THE FLOW OF ABUNDANCE 2

There are people all over the world in conditions of illness, poverty, loneliness, or possibly guilt and shame. If there was nothing they do about that, wouldn’t that be terrible? That would be Hell, wouldn’t it?

But if there was a way, a plan, a roadmap to take them out of that terrible territory, back to peace and joy and healing, wouldn’t that be wonderful? That would be pure Heaven, wouldn’t it?

Jesus said, “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.” Freedom – that’s really the goal, isn’t it? Freedom from lack, from illness, and from loneliness.

The opposite of freedom is bondage – being tied and restricted to a condition that provided never-ending pain and sorrow.

Freedom and Bondage – Heaven and Hell – we can experience either one, and luckily, we know the way out of the dark places. We know how to turn on the light. We know at least a major piece of that Truth, thanks to our founder, Ernest Holmes.

Some people might have noticed that I don’t seem very reverent. I don’t speak of God in hushed and respectful tones. You should know that I don’t speak of anything in hushed and respectful tones – it’s just not the kind of person I am.

Why don’t I act more reverent? I don’t, because I’m not afraid of God. How could I be? Would it make any sense for a fish to be afraid of the water? God is what I am – what I am made of – there simply is nothing else. God is all there is.

Just like you, God and I together always make a majority. This mysterious Something that we happen to call God is the very fabric of the space we inhabit. The vibrations of that fabric show up as our universe, with us in it.

The fabric of our universe, which is the substance of God, known as Spiritual Substance or Universal Substance, bends our way when we set an intention. Dr. Wayne Dyer talks about the power of intention – but we know that the power is never in the intention – the Power is in the Mind and the Substance of God. Our intentions are more like the steering wheel, holding our direction, rather than the engine that powers our life, or the fuel that powers the engine.

THE FLOW OF ABUNDANCE

The fabric of our universe, which is the substance of God, known as Spiritual Substance or Universal Substance, bends our way when we set an intention. Dr. Wayne Dyer talks about the power of intention – but we know that the power is never in the intention – the Power is in the Mind and the Substance of God. Our intentions are more like the steering wheel, holding our direction, rather than the engine that powers our life, or the fuel that powers the engine.

Thought directs Power. So this month, just for the fun of it, think of prosperity. Think of riches. Think of comfort, and money, and precious things. Think of your cup running over, so much that you can’t hold on to it all. Then think of generosity, and giving, and of gratitude. Feel your joy and delight at the abundance that comes your way – especially the unexpected abundance.

It’s an opportunity to try out your spiritual wings.

Don’t ever think that money is not spiritual. Money is the stored up energy of pure spirit. Money represents the reward that someone gets for doing something for someone else. You work, you provide service to someone, and you get money. Money is the stored up value of the work someone did.

You may say, what if I didn’t work for my money? What if someone gave it to me – what then? Well, that means that someone, who worked for their money, found that there was value for them in giving it to you. They got something from you, whether you knew it or not. It may have been inspiration, it may have just been to see the gratitude you showed, but if someone gave you anything, it was because they found their joy in doing do.

Whether it’s money, or compliments, or a friendly greeting, it’s all just a transfer of energy within the infinite body of God. It’s energy flowing from you to the grocery store to the store clerk to his girlfriend to the theatre to the theatre attendant to the government in taxes and out to the pensioner or the doctor in the health system. It’s all a flow and our job is not to interrupt it.

Healing with the Science of Mind

To many the idea of scientific prayer is quite foreign. However, it has proven itself to many as a healing method which opens up the body and mind to its own inner Spiritual healing resources.

The body (or the mind) always heals itself. No medical, psychological, or other practitioner can force healing upon a client. All interventions can but open a way for the natural healing processes of the body to re-assert themselves. Healing prayer is no different.

Religious Science, the organization which teaches the Science of Mind, begins with the understanding that God or Spirit is the inner essence or reality of all living things; indeed of all things. There is a spiritual pattern, or universal idea, behind each form, which has drawn together the energy needed to make that form appear in the material world that we know. This is an idea derived from NeoPlatonism, building on the concepts of Plato.

This spiritual pattern contains no error, just as we know that our idea of a circle is perfect roundness, even though material circles are only a rough approximation. However, as we know, our bodies are not perfect. Therefore they are only approximate in adhering to their spiritual pattern. Returning to this perfection is a natural and continual tendency for us; blocked only by our thoughts and actions during the daily living of life. The greater the blocks we have, the further we drift from perfect health or wholeness.

Scientific prayer, known also as Spiritual Mind Treatment, creates a focus and a concentration on the reality of our perfect nature; and mentally casts aside the errors in thought which have caused us to drift away from our inner Truth. It begins by assuming that the innate activity of Spirit is to realize perfection, and therefore by removing blocks to this we may be healed. Call these blocks sins, if you wish; although they are approached without judgment, shame, or blame – much as one would approach a sliver in a hand or foot.

Spiritual Mind Treatment may seem to some like a vague or trivial process, but it is quite specific in its application, and has been shown to produce tangible results. It works by establishing positive faith, or belief, which brings about acceptance of Good.

Compiled by Dr. Ernest Holmes in the 1920s, the Science of Mind is primarily based on Biblical teachings; but it pays respect to other spiritual traditions, recognizing that wisdom has come to humanity by many routes and in many ways. It ignores much of the cultural and historical content of scriptures, concentrating instead on the specific truths which are being illustrated therein. It provides a method of prayer which is based on faith in the goodness and approachability of God.

The Science of Mind draws upon work done throughout the 1800s and 1900s, in addition to the Old and New Testament. It leans heavily upon the work of Thomas Troward, British judge and lecturer on ‘Mental Science’, and on Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great lecturer, professor and essayist. It also draws upon some of the modern faith healing traditions, including Christian Science. In the words of Holmes, it correlates "the laws of science, the opinions of philosophy, and the revelations of religion applied to the needs and the aspirations of humankind."

THE POWER OF CREATION - THE GOD-CONCEPT

We have all kinds of odd ideas about this thing we call God. We imagine some anthropomorphic being, like either some chairman of the board, in a three-piece business suit, or the bearded old man, white-haired, in a snow white robe, or even a muscular figure in a roman toga, like some Arnold Schwarzenegger with super powers. People form all kinds of mental images of what God is.

Agnostics and atheists even react to these imaginary figures and these stunted, limited ideas of Deity underlie their positions of doubt or denial. For this reason, I like to say, "The God you don't believe in doesn't exist!"

Why must we superimpose our own limitations of imagination upon the intelligence that formed the universe, and which continues to evolve it to this very day?

