What if Lent is More Than Giving Up Chocolate?

As I write this, tomorrow is Fat Tuesday aka Shrove Tuesday, 2010.  The day after that lent begins.

Almost ten years ago when the book "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz was published, I was right there buying my copy from my local bookstore, devouring its every word.  (FYI!  I am not so much trying to sell you a copy of the book as I wanted a way to legally include a copy of what the book looks like in this blog post.)



Even back then I felt that in truth, if I simply followed the first agreement, (Be impeccable with your word.  The word impeccable was defined as "without sin".) not only did the first agreement seem to incorporate the other three, but my life had to change for the better.  Why?  For the most part, we can only think one thought at a time.  Every time I thought about my self being impeccable was a moment I wasn't thinking of my self as unimpeccable.  That probably sounds like a big, "DUH!"  Yet almost ten years later I realize how many moments I thought of my self as unimpeccable in whatever way, shape or form.

Then in 2002 I made a written commitment to myself to become 100% impeccable in the way I felt was described in the book, "The Four Agreements".  I didn't really know how I would do this or how long it may take.  At the time, I also thought that I somehow would not be allowed to consider my self impeccable until I was impeccable in the physical 100% of the time.

In other words, I was functioning under the illusion that I look at the outer (physical manifestation) and review who I have been, what I've done, stuff like that.  Then in my mind if I wasn't perfect, I would not be allowed to declare my self impeccable without being a liar.

Since I've come to realize (okay and granted I have no proof and can only speak for myself.  Yet I am so much more happy now than I ever have been.  So something is working/helping.) as I stand firmly in the power of the present moment to affirm and agree with the truth of who I am in the sight of Divine Love Intelligence (and in the sight of Divine Love Intelligence I am now and always have been impeccable), this practice is what allows the Universe to make this so for me as my physical experience.

I can't say I am unimpeccable and have the universe manifest me as impeccable.

I also like to think of it like the following: You tell someone you love them and they are awesome.  You honestly feel this way and believe this with all your heart and soul.  Yet the person you share this love and sentiment with doesn't believe you are being truthful with them.  Or you love your teenager.  You know they are awesome, beautiful, smart, talented, a divine, child of God.  You know with all your heart and soul this is who they are.  Yet they just don't see it.  They just can't buy it.  It doesn't mean you are wrong about them.

There are mantras like "om namah shivaya", which means "God is in me as me".  Or quoting Rumi, "We are the ocean in the drop."  Or the Bible, "Be still and know that I AM God."  Our Creator knows we are divine, impeccable, without sin.  This is how our Creator created us, "In His Image".  This is how our Creator sees each of us.  Yet imagine if our Divine Creator was human, how it might be hurtful (and unimpeccable) every time we thought, saw, agreed, defined or identified our selves as something less than we are in Divine Truth? 

About now you may be thinking, "Bjork, what does that have to do with lent?"

I feel it is a safe statement to make that for most who still practice lent it has become a time to give up something for the lent season (in 2010 lent is 46 days ending with the celebration of Easter, Sunday, April 4th) as a way of honoring what Jesus gave up as he prepared to go through the death/resurrection prophecy.

What if through the years we stopped seeing the story of Jesus the Christ as allegory/metaphor and instead began taking it way too literally?

"Bjork, what do you mean?"

Let's say for arguments sake that the truth is we are all already 100% impeccable.  Not convinced this is the truth, when lent begins (Wednesday, February 17, 2010) we currently find our self identifying our self as impeccable about 20% of the time (to use a random number for the sake of example).  This means the other 80% of our present moments we are technically committing "self identity theft" by thinking/feeling/declaring/agreeing we are something less than the truth or om namah shivaya, God in Us as Us, Divine, the ocean in the drop.

Let's say for arguments sake that on Ash Wednesday (the first day of lent), we are fairly attached to this 80% of our identity.  Often we find ourselves saying things like, "I would never do that.  It's just not who I am."

Now if you are still with me, what if the true intent of lent was to give up during this period of time (as much as we are capable or will allow our self) our thinking/feeling/declaring/agreeing about our self in unimpeccable ways?  After 46 days of being focused on replacing unimpeccable with impeccable, in theory, our self identity must be changed from what it was when lent began.  That old ways of identifying our self would have to die and be let go of in order for our truthful, divine self to resurrect in its place in our physical manifestation experience.

I offer the following from the Catholic Encyclopedia for your consideration, "the real aim of lent is, above all else, to prepare men for the celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ...the better the preparation the more effective the celebration will be.  One can effectively relive the mystery only with purified mind and heart.  The purpose of lent is to provide the purification by weaning men from sin and selfishness through self-denial and prayer, by creating in them the desire to do God's will and to make His kingdom come by making it come first in all of their hearts."

