Have you ever tried to tell someone how to walk? If so, you've probably discovered that trying to explain how to put one foot before the other and
move forward is not all that easy. Trying to fully explain a process that is, in essence, simplicity itself, tends to make it sound much more complicated than it is.
That's because walking is an intensely personal act and none of us walks alike. Nor do we walk the same way all the time. We may saunter or speed walk; walk with our toes out or our toes in; place the weight on the ball of the foot first or on the heel first; step lightly on tiptoe or with the heaviness of a march. There is no one way that works the same way every time for everyone.
Blessing, too, in an intensely personal process with no one generic method that will work every time for every person, object or situation. In the next few days, however, we will be exploring various ways you may incorporate the simple act of blessing into your own life. Please understand that none of the ways suggested is the "be all and end all" of blessing. These are simply suggestions of ways that may appeal to you or, ideally, spark the idea for a technique that works especially well for you.
The important thing to remember is that when we bless, whether we are calling upon the Sacred and Divine to pour forth its richness, or we are simply setting an intention of good for the subject of our blessing, we first must step into our imagining and feeling nature.
We do not physically see a difference, we imagine it. We do not physically recognize the arc of love going from our heart to the heart of the one we bless, we feel the love being sent from one heart to the other. Through our imaginations and our feelings we change our energy state, charging it with good and then sending that good forth. That is what a blessing does. That is how a blessing works.
In its purest state, the act of blessing removes us from our little selves, taking us away from all the petty concerns and grievances that clamor for our attention and into the light of Inner Spirit where our own thoughts and opinions dissolve into nothingness, replaced by a willingness to allow the best to be for ourselves, for others and for our world.
In this first blessing exercise, we will be releasing the target of our blessing from the fetters of a complicated world. It is a sweet and cleansing blessing that will serve to benefit all concerned.
Please note that for the sake of simplicity only, I will be referring to the target of the blessing in the masculine form.
Today's exercise:
Think of someone you know well and would like to bless. With your eyes closed, imagine this person standing before you in the center of a cluttered and chaotic space. This clutter and chaos represents all the thoughts and feelings and judgments this person has about his own life, as well as all the thoughts, feelings and opinions you and others now hold or have held concerning him. Now imagine a shimmering light filling the space the subject of your blessing is standing in, and as it does so, all the clutter dissolves away, leaving the space around him clear and clean and open. No longer pressed by the complexity of his own thought forms and those of others, he is now free to stretch and grow and become all his larger Self would have him be.
Stay with this vision in your mind for a few seconds, or as long as it feels good for you to do so, and then release the image by saying either to yourself or aloud, "May you be so blessed." Now open your eyes, take a deep breath and step back into full awareness of your surroundings.
Note: As the dispatcher of this blessing, your task is not to imagine the future you would have him occupy, but to simply imagine him able to occupy an open place of potentiality that will free him to do and be exactly what he longs to do and be, whatever that might be.
Today's affirmation:
"In blessing others, I am blessed"
Today's quote:
"To make the choice to bless, to make the effort to bless (which may simply be the act of getting myself out of the way) is to align with a higher energy state in which the blessing can 'do itself' so to speak, and I'm energized, blessed and raised up in response."
-- David Spangler, Blessing, The Art and Practice"
