To be extraordinary ....

I thought I would publish a short Inspirational Talk I gave recently at the Cork Mediumship Spiritual Divine Service and I hope that you enjoy reading this .....





Good evening ladies and Gentlemen.  Its lovely, once again to be back in Cork at this Divine Service and I hope that I can share with you some inspirational words tonight that you might find thought provoking on this cold spring evening.
 
One of the Seven Principles of Spiritualism as taught by the Spiritualists’ National Union is personal responsibility.  It teaches us that the acceptance of responsibility for every aspect of our lives and the use, to which we put our lives, depends entirely upon us.  We are given the freedom of choice, or free will, and the ability to recognize what is right from wrong.

In relation to this, I would like to suggest to you tonight that we are living in extraordinary times.  Frightening and scary times to be sure, but certainly extraordinary.  And it is time to allow our lives to become extraordinary and to take back our personal responsibility for ourselves, for the society in which we find ourselves living, our personal happiness and the teaching of personal responsibility and happiness to our children.

It may feel that many things are collapsing around us today.  There is much sorrow and confusion all around the world as the structures we have known and trusted in for so many centuries are no longer serving us in the ways they used to.  Our governments and politicians around the world no longer seem to be on the side of their peoples.  Our education systems, our religious churches, health systems, corporate institutions are in a mess.  Wars, threats of wars, crime and the huge increase in suicide and mental health issues and chronic illness are all that we read in our papers and see on our tv screens.  And many people are frightened of where this is all leading humanity and what is to become of our beloved Mother Earth.

But tonight I want to ask you to look beyond the fear and the chaos that this collapse of the structure of society as we have known increases, and see the joy in the chaos and see it as an invitation from Spirit to allow ourselves to become extraordinary human beings and an invitation to take back personal responsibility for our future. We have been ordinary for too long and we have obeyed man made rules for too long.  We have taught our children to behave, be good, be perfect.  To sit quietly, be seen and not heard, learn their ABCs and 123s, be sensible, go to college, get a job, raise 2.2 children and tie themselves in a mortgage keeping themselves and their families enslaved to a system that no longer works.  The pressure on our young to do all these things, as we have done before them, has created so much stress.  Too much stress.  And our young ones, especially now, are staying caught up in their egoic minds - battling against their Spirits to stay afloat and losing sense of the adventure life is meant to offer us.  Trying to make sense of the chaos when it can’t be worked out by the mind alone. 

I ask us to close our eyes, put our hands on our hearts and feel our essence once again.  Sit still every day in silence and listen to our hearts and re-connect to our passions, our life force, our Spirit and listen to the wisdom that comes from within the silence and feel the excitement that our Spirit was born to experience.

We didn’t come here from the Spirit world to be perfect.  Life isn’t meant to be perfect.  Our Spirit came here from a place of perfection.  We chose to come here to experience life and love in all its aspects.          I believe life and love are meant to be crazy and chaotic and messy and passionate, for we came her to experience everything being alive can offer us.

Years ago I was working with young people with horses and ponies and I was being trained as a riding teacher.  A leading professional in this country asked the question why were we losing all our good riders at the age of 15/16 and not keeping them to go on and compete for their country.  I suggested then that we put too much pressure on our young today.  They have pressure at school to excel.  Education has become about nothing more than how many points they achieve at Leaving Cert and the pressure on many is becoming untenable.  And then they do extra-curricular stuff after school, theoretically to relax, but they are pushed to excel in these things as well.  Exams, grades, competitions, A teams, be it ballet, music lessons, sports, riding, their teachers push, we parents push, they push themselves and strive and strive for perfection - or the top results or the top position.  Where has the joy gone in kids just making music, going for a gallop on a beach, kicking a ball?  How can we re-kindle, re-ignite the flame of passion and joy in our lives and the lives of our children?  How do we help them do this, re-kindle this,  through the ordinary things in life, that will lead their lives to become extraordinary.

First we have to release the pressure like taking the lid off a pressure cooker.  We have to stop looking for results, stop looking for excellence and perfection.  Stop comparing ourselves and our children with what other people have, what society tells us is acceptable and find instead what and where our and their passion is.  Find the ordinary things in life that turn us on, and by finding the joy in each of them, make our lives extraordinary.

