Category: J Douglas Bottorff

The Gift

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When we think of the gift Jesus gave to humankind, our doctrinal conditioning will take us to his death, the notion that he gave his life as a sacrifice for our sins. I like to think of this gift in a dramatically different way. He dedicated his life to teaching the truth of our oneness with God.

The Franciscan monk, Richard Rohr, made a very telling observation that he calls the great comma. It refers to a statement found in the Apostle’s Creed. The line and comma in question is this:  

“…I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried …”

The comma Rohr points to is the one between the “…born of the virgin Mary, He suffered under Pontius Pilate…” That comma represents 33 years, the entire life and teachings of Jesus. This is the gift he gave and the creed passes right over it.

Matthew’s account of the immaculate conception embodies the gift of Jesus’ teaching. This conception, imparted by the Holy Spirit, is symbolic of our receptivity to the deeper aspect of our own soul. Jesus taught his followers to go into the inner room, close the door, and pray to the Father in secret. That is, lay aside for a time the influence of the intellect, the Joseph aspect, and assume an intuitively receptive attitude. Advocating a direct experience with God was a refreshing approach. For those who were raised believing they were separate from God, the notion of the kingdom of God within would not have been an easy concept to grasp. But once that seed was planted, it would not be easy for the new believer to return to the old way of thinking.

The Christmas story is our story. I am not convinced that Jesus envisioned his message reaching beyond the world that he knew, but I think he would have found great satisfaction in knowing that his gift is still being given to people like you and me.  

Gateway To Intelligence

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Call upon the wisdom of the Infinite

This week we’re exploring divine intelligence and its expression through us as order.

Life and enthusiasm were the first topics for our Advent season. Love and understanding were the subject of last week. Today we’ll look at power and strength as the third of this four-part, pre-Christmas series. Intelligence and order will be the fourth.

How do we come to identify and name a characteristic of God? We can look for biblical passages such as this one: “Ah Lord God! It is thou who hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and by thy outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for thee” (Jeremiah 32:17). We can look at tradition that declares the omnipotence (all power) of God. Or through simple observation we can see countless expressions of power in everything from the volcano to the seed growing silently.

The power of God empowers us with the strength we need to carry on with our life. Those times when we feel our strength is waning, we affirm God’s limitless power works in and through us to give us the boost we need, when we need it. We remember Jeremiah’s inspiring words, “Nothing is too hard for thee” and we might add, “for thou art centered in me.” As an inlet and outlet to the everlasting power of God, I meet each day knowing that nothing is too hard for me.

Visualize God as a power center within your being. Imagine this power radiating out through your every atom and cell, expressing as the strength of optimism. One of Charles Fillmore’s favorite affirmations goes as follows:

“I fairly sizzle with zeal and enthusiasm and spring forth with a mighty faith to do the things that ought to be done by me.”

Such an empowering prayer! As we saw in our first lesson on life, we know that life, zeal, enthusiasm, power, and strength are all interconnected, one power expressing in a variety of ways. This one power is our God center, our very center of power. Stir up this power with words, visualizations, meditations, actions, and any way that comes to you. A simple smile given to a passing stranger can empower them in ways you never know. Remember, nothing is too hard for thee, and thou art centered in me.

Tapping Your Center of Power

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Life and enthusiasm were the first topics for our Advent season. Love and understanding were the subject of last week. Today we’ll look at power and strength as the third of this four-part, pre-Christmas series. Intelligence and order will be the fourth.

How do we come to identify and name a characteristic of God? We can look for biblical passages such as this one: “Ah Lord God! It is thou who hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and by thy outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for thee” (Jeremiah 32:17). We can look at tradition that declares the omnipotence (all power) of God. Or through simple observation we can see countless expressions of power in everything from the volcano to the seed growing silently.

The power of God empowers us with the strength we need to carry on with our life. Those times when we feel our strength is waning, we affirm God’s limitless power works in and through us to give us the boost we need, when we need it. We remember Jeremiah’s inspiring words, “Nothing is too hard for thee” and we might add, “for thou art centered in me.” As an inlet and outlet to the everlasting power of God, I meet each day knowing that nothing is too hard for me.

Visualize God as a power center within your being. Imagine this power radiating out through your every atom and cell, expressing as the strength of optimism. One of Charles Fillmore’s favorite affirmations goes as follows:

“I fairly sizzle with zeal and enthusiasm and spring forth with a mighty faith to do the things that ought to be done by me.”

Such an empowering prayer! As we saw in our first lesson on life, we know that life, zeal, enthusiasm, power, and strength are all interconnected, one power expressing in a variety of ways. This one power is our God center, our very center of power. Stir up this power with words, visualizations, meditations, actions, and any way that comes to you. A simple smile given to a passing stranger can empower them in ways you never know. Remember, nothing is too hard for thee, and thou art centered in me.

