Tag: faith

From Religion to Spirituality

YouTube: From Religion to Spirituality, The Quest for Spiritual Authenticity

Nearly all of us who have come into a more direct study of spiritual principles have some type of religious background. For whatever reason, we have stepped from that path and pursued one that is more suitable to our heart’s dictates. Throughout my career, I’ve heard hundreds of stories from people who have stepped away from the “safety” of their traditional background and embarked upon a path that may not be so well received by their former teachers.

What would cause us to do this? I think the answer lies in today’s subtitle. We are looking for spiritual authenticity. While it can be said that the teachings we’ve been given are true to the beliefs of the early church movement, something has prompted us to question whether they reflect what is actually true of Spirit. Jesus criticized the Pharisees with this quote from Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men” (Matthew 15:8-9).

It has been pointed out that while all religions reference God, none can encompass God. A religion is a collective perspective intended to guide people safely through this maze of appearances we call life, and assure us the best outcome. All religions are based on the belief in separation. Either we are separate from God, or we are separate from our higher Self. But what happens when we grow past this given that we are separate from God or ourselves? What do we do with the revelation that the kingdom of the Father is spread out over the earth and men do not see it? (Thomas 113).

This is where our need for spiritual authenticity really kicks in. If God is present and centered within me, then how can I know and experience God? If my soul is complete now, how can I live from this completeness? If sin does not damage my relationship with God, how can I come to know this unconditional love in which I live and move and have my being?

I can search scriptures for answers to these questions, but I will not come to know the answers until I experience them for myself. Jesus advised to knock, and the door would be open. He did not go into detail about how this works, probably because he understood that each person’s relationship to God belongs only to them, that it isn’t something we find within the confines of a religious doctrine, but within the quiet center of our own heart.

Tapping Into the Mind of God

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It is becoming increasingly clear to a certain camp of physicists that omnipresent Consciousness is a fundamental element of the universe. This is not a new idea. “Panpsychism is the view that mentality [consciousness] is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” In the 19th century, panpsychism was the default philosophy of mind in Western thought. While the scientifically-minded will stop short of calling this God, we in the spiritual community have no problem doing so.

When we think of tapping into the mind of God, we start with the understanding that God doesn’t have a mind, God is Mind. The characteristics of God/Mind are life, love, power, and intelligence. All living forms express life, love, and power sufficient to their being. The tiny mouse is just as alive as the enormous elephant. Intelligence is the one characteristic that displays in distinguishable variations.

If intelligence is everywhere present, why isn’t the mouse designing quantum computers? Brain capacity seems to be the best answer. It’s like screwing a 40 or 100 watt bulb into the same socket. The 40 watt will not produce the light of a 100 watt, though they draw from the same source.

We are literally immersed in the intelligence of God, and we are designed to express it. This is particularly useful to know and visualize in our times of prayer. Affirming the light of intelligence guiding our way, healing our mind and body, or opening new channels of abundance raises our expectation (faith) of greater good to unfold.

Our body constantly carries out a combination of intricate functions that are far beyond our awareness, as if there are multi-universes transpiring within our single organism. We are literally permeated with the intelligence that knows how to carry out these important functions. The same is true of our larger body of circumstance. We may be fixated on the opening of a specific door while infinite intelligence is opening a window that we’re not even aware of. Affirming this possibility opens our mind to all possibilities. In truth, tapping into the mind of God is tapping into the greater resources of our own mind.    

Healing Light

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This week, the subject of healing has been raised a couple of times, a signal to me that it’s time to revisit this topic. Healing, like prosperity, harmony in relationships, peace of mind, or any desired condition, begins at a specific point that engages all our executive faculties, beginning with imagination and faith. Judgment, will, and elimination also play important roles, but imagination and faith are where we begin.

For many, the thing that occupies the imagination most is the problem we are experiencing. If we have a health challenge, we are likely to hold a picture of what is wrong. With the spiritual approach, we start with a picture of wholeness. At the soul level, we are whole. The soul, being energy, is not subject to physical illness of any kind. We can visualize the soul as a radiant light of wholeness shining through our body, permeating every cell from within. We imagine this light doing the work of love, dissolving that which is not for our highest good and attracting that which is.

We turn our faith to the truth of this picture by affirming something like this: The healing light of my soul is now cleansing all impurities from my body. This is where your judgment comes in. Declare that in truth, this healing process is indeed taking place. This is a true judgment.

What about your faculty of will? Do not try to force healing with your willpower. Simply be willing to accept that healing is now occurring. How do you engage your faculty of elimination? You engage this faculty by releasing all negative thoughts and images concerning this process.

You will benefit by setting aside a special quiet time to do this prayer exercise. You can also do it anytime throughout the day, even when you are busy doing other things. You do not have to memorize the affirmation to invoke your healing vision. In truth, your vision is the affirmation. Jesus said to believe in your heart that your desire is coming to pass, and it will be done for you.

