Tag: love

New Beginnings

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Life unfolds in cycles. If you observe these cycles closely, you will notice there are times when things seem to be falling apart and other times when they are falling into place. We are often confronted with the familiar question: Is the cup half full, or is it half empty?

This question points to an important truth. The answer is not determined by the condition of the cup, but by how you are feeling at the moment you are viewing it. If you are optimistic and full of expectation, the cup appears half full. If you are feeling weak, vulnerable, or worn down by circumstances, the same cup will appear half empty.

Many spiritual teachers have embraced a simple principle: life is consciousness. The condition of the cup does not need to determine how you feel. When you determine how you feel, the condition of the cup often takes care of itself.

Have you noticed how, during a low moment, a single encouraging word—a phrase from a book or a line from scripture—can suddenly inspire a new way of seeing? A cup that looked half empty moments before now appears half full… and filling. Do not be discouraged during emotionally low moments. Refuse to set your course by these brief seasons of diminished vision.

Always remember that in the twinkling of an eye everything can change, simply because you allow yourself to change the way you see.

Each new moment holds the potential for a new beginning. It does not matter how negative you may have felt just moments ago—you can begin again now. Set a new energy in motion. Create a positive, encouraging affirmation and begin speaking it with joy and expectation, for these emotions lay the groundwork for transformation.

Refuse to see yourself as a victim of circumstance or personality. And when you slip back into a half-empty way of thinking, remember that life is dynamic. There is always reason to hold even the smallest glimmer of hope, affirming that the good you desire is already coming forth.

As we stand at the threshold of a new year, choose to see it not merely as half full, but as brimming with possibilities—many of them still unimagined.

Life that Flows, Love that Balances

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Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Abundance, in the mystical sense, is not measured in years or possessions but in awakened awareness—an inner recognition that the same vitality moving galaxies into being also breathes through us. Life is not something we possess; it is the universal energy expressing itself in every form. Stars, stones, and souls are all waves rising from one eternal ocean.

This field of life never begins and never ends. Forms appear and dissolve, but the underlying current remains untouched. What we call “death” is simply a change in expression, not a loss of life itself. To live abundantly is to recognize that the Eternal is present here and now, breathing through everything that exists.

Yet life alone does not complete the picture. The energy that animates creation also guides it, balancing and renewing all things through the law of divine love. Love is not sentiment or emotion but the active intelligence that draws to us what belongs to our wholeness and dissolves what does not. Jesus named this the greatest commandment—not as a moral burden, but as an invitation to trust the very nature of reality.

To love God is to trust the movement of divine order within our lives. To love our neighbor is to acknowledge this same movement in them. Love is always at work, even when unseen, restoring balance where confusion once held sway. When we stop resisting this flow—through forgiveness, humility, or simple willingness—we discover that love was already healing what we thought we had to fix.

Life gives us existence; love gives that existence meaning. One is the vitality at the heart of creation; the other is the intelligence that shapes it toward harmony. To awaken spiritually is to perceive both at once—to sense the living field beneath all things and to trust the love that continually renews them.

When we recognize that everything is alive and held in love’s eternal balance, we move gently, speak kindly, and live with the quiet confidence that we are part of something endless and whole.

This Matter of Life and Death

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My fascination with near-death experiences stems from the insights they provide into the nature of the soul. Although these reports are primarily anecdotal, they reveal common themes. Two strikingly consistent themes that emerge are the advanced and immortal nature of the soul. It’s the closest we can come to eyewitness accounts of what it means to be a spiritual being.

Physical trauma, surgical complications, disease, and suicide are among the commonest causes of death. Of these, suicide is perhaps the most controversial. Some religions consider it a sin. However, those who survive it and return with a near-death experience, tell a different story. They’re not judged for their action. They are greeted with the same unconditional love all report. And, they are sent back, or choose to come back, to complete their reason for incarnating in the first place.

The impression we are given is that those who do not come back continue their journey in absolute love. Those who do come back are adamant in saying that suicide is not a viable option. Many will actually go into suicide counseling to help others consider alternatives.

