Wednesday, July 30, 2014

I Choose to Send Blessings . .

When dealing with a sad and unpleasant situation with one of my sisters, I asked my standard Access question one morning: “What’s it going to take for me to get over this?”
Within minutes, I was reading FB posts and saw a reference from one of my friends regarding sending blessings to people who have hurt us.
I was guided to do a search on-line for more information and found an amazing hypnotherapist in California named Marilyn Gordon. She had a series of articles and one of them was simply entitled, “Blessing Everything.” http://www.hypnotherapycenter.com/art_ble.html
In it, she references extending “heartfelt good will and the possibility of transcendence to everything.” She went on to say:
When you bless, there is an immediate shift in you as the extender of blessings, in your reality, and whatever or whoever is the recipient of your blessings. It all becomes filled with light.
When you bless, you send the energy of healing out from your heart and mind. If you are visual, you might see a situation transformed and healed. You might experience it as sending light. You might feel it surrounded with a protective kind of energy. You might hear the words “bless you” reverberating in yourself.

I remember a Theta Healing class I took in 2005 with Asara Lovejoy and Kathryn Perry. Kathryn proposed the idea of sending blessings to people we encountered during the day. Just say, “Blessings, blessings, blessings,” to someone you see with car trouble, someone you see arguing, someone you see in pain. That helps them and allows you a way to be of service to the world. (Since I am an Empath, it also allows me a way to support the person and disconnect from their energy!)
I began to regularly do this, although I don’t think I really connected with the deeper meaning. I even taught it to my husband, Steve, and we would routinely send blessings when we saw an accident on the road. I guess I wonder if we were just “saying the words.”
Now, as I look more deeply into the process of sending blessings, I feel that I was just going through the motions. I want to connect more deeply with the people whom I am blessing. This desire is what led me to Marilyn Gordon and her work.
She also adds:
Blessing equals healing. Blessing means, “I see this situation from an expanded view. I know this is in my life for some reason. More than likely, I am to become powerful from this. Perhaps there is some message that I am receiving from this. I bless it, and I accept my power.”
If you are one of those with a steel-trap mind that plays tapes over and over of slights you’ve experienced, grievances, perceived failures, hostilities, you can use that same quality of steadfast attention by sending blessings rather than condemnation or resentment.

Marilyn references one of my favorites, A Course in Miracles, which reminds us, “I can see peace instead of this.”
THIS GIVES ME BACK MY POWER!!!!
I can choose to see peace, YES, I can choose peace, instead of the hurt, the wrong doing, the injustice, or whatever. If I can choose to turn over and over in my mind the hurt, the snub, the harsh words, then I can also choose to replace that little video of pain with one of PEACE and BLESSING.
Marilyn says it best:
If my mind is so strong that I can return over and over to thoughts of insufficiency or conflict, it can be equally strong in returning over and over to blessing.
Isn’t that brilliant?
She also references a French writer named Pierre Pradervand and shares this:
He acknowledged that difficulties teach you and that trials are blessings in disguise. He said, “It is impossible to bless and judge at the same time.” This desire to bless, he says, helps you to become a peacemaker, and “one day you shall behold, everywhere, the very face of God.”
So, of course, I had to investigate Mr. Pradervand! I found that he is an author and leader in the field of social justice and personal development. He wrote a book called “The Gentle Art of Blessing.” He has also written several other books.
His personal motto is:
In any situation, I can always express love. Nothing can ever prevent me from loving
I will write more about Mr. Praderand on another day, although I want to close with this quote:
"To bless means to wish, unconditionally and from the deepest chamber of your heart, unrestricted good for others and events; it means to hallow, to hold in reverence, to behold with awe that which is always a gift from the Creator. He who is hallowed by your blessing is set aside, consecrated, holy, whole. To bless is to invoke divine care upon, to speak or think gratefully for, to confer happiness upon, although we ourselves are never the bestower, but simply the joyful witnesses of life's abundance." From The Gentle Art of Blessing by Pierre Pradervand
So, will you join me is sending blessings, REAL, heart-felt blessings to those in our lives whom we may not understand or even WANT to bless? Send a blessing today to someone close to you. Bless them, let them go and witness JOY in your own life.