Give thanks that your healing vision is now manifesting throughout your body.   

The Substance of Faith

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For many, a declaration of faith is an affirmation of belief in the truth of a religious system. When they say they have faith in God, they are likely referring to the concept of God portrayed in that particular belief system.   

Faith, as a faculty, is active even if we adopt no religious preferences. The atheist, for example, has faith that there is no God. Let’s look at this familiar statement from Jesus to illustrate the point.

Whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Mark 11:23

The mountain, of course, can be any seeming unsurmountable challenge. We can just as easily have faith that nothing we say to the mountain will make any difference. How we exercise our faith, however, makes a major difference in how we behave and what we expect in terms of an outcome. The substance of faith is, therefore, our own attitude, our degree of expectation.

How do we know our degree of expectation? Our first response is usually the best indicator. If there is doubt in our heart, it will show itself immediately. Like the man seeking healing for his son, we say, “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). Faith pointed in two different directions is better described as hope. Hoping a thing works out is not the same as releasing all doubt.

We may wonder if our faith affects the way conditions unfold. While there is no record in the Gospels of mountains being cast into the sea, there are plenty of instances where a person’s long-standing condition of ill health changed by their change in faith. For twelve years, a woman suffered with an issue of blood that was cured the instant she touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. The faith and money she had previously put in the medical help of her day was apparently diluted with doubt. As she made her way through the crowd to Jesus, her doubt disappeared, and the full force of her faith took over. For the first time in twelve years, her expectation was in her wholeness, and her wholeness is what came through.

We should not concern ourselves with how the substance of faith will manifest, only that it will.      

The Resurrection Principle

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It is common today to hear people say they are pursuing a spiritual rather than a religious path. Religion, they say, is too restrictive in its scope, that the spiritual perspective allows us to lay aside the preconceived doctrine of the organized church and take a more intuitive and natural approach. I believe Jesus agreed, as he challenged many enshrined rules of Judaism while highlighting the spiritual truth behind the teaching.

I believe if he were alive today, he would call attention to the spiritual truth behind the resurrection story of Easter.   

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

He spoke of the need to be born again, to replace old wineskins with new, to “sell” our current belief system and purchase a field containing treasure, to become as trusting as a child who is not yet loaded down with spiritual preconceptions. All of this points to the need for a revamped and revitalized understanding of our spiritual nature. To be born again is the process of releasing our limited seed-self, that part of our thinking that so identifies with the body that we lose sight of the truth that we are spiritual rather than physical beings.  

From a metaphysical perspective, the crucifixion represents the death of the mortal and the resurrection of the immortal. The immortal soul has always been with us but becomes lost in our personal human quagmire.

How do we consciously resurrect the soul so that it may become the guiding feature of our daily thinking? First and foremost, we begin with the understanding that the soul, as forgotten as it may be, is still fully intact and unscathed even by our most negative thinking or thoughtless acts of unkindness. Our spiritual journey is not about developing or improving the soul but recovering our awareness of it. Our natural desire to do this indicates that we are already picking up on our soul’s natural radiance. Before they call, I will answer, is the soul’s position. We affirm, as Meister Eckhart did, that that which we are looking for is that which is doing the looking.

The Resurrection Principle is at work now. The old way of thinking of yourself is passing right now, and the new light and life of your soul is shining forth. Hold this vision for yourself.

The Beginning of the End

YouTube: The Beginning of the End

The event we celebrate as Palm Sunday is the time when Jesus made his final entrance into the city of Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. In addition to participating in this important observance, the synoptic gospels report that he drove the money changers out of the Temple. This would almost certainly be considered an act that prompted the Jewish leadership to turn him over to Pilate to be crucified. In other words, his final entry into Jerusalem was the beginning of the end of his earthly ministry. It also represented the beginning of the Christian era.

The Gospel of John has Jesus foretelling this event using this parable:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

In its original context, Jesus the mystic would not likely have used this parable to refer to his own execution. He was illustrating the need for a rebirth in one’s self-perception. Most people saw themselves as a physical body with a soul that is presently separate from God. The mystic would teach people that all people are primarily a soul with a physical body, but existing in a state of absolute unity with God. The grain of wheat dropped into the earth and dying represents a major paradigm shift from separation to oneness with God.

This paradigm shift is graphically illustrated in the crucifixion account of Matthew:

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split (Matthew 27:5).

This curtain shielded the inner sanctum of the Temple, the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could enter, meaning the public could not access the presence of God. The tearing in two of this curtain is symbolic of the truth that all people, not just the priesthood, have access to the presence of God. In other words, on our personal cross, the thing that must die is our belief in the paradigm of separation. Affirming our oneness with God is the beginning of the end of our imagined separation from God our Source, and the promise of a spiritual life that is certain to bear much fruit.  

