Joined In Peace

https://youtu.be/ZWqT1OPvI7I?si=rMWv023JZKDLEpw7

When a horrible event happens, why must we find someone to blame? Why can’t we simply say this is awful and it must stop? The priest at the church where I play keyboards opines it is because we go to our tribe for consolation, and then we end up banding together with them, which sets up an us-against-them situation. I remember when the terrible attack occurred on 9/11, I felt this was a turning point in which the world would band together and stand against terrorism and other heinous crimes. I saw us all coming together for goodness and love, overwhelming the forces which want to cause harm to others and the world at large. We didn’t see that happen, not visibly, but I still feel the great majority of us are standing on the side of love. If we can only see ourselves as One, created in the image of Love, as the reflection of divine Mind, then we can easily unite for the Universal Good, knowing that differences of opinion are no more than that. Reaching out in Love allows true forgiveness into our hearts. We can release judgment and blame, and pray that “walls of pride and prejudice shall cease when we are instruments of peace.” [from Make Us Instruments of Your Peace]

“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.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 265:10-15

“All forms forgiveness takes that do not lead away from anger, condemnation and comparisons of every kind are death. For that is what their purposes have set. Be not deceived by them, but lay them by as worthless in their tragic offerings. You do not want to stay in slavery. You do not want to be afraid of God. You want to see the sunlight and the glow of Heaven shining on the face of earth, redeemed from sin and in the Love of God. From here is prayer released, along with you. Your wings are free, and prayer will lift you up and bring you home where God would have you be.”
A Course in Miracles S-2.II.8:1-8

Projecting a Quiet Mind

Morning Coffee - Art by Mary Bradish Titcomb

“The world is a reflection of our internal state. If we dwell on turmoil, anger and confusion then that is how the world will be perceived to an individual. A quiet mind and an open heart are important attributes to project into the world.” Ram Dass

“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. All things are created spiritually. Mind, not matter, is the creator. Love, the divine Principle, 

is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 256:1-8

“Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher of peace. For peace is the acknowledgment of perfect purity, from which no one is excluded. Within its holy circle is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute, with no one left outside to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union. Stand quietly within this circle, and attract all tortured minds to join with you in the safety of its peace and holiness. Abide with me within it, as a teacher of Atonement, not of guilt.” 

A Course in Miracles T-14.V.8:1-7

Purr-fectly Calm

“I have lived with many Zen masters — all of them cats.” Eckhart Tolle

“Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more. God’s Teacher cannot be satisfied with His teaching until it constitutes all your learning. He has not fulfilled His teaching function until you have become such a consistent learner that you learn only of Him. When this has happened, you will no longer need a teacher or time in which to learn.”
A Course in Miracles T-15.I.1:1-5

“Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious — as Life eternally is — can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not. Let Christian Science, instead of corporeal sense, support your understanding of being, and this understanding will supplant error with Truth, replace mortality with immortality, and silence discord with harmony.”
Mary Baker Eddy Science & Health Page 495:16-2

Freedom of Speech?

Long, long ago, when learning the meaning of free speech, I recall being taught that this freedom didn’t mean that we could say anything we wanted, no matter the harm it might cause others. For instance, we could not yell “FIRE” in a crowded theater, because it would cause a panic and people would be injured. Somewhere in the past few decades, we seem to have forgotten the do-no-harm maxim. People seem to think they can malign others and propose outlandish possibilities with no thought to the consequences. Is freedom of speech repeating lies until they seem like truth? And why do we not feel free to refute lies? Isn’t that freedom of speech, too? If you decide to teach your baby that “war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength” [George Orwell] is that your right to do so? Shouldn’t someone tell you that is wrong? In much the same way these metaphysical teachings are showing us, thoughts and words are how we create our reality — even if it is not true. We make up illusionary worlds for ourselves all the time. But must we accept what others create for us?

“The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened, and thus made to hold, is one of the distortions on which the reverse of the Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. However, nothing is less stable than an upside-down orientation. Nor can anything that holds it upside down be conducive to increased stability.”
A Course in Miracles T-1.V.6:4-7

“Against the fatal beliefs that error is as real as Truth, that evil is equal in power to good if not superior, and that discord is as normal as harmony, even the hope of freedom from the bondage of sickness and sin has little inspiration to nerve endeavor. When we come to have more faith in the truth of being than we have in error, more faith in Spirit than in matter, more faith in living than in dying, more faith in God than in man, then no material suppositions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 368:10-18

The Joy of an Uncharted Journey

Metafizzies’ Fearless Leader, Jim Young

I inherited some recordings from metaphysical meetings we held a number of years ago. One of the weekly meetings included a discussion where people told how they came to live in Eureka Springs. In this joyous conversation everyone had a different story, but there was a common denominator: they had not consciously made the decision, but in various ways had been led to be here. There was something at work which had nothing to do with human will. People talked about divine guidance, serendipity, blind luck — it all involved a will which had nothing to do with logic or human understanding. The events which led to us being in the same room talking about metaphysics, God, Life, Love — all the while laughing and openly expressing joy — seemingly came about by chance. Life is wonderful when we don’t have to know what’s going to happen next!

“The truly helpful are God’s miracle workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the Kingdom. I will direct you to wherever you can be truly helpful, and to whoever can follow my guidance through you.”
A Course in Miracles T-4.VII.8:7-8

“Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality. Material sense expresses the belief that mind is in matter. This human belief, alternating between a sense of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, life and death, never reaches beyond the boundary of the mortal or the unreal. When the real is attained, which is announced by Science, joy is no longer a trembler, nor is hope a cheat. Spiritual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from Principle, and admit no materialistic beliefs. Spiritual ideas lead up to their divine origin, God, and to the spiritual sense of being.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 298:13-24

Thinking Makes It So …

Unknown location and photographer

A friend once said to me: “You can’t help what goes through your mind; it’s what you do with it that’s important.” As she always got upset when I talked about perception and how things are as we see them to be, I didn’t think I should tell her I disagreed with her statement. I do think we can keep rampant negative thoughts out of our head. I also think we can stop ourselves from flitting from one memory to another, flowing through a tangent of remembrances and idle repetitions. Through these spiritual studies, we are practicing training our mind away from blame and guilt, away from circular, meaningless thought, and hence allowing our function as the expression of divine Mind to flow through us, beautifully blossoming for others to share and experience. On this perfect day, I will work toward cleansing my thoughts of unnecessary chatter, while opening myself to my function as the reflection of Love!

“Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.”
A Course in Miracles W-189.7:1-5

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Science & Health Page ii:4

Healing Wounded Self-Esteem

Recent Full Moon

Photo courtesy of Don Matt

After watching the movie, Brad's Status, I'm seeing people in a different way. In this movie, Brad -- played by Ben Stiller -- is dissatisfied with his life. He thinks all his friends are better off than him, in every way. When he sees that is not true, he decides they're not even his friends, but only pretending. Everyone he meets, he imagines enriching his life, then quickly imagines them using him and throwing him away. He thinks his son is going to Harvard and he gets very excited thinking about his success; then he imagines his son making fun of him on national tv and he resents the imagined success. This goes on and on with every situation, until finally someone he has just met calls him on his self-pity. I won't tell you how it ends in case you want to see this film. But I did have the realization that many people I know feel exactly the same way as Brad. What causes some people to be happy with what's right in front of them, and others to want everything to be different? I don't know the cause, but I do know the cure: Gratitude for every little thing you see and do. I think being happy might just be a learned behavior. We tend to think of it as some sort of divine dispensation, but nothing can give you what you do not want. This movie has given me much to ponder. Namaste, my friends ...

“Imagined slights, remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices and deprivations all enter into the special relationship, which becomes a way in which you seek to restore your wounded self-esteem. What basis would you have for choosing a special partner without the past? Every such choice is made because of something ‘evil’ in the past to which you cling, and for which must someone else atone.”
A Course in Miracles T-16.VII.1:3-5

"Many theories relative to God and man neither make man harmonious nor God lovable. The beliefs we commonly entertain about happiness and life afford no scatheless and permanent evidence of either. Security for the claims of harmonious and eternal being is found only in divine Science."
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 323:5