Youtube: Power and Strength

In this four-part series, we are treating Advent as an intuitive awakening. Our focus is on the meditative process. Follow the same preparations from the first week and bring your awareness into the region of the solar plexus using the simple statement, I Am. See and feely your soul radiating power. Power manifests in a wide range of ways, from the unfathomable power of the sun to the simple unfolding of a leaf. Power divides our cells and fuels all aspects of our being.

Power rises in your being as physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength. You may call on strength to hold a steady course, to take one more step when your world seems to crumble around you, or to steady your faith in the well-being of a loved one. Strength may manifest as the courage to make an apology, or it may express as the power to say no to behavior you know as destructive.

With your attention focused at your center, sense the power of your soul rising from your innermost depths and radiating throughout your being. Affirm:

I am an expression of pure power. The full radiance of my soul empowers me to steadfastness in all that I am and all that I do. My strength is boundless, my power has no limits.

If you are feeling powerless to do anything about some condition in your life, release the emotional energy of helplessness as you use this affirmation. Again, do not try to make anything happen or even look for changes in your life. Simply allow the flow of power to rise in your being and know it expresses as the strength you need, as you need it. Take a series of deep breaths. With each one, breathe in power and breathe out strength. Power is the essence of your being. You are never without it.

Youtube: Love and Understanding

Advent Series, Part 2 of 4

In this four-part series, we are treating Advent as an intuitive awakening. Our focus is on the meditative process. Follow the same preparations from the first week and bring your awareness into the region of the solar plexus using the simple statement, I Am.  See and feel your soul radiating love. This beautiful energy of love works for the highest good of all concerned, sometimes attracting and sometimes repelling or dissolving, depending on how the highest good is to manifest. Whether love attracts or dissolves is not a decision you make, but one you trust love to sort out as it flows in and through every aspect of your being and your life. Love lifts your vision in a way that imparts the understanding to see and know what needs to be done. Affirm:

I am guided by the understanding that love imparts.

Love is my essence. Love is my being.

Love is the balancing action in all my relationships and all conditions in my life.

See your body immersed in love. See every aspect of your life, especially those areas that are troubled, completely engulfed in the love that radiates as your soul. See love doing its perfect work and become willing to do your part in that work when the understanding dictates. Loving your neighbor may result in strengthening your relationship or dissolving it. This is a much better alternative than trying to force yourself to love them because you think you are supposed to. You may not always be able to muster the kind word or take that right action that will bring agreement with another. Still, you can know that invoking love will fit all the pieces together, will tie up the loose ends, and move all concerned to their best and highest good. Love reveals that this is true even when your good intentions at diplomacy fail miserably, or fear drives your own actions. The love that expresses as your soul is greater than all human frailty. Your unloving thoughts and actions or the unloving thoughts and actions of another do nothing to alter love itself. Love does not depend on how loving or unloving you are.

Let all of this go and simply see your entire being immersed in love. Experience love’s healing warmth. Let it melt away your stress and your struggle to be loved. You are more than loved. You are love itself.

Youtube: Advent Series, Part 1 of 4: Life

In this four-part series, we are treating Advent as an intuitive awakening. Our focus, therefore, is on the meditative process. Choose a regular time and a place where you will not be disturbed (allow 30 minutes to an hour). Relax your mind and body. Bring your awareness to the area of the solar plexus (abdominal region) and focus your attention with this simple statement: I Am. Slowly repeat these words, letting go of all stress-inducing distractions. After a time, begin speaking quietly the affirmations that follow. Allow yourself to envision and experience the action suggested by each line before you move on to the next:

My soul radiates the pure, unrestricted energy of life.

There are no blockages. There are no restrictions.

I am filled with boundless life and unbridled enthusiasm.

The pure radiance of my soul shines in its fullness now.

In perfect peace, I let this pure energy rise.

As you relax with your awareness at your center, see the radiating energy of your soul as the energizing life that permeates all aspects of your being. It is natural to visualize life as the light that animates and heals every cell of your body and brings a sparkle of enthusiasm to your eye. You need not direct the energy of life, for life knows how to express itself. We see it animating countless forms at a variety of levels everywhere in the world. Life never stagnates. It is only our mundane focus of attention that becomes dull and lifeless. Acknowledge the free reign of life as it radiates its natural expansive movement through and as your being.

Don’t try to pump up your enthusiasm and strive to be the life of the party. Doing this will expend your energy by directing it to that bottomless pit of your unenthusiastic self-image.

Any forced positive attitude you generate will be short-lived and costly. A forced expression of enthusiasm is a performance you’ll have to continually maintain. Those who do this might be entertaining, but they can also be quite wearisome. You don’t have to instruct fire to be hot and you don’t have to inform life that it needs to express as enthusiasm. This is what it does naturally.

Natural enthusiasm manifests as genuine interest in whatever you happen to be doing, from creating a piece of art to taking out the trash. Enthusiasm is as unconditional as the energy of life itself. You need no particular reason to be enthusiastic. It is life’s gift to you. As you affirm life in your meditative experience, quiet enthusiasm will naturally grow.

