Receiving acknowledgments this week of my birthday has been a challenge. I know and celebrate that I make a difference in people's lives and yet, when people have written their wishes and thank you's for being in their lives and for realizing that their lives have been altered because of my influence, I notice that I allow only a superficial read without letting in too much.

Even though I observe myself, I am still unable to alter the level of receiving. What is it about we human beings that wants to be acknowledged and yet, has difficulty being acknowledged? What about having impact on others lives is so frightening or "un-gettable"? What can I do to engage more emotion and sense of gratefulness?

Communicating to others what their words mean is a start. Recognizing that I am never working alone, that my spiritual guidance and friends are always with me and revealing my own patterns of being unable to comprehend what difference I do make begins to shift the resonance.

We are fish in our own waters; we live our gifts and talents as "just what's so" and have difficulty recognizing our uniqueness, our special way of seeing, interpreting and relating to a situation, person or event. It is so "what is" that we can't see it or experience it as separate from us or as being different from others. "If I can see purple, everyone must be able to see purple."

Seeing our sameness and experiencing ourselves as one, as human, is a wonderful opening. Recognizing our differences and claiming our unique talents and pespective is a challenge worth engaging. Allowing others to tell us who we are when we cannot see, asking for feedback when we are unable to experience our impact, is a powerful beginning in revealing more about who and what we are, more about our individual destiny work, and more about how much we are loved. Such requires a level of responsibility that may at times be uncomfortable...for if we are so loved, so greater is our impact.