Blessing Everything

Marilyn Gordon, CHt, CI

Blessing everything is a revolutionary practice that harks back to the beginning of time. It means that you extend heartfelt good will and the possibility of transcendence to everything. This is revolutionary because it is not always easy. In fact, it can be extraordinarily daunting at times; and yet there is so much freedom and potential for living an uplifted life involved, that it is something to consider. 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.

Just imagine blessing your computer when it crashes. Imagine blessing someone who hurt you in the past. Imagine blessing both your enemies and friends - or even your illnesses. Imagine blessing something you condemn or criticize or feel unhappy about or feel jealousy toward. Imagine blessing someone who has been unkind to you. Or someone who has tailgated you on the highway. Imagine even blessing someone who has abused you.

How can we do this? What about injustice? Should we have a right to our rage and indignation? Yes, we have a right to all of our feelings, and it is very good for us to acknowledge them and pay deep attention to them. It is good for us to know what we feel and to profoundly honor our experiences. There are some very unkind and malevolent people and things in the world, and it is important to know how we feel about them. It is crucial for us to know our sadness, grief anger, rage - all of our experiences. But do we want to wallow in them? When can we say that we've come full-circle with them? When can we call ourselves healed? When we are ready, and we all know instinctively when that is, we can say, "Yes, I feel my indignation (or sadness or fear), and I bless you." 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. "I bless my printer that won't work. I bless that person who said derogatory things about me. I bless those perpetrators who know not what they do. I bless my parents who were doing the best that they knew how to do at the time. I bless myself, as I'm doing the best that I am able to do given all the circumstances." A Course in Miracles says, "I can see peace instead of this." This means that I am at the helm of my perception and my reality. I can shift to a healing reality whenever I am ready and able, after I've allowed myself to experience my experience. Then I can transform my experience and re-perceive reality. 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.

When you bless, it doesn't mean that you don't discipline your children. It doesn't mean you don't create your boundaries and say, "No, you can't do that." It doesn't mean that you don't handle political issues. It doesn't even mean that there are times when it is necessary to pick up your sword. It does mean that there is an underlying blessing that can take place - not just blessing for "our side"-but fundamental acknowledgment of the essential light that is at the core of all things. And in this reality shift of blessing, something happens to the external reality. It transforms.

The Sufi poet Rumi said,

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the Soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.

Rumi's "field" is not "out there" in a farm or forest somewhere. It's inside, and it's our divine birthright to "lie down beside the still waters" whenever we can be conscious enough to remember.

Someone sent me an email about blessing by a man named Pierre Pradervand, and it struck a chord in me. The article was translated from French and said essentially that blessing is that which wishes unconditional good for others from "the deepest chamber of your heart." 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."

But, you may ask, what about evil? Can we bless the horrors of terrorism or war, of the great acts of perpetration by governments and individuals? In Star Wars, Obi Wan Kenobi says to Darth Vader, "You can slay me, but even then I will be more powerful than you." Can you bless Darth Vader for helping to make the forces of the light saber more powerful? Can you have compassion for a man like Darth Vader (or any other so-called evil force) who is only a shell of a being, doing what he came here to do - and ultimately making his adversary more powerful? An enemy can make you stronger, teach you something about yourself. Can we bless this force?

One more book called The Book of Mirdad, speaks of great acts of horror and terror as the tearing away of the veils that separate us from our understanding and experience of the divine. This book, written by Mikhail Naimy (a close friend of Kahlil Gibran) in Lebanon in 1948, said this: Man tears his flesh in shreds and spills his blood in streams. While God, the Father-Mother, lovingly looks on. For He knows well that Man is tearing but the heavy veils and spilling but the bitter gall that blind him to his oneness with the One. (p. 43)

So here there is opportunity for blessing as well, where it least seems to be. All of our trials are calculated to enlighten us, though we may come though them kicking and screaming with the pain we feel. It's all meant to take off our blinders and strip us of our mistaken notions about what is real and what is not, what is good and what its evil, what is death and what is infinite.

We keep on doing our best to uplift our lives and the lives of others. Blessing everything can help us to do this. The tricky part is remembering. It is only too easy to remember what hurt us. It is perhaps more challenging to extend a blessing from the heart; yet it carries with it a great abundance of blessings for ourselves.

Marilyn Gordon, CHt, CI
Marilyn Gordon is the author of Extraordinary Healing: Transforming Your Consciousness, Your Energy System and Your Life. She can be reached at Center for Hypnotherapy, 1(800) 398-0034; 510) 839-4800; Fax - (510) 836-0477; www.hypnotherapycenter.com; www.extraordinaryhealing.com; mgordon@hypnotherapycenter.com