Millions

One day I was

with you know who, Jesus.


                   

And he went up into the mountains

and thousands of people followed him.

  

                   

The police said five thousand,

five thousand.
  

                   

Everybody knows this story.
  

                   

Loaves and fishes.



  

                   

See, I knew you'd say that.

That's what everybody says.

                   

Anyway, this kid comes up to us,

about your size,
  

                   

His name was...

no I have forgotten.
  

                   

I still see him sometimes.
  

                   

Anyway he comes up

with these loaves and fishes.
  

                   

Sardines.


                   

And Jesus blesses them

and passes the plate round.
  

                   

Now the first person

he passes it to, passes it on.
  

                   

He doesn't take anything.
  

                   

He just passes it on.

Do you know why?
  

                   

Because he had a piece

of lamb hidden in his pocket.
  

                   

And as he is passing the fish,

he sneaks a bit of meat out
  

                   

and pretends he's taken

it off the plate.
  

                   

Do you see what I'm saying?
  

                   

And the next person

exactly the same story.
  

                   

Every single bastard one

of them has their own food.
  

                   

And every one of them

is keeping it quiet.
  

                   

Looking after number one.
  

                   

But as that plate went round

with the sardines on
  

                   

They all got their own food

out and started to share.
  

                   

And then that plate went

all the way round
  

                   

And back to Jesus
  

                   

and it'd still got the fish

and the loaves on it.


                   

I think Jesus was a bit taken aback.
  

                   

He says, 'what happened? '
  

                   

And I just said 'miracle'.
  

                   

And at first

I thought I'd fooled him.
   

                   

But now I see it was a miracle,

one of his best.
   

                   

But this little kid

had stood up and...
   

                   

Everybody there just got bigger.
   

                   

Do you understand

what I'm talking about?



   

                   

Not really.

                   

I'm talking about you.



   

                   

Now I'm really lost.

                   

You're trying too hard.

                   

That kid he wasn't planning

on doing a miracle.

                   

He wasn't planning anything,

except lunch.

             

Something that looks like a miracle

turns out to be dead simple.

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/m/millions-script-transcript-danny-boyle.html

Jesus’ Mission Statement

Rev. Dr. Kathryn A. Morse, Vashon United Methodist Church

http://vashonmethodist.org/userFiles/2010/windjammer_february_2013.pdf

In Luke’s gospel we find Jesus’ mission statement:  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
he has anointed me:

 to bring good news to the poor
 to proclaim release to the captives
 recovery of sight to the blind
 to let the oppressed go free
 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor

     Jesus is reading from the prophet Isaiah 58:6-7.  “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them.”
     Isaiah’s message was for the people of his time, a call to just living, and not a description of the work of a future messiah.  The call of God through Isaiah extends to all people through all time.  Truth be told, it calls for creative and sacrificial thinking and bold action.  Imagine the day that Jesus read this scripture in the synagogue and said in effect, “Today is the day that I begin living this.  I am joining God in God’s vision and mission.  It starts here, with me, right now!”

     The apostle Paul writes that we are Christ’s body living in the present day.  You and me together as the church are Christ’s living, breathing body, empowered by the Holy Spirit.  We don’t need to write mission statements, we have one—the same mission statement that Jesus lived.  We are anointed in our baptism:

 to bring good news to the poor
 to proclaim release to the captives
 recovery of sight to the blind
 to let the oppressed go free
 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor

     It is so much easier to think that being a Christian is about my own personal salvation, or that church is about fellowship or a style of worship or being family.  There is only one reason we exist and that is described in Jesus’ mission statement.
<...>
I’ve sat with a lot of churches trying to create compelling mission and vision statements and none are worthy of Isaiah’s vision and Jesus’ declaration, “Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing,” like the Church of the Resurrection’s vision to address the root causes of poverty in their city so that their city looks more like the Kingdom of God that Jesus so passionately preached.  I know you all worked hard on your mission statement, just like all the other churches I have worked with.  The bottom line is that we already have a mission statement:

