White Magic
(It’s Called Blessing!)
My October 13 post, “Daily Doses of Dark Magic” pulled a number of email comments from clients and friends. Thanks for letting me know the message was helpful!
I planned to do a follow-up post with ways to incorporate “white magic” more and more into our lives and our world. I probably will on down the road.
But my friend Peg in Rocky River has taken the pressure off by forwarding a wonderful and helpful post. It covers much of what I might have tried to say about the subject in a truly beautiful, poetic and inspiring way.
It’s from the book The Gentle Art of Blessing – Living One’s Spirituality in Everyday Life by Pierre Pradervand. I must have been under a rock to have missed this before. M. Pradervand (who is French) has very graciously given me permission to post this on the shamanspath blog.
So please take a moment to enjoy a warm, healing blessing for yourself (even if you already know this teaching).
Brightest blessings!
The Gentle Art of Blessing
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On awakening, bless this day, for it is already full of unseen good which your blessings will call forth; for to bless is to acknowledge the unlimited good that is embedded in the very texture of the universe and awaiting each and all.
On passing people in the street, on the bus, in places of work and play, bless them. The peace of your blessing will accompany them on their way and the aura of its gentle fragrance will be a light to their path. On meeting and talking to people, bless them in their health, their work, their joy, their relationships to God, themselves, and others.
Bless them in their abundance, their finances…bless them in every conceivable way, for such blessings not only sow seeds of healing but one day will spring forth as flowers of joy in the waste places of your own life.
As you walk, bless the city in which you live, its government and teachers, its nurses and streetsweepers, its children and bankers, its priests and prostitutes.
The minute anyone expresses the least aggression or unkindness to you, respond with a blessing: bless them totally, sincerely, joyfully, for such blessings are a shield which protects them from the ignorance of their misdeed, and deflects the arrow that was aimed at you.
To bless means to wish, unconditionally, total, unrestricted good for others and events from the deepest wellspring in the innermost chamber of your heart: it means to hallow, to hold in reverence, to behold with utter awe that which is always a gift from the Creator.
He who is hallowed by your blessing is set aside, consecrated, holy, whole. To bless is yet to invoke divine care upon, to think or speak gratefully for, to confer happiness upon – although we ourselves are never the bestower, but simply the joyfull witnesses of Life’s abundance.
To bless all without discrimination of any sort is the ultimate form of giving, because those you bless will never know from whence came the sudden ray of sun that burst through the clouds of their skies, and you will rarely be a witness to the sunlight in their lives.
When something goes completely askew in your day, some unexpected event knocks down your plans and you too also, burst into blessing: for life is teaching you a lesson, and the very event you believe to be unwanted, you yourself called forth, so as to learn the lesson you might balk against were you not to bless it. Trials are blessings in disguise, and hosts of angels follow in their path.
To bless is to acknowledge the omnipresent, universal beauty hidden to material eyes; it is to activate that law of attraction which, from the furthest reaches of the universe, will bring into your life exactly what you need to experience and enjoy.
When you pass a prison, mentally bless its inmates in their innocence and freedom, their gentleness, pure essence and unconditional forgiveness; for one can only be prisoner of one’s self-image, and a free man can walk unshackled in the courtyard of a jail, just as citizens of countries where freedom reigns can be prisoners when fear lurks in their thoughts.
When you pass a hospital, bless its patients in their present wholeness, for even in their suffering, this wholeness awaits in them to be discovered.
When your eyes behold a man in tears, or seemingly broken by life, bless him in his vitality and joy: for the material senses present but the inverted image of the ultimate splendor and perfection which only the inner eye beholds.
It is impossible to bless and to judge at the same time. So hold constantly as a deep, hallowed, intoned thought that desire to bless, for truly then shall you become a peacemaker, and one day you shall, everywhere, behold the very face of God.
And of course, don’t forget to bless the utterly beautiful person YOU are!
From the book by Pierre Pradervand: The Gentle Art of Blessing – Living One’s Spirituality in Everyday Life. Used by the kind permission of M. Pradervand.
The book may be ordered through book stores and many sources online.
A movie version may be seen at:
http://www.joy-tothe-world.com/Gentle_Art_of_Blessing_Movi.html
You are invited to look up the website about the author’s workshops, which take place at 7000 feet in the Swiss Alps (website in French), at: www.life.int.ch or e-mail: prader@iprolink.ch