The Love Dynamic

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Love, expressed as understanding, is our topic for this second week of Advent. As we consider the love dynamic, it should become clear why new understanding for a word so familiar is important.

Most of you are probably aware of the statement I make concerning the action of love:

Love draws to me that which is for my highest good, and dissolves that which is not.

When asked about the greatest commandments, Jesus said to love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, and soul. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself.

God is love (1John 4:8), drawing to us that which is for our highest good and dissolving that which is not. To love the Lord our God is to recognize this is happening now and always. This is the ultimate affirming attitude toward God. To hold this same thought for others is the highest, most freeing form of prayer we can utter. To pray, Love draws to you that which is for your highest good and dissolves that which is not, is freeing both to you and to the one for which you speak it.

Think of love, not as a thing that can be given or withheld but as a perpetual action. At this very moment, as you read or hear these words, know that the action of love is drawing to you that which is for your highest good. Do there appear to be obstacles to your peace, success, health, prosperity, or harmony in relationships? Then know that these obstacles are being dissolved right now. If we are tempted to feel undeserving, we let love dissolve this feeling. Love is not a thing we earn. It is the very nature of the creative life force that is loving us into existence. All feelings of undeserving are based on our misunderstanding of the unconditional nature of God as love.

Affirming this love dynamic is active in us and in our life right now is key to experiencing the spiritual birth we celebrate during this Christmas season. With this understanding, we open our minds and hearts to the more abundant life that we know can be ours.

The Gift of Life

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The energy that we call life is a mystery. When materially based science attempts to trace life to its origins, they look to the fossil record. The earliest life forms were apparently single celled creatures that inhabited the oceans. Through billions of years, more complex forms developed. What is not known is how the energy of life began animating these biological forms. Science says, it just happened.

However things started, this living energy is, as John says, the light of each one of us. I believe this life that is our essence predates all organisms, that it has no beginning and no end. As I think about this, I’m struck with a sense of awe that this eternal gift is given to me, as me, the same realization Jesus may have had when he said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).

When we describe a person as being full of life, we are usually referring to their enthusiasm for living. If we feel a lack of enthusiasm, it may be good to contemplate this ageless energy that we are. It’s easy to bottle it up in restricting perceptions, affirmations of being too old and too tired. The life that we are does not age and it does not wear out. Yes, the organism does both of these things, but we are not the organism. Before Abraham was, we were too. That thought alone is energizing.

If this sounds farfetched, consider that science tells us our body is about 60% water, and that water is one of the oldest substances on earth. So, 60% of the physical body could actually be billions of years old. Can we not imagine our life energy having even more resilience than water?

Though this kind of thinking can be fun, we really don’t need to get this exotic to recognize and affirm the creative life force of God enlivens our mind, energizes our body, and constantly creates new opportunities for greater expression through every facet of our existence. The gift of life will never wane. It is as alive now as ever. God is life and you and I are expressions of God. Keep this thought on the front burner of your thinking and watch it stir up creatively new possibilities.      

The Resurrection Revisited

The Resurrection Revisited, Part 1

In this episode, Lisanya and I discuss the topic of resurrection, its meaning as applied to Jesus and as it applies to us today. The gospel writers advocated a physical resurrection. Paul advocated a spiritual resurrection—sown a physical body, raised a spiritual body. The question each of us need to ask and answer is this: Does it matter if Jesus physically resurrected?

If he resurrected, when will he return to establish the expected kingdom? 2,000+ years and still counting seems like a very long time to consider this Christian model good news. Maybe there is another way to think of this whole idea.  

The Tie That Binds

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“Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”. (Matthew 16:19).

I have always been curious about how Matthew connected this saying to Peter’s recognition of Jesus as the Christ. It never seemed to quite fit. For me, it seems better suited as a reminder of the connection between the quality of our consciousness and the quality of our external life. If we believe a certain thing is true, for example, we tend to express that belief in our life. The belief is what we bind on earth. The invisible laws of manifestation we set in motion is what we bind in heaven.

I once spoke with a young woman who said, “People never take me seriously.” She then went on to name about three examples where her opinions were dismissed. If you continually affirm that people never take you seriously, chances are good that people will stop taking you seriously.

The question is, does affirming people never take you seriously actually cause people to comply with your expectations? Or, do you just latch on to those situations where this seems to be the case? I bought a Jeep Wrangler from our daughter. Now, everyplace I go I see many Jeep Wranglers. Did the whole world run out and buy Jeep Wranglers just because I did? I don’t think so.

The principle contained in the statement from Jesus basically says whatever gets your attention will tend to show up because you look for it. It becomes inevitable. If you want to be taken seriously, then it would be a good idea to stop saying no one does.

This is just an example, but it plays out in many ways in our life. There is a definite connection between what we believe (bind on earth) and what we latch onto from the river of events that flow through our life (bind in heaven).  