The Spirit of the Lord has anointed us
to bring good news to the poor
to proclaim release to the captives
recovery of sight to the blind
to let the oppressed go free
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor

The only question is whether we will make it our own and live it.

not everyone can relate to what you and i appreciate

standing still is death. we must keep moving forward.

ghosts are waiting to haunt us if we stay in the past with them.

we are the ghosts of the past.
quit giving your life to the ghosts.
i love my ghosts but i don't let them get to me.
or at least i try not to.

i don't know how people that aren't writers can keep their sanity. i really don't get it.
maybe everyone really is insane.
general sanity is certainly overrated.

sanity is arbitrary.
are the leaders of the free world sane?
is the free world free?
find me a benefactor and i'll look into it.

power defines sanity.
my belief is true and yours is false.
blind faith gives you an eye for an eye.
hold on...

how about,
when you plucketh out the offender's eye,
you put in back in place of the eye he hath pluck'd from you,
so now you get to see thru his eye.
now that's an interesting spin on that subject.

i'll remember that next time i'm walking around with a plank in my eye.



-brian hildebrand

Church of Infinite Communion 5-6-12

“Sometimes oneness, or unity consciousness, is then presented as a mere mental concept as if it were something we only had to realize in our mind to see manifested.

Some teachers are arguing that since we are entangled in a quantum mechanical sense we are all one.

I feel such statements are so trivial that they are meaningless to make.

Of course, we are all one in the sense that all humans are the products of the same reality and totally interconnected in this.

Yet, a mere mental realization of a concept or a spiritual insight is not enough for us to actually experience oneness and anchor it in reality.

Unity consciousness is something we need to craft and work with to see manifested...

The point to realize is that oneness is not an attribute of ourselves as individuals, but of our relationships to others and the divine “

• Carl Johan Calleman

the weight

we walk around carrying so much weight, but what is it that we're even carrying? why are we even holding on to these things?
sometimes we might dig things out and look them over, "what the hell do i need this for?" but we can't just seem to get rid of it; some use has yet to be made out of them.



where does the weight come from? how do we get so weighed down to begin with? is this what karma is? the sins of the fathers? perhaps, partly.
we are born and dressed in the clothes our family provides.
as a child we can put the weight on our caretakers; it is their job to care for us, to teach us and instill us with their values.
but how empty is the vessel of the newborn child? what things has it brought with it already, from god or karma or what have you? is there a mission it was sent to fulfil, a fate to live out?



in how much isolation do our lives actually exist? how much do others affect our journey, and we theirs? what is the ultimate measure of the worth of our life? if we rise above, does that make it a sucess?
what if we weren't meant to rise so high in this life? will we be judged a failure? could the cards have been played better? did we make the best of the hand we were dealt? who is the dealer, anyhow? how much effect do we have on what life hands us?
maybe we were too scared, too cautious; we folded when we should've bet the farm. maybe we foolishly risked it all and lost everything.
how can we know how best to play the cards? maybe we won the last round and needed to lose this time so the other guy could win. but is that what it all comes down to, in the end, victim and victimizer? is that the only game there is to play?

('the weight' continued)

i've been carrying plenty of weight. some things i made myself, others were given to me. some things i took without knowing any better.
we've all tryed to unload things on people that they couldn't accept. "but, you took my load before, why won't you take it now?"
maybe it's not for them to take.



when we think we're in love, we feel as if that weight has been lifted by the other person. you and me becomes we, for a time.
but what do we do when you and me returns? do we try to shove these identities back under the 'we' umbrella? where is it that the separation has even occurred? why now do we try to assert our individuality?
perhaps the idea of 'we' has become its own weight. i've never made the reconciliation past that point, so anything i could say would only be a guess.



