NO MORE BLACK FRIDAYS! Set Grace & Gratitude Free!
At this time of year, let us begin our goodnight ritual for the end of 2018.
Let us bring 2019 closer to our hearts by first asking ourselves how to make the remaining days fresh and original. Let us rebel against the consumption spell and set our hearts free to be together—to have our holiday season rituals no longer be habit, nor a derivative of the past, but to be a new experience of what is possible now.
What does this mean?
It means no more derivative living—no more buying stuff for the sake of showing your love. Just show your love instead.
No more overeating and comatose after-effects to experience abundance—create a 50% sharing model to share half of your feast with someone who has less.
Pure original living means no more habitual-going-through-the-motions out of habit or because the “over-culture” has accepted something as “just what we do.”
Because we humans have gotten in the habit of deriving our future from our past.
Offering a “Black Friday deal”
Shopping the sale.
Eating the traditional meal.
Buying something for everyone on our list (do they need a token of your love, how about just your love??)
Putting the big dream soul-goals out of reach.
Overusing the earth’s resources: Plastic, plastic, plastic—be gone!
All in the name of “Thanks-giving.”
Let’s call BS on the derivative model of celebrating and do something different shall we?
Last night as I was drifting in and out of sleep, Spirit asked me: If you knew you wouldn’t wake up tomorrow, what would you do tonight?
(Because Spirit always asks the real questions!)
With this question, I remembered the Buddhist exercise of “dying every day,” and how that practice asks us to hold the beauty of urgency within our time spent on earth.
I decided, if in fact it was my last night on earth, that the most powerful thing I could do was pray. From that prayer, a Thanksgiving Ritual arrived in my heart to share with you. I want to give you the love you deserve. The attention you crave. The permission you need to dance in the light of your sacred existence—and there’s no discount or sale that can do that, trust me, I’ve tried .
Here is the Thanksgiving Prayer, I hope you will join me tonight or tomorrow morning to do this simple prayer and visualization.
***
Sacred Soul, I call you forth.
Sacred Soul, please guide me from fear into love.
Heal the past timeline of hurt.
Seal the sorrows of repression into the dirt
So we may dance upon them
So we may rebirth.
May we know a borderless land
Where every woman, child and man
Can sit at the feet of the sun
Knowing there’s enough light for everyone.
Sacred Soul, bring the darkness of ignorance to the light of Love
So that all may know we are one.
May grace and gratitude prevail
As the wind in our worldly sail.
May we consume nothing this season
Made of plastic or at the cost of nature’s strife.
May we honor the breath as the gift this holiday night.
May we know peace in our heart and solace in our mind.
May we heal the earth with our spirits entwined.
Now Visualize:
Our earth as a healthy, unpolluted, glorious planet of grace for all.
Envision every human being held with ease in the field of one.
See the sun rise as the moon kisses it goodbye
And a new day dawns, where the world responds with no more fear, only love.
***
2018 was– and is—a sacred fire burning away the veil of illusion so that we may live with more grace, gratitude and integrity in 2019.
My dear friend Kathy Davenport writes in her upcoming memoir that trauma cuts the cord of illusion, leaving us with the essentials of what is.
What is?
Our soul wants us to know that what remains is grace, and the action to take is to cultivate even more gratitude.
Thanksgiving is a touchstone of grace—we feed others. And in gratitude, we give thanks. 2018, we can thank for cord-cutting the illusions and opening our eyes to the truth of humanity’s evolution…to hold sacred our original nature and the earth’s regenerative power.
We have gratitude for the gifts of 2018:
Gratitude for the women who spoke up this year and upended the status quo of sexual harassment.
Gratitude for the ability to rebuild after fire.
Gratitude for the opening of our eyes and the shedding of illusion.
Gratitude for the writing we did, the sacred act of creating.
Gratitude for the air we’ve breathed, even now as it hangs heavy with smoke here in the west, we are still alive.
And to be alive is to have one more minute, hour, day to experience and express love.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US. We feast and take a day off. We show our gratitude as a ritual of connection.
Our souls are the timeless, infinite well from which we come and to which we will return. Our bodies are borrowed stardust, our minds are sharpened receptors of divine will, and our hearts are the GPS program of the soul. In this we give thanks for the chance to experience life on earth. To honor the earth for the feast she tirelessly gives us.
Instead of giving you all a discount on something, I give you my heart. With that I end the Black Friday derivative and offer something fresh: Myself.
Try it, give of yourself in a priceless way that cannot be discounted. I love you all and am SO grateful for your original self!
With Thanks,
Zhena
