Tag: Meister Eckhart

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Thanksgiving – Every Day Of The Year – For Real

The Fourth Thursday

Today is November 24, the national holiday of Thanksgiving. The present form of this holiday of gratitude was signed into law in 1885. It stemmed from a proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 during the Civil War. The proclamation called for a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated the final Thursday of November. In 1941 the date was fixed by law as the fourth Thursday in November.

In the midst of the calamity of the Civil War, death and destruction was a daily consequence of war. President Lincoln intuitively felt it necessary to designate one day for everyone to re-set their minds. Re-set their minds for one day away from the grieving and relentless horrors of war. Re-set their minds for one day on gratitude for any and all blessings received as well as on the coming day when the war would eventually end.

And so, today in America, the fourth Thursday of the month of November is celebrated as Thanksgiving Day. It is traditionally a day of family members gathering together for a dinner of turkey with gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, string beans, cranberry sauce and all manner of good things to eat. Apple pie or pumpkin pie with ice cream for dessert. A thanksgiving prayer is said before the meal. After the meal is the time for conversation. Football games are on the television. And the secret of the true explosive power of gratitude gets scant attention.

Yeah It Really Does Say That

On this Thanksgiving Day of the year 2022, you are now being issued a direct challenge. If you prove to be successful in meeting this challenge, your life is guaranteed to dramatically change – for the better. Why should I care if your life changes for the better? I am not really sure. I believe that it may have something to do with the interconnectedness of humanity as well as the “productive intercession” part of my life mission, my grand manifestation.

Here is your challenge – live and feel and breathe thanksgiving every single day between November 24, 2022 and November 23, 2023. All 365 days. After you are done rolling your eyes and saying “not that count your blessings stuff again”, further on in this post, I will explain why it is that you should do this. Hint: It is for your benefit.

In First Thessalonians 5:18, it states the following: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”(NIV). Yeah, it really does say that – “in all circumstances”.

Now a response by many reasonable people might be as follows: “That’s total bullshit. Why should I be thankful when the shit is hitting the fan in my life or in the life of someone I love?” Fair enough. Part of the widespread error in belief about thanksgiving however is how society misperceives the process of giving thanks. Read on.

Dance Minions, Dance

As you grew up, you were primarily told by your parents to say thank you when someone gives you something or does something for you. This may have been reinforced by religious leaders, teachers, uncles, aunts, grandparents, friends, etc. You were told that people like it when they are thanked. So as time goes on you angle your thank you’s to game the system. A quick “thank you, appreciate it” and then be on your way.

You may have been told to be thankful because “it’s good manners”. You may have been told by Uncle Charlie that if you don’t get your ass over there and thank Aunt Gertrude for that sweater, Aunt Gertrude is going to be pissed off and take it out on Uncle Charlie when they get home.

The member of the clergy of your particular religion may imperiously state, “It is the will of God for you to be thankful so just do it”. The unspoken rest of the statement is “or else”. It tends to present an image of an old guy with a long white beard wearing a flowing robe. The imposing geezer has a stern look on his face. He looks over his entourage and commands from his throne, “Dance, my minions, dance”. Then if he sees someone not be thankful, he frowns and reaches for his divine taser. Then next thing you hear from the crowd is “Yeowww! That hurt!”

The Law Is The Law Is The Law

Universal Law is divinely impartial. It is no respecter of persons. It works no matter who employs it. Your life reality merely reflects back to you your awareness of being, as a mirror reflects your image. If you are truly feeling (not just mouthing) thanksgiving, you are actively transmitting. You are transmitting neural electro-magnetic impulses to Universal Law which then always responds accordingly. Your neural thought impulses, accompanied by your feeling of it, are received. This sets off a fateful chain reaction for something good to happen in your reality. It is a scientific certainty. This is equivalent to a television signal sent out from a broadcasting tower.

A specific wave frequency dials you into the television channel that you have chosen to watch. Change the chosen frequency, you get a different channel. In the case of your life, change your inner frequency and you change your reality. It’s just that simple. Universal Law responds in a positive manner to the frequency of gratitude. Maintain that frequency and you will receive something for which to be thankful. Turn off the flow and you then block the connection. The Law is the Law is the Law. That is the hidden reason why, even in the midst of adverse circumstances, scripture counsels you to be thankful in all circumstances. It is your way out. It is your way out of your troubles.