what if we approached each encounter as that one relationship?
what if every interaction was between we?
what if we were able to empty our bags in front of each other and look thru the contents together?
"holy shit!" we might exclaim, "i've been looking for that gizmo my whole life and i didn't even know it until you showed it to me."
what if the weight we carry could be used to repair the holes in each other's souls?
it rhymes, so it must be true.

if he does not shine, he is darkness

i must forgive these sins before i make myself die for them.

what if it is the village we have made of our minds in which no prophet is accepted?
are we delusional for wanting to be the prophets of our own lives?

let us manifest the kingdom thru every moment, thru every experience and perception, for what we do not manifest we project, and what we project we invest our faith in, that it may rule over us.

let us manifest our faith in what is good, what is just, what will lift the spirit. let us invest our faith not in you and me, in fucker and fuckee, but in the connections that exist between us and bind us, in the all in all, in the entirety of the universe in every moment. let us be here together.

all this creation needs is your complete and undivided, unprojected faith. then will the kingdom be manifest.

-brian hildebrand

The light has come

The light has come. You are healed and you can heal. The light has come. You are saved and you can save. You are at peace, and you bring peace with you wherever you go. Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. The light has come.

Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. There are no dark dreams now. The light has come. Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. It is a new era, in which a new world is born. The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing. Today we see a different world, because the light has come.

Today we offer thanks for the passing of the old and the beginning of the new. No shadows from the past remain to darken our sight and hide the world forgiveness offers us. Today we will accept the new world as what we want to see. We will be given what we desire. We will to see the light; the light has come.

Today we will be devoted to looking at the world that our forgiveness shows us. This is what we want to see, and only this. Our single purpose makes our goal inevitable. Today the real world rises before us in gladness, to be seen at last. Sight is given us, now that the light has come.

We do not want to see the ego’s shadow on the world today. We see the light, and in it we see Heaven’s reflection lie across the world.

The light has come.
I have forgiven the world.

Dwell not upon the past today. Keep a completely open mind, washed of all past ideas and clean of every concept you have made. You have forgiven the world today. You can look upon it now as if you never saw it before. You do not know yet what it looks like. You merely wait to have it shown to you.

From this time forth you will see differently. Today the light has come. And you will see the world that has been promised you since time began, and in which is the end of time ensured.

Remind yourself every quarter of an hour or so that today is a time for special celebration. Rejoice in the power of forgiveness to heal your sight completely. Be confident that on this day there is a new beginning. Without the darkness of the past upon your eyes, you cannot fail to see today. And what you see will be so welcome that you will gladly extend today forever.

Every moment of every day we have choice whether we are conscious of it or not. This becomes a powerful understanding when we start to realize our choices create our reality. What we experience today is based upon infinite decisions that led up to this moment. We make up our world as we go along according to our beliefs, assumptions, thoughts, words, deeds and actions. What we think is what we become. Yet, most people are unaware of this process. The truly amazing aspect of this realization — we can change our thoughts and feelings and therefore, our reality. Each day we follow our routines rarely thinking about the consequences and usually unaware that every decision or non-decision has an impact upon our life and the world around us. Every thought, word, deed and action is placed in motion by us personally. We are responsible for what we think and do and what we experience as a result. Without paying attention to our inner world we are destined to perpetuate our fears, doubts, angers, shame and judgments. This leads to frustration, stress, problems and frequently disease. The cycle returns to us again and again. When we think and feel lack, for example, we experience the same. Likewise, when we think and feel prosperous, we create more abundance in our lives. The power of our attention determines what we will experience. We have the potential every moment to change our perspective and in doing so, transform our reality. We can become conscious of our focus and attention and bring our thoughts and feelings in alignment to our heart’s desires. We are already creating our life whether we are aware of it or not, so why not choose the life your heart dances to?....

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul....

The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence.

How safe the world will look to me when I can see it! It will not look anything like what I imagine I see now. Everyone and everything I see will lean toward me to bless me. I will recognize in everyone my dearest Friend. What could there be to fear in a world that I have forgiven, and that has forgiven me?

