The Power of Being

“I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don't know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

Since the early days in the history of our world, mankind has been on an endless search of the self and God. Going back to ancient times, our need to connect to someone or something higher than ourselves has inspired individuals to create complicated rituals aimed at reaching a higher consciousness.

In many cases, the universal need of establishing a connection has been exploited by institutions to exercise control over the masses and serve the personal agendas of a few. This process has been made possible by a far-spreading propaganda which has painted God as an inaccessible entity one must seek without, even if the Bible itself (Luke 17:21) teaches us that the kingdom of God is within us.

Our first step to finding God within is through acceptance – not necessarily acceptance of situations but of the way we feel about them. We spend a great portion of our lives fighting the wave, and rejecting the simple truth of just being. Once we overcome our obsession of controlling how everything should be, we allow our experiences to manifest directly from the mind of the Creator, pure and unspoiled by human assumptions.

If we can get to the point of looking at another form of life and just feel love toward it before our mind has the chance to add labels and shelve what’s in front of us within the compartments of an illusionary life hierarchy, what we experience in that moment is God’s love – unconditional, all-serving and powerful. Labels are created by the ego because of its desperate need to quantify something which cannot be quantified. An absence of labels robs the moment of illusion and leaves only the pure essence of it.

According to the Flower Sermon, toward the end of his life the Buddha took his disciples to a quiet pond for instruction. As they had done in the past, the followers sat in a small circle around him, and waited for the teaching. But this time the Buddha had no words.

He reached into the muck, pulled up a lotus flower and he held it silently before them, its roots dripping mud and water. The disciples were greatly confused. Buddha quietly displayed the lotus to each of them, and in turn the disciples did their best to understand the meaning of the flower, without much success. When at last the Buddha came to his follower Mahakasyapa, the disciple suddenly understood. He smiled and began to laugh. Buddha handed the lotus to Mahakasyapa and began to speak. “What can be said I have said to you,” smiled the Buddha, “and what cannot be said, I have given to Mahakashyapa.” Mahakashyapa became Buddha’s successor from that day forward.

There are no labels to describe the energy of God, or Its power, just as there are no labels to properly describe who or what anything is. Simply being sets us free from the chains of illusion and the kingdom of ego.

School for the Soul

"God allows us to experience the low points in life in order to teach us lessons we would not learn in any other way. The way we learn these lessons is not to deny the feelings but to find the meanings underlying them." ~ Stanley Lindquist


To the joy of most children on a traditional school calendar, the 2009-2010 scholastic year is, once again, drawing to an end. In five and a half more weeks, according to one of my sons, ‘jail will let out.’ That mere comment, happily uttered while standing in front of the calendar counting remaining ‘jail’ days, made me smile.

I asked Michael what he meant by ‘jail life’ at school, and he looked at me with a wide-open, deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face; to his child-mind I had asked the unthinkable. "Why Mom," he said speaking a tad slower as one would do in front of a mentally challenged audience, "I know school is important, but you can’t do anything fun there. And, most of the time, even if teachers get things wrong, you can’t even speak up to say what’s really happening, because that’s considered talking back. And last but not least, there is all this work we always have to do! There just isn’t any time left for being a kid."

I thought for a moment about Michael’s description, and I asked him: "If your teachers didn’t have expectations, and no work was required, if you were never allowed to fail anything or run into conflicts with other kids, school would be more fun, but would you learn anything?"

Michael became silent for a moment, then he looked at me and raised his eyebrow. "Well, I guess not too much. It’s great to have fun all the time, but it doesn’t teach you much, does it?" I gloated inside, careful not to show him how satisfied I was that I had finally won an argument against the teenage genius mind, and I simply smiled at him as he walked away from the calendar and back toward the stairs to go up to his room. This exchange led me to think about life in general, and how wonderful it would be if all could be roses; but if everything was always simple, work and hardship were never an issue, and conflict didn’t exist, would we really learn anything about ourselves and others?

Hardship is often the quickest pathway to learning of our own strengths and weaknesses, and the best gauge to measure our resilience. It is through struggle that we discover we can go the extra mile, and through a bruised ego that we understand what matters most.

While listening to a memorial service a few nights ago, one of the most important things I left with was that our spirit wasn’t born with our body – it is timeless, birthless, deathless, and only using the physical body to learn from our experiences in this world. A life with no challenging experiences would be like a classroom without teachers and curriculums; it would be a fun ride, but in the end we would walk away with nothing learned and little to tell.

A day in school allows children to put in several hours of work and structure, and still gives them a bit of time for recreation and social contact; their time is used to learn and become functional individuals. Life is no different: we are born, learn from other teachers, get punished if we do wrong and rewarded if we do well, and all throughout we enjoy bits of recreational time to relieve the pressure of the challenges leading to our learning. Happy, prosperous and easy-going spells are our well-deserved summer breaks. It might take us a little longer to graduate, but the benefits of our experiences will reach all the way to the soul.