The principles of metaphysics (literally, beyond physics) describe the relation between Mind and matter. Creation is something that is an action of Mind - an action which creates a mental template, a mental equivalent, that has the FORM of the thing which will finally emerge as the physical result. This process of emergence results when the universal substance, which we might now call zero-point energy in the world of quantum mechanics, collapses into the form that has been created in mind.

The process that we call creation is the use of Mind to choose from among an infinite set of possibilities, reducing it to the most probable, and finally the actual experience of life. We can each exercise this process, but in doing so, we are using a mental principle that is beyond us, and a Power and Intelligence that, in forming our universe, has Its origins before and beyond it.

Creation is the action of mind; and that which we define as Creator is pure Mind in action. The principle of creation, together with the invisible energy upon which It acts, together is what we think of as God, although the term seems outdated and weak to describe what we are talking about.

This is one thing that Islam goes about in the right way. It forbids the use of images to represent God, and this has the benefit of forcing people to avoid forming limited and limiting concepts. Instead we use the wounded man on the cross, a suffering God, not the very force of creation itself.

Ernest S. Holmes used another technique by referring to God as "The Thing Itself", and then going on to use a different term or descriptor on almost every other page of his famous text, "The Science of Mind". While this confuses many first-time readers, it does have the effect of making it difficult to form limited and rigid concepts about something that is infinitely vast and ineffable.

Other teachers have told us that our concept of God will limit the scope and power of our religious experience and the richness of our life. To expand either or both, we must form an expanded view of what God is, or as Rev. Helen Street used to say "Get a bigger God."

We can only experience as much as we can imagine, because the Principle of Creation is responsive to our thought. As we reach out in thought, It responds in kind. The more power we can imagine, and the closer we can personally feel to It, the more power is available.

Isn't it time to get yourself a bigger God?

A MONTANA JOURNEY

I have just come back from a week in Montana, where I looked for the location of my Grandfather's homestead south of Ethridge. Grandpa was a range cowboy who settled in Montana in about 1904, and ran some cattle on open grassland and in the 'badlands' of the Marias River country under the lazy S bar brand. He also worked with the Blackfoot on the nearby reserve to buy horses captured wild in the foothills of Montana, and 'broke' them for farm use. He drove herds of horses into North Dakota farming country and up into Saskatchewan, where he later moved and bought a farm.

It was interesting to see that the area of his homestead is now being turned into a different kind of farm - a windmill farm, where dozens of towers are being built to produce power which is being sent to California.

While I am glad to see wind power being developed, it is interesting to me that we can never seem to manage to live where the elements of our life come from. Instead we ship water hundreds of miles, and we do the same for power. We ship food from half a world away. Doesn't all this add to the expense and the inefficiency of our life?

It bears thinking about.

THE DILEMMA OF DUALISTIC THINKING

Have you ever been in a situation where there just didn’t seem to be any good choices?

Every once in awhile, we find ourselves in the middle of a situation, being asked to choose one way or another, and we know we don’t want to choose either. That’s a terrible feeling to have, because it seems there is no right way to go. In those cases, we often make choices we regret, but often the alternative still seems no better; it’s like we made one of a set of poor choices.

The confusion this causes often leads to illness, as our nervous stress damages the functioning of our immune system. If you read Louise Hay, she says that a cold is a sign of confusion. Cold germs are something we always have with us - we don’t need to ‘catch’ them - but they can take root and cause illness whenever our immune system gets weakened. Such weakening can be caused by stress of any sort - and a mental dilemma, being confused as to which way to take, is one such cause of stress.

Here is where the world around us and its thinking really challenges us. When Jesus said, “Be in the world, but do not be OF it”, he may have been talking about getting caught up in the choices that others expect us to make. Certainly he counseled many people to ignore the expectations of others.

When we ignore what others expect of us, we become a lightning rod for criticism. We are regarded as being callous and uncaring when we don’t act together with what seems obvious to our friends. This is some of heaviest pressure a person can ever feel, because it gets right at our own self-worth.

We all want to be considered kind, good and caring. Our personal self-worth may be tied up in our being able to feel that way. When we cannot choose the way our friends have done, whatever our reason, we become a disappointment to them. How can we stay knowing that their feelings are their own to have? Our empathy draws us in to share those feelings, even though they are not ours by right. Our own self-esteem takes a beating if others feel we are out of step with them.

We are born as individuals in order that the Universal Power may experience individuality through our being. As a Unity, it can know nothing of differences in thought, in feeling. Only through our individualized selves can this be known. Life, or spirit, can only know itself through individualising. An infinite entity cannot have a viewpoint - since a viewpoint implies that there is something outside of itself to view.

As individuals we follow a complex and widely different series of goals, motivations and priorities. It is almost guaranteed that we will come to different conclusions about many things. If these conclusions are important to us, and many are, we are bound to be frustrated when others conclude differently. We may suspect them of not sharing our objectives, of not caring about our priorities. We may feel they are not for us, but against us.

This last thought is the trap of duality. Duality is the separation of the world, of events, of things and people, into Good and Evil, For and Against, Bad and Good. Finally, it is the separation into Them and Us.

Duality is an illusion, created by our perception of the world. It is not the underlying truth of things. The underlying truth is Unity of all things, of Past and Future, of Them and Us. The Truth is, Them and Us is One.

Maxi-Mind

Maxi-Mind is a book about Creativity, how it works in each of us, and how to make use of it in business and personal situations.

The title refers to the 'magic' that happens when both brain hemispheres are used in a creative sequence to generate ideas that are 'outside the box' and then evaluate and screen those ideas to produce a workable innovation.

This book is based on more than 20 years as an engineer and a strategic planner, during which I pursued a keen interest in how ideas are formed and implemented.

Freeing the visual, non-linear right brain to imagine produces ideas that range from wacky to dull. The great innovations often come from twisting the wacky ones to achieve a workable gem.

Applying this process to your life can really set you in a new direction. Try it!

Find Maxi-Mind at: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1223463

IT'S YOUR CALL - 3

When people have a mid-life crisis, when people develop health issues, from skin rash to cancer to allergies to a heart attack, they are getting the kick in the trousers – the call they can’t ignore any more.

My story isn’t very dramatic – I had it good – my career was zipping right along, I thought, till our department was rather abruptly dismantled. My job played far too big a role in my life – I was in over my head with much of what I was doing. My job was stressing me out, but I didn’t notice. I had allergies – sinus problems – my nerves were raw. I didn’t have the tools for self-analysis and introspection that you can learn from classes in the Science of Mind. We used to have an expression – “I was like a guy with one leg at a butt-kicking”. I had no clue, and no clue that I had no clue.

I was shuffled to an unfamiliar job – and I buckled right down. In less than a year, a second shuffle removed my entire level of management from the company. I was shuffled to a new job that was somewhere between my old level and the bottom rung. Within months a new VP had deleted my new job and others like it.

