The story goes that the young man who had left home and wasted his inheritance returned home humbled and grateful. His father celebrated his return without a trace of punishment or rebuke.

His brother was dismayed. He had not left home, but had stayed and served his father well. Why was there no celebration for him?

The answer from his father was simple and profoundly important, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” Luke 15:31

“All that I have is thine.” As I walked one morning, filled with gratitude for the beauty of the day, these words popped into my head.

We often speak of being “one with everything”, and sometimes we even experience the truth of that statement. However, that morning when I added the idea “All that I have is thine” to the concept of Oneness, or omnipresence, a new level of awareness was suddenly present.

Walk with me a moment into this idea, as we marry the statement “All that I have is thine” to the awareness that the quality of life we have is our own perception, and often misperception, of the omnipresence of God, good.

As I walked, I studied more deeply, what I was seeing, It was richly beautiful and at the same time, if I saw it as a material world, it was flawed and limited. In many ways, it was like a giant monopoly game.

In our worldview, that is exactly what we have created. Some of us have many “houses and hotels” while others are still waiting for the dice to roll in their favor. In monopoly, the rich get richer and the winner takes all.

Is this what we want, a game of monopoly to be the model for the way we live? The brother who left home and squandered his inheritance was playing a game of chance. The brother, who stayed home, was playing too. He was holding on to what he felt he owned.

The father understood the omnipresence of God. He viewed what he was seeing with a spiritual perception. Instead of playing the worldview game of lack, limitation, and ownership, he lived in the awareness that all is good, God.

We can shift our perception away from this worldview into the spiritual perception of the consistently abundant Reality of One God. We can begin to understand ourselves as the compound idea, the full representation, the action, and expression of this One God - not material, but spiritual.

When we accept the statement that “All that I have is thine”, then there is no need to hoard, or grab, or fight, or worry, or even win. There is nothing to do, but let go of the false perception of the worldview.

The sunlight melts away the fog, dissolves the mist, revealing what has always been present. With each increase of awareness of the omnipresent and omnipotent good of God, our misperceptions melt away, revealing more and more of the grandeur and beauty of the infinite.

“All that I have is thine” is yours and mine to acknowledge and live as Truth. As we pay our bills, raise our families, build our businesses, plant our gardens, or cook our dinners let’s shift our perception of it all to a spiritual awareness that it is all God in action.

Not a giant monopoly game, but an infinite expansion of Love, and all of it is ours. Take possession of this idea, and let it dissolve away ever bit of lack and limitation in every aspect of every life.

“Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” is a true statement. Not to be lived in a future time and place, but it is here and now for each of us, because yes, we are all One in Truth.
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“Men who are devoid of the power of spiritual perception are unable to recognize anything that cannot be seen externally.” Paracelsus

"What a glorious day it is, filled to overflowing with abundance directly given to you, expect it, ask for it, give thanks for it, and accept it!" Beca

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.

When I was ten my parents purchased their first home. As soon as we settled in, my dad planted a little garden. Every summer night he would come home from work, change into his shorts and he and I would tour that little garden together.

Now that we have purchased a home, my love for gardening has bloomed again. We have begun the process of adding plants to our yard that attract butterflies so that when we saw our first spring butterfly dance across the lawn, it was a happy moment.

The key here is the word “attracting”.

We can’t make butterflies do anything. We can’t round them up and usher them into our yard hoping they will stay, we have to build an environment that attracts them and then supports and sustains them so that they will remain.

This is a multi-dimensional idea. If we don’t want something, then we shouldn’t build an environment that attracts it. In fact, the more we build an environment that suits who we are, it becomes less likely that what we don’t want in the form of events, people, or things will be attracted to it, or stay in it since there won’t be anything there to support and sustain them or it.

How does this relate to spiritual perception?

In planting our garden, I appear to be doing the work of attracting, but I am not. What is attracting are the qualities of the plants in the garden. If I was doing the work of attracting, I might sit and think using my mind or will power to convince the butterflies to come and stay in my garden. Instead, I am trusting in the natural order of nature to do what it does, by simply being.

My job is to care for the plants, not to attempt to force butterflies into our yard.

Taking this symbol to a larger arena, it is not our job to attract what we need, from companionship to money. That is the one creator’s quality, and works without our needing to step in and try to manipulate people and situations using a material counterfeit attraction.

Since there are many proponents of this counterfeit attraction, we can be fooled; it is highly marketed, appears to be easy, and for a time we may be good at it. However, this counterfeit attraction exists within the material realm, and is not the practice of spiritual perception.

