Day Eighteen: Look for the Good

The great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.” His words ring like a call to prayer: wake up, be present, realize life is holy, experience the blessing of this moment; don’t let this opportunity of a lifetime pass you by. This is the call to live a God inspired life, to awaken to our essential nature as conscious being, and realize that we are not separate from God. Nothing separates us from God, nothing, ever—no condition, no belief, no past deed, no impure thought. We can never be separated from that which we are. We can think we are separate, we might feel like we are, we might even believe that we are, but none of that can ever make it so. There is only one Life—God. A single Reality expressing as all that is and ever will be. God is our life. Rabbi Heschel was right in saying “just to be is a blessing.” Since we cannot be, cannot exist, without God, we are always with God, and therefore, always blessed. Just to exist is to be of God. Knowing this truth liberates us from the burden created by the illusion of a separate self, restores us to wholeness and sets us free to experience life as the blessing it is. When life’s holiness is revealed to us, living each day is an opportunity to discover what Paramahansa Yogananda called “ever-new joy” in God.

Until we know this spiritual truth about our essential nature it is difficult to “just be.” Why? Because without realizing life’s inherent wholeness, most people believe they have to work at life and struggle to win a competitive battle—if not for survival, at least for security and happiness. But life is not meant to be a battle or a burden; we only make it so with our lack of awareness and our insistence on seeing ourselves as separate from God. If we imagine we are on our own, that God is some far off entity, or heavenly judge, we can be too busy trying to earn merit to discover the good that is already before us. Discovering life’s goodness is not difficult, it just takes willingness and practice. When we embody our commitment to live a God-inspired life with congruent action we are met by divine grace, life’s inherent support for awakening.

The joyous, spiritually conscious life rests upon simple choices—choices made in ordinary moments each day.  Make the decision now to live a more conscious life and to make Self- and God-realization the central focus of each day. Even if we fall into forgetfulness many times a day, the simple commitment to be spiritually awake increases awareness of divine grace that supports us in every way. In a difficult moment we may forget that we decided to look for the good and to live in the highest way but the inherent goodness and supportive influence of God’s grace will direct us and turn our attention toward the lighted the path before us. In that moment, we see the choice before us and it is up to us.

Know that you are guided by the inner light of God and that you will be met by divine grace in all that you do. Be open to opportunities to practice spiritual principles in all of your affairs and notice what happens. Look for the good that comes your way and inwardly give thanks to God for all occasions of divine remembrance. What is it that turns the mind toward the light but the presence of Divine Light Itself? Realize God’s grace is already at work in your life.

Think About It: A study published in the online edition of the journal PloS Biology, shows that attention is a flexible, trainable, skill. Psychology professor, Richard Davidson from the University of Wisconsin, led studies showing that meditation alters the brain’s ability to allocate attention. His study showed that experienced meditators were more skillful at attending to rapidly changing stimuli and information. They were able to notice items in a fast changing sequence that the non-meditating control group did not detect.

 –reported in the New York Times

Be Inspired: The Lord is my shepherd: I have everything that I need.    

 –Psalm 23 (tr. Stephen Mitchell)