Today’s Prayer to Passage will be from the book “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.

Today I pray, “Dear God, I am drawing new friends into my life at this time. I have an abundance of opportunity to call upon a small yet miraculous grouping of people with whom I extend myself as a resource. I am filling myself with a fresh energy of being social and active. In a stable-hermit-writer sort of way. Thank You for reminding me that I am living life, and this requires that I connect with people, following a burst of self-love growth at the end of 2016, as a new grounding foundation for new foundational growth. Amen.”

Following my prayer, I held the closed book in my hands and opened it to this passage:

“Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not “fit in” with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.”
—ECKHART TOLLE

I have purged popular culture from my life for a purpose at increased intervals over the course of the past five years. I have abstained from viewing television for one full year. I also no longer listen to the radio in my car. I am frequently learning of well known newsworthy items from my family and friend informants because I no longer obtain my news information, global or national, of my own accord. This made this past year’s national political campaign as relevant to my daily life as Bigfoot. Mysterious, elusive, and seemingly entirely out of touch with my reality. In this abstinence from popular culture, or even just common attractions, I have come to find that I do not often fit in with the people around me. In many cases, I simply have little to contribute to surface-value conversations.

This has actually been helpful in that I am afforded opportunities to balance daily conversations with depth and reflections on the soul-connected aspects of life. I do not pander to the social requirements of “they”, whoever “they” are. And in this, my consciousness has risen exponentially. It feels good to be conscious and at peace. There is room to breathe in the space of authenticity that arises when I simplify my life down to what is popular to me as a unique individual. To love and be loved has refined itself to quality, not quantity. And I am consciously enlightened with that.