This past weekend a good friend and I attended Miska Productions’ “Celebrate Your Life” conference at Unity Church. It was absolutely amazing and totally worth the vacation day from work! The event started with great excitement as Michael Beckwith and his wife taught us to celebrate by standing in gratitude. He suggested that there are three phases of gratitude:
- Looking for something to be grateful for
- Being grateful for the current challenges we are facing because they show our great potential as we overcome them
- Being grateful for nothing in particular; just grateful for what is…
Michael also gave us great insight into how to approach day-to-day situations. He suggested that we identify the current problem or challenge we are facing. Ask God how best to solve the challenge. When we receive the answer, it will lead to an action or set of actions which we can implement. Sometimes these actions help us to develop a way of life.
Problem/Question/Answer/Action/Way of Life
Gay Hendricks shared a beautiful story about how he found the love of his life; his wife of 36 years. He told us that, “Love is the only thing big enough to accept its opposite.” I was very inspired by this quote. It is a great measure for me to check myself against when I ‘think’ I’m demonstrating Love, but I’m really judging, showing anger, or just plain missing the Love boat in my relationships.
Anita Moorjani had a near death experience and she learned that many illness and life challenges are caused by the fact that we make decisions out of fear instead of Love. We can sometimes get ourselves so caught up that we fear the fact that we are afraid. In these moments she suggests that we take the first step and accept that we are afraid. From acceptance we can move into peace. We can then experience gratitude and then finally experience Love.
Fear/Acceptance/Peace/Gratitude/Love
Bryant McGill has a great story of personal triumph. The main sentiment of what I took away from his session is that we can only be ‘free’ by connecting to God’s vision for our lives. That is, we should always check our spirit’s response to man’s systems and recognize them for what they are.
There were so many quotes from Bryan’s session that resonated with me. Here are few I’d like to share:
- Tell your truth and let your friends adjust {Your real friends will be okay with your authentic self}
- Reunite with yourself {In other words, always stay connected to your own heart and soul}
- Children are the best of what we can become {Making our way back to our childhood innocence, curiosity, love for learning, love for life, and love for others will heal us}
- You cannot learn from what you dominate {I love this quote! Being willing to maintain an egalitarian environment will ensure that everyone has an equal voice and allow for creativity, innovation, and continuous learning.}
- We have been remade in the image and likeness of our cultural creator {If we are awake in our spirituality, we will be able to recognize when we are following cultural norms versus being led by God’s plan for us}
Marianne Williamson’s session focused on helping us to understand that human suffering can result in great triumphs. She was very passionate about the fact that our culture has spent so much energy medicalizing sadness and depression versus helping us to understand that there are times in our lives when these are healthy responses to difficult circumstance. She suggested that most of our sadness can be overcome by connecting with our spirit, feeding our physical bodies with nutritious food, exercising, and communing with our friends and family. Here are a few quotes from Marianne that I felt were worth sharing:
- Some of our best lessons come from dark nights of the soul
- People who have raised heaven; have first looked into Hell
- You have very little power to change people who can feel your underlying contempt
- Part of what spiritual discipline does is to give you the ability to master your impulses
Iyanla Vanzant focused on “The Power of A Fall Down.” She shared her personal triumph over the passing of her daughter, the dissolution of her 42 year marriage, and her bankruptcy. Her raw descriptions of what she learned and how humbled she became were very authentic. She responded to several questions with deep and thoughtful responses. She taught us that “A Fall Down” will teach you:
- to let go and that everything is recoverable
- what really matters
- that a deadline is not as important as a lifeline (to God)
- what brings you joy
- that it is unloving and unkind to ask people to do what they do not have the capacity to do (e.g. some people cannot go through the tough times with you)
- just how flexible you are (Iyanla found out she could eat generic meat, but she couldn’t give up Heinz ketchup and Hellman’s mayonnaise)
Iyanla also advised us to give our lives a theme song. She made her grand entrance on this song. I’ve adopted it for my new anthem. Take a listen and see if it doesn’t make you want to march down a church aisle with a choir robe on.
Until next week,