labels you place on all the persons, places, situations and things
in your life down to one: The label of GOOD.
Spend the next 30 days considering that every circumstance and
situation, every interaction, every place you go and everything you
see has the potential to be good.
Like the word "bad", the word "good", however, is an exclusive
word. Usually, when we use one, we exclude the other, and we keep
the line between the two tightly drawn. By determining, however, to
label everything as good, we smudge the line between the two, and
allow our thoughts and our blessings to be inclusive of everything
inside and outside our lives -- both that we have, in the past,
called good and that we would have once labeled bad.
As writer and teacher Walter Starcke points out, everything we
experience has a purpose for being present in our lives or it
wouldn't be there. Even the roughest spots in our lives serve a
purpose. We have these experiences in order to reveal, as Starcke
points out, "something that would make us become more fully
conscious beings."
Our problem, however, is that more often than not, we label
something as bad, or unpleasant or unwanted and then push it as far
away from us as we can, refusing to even think about it. Especially
those of us who have followed the teachings of the positive thought
movement. We try constantly to remove ourselves completely from
every negative. In so doing, however, we literally shut ourselves
off from the information the negativity has come to reveal. In the
end this doesn't help us at all. By ignoring the negative, we don't
even get rid of it, because it will keep returning again and
again, through repeated experiences, until we are finally willing
to look past the mask of negativity to discover its purpose for
being in our lives.
When we realize, however, that anything included in our awareness
-- the good, the bad and the ugly -- is present because it has
information to depart, then the information can come forth and the
so-called negative or bad experience, it's purpose fulfilled, can
easily dissolve away.
Labeling everything good helps us do that. We are not refusing to
acknowledge it. We are simply allowing ourselves to accept that
perhaps there is more too it than we, at first, are able to see.
We recognize this aspect and honor it by naming it good. Through
determining that every person, place and experience in our lives
has a beneficial reason for being there, we open ourselves to
discovering its purpose. We become totally inclusive, excluding no
thing, and open ourselves to whatever information the difficult
person or situation has come to give. By our willingness to call it
all good, we release the hold our resistance would have on the
experience and we allow it to go away, its divine purpose in our
lives having been fulfilled. And because of our willingness, we
become better, stronger, surer, wiser for having allowed the
information in. We benefit. We are blessed in return.
Think of three separate experiences in your past that you
originally determined to be bad, or difficult or uncomfortable, and
then later realized a benefit from. It may have been a difficult
person who taught you unconditional love, or a serious illness
that led you to discover your inner strength, or any number of
experiences or situations from which you gained valuable
information which helped you to grow and change and move closer to
being the person you want to be.
Write about these experiences in your Blessing Way Journal and then
throughout the day, as time permits, further contemplate this idea
that every experience and person that life brings you is a good
thing. Not judging, not fearing, not worrying over... just
accepting that each person and experience contains a benefit or
would not be present in your life.
This is a simple exercise, so try your best to keep it that way.
Don't try to complicate it by adding "but" and "if"to it. Just
determine it all good and move on.
The purpose of these exercises is to help you realize that the line
between good and bad is not as straight and sharp as perhaps you
once believed it to be As you explore the benefits in what you once
labeled negative experiences, and realize that good has always been
present, the line will blur even more and you'll begin find
yourself less willing to pass exclusive judgments on your world.
Today's affirmation:
"I am willing to see the good in every experience."
Today's quote:
"We will never become free of evil by telling ourselves that it
does not exist or that it has no power, but we will become free if
we destroy our old concept of evil as a power apart from the divine
process of life. The only way we can do that is to become aware
that a creative polarity exists in life that is necessary for the
evolution of spiritual growth. In that light there is neither good
nor bad but something beyond both that we call God."
--Walter Starcke
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