Though life can be a struggle, those who have faced death, accompanied by an NDE, often experience a childlike rebirth. They gain a new perspective, shedding many of their self-imposed limitations. Most find a renewed zest for life. Nearly all lose their fear of death, which in turn, eliminates their fear of life itself.

In her New Thought classic, The Game of Life and How To Play It, Florence Scovel Shinn points out that life is not a battle of us against the world, but rather a game of giving and receiving. What we give to the world we receive back―whether that be the dark weight of fear and inhibition or the freedom of joy and empowerment.

This segment of our life that we are living now is our opportunity to discover how to do it well. If we have descended into a rut of the mundane, it may be time to give to the world a new message. It may be that our purpose for incarnating was to prove to ourselves that we could do it successfully. The good news is that the only time we can deal with this matter of life and death, is in each moment. Do that one right, and you’ve got it!

Embracing the Divine Masculine

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For Mother’s Day we focused on the Divine Feminine, so it is good that we consider the Divine Masculine this Father’s Day.

As a reminder, with masculine and feminine references to spiritual concepts, we’re not talking about gender. We’re talking about the functions of mind. We associate the intuition with the feminine and the intellect with the masculine aspects of our being. I think of our intuition as the inlet to God and the intellect as the outlet. It is our primary interactive faculty with the material realm.

It’s probably fair to say that most people spend the lion’s share of their time engaged in intellectual activities. By this I don’t mean we’re drawn to doing crossword puzzles or spending our time working out math problems. I mean we devote a great deal of our attention to the world of the senses. When Emilie Cady said the intellect and intuition are meant to travel together, but with the intuition leading the way, she was reminding her reader of the importance of remembering our larger connection with God.

Imagine standing in the open, front door of your home. You are facing inside the house where you live. To your back, a vast world opens up. If you spend all your time inside the house, your life will get smaller and smaller. Your view of the world is that which you see through the windows. It’s important to get outside and retain your connection to the larger world. Doing so inspires new ideas and a greater appreciation for your home.

The intellect allows us to translate spiritual inspiration into books, music, cinema, art, acts of love, and reminders to others that we’re thinking of them. It is our ability to give form to intuitive feelings that have no form and would not otherwise be conveyed. For me, writing on spiritual subjects is a therapeutic exercise of capturing, as in a literary photograph, insights that I can hang on the walls of my house; reminders that on the other side of that front door there is a very large world.

The intellect without the intuition can become a house with the drapes drawn and the doors shut. The intellect can also throw open the doors and pull back the curtains to let in that intuitive light of God ready to illuminate our world.

The Prospering Power of Love

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For our loved ones, we want to know that love is drawing to them that which is for their highest good and dissolving that which is not. If we hold this principle as the action of love, we can apply it to virtually every area of our life.

When we think of prosperity, we tend to think of finances. While a prosperous life certainly includes finances, we should not confine prosperity to just one area. Freedom from fear and worry, for example, is a prosperity demonstration. If we want to resolve a fear, we affirm love draws to us that which lifts us above our fear and dissolves all negative emotion that feeds the fear.

Our faculty of imagination is a wonderful tool that allows us to see beyond appearances, to dream our dreams, and accept that greater good is unfolding even when we do not see it. The imagination can also blow things way out of proportion and create imagined problems that, in reality, exist only in our own mind. A prosperous life is one that is free of the terrors generated by our negative imagery. We apply the principle of love by bringing our imagination under control. Regardless of what seems to be going on, we affirm that love is now drawing to us that which is for our highest good, and dissolving that which is not. What greater prosperity affirmation could we make?

To add a bit of intrigue to our prayer, we imagine the all-knowing mind of God as love is doing this perfect work. Solutions we have not even considered are set in motion. We not only visualize greater good unfolding, we do it with the anticipation of pleasant surprise. My imagined solution may be good, but what if I let God do the choosing? As Jesus said, it will come back,

“…good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” Luke 6:38

Though we use the month of February to focus on love, we know the principle is working through us at all times. This moment is the time to tap the prospering power of love.

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.      

Paul’s Natural Man

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The unspiritual (natural) man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

What Paul calls the unspiritual or natural man, is a person we would consider as having no interest in spiritual matters, a strict materialist. This would be one who accepts matter as the basis of reality and, therefore, the body as the basis of our identity. To be spiritually discerning is to be intuitively awakened to the reality of our spiritual essence.

