March 1, 2014 - Material Interpretation/Spiritual Translations

"Colorado Sunset"
photo by Aaron springston

ACIM Workbook Lesson #60

Today we review Lessons 46-50

Love, forgiveness, salvation -- these and many other words have taken on interesting connotations through our material interpretations and beliefs. How often does our version of love include jealousy, attachment, and various demands we insist upon for someone to be a worthy recipient of our human-based love? And forgiveness seldom is an acknowledgement that there is truly nothing to forgive, but carries with it superior thoughts and magnanimous gestures. Salvation has an odd interpretation which includes a paying of penance to someone or something. As we turn away from the material conceptions of these and other words, we are allowed to glimpse Love, wherein there is no forgiveness nor salvation as we think of them. We are told in the first lesson review today that "God does not forgive because He has never condemned." And we are told that the forgiveness we are learning of as human beings is "the reflection of God's Love on earth." How beautiful is that!!  When looked at from this angle, it seems senseless to say that we can forgive but not forget. If we truly are, in reality, the perfect reflection of divine Love, if this is the spiritual reality (hence, the Only reality), how easy it becomes to lay down the sword and go forward living from the heart rather than the brain. We can let go all thoughts of retaliation or revenge and live by the law of grace. How I long to forget everything and begin again from Love!

Mary Baker Eddy correlative quote:

"Progress takes off human shackles. The finite must yield to the infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought rises from the material sense to the spiritual, from the scholastic to the inspirational, and from the mortal to the immortal. Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man."

Science & Health Page 256:1-8

February 28, 2014 - Metaphysical Healing

"Peaceful Sunset"
photo by Arthur Lau-Sed

ACIM Workbook Lesson #59:

Today we review Lessons 41-45

When something like a head cold or other dis-ease threatens, it's tempting to wonder if we've slipped into something from which we need to be rescued. But let's not fall into that trap! With physical maladies, as with emotional or other seeming discord or inharmony, it's not our job to figure out where we went wrong. It's our job to see how we are right! We sometimes hear it said that metaphysical treatment is "denying error and declaring Truth". There is no set way to go about this process. When we glean a bit of spiritual Truth, we often think we can repeat this over and over, as a sort of mantra, and this will heal us. And sometimes we can talk ourselves out of symptoms -- but usually this is a temporary fix. We can tell ourselves that disease is an illusion and that it's no part of us, but until we know the reason why, it's nothing more than further illusion. When we find ourselves beginning to understand that disease cannot be in matter because there is no matter for disease to manifest in, then -- and only then -- are we coming close to understanding this Truth of which we speak. It may seem impossible to make this shift in thought, but I love the baby steps leading to it! One of my favorite scientists, Lothar Schafer, is leading others to see the unreality of matter in his latest book, Infinite Potential: What Quantum Physics Reveals About How We Should Live. I invite you to travel with him in this adventure!

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

"This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace."

Science & Health Page 265:10-15

February 27, 2014 - What, Me Worry?

ACIM Workbook Lesson #58:

Today we review Lessons 36-40

This review speaks of "my holiness" in four of the five summarized lessons. What does that mean? Is my holiness different from your holiness, perhaps based on actions or thoughts? We are learning that this holiness is our true state of being as reflections of Love, realized through forgiveness in its purest sense. When I assert this Truth about myself, I affirm it for everyone. The urge to micro-manage things is strong in most of us, because we've been taught to make plans, to set goals, to nail down all the details. But most things in this life are beyond our control, aren't they? How many times do we make intricate plans only to have to change them when circumstances change?  I could write a book! Wayne Dyer tells us that worry is counterproductive. He asks, Why worry? If we can do something about a situation, we will. If we can't do anything about it, what's the use in worrying? Living by this precept has brought a freedom I wouldn't have known had I held on to my old drama queen ways. My mantra is: Only Good can come of this. For this realization, I am most grateful.

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

"Man walks in the direction towards which he looks, and where his treasure is, there will his heart be also. If our hopes and affections are spiritual, they came from above, not from below, and they bear as of old the fruits of the Spirit." Science & Health Page 451:14-18

February 26, 2014 - A Radical Reliance

Love Glows
created by Aaron Springston

A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson #57:

Today we review Lessons 31-35

I have often been asked if (or perhaps told that) Christian Science is a cult. Having been affiliated with this way of life since childhood, it assuredly is not. I've never been controlled by anyone, or asked to worship anyone, or any of the other criteria necessary to qualify for this category of action. I'm sure that Course in Miracles students often get the same thing, judging from what a quick search of YouTube videos reveal! What we do ask of ourselves is a radical reliance on God, a wholehearted acceptance of God as the only power, to recognize that Love leads every action. This is the goal I set for myself at every moment. And this is why I see such a strong interaction with these two disciplines: they both ask us to give up material beliefs and rely on Truth. And this may not be as hard as we'd like to make it out to be! Think back on the so-called laws of life you have adopted in the past. Shouldn't it be as easy to allow spiritual principles to guide your actions as it is to accept material rules which make no sense?  This quote from Lesson 34 says it all: "When I see the world as a place of freedom, I realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules I made up for it to obey." And the rules of God are simple to hear when we have cleared out the cacophony which hides them from our thought. To live from the Truth within rather than the made-up rules of material existence, this is the freedom which will lead into harmonious peace for all. 

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

"The conceptions of mortal, erring thought must give way to the ideal of all that is perfect and eternal. Through many generations human beliefs will be attaining diviner conceptions, and the immortal and perfect model of God's creation will finally be seen as the only true conception of being."

Science & Health Page 260:7-12

February 25, 2014 - Synchronicity

ACIM Workbook Lesson #56:

Today we review Lessons 26-30. 

Many of us have made a conscious choice to see Love, to see the Reality of our being rather than the attacks often envisioned in uneducated thought. Wanting to see differently more than anything else is the key to finding this open secret. Once we make this shift, we start to notice numerous synchronicities occurring around us. It may be that we're in the right place at the right time in order to meet people we need to meet to facilitate projects and other related things. Or maybe we notice we are where we need to be in order to help someone else by the utilization of a particular skill or resource that we have. Today, for instance, I found a teakettle in a thrift shop that I rarely go into. It perfectly replaces one whose handle fell off last week. And right next to it was a glass lid for a saucepan which I use to make popcorn. I had dropped that lid the week before and broken it, too. The only thing more satisfying than noticing these parting-of-the-veil experiences in ourselves is watching this light come on within others. It's with childlike wonder that we relate these events to each other, until they become such a part of our lives we expect nothing else but good, God, to be manifest in our experience. There is nothing to fear in this change of thought. Embrace it and feel joy!

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

“Here let a word be noticed which will be better understood hereafter,--chemicalization. By chemicalization I mean the process which mortal mind and body undergo in the change of belief from a material to a spiritual basis.”

Science & Health Page 168:30-2

February 24, 2014 - Metaphysical Healing

ACIM Workbook Lesson #55:

Today we review Lessons 21-25.

This review is so exciting that I want to write about each and every one of the five topics -- but I've already done that! So I'll just go with the first part of the review, which is from lesson #21 in the Course in Miracles workbook: "What I see now are but signs of disease, disaster and death. This cannot be what God created for His beloved Son." Christian Scientists are often criticized for attempting to use Spirit to heal disease. Obviously, this would be impossible. Alternatively, we are chastised for doing nothing when faced with this thing called disease. If you have a so-called disease, it does no good to pretend it's not there. While affirmations, visualizations, different psychological techniques are often effective at changing matter, that is not what metaphysical  healing is all about. Some people think that the metaphysical treatment of disease is an attempt to affect a change in your experience. It is not. And some think that spiritual healing through prayer is asking God to heal disease. It is not. Yet others feel that prayer is doing nothing. It is not. Seeing past the material illusion to a single moment of spiritual Truth, that is what spiritual healing is about. This knowledge and the demonstration thereof is available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. This Principle is changeless and eternal. All we need do is awaken to it. Today I am determined to see!

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

"Human sense may well marvel at discord, while, to a diviner sense, harmony is the real and discord the unreal. We may well be astonished at sin, sickness, death. We may well be perplexed at human fear; and still more astounded at hatred, which lifts its hydra head, showing its horns in the many inventions of evil. But why should we stand aghast at nothingness?”

Science & Health Page 563:1-7

February 23, 2014 - Every Thought is Important

"Mongolia Sunrise"
photo by Aaron Springston

ACIM Workbook Lesson #54

Today's review is of Lessons 16-20

What if our thoughts of peace and harmony could still the seeming turmoil of the world? Then would it be worth the effort to pull our thought away from error and hold steadfastly to Truth? Everything we think or speak or do is shared with all by virtue of universal Oneness. How important then to realize Truth rather than erroneous beliefs we think of as reality. To this end, I find it very important to monitor and control first thoughts of the day. These daily beginnings seem to set the tone for all that follows in the next hours. If I wake up and immediately begin to worry about things, or allow myself to squander valuable time on inane memories and/or fantasies, then those things carry through to the rest of the day. So I insist that I declare spiritual Truth as soon as I open my eyes, then spend morning meditation and prayer affirming this Truth and listening for the still, small voice. What I see is what I think; what I think is what I see. Every thought is important!

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

"Through discernment of the spiritual opposite of materiality, even the way through Christ, Truth, man will reopen with the key of divine Science the gates of Paradise which human beliefs have closed, and will find himself unfallen, upright, pure, and free, not needing to consult almanacs for the probabilities either of his life or of the weather, not needing to study brainology to learn how much of a man he is."

Science & Health Page 171:4-11