Hope you are feeling the peace that always surrounds you! Did you hear? My first book, Spirituality Is for Every Body was published four weeks ago! Yay!! You can order it here.
In case you missed it, my alma mater, MIT, published a profile about me and my book in its magazine! Click here to read the profile.
Thank you to everyone who has already purchased a copy of my book! Your support has given me wings to soar in ways I never imagined. Thank you!! To continue celebrating the release of my book, this post gives you another peak inside my book(check out this post to read the first excerpt from my new book).
As a child, one of the most eye-opening, awe-inspiring and exciting principles I learned in church was that when I engage in authentic service, I am doing my part to bring the Divine plan into reality. In my book, Spirituality Is for Every Body , I share why this lesson was such a revelation to me.
Below is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of Spirituality Is for Every Body that describes the moment I learned this principle and explains how your participation in authentic service brings the Divine plan to fruition:
When I was 11 years old, I attended a church service in which the minister told the following story:
A man was tending a community garden located in the middle of a bustling city. The garden was beautiful. It was filled with gorgeous, fragrant flowers of various kinds and beautiful fruits and vegetables. Another man was out for a walk and stopped when he saw the lush garden. The man going for a walk yelled to the man tending the garden, “You and God have done wonders with this garden.” The man tending the garden said, “You should have seen this place when God was taking care of it alone.”
The minister went on to teach us that God has a Divine plan, and He needs our help to fulfill that plan…
I have known from the time I was a teeny, tiny child that I was meant to have cerebral palsy (CP) so that I could do my part to improve the world by advocating for, and showing the abilities of, those living with disabilities. The community garden story not only crystallized that belief, but expanded it because it taught me that I, Allison Victoria Thompkins, was chosen to help God carry out Its plan in my own way. On that day, I realized that God needs me, me, to help fulfill Its plan in a way that only I can. And this isn’t unique to me. Each of us has a form of service that we can engage in to help bring God’s plan to fruition.
God’s plan for the Universe is one of love, joy, peace, beauty, blessings, abundance, people knowing the truth of who they are, and so many other qualities. However, humans must help God realize Its plan by being of authentic service—that is, serving for the mere joy of serving— to something greater than themselves. Now you might be thinking, “But Allison, there’s plenty of places in the world where I don’t see evidence of God’s plan being fulfilled. What say you about that?” If God’s plan is not being fulfilled, God can rectify it, but as Marianne Williamson writes, “We cannot save the world without God’s help, but He can’t save the world without ours. We need His love; He needs our hands and feet.” (2013. A Year of Miracles. New York: HarperCollins.)
When we give our hands and feet in authentic service to a cause, we are caring for that cause, which means that we are allowing the energy of love to flow through us to another entity. Since God is pure love, we are allowing God to flow through us. By allowing God to flow through us, we are circulating the power and the presence of God. We are, in fact, allowing ourselves to be instruments of the Divine.
~ Excerpt from Spirituality Is for Every Body
by Allison V. Thompkins, Ph.D.
I hope this discussion helps you along your spiritual path! If you’d like even more guidance about how to engage in authentic service, consider buying my book. Have a wonderful two weeks! I’ll see you soon!
Love, blessings and purple,
Allison
Try incorporating this exercise into your routine over the next two weeks. If you need modifications to the practice, scroll down to the section titled Access Notes.
Engaging In Authentic Service Through Prayer
One way you can engage in authentic service is by praying for the happiness of others.
Choose one person (this person can be someone you know or someone you don’t know) and spend 3-5 minutes praying for that person’s happiness. When you pray for this person, refrain from praying that the person receives certain things, such as a car or a house or a job. Instead, pray that the person experiences more qualities such as love, joy, harmony, blessings, abundance, health than ever before. Also, feel as much emotion as you can while you pray. Praying with deep feeling adds power to your prayer.
The following modifications are intended to create equal access to the spiritual practice above. These modifications are somewhat general to be as useful as possible to as many people as possible. Please feel free to further tweak the exercise as needed so that you can participate as fully as possible while honoring your body’s needs.
1. If you are nonverbal or minimally verbal, I suggest doing the following to determine how to make your prayer practice as effective as possible:
a. First, if you use an AAC device that has a voice synthesizer, type the prayer into your communication device. Have your communication device speak the prayer. As your device says the prayer, feel as much passion and emotion as possible.
b. Second, say the prayer in your head with as much passion and emotion as you can.
c. Third, write/type out your prayer and ask someone to speak it out loud for you. As the person says your prayer, feel as much passion and emotion as possible.
d. Once you finish, figure out which method enabled you to feel your prayer the most deeply.
2. If you communicate via sign language, sign your prayer with as much feeling as possible.
3. If composing a prayer is difficult for you, choose someone you want to pray for and try saying (either out loud or mentally) or signing the following prayer.
Dear God(Universe or Loving Power ) Thank you for the gift that is my life! Thank you for (say the name of the person you are praying for). I pray that their lives reflect the love, joy, fun, abundance, health, support, and beauty that surrounds them always, that is the very essence and truth of their being! May they experience more wealth, more harmony and more love than they ever have. May they experience so much wisdom, peace, and prosperity that they become the personification of these vibrations and spread bliss and blessings everywhere they go forevermore ! Thank you for the manifestation of this prayer. And so it is!
4. If you have challenges focusing while praying, the following suggestions may make prayer more accessible to you.
a. Try writing out your prayers in advance and then reading what you wrote out loud. You can write out the entire prayer or write a bullet point list of what you want to pray about.
b. Pray in a quiet place in your home.
c. Pray while manipulating a fidget/STIM device.
