Have you ever had a cha-ching moment? It’s the moment when a new view of what has always been present becomes apparent to you; when something you have been trying to understand flashes through your thinking in an entirely different way and as it does so you “get it!”

We have all had those moments when everything lines up and clarity appears. It is like a slot machine that has a guarantee of a pay off if we just continue to put those quarters into it.

In this case we get paid in clarity which is much more valuable than money. With clarity we can see the obvious which was just a moment before hidden from view. This clarity reveals the presence of any form of supply that is needed for our daily life.

After building the deck on the side of our house the door was installed into my office. Now I can see a view that was always there, but was not visible to me.

Recently we held a celebration of my dad’s life. The speakers were those who knew him within his field of work. They shared stories and antidotes and as we listened we all had a new view of my dad.

A different view comes about in many ways, but is always a gift and one that is meant to be used. My door is meant to be opened and walked through or it is useless. An expanded view of someone else reveals new views of both them and us and makes a substantial difference in the quality of our lives.

A subject that deserves clarity is the concept of matter versus spirit. The worldview is that we are material, and someday we will be spiritual. The process of how this happens doesn’t matter as much as the idea that we are one thing now, but someday we will become another.

This view or perception acts like the wall in my office. It doesn’t allow us to see what is on the other side. It hides from view the outcome of knowing the Truth that God is Spirit and we are the image and likeness of God.

When we define God as the man in the sky (a glorious example of this is seen in the movie “The Invention of Lying”) we are not talking about the God that is Spirit. The “man in the sky” god is created from the view that we are material, or human, and that god is a glorified version of ourselves, made in our own image.

It’s our choice really which view of God we wish to accept and live with as our reality. For me, I choose the open door view and the idea that God is spiritual and infinite Love. Within this view we are also spiritual, now and always and not just in the future when we have worked through our humanness.

But to get to this cha-ching moment of clarity about ourselves and God we have to practice, just like you have to drop the quarters in the slot machine to win.

One way I practice is during my morning walks. As I walk I remind myself as often as possible that, “Everything I am seeing is not material it is spiritual and since God is Spirit and One then everything I am seeing is God.”

This contemplative practice of shifting perceptions results in my seeing things I never saw before, or seeing them in an entirely new light. It is this view that sets us free.

With this view, the world shifts to match our perception. We have more direct experiences that prove that our lives are the action of God. We find that we no longer need to or desire to control what appears as material. We let go and see the infinite power and abundance that is the Truth of the essence of ourselves and God.

The door in my office needs to be used. The view is beautiful, but the door is useless as a door unless I open it and walk through.

To experience those cha-ching moments takes the continual action of putting new ideas and perceptions into the machine of our daily lives and then enjoying with gratitude the cha-ching moment of clarity that opens up a new view of big r Reality.

Let’s celebrate these moments, and then take that clarity and expand on it until one day we know and experience in every moment that glorious new view of ourselves, each other, and God.

(If you are interested in reading about Dad's event it is here.)

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.

Before we purchased our woodstove Del prepared a huge stack of wood to take us through the winter. Our original intent was to purchase a stove that took 18 inch logs. However, when we were unable to find that size we ended up with a smaller stove that takes only 16 inch logs.

This meant that if we wanted to use them correctly every single log had to have 2 inches cut off. We had a few choices. Ignore the problem and let the logs rot out in the yard, or face the problem and cut off those two inches.

We choose what often appears to be the harder path. Del re-cut every log so that it can be burned this winter.

This is a choice we all can make about assets that we have that don’t quite work in our lives. Instead of letting them rot away or be buried within ourselves why not do what needs to be done to make them usable.

Often those assets, gifts, and talents are buried beneath the trash of useless perceptions; perceptions that possibly once helped us in our lives, but no longer do.

Last weekend Del and I got to ride in a parade – in a garbage truck. Del rode in the cab with Mike, and Mesa and I sat on the back, throwing candy and tee shirts at the crowd. People laughed at Mesa and me sitting on the back of a garbage truck. Who wants to think about the yucky garbage?

But what if we didn’t have garbage trucks? What if we just collected garbage in our house and yards and lived with it?

We all know that we must weekly toss the current trash and periodically de-clutter our homes in order to live happily, but what about the trash in our minds? How often do we examine what we believe to be real, and question if it is true?

This questioning is in two parts. First we ask ourselves if it is true in small r reality. We question if it is true within our daily context of life or are we seeing it from a missed or false perception.

For example, here are some beliefs we all have tucked away somewhere. Is it true that you are not loved, is it true that you have never been happy, and is it true that you are not taken care of?