A Tap on the Shoulder

“The bad things in life open your eyes to the good things you weren’t paying attention to before” ~ Author unknown

Yesterday was an average day – or at least that’s how it appeared at first. Nothing incredibly important or transcendental happened, one way or the other; no tragedies nor mind-blowing fortunes knocked on my door.

However, on second thought, yesterday was a wonderful day, although I wasn’t aware of just how blessed until about six in the evening, when I sat on my porch sipping a glass of iced tea and watched my daughter play in the yard.

Out in the distance I heard a siren; then two; finally one more – something serious had happened not too far from my house. I immediately said a small prayer for whoever was involved in the accident, and felt profoundly grateful that my whole family was home and I didn’t have to wonder about their safety.

Right then I realized that many unpleasant things happening around us are an opportunity to stop the madness and focus a moment of our day on gratitude and compassion. We are fast in prayer if something goes wrong in our lives - or if we are in need - but how often do we take a moment to just acknowledge what we have, and be grateful for the things and people we take for granted?

Gratitude and compassion walk hand in hand, and both are great reminders that we should appreciate our lives for what they are, and enjoy what we have.

Divine reminders come in different packages – the sound of distant emergency vehicles, a homeless person seeking a little change and a ray of hope, a lonely person craving a smile or a kind word – through each of them, God taps on our shoulder. We are always in such a rush that we easily overlook the incredible fortunes pouring down on us throughout each day; once we slow down and take notice, we realize the staggering amount of reasons we have to be grateful.

We spend countless hours of our lives telling others they should pay attention -- sometimes it would be good to talk in front of a mirror.

Lessons from a Daffodil

“Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.” ~ Voltaire


Yesterday was a dreary day. With temperatures in the forties and a steady, icy drizzle, one felt more motivated to buy warm chestnuts and candy canes that the Easter eggs and colorful bunnies displayed on the shelves of a nearby drugstore. A month away from Easter, winter is still ruling the land.

Yesterday morning, one of the posters on my blog mentioned seeing her daffodils already in bloom, to which I replied that mine were still hiding out. I was wrong. Upon closer inspection, I indeed saw that my own spring messengers had awakened from their wintry slumber and were poking their heads out in full expectation of spring to come.

Looking at the tender sprouts made me smile – even on a day like yesterday they knew it won’t be long before they can proudly grow and fulfill their potential for yet another season. Just like birds singing before sunrise to welcome the day ahead, the young daffodils follow their own inner guidance – without a conscious mind telling them otherwise, they have no reason to doubt the plan Universe has set in place for them; regardless of temporary hardship they know warmer weather is on the way

If a daffodil can do it, there is no reason why we shouldn’t. We claim to believe in a supreme source of all creation, yet we consistently doubt the plan set in place for us by the same intelligence. We pray for something, and immediately after we doubt our prayers will be answered. All along, we allow our fears to take over our faith – we are afraid of lack, of being harmed, of being robbed, of being abandoned to our fate, of being betrayed by someone – and at the same time we claim to believe. In what DO we believe, if I may ask? And why do we continue to worship if we don’t fully believe in this entity’s supreme power over all there is?

In reality, God does listen, and there is no limit to what He can accomplish on our behalf, if we don’t stand in the way. By doubting the outcome of our prayers we close the doors to blessings already on their way, and we broadcast the wrong vibes to the Universe.

The entire Universe operates following a law or resonance, thus allowing us to duplicate what we feel. Even if words have power because they allow us to paint a mental picture, words without feelings are just empty groups of letters; no matter how pretty they sound, they lack the fuel to propel our petition forward. Words must be backed by faith and feeling to make a difference. If we have absolute faith that something will happen because we have released the request to a higher source of energy, our feelings will be a reflection of positive expectation, and will, therefore, produce more situations that will trigger the same feelings again, over and over. Whoever said that when it rains it pours truly hit the nail on the head – if our response to a situation is infused with feeling, Universe will continue to match what we feel.

We have become arrogant enough in our own self-image that we assume a frail flower is much less important than we are, but indeed, how much we can learn from it!

A Reflection on Forgiveness

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you” ~ Lewis B. Smedes


A few days ago, someone sent me a short story about forgiveness which I would like to share. The author of the story is unknown to me, since the name was not included in the e-mail, but whoever wrote this piece truly hit the proverbial nail on the head.

“One of my teachers had each one of us bring a clear plastic bag and a sack of potatoes. For every person we'd refused to forgive in our lives, we were told to choose a potato, write on it the name and date, and put it in the plastic bag. Some of our bags, as you can imagine, were quite heavy.

We were then told to carry this bag with us everywhere for one week, putting it beside our bed at night, on the car seat when driving, next to our desk at work.

The hassle of lugging this around with us made it clear what a weight we were carrying spiritually, and how we had to pay attention to it all the time to not forget, and keep leaving it in embarrassing places.

