This Thing Called You

From This Thing Called YOU by Ernest Holmes
Chapter 1, pg 13

The barriers between you and your greater good are not barriers in themselves. They are things of thought. It is because of this that all things are possible to faith. Jesus summed up the whole proposition when he said, "It is done unto you as you believe." In interpreting this saying, however, you must pause after the word as. Think about its meaning and you will discover that he was saying that life not only responds to your belief, it responds after the manner of your believing, as you believe. It is like a mirror reflecting the image of your belief.

While the laws of mind, like all laws of nature, are neutral, good must finally overcome evil. Evil is a negation. Good is positive. Like light and darkness - darkness cannot overcome light, but light can neutralize darkness. This is why Jesus said if you seek the Kingdom first "everything else" is included all things in this life that make for full livingness and joy, peace and happiness, health and harmony, and the success that rightfully belongs to a Divine Being.

The only warning Jesus made against the use of this highest law of your being was that it should not be used destructively. "...for all they take the sword shall perish with the sword." The Kingdom of God contains everything that is or could be disirable. This everything already exists as a potential something to be drawn upon. You may use this potential for any good purpose, not only with certainty of success but with safety. It is only when we use natural forces wrongly that they can destroy, and it is ordained that this destruction be of a temporary nature.

You wish to use the laws of your being in such a way that they cannot bring evil to yourself or others. Therefore, you must be certain that your desire is toward more life for everyone, including yourself. If you follow this rule you cannot use the law wrongly.

There is a law of faith and belief which is just as definite as any other law in nature. This law utilizes the Creative Principle of Life in such a way that all lesser uses of It become submerged. This is the triumphof Spirit.

BLESSING:

There is a Power for good in the universe, available to everyone, part of
each soul's journey, and I can learn to use it wonderfully. This power is my
Power of attention, for what I contemplate, I become. This is the eternal
spiritual law, and nothing can stop it. I can rail against it, complain
about it, or whimper about life not being fair. But ultimately, it is done
unto me as I believe.

I know that in truth, life is just. My habits of attention and perception
literally create the experience I have in the world. I choose to pay
attention to that which is life-supporting, that which nurtures and
encourages. I choose to place my attention on that which draws out of me a
greater Self, a stronger identification with The Self. This isn't about
ego-boosting; it's about Soul-freeing! I see the world as the play of
Spirit, unfolding from unseen substance. I see the actions and choices of
others as Spirit's action through the form of others. There's nothing to
fear here, for we're all part of the same great Soul, all on the same team.
I refuse to think in terms of separation or duality, and because I think in
terms of Unity and Wholeness, that's what I experience.

Because I discover the purity and the beauty and the grace even in the
middle of absolute chaos, I find an unshakable order within. Nothing can
get a rise out of me, for I am rooted deeply in spirit. And for this I am
grateful. And so it is.

Seeds for Thought

"Where love is present, miracles happen. Where the consciousness of God is present - the desire and willingness to love - there God is, for He is invoked through our willingness to serve His children. Commitment to love produces expanded possibilities."
Marianne Williamson

"A still mind is inherently tolerant. Because minds are already joined, only a busy mind can block communication. The ability to see another person clearly springs from gentle tolerance, not from scrutiny. Tolerance is the child of stillness."
Hugh Prather

"Your ego can blame as many people as you want for the choices you make, but at the end of the day, your conscience - your soul - does not assign blame."
Carolyn Myss

"The ego doesn't know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now. Or maybe it does know, and it is afraid that you might this out. Peace, after all, is the end of the ego."
Eckhart Tolle

Seeds for Thought

"Asking the Holy Spirit to heal us when we are sick means asking him to heal the thoughts within us that give rise to sickness." ~ Marianne Williamson

"Commitment does not preclude peace, and peace does not preclude commitment. Most of us think we are in situations we should not have to accept and around people we should not have to endure. Yet the life of every saint, prophet, and master is a story of acceptance that endures and endurance that accepts." ~ Hugh Prather

