My father stood with a cup of coffee in his hand. He liked the kind with the cup and the saucer. I think it made him feel more affluent drinking from a cup like that. I know, for myself, when I want to feel a little closer to my dad and also feel a feeling of affluence, I take out one of my cups and saucers from my china collection and use it for morning coffee. As I know from studying acting, that’s called creating the character from the outside – in. It helps sometimes. The other way around, however, is the way we create in our New Thought Philosophy. We create from the inside – out. When doing that, we reach for the china coffee cup and saucer because we already feel affluent.

Anyway, back to my father. While he was holding that coffee cup, he looked at me straight in the eyes and said, “You’ll miss me someday.” I’m not sure why he said it, but at the time, I was a very rebellious teenager. In fact, I didn’t know it in that moment, but I would be leaving home in rebellion and few years later.

Why am I thinking of my father today? I’m thinking of his feelings of affluence, his love for beauty, and his ability to embrace the world of form from a higher point of view. He loved enjoying the physical aspects of life, and he took them when he wanted them. He followed what Ernest Holmes would call taking what the Universe so readily gives us. My father didn’t keep anything from himself. If he wanted to build a fountain in his yard, he built it. If he wanted to create a lake on his upstate New York home, he did. Nothing was too big for him and he always expressed that there was more. I remember him looking at my New Mexico four-bedroom, 2.5 bath home, and saying “There is even more than this, Rita.” I always remember that statement, but I don’t always live it.

What does it mean to live in the more? It is not about not being grateful for what we have. My father was always grateful. It is about being curious about what is possible and what we can create as that next step into living life more fully. We are constantly growing and expanding. It is our nature as Creative Spirit. Spirit becomes the thing it creates. How do we become the more?

In my life right now, I am faced with that challenge. As we continue to embody and accept a new home for ourselves, I can feel the temptation to compromise. There is a certain way we have been accustomed to living and we have enjoyed it so much. There has never been a time on this Island, where we have not stepped up into a new home with ease and grace, and one has always been more than the last. So, here we are embracing the new and accepting the more. The challenge has been not to fall into the consciousness of scarcity and lack. The challenge has been to be curious and expectant about the more.

Every morning, I work on this with meditations that bring me into my heart space and fill me up with that feeling of the more, the love the expansiveness of Spirit. It’s most definitely working and I find myself in the 5-D world more of the day.

Thinking of my father with that coffee cup brings that feeling even more closer to my heart. Yes, I do miss him, but I also know he is right here. I think I’ll get that china cup and saucer out right now.

Love and Aloha

Rev. Rita Andriello-Feren, Co-Founding Director CSL Kaua`i and the Institute of Magnificence and Author of “What Do I Need to KNOW? 101 Thoughts That Changed My Life” and “This Thing Called Treatment,” both available on Amazon.