“Learn as if you were to live forever.” Gandhi

It’s always stimulating to shift from the monologue of writing to the dialog of discussion. So I’m happy to respond to an important issue recently raised from a couple of people in different settings. It is good to question, even challenge every assertion concerning spiritual matters. In this case, I’ve been asked to draw a distinction between the notion of the complete soul and the thrill and challenge of continued learning. Is it an either/or proposition, or can we have both?

Debunking the notion of the evolving soul does not mean our days of learning are over. Remaining true to our spiritual birthright, in fact, assures we will never stop learning. The irony is that those who would challenge the notion that their soul is already complete usually do so because it goes against something they have learned previously. Isn’t the act of attempting to protect such a preconceived notion similar to saying, I’ve learned all I need to learn on this subject? If I once learned that some object of interest lay in the south but it’s really in the north, do I argue to justify continuing my southbound travel or do I become willing to learn the new route to the north? We tend to reject ideas, not based on the idea’s lack of veracity, but because it doesn’t fit the framework of what we believe to be true.

There is a major difference between learning because you’re interested in a subject and learning because you won’t graduate if you don’t take the class. Many see our earthly appearance as the required class. If you flunk the tests given, you return to take them again. For some, this is a more appealing alternative to the one chance, two alternative eternities offered by most mainstream religions. But it is nevertheless an endless treadmill that leads nowhere. Being good doesn’t get you off this treadmill. The only way off is to step off.

Many hold a certain reverence for the ascetic who retires to a cave in the mountains and spends his life denouncing the material world. But I would ask a simple question: Why go to the trouble of taking on a body and material environment then spend all your energy denouncing it? It seems more logical to learn to be in the world but not of it. I believe we shoot ourselves in the foot by thinking we came here to transcend our physical environment. It makes a lot more sense to me to assume we came here for the unique experiences it has to offer.

Denouncing the world makes perfect sense if you subscribe to the evolving soul model. The world and its countless distractions is, after all, the source of your problems. Our earthly life becomes a school full of soul-advancing tests. But what if this isn’t true? What if we’re here not to merely pass tests but because we were interested in exploring this earthly experience? We can’t do it without a body. And we certainly can’t do it successfully with the fear of eternal damnation or the prospect of endless incarnations dangling over our heads. Are we not equipped with a natural, unbridled curiosity about what makes this world tick? We don’t see children denouncing it. We see them diving into the thick of it, eager to explore. I say this because Jesus apparently saw the natural curiosity of a child as a prime example of the mental disposition required for spiritual advancement (alignment):

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:2-4).

The theory of soul evolution has spawned a framework of expectations that must be met before the individual is deemed spiritually enlightened. There is indeed more to learn, but what is it that we need to learn? The fact is, we have created a false spiritual ideal (based largely on the opinions of others) against which we weigh our perceived progress. If we respond positively to a challenging situation, we conclude that our soul is advancing. If we respond negatively, we assume our soul has more to learn. But here’s the problem. This is a false benchmark that has nothing to do with the soul. It is, rather, the misguided attempt of our self-image to build the perfect soul.

In the parable of the prodigal son, there is a line that perfectly illustrates this idea (Luke 15:1-32). When the boy hit bottom, “… he came to himself …” (15:17). If, as is implied by the evolving soul model, his condition in life represented the condition of his soul, how could coming to himself provide any kind of solution? Wouldn’t following the promptings of this “self” guarantee a repeat of the same dysfunctional thinking? It is obvious that his bad behavior led him to the far country. What isn’t so obvious is that the solution to his problem was to reconnect with the saving influence of his spiritual essence, his soul. Unscathed by misguided behavior, this inner connection prompted him to cease chasing the endless cravings of an inadequate self-image and begin making decisions aligned with his authentic core. While it’s true that we drag around Emerson’s sad self wherever we go, it’s also true that our saving core, our spiritual essence is with us even in those lonely, cloud-shrouded moments of self-inflicted despair. It would appear the Psalmist captured this truth in these immortal lines:

Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee?
If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, there you are.
If I take the wings of dawn and dwell beyond the sea,
Even there your hand guides me, your right hand holds me fast.
If I say, “Surely darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light”— Darkness is not dark for you,
and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but one.
You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works! My very self you know. (Psalms 139:7-14).

