“A human birth is rare, and time is precious”

Birthdays, I believe, are really for the world – we celebrate what we give to others. It seems to me the best way for me to celebrate this birthday is to celebrate the meaning my life can have in this accelerating world, and to discover the joy, bliss and transcendence that lie pristine below the waves of changing circumstances.

People wish you a happy birthday, but the reality is that a birthday does not have the same meaning it did when you turned ten. You’re not sitting around waiting for presents; you’re giving them. And celebrating that your presence on this Earth is the supreme present.

A birthday now is a time of celebration, but there is also an awareness of being integrated with all life forms from all times and places, and of an ongoing process of wisdom and personal evolution toward more and more love.

Each year, I receive a birthday message from within. This year, it’s “change your thoughts, change your destiny.”

I’m not the first to have this understanding, but it’s an appropriate message for this day. My celebratory thoughts – thoughts of appreciation and gratitude – lead to higher awareness.

In the past few years, I’ve been so busy having “manifesting” thoughts that I lost track of an essential fact, and that is that some years ago, a near-death experience changed everything. I realized then that time was finite, and that I had been granted a boon: more time. The purpose of that boon, I was told rather directly, is service. I also had a vision of a logo for my life, and it was: “service to God, service to the planet.”

So today is a very happy birthday. I’m reminded of a quote I heard many years ago from a spiritual teacher: “A human birth is rare, and time is precious.”

And to that end, I am going into the mountains to celebrate with All That Is, once again journeying in, to come back out, joining in wonder in the magnetic and physical experience of love that comes in the form of other human Beloveds. And with that, may blessings flow outward – may everyone be free, and happy, fulfilled, nurtured, protected, and infinitely blessed.