A Real Life Example

Let me give you an actual minor example of pursuing gratitude in an adverse situation. At a job that I worked at for many years, I found myself in the situation of working with a troublesome employee. The employee was just plain annoying, to me as well as others. I think the crux of the problem was that the employee was insecure inside. This then projected outward into irritating behavior.

I observed how there was constant bickering and tension between this employee and another co-worker. The employee even tried to get me in trouble one time but I was one step ahead of her and her attempt was fruitless. Intuitively, I felt that confrontation was not the solution to the problem. “In everything be thankful” came into my mind. I made the decision to steadfastly remain in gratitude mode rather than place my focus on the fact that I really disliked this person.

Thankful for what? you might say. For whatever lesson life was presenting to me. Thankful for Ultimate Intelligence being available for guidance. Thankful for the indisputable fact that I am the only person who gets to decide how I feel inside. Thankful that I was given an opportunity to prove this in concrete terms. Thankful that I am a sovereign thinking being.

As you might guess, in a very short amount of time, I was unexpectedly transferred to another facility within the installation where I did not come in contact with the annoying person. Furthermore, in a short while after that, that employee left that job completely and found employment elsewhere. I thought to myself afterward, “Wow, this stuff really works”.

The Dynamic Duo

Two mystics, seven hundred years apart, were on the same wavelength when it comes to the critical importance in your life of thanksgiving.

The thirteenth century theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, summed it up concisely. He wrote “If the only prayer that you ever uttered during your entire life was “thank you”, it would be enough”.

Some seven hundred years later, in the twentieth century, the latter day mystic, author and lecturer, Neville Goddard, wrote “…(a) way of praying is simply to feel thankful. If I want something, either for myself or for another, I immobilize the physical body, then I produce the state akin to sleep and in that drowsy state, just feel happy, feel thankful, which thankfulness implies realization of what I want.”

Feel It. Feel It. Feel It.

And there it is. Therein lies the hidden secret of the power of thanksgiving. The Law is the Law is the Law. That is the precise reason that you should be thankful in all circumstances. If the circumstances are good, you desire them to continue in that manner. Thanksgiving. If the circumstances are neutral, you want to “kick start” things in the desired direction. Thanksgiving. Further, if the circumstances are bad, you want to engage in an action that is going to turn things around to the good side somehow. Thanksgiving.

If you feel thanksgiving, you live in a manner that will make your life worth living. You will then desire to do something that expresses the gratitude you feel. This then always empowers you. You walk the divine path. The divine path of creating. Creating something that did not exist before. When you keep the faith no matter what, you have the privilege of expressing the power and majesty of Universal Mind during your brief stay here on planet Earth.

Thanksgiving is eternal. Thanksgiving is magical. Set your mind on it every day of the year. You will reap the golden harvest.

Conceive. Believe. Receive.

One response to “Thanksgiving – Every Day Of The Year – For Real”

  1. Andre

    An interesting post. Thank you

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In Case You Didn’t Hear — Tomorrow Is Here Now

What Is Time?

Eckhart Von Hochheim, commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic. He lived, taught and preached in the late thirteenth century, early fourteenth century At the time of his death, his teachings were attacked as a result of internecine intra-church intrigue.

While Meister Eckhart himself was never branded a heretic, the Avignon Vatican pronounced certain of his teachings as heretical. It was just another chapter in the never-ending human drama of one group of humans fearful of losing control over another group of humans. Recent efforts by Eckhart’s Dominican Order to confirm his theological orthodoxy resulted in a letter from the Vatican in 1992 to the Master of the Dominicans stating, “we are perfectly free to say that he is a good and orthodox theologian”.

Eckhart taught that God is a totally transcendent Being, beyond all words, beyond all understanding. From his writings, he stated that “Time is what keeps the Light from reaching us”. With regard to our reality and the “now” of it, he also wrote, “There exists only the present instant…….a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday, nor is there any tomorrow but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence”.

Urgent Care Centers

A relatively recent occurrence in the field of healthcare is the proliferation of neighborhood clinics known as “urgent care centers”. When I was very young, the family doctor still made housecalls for urgent care situations. Then, as that era came to a close, the hospital emergency room became the option for immediate medical attention.

In today’s world, the urgent care center, open seven days a week, twelve hours a day, and has emerged as a viable treatment option when you need to do something now about a health related problem. There are even specialized urgent care centers now such as pediatric urgent care, orthopedic urgent care and mental health urgent care.

