May you always feel and know God’s amazing Grace!

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I woke up this morning at my brother’s home in New Jersey. The the family is gone to my sister-in-law’s in San Antonio, Texas. Bella the cat and I are having Thanksgiving with friends. The house is quiet and cold. Something’s going on with the heat, but I am so very grateful for things just as they are.

I make morning prayers in bed before I get out of bed – often it takes an hour, not less than 15 minutes, even when I have to be up and out before 4:30 a.m. I love the prayer time. Prayer has completely altered my life. As A Course in Miracles says, “Prayer is the medium of miracles.” My life proves it, and that’s why I feel compelled to share every day.

So, I woke up this morning and began to pray, and the thought came in about what I would write for today. Spirit nudged, “What am I most grateful for?”

Even though I’ve been asked that question many times, I always check to see what the answer is, and has it changed at all.

The first time I can remember being asked that question that I still recall what I said was the very first weekend of ministerial training with the Ernest Holmes Institute. It was a weekend retreat and orientation at the Casa de Maria Retreat Center in Montecito, CA (which was devastated by the fires this year).

That was 2001, and my answer is about the same – although I have changed so much. SO MUCH shifting in my awareness, and yet here’s what it is:

I am most grateful for my awareness of Spirit.

My awareness of Spirit — which is also awareness of truth and Love, Beauty, Wisdom, Harmony, Wholeness and all of the spiritual qualities of God, the whole Kingdom, kit and caboodle — is what makes this journey in life “wonder-full”. Where it was once unbearable, it is now an adventure in Love and Light – for real.

I was sharing in Masterful Living class this week that, most families have one person in the family who seems to carry most of the emotion and drama. That was certainly me. I was constantly exploding with upset.

“I do not know what anything is for.” Lesson 25

Now I can see that this was the perfect healing and learning for me. Back then, I just felt tortured, bad and wrong.

When I was in my 20’s, my Mom told me that she thought I felt things more than most people, and I thought she was just not able to feel her own feelings as well as I’d like her to. But, now I know she was correct.

“It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters and circumstances are helpful.” M-4.I.A.4.

I am an empath. I feel a lot more than other people, and almost all of my spiritual student friends are either highly intuitive, highly empathic or highly sensitive, or some combination.

The ability to recognize what we’re REALLY feeling is just beyond the mental logjam of complaints, worries, opinions, judgments, grievances and criticisms that block the awareness of Love’s presence. Once I got some real headway with that, my intuition opened right up.

The more I take out the trash of my complaints I clear from my awareness, the more Clarity I have. The more I let that past go, the more I see everyone’s perfection, including my own.

“It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters and circumstances are helpful.” M-4.I.A.4.

I sometimes feel like the song Amazing Grace was written from my own heart. The miracle of healing has been so persistent and so amazing to me, and yet I know, through my teaching over the last ten years, that God’s Infinite Grace is there for us all. Not one left out. We must claim it.

I once was the drama queen in my family who would seem to cause so much upset and bring everyone down. I got labeled and blamed. I now know that I was carrying a lot of emotion for others. I was the one that wouldn’t be quiet about it.

“I’m never upset for the reason I think.” Lesson 5

My heroes are Jesus, Harriet Tubman, Joel Goldsmith, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. – liberators, each one of them. First we liberate ourselves, and then we have something to share.

Through self-forgiveness I learned that I could let the past go.
Through practicing nonviolence and nonjudgment, I learned I could practice being loving instead of being attacking. I learned HOW to change my mind and my heart through daily spiritual practice, and prayer has been the foundation of that. Prayer truly is “the medium of miracles”.

Where once I was lost, now I AM found.

Where once I would drag my whole family down with me into the sinkhole of my anger and upset, I now have been able to raise them up with me.

“What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?” Lesson 135

All of my relationships have become enjoyable, loving and kind. There are still some bumps, but not many, and they ALWAYS bring more Love and Light – they’re the way of clearing and healing when there’s resistance.

Now, when there’s a bump, I can hold the view from the mountaintop, like King spoke about on the day before he was assassinated.

The view from the mountaintop is the one of knowing that all is being brought to Love and Light.

Nothing can stop it.
And we are here to speed it along.

This day is Thanksgiving Day, such a big family holiday.
Let’s teach only Love today.

“Fear arises from lack of love.
The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.
Perfect love is the atonement.” T-2.VI.7.

The Atonement is the recognition that there is no separation.
All appearances of separation are false.

As I said in my Daily Spiritual Espresso on Sunday this week, it brings tears to my eyes still, because I still have a little bit of sadness for all of the opportunities to be loving that I missed. It still feels a little bit real to me.

But I don’t look back, except to continue to harvest the Wisdom and move forward with more Love, and more Love, and more Love. “Love holds no grievances.”

We can all be the fulcrum point of healing in our family.
We can all rely upon the Spirit for our healing.
We can all practice true forgiveness, which is non-judgment.

It requires no longer giving Love and acceptance in order to get anything back. We must give without attachment.

No need for recognition or appreciation.
We give Love because it’s our Divine Opportunity to be our True Self and be truly helpful.

It all gets so much easier to practice when we forgive ourselves for our debts and our trespasses.

I had to forgive myself for all the things I felt guilty about so I was no longer feeling horrible about myself. Self-forgiveness is the only way.

And that’s why I offer my Forgiveness Letter tool
Please get it and use it. It only works if you do it.

No matter how far gone things may seem in our relationships, Spirit knows the way back to Love if we’re willing, and even if we’ve never been there.

If we’re willing, Spirit will show us the way. That’s the Grace that is so amazing, so pure and uncomplicated. Our willingness is all that’s required.

Together we rise in God. And for this, and so much more, I am eternally grateful!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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