My own daughter become very confused when she was about to take her 1st Holy Communion at the age of 6.  She blurted out that she didn’t know what to believe.  Daddy believed in nothing.  I talked of Spirit and meditation and personal private relationships with God and her teacher was telling her that if she was good she would make the Holy Mary very strong and if she was bad she would make the Devil even stronger.  And she cried and she broke my heart.  At that moment I pulled the car over to the side of the road and told her to close her eyes.  I told her to put her hand on her heart so she could feel it beating.  And then I asked her, “what makes sense to you?  What does your heart tell you?  What is your passion saying to you?  Not what Daddy thinks, or what your teacher thinks, or what I think.  What do YOU think?”  And as we sat there I saw the passion come alive in my daughter.  Her tears dried and she smiled.  And since then I have had the privilege to watch her become extraordinary.  She is someone who really does follow her passions and makes them a reality.  She is not concerned with what others think she should do.  She never went to college but took herself off around the world instead.  Her life is extraordinary and passionate and she lives every day in her ordinary work, her humble sweet home, her relationship, listening to the wisdom of her heart and her Soul and not her egoic mind. 

We can all of us live extraordinary lives.  We can stand up and do something about the things we don’t like or that no longer seem to serve us or our communities any more.  We can chose how we want to live on this extraordinarily magical and beautiful planet of ours.  Each one of us can make a difference.  The Dali Lama once said that if every child on this planet was taught to meditate by the age of 8, which to me means finding a personal relationship with Spirit, then there would be world peace in one generation.  So lets teach our children and ourselves how to sit in the silence - that Gap where we find God - in the essence with Spirit and re-kindle at the same time our passions and our ability to see and live the extraordinary lives that awaken us to our true purpose for being here in our little corner of the Universe on this amazing Mother Earth of ours and try and make a difference every single day.  From the small things, the ordinary things, like recycling that annoying coke can today or sitting and making a cup of tea for that lonely person living down our road - or doing something special for ourselves, falling in love with ourselves and not putting it off.  Sit for 5 minutes with the sun on our face, do one thing that comes from a place of passion today and forget one thing that comes from that egoic place of what I should do, or what i shouldn’t do.  Look in the mirror today and say simply, “I love you”.  Tell someone you are close to, today “I love you” and don’t put it off until tomorrow.  Start saying yes to life and slowly we will learn to be extraordinary and do extraordinary things and teach our children that it is ok not to follow the path laid down by old societies ways that no longer serve us, or them or our planet.  But to be brave and bold and passionate and to follow their hearts.  For i believe if we follow our passions and our hearts, and if we learn to fully connect to Spirit, to really listen to Spirit from within, we don't’ become selfish or self centred but we find our true purpose in life, the true meaning of why we came into this world, this body, this lifetime and we can really make a difference and help get this world of ours back into balance.

This world was not made from apathy or following any rules of science.  It was made from chaos.  It was created from the passionate union of the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine - the two aspects of Spirit, in total chaos.  And in that chaos, beauty was created in the Universe.  So we can CHOSE to see the chaos around us in society and in the world right now as scary and frightening and stay stuck in fear, or we can CHOSE to go into the chaos willingly and start creating the lives we really want from our passions and by listening to our hearts, through love.  Each one of us, whatever age we are, can invite love in and CHOSE to be extraordinary by celebrating the very ordinary things in our lives that we love.  WE can chose to awaken our passions.  WE can chose to live from a place of love and let fear finally go, once and for all.  We can CHOSE not to be perfect.  We have eternity to go back to being perfect, once we pass beyond the veil and live a life after death as we will hear so much evidence of tonight.  A place of perfection and bliss.  So chose now not be perfect.  Get down in the mud of life and experience everything you can.  The ordinary stuff of life.  The messy love, the chaotic love, the passion and above all allow ourselves to become extraordinary by falling in love with the ordinary things and taking back personal responsibility for all our words, for all our deeds and for all our thoughts.

Which would you prefer: to slip back into the Spirit world at our end time and say, ‘well i suppose that was ok, or worse, think, thank heavens that is over …….”  Or do you want to return beyond the veil, slipping and sliding in sideways, saying “whoa - that was an amazing experience - I learnt so much - I made a difference - I lived everyday through my ordinary days turning them into an extraordinary life” !!!!

Go out.  Teach your children they can make a difference by falling in love with the ordinary things in life. Make a difference yourself.  Chose to be extraordinary and live from love.  Its what we came here to do.

To finish with the wise words from a poem by William Martin from ‘Ancient Advice for Modern Parents’

 
“Do not ask your children

to strive only for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

For then the extraordinary will take care of itself.”

 

God bless and enjoy all life has to offer.   Thank you.