For over 60 years I belonged to forms of organized religion. These still play a useful role for some individuals who need to have verbal formulations of truths and liturgical and cultural forms that reassure and comfort. However, we live in a world where increasingly everything is challenged and each one is called to define…
As our guest blog for this month, we are sharing a Spiritual Teaching and Practice from Paul Ferrini’s online course Journey from Fear to Love. Ferrini is the author of over 40 books on love, healing and forgiveness. His unique blend of spirituality and psychology goes beyond self-help and recovery into the heart of…
We live in a world of growing complexity not to mention complications. If I did not have a few good friends to help me, I could easily become a Neolithic caveman in the computer field. In almost every single area, especially e.g., health and medicine, we are faced with contradictory information, most of them claiming to…
Blessing, in the meaning used on this site and in books* I have written on the practice of blessing, often results in healing. A perusal of the section on healing testimonies shows that numerous healings or resolutions of “impossible” situations have occurred through this practice: including a severe depression; very difficult relationships; being freed from…
Kristi Nelson – Guest blogger – is executive director of A Network for Grateful Living, a global organization offering online and community-based educational programs and practices which inspire and guide a commitment to grateful living, and catalyze the transformative power of personal and societal responsibility. We often feel gratitude when we get or experience something we…
It is most regrettable that most politicians, even at the highest level, ignore the very basics of demography! For instance, the average number of births per women needed to keep a stationary population is just above two in our countries. However, the birth rate in the USA and Great Britain is 1.8 (down from 2.12…
“I believe it is impossible to live a happy life if one nourishes resentment for some harm done to oneself, or guilt or repressed anger for an error of omission or commission we caused. On the other hand, we become incapable of resentment when we have understood that everyone is at every moment at their…
In a variety of teachings, unconditional love is the heart and soul of the spiritual life and the ultimate aim of the spiritual path – and by love is meant love in action of course (be it meditation or feeding the hungry), not discourses about love. “We bless ourselves in our desire to have a…
“PIerre, you must be losing your mind!” “Hey, man, you are going soft in the head!” “What, you expect me to not only put up with, or stop hating, but LOVE the present tenant of the White House?” No, in fact I don’t expect anything from anyone (when I am in a sane state of…
In her book The Healing Secrets of the Ages, Catherine Ponder writes: “Bless the world around you unselfishly with divine order. As you do so, you release the power of order into the atmosphere to do its perfect work. Look for, expect and give thanks for divine order, often. By doing so, you release…
Guest blog by Sandy Wilder One reason so many of us struggle with making progress and experiencing freedom, is that we are so identified with our minds that we often confuse our mind with our identity. Your mind is one of your faculties, but it is not who you are. It does not have the…
That so gifted, sensitive Irish writer John O’Donohue once wrote this moving statement: “Let there be gentleness in your gaze when you look within”. So many of us can sometimes be so tough with ourselves. Yet the incredible, divine, unconditionally loving Being which runs this amazing show called “the universe” of which we are in…
Guest blogger: Andrew Harvey Andrew Harvey is one of the great spiritual teachers of today who has inspired thousands all round the world to turn their spirituality into the real power behind their lives rather than icing on the cake. For instance, it is all too easy to make (create, utter, send out) a nice blessing…
More and more in the literature and on internet one encounters stories of such “mystical” experiences. I put the word between quotes because there is no universally accepted definition of the term. For me, it means a state of exceptional clarity where the understanding is no longer so much on the level of the mind…
“Grace is the completely unexpected goodness of divine Love manifesting itself in our lives, often at the most unexpected moment. Some people call it “miracle” which is a word we use when we do not understand the perfect laws governing the nonmaterial sphere of being. “I bless myself in my understanding that in a universe…
“We need a new consciousness, and we need to act differently. Instead of revenge we need to practice forgiveness, instead of all-out competition, we need embracing love, and in place of looking for our own advantage in every situation, we need to embrace everyone concerned – and do so unconditionally…. We need to embrace the…
The medieval thinker, writer and teacher Meister Eckhart is one of the very rare non-dual Christian theologians in 2000 years. He has inspired thousands over the years. He once made the amazing statement (to those who imagine that God is a kind of father Christmas up there on the top floor who grants their prayers…
In one of the most powerful passages on oneness in world spiritual literature, the prophet Isaiah describes service as the ultimate path to enlightenment and the source of real health (the words whole, holy and healthy stem from the same root): “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of…
“A great teacher told us that ALL that the Divine Entity includes is already ours, i.e. that we are the very same essence as Infinite Love, just as the wave is of the exact same composition as the ocean. May I learn to see myself beyond the picayune limits of self-imposed fears and doubts and…
“Joy to the World” Major religious festivals like Christmas, Eid-el-Fitr for Muslims, Hanukkah for Jews, Diwali or Krishna Jyanti for Hindus and many others are simply the historically created cultural expressions pointing to a few eternal truths common to many major religious denominations and spiritual paths and seekers not attached to any religion. One of…
