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The Extraordinary Power of Blessing

By Patricia Pearce

While on a retreat recently I had a dream. In this dream I am a guest teacher of some kind for a group of students. They vary in age, but primarily middle school-ish, although some of them are younger than that. I’m not their regular teacher. I come in and teach about spiritual things, and I’m talking to them about the power of blessing. I gave them a homework assignment: I tell them to go out and practice blessing people, and to come back the next day and share what that experience was like.

Well, they come back the next day and none of them have done it. They think it’s a stupid idea. They don’t know why they should be blessing other people. It doesn’t make any sense to them. They’re in full rebellion here!

So I begin to talk to them about what blessing is. And I have to just give myself credit that in the dream I was speaking very eloquently and persuasively. It was really just pouring out of me. And I was telling them that to bless someone is simply to silently say within yourself to that person, “May you thrive, may you flourish.”

And I tell these students that if any of you did that with everybody you met, you would be the happiest person I have ever known.

The dream went on to another scene, but this was really the scene that I wanted to share because it was so concise and it speaks to something that I know to be true: That blessing is extraordinarily powerful. And when we assume a stance of blessing towards other people, we are really in the fullness of our divine power.

It is a power unlike any other. I used to be a pastor. I left that vocation almost 16 years ago. After I had left, somebody asked me what I missed about pastoring. And as I thought about it, I said that the thing that I miss most is having the opportunity to bless people. Because that was your role as the leader, the spiritual leader; you get to bless people. And every service ends with a benediction, which is a blessing. And when people are baptized or married or any of that, you get to bless them. And I loved doing that. That was what I most missed when I stepped away from that role.

My dream put again on the front burner of my own awareness how much power we have when we bless. It really is claiming our self-sovereignty. It is making ourselves available as a channel, a conduit for the energy of Love to pour through us for the benefit of another. And when we do that, we benefit ourselves as well.

As in the dream, I said, if any of you students blessed everybody you met by just silently saying, “May you thrive, may you flourish,” you would be the happiest person I have ever met. So when we are blessing, we’re not only bestowing Love on those that we bless, but we ourselves experience that Love and we know ourselves to be that Love that has the power, an extraordinary power to bless others.

After I had this dream about blessing and the power of blessing, I have been considering how I want to ritually respond to that dream. One ritual response has been practicing this power of blessing. The other night my husband and I were out to dinner. It was a beautiful evening. It was a restaurant with outdoor dining. And I was just practicing blessing these people around me, and those who walked by. It just opens the heart in such a beautiful way.

Years ago, I created a course called “Activating Transformation Through the Power of Blessing.” It’s an online course that also includes a couple of Zoom gatherings. It’s probably the most popular course I’ve ever offered. So part of my ritual response is to open up registration for that, making it available. By all means register if you feel inclined. But for me, the act of offering the course is my ritual response to the dream.  It’s my way of saying, yes, I get it. We have within ourselves the power of blessing.

At this time in our collective story, I feel it is so important for us not to allow ourselves to become the victims of the drama that’s playing out, not to constrict ourselves to that dualistic narrative, but to claim our own self-sovereignty and claim this power that we have as sovereign beings in this world that is undergoing an amazing transformation, to be present in it and to bring the fullness of our own divine power to this moment. And to realize that our power as blessers, as those who can bless, is extraordinary.

May you thrive. May you flourish.