The Words Got In The Way

 

Photo credit: Blake Lasater

In our small, tourist town, we have a wonderful thing. It’s called Heart of Many Ways. It’s a non-profit which provides places for spiritual groups to meet. These groups are too small to have an edifice of their own, and they have meetings and events in a beautiful, historic building which previously was a Christian Science church. Built in 1914, it is Italian in style on the outside and Arts and Crafts inside. Shortly after the pandemic began, they began asking performers to play for a noontime meditation. I was asked to play organ for them once a month and happily agreed to do so. After today’s performance, a man came up and was telling me why he had enjoyed the hour. He said when he was in a regular church, the words got in the way. He repeatedly placed his hands on his heart and looked up to the beautiful 20-foot ceiling, illustrating his words which were telling me how he had been uplifted by the hour of classical music. My heart soared with his as he told me of his traditional religious training and how they had never brought about the feelings he had experienced today. His joy was mine. Namaste…

“Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect, because revelation is an experience of pure joy.” 

A Course in Miracles T-5.I.1:3-4

“I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.” 

― Khalil Gibran - The Prophet

“Under the Banner of Heaven”

 

Photo credit: Aaron Springston

There are upwards of 4,000 religions in the world. I dare to say they all have factions which have turned insane. I’m watching a mini-series called “Under The Banner of Heaven”. It deals with a militant faction of the Latter Day Saints, but I think the same thing could happen in any religion. The thing I noticed about these Patriots (as they called themselves), is that they have allowed their ego to take control over their thought processes. They began to think they were the only ones who knew the truth. When Mary Baker Eddy wrote Science & Health, she had no desire to start a religion and only did so because she wanted to ensure that the book would continue to be published in the years after her passing. She often stated that its reading would help a Baptist be a better Baptist, and she insisted that we not proselytize. In a similar manner, A Course in Miracles is not a religion and does not require that you follow any ritual or dogma. Anyone can benefit from its teachings, without giving up their lifelong congregations.  Seeing beyond the material picture of human hatred and righteous indignation is what we can do to change the world. Let’s remember: Every thought is important! 

"In the Apocalypse it is written: 'And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.' In St. John's vision, heaven and earth stand for spiritual ideas, and the sea, as a symbol of tempest-tossed human concepts advancing and receding, is represented as having passed away. The divine understanding reigns, is all, and there is no other consciousness." 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 536:1-9

"Wrong-mindedness listens to the ego and makes illusions; perceiving sin and justifying anger, and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the One-mindedness of the Christ Mind, Whose Will is one with God's." 

A Course in Miracles - Clarification of Terms 

Frozen Habitual Beliefs

After watching the movie, "Frozen", I learned that it was being labeled as propaganda for a liberated way of living which particular groups think of as ungodly. I decided to see if I could turn the movie into a vehicle for what I think, so here it is -- without going into too much detail. We are frozen in a thought system which has been perpetuated by years of dogma and habit. When someone happens to realize their power as the expression of divine Mind, they are labeled as bad, perhaps someone to be feared, maybe even told to hide their light so as not to upset others. And so they hide until someone finds out how fabulous they are, then they either deny it and continue to hide or accept themselves in all their glory -- and they shine! This shining lights up the world from the inside out. 

"Our Greatest Fear —Marianne Williamson

“It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,

talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of

God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people

permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others.”

—Marianne Williamson

“The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the glass never mingle, but as matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much materiality--much error--in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides the sun.” 

MaryBakerEddy-Science & Health Page 295:14-24

Opening Perceptual Doors

Carol Dickie Art

Words of Stephen Harrodsburg Buhner:

“When we open our perceptual doors to see deeper into the world, we begin to enter another world entirely; we begin to leave the merely human world behind; we begin to see from the world’s point of view. 

And the view from there is much, much different than the view from our cultural orientation, irrespective of our particular subculture. 

Taking on that view, being able to see deeper into the meanings within material forms, does disturb the existing paradigm. 

