Bless like the Buddha! Hah!
One of my teachers told me an easy way to bring peace within your soul as well as increase the level of peace, joy and happiness within the people you get in contact with. And all it takes is about 5 seconds.
All he did, wherever he went and with whomever he got in contact with, was to bless that person in his mind. How often do you use the words “May you be blessed” or the short version “Bless you” every day? And how often is it just an automatic response if someone sneezes? But like with all words, if you don’t connect any feeling with those words, they lose their power and turn into empty phrases robbed of their potential power.
So let’s inject the power back into this cliché phrase.
What Is a Blessing?
Let’s define the word “to bless” upfront. Some of my readers already know that one of my most beloved resources for this is the Online Etymology Dicionary. They define “to bless” as:
>bless: O.E. bletsian, bledsian, Northumbrian bloedsian “to consecrate, make holy,” from P.Gmc. *blothisojan “mark with blood,” from *blotham “blood” (see blood). Originally a blood sprinkling on pagan altars. This word was chosen in O.E. bibles to translate L. benedicere and Gk. eulogein, both of which have a ground sense of “to speak well of, to praise,” but were used in Scripture to translate Heb. brk “to bend (the knee), worship, praise, invoke blessings.” Meaning shifted in late O.E. toward “to confer happiness, well-being,” by resemblance to unrelated bliss. No cognates in other languages.
While I definitely don’t want you to sprinkle blood over other people (especially not every time they sneeze), giving praise and wishing lots of blessings for other people is a good way to start. But the old idea behind sprinkling someone with blood is to awaken someone and therefore, giving him energy. Blood is often a symbol for the life force or universal, godly energy that we were created from.
Do You Need to Be Religious to Use Blessings?
Absolutely not. All you need to trust in is the universal law, that whatever you sow you will reap or that we are all connected. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in God, Allah, Buddha, Mother Earth, the Morphogenetic Field or anything at all – even if you’re an atheist, you can watch this as a scientific experiment and test this for some days and then draw your own conclusions.
How to Use the Power of Blessing in Your Life?
It’s easy but that shouldn’t stop you from applying it, because it is one of the most enlightening and powerful experience you might have for a long time.
- Just send a “May you be blessed”, “God bless you”, or something similar to every person you meet or even see while you walk by them
- You can increase the power by swiftly visualizing the person being showered by a fountain of joy, happiness and luck
- or send them some thoughts of joy, love and harmony and cover them in white light.
You don’t have to create a full blown 3D scenario in your head – it’s more important to get the feeling of joy, happiness, harmony and love being sent to the other person. Spend only 5 to 10 seconds on it. That is enough.
Whom Should You Send Blessings To?
Short answer – Everyone.
You should bless:
- your loved ones
- your boss
- all people serving you throughout the day
- the tramp down the corner
- the jerk
- the annoying client
- and especially all the people giving you a hard time
It is essential that you won’t exclude anyone from it to experience its power.
As long as you are excluding some people from it, you are not in harmony with the universe, since you try to bargain with it. Yes, you are trying to bargain with the universe and with people by stating, that you’ll only send your blessings to the people who will do you good. A true blessing comes from the same source as true love. True love won’t care about what it gets in return; it just gives itself without calculation. Any type of bargaining comes from a deep seated fear of scarcity. If you feel this one within you – go read my article about the fear of scarcity.
There isn’t much more to say about it – just go out for one day and give it a try. Send a mental blessing to all people that you’ll meet throughout the day – and you will see that this day will soon turn into pure magic.
What Do You Get from It?
It is important to understand that you don’t expect anything in return. This would again be bargaining with the universe. This bargaining comes from a scarcity mindset. You want your blessings to come from a richness mindset, where you already know, that you are blessed to such an extent, that you could give away more and more and your own blessings wouldn’t diminish through it, but they would be increased by the universe. Even the bible knew about this universal law
> “Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.” Mark. 4:25
The more you’ll send blessings to other people the more you will experience that fountain of joy, happiness and luck in your own life.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Patrick,
Thanks so much for this post. I didn’t really realize it until I read your post, but I’ve been doing this practice for a while now. I don’t use the label blessing – I think of it as opening my heart to the person. I do it for everyone, and find it especially useful for people who trigger me in any way – people who I find annoying or intimidating. And when I watch sad stories in the news, especially in war, I open my heart to all involved.
