On awakening, bless this day, for it is already full of unseen good which your blessings will call forth. To bless is to acknowledge the unlimited good that is embedded in the very texture of the Universe and awaiting each and all.
On passing people in the street, in places of work and play, bless them. The peace of your blessing will accompany them on their way and the aura of its gentle fragrance will be a light to their path.
On meeting and talking to people, bless them in their health, their work, their joy, their relationships to God, themselves, and others. Bless them in their abundance, their finances... bless them in every conceivable way, for such blessings not only sow seeds of healing but one day will spring forth as flowers of joy in the waste places of your own life.
Bless the city in which you live, its government and teachers, its nurses and streetsweepers, its children and bankers, its priests and prostitutes. The minute anyone expresses any aggression or unkindness to you, respond with a blessing. Bless them totally, sincerely, and joyfully, for such blessings are a shield which protects them from the ignorance of their misdeed, and deflects the arrow that was aimed at you.
To bless means to wish unconditional, unrestricted, total good for another from the deepest wellspring in the innermost chamber of your heart. To bless means to hallow, to hold in reverence, to behold with utter awe that which is always a gift from the Creator. He who is hallowed by your blessing is set aside, consecrated, holy, whole. To bless is to invoke divine care upon, to think and to speak gratefully for, and to confer happiness upon - not as the bestower ourselves, but rather as the joyful witness of life's abundance.
To bless all without discrimination of any sort is the ultimate form of giving, for those we bless may never know from whence came the sudden ray of sun that burst through the clouds of their skies.
When something goes completely askew in your day, or some unexpected event knocks down your plans, burst into blessing. When life is teaching you a lesson, know the very event you believed to be unwanted, you yourself called forth so as to learn the lesson you might balk against were you not to bless it. Trials are blessings in disguise, and hosts of angels follow in their path.
To bless is to acknowledge the omnipresent, universal beauty hidden to material eyes. To bless is to activate the universal law of attraction which, from the furthest reaches of the universe, will bring into your life exactly what you need to experience and enjoy.
When you pass a prison, mentally bless its inmates in their innocence and freedom, their gentleness, pure essence and unconditional forgiveness. One can only be a prisoner of one's self-image, and a free man can walk unshackled in the courtyard of a jail, just as citizens of countries where freedom reigns can be prisoners when fear lurks in their thoughts.
When you pass a hospital, bless its patients in their present wholeness, for even in their suffering, this wholeness awaits in them to be discovered. When your eyes behold a man in tears or seemingly broken by life, bless him in his vitality and joy, for the material senses present but the inverted image of the ultimate splendor and perfection which only the inner eye beholds.
It is impossible to bless and to judge at the same time. Hold constantly as a deep, hallowed, intoned thought the desire to bless, for truly then shall you become a peace-maker, and one day you shall, everywhere, behold the very face of God.
Exerpted from "The Gentle Art of Blessing - Living One's Spirituality in Everyday Life," by Pierre Pradervard