When you tell the truth to yourself you will notice that there is always evidence that you are loved no matter how small that evidence may seem to you; it is true that something has made you smile, and it is true that you are taken care of beginning with the air that is provided for you to breath.

The second part of this questioning is to ask if it is True. Is it True within the big R Reality? Is it True based on the facts of an omnipresent intelligence of Good?

As you tell the truth you will notice many used assets and many trash perceptions. If it is not true or True then let’s get down to the necessary tasks of readjusting our perception or throwing them out in the trash.

Choosing the perception that chopping and trashing are two actions that set us free from the tiny perception disease that we have caught from the worldview, than let’s get to it.

I have one more symbol for you. We are building a deck for our home, which will then have two doors that open onto it from my office and from our bedroom. It’s been a dream of ours and we have been gifted with the opportunity to do it.

However, even with a gift of opportunity it still takes action to build this deck. Del and John are busy building, and I am busy shoveling the stones under and around the deck. All of it is hard work. It’s our choice once again to choose our perception of the gift and either to find delight in the result or complain about the work.

Chore or delight, it’s our choice of perception in all that we do whether it is recovering and repairing unused assets, throwing out the trash, or doing the work necessary to have what we want. I choose delight. Why not join me and we can walk on the happiness side of life together, listening and following the Angel Ideas that guide us safely back to Truth.

"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." Buddha

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.

Yesterday we saw a squirrel running by our door. He was intent upon burying the nut that he had just found.  We can tell that winter is coming because instead of just using the "squirrel highway" in the trees, the squirrels are on the ground looking for and burying nuts.

The squirrels are doing what they always do, gathering and planting. Someone must have forgotten to tell them about the current financial crisis. 

What if no one told us about it?  What if we never heard the scary projections of those whose fear, turned into greed, bred the results of what they are now experiencing.

Writer H.L. Mencken said at least a half a century ago, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

That was then, and this is now and it is the same intention. If we agree with these imaginary hobgoblins it is because we have forgotten that illusion begins within. When we accept illusion as realty it becomes our perceived reality. 

And we all know that perception is reality. It is up to us to decide if we want to live in Truth known as big r Reality or with what is being sold to us as an alarming perception.  

Isn't starting internally with a perception shift the same thing as what Mark Twain meant when he said, "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." 

Our imagination needs to be focused on what is true if we are to dissolve within our own lives any affect produced by fear. This fear is often imposed and projected on purpose by others with the intention of being able to continue with their lies and deception.

We must be determined to practice shifting our perceptions to the graceful cycle of abundance of Reality. This shift will free us. It will even free those who appear to be intentionally doing wrong within the illusion of a dualist worldview.

Observe the squirrels. They continue as they always have of finding and burying supplies, playing with each other, and protecting the inhabitants of their neighborhood with their alerts.  We might think of squirrels as savers and hoarders, but they are neither.

Although they prepare what they might need by gathering and saving for the winter, once new food arrives in the spring they let what they gathered in the past alone. This means that the seeds and nuts that they have hidden can sprout and produce more of what they will need to gather in the future while providing for the neighborhood of animals, insects, plants and people in the mean time.

It's a glorious graceful cycle of abundance.

In fact the whole of nature continues along as always in that cycle of abundance. It does not react to false and imposed imaginations.  Feel this for yourself. Sit awhile and listen to the birds, feel the wind, smell a leaf and let the grace it represents seep into your being.

Imagine the cooperation, support, connection, love and respect within the many functions of what appears as a body and see how it becomes a fuller sense of body. Your awareness of body expands to include your home, neighborhood, and community.  

Continue to imagine the grace that gently and intelligently guides each thought and action of what appears to be an individual, but is really a thread in the fabric of the intelligent representation of Life.

The wood in our fireplace gives off heat because that is what it does.  It is not judging who is in the room, or whether we deserve it or not.  It radiates.  

It is the continuation of the tree that also brought shade, food, and shelter. A tree that breathed in and out to provide clean air for us. A tree that drew nourishment from the ground and then returned its leaves to the ground to nurture it.  

As it burns in our fireplace it is releasing the sunshine that it had stored within to make food for itself. A perfect cycle of graceful continuing abundance.

At no time in its life did it judge who sat under it, or worry if it was noticed or appreciated.  As a tree it continues to demonstrate grace no matter what its outward appearance may be.

Let's imagine that grace and live it ourselves. Let's make it our perception, because we know it to be true. We know that all that is present is God, Good. So if we look at and accept a financial crisis, where is God?  

See beyond the appearance, the lie and the illusion and feel only the power of grace because this will free us all from the tyranny of fear which lives as greed. Let's perceive as Divine Intelligent Love perceives; let's know and live and respond only to the continuous cycle of abundant grace.