When we use our own mental mind force or will power to make something come to us we are playing a dangerous game. When we give power to our human mind, then we have given it the power for both good and evil. In addition, we have opened the door for others to play that game with and at us. When we give matter power for good, in the dualist place this exists; it also has power for bad.

It is not only dangerous, it is a small, limited, cramped, and tiny playing field compared to the Divine’s attraction of unlimited possibilities.

Material attraction is always hard at work in its attempt to lure us into its limited and false front environment. This attraction to finite and material means and ends, although temporarily pleasant, always leads to a dead-end.

Butterflies leave environments that do not support them. We can also leave environments that don’t support us, which is always the environment of the counterfeit material attraction.

Spiritual attraction is the open door to experiencing the infinite and our relationship to it.

What is our “job” in this spiritual garden of Life? To tend and care for the life found within it, beginning with our own, and from there broaden our outreach, our garden, filling it with the qualities of intelligent Love.

Within our home garden, we pause to marvel at the beauty of the tiniest element to the largest tree. In the garden of the Divine, we can pause often to marvel at the infinite attention to every detail of life, attracting only expanding good for every living thing.

Stop working at counterfeit attraction, and look with spiritual perception at the only attraction that is really going on. Expect that everything you need has already been provided for you, expect that only good is coming your way because that is the only attraction there is.

There is only one cause and creator, only one attractor, only one power, only one infinite holding all of Its creation within Its unlimited loving care.

As spiritual beings, we are the qualities that attract, just as the plants are the qualities that attract butterflies. All we have to do is acknowledge, possess, and live as those qualities, and leave the rest up to the Principle of attraction in action.

“Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities — always see them, for they’re always there.” Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

(Do you love attracting butterflies too? Info on Monarch Butterflies and their migration.)

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.

Core values, family history, worldview agreements, and personal habits all entwine together to present a picture we call our life. Our lives are like a movie that goes on and on because we go on about it.

We stand in the middle of this movie, like characters on the screen, and try to change it or simply live well within it, using of course our core values, family history, worldview agreements, and personal habits to do so.

If these ideas all come together to form a pretty picture then life is good, when they don’t then life is not so good. When the worldview script of lack and discouragement appears as everyone in the movie suffering, then getting out of the movie called our life can seem impossible.

Standing in the middle of this life, or picture or movie, and trying to change it for the better or even survive will only have a temporary impact, because of one very key fact. The movie and the movie viewer are one.

This is not a whimsical idea. This is fact. From the book Biocentrism: “Moreover, if one accepts that the external world occurs only in Mind, in consciousness, and that it’s the interior of one’s brain that’s cognized “out there” at this moment, then of course everything is connected with everything else.” (Robert Lanza MD with Bob Berman)

This means it is absolutely possible to change our lives because our lives are the out-picturing of (but not the creation of ) what we believe and perceive to be true. It also means that there is only one way to both permanently make a change and that is to shift our perception from within.

But what if we want more than just a better life? What if we want to be what we really are, what if we want to experience ourselves as the outcome or idea of the infinite Mind, or omnipotent Light? What then?

To do this we must re-think reality and re-set our perception altogether. We must stop identifying ourselves as human, stop believing what the five senses tell us and listen instead to the quiet voice within; stop acting as if the movie and script are real, stop wanting the story to get better, and want instead to let go and live as the idea of God.

This is a radical thought and decision. It demands a root change. It demands that we reset our perception, or follow the biblical word “repent” which means turn around and walk the other way; turn away from the movie playing in our heads which results in what we call our lives.

Turn away from identifying ourselves as human and re-set our thinking and perception. It demands that we let go of how we want it to be, think it is, and then follow through with action and commitment to Truth.

This radical shift demands that we turn away from trying to fix things and people; turn away from our story and turn instead to the fact that what exists in our lives is and who we think we are is one and the same.

This is not a half way decision, it is a complete shift. Yes, it may appear to take time to reset habits and beliefs, but that too is only set within our agreement of what is true.

It may appear that others need to change first. Again, not true. What appears as they, or that, is really our own perception. There is no way to separate the thinker from what it is thinking.

Our responsibility then is not to create, control, or to make happen. Our responsibility is to stop separating ourselves from the ever present infinite intelligent flow or force we call God; it is to let go and be what we are, which in turn re-sets what we experience as our lives.

As we do this we should expect more beauty, peace, abundance, grace, happiness, love and all the other fruits of good to be more present in and as our lives.

Not because we worked at becoming good and wise humans, but because we gave up the story and returned home by turning within and consistently listening and following the still small voice, by paying attention to the symbols that prove the presence of God, and continually re-setting our perceptions to match our current, highest and best understanding of the Divine.

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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.