I was stressed, discouraged, grumpy and angry – and I walked across the downtown, in an ugly November wind, to a meeting about possibly moving to another city. In an episode that I have described in detail on other occasions, I got the big kick in the pants – a voice in my head that was NOT mine – saying “You need to become more Spiritual.”

This is the way Spirit works in us – from the inside out – providing first an urge, a desire, then sometimes a kick in the pants – but calling on us to be, not someone else or something else, but to be outwardly the person we were made to be inwardly.

We have complete freedom – but remember our inward choices are still ours – not someone else’s. There is just more of us than we can be aware of, and that greater self remembers what we came here to do. It remembers who we really are. When we aren’t connected with It, we are separated from our greater selves.

Your call may not lead you to ministry as mine did – likely it won’t – but trust me, you are being called – to something. You have an urge, a desire that you are either following now, or ignoring.

Remember, it’s your call. Are you listening?

IT'S YOUR CALL - 2

You see, the call comes to people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all personality types from jolly to grumpy – everyone gets the call. We are all called to do something.

I have had people ask me about their urges – sometimes they have been taught that their urges are evil – from some inner demon seeking to lead them astray.

I cannot stress this strongly enough –NO urge of itself is wrong – but there can be a wrong interpretation of a desire.

If you are living from the ego side of your consciousness, if your awareness is focused in the physical, material world, you may translate your desires from fear or anxiety. This will translate into a general sense of lack. You may then feel lust, which flows from feeling a lack of intimacy or closeness. You may feel confusion, a lack of harmony. You may experience greed or poverty, a sense of lacking material support. When you interpret your desires from your fear, then a perfectly normal desire may be warped by the errors in your consciousness into something wrong and harmful.

If so, there is only one thing to do – THINK AGAIN – and think differently!

Be sensitive to your desires, and think them through. Think about how to fulfill this desire for the good of all – your self included. Desires are part of our feeling nature – add some thinking to them – and then fulfill them in a healthy and positive way. There is no wrong or desire – only a wrong interpretation and follow-up action. Do everything from the highest and best good for all, and you cannot ever go astray!

A tiny handful of people are lucky enough to follow their path right from birth or from childhood. For them, it may seem like the call never came, because they followed their path right from the start.

For most of us – we start out along a path that seems reasonable – we go with the flow, it seems – and at some point in our life we begin to fidget, we squirm, we are itchy, possibly unhappy.

At that point we have a choice – to listen and maybe hear the call – or to ignore it and hope it goes away. Many people are ignoring their inner call right now. It will not go away.

IT'S YOUR CALL - 1

You are being called, right now, to do something.

Each and every one of us has within us an urge, a desire, or a voice, that pushes us forward to do or to be something that reflects our inner reality.

Not everyone is destined for fortune or fame. We may be called on to build, to lead, to communicate. We may be called on to love, to nurture, and to be a supportive presence.

You have either harkened to your call, or you have turned away from it, but it has not gone away. The urge to be your true being never leaves you, and the price of ignoring it can be terribly high.

How many of you have found yourselves following a path that surprised you?

Those of us whose lives have taken a surprising turn are those who have harkened to the call of an inner voice, or an impulse that we couldn’t quite explain at the time.

Whether from courage or curiosity, our choice to follow this impulse is an example that has been followed by many for thousands of years.

Have you ever gotten a call that made you shift 90 or 180 degrees, and turn your whole life in a different direction? Are you being called right now, but not listening? If you have ever felt an unexplainable urge, or a burning desire, or a powerful notion – it’s your call.

NEW BOOK AVAILABLE

My latest book is now available on www.lulu.com. Just copy and paste the address into your browser.

href="http://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=115675

Please check it out - you can even read the first few pages on Google Books!

I have created and saved about fifty or sixty talks, on a variety of subjects. This latest book is made up of seventeen talks, re-worked to remove local references and things not relevant to a book.

Enjoy!

ABUNDANCE - THE UNIVERSAL FLOW EQUATION

THE UNIVERSAL FLOW EQUATION

It came as a revelation to me one day that the equations I was learning in Electrical Circuits class were variations of the same equations I was learning in Fluid Mechanics class, for airflow and water flow. There were variations because air is compressible and water isn’t, for example, but the structure, form and principle of the relationships were the same.

The formula for electromagnetism, and the generation of magnetic flux by the movement of electricity, also followed the form of the relationship, which by now I called the Universal Flow Equation. I no longer had to memorize any formulas for my classes, but could derive everything I needed from the Universal Flow Equation!

The form of the Universal Flow Equation is this:

[FLOW] = [A CONSTANT] times [PRESSURE CREATING FLOW] divided by [RESISTANCE TO FLOW]

Of course the units vary according to the type of flow being considered, and the constant varies accordingly as well.

For electricity it is the flow of current:

AMPERES = VOLTS / OHMS,

with the constant already used to calculate the Ohms of resistance for each particular material.

For water, it is:

VOLUME = C X HEAD/AREA CROSS SECTION OF PIPE

where ‘head’ is the term for static pressure caused by the depth of water, and C is a constant coefficient.


ALL LIFE IS A FLOW OF ENERGY

Eventually I encountered the study of metaphysics, and came to see all of life as a flow of energy in various forms. Then, I learned to see us as living our lives in the flow of ideas, I learned that we can ‘tune’ our minds to the flow to open up our lives to greater things, or close them down and constrict our experience.

The same equation fits, but the mathematics is far less precise.

FLOW = PRESSURE / RESISTANCE

So what corresponds to these quantities in the mental and metaphysical realm?

First, let’s look at PRESSURE. What is the thing that corresponds to pressure in the realm of thought? It is DESIRE. Desire is a form of love, so we could expand our equation to use LOVE as the motive force in our life. Love is another word for God in action, so this seems to fit. GOD is just our word for the source of all motive force, the source of all change.

What creates this pressure? Desire is created by a vision of what could be, as compared to what is. Desire is formed by a thought that there is more that we could be, more that we could have, more that we could experience. This vision, by the Law of Attraction, then attracts us toward it, and also attracts to it all things needed for its fulfillment. Thus, pressure creates FLOW in the world.

This bears some thinking about. How can the Universal Spirit, which we have said encompasses all things, all possibilities, infinitely, have any Desire? What is there to desire?

There is only one answer that comes to mind – that is, to express those possibilities, that potentiality, as fully and as completely as possible. Not only that, but to view that expression from as many points of view as possible, so that potential becomes actuality or manifestation, and actuality is witnessed or experienced in an infinitude of ways. Thus potential is realized, and possibility becomes actuality.

So, desire is not something that happens by whim or in spontaneous bursts. Desire is built in to the character of the Universe as a fundamental property.

Now let’s look at RESISTANCE. This is the tendency for flow to be blocked, or constricted.

