Wednesday, October 9, 2002

Blessing

I will be away from Thursday to Sunday, co-leading a workshop with my good friend Joe Landwehr, (who is one of the most skilled astrologers in the world today). As I will be doing various things as a complement to his work, I decided to share with you a hand-out I will be giving on Blessing. Now you can be there with us in spirit. It is from the book Blessing - The Art and Practice by David Spangler.

"We look to the universe, to the world around us, to each other, and, if we are believers, to the invisible world of the sacred, and if we have one basic desire - voiced or not, recognized or not - it is that all these things be on our side. We want life to be our ally: helping us, empowering us, enabling us to be safe and happy. We want good things to come our way: our wounds healed, our loneliness banished, our power restored, our fears allayed. We want alienation to be replaced with belonging, impoverishment with abundance, bondage with liberation, and darkness with light.

We want to be blessed. And in our better moments, we want to be a blessing for others.

...The issue of identity is important. We identify ourselves in so many ways, but most often through our roles, or our possessions, or our social status. We may rarely say, 'I am myself. I am spirit. I am soul. There is a holiness in me. Therefore, I am someone who can bless.' For blessing is spirit reminding itself of who it is in the midst of its myriad incarnations and manifestations. Blessing is a conversation of recognition between myself, and myself within another. Blessing is a reminder of the love that ties at the core of us, waiting to become our blood and sinew, bone and tissue. If in the 'new physics' and the 'new cosmology' the stars remind us that we ourselves are made of 'star stuff' and therefore kin to the universe, then in a new, holistic spirituality, blessings remind us that we are made of spirit stuff, soul stuff, love stuff - 'blessing stuff' - and therefore kin to life and to each other.

When we bless, we are not just doing good. We are remembering this.

...A blessing is much more than just an act. It is an affirmation of our interconnectedness; it is the creation of an opportunity for the power of that connectedness to pour through into our lives and the lives of others. So in practicing the art of blessing, we are really practicing being connected. We are practicing how to discover and express those parts of ourselves that innately understand that connectedness and the wholeness that emerges from it.

In that context, whatever form it may take, blessing is at the heart of any spiritual practice. For ultimately all such practices are about remembrance, connectedness, wholeness, and being a participant in the flow of love that weaves the world together from the most numinous to the most material. They are not about how we may develop ourselves or become holy, saved, or enlightened. Spiritual practices are about how we give of ourselves, sharing our life, our presence, and our substance so that the body of creation may be seamless and the infinite may be reflected in the presence of the finite.

...Blessings enter our lives in many guises for many reasons and create various effects, all of which in some way leave us more capable or whole than we were before. There is no doubt that however they may manifest and whatever they may be, blessings make the world a lovelier, happier, and more creative place to live in. They enhance our capabilities, awaken us to new possibilities, and generally open a space for us in which something new and potentially transformative can emerge.

It is a good ecology to have in our world. And like an ecology, there is a niche for every possible type of blessing.

Furthermore, adding to the ecology of blessing is not fundamentally hard to do.

At heart, giving a blessing is really quite simple. We innately know how to do it, precisely because it comes from the heart, from a sense of caring and helpfulness. Every time you create safety and reassurance where before there was fear, you are giving a blessing. Every time you perform an act of kindness, providing money where there was poverty, shelter where there was vulnerability, food where there was hunger, love where there was loneliness, comfort and encouragement where there was despair and depression, you are being a blessing. There is no special technique other than having an open, generous heart and a loving, aware mind. You don't have to possess any particular gift in order to embody goodwill or to be kind and helpful.

In fact, being a source of blessing is a natural human attribute. It's an expression of those impulses we have to create community and to support life. That we have negative impulses, too, that take us in opposite directions in no way diminishes the potential we have to bless. It only demonstrates that we are complex and paradoxical beings, and that in all areas of our lives we need to make choices about how we will act and the effect we wish to have upon our world. Certainly there are times when giving a blessing comes more naturally. Blessing is easiest when it's simply the overflow from a joyous heart. But it's when we are able to make the choice to bless even though everything in us wants to curse and strike out that we demonstrate the power of the human soul to choose what builds life and creates wholeness.

...Within each soul is a passion: an inner fire born of love and of an intelligence profoundly immersed in the wholeness of all creation - therefore, an intelligence burning with compassion. A blessing is this very soulfire made manifest. When our angry and hurt heart chooses to bless in spite of its pain, then we ourselves become the kindling that enables this fire to release its light into the world.

If I think of a whole ecology, I can be overwhelmed and awed by the multiplicity of forms that life can take within it. Or, I can be filled with a sense of wonder at life itself and with a realization that I, too, am a manifestation of that life. Similarly, in thinking about blessings, I can be overwhelmed by the multiplicity of ways they can appear and be created and be defined. But that misses the point. Like life, all blessings come from a single source: the soulfire of an intelligent love and compassion willing to give of itself. Whether they're simple or complex, obvious or subtle, planned or spontaneous, blessings happen when this soulfire is released and shared.

Blessing happens when a heart opens and we find all of us there within it.|"

-David Spangler, Blessing - The Art and Practice

5:53:35 PM