A Time To Give Thanks. But To Who? For What?

Mundane Or Significant? Habit And Duty Or Privilege?

I wrote this article five years ago. Sometimes the way to get ahead is to go back five years and start from there.

Recently the readership of this blog has changed, not to my liking. I’d like to return to how it was five years ago, when people with sincere desire to change visited, and asked for help.

OK, here is the old article… hopefully all typos are corrected.

Thanksgiving: a time to give thanks. But to who? For What? Mundane or Significant? Habit and Duty or Privilege?

In searching what I am really thankful for, I went through all the things I could be thankful for.

The air I breathe? the fact that I woke up this morning? the sunshine on this winter day on my window… hey it’s so strong I had to lower the blinds! lol

Or the roasted beet salad with goat cheese (yumm) I am making as part of Thanksgiving dinner?

But then I looked what would be most useful for me to look at.

When I have a client who feels hopeless, listless, beaten and done, which happens only every day, I give them a homework to either make a list of their accomplishments or alternatively write seven stories of seven accomplishments they’d had.

The accomplishment doesn’t have to be big, just have to be something that they were proud of at the time. ¹

You won’t know how much difference this simple exercise makes until you try it. It changes your world, it makes it brighter, because you just changed the context in which you live, the context where who you are is that you can’t… to a context where who you are is that you can. And being a person who can is probably the most important thing you can have on your side.

So, I decided to look for an accomplishment that wasn’t predictable, that was a victory in the face of incredible odds: I wanted to feel really proud this Thanksgiving.

It didn’t take long.

A friend called and I told him I didn’t have a lot of time to talk because I was cooking. What? He said stunned. I have a friend come over for Thanksgiving dinner. “Oh Sophie,” he said, and wept.

You see, this guy has known me for 11 years, and this is the first time anything like this happened.

I would even say no to an invitation to any social gathering, movie, walk, lunch… anything that involves even just one other person.

Except, gasp, I must have changed. When? How? I don’t quite know.

Don’t be mistaken. I am not a social butterfly. I am not a social maven. I still spend most of my time alone. But…

A few years ago, 4? 5? can’t remember, I had my kabbalistic horoscope done. Kabbalah is an ancient body of knowledge, stars, planets, numbers, the Old Testament… the first written book was written about 6 thousand years ago, written by Abraham, father of the three religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Anyway, in that horoscope reading the woman said that my soul correction has everything to do with relationships. That all love, happiness, success, money, health was trapped in what I avoided the most: relationships.

She said: “All money and success will come to you through people.”

I was beaten as a child. I was declared persona non grata as a school child, and then as an adult at my first job. I left employment at age 32, and never looked back. I want to be alone, I enjoy being alone, I love silence, no music, no TV, no radio, no other people. I live on a dead end street in a neighborhood where there aren’t even dogs yapping. The occasional noise of a grass mower hurts my ears. I dream about moving someplace where I don’t ever have to see another person, unless I drive there to see them.

After that horoscope reading I wept for a week. I said good bye to all the dreams, all the aspiration, all the hopes, because now I knew that all the knowledge I had, all the hard work I invested was wasted: if everything I ever wanted was going to come to me through people, then I was screwed, and it was over. It was hopeless. It was time to give up.

Except, somehow I managed to change. Ever so slightly.

I know what did it, I am sure of it.

It’s connecting to Source. It’s looking at myself in the Light of the Creator, and weeding out everything that doesn’t belong to me, that isn’t me, everything that has been growing in me like a weed, uncontrolled, unrecognized, taking up space, air, light, Life Force for its own purposes, not mine. The judgments, the superiority, the arrogance, the forcefulness, the reactivity, the quick-to-hang-up, quick-to-leave, quick-to-resign, cynical, resigned, hopeless victim.

And in the space I was left through connecting to Source and finding my self, I can actually enjoy spending an hour or two with another person. I can go out for a cup of coffee. I can go to the grocery store together. I can imagine cooking a meal together. I can have dinner with another person.

I am grateful to myself for recognizing all the stuff that didn’t belong to me.

I am grateful to my students and friends who kept pointing out the same. ;-\

I am grateful to Source for giving enough Light in which I could tell one thing from another… and not weed out the good stuff accidentally… lol.

And I am grateful to you, my dear reader for being interested in what I have to say, even if I manage only a little bit to get through to you, like the sun squeezes a little light through the lowered bamboo blinds… you know between the slats, not all the light.

I am even grateful for you mostly misunderstanding what I say, because it forces me to say it differently, in a way that maybe you can hear it and get it.

And more than anything, I am grateful to the handful of brave people who have been working with me to bring this body of work to the world so that we can bring about the thousand year of peace… I am using them shamelessly to test, to work through, to give me feedback.

Without you, it would not be possible…

Thank you guys. Thank you my readers.

I only wish you joined us on this journey. Allow the Light to show the parts of you that is not you, so you can pull those parts like a weed. So you are left with more of you and less of not-you. Less of not-self. So you can become someone who can.

Happy Thanksgiving. I love you. Unconditionally.

If I could do it, so can you. So what did I do that you can model after?

1. Learn to connect to Source.
2. Use the Unconditional Love Activator.
3. Learn to enter the Theta brain state and stay there.
4. Find out what is your soul correction (the weed that is growing in you) and pull it

The change will be slow and near imperceptible. But you’ll know. And you’ll become someone who can. Glorious.

1. Some mornings getting up when the alarm goes off is an accomplishment. Staying with your diet when you are in the candy isle. Saying no to a request you’d hate to accept. Getting up to brush your teeth when you realize you went to bed without doing it…

Author: Sophie Benshitta Maven

True empath, award winning architect, magazine publisher, transformational and spiritual coach and teacher, self declared Avatar View all posts by Sophie Benshitta Maven