What are the ways in which resistance is created?

In the case of electricity, the material itself plays a role. In the case of metaphysics, this is not the case, since all things are made from the same substance. Thought transcends all substance, and is not conditioned by it. So material or substance is a constant in the field of thought, and is therefore a constant in our equation.

In the case of either electricity or water, another cause of resistance is a constriction of the pipe or the conductor. The channel is made smaller, and the flow is affected.

Think of the ways in which we can make ourselves smaller. We are made smaller by our own beliefs about our worthiness, our capability, or our sense of what is right. Therefore it is BELIEF, which determines our resistance to flow, and our ACCEPTANCE of flow is dependent on our belief. Acceptance is the exact opposite, the inverse, of resistance.

So, our equation for all things metaphysical is:

FLOW = DESIRE X ACCEPTANCE, where

ACCEPTANCE = 1 / RESISTANCE


What kinds of flow are we talking about here, in the mental realm? Some of them are:

Prosperity Wisdom Joy
Peace Courage Faith
Beauty Harmony

Notice that all of these things have Love at their core, and all can be attracted through Desire and Acceptance. If we can control the flow of these things, our worldly experience will parallel our mental one.

Note also that FEAR is the opposite of DESIRE, and works like a negative pressure, which causes a stoppage or even reversal of the flow in our life.

This blog entry is adapted from my book, "THE LITTLE BOOK OF TRUTH AND WISDOM", which is available at www.lulu.com.

ABUNDANCE AND OUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM

ABUNDANCE

Perhaps the greatest part of the illusion of our material world is the idea of lack and limitation. Our modern civilization is based on it. The regulation of money, wages, and investment in the economy is entirely for the purpose of distributing scarce resources. It is founded on scarcity.

The notion of economic theory is founded on the idea of a zero-sum game; that is, if you have more of one thing, you must have less of something else. It began as observation, but soon became a controlling factor, as the theories are used to allocate resources and make both political and business decisions.

It is further assumed that scarcity operates throughout nature, so that we can only have more if someone else has less. This teaches us to feel guilt for all that we do have, so that we are prevented from enjoyment of anything. Since we cannot enjoy what we have, we neglect to feel grateful. The absence of gratitude in our thinking leads to unconscious avoidance of opportunity, and pushes prosperity away from us.

The most dangerous idea in our economic system may be that things derive their value from scarcity; that there is no such thing as intrinsic value. Scarcity is contrived in order to maintain the value of goods. People apply this to themselves to destroy their self-esteem, reasoning that abilities they hold in common with many others are therefore valueless.

Again, this is a case of a belief system which does not serve us well. Is an egg, sausage or steak less tasty when eggs, pork or beef are more plentiful? Are they less nutritious? Yet we expect to pay less for them if they are not scarce, and we allow farmers to become bankrupt due to low prices if there is a plentiful supply. We have lost sight of the concept of intrinsic worth.

A new concept of abundance - the flow concept - can be found in my books TURN THE WORLD ON ITS HEAD and THE LITTLE BOOK OF TRUTH AND WISDOM. Yes I am flattering myself with the latter title, and I was tongue in cheek when something told me to use it! Both books can be found at www.lulu.com.

BOOK CATALOG PAGE on www.lulu.com

This a partial list of my books on www.lulu.com - the first few pages can be read to get an idea of the content and writing style. I hope each book contains something that makes the reader think, or see something a little differently than before.

To go right to the catalog page, copy and paste this URL in your browser:

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1223463

Yours truly,
Darrell

OUR MAGICAL WORLD - 5

The real magic is when we realize that God is in all the spaces of the universe. The suns and the planets and the rocks and trees and people are just the material forms that have arisen out of that powerful space. The things we see are made from that which is invisible, and the source is more vast that we can imagine.

You know by now that your form is not you – it’s just your form. The intelligence that is you is occupying your form – just for now. Someday it will move on – perhaps to a new form, if that’s what you want. You have come from the magic, and you are here to experience time, space, and matter . Eventually you will return to the magic- to those other dimensions – those other universes – to that place where the sub-atomic particles go when they are tunneling from place to place.

You see, we are not the magic. We are the magicians, and we just have no memory of the magic we have made.

When we remember, won’t that be something?

That will be real magic.

OUR MAGICAL WORLD - 4

God has always been the name that we use when the mystery and the magic of life goes beyond what we can reach; past our understanding. God used to be the name for wind and weather; for the mysteries of sexuality, for the raw emotions that seemed to take over people’s minds. At various times, each of these was taken as the work of one or many Gods.

A wise Rabbi said, “God to us is always just the next level of Mind above where we are.”

I like that. God is the mystery, and God is the Magic of life – and no matter how much we grow or learn, there is always that next level above where we are, where God is waiting for us to catch up.

The God of the Old Testament seems to us today to have far too many human frailties – anger, jealousy, not to mention a tendency for genocide. The God of the New Testament is much more a God of Love, but many people have confined Him to a human form, ignoring the vastness and universality of the Intelligence that underlies everything that is.

Someone said, “As soon as you think you know something, you limit the Vastness.” We meet people every day who think they know about God, about Jesus, about the Bible. These people are limiting the vastness – any human concept does that. God is not in the pages of a book - any more than there is a pumpkin pie in the pages of a recipe book - nor is God in the body of one long-dead teacher. The vastness cannot be so limited. We must not confuse the map with the territory, or the symbol with the reality.

OUR MAGICAL WORLD - 3

To me, it is magic to think that our minds, using some quantum effect we still have not discovered, may be reaching into or through an alternate universe. What are we doing – what are we contacting – when we use prayer treatment to alter the path of our life and our world?

Now please don’t go thinking we are like some kind of flying saucer cult, and the green men are going to come and take us away! But we do believe that mind and matter are linked in a mysterious way, and that we can explore that mystery – in fact we are meant to explore that mystery, until that vast Intelligence we call God is able to work through our consciousness and express in this world all the wondrous Good that lies in the invisible world of thought and vision. We do believe there is a kind of magic in that, and your own life can be an example of it.

Back to the mystery inside the atom – it gets more and more magical. It turns out that each 'wavicle' inside the atom is actually just a ripple in the fabric of space – what we think of as empty space! Some of these ripples are looped back on themselves, and some a just open-ended. These have become known as Strings, and string theory is upsetting to most physicists, because this theory tells us that there isn’t any there, there. The material world is nothing at all, except a set of wiggles in space itself.

Along with this idea is another incredible discovery – that every point in space actually has a potential energy so vast that we are surrounded by a power beyond our imagining. It is in us, through us, and all around us – DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?

Well, it’s only a theory, at this point. So there is still more magic to be uncovered.

