You Will Do Amazing Things

Good morning!  It's a brand new baby day!  A brand new opportunity to do amazing things!

Don't think you can?  I know we all have our ups and downs, and sometimes we need a little help remembering who we are and what we are capable of.  So this morning I am going to share with you an AMAZING person, singer and musician, who is here to remind you exactly who we are and what we can do.

I invite you to close your eyes as you listen to this song.  Really LISTEN to it.  Hear the lyrics, what they mean and what they are saying.  He is singing to YOU!  He is singing about YOU!

Take it in... let the words wash over you.  Allow your heart to open up a little more to the amazing possibilities of Life...

I hope you started singing along with him around 3:20,  I can't help myself.  It opens my heart, fills it with love and brings tears to my eyes.  I realize, despite the way things in this world may appear, it's all good.  We've got this.

Think of what we are doing collectively... God is all there is, in each and every one of us.  More and more people are waking up to the Love that God is.  With God, all things are possible.  God is in us, as us and through us... We will do amazing things!

This song is filled with spiritual principle and fabulous reminders.  Really listen to the lyrics... he is singing your Truth!  Let this be a theme song for your day.  :-)

If you enjoyed the video, know he is even more amazing live!!  We are blessed to have Michael Gott performing at the Center for Spiritual Living Capistrano Valley in April - more details to come!!

In the mean time, you can visit his website: www.michaelgott.com or find more videos available on YouTube.

Now go forth this day, your heart filled with Love, and remember, you are capable of and will do amazing things!  Right here right now!  And so it is!

Meditation, Purpose & Emerson

What is your plot of land?

This Sunday was our final week in our month on meditation. Rev. Dr. Heather Clark talked about using meditation as a tool to connect with the very essence of who we are and to ask how to manifest our good in the world. To ask "What is trying to manifest through me?"

I can't think of a more practical role for meditation.

I've always wondered if a strong life's purpose was innate in some people or was it something developed, something nutured and encouraged to grow until it then took on a life of its own. I remember watching the movie "The Secret," and when Neal Donal Walsch said that there is nothing declaring what you have to do or be, I felt a great sense relief. But while I desire freedom of choice there is a longing to have a strong sense of purpose, a strong sense of your plot of land.

I say "plot of land" because Sunday's talk from Rev. Dr. Heather made me think of Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance." Whether our true calling is predetermined or self chosen it doesn't matter as long as we know how to find it.

Because ultimately I know that no one is going to tell me what color my parachute is. Because ultimately I know that every answer in a multiple choice quiz is a compromise of who I am. Because ultiimately I know that it's even more than taking your "own counsel" ... it's tapping into who you truly are for the answers that truly matter.

I'm going to share a couple paragraphs of Emerson's "Self-Reliance"

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Answering that question of "what is my work" or "what is my purpose" is the stuff that builds lives and the satisfaction and happiness that comes when one works in harmony with their true nature and gifts. And as Rev. Dr. Heather Clark pointed to the not so subtle shift between "How do I draw abundance into my life?" as "What is it that wants to be created through me?" The second question draws you into alignment with your greatest good, your greatest expression and therefore your greatest gift.

Listening to the Voice of God, I Know.

Have you ever found yourself not knowing what to do so you do nothing? I have and I don’t like it. I don’t like feeling powerless, at effect, limited by my conditions. I don’t like it because there really is nothing for me to do and we live in a world of doing. It’s true, when I am stuck I cannot ‘do’.  But something in me knows – I can be. Just be. I sit in the silence and listen to It. It is my intuition, the voice of God within.

Sometimes I listen for a minute, or five, or thirty. I just listen. Yes, I get interrupted, yes, I start over and yes, I listen every day.

Learning to listen to my intuition was a journey. You see, I was a doubter. I was a young person who thought answers came from what I could see, touch and know around me out in the “real world”. I did not yet trust that a valid answer to any real question could come from my gut, a hunch or simply because I felt it. It wasn't even that I belittled the idea of intuition I simply didn't acknowledge it as an adult experience. To me, knowing not feeling, proving not trusting and listening to my head not my heart was a sign of behaving like an adult.  If you know me, well you know I got over that old idea! I still appreciate wisdom and knowledge. If anything, today I sway on the side of my intuition. I might say to my husband “I think there’s something up with the car” and he will ask "what?" And I really cannot give him an answer that means anything to him or the mechanic. I respond, “I don’t know, it just doesn't feel right.”   And, in a few days he will say something like hm, I have to take the car in for “name the mechanical diagnosis”. I didn't know what was wrong but I sure sensed it. I love this example because I know that there is not a part of my life where my intuition does not “work”.  Often, I am inspired
with intuition in my work creating or presenting a lesson, listening or teaching.  I love living by my intuition and I love knowing that my hunches, my gut, my intuition are all part of my spiritual maturity.