To search; you must commit your heart,
To find; you must free your soul,
To be; you must embrace your becoming

The secret of the Ego is in inverting it. Slowly, it grows into a force of communion with the lingering light of innocence within all.

Your ability to receive is equally important to your ability to give. Have you ever brought a special gift, working hard just to get it, only to be refused by the person you were giving it to? That didn't feel right, did it? Our relationships are greatly enhanced when we become not only generous givers, but generous receivers as well. When we know how to accept gladly, wholeheartedly, embracing the gift as an extension of the giver. It takes both giving and receiving for care and generosity to flow unimpeded.

Remember, if each day does not find you a better person than you were the day before, you are going backward — in health, in mental peace, and in soul joy. Why? Because you don’t exercise enough control over your actions. You yourself made your habits, and you can change them. If you have been thinking wrongly, make up your mind to be with good company and to study and meditate. A change of company can make a great difference to you. When you enter a spiritual environment, even for a few hours, your mentality changes; you feel a refreshing peace. When you go to a dance or a party, your mind is often restless, nervous, and excited. Later, if you go into a better atmosphere, one of calmness, you feel different again. The greatest influence in your life, stronger even than your willpower, is your environment. Change that, if necessary. Until you are mentally strong, you can never be what you want to be without a good environment to help you. When you are having difficulty in trying to change for the better, spiritual company and good environment are essential....

I am not the victim of the world I see. How can I be the victim of a world that can be completely undone if I so choose? My chains are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. The prison door is open. I can leave simply by walking out. Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up my insane wishes and walk into the sunlight at last.

I have invented the world I see. I made up the prison in which I see myself. All I need do is recognize this and I am free. I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want. The Son of God must be forever free. He is as God created him, and not what I would make of him. He is where God would have him be, and not where I thought to hold him prisoner.

There is another way of looking at the world. Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God’s Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom.

When I see the world as a place of freedom, I realize that it reflects the laws of Love instead of the rules I made up for it to obey. I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it. And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this place with me.

As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself. The world I look upon has taken on the light of my forgiveness, and shines forgiveness back at me. In this light I begin to see what my illusions about myself kept hidden. I begin to understand the holiness of all living things, including myself, and their oneness with me.

Everyone on earth in some way feels like an alien here....because we ARE! We come from another world, a home beyond this one that is always calling us to return. We get home not by leaving this earth but by changing our mind about its purpose: knowing that we ARE love, and we are here to love. That recognition is enlightenement.

All you really have to do to change your thought about something is to Think Twice. When you're facing enormous change, and the fear that quite normally can be attached to it, many people will say to you, "Don't give it a second thought." I'm telling you exactly the opposite.

Sometimes oneness, or unity consciousness, is then presented as a mere mental concept as if it were something we only had to realize in our mind to see manifested. Some teachers are arguing that since we are entangled in a quantum mechanical sense we are all one. I feel such statements are so trivial that they are meaningless to make. Of course, we are all one in the sense that all humans are the products of the same reality and totally interconnected in this. Yet, a mere mental realization of a concept or a spiritual insight is not enough for us to actually experience oneness and anchor it in reality. Unity consciousness is something we need to craft and work with to see manifested... The point to realize is that oneness is not an attribute of ourselves as individuals, but of our relationships to others and the divine

"Humility" is not about becoming meek.

Rather humility takes root in the very recognition of the magnitude of your gifts and the innate responsibility you have to employ these toward uncovering the hidden light in all things!

Be aware of your immortal self. Let go of the idea that you're a body that's destined to die, and instead seek an awareness of your immortal self. Affirm: "I am eternal, and that means that I showed up here from the infinitude of spiritual intention to fulfill a destiny that I must act on."

You learn what you do. If you worry a lot, then day after day you are learning how to worry even better. If you think about doing something a lot, then you are learning how to think about doing. Every moment you are happy, you are learning how to be even happier. Every time you act, you are learning how to take an action even better. What is it that you've been learning today? What is it that you want to learn tomorrow?