The parable of the prodigal is not the story of a developing soul or of a religious conversion. For me it has become an illustration intended to show that no matter how far we stray from our spiritual center, our soul remains healthy and intact. The parable does not depict the act of spiritual discovery but the act of spiritual recovery. Discovery implies finding something you never had. Recovery suggests the regaining of something that has been yours from the beginning. The boy didn’t merely discover a new scheme that would lift him out of trouble. He came to himself. He recovered a conscious connection with his spiritual essence which immediately placed him on the road home.

Learn as if you were to live forever is sound advice. The truth that we do live forever should allow us to relax and take a new interest in learning as much as we can about this world we temporarily inhabit.

Question: You say the soul does not evolve, but I’m not sure I understand what this means. Are you saying we just stay the same all the time, that we don’t learn anything? Do we just stay like we are and get along the best we can?

Response: A good way to address this question is to recall the tale of the so-called ugly duckling. This is a powerful story that has helped millions of children realize that self-understanding is much more important than fitting in. In the era of social media — fake friends and hollow likes — our kids need this more than ever. But we adults can also take the lessons of this story to another level.

This little swan had come to believe he was a duck so he tried desperately and unsuccessfully to fit into the duck culture. At the lowest point in his life he experienced a revelation. Seeing a flock of wild swans, he threw himself at them with the thought that it was better to be killed by them than to continue living his miserable existence. To his surprise, they did not kill him, they welcomed him. Better still, he saw his reflection in the pond and realized he was one of them!

Many on the spiritual path see this path as a process of becoming something more than they are now. They are driven by the belief that we are to evolve from a spiritually unenlightened state to an enlightened state. This is seen as a soul process, even to the point of assuming there are both young and old souls. The belief is that every challenge we face provides some kind of lesson that, if learned, brings us closer to that desired state of soul maturity. From the spiritual point of view, however, this is a false assumption. The little swan did not need to evolve from a duck to a swan. He was a swan all along. The only change that occurred in him was his self-perception. Did he require all the hard lessons he encountered to become a swan? No. He could never be anything else. But he could, laboring under the curse of a mistaken identity, live a very miserable existence trying to fit in by attempting to force himself to become something he thought he was supposed to be.

From childhood, we’re exposed to a wide array of cultural influences that insist we become something other than we are now. Being rather social creatures, we want to fit in and we’ll often gladly develop the persona that allows us to do so. Yes, we can do it, often at great cost to our well-being. We cannot escape that gnawing feeling that something essential to our being is missing. We’re Emerson’s traveler who believes that in Naples he will find what his mundane existence lacks, only to discover that he awakens in Naples as the same sad self he hoped to leave behind. Regardless of where one goes or what one achieves, playing the role of even the successful duck will forever leave a hollow feeling in the heart of the swan.

We seek to advance our spiritual status by exposing ourselves to the works of the masters. This would be fine if we did not think of ourselves as the duck reading of the benefits of becoming a swan. Many of us began our so-called spiritual education from the premise that we were sinners from birth, that our hope of salvation lay in becoming something other than our natural sinful nature. Some of us put this off when we discovered New Thought and were reminded that we are made in the image and after the likeness of God. So why don’t we feel the freeing power of this truth? We will, we’re told. We just need a few more lifetimes to mature. Yes, we can even declare that we are now on a spiritual rather than a religious path while still walking and quacking our way to that elusive ideal of perfect swanhood.

Because you feel separate from God does not mean you are. Nor does it mean you are a spiritual failure. The little swan’s true identity was never in jeopardy. His months of dreaming of being a successful duck did not mean he had to invest that same amount of time regaining the truth that was his birthright. Placing your soul on an evolutionary time-line may seem to address the why of why it feels as if you are here and the fulfillment you seek is somewhere else. But why not start at the end, even if you don’t feel it?

