Honouring

December 2017

A few years ago when I was living in China, we visited a silk factory in Suzhou. As our hosts came towards us, one young woman put her hands together, looked directly at me, and gave a small bow of welcome – in the Chinese way. For some reason, and for the first time in my life, I experienced what it was like to feel truly honoured. It touched me to tears.

“When did you honour the life you have? Not just accept your life and plod on, but really honour all that you have and are?

May we suggest that it is time to truly honour the lives you are in: to honour your partner, your family, the home you have made and the environment you share. Honouring has a gentleness, a quietness, a grace, and has a real message at this time. This marvellous feeling of honouring elevates the status of that honour and of you yourself.

In honouring the life you are in, you honour the work you do and you honour the people who enjoy your work. You honour the people who work with you in order for you to do the work. You honour your friends around you, but also the friends who are not in incarnation. And every day, as you work, you honour what you do and what you feel, and what you think and how you do it.

We would suggest very very few people honour themselves. And there is a feeling in the world today that no one really honours anyone. Social media is so pernicious with its attitudes and views, it taints the world right now. We suggest that everyone needs to stop and think. Firstly about themselves and secondly about their neighbours, their friends, their community, their region, their political environment, the world. Because everyone needs to be honoured at this time.

Honouring begins with the self. For until you honour yourself and your life, everything else becomes unhinged. Without honouring your own life, you cannot begin to find a true place for yourself, or anyone else in your life.

In a new sense of honouring, imagine yourself honouring, say, a person you are not completely aligned to, and see how it changes your attitude completely. Even if you do not admire that person you can regard that person with honour, no matter what. We are all part of the wide sweep of human evolution and experience, and there is a degree of acceptance and pleasure in that. If you begin there, if you stay in that honouring environment for the rest of your life, see how the world changes. Honouring is the way towards peace.

In the honouring of the life you are in, you will feel how everything changes around you. A golden glow comes into humanity – rather than the rather cold, icy, nasty, feeling that pervades at the moment, when so many people feel undermined

If you live that honouring, day by day, honouring the life you are in, you absorb the energy of honouring. It is all you need to live the rest of your lives in peace and contentment. You do not regret or resent or feel undermined or fight against your life. You honour it.

It really isn’t that difficult. It only takes the ball to start rolling.”

Here is an audio meditation for Christmas. Sit quietly and comfortably.