So, when I find myself stuck with a question, a decision, a dilemma big or small I know I really can just stop. Stop in my tracks not because I can’t do, but because I can just be. Almost anytime and anywhere I can pause and listen. There are very few, if any exceptions.  I find there are many opinions, ideas and answers available to me out in the world and what I know is my best answers come from within. I would suggest that is true for all of us. The answer, words, direction is always known within each of us if we just listen. Listen to the voice within, listen to our heart, listen to It, our intuition.

This month our spiritual inquiry at our center is to connect to our intuition.  Wherever you are on your spiritual journey you are welcome to join us in this powerful inquiry. I’m excited to see where it takes me and to share it with you!

Conversations with God

Conversations with God

I asked three teens from our In-Flight youth group to share their thoughts about Conversations With God. Their insights are shared here.

"I like to play with my dollhouse, because it makes me really happy when I'm sad," says four year-old Mari in response to my bundle of questions, of which included," What do you do to make yourself happy when you're sad?" and, "how does it make you feel, calm or excited?" This, like many of the other answers I might have received from other younglings, astonished me mostly because it is something we all simply do, a universal reaction to certain situations that could be uncomfortable or different. We, as people, tend to turn to our favorite activities when faced with difficult tasks. Upon finding the topic, Listening and Having a Conversation With the Voices of God, I immediately asked for some answers from the children, whom I like to think of as the Wise-Ones because all questions we may have can almost always be answered by them. So, in Mari's case, I see her 'playing with the dollhouse' situation as a sort of initial invention of how she perceives life to be, or how she would like it to be. In some other activities we may include ourselves in for enjoyment or to change a mindset, I can see this in play as well. So I see this as the Universe, or God, or Spirit, or however you prefer to title It, speaking directly to me, and listening, I can receive some of the answers I desire.
-Kaylee Allen

This Wednesday I attended a Wednesday Wisdom concert with my mom and had an out of  mind and out of body experience. I attended a Anton Mizerak concert with soothing sounds of nature and stories about his journeys in nature and becoming one with the universe. His music inspired me to just stop throughout my everyday life and to just listen to the sounds around me and breathe.  Mizerak told the group about his music-making process and how songs come to him through the birds, the trees rustling in the wind and the weather.  We learned chants which led in to a powerful visualization/meditation that Mizerak guided us the whole way through. As I was meditating to the beautiful music I had an eye-opening realization. I realized that all of his songs and chants were voices speaking to me from the universe and that I was really listening to God through the music that Mizerak was singing.  At the end of his concert all I could think was Wow! It was almost a "what just happened" kind of moment. On the way out of the center my mom and I bought one of his CDs that is full of peace, relaxation, healing, and overall the voice of God.
-Katie Isola

Some people, like my friends, may find it strange, but I spend a lot of time talking with adults. I love it! I like the different maturity levels, the different types of humor, and the diverse varieties of advice that they all have to offer to teens, like me. So when I talk to my best friends' mother, Octavia Tuohey, we have some really hysterical conversations, and then some really deep ones, too. We talk about her son and daughter, Grace and Gabe (my friends), and how they used to express themselves as small children. She says, "From the time my kids could talk I knew they were old souls. Gabe is a little autistic, and sometimes he used to mentally go somewhere else when he was bored or sometimes just when he wanted to. So when he was little I used to ask him ,'When you go away little bit where do you go, and why can't I go with you?' And he responded with, 'Anyone can go there. It's my special place I go whenever I want to. Everyone has a little autism like me, just in a different way. Anyone can go if they want.' And that just made me so proud to know that he knew the truth. Even though some people think autism can be really bad, he reminds me that everyone has that part of them that may be apart of some bigger power; a power that we can't comprehend." From the time I met Grace, Gabe and Octavia I knew that they each had something to teach me. They taught me the true meaning of brotherhood and sisterhood, and friendship. Octavia also told me of Grace's godliness. "I used to take Grace and Gabe with me everywhere. One time I took them to see one of our friends. I never told them though that she was sick, she had a tumor in her brain, and she wasn't doing very well. So I was talking with my friend and I stopped to do something that called me into the other room, but I quickly returned to see that Gracie had her hand on the woman's forehead. Grace told me that she had an 'Ow-y!' on her head and she could feel that it was hurting her. I know that Gracie has an ability that is really special, and the fact that she was using it at a very young age really amazed me! I am so blessed to have my twins! They are sooo talented!" When Octavia told me this I couldn't help but think that this was God in action. And when Pattie said that the theme was Voices of God I thought of Octavia telling me these beautiful things. Octavia is the voice of god, as are her children, as am I. And I am absolutely grateful to know that.
-Karyssa Allen