I’ve always been singled out by others for being different. Most of the time, this seemed to attract bullying from other kids who were looking for someone to suppress and dominate.
I never cracked this code in childhood. I just endured each verbal jab, and on a few occasions, physical pain, from those who gained amusement from the misfortune of others. This helped further establish my co-dependent tendencies, since now, upsetting others wasn’t just the loss of validation but another potential moment of harassment. As I grew up, abuse from bullies faded away and transformed into verbal pokes from distant relatives I’d see at various gatherings and reunions. By this time, I was mostly free of my people-pleasing tendencies, having developed the thick skin needed to stop blaming my behavior for someone else’s judgment. Somewhere along the way, during a moment of sarcastic banter with a relative, I received an intuition in the form of a question, What if you said thank you in response to any insult, judgment, or projection?
Such an idea seemed strangely out of place, in response to an insult versus a compliment, but that’s what intrigued me the most. What if I didn’t respond to their criticism, but received it from the consciousness of my intention? I thought. At that moment something deep inside me clicked into place. Since my daily intention had been and continues to be, “May I be a gift that is received in the lives of everyone I encounter,” what if I received even an insult as a gift sent from their divinity, even if gift wrapped by the projections of their ego?
It was such a ridiculously liberating suggestion that I had to test it out. Later that night, I crossed paths with one of the relatives I mentioned earlier. His once-subtle forms of judgment had now become a boisterous alcohol-fueled witch hunt. With slurred words, he looked at me and said, “You know what your problem is?”
Truly without an awareness of what problem he was referring to, I responded, “No, I don’t, but I’d love to hear what you have to say.”
“Your problem is—you’re just weird. I mean, who makes a living as a healer?”
The others watching from their chairs and couches gasped. I looked directly into his eyes, smiled, and said, “There are many people in need of healing. Perhaps you’re not one of them. Thank you.” The last part is what their ego latched on to since it was so out of context to the insult offered.
“What are you thanking me for?” he asked.
“Thank you for your feedback. I’m always interested in what you have to say.”
Then there was a pause. His drunken rant was momentarily interrupted when I spoke to the innocence he had lost touch with many years ago. As a way of saving face and denying the vulnerable invitation I offered, he said, “I just don’t know why you’d thank me.”
To which I replied, perfectly on cue, “What can I say? I’m weird.”
The entire room laughed while my drunken relative slumped away into the farthest corner of the house to further bury his unprocessed pain with more booze.
It was at that defining moment of conscious interaction where any threat of confrontation inspired me to recognize the person’s soul as a gift to receive instead of responding to the unconsciousness they weren’t prepared to take responsibility for or even acknowledge. As I continued this practice, in response to compliments as well as judgments, my willingness to say thank you became one of the most popular phrases I found myself saying countless times a day. As I became aligned in the vibration of gratitude, I began to notice how the pattern of bullying or confrontation had disappeared from my life. I began to see that my constant and authentic usage of the words thank you shifted my field of reality to bring me only outcomes, interactions, and characters whose contribution in my life matched the gratitude I constantly sent out. It wasn’t as if I planned to say thank you hundreds of times a day as a way of eliminating any mistreatment. It never occurred to me, since the Universe doesn’t respond to actions expressed from a space of manipulation or coercion.
Instead, I just came to see how good it felt to receive everything as a gift, allowing any judgment of ego to be a moment of playing peek-a-boo with someone else’s soul. I also found the practice of thankfulness to be a way of sending blessings of forgiveness in advance. Instead of waiting for someone’s ego to wrong me as a reminder of who needed the healing effects of forgiveness, I lead with thank you as a way of giving them the transformative effects of gratitude. As thank you became hardwired into me, the little boy who spent the majority of his life hiding from moments of judgment, denial, exclusion, embarrassment, and ridicule felt safe enough to step forward and merge with my adult self. This gave me the ability to open my heart to a greater capacity without being a larger moving target for other people’s insecurities and frustrations.
This highlights the third Golden Rule: “Hardships can be fast-tracked through moments of thankfulness.” Hardship is how your nervous system responds to adversity. Adversity is how you perceive and relate to change or loss. Change and loss are some of the deepest ways in which life evolves you out of ego and into alignment with your soul. Change and loss occur through moments of renewal and erosion that come and go like the seasons or weather patterns. As you experience the nature of change and loss from the soul’s sense of excitement, instead of the ego’s perception of judgment, you are able to let go with authenticity and ease. Only the soul lets go. Equally so, all the ego can do is maintain struggle, judgment, and negotiation. With the utmost respect for its purpose in your evolution, what’s the battle cry of ego—“I wasn’t ready to let go of that yet.” The ego will never be ready to let go of anything. It can’t because to let go is to accept evolution. You may wonder, “Why can’t the ego accept evolution?” Because evolution requires leaving the ego behind; therefore, the ego cannot agree to something it cannot be a part of.
