Blessing and Curses

This week's Bible reading discusses blessings and curses. But what's it all about? What does it really mean to be blessed or cursed? The secret that we learn this week is that the concept of blessings and curses really refers to their impact on the consciousness of the person being blessed or cursed. Essentially, when we are blessed, we have the ability to go beyond the present moment and to see where the road will take us. We feel connected to a higher purpose for our being and we understand the difficulties we need to go through and why we need to go through them. Oftentimes, though, we fall into the illusion that being blessed means getting what we want or having the best of the fruitfulness of this world. However, people can have lots of money and material things and still not be happy. In fact, sometimes an abundance of material wealth can be a curse for people. They are always concerned with how to keep it, who may be after them for having it, and will it be enough for them and for their future generations. On the other hand, there are people who don't have a lot of material possessions, yet seem to be living a blessed life. We are cursed when we don't realize that everything that happens in our lives is there to bring us to a higher spiritual level—when we haven't realized that there is something beyond us. Being cursed means that in one way or another, we are blinkered, and our limited vision holds us back from connecting to and living within the context of the bigger picture. Let's take a look at how this concept operates in our lives. We may find ourselves in situations when we feel envy or feel jealousy towards another person. But what we don't realize is that whenever we look at someone and ask, "Why do they have and I don't?" we lose because whatever envy or jealousy we are harboring is actually sapping our energy, our Light. It is, in effect, our own envy or jealousy that is causing the lack to remain in our own consciousnesses. The concept is simple, yet profound if we really take the time to think about it. The punishment for our anger is the anger itself. The punishment for our jealousy is the jealousy itself. The punishment for our envy is the envy itself. In other words, the curse is actually our limited consciousness that keeps us from seeing that the negative situations we find ourselves in can help us grow to a higher spiritual level. If we could really understand this concept, remember it, and bring it into our lives, then we would have the beginning of another way of looking at life. When we throw a ball against the wall, we know for certain the ball will bounce back. When we “throw a ball” of caring for someone else or of being there for someone when we don't want to be, we need to know that the ball will bounce back. The blessing is the ability to know with absolute certainty that anything positive we put in someone's life will bring positivity back to us, while anything negative we put in someone else's life will cause negativity in our own. This week, we have the opportunity to connect with this consciousness of blessing. We have the ability to remember in the busyness and routine of our everyday lives that everything around us—people, situations, challenges—is there to help us grow as individuals and to come closer to realizing our true potential. If you like this please share it with a friend.