To be....
a state of
nothingness.....
perfectly still
moving neither
air nor sound
absorbing the
exact moment
when life and death
merge
becoming one
to be...
stationary.....
feeling neither
the fear of falling
or the need to climb any higher
to be.....
is to be no more.....
to be.....
is but another door___

We dream for our communities and our world, as well as for ourselves and those near to us. We can learn to do this as a conscious practice in the service of peace and healing. By bringing dreams into the lives of people around us, we can heal and revitalize all our relations, our workplace, our schools, our health care, and our communities.

Dream Out Loud!!!

Your circumstances are the cure
for what ails your consciousness.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can-and surely will at times-fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.

When I loved myself enough, I lost my fear of speaking my truth, for I have come to see how good it is.

Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want & need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values. Making choices based on what you believe, & not what others believe.

Before walking into any situation, pray that it be lifted to the level of divine right order. Dedicate it to Spirit and ask that it be used for Love's purposes. Surrender yourself as a channel for Spirit's expression in the world. Then watch what happens...

Faith begins by believing in your heart that whatever is right has a chance. Faith is knowing in your heart that good can overcome evil, that the sun can shine in a rainstorm, faith is peaceful and comforting because it comes from within, where no one can invade your private dreams. Faith is something you can demand or command; it is a result of commitment to belief. Faith is believing in something you cant see or hear, something deep inside, that only you understand & control. Faith is trusting in yourself enough to know that no matter how things turn out, you will make the best of them.

One of the deeper, underlying archetypal patterns which is being constellated in the human psyche that is playing itself out collectively on the world stage is the archetype of the “wounded healer.” To quote Kerenyi, a colleague of Jung who elucidated this archetype, the wounded healer refers psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sunlike healer.” The archetype of the wounded healer reveals to us that it is only by being willing to face, consciously experience and go through our wound do we receive its blessing. To go through our wound is to embrace, assent, and say “yes” to the mysteriously painful new place in ourselves where the wound is leading us. Going through our wound, we can allow ourselves to be re-created by the wound. Our wound is not a static entity, but rather a continually unfolding dynamic process that manifests, reveals and incarnates itself through us, which is to say that our wound is teaching us something about ourselves. Going through our wound means realizing we will never again be the same when we get to the other side of this initiatory process. Going through our wound is a genuine death experience, as our old self “dies” in the process, while a new, more expansive and empowered part of ourselves is potentially born.

In the ancient tongue, the word for "peace" was interchangeable with the word for being "whole". Within our modern lexicon we have lost this subtle truth, and so in many ways, peace remains allusive.

Mending a broken heart can seem a task so monumental that we dare not attempt it for fear of damaging ourselves further. But heartbreak, like all emotions, falls under the spell of our conscious influence.

Often the pain that wounds us most deeply also leaves the most enduring mark upon us. The shock that becomes the tender, throbbing ache of the heart eventually leads us down the path of enlightenment, blessing our lives with a new depth and richness.

Acknowledging heartbreak's impermanence by no means dulls its sting for it is the sting itself that stimulates healing. The pain is letting us know that we need to pay attention to our emotional selves, to sit with our feelings and be in them fully before we can begin to heal. It is said that time heals all wounds. Time may dull the pain of a broken heart, but it is fully feeling your pain and acknowledging it that will truly help you heal. Dealing with your heartache in a healthy way rather than putting it off for tomorrow is the key to repair. Gentleness more than anything else is called for. Most important, open yourself to the possibility of loving, trusting, and believing again. When, someday soon, you emerge from the cushion of your grief, you will see that the universe did not cease to be as you nursed your broken heart. You emerge on the other side of the mending, stronger for all you have experienced...