If we think of Jesus as a wayshower, we need to define the way he showed. We find the best insight on a personal statement of his mission in the Gospel of John. As he stood before Pilate, he said, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.”[1] In terms of getting an understanding of how Jesus thought of himself and his ministry, these two statements are crucial. His use of the word truth is key to his response. When Pilate asked what he meant by the word, Jesus did not answer. Here we have an exchange between a career politician and a mystic. To the politician, truth is whatever narrative currently needs to be pushed to gain political advantage. To the mystic, truth is the changeless nature of reality. It would have been futile for Jesus to try to explain truth as he used the word.  

To bear witness to the truth, as the mystic understands it, is to base one’s life on God as a living presence, to see one’s soul as an expression of this presence, and to know without question that there can never be any separation between God and the soul. The people who had come to know this truth through their own personal experience, would understand what Jesus taught. They would hear his voice. The same is true today. The mainstream Christian theologian will insist the truth Jesus was referring to is more or less that collection of beliefs summarized in a document like the Nicene Creed. Mysticism, however, is not about a list of beliefs that one must subscribe to. It is about knowing from direct experience the nature of underlying reality.

A simple way to illustrate this difference is to imagine looking out a window and seeing sunlight spilling over the landscape. Mainstream religion looks out a window, sees the bright sunshine, and creates a set of beliefs around what the sunshine must be like. In contrast, the mystic steps outside and has direct exposure to the sunlight. Their understanding is not based on a set of beliefs but is grounded in direct knowing.

When Jesus said that knowing the truth will make us free, he was saying the direct exposure to the presence of God not only sets us free from all speculation about God’s nature, it also elevates our inner experience to a place above mental and emotional turmoil sparked by negative appearances. When we go within to our inner room, that secret place of the most high, we experience first-hand exposure to God. We shift from believing there is a God to knowing God directly.

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[1] John 18:37

Youtube: Understanding Prayer

Next Sunday we will begin our first of four lessons in Advent. As you know, I do not follow the traditional topics but focus instead on the four aspects of God: life, love, power, and intelligence. These attributes also express as the soul and should be thought of as our spiritual resources.

Prayer is our way of directing these resources in ways that are specific to our needs. If we need to breathe the breath of life into some area of our experience—say we’re feeling trapped or stagnated in some negative situation—we first stop giving attention to such feelings. We do not allow ourselves to entertain any feeling that this area of our life is not working. Instead, we vigorously and steadfastly affirm that the life of God is now expressing in beautiful and prospering ways, that there is a perfect flow of new ideas and enlivening enthusiasm that now clears the way for a more wholesome and satisfying experience.

We bring a consciousness of love into our prayer life by knowing that which is not for our highest good is now being dissolved and the greater good we desire is now being established. Love is the very process of denial and affirmation. Affirm that love is doing its perfect work in you and in your life right now.

Spiritual power is spiritual empowerment. Release all feelings of powerlessness and affirm the power of Spirit is now doing its mighty work in you. You are fearless and free to move forward in your thinking, to open your mind to new possibilities now unfolding.

Cease all talk and thought about not knowing what to do. Affirm the very intelligence of God is guiding you in all ways, that you know what to do and you do it. Divine intelligence is a tremendous resource that is always available and ready to respond to your affirmative attitude.

During this Advent season, let us not look back to the past and simply tell the same old story. Let us turn to God now, drawing upon our limitless resources of life, love, power, and intelligence to stir new possibilities.

Youtube: One Step at a Time

“Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets but threw the bad away. Matthew 13:47-48

In the spiritual context, the term enlightenment is often misunderstood. We might think of it as a singular experience, like passing through a door from a dark room to one full of light. There are, of course, cases where this seems to be true, but we don’t always know the facts of a person’s inner life. Their sudden breakthrough may be the result of years of preparation.

Let’s think of enlightenment first as the understanding that we are spiritual beings inhabiting a body in a material environment. To be unenlightened is to live as if we are trapped in a body and material environment. The enlightened approach to life’s events, then, is to consider them from the perspective of a spiritual being with limitless capacity. Rather than feeling trapped, we make mental and emotional choices that are based on the truth of our spiritual capacity.

To live a prayer-centered life is to not only be aware of the choices we are making, but to deliberately make choices that are in keeping with the truth of our spiritual capacity. Prayer is the two-fold process of denial and affirmation: releasing the unwanted reaction and affirming the truth. Jesus compared it to tossing bad fish and keeping the good.

The bad fish is a negative response to an appearance. We do not deny the appearance, but we release the negative energy we give it. We then affirm the truth with a statement something like this: Greater good is now unfolding through this appearance.

This is a spiritually enlightened approach to life’s challenges. We make our mental and emotional choices, not as a reaction to appearances, but based on the truth of our being, one step at a time.  