With enough time and experience steeping in heart-centered consciousness, the ego releases its control as a result of your alignment with thankfulness.
Whether silently or out loud, repeat the following words:
Thank you for this gift.
Notice the way the sentence is constructed. It begins with thank you, which is anchoring the vibration of gratitude, or thankfulness. The sentence ends with gift, which is the affirmation that something is only here to positively move you forward in evolution—no matter the circumstances in view. It’s literally a cosmic rule that anything received as a gift will always contain some form of benefit. When not viewed as a gift coming your way, such a creation is given permission to be anything else but helpful within your reality.
To further demonstrate the potency of thanking everything as a gift, I have personally tested the boundaries of thank you by acknowledging the gift in all levels of human experience. I remember one specific instance of exploring it. While sitting in meditation, I spontaneously had the idea of thinking about the worst things that have ever happened to me. One by one, I called upon each character who hurt, wronged, shamed, abused, or betrayed me, and I said to them, “Thank you for this gift.” From the insignificant moments of annoyance to the deepest pains I’ve ever felt, I thanked each person who has been a part of my life with a sincere depth of gratefulness for their contribution. I did this from the knowing that if even one single detail about my past were to be altered, I would never have become exactly who I am today. Therefore, my gratefulness came from a place of pure self-acceptance, which created absolutely no space for anger, frustration, regret, or vengeance to lurk. In being thankful for every moment that made me the man I’m so proud to be, “Thank you for this gift” became the words to celebrate the confirmation that forgiveness was complete.
In essence, you forgive others to help them become more forgiving. In forgiveness, you unearth the energy of happiness, which makes thankfulness more instinctive. As you cultivate greater happiness and thankfulness by being more forgiving, the true self-acceptance of your soul’s reality awakens. Once you are proud to be the person every single moment in time helped you become, there is only gratitude to be offered, helping to energetically break the cycles of abuse in others and unravel patterns of violence permeating our planet, so that each and every sentient being can be nourished by the validation that only we can give ourselves. And so true freedom is here.
EXERCISE: Cultivating the Opposite
Think of a person in your life who either hurt you the most or is the hardest to forgive.
Find the adjective that describes the way they made you feel. Was it betrayed, ashamed, hurt, heartbroken, devastated, or another word that best describes the intensity of your experience?
Here is the crucial turning point. What is the opposite adjective to how they made you feel? If it was abandonment, the opposite of abandonment is inclusion. Because abandonment is to be cast away by another. Inclusion is to be accepted by another.
If it was heartbreak, the opposite of heartbreak is wholeness. If it was devastation, the opposite of devastation is openness. If it was pain, the opposite of pain is ease. If it was shame, the opposite of shame is worthiness. If it was betrayal, the opposite of betrayal is trust.
Why am I showing you this? Because every negative experience that someone seemed to bring upon you serves to help you cultivate the opposite adjective on a vibrational level.
Through devastation, we eventually arrive at more openness. Through betrayal, we actually learn to trust ourselves deeper. Through heartbreak, we become more open. Through abuse, we become more compassionate.
No one deserves anything that happens to them. Life is not a matter of deserving. It’s an opportunity. A divine rite of passage.
Through this practice, you take the worst thing that happened to you, the adjective that describes the way that it made you feel, and acknowledge that the opposite of this feeling is what you’re actually being given the chance to cultivate throughout your life’s journey.
Can you now visualize the person who wronged you and try speaking these words out loud:
I may not have liked the gift
when I initially opened the package.
But there is no doubt
it’s only destined to make me
better than I’ve ever been before.
This doesn’t make the action okay.
And the fact that it isn’t okay
is why I offer forgiveness.
To ensure no one else may be harmed
by the actions of unprocessed pain.
If there’s any justice in this world,
may I be more evolved
than those who have hurt me.
So, in knowing my deepest pain,
I guarantee that no one in my presence
shall ever endure the pain
that I have endured.
This helps me break the cycle of abuse.
Through forgiveness, unfairness is a gift
that only helps me be more kind.
Thank you, unfairness.
Thank you for this gift.
If there’s something in your life that doesn’t feel like a gift, just sit with this wisdom until it feels authentic. It’s not a gift until it’s a gift. You might need to start with “thank you for this hardship, thank you for this betrayal, thank you for this abuse, thank you.” If you can at least say thank you to some of the worst things that have ever happened to you, on a vibrational level, you will feel something deep inside of you shift. When it occurs, it is always the presence of forgiveness answering your call to make things right.