We punish ourselves needlessly when thing go wrong. Life lessons are meant to help us, not hinder our progress. Every wound carries a blessing: imagine that each time we were hurt or hurt someone that we never learned anything from it. We would continue our behaviors because we could not draw any other conclusions. Consider the gift we’re given each time we walk away from a situation with a greater understanding of who we are and what we have learned. The road to self-forgiveness is long, but there are plenty of signs along the way.

Many of us feel we’ve done things that make us unforgivable. When we look deeply enough inside we see that keeping ourselves “unforgiven” is actually motivated by love. We hold ourselves as unforgivable in hopes that we never do that thing again because we don’t want to hurt anyone else or ourselves. This is usually unconscious.

Although at the core this is a loving act, unfortunately, withholding self love and self forgiveness causes us to feel separate from Source. Consequently we feel cut off from love, which causes us to do things that are off balance, which generally have off-balance results for ourselves as well as our Brothers and Sisters. In other words, we end up acting in the very ways that we held ourselves unforgivable in the first place.

This is not because we are “bad” and shouldn’t be forgiven. It is because we carry the energy of “I BELIEVE I am bad” in our energy field. By the Law of Attraction, we draw to us circumstances that reflect our assessment of ourselves.

Apologize to yourself and let it go. Practice this often, whenever you find yourself beating up on yourself about something you did or did not do, accept that the deed is done and it cannot be undone, forgive yourself and move on to find a solution if necessary, if it something that another action cannot rectify then you must let it go, for it is in fact in the past already and remind yourself that no one can change the past.

This is not meant to relinquish you from responsibility, it is in fact making you more responsible, but in a more positive and focused way. Often responsibility is seen as something negative, something to be endured, but being responsible can also be remarkably freeing and in terms of forgiveness if you take responsibility for forgiving yourself you will learn what it is to live without the burden of guilt, blame, fear and shame.

When you have mastered the loving act of forgiving yourself, your heart will then be open to forgiving others. This is part of a natural progression on your journey to enlightenment, to forgive others means to take away yet a bit more control from ego and allow your higher self the possession of your thoughts and actions that it deserves.

Forgiving others shows you have the ability to open up and let love flow through you.

It shows that if you no longer bear grudges and carry hatred in your heart, you will recognize the connection that you have to every other soul in the universe, you will not feel separate and alone, you will no longer allow the actions of others to instill bitterness within you and because you are radiating love despite what is happening around you, in turn love is what you will receive, thus eliminating the need to forgive.

The law of attraction states that you receive that which you send out, so if you project only forgiveness and love, you will only attract others that do the same and so ultimately you will not encounter behavior that warrants your forgiveness. But all of this cannot be until you learn first to forgive yourself.

We can change how we think in the present moment in order to prevent our past traumas from hurting us. To do this we must learn to live beyond blame, shame and judgment.

Most people, at some level, feel ashamed just for being alive, because, after all, they are naked, and all they have ever heard is that that is not a good thing. The more someone tries to put on some spiffy coverings, whether religious righteousness or even being sexually alluring or politically powerful, it doesn't matter. Much of the gyrations of the false personality are designed to try to present itself as not being naked.

Children remind adults, especially those who are relatively as-yet unsullied, that it is possible to be naked but not be ashamed. It is very difficult for children to grow up in this world and hold their innocence. The spiritual path involves taking on the shame, becoming conscious of it, and beginning to make new choices. That includes releasing the old imprinting, recognizing the nakedness, and finding peace about it. The ultimate statement of that is, "I am perfect in my imperfections; I love myself unconditionally; at the same time, yes, I am naked in a great number of ways, and that includes having numerous faults."