Reflections for Thanksgiving 2017 by Pierre Pradervand More and more, gratitude is being acknowledged as an amazing power for good and healing in many different areas of existence –from medicine and positive psychology to gardening and education. It is absolutely impossible, I repeat, impossible, to entertain a deep feeling of gratitude and the least trace…
Note from Pierre: This site has always stressed not only the interdenominational, but also the inter-religious dimension of blessing. Today, for our November blog, we wish to show that even atheists can practice it. So many of our misunderstandings in life are related to the use of words and, in the history of the Western…
There is such a need in the world today of the most tender and immense compassion and deeper, more unselfed caring and giving, and blessing is one simple and efficient way of doing it. It is also an amazing tool for learning instantaneous, unconditional forgiveness, a practice upon which, given our dramatic divisions in the world, our…
related by Pierre Pradervand Succeeding in a spiritual quest demands at least four basic qualities: a strong motivation, total sincerity, a lucid and firm intention and, as in most other endeavors in life, great (and sometimes immense) perseverance, as the seeker will almost invariably encounter important trials (which are necessary to test us). Grit will…
This month’s guest blog is from a reader of The Gentle Art of Blessing who shares how the practice of blessing helps him on the spiritual path. It is so well said, and also stresses that each one “invents” her or his own way of blessing, i.e., that blessing is a daily, even moment-by-moment creation,…
It has been said that Albert Einstein once asked the question: “Is the universe friendly?” Although this quote may well be erroneously attributed to him, the question is possibly the most fundamental one any thinking person can ask. Personally, not only do I believe we live in a very friendly – even exceptionally loving –…
Our guest blogger for the month of June is Pope Francis, with a powerful message for humanity. We have reprinted it from the blog on http://gratefulness.org/blog/the-future-you-pope-francis-ted-talk/ EDITOR’S NOTE: Below is the complete transcript (translated into English by Elena Montrasio) of Pope Francis’s recent TED Talk delivered directly from Vatican City. We offer our warm thanks to…
“To bless is to acknowledge the omnipresent, universal beauty hidden to material eyes” (The Gentle Art of Blessing) There are many reasons to bless. We bless to help heal society. We bless to get out of the shell or cave of our little egos and open up to the world. We bless as a wonderful…
For this month, we are borrowing one of Fr. Richard Rohr’s daily meditations (from Friday, September 30, 2016) which have a large following among deep thinkers. We have very slightly abbreviated it. Richard Rohr. OFM is a globally recognized ecumenical thinker, teacher and author and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico…
Could it not be said that the first conscious realization in the area of personal development is the awareness that we create our own reality and even shape our bodies according to our expectations and thoughts – and this to a degree that is beyond imagination? In other words, all we see and hear, all…
I’d like to share with you a few small rituals that I practice and that may really enrich your day and place it on solid ground from the get-go. Some can be used when you awake, others are reminders during the day, and additional ones can be practiced at bedtime. Morning Before I get up,…
There is a beautiful and very inspiring website, peerservice.org which regularly sends deeply inspiring (and only inspiring) messages. You can subscribe to their newsletters from which I took the following message. It is a declaration that was recently made at Standing Rock, the place in North Dakota where Native American tribes and their supporters from the…
A comment from Pierre Pradervand: “MLK’s powerful words are truer than ever today, in a period where some leaders are attempting to divide rather than unite. They are still more powerful when we remember, to quote Mary Baker Eddy, that absolutely everything we see, hear, feel is a mode of consciousness and can have no…
I hold you gently in the quiet of my thought. The stillness tells me clearly that this crisis in your life, which most call a breakdown, is a listening time. As you told me when we visited a few weeks ago, the pace of your life had become utterly hectic. You’ve become a great success…
Simplicity. That is a lesson the quiet grandeur and humble majesty of the place had been teaching me. Often in the past, I lived for three months without electricity, car, TV, radio, telephone, hot water, a nearby supermarket or any of the ”essentials” of modern urban life. But what light bulb can compare with the…
What is called “centering prayer” is in fact a form of meditation or contemplation. It has become known to the public through the writings of people like Father Wayne Tysdale, the untiring promoter of what is called interreligious dialogue between the main religions, Cynthia Bourgeault, author of the most beautiful biography of Jesus I have…
During my African years, I once spent an evening on the banks of the Niger River in Segou, Mali. Everything breathed peace and an unhurried pace: the fishermen throwing their nets in the river, the women walking home and joking with one another other, the rhythmic, slow pace of the cows with their huge horns…
Only recently have we been discovering the extent to which we are all connected through a network which is infinitely more efficient and far-reaching that the entire world’s social media and all the Facebook pages all put together: namely, an infinite Mind. One of the fathers of alternative medicine in the USA, who is also…
Occasionally one meets in the course of one’s life people who leave a deep imprint on you. Last month I spoke about French spiritual teacher Alyna Rouelle. Today I would like to write about another such teacher I met on … death row Texas ! Roger W. Mc Gowen and I have been corresponding for almost…
From time to time we have encounters in our lives which will have a lasting impact on us for years, sometimes even for life. At the end of April I had such a contact which I know will influence the rest of my days. It was a one-day workshop in France with Alyna Rouelle, a…
