Grand Rising! It's a Brand New Baby Day!

Today's episode is about how to have a successful brand new baby day, each and every day, from this point forward in your life. 

It's about personal self awareness, knowing your oneness with Spirit, knowing what you are feeling at any given moment, and knowing how you react to those feelings.

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Transcript

The Centers for Spiritual Living Global theme for March is That’s How We’ve Never Done It and the topic for the first week of March is It’s a Brand New Baby Day!  This month will be a dive into successfully living in today and moving beyond past or future.   

But first, the intro!

Welcome to Fearlessly Feral Living!  Broadcasting to you from the Woogie Ranch, out here in the back 40 of northwestern Nevada, where I’m a half hour away from the nearest gas station and grocery store!   

Our MISSION is to provide a strong and unshakeable inner foundation that works for long term successful living.

Our PURPOSE is to activate inner self awareness.

Our VISION is a world in which everyone lives wild and free.

 I’ve been reading a new daily meditation book.  It isn’t organized by dates but by topic. Just this morning I did a search on creativity, and found a reading that so perfectly applied to my talk topic for this episode that I wanted to read it to you:

 It begins with this quote by Ernest Holmes:“I know I am now at the threshold of all good, wisdom, and Truth. All the good I can embody is now mine. I have only to open the portals of my soul and accept that which is ready to express through me.” – Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind, p.293 ∞ 

Opening Day at the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball stadium brings back memories. I believe opening day excitement to be true for any sport and any sport arena. With a record free of loss, and anticipation of a successful season, opening day is also a ritual of loyal fans gathering with other afficionados to welcome another season. 

Each day of your life is an “opening day” to achieve something new or increase your personal value. You are Spirit’s outlet. Your job here is to become an outlet for its Wisdom, Intelligence, Love, Beauty, and Creativity. Life is flowing through you as pure Spirit. Because you are “God Stuff,” your word has power to manifest itself in concrete form. Now is the time to open to what you want and create your vision. Listen to that still, small voice that is tugging for your attention. You will duplicate what you understand. No time to be vague; you must be definite in your desires to be able to achieve your goals. Take a few minutes in silence to allow the Infinite to speak to you. Add visioning to your daily schedule to prepare your opening. Mind, as Law, is helpless without your direction. All the good you can embody is yours now. Declare the command to open the doorway to your future. It will be done unto you! ∞ 

I demand my vision be brought into substance. I have prepared the opening and my demonstration is brought alive in my experience right now. Rev. Susan Carol Dexter Interfaith & Religious Science New Berlin, Wisconsin

It’s a brand new baby day!  And a brand new baby month, where I am inviting you to be curious about being and doing things differently than ever before.  That’s how we’ve never done it.  That’s what I want to see this month.  I want to see people doing things they’ve never done before, or doing the same things in different ways.  But in order to do, we must first be, so I want to continue this talk by playing one of my favorite games.  I call this game “what if?”  It’s part of a spiritual practice called curiosity.

What if you could wake up each morning and automatically be filled with gratitude and joy, peace and equanimity.  What if you could do this without effort?  Without consciously having to sit down and meditate, or go within and assess what you are feeling and change it?  

What if you could use this brand new baby month to be and do things differently than you’ve ever done them before?

 Seems to me like that would be a grand rising indeed.  In my circles lately, we’ve been talking about grand risings.  Lots of doing things differently.  In fact, it is the year long theme of Centers for Spiritual Living this year.  A couple of weeks ago I attended our annual convention where almost every speaker greeted us by saying “grand rising.” And what a grand rising it was!  That convention was different than any other CSL convention I’ve ever experienced, except the integration conference in 2011.  We did things differently, and I was in awe, I was inspired, I was fully and completely engaged in the consciousness of a grand rising, and when it all ended, I was very very tired.

Turns out it takes a little work to affect a grand rising.

Manifesting a grand rising in our lives means thinking, speaking and, ultimately, as a result of that, doing differently than we ever have before.

And I have learned that how we do the small things is how we also do the big things.  How we experience day to day things is typically how we also experience our years, and our lives. 

 So I want to invite you today to consider a grand rising in your own life, one day at a time, by taking this brand new baby day and beginning to change things.  

Here’s some ways to do that:

Consider this:  we are each unique and individualized manifestations of spirit. Physical walking breathing talking godlings.  Now think about god. Think about what we’ve been told about god, think about what we witness about god:  that it is ever reaching higher and higher, ever evolving into something greater.  And by Its very nature, because It created us so that It could experience the physical, we are also called, invited, nudged and pushed to reach ever higher and higher in our own lives.