Again, a paradox: when a person totally accepts his faults, he has much more leverage to change. Those who are in the throes of shame are terrified that if there was love, acceptance and tolerance, then everyone would just be terribly sinful--there would be no motivation to change anything, and, oh, the terrible things people would do then when their so-called animal nature took over! However, when you are naked, unashamed, but also know it, then instead of splitting off from yourself to make a judgment about it, which is quite draining, you can simply see, "Well, this habit here is not adding to my happiness; I think I will work on changing that." Since you are not divided in half, you have more wherewithal to make a change. If you are innocent and conscious at the same time and, let's say, you spoke out of pique--you were irritated or angry in the moment--and you are present with yourself, you get instant feedback that "that didn't feel good."

It's not moral in the sense that there is a judgment of what is appropriate or inappropriate behavior; it doesn't come from the intellect or from a judgment. It is simply a direct experience, because when you are one with yourself, you are one with others, and your thoughtless words, in hurting others, hurt yourself. So you instantly realize that that is not something you want. You may be aware, "Oh, I overreacted because I was tired, or I was sad about this other thing," but you immediately know that you no longer want to take it out on another person, because that does not feel good. So there is a direct feedback system and, therefore, no need for shame.

When you strip yourselves without being ashamed, when you take off your clothes and lay them at your feet like little children and trample on them, then you will become children of the Living One, and you will have no more fear.

When we are able to shed the cloaks that we set up to hide our own spiritual or moral imperfections then we will realize that there was no sense in trying to hide them and fearing them in the first place...

We are not "everything," but neither are we "nothing." Spirituality is discovered in that space between paradox's extremes, for there we confront our helplessness and powerlessness, our woundedness. In seeking to understand our limitations, we seek not only an easing of our pain but an understanding of what it means to hurt and what it means to be healed. Spirituality begins with the acceptance that our fractured being, our imperfection, simply is: There is no one to "blame" for our errors - neither ourselves nor anyone nor anything else.

The spirituality of imperfection speaks to those who seek meaning in the absurd, peace within the chaos, light within the darkness, joy within the suffering - without denying the reality and even the necessity of absurdity, chaos, darkness, and suffering. This is not a spirituality for the saints or the gods, but for people who suffer from what the philosopher-psychologist William James called "torn-to-pieces-hood" (his trenchant translation of the German Zerrissenheit). We have all known that experience, for to be human is to feel at times divided, fractured, pulled in a dozen directions and to yearn for serenity, for some healing of our "torn-to-pieces-hood."

When we accept our humanness and exercise our responsibility for making our own choices — for example, choosing what we do when we are angry, lonely, or sad — we are involved in a spiritual process. Our spirituality must be based on a vision that attends to our whole self and honors our whole experience, while at the same time acknowledges that we are accountable in the present for our own feelings, beliefs, and behaviors.

Spirituality is the healing process of “making whole.” Spirituality helps us first to see and then to understand, and eventually to accept the imperfection that lies at the core of our human be-ing.

Accepting our human limitation brings us inner peace. What a relief it is to put an end to the fight within ourselves. Also, as we find the permission to be the imperfect beings that we are, we become able to let others be who they are.

To deny or disown any part of our experience leaves us dangerously incomplete and especially vulnerable to our shame. The lifeblood of shame is secrecy, fed by the dark fear of being found out. To grow toward wholeness in the context of our family home, we have to open all the doors and windows to let in air and light. Then for us at last, healing will begin.

“You and I are children of mud, earthy and moist,” Jane Smiley writes in A Thousand Acres. “We’re not all fire and light — no matter how much we wish otherwise.” Facing this truth, we reach another turning point:

It is in the acceptance of all that was and is that our spirits become whole.

Health is a state of mind that recognizes the history of life, which includes moments of great delight and moments of deep sorrow. When we see all these parts of our being as connected, we come to terms with where we come from, who we are and where we’re going. Health is a whole.

The journey to love, acceptance and strong self-esteem requires courage, strength and faith. It also requires gratitude and forgiveness.

In Neale Donald Walsch's 'Friendship with God', he states that "gratitude is the fastest form of healing."

The truth of this phrase is one that must be experienced (as is the case with all things if we are to achieve full integration).