It’s amazing what happens when you start to love your “enemies.”
Gail, I think it is not about the label but about the practice. Connecting with each other and visualizing their wellbeing and luck is a great way to your own as well as their growth. In this way I would call your practice a “blessing”.
The idea of “marking with blood” is interesting. When you bless someone, you mark them (figuratively, nowadays) with blood, which in turn symbolizes life, vitality, effort, and sacrifice. Something to think about when we bless others.
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Jeffrey, I thought you’ll find the blood-thing interesting
But honestly the symbolic connection is something that I think is ingrained in our subconscious even nowadays, that’s why the archetypes still work in us.
Loved this post Patrick, simple and so effective. I am trying to do this often but sometimes forget. Thanks for reminding!
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Lana, glad to be a reminder for you.
Dear Patrick,
Thank you for this beautiful post. It is a gentle reminder of how easy it is for us to feel good and at the same time wish others good. I am sure there are other ways of doing just that. The other day I came across a blog post about sending people ‘unconditional love hugs’ which serves the same purpose. And although that too is wonderful and easy, remembering to do so (at least initially) may not be so. To silently bless someone would be relaively easier. Why? Quite often (sometimes several times a day) we encounter ‘sneeze’ in one form or another. Thanks to our automated response, this itself could serve as a reminder to start sending blessings if we haven’t done so for a while. No sticky labels around the house required!
You are truly blessed!
Rani
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Rani, there are many forms of doing this, and whatever comes easy and natural to you is the way to go. If you would like to mentally hug people, send rays of love, send blessings it is all a means to the experience of being oneness, which lies at the root of this all. Thanks for sharing additional ways for expressing this oneness.
Hi Patrick, this was awesome! I’m definitely going to do this. It’s something I never really thought about before, and I love quick little ways throughout a busy day to align myself with love and grace, in their truest forms. Which brings me to your remarkable insights on true love, scarcity, and on bargaining with the universe. Totally brilliant and extremely well put… The whole topic could be a post in itself (I’ll have to go read your post on fear and scarcity, too.)
I really like this:
“True love won’t care about what it gets in return; it just gives itself without calculation.”
There are so many misconceptions about love. We have to distinguish between real love and true love and passionate love and love of a thing or a person or an idea… there’s a lot to explain there… I’m partial to the etymology of words, too. And I often feel like the English language just doesn’t have enough words in general. The ancient Greeks had somewhere around 42 different words for love, for love in all its forms, compared to our scant few.
Thanks for sharing this, really. Many blessings to you.
Cheers,
Miche
´s last blog ..Is Passion Necessary for a Meaningful Life?
Miche, you are right, the more words you have, the more you can differentiate shades. Like the eskimos, who have around 50 words for ice, 42 words for love will cover the area much better than one word. Although you need to keep in mind, that 42 grades of light are only 42 illusions of differentiation. It is like a spektrum. The spektrum is not in the light, it is in the observer. And love is just one thing – love. All differentiations are just in our brains and therefore – illusions.
I agree
Patrick, I like what you say about distinguishing between the spektrum and the light – no matter what you call it or how you describe it, love is love.
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Love is the message and the message is love – wasn’t that a song in the 80′s? So true!
Patrick, thanls for this excellent post and another reminder of the Buddhist principle of blessing everyone and everything.
I have been listening to some recordings by buddhist master Jack Kornfield and his wisdom has pervaded my psyche as I now often go around blessing others. And sure enought magic is happening in my life:-)
Arvind, great to hear that. To some people blessing someone else feels uncomfortable at first, but once you’ve experienced the benefits its easy to become second nature.
This has helped me get through so many things over the years. When I first discovered this I used it so much I even blessed people when I ran. Currently I bless my entire family one by one before I fall asleep in the evening. This is an example of a peaceful ripple effect when everyone participates.
Tess, blessing can be highly addictive once you get the hang of it
I really enjoy it when I sometimes walk through the city and just throwing blessings left & right.
I feel so much happier, smiling to myself – which of course radiates to others – as I go about throwing blessings. It’s a two fold thing. I am reaping many blessings as I bless those around me.
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