What helps you with your
commitments? The only way you can be successful at keeping a commitment or
promise of any kind is through one thing, and that one thing is sacrifice. The
dictionary defines sacrifice in this way: The
act of giving up something that you would want to keep, especially in order to
get or do something else or to help someone.
When was the last time
that you gave up something that you wanted to keep? It is a good idea to give away
something that you like and care about because by doing this you can practice
surrender, sacrifice, and letting go. When we cared
for my mother, my husband and I sacrificed our privacy, we sacrificed living in
our home alone, and we sacrificed being able to do anything we wanted to do
whenever we felt like doing it.
Sacrifice is how we
progress on the spiritual path; it is how we go to the next level and it is how
we earn those next degrees of initiation within ourselves. All of those degrees
and keys that are of a spiritual nature are between you and God. Somebody might
be facilitating your journey or giving you a practice or a teaching, but then you have to do it. No one can do it for
you.
The ancient people
understood sacrifice, perhaps not so much on the mental planes as on the inner
planes. It was understood that you have to give something up to be part of the
Cycle of Grace. Sacrifices of food were made to the food gods for good crops.
Sometimes animals that were important to the livelihood and the life of the
community were offered as sacrifices.
If you garden and you
want good organic food, you sacrifice ease because gardening requires a lot of
time and effort. Tilling, planting, weeding, watering, harvesting,
preserving—it is a huge commitment. But what do you get back? You get back a
relationship with the earth, you get back the mystery that God gave us every
seed that we need for our lives, and when we plant that seed and watch it grow,
it is a miracle. We get to eat the food that is part of that Cycle of Grace.
Sacrifice, commitment,
and promises to yourself as a Soul are important, so reflect on how God is
using you. It is so important to find that key because if you can find that
purpose, and if you can say, “I am willing,” help and support will come to you
in a natural way. If you say, “I do, I will, and I will continue to help,” you do
not really have to worry about how it will all happen because it just will. You
will be called upon, and when you are called upon, it will not always be easy,
but you will do it because you are needed.
Sometimes I think things are supposed to be hard. Every time I try
to attend a meditation group, it gets cancelled or no one is there. I recently
went to a meditation before work, 20 miles away from my home. No one was there.
When I contacted the leader, he said it would be held the next day. Again, I
drove there before work and he wasn’t there. Things like that happen to me all
the time, and I just don’t know which way to go.
I think you do know
which way to go; you went twice and he wasn’t there. That’s pretty clear. We
often do know which way to go, but we want it to be different, so we kind of
hang out with it, hoping it will change. You would have liked him to have
texted or called you to let you know that the meeting was off.
You really do want a
meditation class, and you would like to go to a consistent one where you could
have a good meditation and be in that energy. Why don’t you find a place,
somewhere simple, where you could have a small meditation space, and then
invite others? Go whether there are two persons or one or none, but go and
become what you want. That is how you make yourself whole. Just keep the
commitment and somehow put it out. This may not be the time for you, but just
consider it. Maybe you are the one who is being called to put the sign up and
the notice in the newspaper. It is important to see how your desire to do a
group meditation keeps coming around in a certain way. Spirit is giving you
this for a reason. So do something different.