A Message From Karyn Bradley
March, 2008
Just Be Your Authentic Self
As many of you know I took a few weeks off in January to refresh and reenergize my physical, mental and spiritual being-ness.
I highly recommend each and every one of you reading this article to do the same.
During this time I planned to discern the name that I would write on my White Stone.
While in prayer and meditation I listened deeply to my inner still small voice and heard Just Be your Authentic Self.
Its a long name this year! I think I will shorten it to Just Be.
What does the phrase, Just be your Authentic Self mean to you?
For me it means living life in and from the presence and power of our innate spark of divinity.
How can we be sure that this is what we are doing?
The answer is that when we add to the fullness of our own lives and the lives of others, then we can be sure.
When we commit to make conscious contact through prayer and meditation on a daily basis we invite this innate divinity
to inspire us into being and expressing the very best qualities we possess – unconditional love, compassion and joy.
Society has taught us for years that we should conform to gain acceptance and approval.
But we pay a very dear price for conforming. We lose ourselves by creating a split within ourselves – a division between who we feel we are and who we give the impression of being.
The self-image that we show others becomes our dominant self.
But this self-image betrays our true self and we suffer accordingly.
I have come to realize that the Self that I yearn to express is the very Self that fills me with a sense of freedom,
passion and excitement to live my life with total lack of limit.
When I am an expression of worry or pettiness, I strangle the very energy that is trying to expand my ability to create in and through me.
My God is calling me to Just Be who I AM, my authentic Self.
God, my inner source of goodness, compassion, wisdom, joy, life and imagination is calling me to be the best, the very best, I can be.
There is no failure, no superficiality; there is only the urging to take it one step, one prayer, one affirmation at a time.
You might say I am taking a journey or a voyage to authenticity, a return to my true SELF.
If we choose to take this journey it will show each of us that no matter what we have done in or with our lives we always have a choice to be lifted up,
to be brought to a new level of understanding.
It is the Easter experience – the rising above the limitations and restrictions that we put upon ourselves.
I want each of you to ask yourselves: What are the things that keep me from being My Authentic Self and am I willing to take the first step
on my journey to becoming Just Who I AM?
Rev. Karyn Bradley
Senior Minister
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