 Dear Friends,
In our last letter we mentioned that we had been listening to Doreen Virtue’s Manifesting with the Angels CD. On this CD, Doreen explains that, in theory, it should always be possible for us to have, within and around us, all the help and support we need to fulfil our true destiny on earth. In practice, however, our fears, doubts and negative conditioning are often stronger than our desires for the things we know we need, and this is what prevents our needs from being fulfilled. The solution, then, is to develop a confidence and trust – stronger than any doubts or fears we may have – in the helping energies of the universe and their infinite power to provide our every need. Then, says Doreen, when we have clearly and confidently visualised our needs being met in every way, we need to ‘let go’ – to hand over the whole situation utterly to the angels.
Overcoming fear
The question of how to overcome fear seemed to us to be a crucial one in all this, so we decided to give it some serious thought, and to ask the higher powers to help us find answers that would benefit not only ourselves, but you as well.
Strangely enough, we weren’t so concerned about the big fears – you know – the ones that loom right there in front of you, so you can see them and consciously decide what to do about them. Twice, for instance, we have been involved in car accidents during which we never felt anything other than very loved, safe and peaceful. Miraculously, we emerged from both virtually unscathed.
No, it was those tiny, niggling fears we were interested in, the ones that constantly rattle around at the back of our minds, rarely coming into our conscious awareness because they’re part of the ‘wallpaper’, just affecting our general mood, sapping our energy and making us slightly less cheerful than we’d like to be: fears about money for instance – we all know those – or anxieties about our children, our job, our health, our past, our workload, or even about our spiritual quest. What would be the best way to winkle out those kinds of fears?
Well, we asked our question, offered it up, and then didn’t have time to think about it very much for the next couple of weeks, because it was Christmas.
Then, on New Year’s Eve, we were searching through our book shelves, looking for titles that would be suitable for this issue of the Cygnus Review. We opened one at random and saw a passage about the 23rd Psalm – the one that begins: ‘The Lord is my shepherd’. That looks interesting, we thought. A couple of minutes later, we opened another, completely unrelated book, also at random, and there, again was something about the 23rd Psalm. After a few more minutes, we opened yet another book and yes, you guessed it, there again was the 23rd Psalm. Now all those books had been on our shelves for months, and we hadn’t seen anything in them about the 23rd Psalm until now. Clearly, somebody up there was trying to tell us something. What could it be?
The most powerful affirmation ever written
As it turned out, we were unable to obtain any of these three books for inclusion in this month’s Review, so we figured that this meant we were supposed to say something about the 23rd Psalm. So here is what we realised on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, when we went out for a walk so that we could think deeply about what this ‘coincidence’ meant.
‘The Lord is My Shepherd’ was my mother’s favourite psalm. We sang it at her funeral. As children, coming from a Judeo-Christian background, it formed a fundamental part of the structure of our growing minds, as we’re sure it did for many of you too. The first Christmas after Geoff and I were married, we gave many of our friends a framed copy of the 23rd Psalm. Clearly, it meant a lot to us, although in the intervening years we had forgotten just how much. Indeed, as we walked along in the gathering dusk, we realised that, if we were to dig right down to the bedrock of our inner selves, that psalm is what we would find engraved on it. At our bedrock, there was no fear at all, only trust. ‘The Lord is our Shepherd. We shall not want.’ Whenever we hear those words, we don’t think they are true, we know they are!
At that point, we realised we had been given the answer to our question about fear. All we needed to do, was to bring every part of our minds into harmony with our own, already existing inner bedrock, and fear would be banished for good. Particularly if, at those times when we weren’t consciously aware of being fearful, but were just feeling somewhat less than cheerful, we remembered to draw the words and power of the 23rd Psalm into the situation, we felt we could make a tremendous difference to our inner climate.
We realised that – at least in the Western tradition – the 23rd Psalm must be the most powerful affirmation of reality ever written, extra powerful because of the constant, hidden stream of human beings down the ages who must have tried to live according to it, and have left behind in the earth’s energy field the pattern of whatever truths they realised, as a legacy for all of us.
We also became aware that you could ‘live inside’ the 23rd Psalm as you would live inside a house – the ‘house of the Lord’ indeed! – and that if you did, if you used it consciously every single day, you could clean out fear and illusion from every particle of your being. The ultimate spiritual broom! The universal panacea!
The secret of ‘living inside’ the 23rd Psalm, we thought, must be to unfailingly remind ourselves, till we feel it in our very bones, that reality is as described in the Psalm – we are loved and perfectly guided, protected and cared for in every way – and that any perception which apparently contradicts that fact is a mere passing thing, to be dissolved in the Light of truth, because higher powers – ‘the Lord’ – have the whole situation absolutely in hand. We should do this especially whenever it seems that we are ‘walking in the valley of the shadow of death’, for that is how, with the creative power of our thoughts, beliefs and feelings, we can build a holy, impregnable citadel, right in the midst of whatever devastation may appear to be around us. And from that citadel will spread an irresistible tide of healing.
That night, as the clock struck twelve, our family shared our New Year's resolutions. Ours was to ‘live inside’ the 23rd Psalm: to say it – and even more importantly, to feel it –at least once a day without fail, and to bring the light of those mighty words – together with the wonderful feeling of confidence and safety they bring – into every corner of our being where shadows still dwell.
Since then, we have been using this affirmation not only in the first person singular, but in the plural, drawing into its embrace the whole planet, or any person, group or situation to which we feel drawn to send healing. Before we start saying the words, we often find it helpful just to breathe gently for a few moments, noticing how the One who is our Shepherd is present in the very air, as it enters and leaves our bodies. What could be closer? Here, we say the 23rd Psalm for and with you all:
The Lord is our shepherd. We shall not want.
He makes us lie down in green pastures.
He leads us beside still waters.
He restores our souls.
He guides us in the paths of righteousness
for His Name’s sake.
Yes, though we walk in the valley of the shadow of death,
we will fear no evil, for You are with us.
Your rod and your staff, they strengthen us.
You prepare a table before us
in the presence of our enemies.
You anoint our heads with oil.
Our cups run over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us
all the days of our lives,
and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
With much love from all of us at Cygnus Books.
Geoff, Ann, Martyn, Sarah, Jackie, Jacqueline, Eileen, Catherine, Graham, Alison, Cherry, Penny, Brian, Phil, David, Naomi, Chris, Saijai, Vanessa, Derek, Eddie, Shane, Matthew, Jon, Sam & Pat
Text & photographs © Cygnus Books 17-Feb-2004
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