Hālau 'Aha Hui Lānākila

“When everything is a gift, it is a means of opening our perspective to the insights that confirm our most remarkable moments of expansion. Since it is common for the ego to use such an insight as a subtle form of manipulation, hoping to “learn its lessons” as quickly as possible, so it can move beyond the pain, torment, frustration, and confusion of discomfort, it’s easy to discount the usefulness of such a statement.

When everything is a gift, it doesn’t become the mantra you suggest to someone in pain. Instead, you allow the presence of their despair, no matter how uncomfortable it may feel to deepen your capacity to love for as long as your heart can withstand it. In the new spiritual paradigm, we are not attempting to give anyone a better way of seeing anything. Instead, we remain grateful for the opportunities to meet in ourselves the feelings others instigate and embrace in others the struggles that carve out our highest rebirth along life’s eternal road of redemption.

When everything is a gift, we are not trying to be anything other than fully available to however life seems to be. We remain open to the fact that everything exists to inspire the gifts of evolutionary benefit, whether noticed immediately or revealed on its own time frame. We accept the fact that moving beyond our feelings is as much of a necessary ingredient in healing, as it is to turn toward and face each sensation, without trying to control how little or how much time we spend engaging with our emotions.

When everything is a gift, we are so open to the journey of evolution, we are willing to face any amount of adversity, and spend as much time feeling shut down, just to cultivate the strength, courage, tenacity, and compassion to open back up more radiant, renewed, purified, and powerful than ever before. We acknowledge life’s bigger cosmic picture without denying the grit and gravity of our feelings that signify how deep of a reconstruction occurs in our energy fields.

Equally so, we are open to facing any amount of fear, guilt, anger, shame, doubt, loneliness, victimhood, or judgment without it becoming a badge of honor used to decorate the righteousness of a martyr.

When everything is a gift, we are not telling people how to experience their reality, in any type of spiritually-dogmatic way. Instead, we are honoring the relationship of opposites that flow throughout the oneness of Truth. If one seems steeped in denial, it could only build up momentum to inspire an ability to face reality with greater authenticity, once such a shift is meant to occur. While sadness foreshadows the arrival of joy, and fear reflects a journey only guiding you into greater courage, it is not a transition that you can assert with the insistence of personal will. Since personal will cannot make pain become more pleasurable, it equally cannot get in the way of the perfection of your expansion.

To ask yourself, “how am I in my own way” is to deny the way you’ve come to be, which will unearth a multitude of gifts at exactly the moment it is meant to occur.

Even if you cannot fathom certain experiences as gifts, it merely confirms crucial stages of healing, where we must burn in the authenticity of our direct experience, simply to make more room for greater perspective to dawn. Nothing occurs because we lack perspective. Each experience offers the gift of transformation to usher you into a depth of awareness that could not help you cultivate the brightness of light without time spent wandering in darkness.

When everything is a gift, we are not using light to diminish darkness, but recognizing light as the capacity through which darkness is able to be recognized. Since darkness can be seen as consciousness unaware of its true illuminated nature, we allow the light of unconditional love to support, honor, and cherish darkness throughout its journey, without needing to rush the process. To alter someone’s experience is much like continually moving the seeds you’ve planted, hoping to find a more ideal spot for growth. Each time a seed is moved, it interrupts the growing process and disturbs the roots that are meant to sprout along their own rhythm of time.

While we don’t wish to interrupt the energetic transformations occurring throughout each moment of emotional healing, it doesn’t mean we don’t have valuable gifts to contribute.

Those who hurt are engaging in a healing process that will allow them to be the love, strength, courage, and compassion for others who heal. Those who have been healed have survived the perfect mixture of change, realization, and discovery to come out the other side more aligned in their highest potential for the benefit of those still finding their way.

When everything is a gift, we are thankful for the sincerity of every person’s living testimony, and grateful for the chance to meet aspects of our own eternal being by daring to embrace the heart of another. If unable to meet others in such a naturally open way, it could only remind us of the necessity of our own emotional needs. When this occurs, our hearts remain first in line to receive the infinite depth of unwavering attention that nourishes our innocence as it dares to transform.

When everything is a gift, there are highs, lows, and everything in between, merely giving us the chance to respond to life with more faith, respect, humility, kindness, and care under the threat of any circumstance. That is, if we are able to face the inevitabilities of our journey without steeping in jadedness as a false shield of protection.

When everything is a gift, we don’t need to turn away from the hardships of reality, in order to know the joy of Truth. Equally so, there is no need to look for despair and pain to ensure you aren’t missing or avoiding. There is a middle ground and its as natural as whatever experience you are already having that merely clears enough space in your reality to notice it. Such a middle ground welcomes each experience openly, even if it means being open to feeling shut down for any amount of time.

We are open to everything being a gift of evolution, whether we agree with the conduct of others, agree with the situations in view, or wish such growth could occur under more favorable conditions. We love what arises in ourselves if we have developed such a capacity. If not, the love within your heart shall manifest as the compassion of others, the light emanating from nature, or the silence of Source energy flowing in and out as each and every breath. We know that everything is inherently designed to make us better than we have ever been before, which requires us to be true to our journey, no matter how deeply we desire speeding things up.

In the new spiritual paradigm, we value the gift of our most loving responses to life, despite how reactive we are to anything in view. If unable to respond from our hearts, more rest and renewal is required to offer ourselves the nurturing attention seemingly absent in the behavior of others.

No one deserves to suffer for any reason and we are not to blame for the experiences at hand. We have been given an opportunity to evolve if we stay the course, which reveals an ability to expand without requiring adversity to inspire it. How do we get to such a destination – By being true to our feelings without projecting onto the experiences of others and embracing our own innocence, even when we are the only ones who seem to notice it.

When the response of our highest conduct outweighs the justification of any conclusion, a surrendered heart is revealed. As our hearts surrender, an abiding alignment with Source energy reveals the beauty of heart-centered consciousness, no matter the amount of hurt that was seemingly required to reveal the glory of your perfection.

It’s not a gift until it’s a gift. Once each gift is revealed, the benefits of its offering are awe-inspiring and infinitely magnificent.”

• Matt Kahn