12-16-01, Sunday Journal, 616 words
ONE POWERFUL PROMISE
By Dalton Roberts
IPS Features
From 1977 journal notes
Sometimes
when we are without any feeling of power or importance, we have to latch onto
one powerful truth and hang on for dear life.
At
this time in ‘77 I was going through a time of finding some spiritual roots
after a 20 year period of church disappointment and agnosticism. I had been
unjustly fired and felt I should run for office to vindicate my name. I kept
asking for signs and all I got was the words, "I will be with you." No
money, no organization – nothing but that one sentence came to me.
Then
the signs began. Signs showing Something or Someone was with me. Little things,
sometimes, but when you have almost nothing going for you, any tiny help boosts
your confidence.
I
couldn't say this when I was in office because people would have thought I was
just talking religion to help myself politically, but I am glad I can say it now
because I strongly desire to give God credit. I became keenly aware over those
six months of campaigning that God was with me, opening doors, giving me
strength, drawing to me the people I needed to win.
I'm
not saying I was a better Christian or more spiritual than my opponent. To the
contrary I was a spiritual baby, struggling for some kind of reality.
I
was unable to raise much money and I think now the reason was that the credit
needed to rest where it belonged, not to money.
Nothing
feels better than to prove a spiritual reality in your life. To stand on a
promise while doing everything you know to do, taking chances that might look
ridiculous to those who don't know the spiritual path you have chosen.
Until
the day I die, I will treasure this experience. It means so much more to me than
just winning. Even if I had lost, I could have never been an agnostic again. A
Presence had become too real to be denied.
Say
these names quietly and slowly and notice your energy changes: Ebeneezer
Scrooge, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, Gandhi, Jesus. Any others that come to your
mind.
I
have come to realize that names carry energy. That's why I like to nickname my
close friends.
One
dear friend sends me letters with sparkles and stars all over them. Her name is
"Lea" so I gave her the spiritual energy name of "Sparklea."
Just looking at that word sparkles up my energy field.
I
love my nickname of "Downhome." It transmits the power of old
memories, old places and old ways that have special meaning for me. It makes me
realize that "old" can mean "new." Every old memory you pull
up today, is new. You re-embrace it. You swap with it the energy of your nowness.
Give
yourself at least one nickname that brings out the most sparkling aspect of your
being. Even if you never share it with anyone and are never called by that name,
meditate on it now and then and suck the juice out of it.
When
I was a boy, I'd cut across a sugar cane field going to the creek to fish or
swim. I'd take my pocket knife and cut off stalks of sugar cane, stripping away
the hard bark, and just suck all the goodness out of it. Just think of your
special name as a big chunk of that sugar cane.
This
will sound silly until you try it but it is sublimely silly and sublimely silly
is sublime.
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