Youtube: Freedom From Attachments of the Past

As they were going along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” But he said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:57-62

This series of statements all point to the same issue: if you want to begin again, you must release your attachments to the past. This is not so much a call to let go of memories, fond or otherwise, but rather to stop using energy to continue to respond to these memories.

The only place we can effectively act is in the now moment. When we feel overburdened, it is because we are expending energy focusing on problems that are impossible to resolve in the present. All we can do is mull them over, dispersing our creative energy. It’s like plowing the same furrow over and over. You can get just as exhausted plowing one furrow a hundred times as plowing a hundred furrows once, and the result is much less satisfying.

Solutions to our challenges have a way of presenting themselves, though not necessarily on demand. We sometimes have to let situations mature to the point where we know exactly what to do. Our energy drains come from speculating on what should be done, before it’s time to do it. Jesus talked about letting the weeds and the crops grow together, refraining from pulling the weeds until they are clearly identifiable. There is a great deal of wisdom in this. How often do we destroy our present peace by focusing on eliminating the weeds?

Today, take a moment to connect with your Source. Know that you have all the intelligence and energy necessary to do what lies before you. If you feel overburdened, like your life is going nowhere, know that you are plowing the same furrow. Let it go and move on.

Youtube: Getting Out of God’s Way

Guest Speaker: Erika Satie

What does following your intuition and joy look like to you? Does it mean that you are dialed in to the Truth of who and what you are and that you are being guided by that inner knowing? Some say that your feelings are indicators of your alignment with Source – do you believe that to be true? What if this was taken more seriously? I do know from experience that the feeling of joy is almost always a clear indication that you on the right path and that you are in the flow of Life itself. On the other hand, when you feel dark and negative it can seem that you are somehow lost and alone and that things will never work out. When this happens, know that you have simply forgotten who and what you are. You have let it slip your mind that you are a powerful and naturally joyful expression of the Divine. Be grateful to know that you no longer must let these dark feelings be predominant in your life, as you always have a choice on what to focus on.

I have found that the more we lean into our spiritual practices, the easier it becomes for us to allow better feelings into our life and experience. Unfortunately, if you look around you most people seem to be in low spirits much of the time, but every once in a while, you meet a person who is upbeat and positive. It’s as if they see the silver lining in everything that has taken place. I don’t think that these people are special or unique, I believe that this mindset is here for all of us. Not as a spiritual bypass, but as a way of training ourselves to go back to God when we happen to find ourselves in a place that feels cut off from the source of Joy that is always flowing to us.

Youtube: I Am The Vine

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5).

Using this simple metaphor, Jesus beautifully illustrates the relationship each individual has with his or her spiritual source. God, our creator/sustainer, is like the vine from which we grow. To abide in God is to live with the awareness of God as the source of our being.

Because we often draw our identity from external sources—job, family, social level, etc.—we may feel overwhelmed when challenges sweep through our lives. These words from John remind us to pause, and to reconnect to our source. In the seventh verse, Jesus makes this promise: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.”

How do we abide in God? Through prayer. In Unity we teach that prayer is a two-fold process. First we are to release the negative energy that appearances stir in us. This is called, denial. Let go your emotional attachments, your fears, your anger, to that which you do not want. Speak words like this: I now release all emotions of fear and doubt. Next, move into the second half of the prayer process by affirming, God is my source, God is my strength. My life is now unfolding in divine order.

Allow yourself to experience the lightness of letting go, and the infilling of assurance that your life is unfolding perfectly, according to the divine blueprint that is being imparted from within your being.

In the same way the fruit of the vine manifests from within the branch, so a spiritually ordered life will manifest through your inner being and through every facet of your life. Abide often in the awareness of God as your source, then ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. 

Youtube: The Dynamics of Challenge

Excerpt from: A Practical Guide to Prosperous Living

It is important to realize that every new enterprise, every decision you make to pursue your passion is going to evoke some level of confrontation between the stronger and the weaker elements of your self-image. You will set your goals based on your strengths, your talents, your interests and your dreams. In the process of manifesting them, however, you will encounter challenges that will summon all your weaknesses as well. Self-doubt, fear of failure, feelings of lack, impatience, anger, lethargy and indifference will all creep in at the most inappropriate times. Like Job, you may find yourself saying, “The thing I feared is upon me and the thing I dreaded is now before me.” Many worthy undertakings have been brought to a grinding halt by these unwelcome thieves of our creative energy.

You need not be taken by surprise when this seemingly negative side of your consciousness arises. While it may not always be comfortable or convenient, the arousal of these stifling elements is both inevitable and necessary. They arise from that limited aspect of your identity which is crying out to be redefined from the basis of your soul.

Because of the discomfort or even pain involved in dealing with them, the temptation is to suppress these unwanted elements. But unless the things you fear most come upon you, unless they are brought into the full light of your awareness, you will never be able to trace them back to their sources and permanently release the negative influence they have on your circumstantial tendencies.