Manifestation Principles

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J Douglas Bottorff

It occurs to me that the ministry of Jesus focused on helping people experience better health, prosperity, and more harmonious relationships by applying spiritual principles. As I began jotting these down, I quickly came up with twelve. To begin, he emphasized the spiritual nature of God, the importance of forgiveness, acknowledging the intuitive promptings of the Father, accepting that it’s the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, the need for faith, the attitude that you have already received what you ask for in prayer, singleness of eye (imagination), letting go of spiritual preconceptions, the need to be born of spirit, persistence, don’t follow the crowd, and break the worry habit.

These ideas are scattered throughout the gospels and are not presented as a specific formula to follow. We’ll drill down into each one of these ideas in today’s talk. Here, I want to point out the mental and emotional emphasis Jesus put on his teachings. As a mystic, he would have focused on the importance of a firsthand experience with God. However, he would have also understood that many in his audience would not make this kind of breakthrough, but that would not prevent them from reaping the benefits of a spiritual change of mind.

If we think of God as Spirit, the creative life force that stirs in and through us at all times, we want to be aware that our mental and emotional atmosphere influences the way this creative energy displays in our life. When Jesus said it’s the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom, we accept the truth that this creative process is bias toward our highest good. We do not think of prayer, as someone has suggested, as a means of overcoming God’s reluctance. We think of prayer as a way of cooperating with God’s willingness.

In light of the twelve principles I’ve listed, our prayer is grounding ourselves in these ideas at different times throughout our day. We develop a general attitude of optimism, or faith that greater good is now unfolding through our life. Jesus, of course, highlighted many other principles we can add to this list, but the important thing is to stay aware of how we are using our faculties of faith and imagination. Just the single thought that it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom is enough to raise your level of expectation to a healthy place. The more of these principles work through your mind and heart, the better off you will be.

The Reluctant Messiah

Podcast: Episode 3: The Reluctant Messiah

In this episode we explore the notion of Jesus as Messiah. Even though the gospel writers portrayed him in this way, we explore some of the reasons Jesus himself might have rejected the role.

“Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself” (John 6:15).

He would have known that every self-proclaimed messiah had met the same tragic fate. Recalling that Jesus was a Jew, we look at the differences between Jewish and Christian concepts of the Messiah. Modern scholars know that the Christian Messiah was pieced together from various Old Testament passages those early followers of the Jesus movement insisted supported their belief.

Many sayings attributed to him suggest that Jesus was not the typical apocalyptic prophet but a Jewish mystic, a teacher whose ministry was dedicated to the mission of helping “break every yoke” and lift open-minded members of his peasant class from the drudgery of daily life. He introduced his audience to a new, spiritually empowering way of thinking of the kingdom of God as an underlying, ever-present reality, whose point of contact was centered in every individual. Because the region in which Jesus was raised was Hellenized—imposed Greek culture, language, and philosophy—it is not inconceivable that his understanding of the kingdom of God was influenced by Plato’s Theory of Forms. This major paradigm shift required a new birth, a new way of seeing and thinking of themselves and their relationship of oneness with God. This mission he drew from Isiah, which, according to Luke, he read at the outset of his public ministry.

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of wickedness,
    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?” (Isiah 58:6)

Breaking the Sin Connection

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The Jews of Jesus’ day saw a strong connection between disease and sin. The best example of this belief is when a young man, blind from birth, was brought to Jesus with the question, Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind? We notice they did not inquire about his belief regarding the connection of the boy’s condition to sin. They made the assumption, and they wanted Jesus to name the guilty party. Jesus, of course, dismissed their question and took steps to bring about the healing.

On several occasions, before he spoke a healing statement, Jesus would tell the person that their sins were forgiven. I do not believe he was asserting special power over sin. He was breaking the sin connection, erasing the lifelong belief that their problem resulted from an offense against God.

I have pointed out that much of what we consider sin, our legal system would call a process crime, a crime, not against a person, but against the legal system itself. None of the so-called seven deadly sins—pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth—are actually illegal. They are considered sins against God, but they are really only sins against the religious system. Jesus made clear in his prodigal son parable that the Father does not take into account the sins of his son.

Jesus was a spiritual educator. His conscious connection with God gave him direct insight into what was true of God. When he said, for example, that you are judged by how you judge, he was saying that if you believe you sinned against God, then the first malady that pops up will prove you correct. If you live as if your sins are forgiven, or, better still, not even acknowledged by God, then you will relieve yourself of the associated anxiety.

It is good for each of us to see if we have some kind of sin connection going on. Do we associate negative conditions with negative thoughts or other shortcomings on our part? If so, let’s make sure we get God out of that formula. God is that consistent one presence and one power that we call upon to restore order where chaos may have erupted. Nothing we say our do changes God’s changeless behavior. In other words, our sins are forgiven.