The Gift of Jesus

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When I think of the gift that Jesus brought to the Jewish population of his day, I’m not inclined to think in traditional terms. What I believe he brought was a new way to think of God, man, and the relationship between God and man. He was born into a culture that believed God and man were separate. He taught from what I call the paradigm of oneness: we are one with God. To the average Jew, the kingdom of God was coming someday. To Jesus, the kingdom of God was not only present, but it was also centered within each person.

It is my belief that his message was lost in the movement that followed. A kingdom that can be described in observable terms is much easier to grasp than the rather abstract, inner-oriented model that we find throughout his sayings. With Jesus out of the picture, his original message took on an entirely different meaning that was more in alignment with the Jewish hope for a religious and political revolution.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were so adamant about the belief that God and man were separate that they threatened to stone Jesus for claiming his oneness with God. The Temple contained a sacred room called the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could enter this inner sanctuary once a year and offer sacrifices on behalf of the people. In other words, the people’s connection with God was made through the priesthood. The gift Jesus offered to the people was to tell them that God was not in a temple made with hands, that every person was, in fact, a temple of God. The connection with God was an inner one.

An important observation that I offer is this: The original teachings of Jesus were firmly grounded in the paradigm of oneness. The teachings of the entire New Testament are firmly grounded in a paradigm of separation. Jesus taught that the kingdom is present and found within each person, the early church taught that the kingdom was coming, and no one knows exactly when.

The gift of Jesus was a new understanding of God, and each person’s relationship of oneness with God.

The Simple Prayer

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“And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Matthew 6:7-8

Emerson described prayer as “the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.” A great starting point is the one suggested by Jesus. The Father knows what we need before we ask. From this positive and accepting attitude, we engage in prayer as a two-fold action of releasing and affirming. We release all resistance, all fear, all doubt and we affirm that we have already received that which we ask for in prayer.

As Jesus points out, this activity does not require many words. Prayer is more of an acceptance, a conviction, a shift from want and doubt to a deep sense of knowing that our greater good, in whatever form we seek, is now coming forth.

It’s important that we understand that prayer does not cause God to act. Prayer brings us into alignment with the action of God. If we think of God as the creative life force, we see this as the river that flows in but one direction, from the inside out. Jesus said it isn’t what goes into your mouth but what comes out that matters. This creative process picks up on the frequency of our consciousness. A negative internal environment is a low frequency. As we release this energy and raise our consciousness frequency, things tend to go in our favor. We’re not being rewarded by God, we are being rewarded by working at a God-like frequency.

If your need is healing, release all negative appearances and begin to affirm the healing power of God is flowing in and through you. If you need greater prosperity, let go of your fear of lack and know the perfect abundance of God is pouring through you now. If you are seeking harmony in family or friend relationships, release all appearances to the contrary and affirm the perfect harmony of God is expressing through you and others this very moment.

Prayer as the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view invites us to lift up our spiritual eyes and see the greater good that we seek is flowing in and through us now.

I Am the Door

YouTube: I Am the Door

In the Gospel of John, we find Jesus saying, “I am the door” (Jn 10:9). Mainstream Christian theology teaches that accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior is the only way to God. In truth, God is accessible to all, regardless of their religious orientation. John is using the voice of Jesus to lend credibility to the teaching of the church.

When I read John, I have found it helpful to think of his voice of Jesus as the voice of my own soul. When he says, “I am the door,” for example, or “I am the way,” I read this as my soul, my spiritual essence as being that door, that way. Our spiritual essence is our only way to God. When Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice,” the sheep represent that part of us that recognizes the genuine inspiration that rises from the depths of our being. It begins as a still small voice but becomes more pronounced as we learn to listen and know.

The door is a powerful metaphor. The front door of your house opens to the interior of your home and it also opens to the limitless outdoors. In Revelation, Jesus is quoted as saying,

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

Revelation 3:20

 In this case, Jesus is not portrayed as the door, but as the one who is knocking and would like to come in. Again, the voice of Jesus is the voice of our soul. The knocking we hear, or actually feel, is our natural urge to open our mind to greater possibilities of being. This is an intuitive knowing, very natural but not widely understood. Jesus says there are thieves and robbers that will try to steal your sheep, meaning there are all kinds of distractions that can take us down paths that lead nowhere. We want our sheep to find rich pasture, or open the door to true spiritual nourishment.

For me, this is the real message coming from John. When we begin to understand our oneness with God, then it becomes clear that the door to God is within us. This is not about Jesus; it’s about each one of us and our developing understanding of the guiding promptings that bring us into firsthand knowledge of our unity with the Infinite.