What if God's will is simply for us to identify us as the amazing, blessed, beautiful, wonderful, divine, impeccable, children of God, healthy, wealthy, Well-Beings we are in truth?

What if instead of being afraid to let go of our "less than" self images feeling we have to do this or that to "get better", all we ever had to declare and agree with is the truth of who we are as Divine, impeccable children of God?  Because we declared it and agreed with it in consciousness, the laws of the Universe must make it so for us in manifestation?

I thought about all of this last lent season.  I set the intention to practice lent 2009 being more impeccable in every present moment.  I declared the image of the Laughing Buddha as my touchstone.  After all, I find it is a little bit funny or laughable that what I have been striving for I always have been.  I also thought that the Buddha, upon achieving enlightenment, had to laugh (or else he'd cry) knowing how easy enlightenment may have been had he trusted in his true self-identity.

I'll be honest, last year I didn't last all lent.  Maybe about two weeks.  And if I remember correctly, I only caught about 10% of my unimpeccable thoughts/agreements/ways I self-identified as me "less than".

I also had a simple mantra for my lent practice.

"Thank You, God, for restoring me to the impeccability from which I emanated."

It has been estimated we have about 60,000 thoughts per day.  If all you did was repeat this mantra once every ten minutes (6 X 16 = 96) of your waking hours (or six times once every hour)...well, that may just be 96 more times a day affirming, agreeing and declaring your true identity to the Universe than you had been previously.

I don't know about you, but I find it exciting to think that this practice of giving up some of your unimpeccable self for the 46 days of lent is not only harmless, but empowering.  And it won't cost you one legal tender cent.  Only time and focus to change your self consciousness.  Sounds like a win/win to me.  Sounds like a reason to celebrate my newly resurrected self-Identity when Easter comes to pass.

Now that I have presented the above amazingly brilliant and compelling arguments for practicing lent,

"What less than stellar way do you identify yourself that you may be willing to give up and replace with the truth of your identity? You are Divine.  
Always have been.  Always will be.  Unconditionally.  For there is no condition in the physical that can change this truth about your true identity.
You may believe this is not the truth about your Self and thus have this experience.  Yet, like the sun is always present even if it is momentarily obscured by clouds, your divinity is always present even if it is obscured by your momentary disbelief that divine is your true identity."

P.S.   The laughing Buddha photo is not one of my own.  To read more about it, click here.

Where the Wild Things Are

I know.  What an original title. 

I find it interesting sometimes...when I allow myself to ponder such things...what ends up in our awareness and why.  Today is the opening day for the movie, Where the Wild Things Are.  My youngest son (soon to be 25 years young) is psyched and I am sure has probably already seen it.  I will call him and ask him soon if this is true.

He's been psyched for months.  He loves this book.  Loves with a capital "L" and not just 'cuz it is at the beginning of this sentence.  I'd never read the book once.  Still wasn't even motivated to read it, although I will see the movie so I can better share my son's experience with him.

Part of me thinks, what's all the fuss?  I mean if it was that big of a deal wouldn't I have already read it.  I'm a reader.  And this book and its being brought to the silver screen seems to have a lot of buzz and a lot of love behind it.  Still, would I care if my son wasn't so in love with it?

While I can't with 100% certainty say that I would care without his excitement about it, I feel in my gut that I just wouldn't.  I mean I don't care about Hanna Montana, but if I had a young daughter who did...I just might.

Even with how much I love, love, love my son and am thrilled always to have ways to share his love, like this movie, it wasn't until I read the review today, which clued me in that the book is less than 400 words that I felt like I just may want to read it. 

I was going to Barnes and Noble today anyway.  So this was an extra bonus.  And if anyone at Borders is reading or Barnes and Noble, for that matter, I'm giving you a heads up why I have been choosing Barnes and Noble lately over Borders (for quite a while either was equally beloved by me).  Barnes and Noble has free wi fi access.  All else being equal...

So I enter Barnes and Noble and assume my best bet for finding the book is heading straight back to the children's section, which in the Manhattan Beach Barnes and Noble is where the children's section is.  And I'm looking and looking for the book and finally think I've spied it.  I pick it up and it is some sort of thinly veiled spoof of the book. Not actually what I am looking for.  So I take a second look around and if it had been a wild thing, it would have bit me.  That's how close I was. 

I had lots of choices.  Small version.  Paperback.  Hard cover.  I chose the hard cover.  Does that say something about me?  Does it matter?

I sat down at one of the kids table on the kids bench and proceeded to read the book.  My first thought...what's the big whoop.  I wanted to like it more.  I want to 'cuz of my son and his love for it.  So, I continued sitting there and thinking about that article in today's newspaper about how the book was controversial because it seemed to somehow show this boy's desire to bite his mother as not being a bad thing. 