We are called to be more and more godlike, in all our affairs, 24/7.  This really isn’t a tall order.  After all, we are a part of god and it is a part of us.  We could ask ourselves:  what if I really and truly believed that I was a part of god and it was a part of me?  If that is true, then I could also ask myself:  what would god do in this situation, and then I could do that. 

There is one other practice that I believe is essential in effecting a grand rising in our lives, in experiencing each day as a brand new baby day, where, as Ernest Holmes puts it,  “The thoughts of the tomorrows and the yesterdays are swallowed up in the great realization of the Perfect Here and the Complete Now.”  ~ Ernest Holmes, SOM 531.2

It takes personal self awareness, knowing ourselves fully and completely, knowing our feelings at any given moment, and knowing how we react in times of stress and fear, and knowing how to restore our faith when faith has disappeared.

This means we decide, each and every day, upon awakening, to dive into ourselves and make ourselves aware of what is going on inside of us.

 How do I feel today?  

Can I accept all of those feelings without judging them and also work towards changing those that don’t serve me, with compassion?

Am I blaming myself for something that happened in the past?

What are my intentions for today?

What actions do I wish to accomplish today?  And have I been practicing good self care in establishing my to do list?

How do I wish to show up today in my relationships with other people?

If you are new to this practice, you may be thinking that you don’t have time for this. 

I understand.  

But it is essential.  And the reality is that once you have a consistent and persistent introspective practice under your belt, it can be done in a very short amount of time, and can be done even while in the shower!  Or, in my case, feeding the horses!

So let’s break this down a bit and see if I can illustrate how manageable this process is.

Let’s talk first about those pesky little things called feelings.  Feelings begin with a statement that says, “I feel.”  Not “I think.”  A thought is an opinion.  A feeling is a state of consciousness or an emotional frame of mind.  If I asked you right here and now what were you feeling, would you be able to tell me?  If we were out together and got ourselves into a difficult situation and I asked you what you were feeling, would you be able to tell me?  I have news for you, in my experience working with people, the majority of them have not been able to tell me what they were feeling at any given moment.  

And yet, one of the most pervasive values of our time and culture is that we must be true to ourselves.  How are we supposed to be true to ourselves if we don’t know what our truth is?

So begin to identify your feelings.  I suggest going to google and doing a search for feelings lists.  This is actually a fun exercise and I did it while preparing for this talk, just to see if anything has changed since the last time I did it.  This time, I noticed that they now have feelings lists with faces to match.  They have feelings lists with definitions.  They have feelings lists for non violent communication.  There are all sorts of feelings lists out there.

Here’s some feelings for you:   Joyful. Amazed. Awe. Bliss. Delighted. Eager. Ecstatic. Enchanted. Energized. Engaged. Enthusiastic. Excited. Free. Happy. Inspired. Invigorated.

 Here’s some more feelings:  anger, love, sadness, joy, confusion, happy, fearful, affection.

Once you are able to begin to identify your feelings, remember not to judge them.  Just notice them.  

Then take a deeper dive and notice how you typically react when you are feeling something.  For example, what do you do when feeling anger?  Flight or fight? 

What do you do when feeling confused?  

What do you do when feeling love?  Or joy? 

Here’s what I know about feelings:  we need to allow them but not necessarily act on them.  We need to acknowledge them without judgement but be able to discern which ones serve us in accomplishing our mission and living true to our values and vision for our life.  We need to know how to release the ones that are not serving us and replace them with feelings that serve us better.  And we need to know how to use prayer to do that.

And with prayer we are right back to god.  To knowing the essential and elemental truth of who and what we are:  perfect and individualized manifestations of god.

 And now we can use affirmative prayer to wake up each day from this point forward, knowing that on this brand new baby day, we can each do things like we’ve never done them, we can each wake up liberated, joyful and enthusiastic to greet life, and on those days that we don’t, we can use our connection with god to allow with compassion what is going on with us, but also know our truth, and we can move outward doing what is ours to do in this world.   

I close with this quote by Ernest holmes:

 “I rise to meet the new day, filled with confidence and strength. I rise and go forth into the dawn, inspired and refreshed by the Living Spirit within me.” ~ Ernest Holmes, SOM 532.2  

I thank you for listening and for your support, and I am knowing fearlessly feral living for me and for you! 

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