Searching For the Wrong-Eyed Jesus

photo credit: Dale Johnson

"Searching For the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" is a documentary on life in the South of the United States. This film takes us to small towns where people turn to drugs and/or religion when they've given up all hope of finding happiness. I watched in fascination, realizing for the first time what people find in so-called "holy-roller" churches. In their feverish love of God, they find the pleasure they crave. Others turn to mood-elevating drugs for the same reason. One person in the movie says that everyone is "lonely for God" in these desolate towns. Another line which struck me was this: "He was just a regular ol' Southern lunatic. In his quest for union, he ended up being more separate than ever." There is such truth to be found in their longing! I longed with them as they jumped up and down, speaking in tongues and dancing in odd jerky movements. There wasn't much difference in the drunken barroom scenes on Saturday night and the gyrations of the Sunday morning gatherings. They're all looking for the same thing: They want to fill the emptiness inside. They want excitement, fun, a way to pass time without feeling alone. I can't keep from thinking of how they would be set free with the knowledge of their true Being. The only way this can happen is if I realize it -- really realize it! --not just intellectually, but with my heart.

“The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another's good." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 518:15-19

Weights and Measures

I remember a tale which relates to choosing joy rather than pain. In this story, we are asked how much a glass of water weighs. Then we are told it doesn't matter what its weight is; it matters how long we hold it. If we hold it a minute, it's light. If we hold it an hour, our arm and/or hand may become uncomfortable with the weight. If we hold it all day, our arm will feel paralyzed. This scenario is a metaphor for holding onto worries and fears. If we keep them with us, we become convinced they are impossible to overcome. We are paralyzed from the carrying of this weight. All we need do is put the glass down to be released from our burden! Then we are free to feel the joy which is innately ours as a child of Love.

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

“Who that has felt the loss of human peace has not gained stronger desires for spiritual joy? The aspiration after heavenly good comes even before we discover what belongs to wisdom and Love. The loss of earthly hopes and pleasures brightens the ascending path of many a heart. The pains of sense quickly inform us that the pleasures of sense are mortal and that joy is spiritual.”  Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 265:23-30

States and Stages of Consciousness

"John Muir Trail"
photo credit: Aaron Springston

Imagine a world with no pain, no war, no lack. This is the world presented in a thought-providing movie called, "The Giver". This scenario seems Utopian on the surface, but no one sees colors, or feels love, or knows joy. This world of sameness is calculated to eliminate envy and greed, as these are feelings which lead to conflicts and war.  Jeff Bridges plays the giver of memories, and no one else knows the memories of past horrors or wonders. What do you think? Would it be worth it to have a perfectly comfortable and predictable world with no highs nor lows? Is this what we're trying to create for ourselves in giving drugs to anyone who steps outside of the so-called norm in society? What are we creating in our efforts to make everyone socially acceptable? I feel like I'm asking you questions in an Oprah book club or something similar! This movie asks us: Is all the pain worth the glimpses of love we may experience? I know many of us are willing to give up our belief in a hellish world of pain and reach within for heaven and harmony. I can see that many of us are finding bliss no matter what the outer circumstance, but a lot of people are frightened and resistant. We can't change anyone else, but we can change our own thought. If we really are One, this makes a difference!

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

“…the heavens and earth to one human consciousness, that consciousness which God bestows, are spiritual, while to another, the unillumined human mind, the vision is material. This shows unmistakably that what the human mind terms matter and spirit indicates states and stages of consciousness.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 573:6-12

Let It Go

Mongolia - photo credit: Aaron Springston

Some painful memories seem to stay with us. Throughout the years, certain events have re-played regularly in my mind. Although these reruns are mostly gone now, there are current events which seem to beg me to take offense. They jump up and down asking to be retold, wanting to hold me to them with emotions. To hold a grievance, you must live in the past. I remember a line from a little book by Alan Lightman called "Einstein's Dreams". He tells us that those who live in grievances past are condemned to live there alone. Habitually recounting what used to be, or wishing for what never was, or wanting what could have been, these thought processes are symptoms of holding on to the past. So today I will hold thought to a return to Love -- a figurative return, as I remember that I never left, and neither has anyone else. This Love replaces all grievances in my thought, and by this process I am safely and peacefully at One with God and all.

“The circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 574:27-30

“’Now’ has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it were the past. The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and although the past is over, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as if it were present. It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality.” ACIM Chapter 13:IV:5

Trust Yourself

The world we live in teaches us we should try to defend against every contingency which may come up -- i.e., get your inoculations, take out insurance for every possible disaster, check your blood pressure, teach your children not to talk to strangers -- the list goes on and on. Our acceptance of good as the only reality is where our safety lies. Is it possible to protect our mortal selves from every material malady which may befall us? Of course not. But we can be aware of the still, small voice which is always guiding us in our every action, when we listen. Trust yourself! Listen to your instinctual prompts; this is where safety lies. I now see that defensive behavior is nothing more than trusting in suppositional evil more than the Truth. When we trust the Eternal, a peace always dreamed of is actualized, and we find ourselves imparting that peace to others, through our living of it.

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

“Instead of tenaciously defending the supposed rights of disease [and other seeming threats], while complaining of the suffering disease brings, would it not be well to abandon the defense, especially when by so doing our own condition can be improved and that of other persons as well?” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 348:21-25

Changing Thought - February 3, 2018

I’m tempted to tell you about all the attack thoughts I've been having lately toward coal companies and chemical producers, but I won't. I won't do that because feeding your attack thoughts does nothing to take mine away. This fertilizing of attack thoughts can be found everywhere, from coffee shops to churches, and it doesn't do a single thing to change the world. If the world we see is an effect, the only way to change this hallucination is to alter the cause: our thought. Some may ridicule this idea, and for those who do I only ask them if any of the material manipulations in all of history have affected a change? Did our civil war free the slaves? It was a beginning, of course, but many people stayed in bondage long past when laws were enacted. It takes a change of thought. Let's free ourselves today -- and forever! 

"Legally to abolish unpaid servitude in the United States was hard; but the abolition of mental slavery is a more difficult task. The despotic tendencies, inherent in mortal mind and always germinating in new forms of tyranny, must be rooted out through the action of the divine Mind." Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 225:22-28

Safety Without Worry

My eldest son, Aaron, left for South Korea today. He is the video coordinator with the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association and they are off to the winter Olympics! I don’t worry about him when he travels. I remember Wayne Dyer saying that worry is like praying for something bad to happen, and I suppose my attitude is akin to his. I love that A Course in Miracles tells us that our safety lies in our defenselessness. I love that Mary Baker Eddy understood how to hold thought to good and, thereby, to bring it into our lives proportionately to its occupancy of our thoughts. I see Aaron protected and joyful in this endeavor, as does he. The preparations for the trip have been chaotic and seemingly not very well planned, but he knows he will face whatever is happening and do the things which need to be done. I look forward to hearing of his adventures!

“A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans that it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own.” A Course in Miracles - Workbook Lesson #135

“Christian Scientists must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and be separate. They must renounce aggression, oppression and the pride of power. Christianity, with the crown of Love upon her brow, must be their queen of life.” Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 451: 2-7