The more I thought about the book and the article and my son's love for it; it morphed me to a place of "What if part of our suffering as human's is we are trying to get it right and police everyone else as to what is right, when in the perception of Divine Love right or wrong doesn't actually exist?"  And in under 400 words, (and yes, I have to admit I can certainly respect the artistic nature of the illustrations) the author was able to portray opposite views of what biting someone may mean and what punishment has to mean.  Or technically if we can actually punish someone if they aren't willing to see it that way.  And in that I can certainly respect a brilliance for writing something that can be seen in so many different ways.

I was so lost in thought that it took one of Barnes and Noble's employees asking me if I needed help to snap me out of it.  If she only knew.

Save the Boobs: ReThink Breast Cancer

It's October.  These days October seems to include rolling out the pink to make everyone aware of breast cancer.

So, I'm probably not going to be too popular because it appears to make a lot of people feel good and helpful when they participate in a cause, like breast cancer awareness.

Still, it makes me wonder.  What if all the awareness is the very thing that keeps it alive.  There is a saying in spirituality circles, where we talk about stuff like Universal Laws (the Law of Attraction is a Universal Law), "what you look for you find".

I can't speak for other cultures or for everyone, I don't know everyone.  Let me be clear I only speak for my self.  My observation is that we have been schooled over time to believe the caring and best thing we can do for our friends, loved ones and any one who will listen is to warn them about something bad that has happened to us so that it won't happen to them.

What if in the realm of Universal Law this type of behavior is actually so counter-intuitive and counter-productive as to almost be considered insane.  What if just because you have breast cancer and this experience is perfect for you (even though from the level of soul you may not understand why), while you sharing with me and warning me about it plants a suggestion seed in me turning that probability into a manifestation?  Now I end up with breast cancer too.

What if in the realm of Universal Law the sane behavior is women wearing pink and lots of people and companies jumping on the bandwagon, but to promote Women's Well-Being Awareness.  Then we have all of these women and people looking for all the reasons why they are well instead of looking to see if they have something wrong with them.  Our natural state is well-being.  The intelligence in each cell of our physical body (when left to its perfection) is perfection.  The intelligence is designed to attack viruses to bring us as back to our natural state of well-being.

What if illness is simply our body saying right now it's detected something that has thrown it out of whack, much like a stone thrown into a still pond, which sends the intelligence into action to do what it is programmed to do to bring it back to stillness (to extend the metaphor)?

Truth is I may be totally off base with all of this.  It just seems that it may be wise to not always blindly jump onto any bandwagon or for that matter jump off the bridge 'cuz all my friends are doing it.

We also have a saying in spirituality about deciding whether you want to serve a person's ego or their soul.

No amount of feeling bad can help anything get better.

If you want a reason to feel good, remember the truth about your whole self.  It's all energy.  All energy is Divine Love Intelligence.  This is first and foremost who you are.  Energy.  So you are already good.  You are already spiritual.  The intellegence in every cell of your body was designed perfectly for perfect well-being.  And since this is true about you, it is true about everyone.  Thus, it doesn't make you wrong or bad to decide you will not put your attention on breast cancer awareness because you choose to keep your awareness on well-being.

And what if this choice is actually the best thing you could do to eradicate breast cancer.  What if no more attention on breast cancer doesn't mean it's not still possible, but it does mean the likelihood is so remote that why would you put your attention on it?

P.S.  According to Susan G Komen website stats less than .15% (150 out of 100,000) of women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and less than .04% (40 out of 100,000) will die from it.  I understand it must be heart wrenching to experience and the loving part of us wishes no one ever had to.  It's just that I may not (nor may you) understand that there may be a perfectly good reason at the level of soul why the women who experience breast cancer do.  I'm just saying.

Also, in writing this it made me wonder if anyone keeps statistics on well-being.  This is the closest I came to finding something on Google.  As I write this in less than 7 days Deepak Chopra's new book, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul will become available October 13, 2009.  With the new FTC guidelines, I disclose that I have not read the book yet (it's not available yet as I write this) and if you buy one after clicking on the link, as an Amazon affiliate I will receive some sort of compensation.  Thank you.  The reason I will be reading it however is because ever since he came into my conscious attention in 1996, I've felt we have so much more control over our well-being than we are led to believe.  I also want to read more about what he has to say in regard to how up to now we have treated our physical bodies more like they are buildings (I believe he uses structure) than the intelligent replenishing entities they are.

"Health and disease often begin in our consciousness, so awareness is the first step in healing. In Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, Deepak Chopra eloquently and beautifully describes how to enhance our awareness and transform our health more dynamically and powerfully than had once been thought possible."
—Dean Ornish, M.D., founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute; clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco; and author of The Spectrum