I am extremely grateful for my life. I know that my life is as it is, not so much because of what is in it or what I am experiencing, but because of the way I approach life every day. I have my challenges just like everyone else, but I seem to be able to look at my challenges with a different insight and see them through Truth. I know that my challenges are part of me growing up.

It’s amazing to think I am still growing up at age 65, but I am. Every day this becomes evident to me. When I use the term growing up, I mean I am growing in consciousness. I am letting go of ideas and habits that hold me back from being more of myself.

I recently had an experience with my family where I slipped back into my old ways. I put my good outside of myself and named it as coming from a certain place or person. Wow! Did I get mad and frustrated when things didn’t turn out the way I thought they should. Through deep contemplation and surrender, I was able to turn things around for myself. The outside circumstances did not change. The people did not change. However, I changed. My life began again in a new way, leaving behind a consciousness that did not serve me or anyone else, for that matter.

Life is a matter of changing our consciousness. It is not about pointing out and blaming others. It is about going within and thinking anew. It is about asking ourselves clearly how we want to live, not restricted by outside people or even conditions that we might be experiencing. We have to think beyond  conditions. Nothing can really hold us back, unless we allow it to.

I knew a man who spent his whole life from age 16 in a wheelchair after an accident. Even so, he became a doctor, got married, had a family and became affluent. He obviously knew what he wanted from life. Perhaps his challenge made him even more determined to succeed.

The great writer and mystic Thomas Troward wrote,“…the more yourself, more yourself, yet more yourself is what you want; only with the knowledge that the true self includes the inner and higher self which is alway immediately in touch with the Divine Mind.”

What is the Divine Mind, but our true selves. The more I can live from that place, the greater this experience called life becomes. And, it becomes that greatness immediately.

Letting go of control and surrendering to the Divine Mind is a mental act that we can only do for ourselves. Do we think life is good or do we think life is a tragedy? We get to choose and we get to live from that place.

The more we are ourselves, our true selves, the greater the experience of living becomes because we are no longer fighting our purpose; we are allowing it to be our lives. What is your purpose? JOY…whatever brings you true JOY.

I love the quote accompanying this blog. “I never change. I simply become more myself.”

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita