The Matter With Things

This man has new talks posted regularly to YouTube. He is unfailingly inspiring and hopeful! 

 Written by Iain McGilchrist:

“I believe that we are engaged in committing suicide: intellectual suicide, moral suicide and physical suicide. If there is anything as important as stopping us poisoning our seas and destroying our forests, it is stopping us poisoning our minds and destroying our souls.

“Our dominant value – sometimes I fear our only value – has, very clearly, become that of power. This aligns us with a brain system, that of the left hemisphere, the raison d’être of which is to control and manipulate the world. But not to understand it: that, for evolutionary reasons that I explain, has come to be more the raison d’être of our – more intelligent, in every sense – right hemisphere. Unfortunately the left hemisphere, knowing less, thinks it knows more. It is a good servant, but a ruinous – a peremptory – master. And the predictable outcome of assuming the role of master is the devastation of all that is important to us – or should be important, if we really know what we are about.

“Even if we could, by some miracle, reverse the course on which we are set, unless we change our way of thinking, of being in the world – the way that is destroying us as we speak – it would all be in vain. This is why I have written the last long book I will ever write: The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World.

In it I search out what it is we have lost sight of, all that is there for us to see, if only we were not blinded to it: an inexhaustibly, truly wondrous, creative, living universe, not a meaningless, moribund mechanism. By bringing to bear up-to-the-minute neuropsychology, physics and philosophy, I show not only that these are in no way in conflict with one another, but that they all lead us, time and again, to the same insights. And that this is not in opposition to, but rather corroborates, the wisdom of the great spiritual traditions across the world.

“All this converges on a vision that is necessary if we are to survive; and, even more importantly, if we are to deserve to survive. What I hope for my readers is that, if they are willing to accompany me on this adventure, they will never see the world in quite the same way again.”

 Iain McGilchrist

“This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 96:12-20

“Let us today be truly humble, and accept what we have made as what it is. The power of decision is our own. Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear. What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. And it will take the place of self-deceptions 

made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son.” 

A Course in Miracles W-152.8:1-5

Extending Creations Gifts

Art of Rebecca J. Becker 

Some days, when I’m feeling grateful for all the things people do to help me, I begin to feel sorry that I can’t do for others in kind. And then something will happen, as it did a few days ago, which causes me to realize that even though our physical circumstances may change, there are still many gifts we have to offer the world. The drawing which is included with this writing was done by a neighbor who lives up the street. We share a love of art and music and have a kinship which seems to go deeper than this physical realm. She reached out to me last week for help in finding someone to transport her husband to a neighboring town. Because I have always lived in this area, because I have been involved with many organizations, I know a large number of people. Because of this knowledge, I can put people in touch with each other when the need arises. She drew this sweet mouse as a thank you for doing this. And so I remind you, as I’m reminding myself, that we all have something to offer each other. As my dear friend, Jim Young, always says: We’re here to lend ourselves to each other. Namaste …

“What you believe you are determines your gifts, and if God created you by extending Himself as you, you can only extend yourself as He did. Only joy increases forever, since joy and eternity are inseparable. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you who are co-creator with Him extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. Eternity is the indelible stamp of creation. ⁶The eternal are in peace and joy forever.”

A Course in Miracles T-7.I.5:2-6

“Whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love — be it song, sermon, or Science — blesses the human family with crumbs of comfort from Christ’s table, feeding the hungry and giving living waters to the thirsty.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 234:4-8

Loving and Lovable

 

I have an old friend who feels like she’s drowning in sadness. A man she didn’t want to live without died, and she’s having a tough time going forward on her own. I can understand how she feels as she tries to remember how to be happy. The things we spoke of today led me to tell her about Mary Haskell, the woman who loved Kahlil Gibran. Although she was much older than him, he died many years before her. At his funeral, her friends were amazed that she was so peacefully happy and they wanted to know how that could be. She told them she felt closer to him than she ever had before. I talked to my friend about our unity in divine Love and our inseparability as the experience of God. I’m not sure if she felt better, but I certainly did!

“Today we see only the loving and the lovable. We see it in appearances of pain, and pain gives way to peace. We see it in the frantic, in the sad and the distressed, the lonely and afraid, who are restored to the tranquility and peace of mind in which they were created. And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life. All this we see because we saw it first within ourselves.” 
A Course in Miracles W-124.4:6–5:4

"Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being, and [Its] reflection is man and the universe." 
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 465:17-1

The Sweetness of Friendship

 Kahlil Gibran - On Friendship

    “Your friend is your needs answered. 

    He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. 

    And he is your board and your fireside.

    For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

    When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the ‘nay’ in your own mind, nor do you withhold the ‘ay.’

    And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; 

    For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed. 

    When you part from your friend, you grieve not; 

    For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. 

    And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. 

    For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery us not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

    And let your best be for your friend. 

    If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. 

    For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? 

    Seek him always with hours to live. 

    For it is his to fill your need but not your emptiness. 

    And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, 

and sharing of pleasures. 

    For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”

Kahlil Gibran

“Those who accept the Holy Spirit’s purpose as their own share also His vision. And what enables Him to see His purpose shine forth from every altar now is yours as well as His. He sees no strangers; only dearly loved and loving friends. He sees no thorns but only lilies, gleaming in the gentle glow of peace that shines on everything He looks upon and loves.”

A Course in Miracles T-20.II.5:2-6

“A blundering despatch, mistakenly announcing the death of a friend, occasions the same grief that the friend’s real death would bring. You think that your anguish is occasioned by your loss. Another despatch, correcting the mistake, heals your grief, and you learn that your suffering was merely the result of your belief. Thus it is with all sorrow, sickness, and death. You will learn at length that there is no cause for grief, and divine wisdom will then be understood. Error, not Truth, produces all the suffering on earth.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 386:15-29

Gratitude For Books and People Who Read Them

Today I would like to express gratitude for my bookclub. In the past two-plus decades, we have read more than 200 books, and many (if not most) of those books I would not have picked up had it not been for the suggestions of these Novel Women. We met today for our “retreat”, which we do at the end of the year to choose books for the next year. We also take care of a few business matters pertaining to the Little Red Bookshelf, which we have placed at a local food bank. This fabulous project supplies new books for children to read, keep, and perhaps cherish. This group of women have been such a blessing to each other. In times of trials and the sharing of joyful events, we are there for each other. Today we passed phones around the dining table with the newest photos of grandchildren, as we all marveled at their beauty. Through the years, our friendships have grown and encompassed us all in loving care. Thank you, dearest friends, for the good books, the good times, and all the beauty which has come from knowing you.

“Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less than beautiful. Men and women of riper years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom. Immortal Mind feeds the body with supernal freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images of thought...”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 248:3-11

“In the holy instant no one is special, for your personal needs intrude on no one to make your brothers seem different. Without the values from the past, you would see them all the same and like yourself. Nor would you see any separation between yourself and them. In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what it will be when you perceive only the present.”
A Course in Miracles T-15.V.8:2-5

Similar Beginnings; Different Outcomes

Two men, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Actor Will Smith, have had a number of similar experiences in their lives, with differing results. Both of these men were raised attending Catholic schools, both had violent father-figures in their lives, and both had ah-ha moments with regard to racism. Judge Thomas was going to Holy Cross seminary when Martin Luther King was killed. While hearing the comments made by his all-white classmates, he walked away from his family’s dream of his becoming the first black priest in Savannah. While in school, Will Smith realized that he could never be good enough, no matter how hard he tried. But he had his eye-opening moment while bagging ice in his family’s ice-making business. He was listening to the radio and hearing the top 100 songs of the year. He was lamenting the fact that he wasn’t in the top 100 when the #1 song came on and it was his! Everything changed for him in that moment. He said it was “the joy in being right about me”. While Will Smith was realizing how playful the universe is and how happy he was being a part of it, Clarence Thomas was plotting ways to get even with people who had treated him badly. Without delving into their lives more thoroughly, I dare say one of these men was able to process childhood trauma and one was not. May we all learn to work through fear and return to Love.

“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 495:15-2

“Would you not go through fear to love? For such the journey seems to be. Love calls, but hate would have you stay. Hear not the call of hate, and see no fantasies. For your completion lies in truth, and nowhere else. See in the call of hate, and in every fantasy that rises to delay you, but the call for help that rises ceaselessly from you to your Creator. Would He not answer you whose completion is His? He loves you, wholly without illusion, as you must love. For love is wholly without illusion, and therefore wholly without fear. Whom God remembers must be whole. And God has never forgotten what makes Him whole. In your completion lie the memory of His Wholeness and His gratitude to you for His completion. In His link with you lie both His inability to forget and your ability to remember. In Him are joined your willingness to love and all the Love of God, Who forgot you not.”

A Course in Miracles T-16.IV.11:1-14

Through the Illusion, to Reality

Stereogram from Magic Eye book

Over three decades ago, I was at a yard sale when a book title jumped out at me: You’ll See It When You Believe It. This book was written by an author I had never heard of at the time, but whom I now think of as my good friend, Wayne Dyer. I took the book home and when I began reading it I said right out loud, This is Christian Science! Upon researching this author, I found out he was teaching the principles of A Course in Miracles. I can still feel the excitement of finding another teaching which was a fraternal twin of the Mary Baker Eddy writings which had been with me forever. While reading a work of fiction recently, I was reminded of stereograms, or Magic Eye pictures. Remember them? They are seemingly random colors and shapes, which when looked at with a “relaxed” eye, you can see through the mishmash of nothingness to a 3-D picture of something else. And, of course, I thought of Dr. Dyer’s book title and how true it is in our day-to-day existence. In the above stereogram eye-puzzler, once you see the picture, you can often train your eye to look around and see other hidden objects. Ah, seeing through the illusion to the reality!

“You command the situation if you understand that mortal existence is a state of self-deception and not the truth of being. Mortal mind is constantly producing on mortal body the results of false opinions; and it will continue to do so, until mortal error is deprived of its imaginary powers by Truth, which sweeps away the gossamer web of mortal illusion.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 403:12-20

“Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will still be many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself: Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Would I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself.”
A Course in Miracles W-134.17:1-5