149 – May 29
“Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”—James M. Barrie
This is a story I heard years ago, origin unknown:
In the Chinese vision of Hell, many people are seated around a large table. The table is laden with fine food, piled high in the middle of the table, looking scrumptious and smelling delicious. At each place setting, there is a set of very long chopsticks with which each person can reach the food in the middle. But the chopsticks are too long for the people to be able to get the food into their mouths. So they are all wailing, angry and starving.
In the Chinese vision of Heaven, many people are seated around a large table. The table is laden with fine food, piled high in the middle of the table, looking scrumptious and smelling delicious. At each place setting, there is a set of very long chopsticks with which each person can reach the food in the middle. But the chopsticks are too long for the people to be able to get the food into their mouths. However, everyone here is fat and happy—because they are using their long chopsticks to feed the person across from them.
Someone once told me: “No one goes to Heaven until everybody goes.”
Hmmm. Rather gives you a different sense of your responsibility in the world, doesn’t it?
Today’s Affirmation:
“As I give to others from my abundance, I give to myself as well.”
My dear friend, Lorrie Kazan, wrote this great article – enjoy!
Prosperous Times
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an unchartered land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” — Helen Keller
This quote brings me back to the idea of asking, “What’s the down side of positive expectancy?” We’re hearing a lot of doom and gloom predictions these days; apparently doom and gloom is dramatic, sells papers, gets us hooked, but it doesn’t leave us anywhere we really want to go.
Edgar Cayce, who was the most documented psychic in history, often cautioned people about being too quick to judge their successes and failures. Psychologist and Cayce expert, Dr. Mark Thurston, expressed similar ideas in Venture Inward magazine that are relevant for us and our prosperity.
In How Do We Measure Success? Dr. Thurston reminds us that Cayce often nudged people to realize that “Sometimes when we seem to be failing most miserably in outer life, it provides an opening for our inner life.
Those of us who are looking at creating prosperity from the metaphysical level, which is from the inside out, can look with added interest at Cayce’s words. In 1943 he gave a psychic reading for a woman who repeatedly asked why her life was such a failure. She had all the outer proof: a cheating husband, failing marriage, estrangement from her children. But Cayce told her that from a greater perspective, “her life was a failure only if she stopped trying. Her soul-growth task was to avoid self-condemnation, be selfless, and keep recognizing the spiritual opportunity in what was happening.”
The readings tell us that no matter what the circumstance, there is always a spiritual opportunity. In fact, a reading revealed that Cayce’s remarkable talents were heightened in past lives, especially the one in which he was buried alive! While it would be great to have his phenomenal gifts, most of us wouldn’t consciously volunteer to develop them through such difficult lifetimes, but who is to say that we aren’t in that same soul process of becoming our highest and best selves?
Certainly, keeping one’s mind focused on spirituality and possibility seems healthier than what many of us do, which is habitually judge ourselves negatively and slip into fear-based, negative self-talk.
Sometimes old habits die hard but they can be replaced. What if we don’t judge our circumstances and ourselves from our limited earthbound perspective?
Cayce said it was important to have an ideal, which each of us could use as a guiding star. If, for instance, your ideal were love, then you would measure your thoughts, words and deeds against that ideal. If you’re in self condemnation, are you living your ideal of being loving? If not, then in Cayce’s cosmology, it’s only a failure if you stop trying. From my perspective, the ideal of love guides one back to kindness to ourselves and others, no matter what.
Dr. Thurston also notes that modern business are seizing upon holistic practices such as meditation and dream guidance because its shown to provide stress reduction, better decision-making, and an enhanced bottom line.
We’re reminded not to mistake material success for spiritual depth. While the two don’t automatically run concurrently, they certainly can. Wherever you are in your current journey, the lesson here is stick with a positive ideal. Progress can’t always be seen, especially in the moment, by the critical mind but what we develop within us is ours for life–or if you believe Cayce, for lifetimes.
Lorrie Kazan was chosen as one of the top psychics in a worldwide audition for the Edgar Cayce Institute. Contact her at www.ilovemypsychic.com for information about readings, free newsletters, articles and classes.
