I grew up in the Sixties, but I wasn’t an Elvis fan. I was a Beatles’ girl. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I loved, Paul, Ringo, George and John. It was only recently that I was awakened to Elvis through the new film, “Elvis.” I am grateful for filmmaking. When I got notice yesterday that “Elvis” was available on Amazon Prime, I didn’t take even a moment to know I wanted to purchase it. I had to share it with my husband. I had seen the film the first time with my son in New Mexico and was touched deeply by it.

I’m not going to go through the film here, but I am going to share why it was so moving and awakening to me. My heart was cracked wide open by the witnessing of God expressing through one of us. When I watched this actor portraying Elvis, I saw what it was that Elvis had that made him King to our world. It was his deep deep ability to bring his True Soul forward and perform from it. I say perform, because if we know anything about Elvis’s personal life, we know it was filled with drama and sorrow. However, when he was on stage, all we saw was his God-Self. The second thought that clicked in was that this beautiful actor was doing just the same thing – expressing his full God-Self. What a joy and gift to the world.

What does this mean to me now? It is another calling to truly and fully express my God-Self. It means no holding back. As long as I move forward as my True self, it means my success is assured and non negotiable.

This morning when my husband and we were thinking and talking about the film, I remembered a story of my own. I was seventeen and out on my first real date. We were walking at a local beach park when I spontaneously climbed up into a tree. As a young girl, I loved to climb trees and was often ostracized by my father for being too boyish. That day, I did it anyway. I didn’t care what this boy would think of me. I remember looking down at my boyfriend. I was on top of the world – in love, happy, with a feeling that everything was before me, in spite of the restrictions I had at home. Nothing mattered but this moment. I’m not sure what I said to my boyfriend, but I do remember what he said to me. As he looked up to me in that tree, he stated, “You can’t have everything you want, you know.”

Those words stuck me deeply and unconsciously I allowed them to crawl into my subconscious. Throughout my life, I have mostly had what I wanted, but yet they were still times when I know I held myself back. Why was this coming forward this morning? I believe it was because of this film about a man let go so totally and yet questioned himself throughout his life, who let outside things and people control him. We all know the end of Elvis’s story.

The Truth is we can have everything we want, but only if we can become it in consciousness and then act upon it. We can make excuses for why we don’t have what we want and blame it on people who said and did things to us in the past, or we can admit, as Ernest Holmes would say, “We stand in the shadow of a Mighty Mind.” The operative words are “we” and “stand in the shadow.” We’re the ones blocking the Mighty Mind with our excuses and denials of our True Selves.

We are living in a different era now than the one in which Elvis lived. We are more conscious of our self-made obstacles. It is scientifically proven that what we think and believe affects the outcome of our life. We have so many tools available to us to help us along the way.

There is only one thing required of you and me. It is to step into the consciousness of our God-Self and express it. All the Good that we say we want is buried in that Inner Splendor. We just have to release it. When we have the courage to express it, own it and be it, everything will flow from that place. Our success is non negotiable. I know this is True.

I’m getting back up in that tree, and if I look down and see something that says “you can’t have everything you want,” I will know that it is an illusion, a false belief. It is that little girl listening to someone who she thought was wiser than the Infinite, the unlimited One. Elvis was called the King, and you and I are all KINGS!

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita Andriello-Feren, Co-Founding Minister CSL Kaua`i and author of a new book “What Do I Need to KNOW? 101 Thoughts That Changed My Life.” Available HERE ON AMAZON

For bulk orders, write: revrandriello@gmail.com

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