You and I are spiritually complete now. Our quest for spiritual fulfillment may take us to the far corners of the earth but the day comes when we catch a glimpse of our true essence in the rippling surface of this very pond that is our life. Like the little swan, we do not evolve into something more than we are already. We awaken to that something we are right now.

Advent Series, Part 2 of 4

YouTube: Love and Understanding

Audio: Love and Understanding

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: Consider the Lilies

Audio: Consider the Lilies

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these” (Matthew 6:28-29).

God is an all-sustaining presence that great spiritual teachers of all ages have recognized as a providing source of support and guidance. Jesus was, no doubt, familiar with the writer of Deuteronomy’s comforting image of God: “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).

We often feel alone, cut off from any source of support and supply. This happens, of course, because we become focused completely on the outer aspects of life and we start thinking that our good comes only from external channels.

This attitude actually contributes to much of our struggle for a more prosperous experience. The belief that our good comes to us from the outside in has us looking here and there for what first must be discovered within our own being.

If you are faced with a need right now, the first step toward opening yourself to a more attractive, prospering state is to become a magnet of good. You do this by affirming something like this:

God is my dwelling place, my perfect support. Today, I draw to myself all that I need to live a full and prosperous life.

Get the feeling that you are loved and supported, that your life is, on all fronts, working in an easy and orderly manner, that God as your source is now drawing to you everything you need to live a full and satisfying life. Just as the lily is clothed from the inside out, so are you. Take time often to remember this, and to know that God is your everlasting source of absolute good.

Youtube: The Cain and Abel Dynamic

Audio: The Cain and Abel Dynamic

In closing this series on meditation and prayer I thought it would be good to discuss a common challenge that you will likely encounter when attempting to make positive changes in your life. In my book, Meditation and Prayer, I refer to this as the Cain and Abel dynamic and I describe it in this way:

In reading the story, you know that Cain was a tiller of the soil—a farmer. Abel was a shepherd. The farmer must stay in one place, planting his crops in defined areas, making his location at any given time predictable. Cain represents that tendency in us to seek out the familiar, set up predictable routines, and hope nothing comes around to disturb our world. A shepherd, on the other hand, must constantly be on the move, changing the location of his flock so his sheep will not overgraze the land. Abel represents that part of us that is on the move growing, indefinable, changing.

These two characters represent two aspects of our consciousness. One seeks the comfort of familiarity while the other seeks the expansive mental attitude that invites growth. You may be praying for a condition to change, for example, so you don’t have to. You want some unusual circumstance to go away so you can get back to living your life as usual.

When you pray for change you will, in all likelihood, be presented with an opportunity to change. This opportunity could come in the form of a challenge that forces you to broaden your understanding of yourself and your life. It may be unexpected and seem like an undesirable development that you want to pray away.

Be mindful of such opportunities. See if you are hanging on to old ways of thinking that you need to let go. Every challenge has something of value if you are open to it. The value may be as simple as letting go of a negative emotion and proving to yourself that you do have a choice about how you feel. Your Cain may attempt to slay your Abel but growth is inevitable. Think growth and let go.

Youtube: The Prayer That Prospers

Audio: The Prayer That Prospers

One of Unity’s fundamental teachings is that God is the source of our supply. We may think of God as owning a great warehouse full of goods and when orders are put in, they’re fulfilled and sent out. There are times, of course, when the order is slow and we think our request is on back order or that our credit has been compromised.

Jesus said that God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. God does not actually give us things. God gives us ideas and inspiration. We have the wonderful ability to open our minds to the very essence of God, to be filled with the life, love, power and intelligence that bring about all we see and all we do not see. We have a beautiful faculty of imagination that enables us to envision specific things and conditions that are appealing to us. We can tap into the energy of zeal that enables us to do the things necessary to bring about the life we envision. We have the ability to love what we do and create blessings that touch the lives of others.

The prayer that prospers is the one that sees clearly a desired objective, that releases the negative doubts and fears that stand in our way, that stimulates the faith to hold fast and to move forward when we are called to act in ways that further our heart-felt aspirations.

George Eliot made the great observation that God “could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.” God cannot make the world you know is possible without you to bring it forth. Think of yourself as the translator of the unseen to the visible. The life you desire is not a thing that is either given or withheld but a thing you agree to help produce.

The prayer that prospers is one that affirms that which you desire is yours now and your acceptance of this truth opens the mental and emotional doors through which your good may come. Do not be discouraged if the manifestation seems slow. Hold fast to your desire, be willing to work and live with the peace of knowing your good is coming forth now!

Youtube: The Prayer of Healing

Audio: The Prayer of Healing

As we’ve seen so far in this series, effective prayer involves three basic actions. The first is the infilling we receive in our quiet times of meditation. The second is the releasing of mental states that do not conform to the truth we discover in our quiet time. The third is the affirmation of what is true of Spirit in specific areas of our life.

One specific area that touches all of us, though in varying degrees, is the area of healing. I want to turn to near-death studies for a moment because this research reveals a very profound piece of information. Let’s say a person is hospitalized and undergoes surgery for a serious heart condition. During the surgery the patient flat-lines and is pronounced dead. To all appearances the life of the patient, including all perceptual functions of the brain, has ceased. Yet the patient “regains” consciousness, either of their own volition or through resuscitation, and reports experiences they could not possibly have had according to the current scientific, brain-based model of consciousness.

Included in the experiences the patient reports is a condition of perfect health, so perfect, in fact, that they felt more alive than ever. What is true of this patient is true of you. In meditation you open your mind, not to a state of health and well being that you do not yet have, but to the condition of health and wholeness that you possess right now. The aches and pains of our body bring our attention away from the truth of our perpetual wholeness that is so strong death of the body does not overcome it.

Open your mind to your spiritual body. Release all doubt that it exists in its fullness right now. Affirm that this spiritual body is you and you are giving yourself permission to come forth and fully occupy the physical body you now inhabit. Do not try to force a healing, beg for it or make any bargains with God. You are this wholeness, this perfect spiritual body and you need only acknowledge it and invite it to come forth into your consciousness.

The prayer of healing is the simple acceptance of what you are.

Youtube: The Power Behind Prayer

Audio: The Power Behind Prayer

While meditation is an infilling, the deeper realization that you are grounded in the life, love, power and intelligence that God is, prayer is your means of expressing these qualities through all the specific areas of your life. You do this through the exercise of your faculties of elimination (the power to release), faith (the power to open yourself to the new), judgment, will, and understanding.

Once you grasp the relationship between meditation and prayer you no longer see prayer as a means of getting something from God. Rather you see it as a process of releasing those mental and emotional states that are blocking your good and affirming the truth that unfolds through your quiet times.

If you have a challenge in your life that you want to address spiritually, you begin by taking your thoughts off the challenge and turning to God in meditation. When you close your eyes you’ll be tempted to think only about your challenge. With practice you will release your attachment to the negative appearance and experience an infilling of new inspiration. As you go about your day and the challenge presents itself to you, you release the negative energy you have invested in the challenge and allow yourself to experience it in a new and different way. You can speak words such as, “I now release the energy of this negative appearance. There is nothing to fear.” This is the denial or releasing side of prayer. You then follow up with statements that are true of your spiritual nature. “That which is in me is greater than that which is of the world. I am fearless. I am filled with the understanding of what I am to do and how I am to do it.”

Effective prayer asks nothing of God. You pray with the assumption that God has already given you all you need to meet the challenge at hand. Sometimes you are called to act and other times you are called to be still and know the Creative Life Force that is God is working through you in ways that allow your light to shine in beautiful ways. The power behind prayer is your understanding of your inseparable oneness with God, your unfailing source.