It’s a fresh new year stretching before us.  I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions.  I began thinking about something else though and it’s timing just seems perfect for the new year.  All the little things that come up that get under our skin, bug us or in one way or another seem to draw us out of what felt like blissful alignment — to all of that — to simply stop and ask yourself this simple question:

Will it matter in a year from now?

I’m thinking just about 99.9% of everything you can resolutely say “no, it won’t matter in a year from now”.  Once you’ve determined that, you can drop it and just let it go.  Let it return to its “native nothingness”, as Florence Scovel Shinn once wrote, as it means nothing unless you assign it meaning.  It, whatever *it* is, is relatively meaningless and not worth your attention and certainly not worth your alignment.  When you get down to it, if you are willing to suffer less and be in alignment more then less and less is there any configuration of outer facts or conditions that can draw you out of alignment.  The more you step outside of your own suffering, step outside of the dream you are dreaming, the greater capacity you have to repeatedly step outside your own dream.

As for the other .1% or so that will matter a year from now, you won’t feel the same about it a year from now as you do today, as long as you are willing to suspend any judgment about what it means.  This means you don’t give yourself to conclusions that are at odds with what you really want.   You can check yourself at any time you’re feeling something unwanted by asking: am I giving myself to a conclusion that is set against my true desire?  This fosters a self rapport and an inner harmony that will carry you through even the toughest times in life.

Come to life with an open mind, an open heart and a willingness to let a wisdom greater than your own work through you.  It does so both visibly and invisibly every day.  Today is no exception, this year is no exception.  Solutions, answers, miracles happen in an instant and it all flows to us with ease when we let it. The “letting” is the key.

A few weeks ago one of our cats, Angel, transitioned.  Then last week another one of our cats, Muffy, was missing.  I was upset, angry really, I was not going to lose two cats a few weeks apart.  And I was jumping to all sorts of conclusions about what had happened to him.  In this frame of mind, I went out canvassing the neighborhood with his picture, knocking on doors asking – had you seen him?  I crossed the street to a home on the edge of a cul de sac and walked up to the doorway.  As I rang the doorbell, a sign to my left caught my eye.  It read: Be still and know that I  AM.  I just sort of froze in the moment and really took in the meaning of that sign and the message I felt the Universe was conveying to me in the moment.  All my action oriented efforts from this place of resistance will not bring Muffy home.

I stopped knocking on doors and went home to take the message in literally.  I meditated for a little bit and then I went about my day in mindfulness practice. Fully present with everything I was doing no matter how trivial it was.  No more banging anything into place.  I had conceded as much before that there was very little the locally focused me could accomplish and even less when approached with a resistant stance.  Now I was walking the walk.  No knee-jerk reactive thoughts, just being in the moment.  All judgment and conclusions suspended, I was at rest in still waters.  It also helped that I’d been actively doing a mindfulness practice so that it was easy to return to when I had found myself floundering.

Muffy walked in the door a few hours later much to our glee!  He was a little skinnier than usual but otherwise unscathed.  We exchanged kisses.  He is our one cat who loves to kiss and we fed him lots of tuna.

Florence Scovel Shinn has written: my ship comes in over a calm sea.  Makes sense, doesn’t it?  I thank Universe/Field/Spirit for the reminder earlier in that day – Be still and know that I AM.  The Universe is continually in conversation with me; this time I was taking note and listening.

The winds of grace blow all the time. All we need to do is set our sails.

~Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa~

It is such a relief to be reminded that as outer conditions don’t always seem to
swing into agreement in the ways I want them to, that there is Grace.  As Florence
Scovel Shinn once wrote, I am under Grace and not under Law.  I am reminded
again that I live under the umbrella of a Benevolent Universe.  The scales are
inescapably tipped in our favor.  And so, I set my sails with a deep surrender,
which is not to say I cease to have my desires, but is to say I make peace with
the way things are now.

]]> http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2009/03/02/tranquility/feed/ 0 Beth/Bethie waterlilies1 http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2008/12/18/882/ http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2008/12/18/882/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:33:38 +0000 heartsdeesire http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2008/12/18/882/ ]]>

I cannot lose
anything that
belongs to me by
Divine Right.
I am under
grace and not
under law.

~Florence Scovel Shinn

Believing in someone is a force for the good.

Be Still.
Breathe deep.
And know that I am God.

Close your eyes
Fall in love
Stay there

It’s just a chapter, it’s not the whole story.

I cast this burden on the Christ within and
I go free to be loving, harmonious and happy.

Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve -
fear or faith.

Is this consistent with who I choose to be?

The aim of practice is being in love
not the good stuff of being in love.

Who knows what’s good, what’s bad.

The Universe knows what it’s doing, I can
rest in that.

All kinds of things can happen, these doors open,
when we do.

We can never be free of something we are judging.

You are not willing to have what you want for some
good reason, until you are willing.

The ways and means are not your job, the Universe
will provide.

Do I really know this to be true?  (this one is excellent to
snap you out of any kind of feel bad story that you are locked into)

(Note on authors: Rumi authored the close your eyes one, Florence
Scovel Shinn did the cast your burden piece, a couple of these are
my own and generally the rest come from Philip Golabuk, founder
of The Field Center.  “Do I really know this to be true?” is a version
of question no. 2 in Byron Katie’s work: The Four Questions)

The idea behind the Law of Attraction is not new. The concept can be found
in Hinduism and, due to the influence of Hinduism on Theosophy, it is mentioned
in early Theosophical texts, as well. In 1877, the term “Law of Attraction” was used
by Helena Blavatsky in her first book on esoteric mysteries, Isis Unveiled: Secrets
of the Ancient Wisdom Tradition. In 1902, a principle similar to the law of attraction,
but not named by that phrase, was mentioned in As a Man Thinketh by James
Allen (1864 – 1912). The title derives from the ancient Jewish Book of Proverbs,
chapter 23, verse 7: “As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so he is.”

In 1906, William Walker Atkinson (1862 – 1932) used the phrase in his New Thought
Movement book, Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World.
Atkinson was the editor of New Thought magazine, a student of Hinduism, and the
author of more than 100 books on an assortment on religious, spiritual, and occult
topics. The following year, Elizabeth Towne, the editor of The Nautilus Magazine, a
Journal of New Thought, published Bruce MacLelland’s book Prosperity Through
Thought Force, in which he summarized the principle, stating “You are what you
think, not what you think you are.” The phrase “Law of Attraction” appeared in the
writings of the Theosophical authors William Quan Judge in 1915, and Annie Besant
in 1919.

By the mid 1900s and continuing into the early 2000s, various authors addressed
the topic under a range of terminology, such as positive thinking, “mental science”,
“pragmatic Christianity”, “New Thought”, “practical metaphysics”, Science of Mind” /
“Religious Science” and Divine Science. Among the mid 20th century authors
who used the term were Sri K. Parvathi Kumar (1942) and Alice Bailey (1942),
as well as Florence Scovel Shinn (1925).

~The Writings of Florence Scovel Shinn~

-The Writings of Florence Scovel Shinn