Original photograph by Sandy Chase

I am sitting here, goose bumps covering my skin and tears welling up in my eyes. Each hair on my body is alive as if each is reaching for the sky while my body seems to be melting into the space beneath it.  My breath is still slow, my heart content to beat in time with the rhythm that has pulsed through it.  I am alone but not lonely.  I am still but far from doing nothing.  I am alive and I am aware even as the universe fades from view in eyes wide open.

Thus ends my midday meditation and for those of you who may not have experienced this I highly recommend it.  It’s not the first time that I have been graced with such an explosion of emotion.  Once, when I was about 14, I had such a tremendous experience while meditating that I stopped practicing until I could better understand the experience.  In that moment I cried like a baby as a sense of love came cascading down from points all around me.  I felt the room fade away as all that remained was the sense of love that filled the areas where intense pain once dwelled.  Light filled darkness, and the unusual experience of joy filled my heart.  Needless to say, I was not prepared to handle it.

I was not alone but I was lonely in my youth.  I was a tortured soul if ever there was one, with parents who instilled such agreements in me as “I am not worthy” or “I am nothing”.  They also created agreements for me that caused me to fear love, to fear commitment, to fear giving myself freely and to fear trusting in anything with a heartbeat.  Yes, they drew up the contracts but it was me who readily agreed to sign them.  I did not understand the latter part of that equation until after my children were born and love began to invade places I kept locked deep within me.  Today, those places are becoming “public parks” where anyone can visit without a moment’s hesitation on my part.

It was not until recently that I decided those contracts must become null and void.  Now, you just don’t cancel a contract with fear or anger.  It just doesn’t work that way.  Rather, you must replace those contracts with agreements that make them null and void.  You don’t “ask” for release, you release yourself (action, by the way, is the purest form of asking).  I’ll say that again, this time without the parentheses. Action is the purest form of asking. Perhaps, for those of you who don’t know me, this requires a bit of explanation using my patented analogies.

Say I want to have a successful business in landscaping and I am a very creative landscaper with many talents for the task.  I sit in silent prayer asking the Universe (or God) to make my business successful.  I do this for countless hours a day, several days a week for several weeks in a row.  At the end of the practice, I look at my sales figures in total disbelief.  “Zero sales!?,” I shout.  “The universe must hate me.  That law of attraction stuff is nothing but nonsense!!”

Source: Photobucket (username: eyeness)

I suggest that is simply not so.  What you have truly done is ask the universe to make you successful at sitting still and praying, to which it replied “YES!”  I have found in my experience that action is the only question the Universe actually understands.  If I sit in a church somewhere and pray for world peace, and then leave the building and attack a person walking down the street, which request am I actually asking the Universe to meet?  That answer seems relatively simple, and to me is one reason gurus like Gandhi said, “BE the change you wish to see in the world” and not “pray that the world changes”.  Make sense?  I can’t find anything else that is clearer spiritually.

Having this experience within me, I discovered that I cannot simply ask that an agreement with fear be nullified.  I cannot ask for an end to loneliness while remaining in an empty room attached to a need for companionship.  I cannot ask to be loved while continually spreading fear to those around me.  I cannot ask to “see the light” while sitting on the basket that covers it.  No, I must make other agreements and, in turn, ask the question correctly.  I must walk out of my empty room toward a room filled with others (or lose my attachment to companionship) if I no longer want to be lonely.  I must spread love if I want to see love in return.  I must lift the cover if I wish to see the light under it.  Action, therefore, is the question the Universe understands.

Now, back to the analogy.  I ask the Universe to have a successful landscaping business not by praying for it, but rather by going out and doing a good job at a good value.  I relish in my passion for it and it, in return, provides me with success.  I have made an agreement with success by not only identifying my passion and talent but by putting that passion and talent in ACTION.  To this, the Universe always says “YES!”

What Agreements Does the Universe Have With You? (source: NASA)

Once I discovered this truth a new reality was born for me.  I have replaced the agreements I had with fear with new agreements with Love.  I have replaced the agreements I had with anger with new agreements with joy.  I have replaced the agreements I had with judgment with agreements with peace.  Mostly, I have replaced agreements I had with death with new agreements I have with life.  Amazing, huh?  I have begun asking the questions correctly.  I used to pray that I could become a writer.  Now, I write.  A prayer never once put a moment of inspiration through my fingers onto paper, actually typing them did.    An agreement I had with a dream has been replaced with a new agreement I have with action.  I have replaced asking with action and expecting with doing and have found a great new world in front of me.

Now, the goose bumps have subsided, and I can return to the rest of my passion-filled day.  See, prayer may not get inspiration from fingers to paper, but it does get inspiration from Source to fingers.  Prayer in itself is a question.  Meditation is, after all, an action.  The Universe always says “YES” to both, and anytime we believe it has failed what really has failed is our perception of what we have asked or what we have done.  The Universe never fails, ever.

Be well, and prosper my dear friends.  It’s all up to YOU.

Peace. ☮   ©2011 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