Tag: love

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.