OUR MAGICAL WORLD - 2

All these cells are made of organized molecules, collections of atoms that operate in that fluid environment that we were born into a couple of billion years ago. The atoms that make up our molecules are no different that the atoms that are all around us in the world. These atoms interact in a simple and predictable way, as chemistry dictates. The result is very complicated, as we can see. Just why is that we can see that?

Oh, the molecules…. They are made of a standard set of atoms, which were made in the giant suns of the early universe, between ten and fifteen billion years ago. We are made of very standard building blocks, found around the Earth and around the universe. Nothing very fancy about that.

Inside our atoms – all atoms, there is mostly empty space – almost ALL empty space, and a collection of things that act sometimes like particles, and sometimes like waves – you could call them wavicles, I suppose. You see, they are particles, only when we try to locate them; the rest of the time they aren’t. They are waves only when we try to measure them; the rest of the time they’re not. When they are particles, they bump into things and bounce; but when they are waves, they go right through things.

In fact, sometimes they don’t actually go through things, but they disappear from our universe on one side of a boundary, and reappear on the other side. This is called tunneling, but some think that the tunnel is through some other universe. This was discovered by a Welsh physicist, Brian Josephson, who earned a Nobel prize along with Leo Esaki of Sony Corporation in 1973.

(In my fourth year of Engineering in about 1967, a friend and I became interested in 'tunnel' diodes, or Esaki diodes, and borrowed a rare one from a graduate research lab to build a simple FM radio tuner on our lab bench. It worked quite well, receiving several local stations, but we were sworn to return it to the lab ASAP. Inside the Esaki diode, the 'magic' that made it work was something called a "Josephson Junction.")

Dr Josephson, by the way, currently researches psychic phenomena, and runs the mind-matter unification project at Cambridge in England as part of his quantum physics research, according to Wikipedia.

OUR MAGICAL WORLD

We tend to think our lives are pretty ordinary, most of the time. We sleep, we wake, we eat, we bathe, we do various other very human and possibly animal acts, and we do most of them unconsciously – that is, we don’t think very deeply into them.

People who think deeply about stuff are few and far between, and we think of them as not too practical. After all, there is money to earn, things to buy, and food to prepare. There are things to clean, and errands to run.

When we do stop and really think about things, we uncover the magical in the everyday.

What makes us think there is something we call God behind all of this? Because when we dig deeply, we run into impenetrable barriers. We run into the magical, and we are left without any explanation, other than some intelligence is at work.

Here’s what we know about what we’re made of. We are, each of us, about 80% water. Not just any water, but water that happens to have just about the same salt and mineral content as seawater. That’s because the cells that travel about in our blood stream had their start, ten billion years ago, in the oceans of the world. We are a collective organism, using dozens of the types of cells that evolved individually as our symbiotic servants. We are the life of the Earth, in its latest effort to reach the pinnacle of aware intelligence.

Our blood cells, several types, roam our arteries and veins independently, each with its own purpose, like otters and beavers in a stream but without any idea where the stream comes from, or where it goes.

Each of our cells contains tiny sub-organisms that roam the cell independently, carrying and converting food to energy, and supporting our master programming, our DNA.

UNIVERSE, FORM AND MIND

All things we can sense and experience, this world that we typically call "real", is the unfoldment of the original energy-stuff of the universe. Everything we are, and everything we can see is the substance of the original 'Big Bang' that was the starting point of the universe.

With telescopes and space probes, we know the universe is expanding outward. Working backward from the outward motion, it is estimated that the material universe began around twenty billion years ago, and was originally smaller than a basketball in size.

This is the story of the creation of what we call FORM, which is to say, of things that can be measured, with beginnings and endings, with the four dimensions of length, width, height, and time, or duration.

Most people believe that Form is only half the story. Behind form is Intelligence, or Mind, which is the organizing principle, making form out of the formless, order out of chaos.

Forms are the stepping stone from unconscious Mind to Consciousness. Mind can only know things as FORM, and mind creates form as It comes to know things. Therefore as God expands Its knowledge of Itself, more forms are created, and energy must flow into the forms that are created. Hence God knows itself as US, and as the entire created universe. As It does so, we are created, and the universe is created.

As Mind evolves, thought evolves, and we observe that the world evolves to keep pace. Creation and Evolution are but two sides of the same coin. Creation does not occur from outside, as we commonly think of it, but as an unfoldment from within.

FACTS, INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM

There is a process by which we humans progress in our handling of intelligence. When you read this, ask yourself where you are operating on the scale of processing the nature of the world through your own intelligence.

We operate from our senses, however many there are. I know there are the usual five, but psychological feeling and intuition can add to those as inputs to our thought process, and imagination may also fit in there somewhere. This already brings us to eight senses, if we choose to see things that way!

These are sources of the elements that we begin to process. We could consider them data, of which some are facts, some are opinions, some are impressions. Do we really know which are which - and is there really a difference? Can we really trust what we think we see, any more than we trust what we emotionally feel? To wonder about these may be the beginning of wisdom!

Facts are of no value in themselves, unless we put them into a framework, or context. Then they become information. If I say "A jeep is heading for a fence", that may be a fact (or not) but it gives you no context. If I say "Your son's Jeep is heading for your fence", suddenly the context makes it information for you.

Now, if you take the latter 'information', and add to it the meanings that you have attached to those things, both what your son means to you, what the Jeep means (e.g., a brand-new, valuable possession) and the fence (which you just rebuilt yesterday) and it becomes critical knowledge to you, especially if you have time to act on it in the moment.

When we can place knowledge into a wider philosophy, that becomes wisdom. Knowing when you should take quick action, and when there is no point, allows a certain level of calm that can be brought to all things in life. The essence of wisdom is to see the connectedness between all things, including between ourselves and the wider universe around us. When our sense of isolation and separation is seen as an illusion of the senses, then we have a new way to interpret and bring meaning to all that we see.

POLITICS, ENTERTAINMENT AND THE PLAY OF ILLUSION

It has been amusing to watch the interplay of political candidates, their handlers and their associates, and the continual parade of pundits that inhabit the cable news talk shows. People apparently make careers out of punditry, which is nothing more than personal opinion, only loosely connected to the facts.

The looping of controversial comments from the distant or not-so-distant past, ad nauseam, by people not directly connected to any campaign, is one way of spicing up the stream of 'non-news' by creating controversy out of next-to-nothing.

When Marshall McLuhan published "Understanding Media", in which he stated "The Medium is the Message", he was a prophet of our times. What we are seeing in these 'fake' controversies and the substitution of pundit opinion for news facts, is the direct result of creating the 500 channel universe, while not really wanting to spend the money to fill it with meaningful programming. It is cheaper to manufacture news than to go out and find it.

