Strike While the Iron Is Hot
There comes a time in life when an opportunity will find you. One you might not have seen coming but when it is there, and when it is before you, it is imperative that you say yes.
About 25 years ago I attended a meditation retreat with Michael Beckwith. During this retreat we would meditate in silence for prolonged periods of time. Something happened to me during one of the silent meditation sessions. Suddenly, my kinesthetic and my auditory senses somehow merged. I know this sounds odd but, evidently, it is not unheard of. The way this displayed itself is that instead of just hearing sounds, I feel sounds. The musician who attended the retreat with Michael to support his process on occasion would hit a single note on the piano just to keep the attendees plugged in to their meditation. What happened was that he would strike a note and suddenly I felt the vibration of this note as it passed through me.
I admit to you that I was initially unnerved. But I knew intuitively that this was happening for a reason. I knew that this shift was meaningful and it was going to have an influence on my life. This all happened right before I completed my ministerial training. It would make sense that I would want to be able to feel the room that I was teaching in. This merging of sound and feeling has benefited me for the past 25 years. At the moment of this happening, when I really got a sense of what was going on, I could feel my fright and knew that this was a poignant moment in my life. So while feeling everything I was feeling this was going to be a moment when I was going to accept this as a gift, a meaningful gift, or I was going to run fearfully from it. I went off to a staircase behind closed doors, sat down, and spoke aloud these words: God, I am saying yes. I am saying yes. I am willing to accept this gift. And, through tears and nervousness, I made sure that I delivered “YES” into the mind of God as my acceptance.
There are moments in our lives when opportunities find us. But those opportunities need to be accepted. We must consciously accept our good. This is necessary because we each carry within us so much unconscious conditioning where we resist our good, we refuse our good, and we are actually often afraid of our good. You must declare yes. This is the way that we break our own self-imposed glass ceiling. You were not born to play small. It is the difference between being on the edge of the dance floor or getting into the middle of the dance floor and allowing yourself to feel the music and the vibration all around you. This is quite different from standing there or sitting there and simply tapping your feet. We must strike when the iron is hot when the opportunity avails itself. And we must do this boldly, confidently, accepting our divine birthright.
PHOTO CREDIT: Nina Uhlikova
