Sunday Sermon [Praise]

Hola Everybody,
I can't believe my mother actually tried to take money out of a male dancer's briefs. Her rationale? They're gay!! I'm not gonna give them my money! SMH

LMAO!

I will be gone all day, enjoying the weather...

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-=[ Praise ]=-
Praise the Lord! Jesus is gonna save me and cut my taxes.
-- A Co-worker

LOL! I love this quote. It came during a moment I was trying to explain the dynamics of the right-wing coalition of economic and social conservatives. Two groups that were once natural enemies.

Anyway, I'm here to talk about praise today. I will address the above issue soon enough...

I am fervent believer that insight alone will not create change or free anyone. In fact, staying stuck on insight -- staying stuck on the habit having to know intellectually -- actually serves to keep you bound to your suffering. All your insight and proclivity toward staying stuck in your head manages to do is make my dick itch, to put it crudely. No, one must integrate head and heart, metaphor and experience, in order to change -- to awaken to your true self. So I offer these exercises in the hopes that some will do them. They are meant to edge you toward the experience, rather than merely the thought, of true freedom.

Imagine praising the next person you see. Imagine praising this person to the point it would be embarrassing, you're so praiseful. What would that praise look like? Picture someone you know -- anyone -- and feel what is the most powerful praise you can offer him or her.

As you're doing this, remember your parents. How do you feel? I'm willing to bet that you have chosen a career and searched for a lover as a reaction to the praise you never got from your parents. Take the time to remember what you didn't get from your parents and look at what it is you seek through your career and relationships.

What do you wish your parents had told you more of? Try to really feel back into your childhood. Feel, as a child, what your parents said, or didn't say to you. What is it you wish they had given you more of? What do you wish your parents said to you?

To the next person you see, silently give them the praise you didn't get from your parents but wish you had. Try giving this praise silently to everyone you see for the next three days. In your mind, give this praise silently to your parents, right now. Note how this feels. How does it feel to offer the praise you never got, but wished you had?

Holding back praise limits you. It limits the capacity to love you were born with. The capacity to give love through speech, sex, and touch. It also imprisons the love you could offer through your life's work.

If you want to awaken to the full potential of the love that flows through you, give the praise that you wish your parents had given you, but never got. Give it silently to everyone, and give it out loud to your lover, whether you feel they deserve it or not. Go ahead, what do you lose? I do know that what you gain by giving this praise: you discover the full offering you were born to give as a gift to the world.

Love,

Eddie