Punditry on the 'News' channels is the equivalent of 'reality' shows on entertainment channels. Neither is 'real' at all, but a fabricated pseudo-reality to fill up space.

The late Alphonse Ouimet, once the head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, once wrote that television channels do not try to carry what people want to watch. They carry what people are WILLING to watch, given that it is on. This, it turns out, maximizes the total number of viewers, and thus appeals the most to sponsors. So if you can't find anything you really like on TV, it is because there has been no real effort to please any particular group of viewers - the game is to grip the eyeballs with some sort of adrenaline-causing controversy or dilemma, and then carry it on until it's time for the commercial.

Just remember, almost nothing you see is rooted in reality. When you watch TV, you are looking at a stream of lighted pixels, driven by a box of electronics, and fed by a carefully crafted media machine designed to titillate, to enrage, to amaze or to excite. Your job, presumably, is to stay glued, and behave as any modern adrenaline addict should.

End of rant - now, take a walk outdoors!

FROM "MAXI-MIND" - A BOOK ON CREATIVE THINKING

Most people drift through life without questioning their day-to-day actions or their real wants and desires. Motivated by short-term gratification, they look forward to the next cold beer, eggs and toast in the morning, the baseball game or the football game. Rarely do they ever see themselves placed against the larger canvas of the universe, the world, the human race, or even their local community.

That larger sense of fitting or belonging to a greater picture is left to a precious few. Those who have it share a sense of self-worth, of meaning, which leads them to greater happiness and success in their life.

This larger mental picture is drawn for us by our power of creativity. It is our ability to imagine, to have vision, that helps us put ourselves in that picture. Our role in that big picture gives us our goals for the future, our purpose in life.

Research has shown that eighty-four per cent of people feel that they are under-employed or under-utilised. Thirty per cent of people are less than happy with their relationships. Only FIVE PER CENT of people have written goals for their life.

BUY "MAXI-MIND" ON LULU.COM


An overwhelming majority are just drifting, taking the path of least resistance. These people are easy, vulnerable prey for modern advertising or social pressure - anything that will tell them what they ought to do and who they ought to be. Most of our useful citizens are caught up in this kind of ‘rat-race’, working from school to retirement by putting one foot in front of the other, and conforming to the norm.

In the game of life, as in a race, the winner only leads by a tiny bit of distance--by a footstep, by a 'nose'. That tiny edge may be given by doing just one thing better than the rest, or it may be a dozen, a hundred, small insignificant differences where they do something just a tiny bit better. Those differences can come from keeping our eye on the goal, the target, instead of on short-term 'trivial pursuits'.

HIDDEN WISDOM OF THE BIBLE - 8 (FINAL)

Conclusion

The Bible is a connected series of parables. It seems to be a book of history, it appears to be about the Israelites, but it really is about us. it portrays to us our secret fears, hidden longings, our love, rage, and tears; but it also reveals to us our secret innermost power, that marvelous secret we have each kept from ourselves - which is that we are Spirit at our core. We are God in action in the earth - the physical channel through which Creativity and Love may pour forth into the world!


Here is a symbolic translation of Psalm Number One

They are favored
who reject advice from those out of touch with their Source (Spirit):
who do not accept the viewpoint of those in error: or
who do not look with scom on the failings of others;

But who take delight in the working of Universal Law,
and who keep this law in mind continually.

They shall be abundantly supplied,
shall demonstrate accomplishments regularly;
they shall not lose strength, and their actions will lead to success.

Those not aligned with their Source are unfocused, and lack direction;
so they drift with the prevailing mood.

Those not aligned with their Source will think poorly of themselves,
and feel unworthy in the company of those who think rightly.

For the LAW supports right thinking; and actions of those not aligned
with it shall be self-defeating.

HIDDEN WISDOM OF THE BIBLE - 7

Hidden Biblical Humour

There are even jokes- of sorts- hidden in the Bible. In the Science of Mind magazine, I love to read the colunms by Dr. Rocco Errico. He is a scholar of ancient Aramaic, the original language of most of the Bible. Our King James version is NOT translated from the original Aramaic, but from later Greek translations, for the most part.

Errico translates the story of Jonah and the whale. In most translations, it is given as a FISH, not a whale. Jonah was ordered by God in a dream to go and warn the people of a foreign country that they should change their ways or be destroyed. Of course, on the way he spent three days in the 'fish' before being cast up on their shore.

The Aramaic slang expression for being in a real pickle or dilemma is to be "in a fish" Jonah's dilemma was that he was unknown and had no credibility at all in the country where he was expected to preach and make them change their ways. Maybe he couldn't even speak the language! So, for the entire voyage, he was "in a fish".

The writers of ancient Aramaic told an excellent joke, and it only took us a few thousand years to get the punch line! Are we slow, or what?

Imagine if we wrote a story today about someone in a dilemma, and we wrote that he was in a real pickle. Four thousand years from now, people would be wondering what sorts of cucumbers we were able to grow, and how did we get them pickled! We might even have archaeologists rummaging for giant pickle vats - and of course they would find them - or at least something very large, which would immediately be designated a pickle vat!

HIDDEN WISDOM OF THE BIBLE - 6

The Code Itself-

So what about the code? How does it work?

The ancient Hebrews were an oriental culture, where the NAME of a thing was chosen to reflect and symbolize its nature. This is not entirely unlike the practice in some native North American cultures, which are thought to have had an Asian origin. Thus the personal names and place names in the Bible are selected to reveal the nature of the person, or of the event which happened at a certain place.

Names & Symbols

In many places in the Bible, when an individual had a great change of heart and mind, we see that the name was changed to reflect that.

Abraham's wife Sarai (contentious or quarrelsome), representing the focus of emotional energy onto physical things, became Sarah (princess or noble lady), which refers to the direction of emotional energy to higher things. When this was done, she gave birth to Isaac, meaning joy and laughter, literally, God laughs. In this case the symbolism describes Sarai and Sarah as Abraham's emotional side; partner to his rational identity.

The most famous example was Jacob (the supplanter, or he who lies in wait), who wrestled all night with a strange man (of course representing his outward nature struggling with the inner), and upon being declared the winner, was told to change his name to Israel, meaning ruler with God, or Victor over All.

The most significant symbols used in the Bible are those of water and air, which are used to signify the fluid nature of spirit, which flows through, into and around everything.

In Genesis, it tells us "the waters were separated from the waters." Water, and sometimes air, is the symbol for Spirit, which flows into everything and assumes the shape of Its vessel. Separation of waters from waters describes the formation of our individual identities, as of Spirit dividing itself into portions, thereby creating individual points of view, separate souls. In this symbolic story, Spirit becomes individualized while remaining One.