"You can tell yourself that you do indeed trust in this God, but do you really believe that your basic needs will be met in life? Do you require order in your physical world to feel safe? What do you pray for? How many prayers do you offer for safety? For protection? How many prayers do you make that stem from your desire to survive? How many prayers do you offer in surrender? How much do you fear that if you surrender, God will reduce you to poverty? Do you still need a reason for even one experience or trauma that happened to you? Do you still question why chaos swept through your life and reordered the plans you had?" ~ Carolyn Myss

"Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Cleverness pursues its own little aims. Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all things are connected. Cleverness is motivated by self-interest, and it is extremely short-sighted. Most politicians and businesspeople are clever. Very few are intelligent. Whatever is attained through cleverness is short-lived and always turns out to be eventually self-defeating. Cleverness divides; intelligence includes." ~ Eckhart Tolle

Dear Friends,

Two dear members of our OSC community have passed on beyond time and space and out of our physical reach this past week. We mourn the departure of these two dear persons, we reach out to their grieving families with our love, and also we celebrate their lives:

Marylou Fitzmurphy, who passed Thursday, June 26. Two of Marylou’s children are regulars at OSC—Maryellen Murphy and Jay P Murphy. Memorial services are being planned on both coasts; a recognition and celebration of Marylou was included in last week’s Sunday service, and a small, private memorial remembrance will be held next week in the family garden. See the San Francisco Chronicle obituary:
San Francisco Chronicle

Karen Sommers, who passed Monday, June 30. A Memorial Visitation will be held Monday, 5-8PM, at Nicollet Island Inn, with the Memorial Service Tuesday, 10:30AM, in Pohlad Hall at the Minneapolis Central Library. See the Star Tribune obituary:
Star Tribune

The Traveler
He has put on invisibility.
Dear Lord, I cannot see---
But this I know although the road ascends
And passes from my sight,
That there will be no night;
That You will take him gently by the hand
And lead him on Along the road of life that never ends,
And he will find it is not death but dawn.
I do not doubt that You are there as here,
And you will hold him dear.
Our life did not begin with birth,
It is not of the earth;
And this that we call death, it is no more
Than the opening and closing of a door---
And in Your house how many rooms must be
Beyond this one where we rest momently.
Dear Lord, I thank you for the faith that frees,
The love that knows it cannot lose its own;
The love that, looking through the shadows, sees
That You and he and I are ever one
By Unity's Poet Laureate James Dillet Freeman

A Contemplative Moment

The Sunday group that I belong to is currently reading "A Contemplative Life," by Joel Goldsmith and the question was posed, does anyone live a contemplative life? A contemplative life defined by Goldsmith is, I am consciously one with God, I am instantaneously one within the good necessary for my experience. The unfoldment of scriptural truth is, “I and my Father are one.” The initial answer from several was no, it cannot be achieved. The initial look at the question may lure you into thinking no one does, as we may think it refers to all of the time. The question posed does not state all of the time, and so in reply, the answer is "yes" we do for brief instances, fleeting moments. And as we mature into our spiritual growth, we start having longer fleeting instances.

One of the real issues is that in this US culture, we think or expect it to happen at the moment we envision it or desire it. We have Wendy's, McDonalds, drive thru coffee dispensers, and just by slowing down to go thru a drive thru, we do get whatever super sized we want at that instant. And off we zoom, with an eye on the time.

We have not learned patience, and not really let go, as we still have an expectation tied to those brief instances. We WANT a spiritual life and a contemplative life now! We want that fleeting moment all of the time, now, not years from now. This culture has a focus on time, and possibly one of the reasons is that this country is a young country. The other part may be our Puritan ancestors coming over on the Mayflower and engraining into all of us not to waste time. We do not see buildings, or history beyond maybe three to four hundred years old. In other parts of the world, buildings, monuments, and generations of tombstones of family members are within walking distance, and are thousands of years old. Those cultures also seem to be not as wired into "what time is it" as we are.

So we keep running, and running as the following poem speaks of.

“Now I become Myself” by May Sarton

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

We do not take the time to understand, to reclaim our lost self, and see the sun stand still. Have you noticed that when we have stop running, we then notice that time is irrelevant, and the only relevancy is seeing and being love? It is this moment that counts, as this is the only moment we really have. We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us day and night. I have noticed that for me, when the sun stops, I am being of service in some way to someone. I am living my life thru love.

