Here and Now

Grant Haffner - Into the night, 1978.

 “It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.

We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”

Matt Haig - The Midnight Library, 2020.

Do Atheists Pray?

A friend brought me an interesting question, which I’d never heard before. He said one of his friends had asked him to pray for them, that they had an incurable disease and they wanted his prayers. He explained to the person that he was an atheist and he couldn’t do that. They begged him to do so anyway. He called me wanting to know what to do, mainly wondering what to say to them in order to not hurt their feelings by refusing. I assured him it wasn’t necessary to believe in a big guy in the sky which would grant favor if he asked; that it was perfectly acceptable to tell his friend he would send good thoughts to the universe, or something along those lines. Anything which expresses love is a gift, and one which may be given in a multitude of ways. Honestly expressing love to those in need is a gift which circulates freely to them, back to us, and out to everywhere!

“Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hatred. Life has no partnership with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except God.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 243:25-29

Ketanji Brown Jackson

 Ketanji Brown Jackson

A short 60 years ago black women were not allowed the most basic of rights in this country, including the right to vote. Today we witnessed an historic happening when Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the highest court in our nation. To see a black woman nominated and voted into this position is, to me, a sign of hope. I am grateful …

“Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.”

~ Excerpt from Dr. Maya Angelou’s~ ~ STILL I RISE

"Legally to abolish unpaid servitude in the United States was hard; but the abolition of mental slavery is a more difficult task. The despotic tendencies, inherent in mortal mind and always germinating in new forms of tyranny, must be rooted out through the action of the divine Mind." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 22

Peace is the Path

 

Photo credit: Aaron Springston

Few of us have no regrets when we look back on our lives. Sometimes it's tempting to replay instances in our minds and think of ways we could have done things differently. Thich Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese man who lost his family during the war in the 60s. He spent his life practicing peace and showing others how to do the same. He helped American Vietnam veterans forgive themselves. He told them that no matter how badly they felt, it would never bring back the lives that were lost, but that there are many ways in which to help people today, right here and now. He showed us how to be the Love which we are. Peace Is the Path, he told us. I want to follow that Path, without looking back.

"Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way. Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action. Love is priestess at the altar of Truth. Wait patiently for divine Love to move upon the waters of mortal mind, and form the perfect concept. Patience must 'have her perfect work.'" Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 454:18-24

Happiness in This World

artist ~ Claudia Tremblay

 “She was damn happy to be alive.

She didn’t have millions in the bank.

She wasn’t at the top of the

corporate ladder and still her deepest

dreams ... though she pursued them

hadn’t yet come true. But still 

she was damn happy to be alive.

She had people to love; a roof over her head;

she had all the essentials for living;

water, gas electricity, food;

she could appreciate the flowers blooming,

the sun beaming and the skies blessing.

She had good books to read. 

She spoke to the moon at night.

She often had a good sing in the shower.

And she lived her life with a touch of her own style.

The world’s mindless noise went quiet at the 

sight of her relentless joy.”

~ S.C. Lourie

“The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect. Knowing this perfection is shared He recognizes it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger this arouses love for both, because it establishes inclusion. Perceiving equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically, because Atonement is the one need in this world that is universal. To perceive yourself this way is the only way in which you can find happiness in the world. That is because it is the acknowledgment that you are not in this world, for the world is unhappy.” 

A Course in Miracles T-6.II.5:1-7

I Will Receive Whatever I Request

Photo from unknown source

I am remembering a meeting in which a woman confided a situation of abuse from her childhood. Some of the people in the metaphysical meeting we were attending insisted that she had chosen this scenario, whether to rectify something from a "past life" or for some other reason. This woman became very upset to think that a little girl would be tortured and want such a thing. A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson #339 iterates that no one desires pain, but often we are confused about what we would want. Without going into the possibility of past lives, or reincarnation and retribution, I remind myself that all I want is One Thing. My only desire is to know God, and everything else will be attained without my delineation of what that is. I also remind myself not to judge others in any way, as we are all on an individual path. That's what it's all about. We are the experience of God, and there are no outlines as to what that means. Go in peace. Live in truth. Namaste …

A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson #339 "I will receive whatever I request."

"Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual evidence, contradicting the testimony of material sense, begins to appear, and Truth, the ever-present, is becoming understood." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 297:20-24

Every Thought is Important

 "When we think of communication, we usually see it as being between two people, between two bodies. One form of communication is to feel somebody’s touch, hug, or caress. Another form of communication is sitting together having a cup of tea or coffee and a very intimate talk about your deepest thoughts and feelings. But even when the other person is not with you, you can communicate. Your thoughts are powerful, and anytime you think of another person, you communicate. It’s like prayer. I sometimes tell people who have someone who’s not around anymore, ‘Well, you might as well keep talking to them because they are still there. You just can’t see them, but they are still there.”’And if you have attack thoughts toward somebody, you will see that person as the thoughts you have about them. It may feel like a very foreign idea, but it is within your own thinking that you have all of your relationships and your communications. This is why you need to take great care of what you think and be aware of what kind of relationship you have with your thoughts." 

✨ David Hoffmeister ✨ 

♥️🕊♥️ 

This quote was taken from the book “This Moment is Your Miracle”. You can find this book and many others at https://buff.ly/2vzIiMI 😍 Enjoy! ✨🙏🏽🥰