cloak in half to give to him. He listened when he heard it was wrong to kill, and even though he was a soldier in the Roman army he refused to fight again.
Like St Martin we may find that what we hear means we must make a major life change. Or perhaps like listening to the tree it means there is work to be done.
Other times listening may give us answers to questions we are seeking, reveal truths that have been hidden, or bring comfort in the midst of sorrow.
But one thing is always true about listening to the still small voice within; it always operates from the point of view of love. It always leads us away from danger, and it always directs us to the light.
Don’t mistake the “voice in your head” for the still small voice within. These are two different and entirely opposite “voices.”
The voice in your head is not coming from love, and does not have your best interests in mind. It leads us all away from the joy in our lives; it brings us to discouragement and fear.
Listen, and you will be able to tell the difference. Trust in the guidance of that still small voice within. Although what it asks of you may be uncomfortable, it always directs you to the safer and more inspiring path of your life. Take that one. You will be happy that you did.
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>>> If you would like more information on how to know whose voice you are hearing, you can download the report “10 Ways To Know Whose Voice You Are Hearing” Here’s Your Link <<<
You have permission to reprint The Shift Ezine as long as it is copied in full without changes and includes the following footer: Article by Beca Lewis, author of Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception. Visit http://www.theshift.com/ez.html for more ideas to help Shift perception. Reprint permission granted with this footer included.
I stepped into the lovely fall day and was surrounded by leaves. Leaves on the trees, leaves falling like rain, leaves covering every surface on the ground. It was a stunningly beautiful sight!
For the next few hours I blew leaves into piles, raked leaves into more piles, and carted leaves to the edge of our lawn to add to the millions of leaves already blanketing the “forest” part of our property.
As I moved hundreds and hundreds of leaves to their resting place and marveled at the abundance of leaves a “what if” question formed in my thought. What if we believed that leaves were currency? What if we traded leaves for our food and leaves paid our rent and our mortgages?
On that same day I had another task to accomplish. It was the day to pay bills, and balance checkbooks, and it struck me how differently those two tasks felt.
Although it was many days of taking care of leaves, hours and hours of moving them as more fell every day, and sometimes feeling as if it would never end, there was a glorious awareness of the beauty and intelligence of the divine in action.
Paying bills can feel exactly the opposite because for every bill paid it often feels as if the pile of money diminishes rather than growing without effort like the leaves falling to the ground.
What if we had the same feeling about money as we did about leaves?
On a spring day many years ago I felt paralyzed by fear that I didn’t have enough money to take care of our families current needs. Looking at the human picture that lack appeared to be true.
Seeking solace, and an answer to my perceived problem, I walked outside and stood in a friend’s backyard. It had a ring of trees around it. I glanced up at them and admired their beauty and the contentment they stand within, and as I did so I noticed the abundance of leaves they were wearing.
“This is what is True,” I heard within. “This abundance, the display of so many leaves that they cannot be counted. Look around at the overflowing variety of abundance and know that this is a symbol of the overflowing abundance that is divine Love, always giving to everyone, including you.”
I returned to the day with that message ringing within me. I don’t remember what happened after that because it was a non-event. Our needs were met that day and the next because of that simple momentary awareness that abundance is the law, which meant that the appearance of lack was a lie.
On a recent walk along the route I often take I was astonished to notice a blue house I hadn’t seen before. It took a few minutes before I realized that I had taken a different turn and was now approaching the street from the opposite direction from my usual walk.
The house was always there, but I didn’t see it going the direction I walked before. By going the opposite direction it was clearly visible.
This is why shifting or repenting and taking an opposite or different perception than held before reveals what is always present.
Seeing the abundance of leaves on the trees in my friend’s yard shifted my perception to the law of abundance and in turn that shifted what was visible to me.
Returning to the recent beautiful fall day I was reminded tenfold of this law of abundance. No matter how many leaves we blew and raked they continued to fall. Each leaf beautiful by itself, but glorious as it joined the millions of other leaves to create patterns of color on the ground.
So what if we declared leaves as currency? It’s not as far-fetched as it may sound. Tulip bulbs, salt, and tobacco are just few of the items that were traded as money at one time or another. What made them currency was the lack of them. As soon as they became abundant we no longer saw them as valuable. In the human condition and the worldview, lack is the game we play.
Let’s not play anymore. Let’s live in the Truth of abundance and stop agreeing with those who continue to produce fear, either through ignorance or intention.
Perhaps some people would have more trees then others, but knowing that trees continue to produce leaves and they are happy to share them with us at the right time, and knowing that trees only need to be planted and cared for with no special skills required, wouldn’t we be happy to give our leaves to those without trees, and assist them in planting their own?
Let’s see money in this new light. Let’s walk a different direction to view what we call supply.
Leaves give us the perfect symbol of beautiful abundance. Keeping the idea of the abundance of leaves as the symbol of supply, and trusting in the power of shifting perception to the Truth of what is, and giving up what isn’t (lack), we will see what has always been present available at all times to meet any human need.
Step outside and see for yourself, abundance is the law, all that is required of us is the awareness and discipline to stop believing in and promoting the lie of lack.
Rev 22:2
In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
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You have permission to reprint The Shift Ezine as long as it is copied in full without changes and includes the following footer:
*Article by Beca Lewis, author of Living in Grace: The Shift to Spiritual Perception. Visit http://www.theshift.com/ez.html for more ideas to help Shift perception. Reprint permission granted with this footer included.
The sun shone through the window for the first time in what seemed like months. What it revealed was startling. What before had appeared as a clean window, dusted furniture, and swept floors was a very dirty window, dust where I hadn’t noticed it before, and a not so clean floor.