When I was eight years old, I left my body and visited heaven. Since then, I’ve had an open dialogue with the Universe. Of all the insights I’ve learned throughout my life, I’ve learned by seeing firsthand, there is an afterlife. When you’re in heaven, there are questions that are asked of you. I’ll share with you one of the lesser-known questions you’re asked in heaven. It’s a question of extraordinary perspective. There’s the question of how deeply you loved, of your regrets, but here’s a rather clear and definitive question:
How many people did you hurt as a result of the hurt you endured?
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Hurt people hurt people.” I like to say, “Free people free people.” You might ask, “What does it mean to be free?” Being free means you might get hurt, but you will not hurt others as an excuse for being hurt. Being free means you are here to break cycles of abuse by saying thank you to any perceivable hurt. Only the soul can do this. If any degree of ego hears these words, it is immediately frightened or repelled.
As always, you can work the three-step process outlined in this chapter:
One of the most compelling reasons why the image of Christ on a cross is a vivid depiction of surrender is because the one being crucified isn’t fighting back. How many beings did Christ hurt as a result of his hurt? Zero. That’s the path of mastery. You might be hurt throughout your life, but your objective is to hurt no one in response. Your ego might think, “If I don’t hurt the people who hurt me, what do I do?” To which the soul replies, “Say thank you.” If you’re entrenched in ego, that will make no sense at all. It will sound completely insane. If, however, you’re an evolving soul, something in you says, “You know, that makes sense, somehow.”
It’s actually the only way. Once you are ready, willing, and able to bring gratitude to the forefront, you’ll be surprised how often people go out of their way to help, uplift, and support you. Simply put, the light within every being steps forward once the divinity in you shows up.
This means the speed at which you evolve is how often you bring gratitude to the table. When everything is a gift, you have successfully completed Golden Rule #3.
When you embrace the wisdom of Golden Rule #3, you help to dispel old-paradigm myths such as the age-old saying, “Reality grows where attention goes.” This is not a true statement at all. If anything, it is one of the most fear-based ideas that gave rise to the positive thinking movement of the 70s and 80s. In retrospect, it did more to create spiritual ego’s fear of negativity than it aligned human beings with the light of divinity.
Let’s first acknowledge the sliver of truth this statement is suggesting. If you choose to see things from a negative viewpoint on a regular basis, through the law of repetition, you increase the likelihood that your subconscious mind will be fed by such perspectives. As a result, you will seek out negativity to confirm what you’ve conditioned yourself to believe. This might be a groundbreaking realization for narcissistic behavior, but for the already evolving, energetically sensitive soul, it just creates more superstitious belief patterns to be afraid of.
Can you multiply your debt just by staring at your credit card bill? No. Why? Because reality doesn’t grow where attention goes. If you were to believe such an oversimplified statement, you would be more than likely to turn away from someone in pain, out of the fear of manifesting equal amounts of adversity if you focus too much on it. Especially knowing, our role as lightworkers, earth angels, and evolving spiritual masters invites you to thank each and every person for the gifts they provide, whether good or bad, as our way of elevating our vibration through the power of gratitude and forgiveness. You can’t participate in that depth of global and individual transformation if you believe these types of antiquated statements.
It all comes down to human beings not having the coping skills to be aware of why adversity strikes and how to use each moment toward the evolutionary advantage of all. As a whole, we are so afraid of attracting more difficulty and upsetting the never-satisfied ego structure that we are more willing to turn away from the hardships of another if it guarantees us one split second of joy. Thankfully, we have arrived at a pivotal time in Earth’s evolution, where the pain of humanity is so severe and relentless, it forces us to ask the deeper questions as entry points into a more mature, spiritually aligned reality.
Gone are the days when supposedly positive people disempower the hardships of other people’s testimony, as if the feedback they provide about the depth of their difficulties is somehow lowering anyone’s vibration. Of all the mechanisms that restrict the flow of consciousness and maintain a lower vibration, there is no greater culprit than denial. When you feel sad, low, or exhausted by other people’s feedback, it’s because you are empathizing with their experience. If you wish to transform such exhaustion into lightness, inspiration, and joy, simply respond with spoken blessings for a better tomorrow. You don’t even have to take the time to convince anyone how everything is a gift. That’s for you to know on the inside, while leading with your most loving responses toward those who may not have even taken a moment to breathe since the last catastrophe struck.
Life is a dance of ever-growing perspective that cannot be disrespected with oversimplification. Let us join together, daring to look at life’s most insurmountable difficulties directly, while asking the most important question only your soul can muster, “How can I help?”
Through the power of thankfulness that fast-tracks adversities into the soul’s domain of infinite excitement, I invite you to embrace Golden Rule #3. One moment of gratitude at a time, it eradicates any tendency to be less emotionally available for those who just need to know they are seen, heard, and loved.