When the Israelites fled Egypt, which is the symbol for bondage and slavery, they repeatedly complained of thirst, which is to say they became de-spirited. (Lack of water = lack of spirt) They had camped at Rephidim, the place of rest, and the people nagged and complained to Moses. Moses was instructed to take his stick and strike the rock, and water poured out, raisingthe spirits of the people. It doesn't say whether the stick was a rod, the symbol of authority or discipline, or a staff, the symbol of wisdom and learning. But he did strike the rock, which is the symbol of unchanging truth.

This is also why Jesus said of Peter (which is rock - Petra- in Greek) "Upon this rock will I build my church. ". The 'ROCK' symbolized the unchanging, the everlasting truth, the truth that sets us free. Maybe a church somewhere really was built on a rock, but that's not the point.

HIDDEN WISDOM OF THE BIBLE - 5

New Thought teachers:

Many New Thought teachers have unlocked for us the meanings in these great books. These include Thomas Troward, Ernest Holmes, and Jack Addington. Their books should be on your book shelf.

Unlocking the Code:

The 'code' is the similar to what we might use in dream interpretation or in psychoanalysis. The symbols, both objects and events, of a narrative are indicators of what is in the creative mind of the narrator, whether it be dreamer, writer, painter, cartoonist, or subject on the analyst's couch. We dream in parables. We live in parables, as our life experience is an outward symbol of what is in our mind.

Metaphysical schools of thought like ours are based on the symbolic relationship between thought and thing, where the 'things' in our life have flowed into the forms created out of our thought, through the working of an Universal Law of creation. As Ernest Holmes tell us, this is because our individual mind is just the use we are making of a Universal Mind Principle, When we sit on a chair, or pour water, we make individual use of the Universal Principle of Gravitation; When we make coffee or toast we make personal use of an Electrical Principle. And we think with the Universal principle of Thought.

HIDDEN WISDOM OF THE BIBLE - 4

Our role as channels of Universal thought.

As channels of God's Love and Wisdom, it is our function to be better readers of Truth, and writers as well. To do this, we each pursue spiritual growth in our unique way. Each of us adds another viewpoint to the Truth, though it is always the same Truth we encounter.

So how can we be better readers? The pure and contemplative mind is a better channel for high thoughts than the egotistical or overly busy mental attitude. Love purifies the thought process while Fear contaminates it. There is no work, however, that does not bear the stamp of the Creative Power of the universe. In that sense, we can do no wrong- we are always expressing Spirit, since there is nothing else.


The Bible as a symbolic document

The Bible shows evidence of being a book that was deliberately written in symbolism. The clue to this is in the New Testament, where the concept of the parable is introduced, and Jesus speaks a great number of parables, which many of his listeners could not understand. Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." or: "Let those with the tools to interpret this, understand it."


Parables

Thus the New Testament is a key to the Old. It reveals to us that Hebrew thought was oriented to the parable - a story complete in itself, but with a hidden meaning. Such a story, while potentially factual, is not the point. The point is the hidden wisdom which speaks to us about the human Spirit, Mind and Heart. The facts are not the truth.

Jesus talked about a farmer sowing corn. Planting corn is not the point of the story - it's not a lesson in agriculture! Even Biblical fundamentalists know that, yet they can't seem to see that the Old Testament uses selected pieces of history to teach in the same way.

HIDDEN WISDOM OF THE BIBLE - 3

Writing and Reading
are parts of a single act in Consciousness;
The passing of a thought in Mind
over Time & Space

Writing and reading are two sides of the same coin. Taken together, they form a communication between two minds, over both space and time, with both writer and reader contributing to the final understanding of what is read.

When we view people as individual minds, only the writer knew what they meant when they wrote what they wrote. But only the reader can determine the final sense that is gained from reading it. But we know from our study of Religious Science that there are not two individual minds, there is only one Mind, and the great books convey a movement of thought within that Mind, from one part to another. Writing is just another way of planting a thought in Mind.


One thought
with a million viewpoints

A Bible passage, written 3000 years ago, and read by someone today, is such a communication in Mind, transcending time and space. Each reader triggers a different communication, so that one passage results in millions upon millions of transfers of thought across 3000 years of time, and millions of miles in space as the earth goes on its travels. Though there be a single Truth, millions of viewpoints result. And since YOUR spiritual self wrote it years ago, you know at a deep level what it means to you.

In Universal Mind, there is one Consciousness; there is no time or space to form a barrier to understanding; and Writing and Reading are two parts of the same act, the act of passing a thought within Mind itsell There is truly only ONE thought, not many, and if a million thoughts are held in Mind, they are integrated into an expanding Truth. In this way, God contemplates Itself from all points of view.

HIDDEN WISDOM OF THE BIBLE - 2

All writing has symbolic content

Maybe you have heard somebody say, 'Why don't you say what you mean?" But in fact all of us say MORE than we mean, because hidden in our speech and our writing are the contents of our subconscious, influencing our communication without our conscious knowledge.

As someone once said: "Who you are speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you say."

All writings bear the mark of the subconscious thought of the writer. In this way, the inspiration of God influences the heart of every writing, since our innermost subconscious is our link to infinite Mind. Inspirational writings are a direct channeling of the thoughts of Universal Mind, while even ugly and angry writings reflect the authors' reaction and rejection of these same Universal impulses.

The Bible is not the only work that can be interpreted symbolically. The Chinese Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita of India, the works of modem poets, and writers such as Shakespeare, have high levels of symbolic content. They have a meaning that goes far beyond the literal, so that we may read into them vital and important messages which a literal interpretation totally misses. Literalists only get half the message; perhaps less.

HIDDEN WISDOM OF THE BIBLE - 1

Why
symbolic
interpretation?

In New Thought churches, we interpret the Bible symbolically rather than literally. I want to discuss why we do this, and why it is important to know something of the symbolic way of reading the Bible or any of the ancient (or modern) mystical texts.

At the far end of the scale from us are the literalists or fundamentalists, who advocate a strict literal interpretation of the Bible as the only valid guide for living. This approach leads to some problems, for a number of reasons, apart from the personal inflexibility it creates:

First, translations always lose something of the original meaning. This does not inspire confidence in something that I am going to allow to have authority over my life. hi several versions, the Bible contains translations of translations; compunding the chance for misinterpretation and error.

Secondly, a literal interpretation runs smack into reality, in the form of scientific discoveries and obvious facts.

Thirdly, the culture of Biblical times and of the Israelite people is not our culture; their idioms are not our idioms. Russian-bom comedian Yakov Smirnof says that learning English gets very hard when you hear phrases like "The door is ajar” or "Exact change please”. We may have less trouble with, “What's goin' down, bro?” or "He got some bad mojo, man" than we do with biblical phrases from thousands of years ago. They had their own idioms in Biblical times, too, so a literal translation can result in a certain amount of nonsense.

