Living Consciously      June 22, 2009

Dear friends,

One of my favourite workshop exercises is to have attendees ask each other one question over and over for about five minutes.  The question:  What do you like about yourself?  Later I thought, That would be a good question to ask someone when you first meet, in place of the usual, What do you do?  Another version might be: What is the best thing about you? 

The lesson for most people at the workshop was their reticence or discomfort in saying such things aloud.  We are confronted with our fear of being misjudged or a sense if impropriety. It is not easy for most of us to come up with more than one or two attributes that we admire in ourselves.  Someone said, if you asked what I do not like about myself, I could go on for an hour!  That is a sad comment on our self assessment.

There are so many wonderful qualities that we all have and that we share so readily.  Our sense of  humor, our compassion, our generosity, our creativity, our ideas, our willingness to listen, our innate optimism are part of our natural way of being.  We are each endowed with the capacity for love and joy and the ability to express them effortlessly.  

Making a gratitude list is a good practice, but why not start a second list of personal qualities that we like about ourselves?  What if we awoke each morning and added a new trait to the list.  Before long we would have a new sense of who we are and what we have to work with every day.  Soon we would discover that the best thing about us is not what we own or what we have achieved in the world, but how we have lived up to our spiritual nature.

Peace and Blessings,

Rev Carol Carnes 

Living Consciously June 23, 2009

Dear friends,

This is the planting season for us in the North. We do not see flowers in our yards for months at a time. The garden shops are crowded with color-starved Canadians! Sowing and reaping are long time metaphors for the creative process. There is great wisdom in nature and observing her can be quite instructive when we are attempting to bring forth newness in our personal experience.

The seed is implanted in the soil; the soil takes over; time passes; a tiny sprout appears above ground; we smile, knowing that the full blooms of summer are on the way to us.

In life we are not usually that patient with the flowering of our desires. We do not recognize first sprouts. We negate the necessity of leaving the seed idea alone to do its thing. We forget to water it with cheerful expectation and the light of our conviction. We say, well I guess it is not God’s will for me to have this now.

The first sprout can be as subtle as noticing your completed idea around you. You begin to see it everywhere. When we become embedded with prosperity ideas, for example, we see how lavishly life is supplied by an unseen intelligence. If love is what we are embodying, we notice our hearts opening to others in compassion and caring. We feel a deeper connection with the world.

Most creations evolve through us and appear outside of us when they are fully developed. That is the recognizable stage, but prior to that the little indications are there. Our job is to celebrate the small changes, knowing that something wonderful is growing in our personal garden.

Peace and Blessings,

Rev Carol Carnes