Tag: universe

When You Know Where You’re Going It’s A Lot Easier To Get There

When You Know Where You’re Going It’s A Lot Easier To Get There

If only the Universe was always this clear.

The long meandering road by the beach ends with a stop sign. The intersection presents only two options. A left turn or a right one. Glancing up at the sign, I see that the names of the roads converging at this point are unusually descriptive. The road to the left is Purgatory Road. The road to the right is Paradise Avenue.

Purgatory or Paradise.

Which would you choose?

At first I found the sign a bit humorous, but on the drive home I started thing about some of the intersections I’ve come to in my own life. The choices I’ve had to make were not as clearly marked, there was never a sign to tell me where my choices would lead me. 

With no real signs to guide me, at times I’d simply remain at the stop signs for as long as I could. When unsure of which decision to make, sometimes making no decision was the comfortable decision. And if I had to make a decision, the safe one was usually the familiar one, even if I knew such a decision wasn’t in my best interest. My greatest moments of growth have been when I Continue reading “When You Know Where You’re Going It’s A Lot Easier To Get There” →

The Gift Of Spiritual Impatience

The Gift Of Spiritual Impatience

That was the last of them.

The third box of books was loaded into the car, the next stop was the barn behind the old church, the storage point for donated books for their annual used book sale later in the year. 

Perhaps it’s an age thing, but I’ve been downsizing many segments of my life of late. The stuff I’ve collected over a lifetime which I no longer want to hold on to. Stuff. Expectations.

Today, it was the books’ turn to go. 

As I loaded the boxes, I realized that the vast majority of them were books I never fully read, as indicated by the number of bookmarks I found lodged into the first third of the pages of many of them. I guess the enthusiasm which motivated me to initially purchase them greatly waned as I actually started to read them. With so many of these books being not fully read, I realized there was one thing each of these unread books had in common.

Me.

I’ve had an interesting relationship with books. My now-almost-empty bookshelf was filled with the books of a seeker; non-fiction, self-help, self-improvement, spiritual, psychological, and growth-oriented themes. I bought each one for a specific reason, yet at some point early in these books I’d become a bit disillusioned and put them down only to then pick up the next book I had also excitedly purchased, only to abandon it early on just like the others before it. 

Giving up on a bad book seems logical, but when you give up on all the books the books aren’t the problem. 

As someone who has been a lifelong seeker, I was hoping each of these books would bring me closer to that which I really wasn’t sure I was hoping to find. I knew I was looking for something and I would grow increasingly impatient the deeper I got into these books when I felt it was going to be just another dead end on my spiritual journey. 

Each book was a tangent of sorts, a tangent wrapped in the elevated expectation that THIS book was the one which would deliver me the wisdom I demanded to learn. No pressure, right?

One thing I learned on my meandering journey of life is my impatience consistently created elevated levels of frustration, especially towards myself. The pressure of not finding what I wasn’t Continue reading “The Gift Of Spiritual Impatience” →

What To Say When You’re Having Coffee with God

What To Say When You’re Having Coffee with God

It was quite surreal.

I was sitting at a round wooden table in a busy coffee shop having a nice conversation. With God. He looked a lot like I thought He would look like, sort of an older version of the images of Jesus I’ve seen all my life. Same eyes.

Surprisingly, no one else in the coffee shop knew who He was. Oblivious, they were simply going about their collective days, too busy to notice perhaps?

Or, maybe He was there just for me.

At some point during our brief time together, I worked up the courage to ask Him an important question. An important question I’d been seeking answers to for most of my life.

“God?”

“Yes, Pete?”

“Am I worthy to receive the abundance of blessings of the Universe, to become all I have been created to become?”

God paused, put down His coffee, and looked me square in the eyes.

“Have I ever told you that you’re not?”

And with that, God stood up, and with a wink and a smile left me alone to reflect upon His answer.

It was quite the dream, but the message was anything but.

God has never told me I’m not worthy. He’s has never told anyone that they aren’t worthy. Yet somehow life has a way to often create a disconnect between who we are and who we think we are. And who we think we are is often much less than God’s intention behind our creation.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded of our worth, of our value, of our significance, of our birthright to allow and receive the blessings inherent with our own creation.

To allow ourselves to become what we’ve each individually been created to become.

Unless God tells you otherwise.

And He won’t.

How Much Of You Are You Willing To Leave Undone?

How Much Of You Are You Willing To Leave Undone?

What if we were to see ourselves the same way God sees us?

God has a lot of big ideas. And each of us is one of them. Each of us intentionally created in our own unique way. It’s the uniqueness of our individual talents, gifts, and abilities that we are here to develop and share with the world. Little pieces of God’s biggest idea.

God doesn’t just create things for the sake of creating them. Honestly, I don’t think He needs the practice. In a world of divine intention, there are no accidents. All of nature and all of humanity are here for very specific purposes.

The intention of creation is full expression. The idea becomes reality. That is what nature does. Trees grow as tall as they are supposed to. Trees don’t question their worthiness nor do they compare themselves to other trees and decide they aren’t good enough and decide to play small. They just grow, fully evolve, fully expressing the intention of their creation.

For us humans, the full expression of our own creation often gets a bit complicated.

Becoming all we were intended to become certainly has its challenges. Perhaps the greatest challenge is actually figuring out exactly what it is we were created for. Our Continue reading “How Much Of You Are You Willing To Leave Undone?” →

The Universe is My Dog

The Universe is My Dog

Who knew a saliva-coated stick could teach us something about how life works…

When my dog was a little younger and a little lighter he was quite active. With a big open yard there was always plenty of space for him to run and chase squirrels. Every once and a while we’d play fetch with an old tennis ball or a stick. No matter where or how far I threw it he’d always find it, run it back to me and drop it at my feet, ready for me to throw it once again. Throw, run, gather, return, repeat.

Kind of how the Universe works.

Whatever we throw out, the Universe will go get it and drop it back at our feet.

The Universe, like my dog, is extremely loyal. And like my dog, the Universe doesn’t differentiate between what we want and what we want to get rid of. What we throw out Continue reading “The Universe is My Dog” →