Awareness Of Being

In your life today, right now, you are in a situation that requires urgent care on your part. So many human beings, the overwhelming majority of inhabitants of planet earth, defer their awareness of being to tomorrow (or some later date). For example, if you do this, then tomorrow you will get that. If you go to work, you will get pay on payday to pay for your food, your lodging, your car, your clothes, your child’s braces, and so on.

All activity is geared to doing something today in order to get something or be something tomorrow (or some later date). It is a true blessing to be able to earn enough money to pay for your needs. The urgent care that you must attend to however, is the endless deferring of your Now awareness of being.

For just a few minutes, cut away all the layers of crap and focus in on exactly what you are aware of being right now. Not what you will be five minutes from now. Not what you will be tomorrow or next week or next year or five years from now, but what you are aware of being right now. This awareness of being, moment by moment by moment, is the very essence of your life and of your existence in this dimension. It is urgent that you realize this because everything that occurs in your life flows outward from your now awareness of being.

Smothers Brothers

Back in the 1960’s, the Smothers Brothers (Tom and Dick) were a very successful pair of folk musicians who specialized in comedy. At home we had one of their comedy LP albums and thoroughly enjoyed it. The brothers went on to have an hour long television variety/comedy show on CBS. While the show proved very successful, it was ultimately cancelled by the network in 1969 due to content that was considered too controversial.

On one of their shows, they had a short film segment that was brilliant. This film was entitled “American Time Capsule”. It was a film that consisted of a multitude of still photos presented in kaleidoscopic fashion and set to a vibrant, yet subtle drumbeat solo. It is actually available to watch on the internet if you choose to do so. It portrayed two hundred years of American history in three minutes.

A Lasting Impression

This short film made a lasting impression on me. From time to time, I reflect upon it as sort of a microcosm of how time flows in the life of a human being. The film commences with the events of the American Revolutionary War in 1776. It proceeds to display in brief but recognizable image flashes, thirteen hundred different images of American history in a chronological fashion until reaching the current date at that time, 1968.

One of the things fascinating about this short film was the subtly changing speed of the display of the images. If you take one hundred and eighty seconds (three minutes) and divide it equally by thirteen hundred (images), it would come to about thirteen hundredths of a second each. The film however did not display each image in equal time amounts. As the film progressed to the latter half of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, it moved ever faster as the amount of time allotted for each image was shortened. It is a remarkable piece of cinematography.

The sands of time of your life move past you in approximately the same manner as the images of the film American Time Capsule. As you get older, the time, the events, the circumstances of your life, move by with ever increasing speed. Time is the ultimate trickster in this regard. It moves turtle-like when you want it to speed up and then it becomes Speed Racer when you would appreciate it slowing down just a tad.

Time Is What Keeps The Light From Reaching You

So how exactly do you deal with this mischievous imp called time? There is only one best way. Focus. Make the irrevocable free will choice to focus. Focus on the present instant. Leave all temporalities behind. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is merely an illusion. There is only Now, your current awareness of being.

You say that you can’t. You have tried and you keep thinking about stuff that is “coming up” tomorrow, next week, next month. Try as you might, you keep ruminating over past events, past grievances, past mistakes. If that is the case, you need to go to your own personal urgent care center. You must generate a desire to “live in the end” right now with as much urgency, with as much feeling, as you are humanly capable of. If you do this, it will assuredly be to your benefit.

Discard Your Concept Of Time

When my youngest boy was around four years old, he became ill one day with a high fever caused by a childhood flu bug of some sort. All of a sudden his temperature spiked with such an intensity that he suffered a grand mal febrile seizure. I was in another portion of the house and immediately heard my wife shout in distress. I did not wait for an ambulance. I scooped him up, ran out to the car and drove at once to the local hospital emergency room which was fortunately only two minutes away.

Pulling up to the ER entrance, I jumped out of the car and carried him inside, imploring the nearest nurse to help my boy. They quickly took him and employed immediate measures to hydrate him and successfully reduce his temperature. He recovered nicely. During that entire urgent situation, there was no yesterday, there was no tomorrow. The entire focus of my life at that time was totally centered on one thing – getting my son help in that Now instant. I had no concept of time.

What Do You Desire To Be?

I now pose a question to you – What do you desire to be, to have, to achieve, to experience? In your Now awareness of being, be that – now; have that – now; achieve that – now; experience that – now. Commit yourself, once and for all, to choose your ever present Dwelling Place to be the Kingdom of God within. Humbly allow the Divine Presence to fill every part of you. Heed your intuition and pay attention to Divine inspiration. Do this with a peaceful urgency and every other thing in your life will subsequently fall into place naturally for you.

Believe. Receive.

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Gratitude: Magic Magnet For The Good Stuff

Today Is Thanksgiving Day 2021

Today is November 25…….Thanksgiving Day. The present form of this federal holiday of gratitude was enacted into law by Congress in 1885. It originally stemmed from a proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 in the midst of the Civil War. The proclamation called for a national day of thanksgiving, to be celebrated on the final Thursday of November. This proclamation set the precedent for America’s Thanksgiving Day. The date for the holiday was fixed by federal law in 1941 as the fourth Thursday in November.

In the midst of the calamity of the Civil War, with the unrelenting violence, death and destruction threatening to rip apart the nation, Lincoln instinctively felt it was necessary for everyone to just take a day off from dwelling on the negative effects and events of the war and simply dwell on those gifts received that would generate true gratitude to the Almighty.

In the manner of synchronicities, Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74 year old magazine editor wrote a letter that Lincoln received on September 28, 1863 urging him to have a national day of thanksgiving to permanently become an American custom and institution. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale’s letter immediately and issued the proclamation of a Day of Thanksgiving to be held on the last Thursday of November 1863.

Of course, over the years, the societal controllers and manipulators of consumption have made every attempt to contort this holiday into an ode to eating food and buying stuff (think Black Friday sales). As is always the case, they only succeed to the extent that you allow them to succeed. OK, you say, what is so bad about having a good dinner with family and then saving some money on the purchase of Christmans gifts? Nothing, absolutely nothing at all, they are good things unless they distract you away from deeply experiencing the eternal magic of gratitude.

Filler Up With High Octane

Gratitude is the fuel that powers the engine of the cosmic delivery truck that delivers “the good stuff” to you. Just as your car won’t go anywhere if it does not have any fuel, the universe patiently waits for your gratitude fillup before the delivery truck of goodies can start on its way to you.

It all filters down to your current (as in right now) awareness of being. If you are truly feeling gratitude for something, you are simultaneously transmitting neural electro-magnetic impulses to the universe. The neural impulses of gratitude are received by Universal Intelligence. In alignment with how the universe was created by God, your electrical signal of giving thanks sets off a chain reaction that in turn starts sending “good stuff” your way in order to match the “feeling wave length” that you are transmitting. This is equivalent to a television signal that is sent out from the broadcasting tower.

When you direct the tv remote to the designated channel that you want to watch, your receive the program that is on that channel. That channel represents a specific wave frequency. That is why it is of paramount importance to you to always be thankful. Otherwise you turn off the flow. I will repeat that — if you turn off the gratitude, you turn off the flow. The flow is not turned off by God, or your spouse or girlfriend or your boss or co-workers. Not even Joe the barber. You do it, as in y-o-u.

Yeah, It Really Is a 7/24 Thing

You do not have to be thankful all the time, only when you are actively breathing. In First Thessalonians 5:18 it states, “In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (KJV). This verse is a toughie when something bad has happened in your life. How do you give thanks for a negative event and more importantly, why would you?

In the midst of some minor or major negative event, that is the time when it is all the more important to find a way to generate thanksgiving for something…..anything. The reason being is that it sets into immediate motion the ongoing electrical impulses that will subsequently return to you in the form of something good happening for you as long as you keep the electric current turned on. Very easy in good times. Very hard in bad times but you have to find a way to do it.

I understand, better than you may think, that you may have zero desire to be thankful when bad things happen. You have to will yourself into gratitude mode. It is your way out of trouble and hardship. Dwell in God. Don’t you see? Your awareness of being “down and out” only anchors that condition to you. Choose (and it is your free will choice) to ignore circumstances and relentlessly send out electrical impulses of thankfulness to Universal Intelligence — Original Source. By doing that, you, yes you, start the process of overcoming that trouble or hardship no matter what it is.

And then stay thankful. Stay thankful, not to be some mindless moron who merely accepts bad stuff and then says, “Thank you sir may I have another” like the fraternity pledge in the movie Animal House. Stay thankful in order to use your God-given power to create your life circumstances and fashion a reality that you truly desire.

Feeling + Action = Power

When you combine your feeling of gratitude with some type of action that reflects your gratitude, that is what is termed a synergism. It is you “upping your game”. A thanksgiving action does not have to be something that is expensive or time consuming or showy.

Just what is a thanksgiving action you say? It is something that says “I am receiving…I have received…I will receive…good stuff and I want to demonstrate my appreciation. It can be something as so simple as a smile and a kind word to someone. Perhaps it is a silent prayer for someone who you think could use a prayer (God, I claim a rich blessing for this person today. Thank you. Amen.).

It could be tolerance and patience (when you don’t want to be tolerant or patient) when somebody makes a mistake. Maybe it is just stopping for a few moments and listening to someone who wishes to say something. It could be be doing something helpful for someone without the slightest expectation that they will ever even know about what you did for them. It could be a thousand and one simple little things that you could come up with that send a signal of gratitude to Universal Source.

You can try to ignore it. You can try to deny it. That doesn’t change anything – gratitude is absolutely vital to your personal well being. The thirteenth century theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, stated: “If the only prayer that you ever said during your entire life was ‘Thank You’, it would be enough.”

The Boil Down

When a chef “boils down” a sauce, stew, pudding or other dish, he decreases the water or other liquid in it — it evaporates in the steam rising from the pan. Cooks do this to make something thicker and more flavorful. Carrying over this phrase to outside of the cooking realm, when you boil down something, it means that you get down to its essence. When I read something, a book, an article, an essay, etc., in my mind I always try to do a “boil down” so that I will remember the essence of the book, article or essay.

I hope that you enjoyed reading this blog post. However, I hope that you do more than just read it. My hope even more is that you actively use it to make your life better. There is something inside me that desires, in these final years of my life, to spread the word about universal truths that I have learned about during my stay in this dimension. If you remember nothing else of this post, I will give you a “boil down” of just five easy words to remember — Be Thankful……..Get Good Stuff.

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Time — The Ultimate Trickster

Time – The Ultimate Trickster

On this April Fool’s Day, it is genuinely appropriate to discuss the ultimate trickster of them all — Time. Just what the heck is this earthly construct called “time”. Time – measured by today’s atomic clocks at over nine billion cesium energy jumps per second. There is more to this “tick-tock, tick-tock” trickster however than meets the senses. Have you felt that experience of time “flying by” when you involved in an activity that you enjoy doing and are good at. The greater the enjoyment, the faster time speeds up. Conversely, when you are doing something that you have zero interest in or find distasteful or boring, time then slows down to a snail’s pace. You look at the clock and it seems like invisible gremlins are holding back the hands of the clock. Yes, time is indeed the ultimate trickster.

The Eternal Now

According to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, time slows down or speeds up depending how fast something is moving. The ultimate conclusion of this is that time itself would stop if you could hypothetically move at the speed of light. On earth, time remains a constant, neither speeding up nor slowing down but our perception of it varies widely. It has been postulated that when your spirit or soul leaves your body and proceeds to wherever it belongs, time, as such, ceases to exist. Everything happens in the “now moment.” Time does not travel forward from a point in the past to a point in the future. The present merely changes. Everything happens in the now. In the 1300’s, the theologian, philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart wrote, ” There exists only the present instant…a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.”

Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

When your soul moves on from earth, there will be no calendars, no clocks, no time. No placing an X over a day on the calendar or tearing off a page from a calendar for a month that is over. Here on earth however that would not work. There must be the “tick-tock, tick-tock” of time in order to allow you to measure your movements, your actions, your life. You can do your very best to live fully in the current moment but you are always aware of time past and time ahead. Even while writing this post, time was playing games with me. I found myself looking down at my watch and thinking to myself “What – 7:30 already! That’s ridiculous. It was 6:00 just a few minutes ago!” Another thing about time that I have discovered is that the older you get, the faster time zips by. The years crawl by when you are young, but then, each successive decade of life, time goes by faster and faster. When you hit your sixties, time appears to perversely speed up exponentially, seemingly to get you to your ultimate demise all that much quicker. So what are you to do with this thing called “time”.

Improve Your Relationship With Time

One of the wisest men in the history of the world, King Solomon, may hint at the answer. From the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verses 12 and 13 (ESV): “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in his toil.” The philosopher and a-theist Albert Camus ironically comes to somewhat the same conclusion in “The Myth of Sisyphus” when he states that Sisyphus can only be free when he comes into harmony with his circumstances. Whether you are involved in a major life undertaking or cleaning your ceramic toilet with a scrub brush, focus on what you are doing in the “right now”. Do it the very best you know how to do it. It doesn’t totally take away the mischievous trickery of time, but it does help to “take the edge off”. Plus, in the world of manifesting, learning how to focus on feeling as if your desire is real, right now, is definitely “where it’s at”.