This little spontaneous heart-to-heart essay was inspired by a recent discussion on FaceBook. No editing or scripting, just thoughts to give more thought to:

“Love others the way you’d love to love yourself. Love yourself the way you’d love others to love you. Be the love that others would love to dare to feel for themselves.

Trust me, it won’t be a sacrifice. And it won’t be your folly or your doom. You’ll never need to act “perfect” because that’s impossible, unnatural, and it’s just not you. Or me. Or anybody.

Jesus in deep meditation with His Heavenly Father

Jesus in deep meditation with His Heavenly Father

Instead, decide to be a growing affirmation of all that’s good and natural and glad about YOU. Dig deep to explore with freedom!

This struggle will make you tough in your new-found gentleness. This process of releasing what is deadening will make you come alive.

Because when you decide to be reborn as yourself for the first time in your life– as a REAL human being focused on growing with greater awareness in your own warm skin– others will see you as if for the first time. Their hearts will flock to you even if their hearts remain awhile shut..

Why? Because they will welcome you as proof of the validity of their own dream to fulfill their own desperate hopeful desire to awaken themselves..

Knowing this is the growing nature of humanity– to grow spiritually and emotionally honest in our own skins– you will know you are never alone, never defeated, never a loser, never a waste.

Instead–because you try, because you care, because you somehow start to KNOW some mysterious essence of what’s REAL– you are a living champion.

Happy Passover, Easter, and springtime of the soul to you.”
-Rev. Scott Ufford
Passover & Eastertime, 2014

3 Secret Reasons Why Patience Is the Best Fuel for Your Success

Three secret reasons explain why patience is the best fuel for your flight into spiritual & personal success.

Those 3 secrets lie hidden behind this common question:

Why’s it so hard to be patient with others–
after we’ve conquered in ourselves what they’re struggling with?

Because we’re sick of that tiresome old scenario?
Because we want to escape all memory of our old pains?
Because in the light of our advancement, we realize how stupid our old struggle was?
Because we think we’re “past all that”?
Or because we think they’re inferior to us?

We must remember this:

Measured over the span of a lifetime, or an age–
our greater progress is only the blink of an electronic eye faster than someone “behind us”.

We must give those “slower” pilgrims on the byzantine wandering trails of life the same patience we wanted when WE were lost or WE were confused or WE were struggling with their same issue.

Because what looks like crawling to you might be someone else’s build-up to blast-off.

Remember:
36 seconds after lift-off, every ascending rocket sees every spaceship quivering far below on a launchpad as immobile.

But it’s actually a beehive of necessary calculations and trial-&-error preparations..

Also, to the humblest Angel in the heavens, what we consider our grandest flights of courage and invention might appear as basic as hopping over a mud puddle.

Most of all, these 3 secret reasons explain why patience is the best fuel for our future success!

Question 1. If we’re impatient with people slower than us, what are we saying to the Universal Schoolmaster we study under every day of our existence?

Answer: We’re shouting loud & clear:
We haven’t fully learned our lesson! We’re telling the Universe to please bring us more of the same bitter medicine to fully digest & move past our familiar old struggle!

Question 2. Why should we be patient with people who progress slower than us?

Answer: Because the exact quality of caring we give others, Life gives back to us. If we’re impatient with others, we short-circuit our connection to the merciful patience we’d received–
however small it seemed at the time–
that helped us survive our terrible growing pains.

Question 3. Once we’re free from our growing pains over that issue, why should we care?

Answer: Because the School of Life is an Infinity Pool! Just when we start congratulating ourselves on our wisdom or sophistication or prowess, Life’s busily choosing and cranking into position the next logical lessons of a new, heightened obstacle course for us to swim through.

But here’s the Ultimate Lesson Secret.

To paraphrase the New Testament:
“Even though I have all the wisdom, all the wealth, all the honors and all the accomplishments in the world, if I don’t have Love, everything else is nothing but a tinkling bell.”

That’s the Ultimate Lesson Secret:
LOVE.

In, through & beyond all circumstances of stress, stupidity, scorn and sacrifice, every Lesson in Life is another camouflaged lesson in LEARNING HOW TO LOVE.

Do you CHOOSE to learn how to express love during your new lesson–
or not?

More to the point:
Do you choose to learn how to love the easy way, or the hard way? Because for new & greater learning, one way or the other is INEVITABLE.

Summary:
During your stressful lessons do you CHOOSE to practice the power of patience? Or to suffer more by ignoring your power?

Patience is nothing but the fuel of love voluntarily used despite all constraints of time & circumstance.

See what powerful magnets your choices are?

-Rev. Scott Ufford
Copyright 2013

Haven’t You Climbed Long Enough? Aren’t You Ready for a New Adventure?

I.
Do you want to stop wandering, stop trekking, stop zig-zagging endlessly upwards by the sweat of your brow?

Do you want to stop struggling & learn how to fly?

Christ says the Kingdom of Heaven–
that mysterious, omnipresent exciting Kingdom–
is not only within you–
it’s within everyone.

What does this mean?

It’s our infinite final frontier.
It’s our perfect spiritual nest.
It’s our ultimate launching pad.
It’s our pure blue skies of happiness.

But what do I know?

It sounds like a lovely place to fly.

So you’re not alone in your desire.

II.
If you want to learn how to fly, why not help someone else?

Let’s face it:
We’re all learners.
We’re all beginners.
We’re all disgruntled veterans and secretly hopeful children.
We all desire a helping hand.

We’ve all risen to grasp some hard-won wisdom but it’s not enough.

We desire–and deserve–to spread our wings.

Spiritual Law:
He or she who gladly helps others, also receives help.
From Heaven and on Earth.
The greater your service to others, the higher the Kingdom of Heaven within you, leads you.

III.
Take this pure moment to trust a little bit.
Hear your own prayer.

Yes, your spiritual eyes can open enough to glimpse.
Your spiritual wings can sprout.
Your spiritual heart can thrill to that mysterious exciting blue reality…

Do you dare to admit your desire to fly?

Do you dare to take that wondrous leap?

I believe you do.

Just try.

Rev. Scott Ufford
C 2013