March 30, 2009 @ 7:00am

The gifts of the Spirit spill out through me daily as peace, joy, wisdom, intelligence, healing, and love. My spiritual ground is firm and supportive. I know my stability lies in deep Spirit is today's affirmation from scienceofmind.com.
I awake this morning in a deep contemplation about the direction of my life, not really the direction because I know where I'm headed but I'm uncovering intricacies, the small nuances of the way I want to live. More importantly, really I'm endeavoring to explore how these elements fit into the new definition of myself and how my mind contends with affirmation of things that I have previously found shameful or I have struggled to assert a sense of choice around my choices. I get that it's all in my mind and it's all in spirit, God has made me a unique expression and why wouldn't I honor that in my living.
There is a part of me that has always lived life to beat of my own drum and it seems the older I get the more I desire to blend and yet blending feels so foreign and so incomplete and so boring. As I contend with these thoughts I get that my primary concern is to focus on spirit, the infinite intelligence that lies within me, the spiritual force that governs my living and the abundance contained with that. Also, I get that life is about balance, it's about exploration and it's about finding the right balance of things that make living interesting and full of vitality. Also I'm really interested in exploring more sides to myself, interested in exploring new ways of being and I'm interested in attending to my deepest most inner most desires and pleasures.
I'm taking my life back, so to speak. Giving myself permission to be me, in all of my complexity and in all of the ways that make me, me. I'm really interested in and want to use the force within me to effect my mind and thus my outer experience of the world. The book the Four Agreements always brings me back around to mind over matter and the ability to not be sucked into the world's psycho-social dysfunction. To be the light in the midst of darkness and to be the joy in a world that feels the need to be depressed and full of anxiety over financial matters. And I don't get it, money never makes you happy, so why allow it to make you unhappy. I find this time of chaos in the financial realm a good chance to return back to what is important and that are the people in our lives, to re-connect, to love and to be together but I can see the grip of consumption and materialism has a noose around the necks of most people. They are so bought into the idea of consumerism that even though they are not able to partake in this cycle of numbness, they still try. Talk of going to the dollar store is chic now, when it's not that the items are a dollar because I can't stand the dollar store, there is no value in much that they sell except when it is an actual quality product offered at a reduced price but not much.
I just caught myself focusing on others and thats not my goal, my job is to be conscious of my own actions and my own thoughts and my words. People are God made manifest, it is not my job to judge or rate their living, it is my job to be a positive example of how to live with peace, joy and in balance with the universal energy. Today I commit to reminding myself for as many moments as I can about the power and presence of the holy spirit in my life and to look to the presence for guidance, to relinquish control and allow things to transpire in a positive God way. I'm interested in being gentle with people, understanding and open to knowing that they too have the divine inside of them as well and they can use it when they choose to. I'm not in the least bit interested in making people's lives more unbearable, I'm invested with my whole heart and mind and spirit to see them reach the level of pure bliss and joy. All the spiritual teachers continue to say that laughter is the path to God and I wonder why that is. I guess God realized that laughter is simply the manifestation of happiness, the point where we are full of joy and so much so, it erupts into laughter. I want to make people laugh, smile, feel good about themselves and know how Godly they are, how divine and how exquisitely perfect they are.
Rev. Moira from Redondo Beach Church of spiritual living in her podcast reiterates over and over again that we can't control our external experiences but those experiences are experienced by us through our minds and what and how our minds selects to interpret these experiences. She also shares that there is a way out of this predicament and that is our ability to control our mind, thus in controlling our mind, in using our mind for the purpose of examining experience for it's truth, we can have a more wonderful experience with things that happen externally. And this concept is totally in alignment with the four agreements. I love the agreement about not taking things personally, if I fail to take it personal when people half-hazardously, careless or even with intent (which usually means they are unhappy and want to hurt any and everybody), if I don't take these acts against, or so called against me personally then what I realize in that moment is that their choices aren't about me and their choices are manifested in the lie they continue to tell themselves and their choices are actions that happen when they are not in alignment with the holy spirit and anything that happens outside of the holy spirit is not real, not as powerful and not as influential as those things that are masterminded with God consciousness. What a revelation, what a wonderful recognition and what a relief because my greatest challenge has been, why are people so mean, why do people treat others bad and why on earth do we as human beings do things to hurt others, it behooves me but I get it. This is my moment of epiphany when I get complete clarification about how to live life without allowing the negative forces to control my behavior. I choose divine intelligence and the holy spirit, I choose to connect with that in as many moments as I can and I choose to relinquish my need to know all the answers, I choose to surrender with complete comfort and knowing the support I need is always readily available to me. In a nutshell I'm taking back my life and that has been my intention for the last however long and today it feels real, tangible and something I can really do.
I am perfect and I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME!