The Gentle Art of Blessing !

“Blessing, at least after the initial learning, and often right from the start, is full of rest. In the midst of the worst tempest, when your lifeboat is rocking wildly, it will calm the waves and you will discover a deep, deep repose.” - Pierre Pradervand, from The Gentle Art of Blessing

Blessing is such a simple practice one wonders why everyone doesn’t do it. It doesn’t require special training or equipment. You need not kneel before an altar or light a candle or recite scripture in order for a blessing to work. No particular faith is required and you don’t need to belong to a certain church or sect. Nothing is required at all, in fact, except your willingness to imagine the highest and best for the person, circumstance or thing being blessed. It’s that simple. Just a little willingness to think a higher thought and a blessing is dispatched.


To follow the Blessing Way Path, you only need to be willing to bless. That sounds so easy, doesn’t it? And in reality it is easy. But sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. That’s because life has conditioned us to fight our enemy instead of bless him, and while few would admit it, most of us consider anything we disagree or disapprove of as an enemy of sorts. As a deeply spiritual expression of unconditional love and acceptance, when it comes loving and accepting those people and things we have previously thought to be unlovable and unacceptable, blessing can quite naturally begin to feel like the most difficult thing one could possibly do.


After all, what are we supposed to do we do when someone makes us angry or a situation is turning out badly and we feel far more inclined to stress than to bless? What are we supposed to do when we are being attacked and the urge to retaliate is so strong we can almost taste it? What are we supposed to do when the idea of blessing a particular person, circumstance or thing seems like the least appropriate action we could possibly take?

What are we supposed to do? We’re supposed to bless anyway. That’s what.

We’re supposed to plant our feet firmly on the Blessing Way Path and start moving forward even when it feels that’s the very last thing we should do. Even when we’re being attacked and every thought in our head screams retaliation. Even when everyone tells us we need to fight back, or condemn, or curse, or at the very least, disregard. Even when we think we can’t possibly… We bless anyway.

We take responsibility for our lives and recognize that whoever or whatever we might be dealing with at any given moment was attracted to us by us as a way of helping us to learn, to love, and return to the reality of our Beingness. No matter how awful, how disturbing or how distasteful any person or circumstance might be, its purpose for being present in our lives is to benefit us in some way. Once we incorporate that Truth into our thinking process, the changes begin. We begin to appreciate, opening ourselves to our own blessedness as at the same time, we open our hearts to the blessedness of others.

And as we push past our resistance and bless anyway, an amazing thing happens. Our lives begin to change for the better. As we focus on blessing others, our lives our blessed.


For the cost of a simple blessing, our lives are forever changed.