Scientific materialism cannot conceive of the existence of the soul. Consciousness and life itself is dependent on the physical organism. The notion of consciousness surviving the death of the body is folly. It does not fit the materialistic model.

In truth, it matters not how many textbooks are written to support the materialistic model of reality. Even Einstein could see past this limited view:

“We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.”

How do we come to know this? What is our faculty of spiritual discernment? We know it by its questioning nature. I know people who are religious mainstream thinkers. They never question their religious inheritance. Why do we? Because the larger Self, the soul, stands knocking at the door of our consciousness waiting for us to open. This knocking might be interpreted as an annoyance or a disturbance. But it only wants one thing. Open the door.

Birth From On High

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Unity uses the term Christ is the essence of God individualized in each of us. However, we have accepted as the basis of our identity ideas of lack and limitation. These have found expression in our minds, our bodies, and our circumstances. Our spiritual quest is about recovering the awareness of our spiritual core.

We re-establish our identity in the Word (soul) so that Word may become flesh, full of grace and truth, and dwell among us. Mary represents the spiritually receptive intuition. She is the higher Self that is open to the things of Spirit. She is our intuitive nature, that part of us that knows there is more to life than this human, physical existence.

Joseph represents the intellectual aspect of our spiritual awakening. We must reassess the function of our intellect. Before, it was the leader, the teacher, the presenter of new ideas. Now it becomes the observer, the student, the discerner of eternal truths. It beholds divine ideas that are untouched by the limitations of human thought, born out of the virgin regions of the soul.

The shepherds represent our ability to watch over our thoughts. They represent our innate ability to discern and judge from the spiritual perspective. In the same way the shepherd keeps watch over his flock by night, so we keep watch over the flock of our thoughts and feelings. In daily periods of quiet, we remember that we are spiritual beings, here to express the highest and best that is in us. We let go of all that is not constructive, so that we may focus this wonderful energy and power of our spirit on the good.

The wise men from the east represent the innate wisdom of the soul. Just as there is a wisdom that knows how to unfold a mighty oak tree from within a tiny, insignificant acorn, so there is a wisdom that knows how to unfold the full potential of the soul through the mind and heart of each one of us. Sometimes we are afraid to move out of current conditions of limitation because it doesn’t appear that we have the knowledge to successfully pull it off. When we commit ourselves to growth, to changes that will encourage the bringing forth new dimensions of the emerging soul, the wisdom we need is given, as we need it.

Empowerment From On High

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When we think of power in connection with God, we may envision the Almighty throwing mountain-splitting lightning bolts, or something of that nature. Or when we think of powerful people, we may think of those who possess great wealth or hold influential positions, such as a political figure.

Spiritual power is quiet. Empowerment from on High is the silent impartation of spiritual revelation. And we should not assume a person is spiritually empowered because of the position they hold. The exact opposite may be the case.

Spiritual power manifests through us as strength. For example, it may require a great deal of strength to admit we are powerless to resolve an addiction, or to control a difficult situation. Now we are moving into the notion of empowerment from on high.

We associate empowerment from on high with vision, the kind that evokes the understanding that we are more than the sum of our perceived resources. When we think of a power greater than ourselves, we do not think of a power outside of ourselves, but as the larger spiritual context that includes us. Empowered by this vision sparks new thoughts, new feelings of greater possibilities, and new strength to take needed action and move forward in creative ways.

We’ve all had moments when we felt we lacked the strength to take even one more step. But from such a place we also know that it can take only a few simple inspirational words of encouragement, spoken or written, to open the floodgates of power. Just a slight shift in the way we’re looking at a situation can bring us strength we didn’t know we had.

Like all of our spiritual resources, power is inherent in the soul. God as power is our underlying, unlimited source. When we feel weak, inadequate to meet that threatening challenge, we become still, take our mind off the appearance, and open ourselves to empowerment from on high. We wait in silence and in peace for the infilling. If it does not come immediately, we get up and go about our life. It is often in unexpected moments that we experience our desired renewal of strength.