Naturally, the condition of the potatoes deteriorated to a nasty slime. This was a great metaphor for the price we pay for keeping our pain and heavy negativity.

Too often we think of forgiveness as a gift to the other person, and while that's true, it clearly is also a gift for ourselves. So the next time you decide you can't forgive someone, ask yourself...Isn't MY bag heavy enough?”

Sad as it is, the struggle of forgiving is always harder when we feel we are the ones who need to be forgiven. We carry burdens which we consider embarrassing to reveal, and by keeping them concealed we further enable the putrefying process - what we keep sealed inside ourselves lurks within until it has total power over our thoughts and actions,

Lack of self-forgiveness is born from the ego-mind - and engineered through tainted points of perspective - to defy the flawless perception of our higher consciousness, while slowly eroding our sense of self-worth and our connection to others.

If God can forgive our transgressions, should we not give Him a little more credit and trust that it is okay to forgive ourselves?

On a Journey to Learn

“Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you're alive, it isn't.” ~ Richard Bach



I have always believed that our souls come to Earth to learn certain lessons.

In the last couple of decades there has been a tremendous amount of speculation over “life contracts” – do we choose our lives, our parents, who we are? Do we pick the type of body we will inhabit and the socio-cultural circumstances we are born into?

Many struggle understanding why certain things happen; why children get sick and die, why we find ourselves stuck in certain predicaments – how could we possibly have chosen any of those trials?

Indeed it is hard to accept that any decision on our part is partly responsible for our falls, and it’s even harder to accept that a loving God could allow some of senseless suffering we and others go through, but if one can momentarily entertain the thought that life contracts are a possibility, the whole concept becomes suddenly easier to grasp.

We don’t choose to be sick, to be poor or abused, and no god is evil enough to bestow those tragedies upon us. However, since certain life circumstances can facilitate learning a specific lesson better than others, it only makes sense that our soul stipulates an earthly contract based on what still needs to be learned. Once the choice of lesson is made, Universe arranges our stay and “books” us on a trip filled with unique experiences tailored exclusively for our learning. We state the soul need, and Universe takes care of the details of the journey.

Every situation is as different as are the lessons that must be learned, and because of it, no generalization can possibly be made.

It’s also important to note that the mission of a soul may simply be that of supporting another soul – a sick child might only stay for a short while to teach parents the meaning of true love and the importance of living day by day; living in a crippled body might teach someone to accept their true-selves; poverty might teach someone how to be humble.

The possibilities are too numerous to list, but what is truly interesting in some cases, is that if one is able to identify a lesson through the patterns, a new route can be mapped to reach destination minus part of the suffering.

The Dog and The Old Man

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.” ~ George Elliot


I would like to share a story that my mother-in-law sent me today. The story is told by a young lady whose father struggles with personal anger after he can no longer work as a lumberjack because of health issues. After suffering a heart attack, he is invited to live with his daughter and her husband, but as days go by, tension begins to rise. The father is resentful of his declining health and lashes out at everyone.

The young woman prays for a resolution, but for months God is silent. Finally, she decides to call several clinics hoping to find some advice. During one of those calls, a friendly lady tells her about an article she has read about people with the same symptoms greatly benefiting from caring for a pet.

She drives to the local shelter to look for a dog, but none seem right for her father. Then, she spots a pointer in the last pen. Years have etched his face and muzzle with shades of gray; his hipbones jut out in lopsided triangles, but his eyes are calm and clear. She asks the attendant about the dog and is told that he just showed up near the shelter two weeks before.

When she gets home, she shows her father the dog she got for him, but he replies angrily that he doesn’t want a pet, and definitely not one so old and frail. Tension rises, and father and daughter face each other down as if preparing to duel. Just then, the dog walks up to the old man, sits in front of him, and raises his paw to touch the man’s leg. Time stands still. The old man continues to look at the dog who just sits there calmly, his paw still raised. He finally kneels down and takes the dog’s paw in his hand. From that day on they are inseparable. Within the course of a few months, all the anger, frustration and tension wash away, as the old man and his dog become more closely connected.

One night, the dog walks into the young lady’s room, whimpering. Considering the fact quite strange, she rushes to her father’s room. She finds him in his bed, his face peacefully relaxed and at ease in his final sleep. The dog raises his paw and touches him for one last time.

It’s not until the dog has passed away - and she reminisces about her father’s last few months - that the young lady realizes something important. She had prayed for her father to find peace, and had thought her prayers had gone unanswered. Yet they hadn’t. The girl on the phone and the dog were angels she hadn’t recognized. At the time, everything had seemed coincidental but none of it was – the woman, the article, and the dog that had mysteriously appeared at the shelter out of nowhere.

Prayers often seem to go unanswered because they don’t manifest as we imagined. We expect a result which will pacify our wants, because we are not aware of our true needs. Sometimes the path to our greater good is an uncharted one, yet if we follow it with faith it will lead us where we need to go.