Have you noticed how many beautiful young women come to our Center? These women are beautiful spiritual beings who are confident and radiant, living life fully because they know who they are. We live in a culture that worships youth and emphasizes the appearance of youth. If you don’t know who you are, it would be very difficult to live in our culture. Open a magazine and you will see photos of beautiful women. These models are often very young and have tortured themselves to stay a size zero. Sometimes the photos are of older women who look remarkable thanks to the magic of photo finishing. Oprah reminded us when she talked about her photos in her magazine that there has been a lot of retouching before we ever see the finished picture.
Why do we want to look young? I believe we want to feel attractive, graceful, maybe even glamorous. We want to restore the vitality and love of life that we had when we were in our twenties.
What if we really could have the effects of that fountain of youth by believing in ourselves and acting accordingly? What if we used spiritual practices to form a new idea of someone our age? What if we really could be as graceful as a teenager into out eighties and nineties?
Well the fact is we can! Watch the video to see 86 year-old Johanna Quass do the most graceful routines on the parallel bars and the floor. She competed in her native Germany last year in the Cottbus World Cup and wowed the audience. She has the strength and agility of a youngster! She isn’t trying to cover up her wrinkles! She is living her life fully! She has become one of my role-models!
What do we have to do? The answer is available every Sunday; we are going to discuss it all month. We are going to Practice: Exercising Our Souls!
What does that mean? How do we exercise our souls?
It is a very catchy title and it is the heart of our teaching. The Soul, according to our founder Ernest Holmes, is the Law through which life comes to be. It is the way God, or Divine Presence works in us. The Soul is like a mirror, whose job it is to reflect back to us, the thinkers, what we have been believing about ourselves and our lives. Exercising your Soul means to invest some of your precious time imagining the life that you DO want. When we have a clear mental picture we will notice that we naturally want to take some actions in the outer world.
I don’t know Johanna Quass but I can see that she is a women of determination, strength and imagination. In addition to her desire to be a graceful, strong gymnast, she also needed to learn the skills of a gymnast and perfect them. Maybe she signed up for an adult gym class. Maybe she has been practicing gymnastics since she was a child. It doesn’t matter to me. The fact is she did it!
That is the great news for all of us. If one person can accomplish something extraordinary, then we all can. It is simply a matter of believing it until we see it.
You are never too old to accomplish your dreams! What is it that you have been dreaming of doing? Has anyone told you that you are too old to begin that practice? Share my blog and the video of Johanna.