Easter is a time of celebration because it honors my resurrection, the main feast in the Christian year, the feast that reminds you all that you are the divine children of God, forever enfolded in His most loving embrace, and that you are eternal beings blessed with life everlasting. Life should and can be joy-filled, and when you awaken it will be!
As humans, very, very few of you truly acknowledge or pay attention to this feast day, other than to have a celebratory meal and enjoy eating chocolate eggs. There is nothing wrong with that, but, as your awakening draws ever closer, it behoves you to pay attention to your spiritual lives and to the holy days that occur throughout the year. The Christian calendar of holy days was established to remind people of their spiritual heritage, and to bring to their attention the major days on which remembrance of that meaning is honored through devotion to those who are named as saints. But of course you are all saints, because every child of God was created perfect and is therefore a saint, you have just forgotten who you truly are.
All creeds and religions have their holy days, because, for those who believe that there is far more to life than the materialist world acknowledges, it helps to bring into focus the event or occurrence that the holy day asks you to celebrate, as you call to mind the one for whom the day is named. After all celebration is a very important part of your lives, and you have many personal events that most people will at some stage experience – graduating from high school, coming of age, getting married, and, of course, birthdays – and then honor with an appropriate celebration.
To celebrate lifts your spirits, because it temporarily takes your minds off the daily struggles that most of you undergo to provide for yourselves and your families. Therefore, when you do celebrate, it is important to set a very powerful intent to honor your spiritual heritage, your true nature, and give thanks to God for all the blessings that He has bestowed upon you.
To become aware of those blessings it is essential that you spend some time each day in prayer, not begging or beseeching God for favors, but sitting or, if you prefer, kneeling, or even prostrating yourselves – whatever feels most appropriate and comfortable to you (let what others do be of no concern) – and offering gratitude to God for the gift of life He has given you. Then make a positive effort to see and appreciate the joys that being alive allows and encourages you to experience.
Life as a human, when you cease to focus your attention solely on your worldly concerns or on the pain and suffering that so many are undergoing, is constantly offering you some wonderful experiences – beautiful sunsets, the gorgeous smell of fresh fruit, the glorious colors of flowers, trees swaying in the breeze, and hillsides covered in gorse or heather, the excited smiles of small children, and the loving affection of your partners, and also your pet dogs and cats. Truly there is SO MUCH for which you should be filled with gratitude! And so many of you miss these joys because you are remembering and perhaps regretting the past, or worried about what the future holds for you, instead of LIVING, right NOW, in the present moment when life actually happens!
To spend time daily in prayer, meditation, contemplation, or just quietly and effortlessly relaxing, is the most effective way to be aware of and experience the present moment when your life is actually happening. Accidents, when people hurt themselves, or someone they love is hurt, do bring their attention to the now moment – temporarily – but then judgment, blame, and the need to deal with the situation tends to bring the focus of attention back to what has happened – the past – or to concerns about what needs to be done to deal with it – the future – and awareness of being alive is once again forgotten.
Nearly everyone has had the experience of being distracted during moments of joy by a call for attention – the phone, social media, remembrance of something that should have been done yesterday – and then later being upset that they did not fully engage with that never to repeated moment. NOW is when life occurs, and by making the time available daily to be present in the now moment is extremely good for your health – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
All of us in the non-physical realms do our utmost to assist you in feeling the Love, which of course envelops you constantly, when you take time out to be at peace. However, many of you tend to get caught up in negative judgmental thoughts about yourselves and your ineffectiveness in establishing quiet times because you keep engaging with the almost constant flow of thoughts through your minds. Initially they will be flowing constantly, and because you have spent years attending to them instantly, thinking that they are who you are, it is difficult for you not to engage with them. Then you remember that you were trying and meaning to be quiet and at peace, and you perhaps berate yourselves for allowing yourselves to be distracted, and tell yourselves that you are no good at it, or that it is just a waste of time.
None of these negative self assessments are in any way valid! When you become aware that you have become lost in your thoughts instead of being at peace in the now moment, thank yourselves for that awareness, and forgive yourselves for being distracted. Doing that will slow or reduce the flow of thoughts because you have removed the need to judge them with further thoughts. As you continue to make time available daily to be quite and to be at peace, and as you continue to thank yourselves when you become aware that your mind has been wandering, and you forgive yourselves for allowing it to happen, you will find that you have increasingly long moments when you are not attending to or engaging with your thought flow. This will bring you a sense of accomplishment, along with the stillness and peace that you have been seeking and are now experiencing, and you will find yourselves making sure not to miss making quiet time daily an essential part of your lives. In fact you may well find that it becomes the most important part of your day, as you find that your daily life is now running far more smoothly and easily, no matter what may arise for you to deal with.
And as you spend your quiet time peacefully disengaged or partially disengaged from your chattering mind, CELEBRATE, because you are at peace, which was your intent when choosing to set time aside daily to be quiet. Of course you will have to return to the world after spending time quietly alone, but now you will find that it is much easier and far less stressful to deal with the issues demanding your focus and attention. You will also find yourselves noticing little things that bring you momentary joy throughout your day, things that previously you were too preoccupied to see. And this will further add to your peace and sense of well being, further encouraging you to CELEBRATE LIFE for its own sake.
To reiterate, life is to be lived for its own sake, and to be alive is the perfect reason to offer thanks to God in gratitude for this most wonderful gift. The perfect time and place to do this is when you enter your quiet time and go within to that holy inner sanctuary where Love resides permanently within you. And as your awareness of the fact that you are infinitely and eternally loved grows ever stronger, CELEBRATE! God’s Will is that you know and experience his eternal Love for you, and knowing this, as deep within yourselves you do, then celebrate your beingness at One with Him.
Your loving brother, Jesus.
