Prayer for Forgiveness and Reconciliation

I began a forty day prayer suggested by Brandy yesterday, praying that all beings who I have harmed, whether I know it or remember it, will forgive me and also asking for the means to provide reconciliation and make amends. Today after practicing this devotion I encountered the thought that I might need to consider the harm to the Earth involved with taking the materials to build my home and even the food that I eat. My participation in wrongdoing may be extraordinarily extensive. So I burned some sage in my home and blessed the water I used to make coffee with gratitude, recognizing the dependence and interconnection of all life. I took an extra moment when feeding my dogs to make them sit and join me in blessing their food, simultaneously receiving the gift of recognizing their beauty and devotion to me.

I was reminded of the post by Angleclaire on oneness consciousness and it helped me to see that enlightenment is a very large awakening. Every breath I take is communion with energies that my ego sees as distinct from itself but in fact that very ego is only a passing gift from the infinite multitude of tiny living entities who construct and maintain this body the illusory “I” inhabits. Star was kind enough to write on recognizing our own abundance and point out that it is only through giving that we nourish the abundance. I am grateful that quite unconsciously, through the devoted work of my lungs and the cells who make up my pulmonary system, I am continually giving carbon dioxide to the plants I love most dearly. They might even love me too. I wondered that I have anything at all to give but found I could give attention to the words and suggestions of my brothers and sisters, which in return gave me the knowledge that I have been giving all along but that I had limited the gift by not being conscious of it. I even give three dogs food and shelter while I am learning from my new friends how to give them even more than that. All with only the expenditure of attention to what I was doing anyway.

To continue giving gratitude, I would like to thank Laurence for welcoming me here and for all the work he puts into creating and maintaining the site. (I originally posted this at Aussie Lightworker aussielightworker.ning.com/) He told me a little bit about his life and I must conclude he is a very busy and devoted man. I was a little bit disturbed by his post on our financial system but in the end it only made me realize that money is nothing more than a symbol for faith and I am grateful for the truly amazing growth in abundance it has provided. It is true that there appear to be some problems with the system but I am confident that wisdom will prevail and the mechanics of distributing tokens of faith will evolve into a reflection of the divine process of nature, which in fact is all humans are after all. I think we need to have some gratitude for our bankers. I sure wouldn’t want their jobs; I’ve spent a lifetime trying to avoid any attachment to money. Funny how I have more of it now than ever before. “What you resist persists.” ~ Carl Jung

Contemplating all of this in the context of a prayer for forgiveness while drinking my coffee led me to see the sacred cycle that is the metabolism of this planet’s life, from the discovery of coffee beans by indigenous tribes to the cultivation, harvest, manufacture, packaging, shipping, distribution, and sale, all through human hands grasping for the faith in abundance represented by money, which now allows me and people all over the world to partake of the sacred gift of caffeine and its attending enlightenment of consciousness. How many of you are grateful to the core of your being for that first cup of coffee in the morning? Through this contemplation I was able to awaken again in myself the wonder at a magical gift from nature that has become the daily meditation of humanity if we but take a moment to see the continuous thread of natural abundance weaving through our lives. We lost contact with this when we became distanced from plucking the beans from the plant and now see nothing sacred in twisting a can opener, even after offering the holy sacrament of our life blood translated into the Eucharist of money for the privilege. We have become too rational and judgmental of our activities, failing to see the same energy of creation in a can opener and a dollar that also moves the sap into the flower and manifests tiny nuggets of holy food.

I ask that all parts of the living cycle that I have ever judged as anything less than holy or subjected to the sin of unconsciousness forgive me and grant me daily the means to make amends by honoring their service to enrich my life with my conscious gratitude to all things that are the cooperating causes in all things that exist. Selah.