It requires that we be grateful for everything that comes into our lives. It requires that we be grateful for the annoyances, the frustrations, the pain, the anger, the disappointment, and the sadness, with as much soulful acceptance as we are grateful for the joy and love and delight we receive. As soon as we can view a situation from a place of gratitude, all the drama and chaos melts away into acceptance. And only from a place of acceptance can we hope to come to forgiveness. Gratitude is key in all things if we are to find the path to living in joy.

Forgiveness is a less tangible concept. It, unfortunately, gets tangled up with the ego and one's need to be right, or one's need to seek justice or revenge, or even one's need to stay miserable. It also carries with it a load of dramatic religious baggage. It comes wrapped up in concepts of God and saints and holiness. When asked to practice forgiveness, people often think it is something beyond our spiritual capabilities. It is not. In fact, it is vital to our spiritual health and growth. We must free ourselves of these preconceived notions before we will be able to experience the profound freedom that comes with forgiving. Forgiveness is a very tricky thing because, like all healing, it must first begin within. Self-forgiveness is the starting point. We cannot give to others what we do not have ourselves. We can't give love if we have self-hate, we can't give joy if we have self-loathing, we can't forgive others if we haven't forgiven ourselves.

Forgiveness often takes much longer to find than gratitude. First of all, we often believe that forgiveness of a certain behavior equals validation of that behavior. If these two things remain connected, forgiveness becomes impossible. We must be able to separate the two concepts. When we forgive, it is not about validating the act, but about letting go of the power that act has in our lives. This is particularly important when it is our own act that we must forgive. Those people who understand the necessity of taking responsibility for their choices and actions are always harder on themselves than on anyone else. We often hold ourselves accountable to a much higher standard. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can become damaging when we are unable to forgive ourselves for what we perceive to be our transgressions.

The path of gratitude and forgiveness is a much smoother one when we learn to stay more in the moment and not wander into the nether regions of the past or the unknown of the future. Nothing keeps us more grounded in nonforgiveness than holding on to past behavior or events. You can't change the past, yours or anyone else's. You can, however, learn from the past. It has many, many lessons. To forget the past is to put our Now in peril, because we will be doomed to relearn the same lessons over and over. Learning from the past is essential. Living in the past is fatal. The Now moment is the only one we really have. It is the only place we have any control. It is the only place from which we can create. Regrets of the past and fear of the future are our greatest enemies. We must be present, aware and awake in the Now moment, or we are not living our lives to the fullest.

Traveling any path is about putting one step in front of the other. If we worry about where our last step was, we will miss the step we are taking, which could mean stepping where we should not. If we look too far at the many steps we have ahead, then we will become fearful, and may stop taking steps at all. Never was this concept so apparent to me as when I recently participated in a firewalk. Much of the preparation for walking the fire deals with the act of moving forward, through fear of the future, through fears the past has laden us with. One step in front of the other. The step into the fire is no different than the last step taken; it continues to move you forward. But stepping into the fire proves that we can move through the veil of limitations and boundaries we convince ourselves are impossible to overcome. Nonforgiveness is one of those unnecessary limitations we place on ourselves that keep us rooted, and make it impossible to take the step into the void. But once you make that commitment, you have no choice but to keep going forward, and suddenly you find yourself able to fly, seeing a whole new world, filled with unimaginable possibilities. This is the power of the firewalk; this is the power of forgiveness.

We all have spiritual wounds; places in ourselves that have been hurt so badly, or beaten down so far that they are now hidden away, fearful of coming into the sunshine.

We have the power to change our lives; to change how we take things in; to replace self-hatred with self-love, pain with joy, feelings of loathing with the reality of knowing our own beauty. A large part of that path is forgiveness.

Wounds can only be healed in the light. They need air and acknowledgment and awareness in order to fund the healing power we all have inside ourselves. Walking the path of gratitude, forgiveness, and living in the present moment is a life-altering, life-affirming and celebratory journey. I highly recommend it.