Simply by existing, by reflecting back to the culture something outside its frame of reference, those of us who perceive in such ways really do fairly spectacular damage to entrenched presumptions about the nature of reality. 

But there is every reason to view this capacity as a crucial evolutionary adaptation, a capacity hardwired into all living organisms and which serves a specific purpose. Given the situation we find ourselves in, as individuals, as a culture, as a species, it is a capacity that is essential, for as Albert Einstein once said, 'We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them'.”

~ Stephen Harrod Buhner 

Is This Where I Belong?

Central Park - photo credit: Aaron Springston

Any number of people have told me they feel they don’t belong here. At some time or another, we probably all have felt this way. What if, rather than us not belonging here, this "here" we speak of isn't what we think it is? What if we don't belong in this crazy world, but the world we see isn't reality? Perhaps our true home is something we've sensed is there, sort of like seeing a movement out of the corner of your eye, but when you look directly at it, it's not there. For years I grasped at straws while ignoring the vast Truth of eternity. We're not strangers in a strange land when we realize the truth of Life. We may think everything we touch and see is real, but it's shifting and changing, as opposed to the omnipresent stability of our true home. So let's be still a moment and ask to know what that home is. We want it so badly, but we've forgotten what it is. Perhaps now we're not afraid to remember!

“So we have goodness and beauty to gladden the heart; but man, left to the hypotheses of material sense unexplained by Science, is as the wandering comet or the desolate star — ‘a weary searcher for a viewless home.’” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 121:12-16

“The part of your mind in which truth abides is in constant communication with God, whether you are aware of it or not. It is the other part of your mind that functions in the world and obeys the world’s laws. It is this part that is constantly distracted, disorganized and highly uncertain.” 

A Course in Miracles W-49.1:2-4

Human Rights

 

Creations of Sandy Starbird

In my lifetime, I have seen many advances in our understanding and the implementation of so-called human rights. We have seen the Voting Rights Act, Title IX sex discrimination legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Supreme Court rulings overturned state bans on contraception and interracial marriage. Abortion and same-sex marriage have been legalized. It seems odd that our government would have to guarantee these fundamental human rights, but many things had become illegal since our country’s inception, and women and minorities were always stifled when it came to voting and holding certain stations in life. We made many advances during the 1900s, and we were proud of our open minds and higher thinking. Now it seems many people think these human rights are not necessarily something which should be legislated. I agree they shouldn’t have to be, as as we are all one in Spirit. Well, I won’t go on and on about this. It’s pretty simple if we let our beliefs and ego fade away and allow Love to rule our ways. Namaste…

“Today we will claim the miracles which are your right, since they belong to you. You have been promised full release from the world you made. You have been assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost. We ask no more than what belongs to us in truth. Today, however, we will also make sure that we will not content ourselves with less.” A Course in Miracles  W-77.3:1-5

"The history of our country, like all history, illustrates the might of Mind, and shows human power to be proportionate to its embodiment of right-thinking. A few immortal sentences, breathing the omnipotence of divine justice, have been potent to break despotic fetters and abolish the whipping post and slave market, but oppression neither went down in blood, nor did the breath of freedom come from the cannon's mouth. Love is the liberator." Mary Baker Eddy -- circa 1865

Unfolding Harmony

“Wonderment”

Creation of Sandy Starbird

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.” 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If a light is suddenly turned on while someone is dreaming a fearful dream, he may initially interpret the light itself as part of his dream and be afraid of it. However, when he awakens, the light is correctly perceived as the release from the dream, which is then no longer accorded reality. This release does not depend on illusions. The knowledge that illuminates not only sets you free, but also shows you clearly that you are free.” 

A Course in Miracles T-2.I.4:6-9

“Right is radical. The teacher must know the truth himself. He must live it and love it, or he cannot impart it to others. We soil our garments with conservatism, and afterwards we must wash them clean. When the spiritual sense of Truth unfolds its harmonies, you take no risks in the policy of error.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 452:18