As Jack Kornfield writes in “A Path with Heart”

“Each state we encounter will succumb to the next. There is no way to avoid the transitions of our life. The chief means of entering them gracefully is to practice them mindfully over and over again. It is like learning to ride a horse: over and over again walking, trotting, cantering, over smooth and rough terrain, mounting and dismounting, starting and stopping, until it becomes possible for us to move through life in a graceful conscious way. In moving through the difficult stages of our lives, we can learn to trust our heart to these cycles and their unfolding as surely as we can trust roots to go down and leaves to push up through the earth in our garden We can trust each petal of a flower will open in the right order from outside to inside. We can trust that whatever calls our attention to practice – our body, our personal history, the community around us – in or out or retreat, it will bring to us what we need to live fully and genuinely in the timeless here and now."

Namaste

Feelings

I'm big on feeling feelings. I am an advocate of knowing what one feels. I'll get behind just about anyone who wants to know more about what they feel. Why? Because without feelings I couldn't tell if I was alive or dead. For years, I saw myself as this masculine lone wolf, capable of surviving anything all by myself. I have been working hard to regain awareness of my emotional self. I am now reasonably sensitive to my feelings and for the most part I honor them.

Sometimes I still drop the ball. I don't like feeling "hurt". Because I have trouble welcoming feeling hurt. I don't notice it as quickly as the rest of my emotions. I deny it. I stuff it. I hide it from myself. I get angry with myself for allowing myself to feel and be open to feeling hurt. Last night, I was hurt and angry at myself more than my friend. And I was angry at my friend for admonishing and attacking me on what I had worked hard on in front of the group.

Then, this morning, sitting quietly as I do every morning, I meditated. I wasn't angry with my friend any longer, but I felt unfinished. Something in me was bugging me, wanting recognition. I had been angry with myself for seemingly falling short and failing.

Here's part of what I have learned. I have a judgment against feeling hurt. It is unmanly to admit feeling hurt. Feeling hurt means I am not using the lessons I've studied over the years as tools to take care of myself. So, I feel ashamed of myself as a failure. Feeling hurt and saying so makes me vulnerable to further hurt. I could go on and on, but you get my drift. I admit that I just don't like that damn feeling.

What this means is that as long as I hang on to my judgment against the feeling I will continue to fall victim to it. If I want to grow up, truly be a spiritual being, I have to come to terms with accepting feeling hurt with more warmth. I have to embrace it with love and see the gift in the moment. If I deny hurt feelings, and I do at times, I shut off the flow of all other feelings and I like a lot of them. Since they all rise from the same place within me, if I put the cork in the jug, so to speak, nothing moves. I feel no appreciation, no joy, no warmth, no tenderness, and no heart presence at all. I don't like being without heart presence because I feel the same way when I saw myself as a lone wolf. I feel dead inside and untouchable. That is a very lonely place to be inside of me. I can understand why being shunned is considered the ultimate punishment of one person by another. When I'm untouchable I have effectively shunned myself out of contact with anyone outside myself. The feeling sucks.

So, the task at hand for me is to look openly at my judgment against feeling hurt and its relatives. You know, feeling ignored, unheard, dismissed, or otherwise out of touch with other people.

What's the core of the lesson I'm learning? That when I feel hurt I am far better off to announce it and immediately see if that's what is intended by the other person, rather than to deny the feeling and end up getting angst with friends. I still have work to do on angst with myself.

A teacher told me four things were necessary to make a relationship work between people. Remember, these are my brothers and sisters in the spiritual sense.

One: a willingness to be vulnerable.

Two: a willingness to give up control.

Three: a willingness to feel hurt, again.

Four: a willingness to hurt someone else, again.

I no longer see myself as a lone wolf capable of surviving anything all by myself. I like being in relationships with other human beings. There's nourishment in them. Some kind of sustenance. And, I am unwilling to continue to disrupt them unnecessarily all due to my unwillingness to feel hurt and say it aloud. I may screw up again, but I'm willing to bet it won't take near as long for me to make a correction next time. It's time for me to learn it is innocent to say, "Ouch!"