The stories told in the Bible look like a literal history of the Hebrew people, and that's partially what they are. But if that was all they were, this book would not have become the guide to living of hundreds of millions around the globe.

If I wrote my family history, I don't care how good a writer I am, it would not sell billions of copies over a few thousand years, and become the guide to living for hundreds of millions of people. It is the wisdom buried in bible stories which is the real treasure. The stories may be true, but their literal truth is not the point.

Have you read the Celestine Prophecy? Is that a true story? No. Does it matter whether it is or not? No. Because it conveys an ancient wisdom to us in yet another form. It speaks past the mind, straight to the heart.

Great works like the bible do the same. The story matters a lot less than the message.

FINDING FAITH - 7

“But what if I don’t have faith?”, you might say. Of course you don’t have faith - God has faith.

Why is that? because faith is based on knowledge - on certainty. You can’t be certain of anything, except what you know. That’s why you have faith that the sun will come up, that summer will come, that your toaster will make toast, that flipping the switch makes the lights come on - that. Some of you might even have faith that your car will start!

The more you are certain, the more you have faith - but only God has complete faith - that’s because all knowledge is contained in Universal Intelligence. And that’s the knowledge that is deep within you. At your heart, all knowledge lies. Within your feeble outward intelligence, lies the inward source of ALL intelligence.

How do you obtain it? Just ask! As Jesus said, “Ask and you shall receive - knock and the door shall be opened.” If you want faith, ask consciously for faith. Ask for the confidence to KNOW what to do, what to say, how to live.

Think for a minute about the things you have faith in. How did you come by that faith? Why do you believe with certainty that flipping a switch turns on the light? By experience, of course! You have faith because you have seen it done, and you have done it, many times before. Faith in other things comes about by practice, by starting small and then letting your experience grow. But it starts by asking.

Don’t listen to me - ask within yourself - Let that same Christ-mind be in you that was in Jesus, and Buddha, and other great teachers of truth. Follow your own advice - choose your own path - let your own faith carry you. If you only borrow faith, you will borrow someone else’s path too, instead of walking your own.

Start now with small things. Set an intention, and follow through - don't accept drawbacks, and let the completion of your intention be added to your storehouse of confidence - of faith.

FINDING FAITH - 6

Jesus said, “The kingdom is at hand.” His disciples assumed he meant he would return as king soon. They thought of a physical king. But a king is ruler - and you are the ruler of y our life. No matter what happens to you outwardly, you are the one who controls your inner state. The kingdom of God means bringing the consciousness of God into your awareness, so that It rules your life so that It determines your inner state.

And what inner state would that be? What does this Universal Intelligence, this Supreme Mind, have to offer you?

First, the experience of oneness. No longer do you need to feel alone, or unsupported, or ‘out of the loop’. When you have a sense of oneness, you know that you are a part of everything.

Then there is the experience of pure harmony. Within oneness, nothing can be at war
with Itself. “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, as the saying goes. Oneness leads to harmony. You can experience that harmony in your job, in your family, in your community. You can BE it!

There is the experience of abundance. Oneness means that you can tap into the flow of wealth, the flow of success, the flow of opportunity that goes on all around you. You can capture opportunities because you know that they are there for you.

What is the difference between a supremely successful person and one who struggles? It isn’t brains - there are smart poor people everywhere, while folks like Ozzy Osbourne, who are talented but not exactly brilliant, are rolling in money. It isn’t birth - there are a million stories of people who inherited wealth and yet live like paupers. It isn’t luck - we know that about 70% of lottery jackpot winners are poor again within 5 years.

It is thinking! It is belief! It is attitude. It is believing that you are entitled to abundance, that you deserve it, that you attract it to you, and that you are squarely in the flow of it.

There is the experience of pure joy. Joy is the experience of lightness of heart. It is the result of en-theos - God within - from which we get the word “Enthusiasm”. People fly when they take themselves lightly!

That is Heaven on earth. And it is yours, here and now. Yes, the kingdom is at hand. It all begins with faith.

FINDING FAITH - 5

Let’s come back to the questions that we started with. Maybe we do have some answers that will help:

What is God? What isn’t God? God is All There Is. Everything is God is form and in action.

What does God have to do with you? God is the life in you, the intelligence of your bones, your cells. You are that. You are not God - but God is you, and more than you. God is All That Is, and God is certainly all that you are.

What can you do with that? You can become more of what God is, that’s what you can do. This power is in you - it IS you. You can use more of It that you are doing right now. The creative ability in you is your Spirit. The urge you have, the need to build, to grow, to expand your activity - that is God in you calling for a miracle.

Does God speak to us? Yes, in many ways - in our dreams, though the people around us, through the things we notice every day. You have an urge to go somewhere. There, you notice something. You noticed because of an inner program that directed your attention. That was God speaking to you. Someone told you the same thing five times. The fifth time you paid attention, because God in you directed your attention.

Does this God have real personality? Oh, you bet! For one thing God has YOUR personality, and about 5 or 6 billion other personalities - and that’s just the ones currently living. God is infinite personality, all personality, any personality. There is no limit - it is open-ended.

So what can you do? First, stop looking away from yourself. Look at the qualities of God that lie in you, and bring them out to play. Stop waiting for Jesus to come back, and look to develop the Christ that is your fullest potential. Remember, the name of Christ is Em-man-u-el (In man is God). The Christ means the full and total realization of the Spirit of God within you. When the Christ comes down to earth, it means you have taken your Spiritual consciousness, and brought it into your physical life.

Truly, the kingdom is within you.

FINDING FAITH - 4

The Self-Organizing Universe

Science has proven that there is a tendency to self-organization in the universe, through the mathematics known as chaos theory. Nothing can remain random, because the natural perturbations within randomly moving material will always eventually create nonrandom groupings and clumpings of matter. Stars will always form in the hydrogen clouds of the vastness of space. There is a bias for increasing order even when chaos (randomness) is the starting point.

This is the start of evolution. Stars form, and we are formed from stars, in a process that takes a few tens of billions of years. We are star-stuff, all of us. There is an urge, a tendency, a pressure, toward ever greater complexity, toward greater intelligence, in all of us. God is building not from outside of the world, but from within it. The Mind of God is working in each of you, in every instant when you allow It.

When we say we are searching for God, we are claiming that God is not here, but somewhere else. Meanwhile, what we are searching for, we are searching with! We are seeing empty air, using God’s eyeballs! We are standing knee-deep in the river, and dying of thirst.

Remember the Last Supper, where Jesus picked up bread and wine, and said “This is my body, this is my blood.”? This is the man who said “I and the Father are One.”

He could just as well have said, “The whole earth is my body and my blood, I am one with it all. We were formed in the heart of the same star. We came from the big bang that began the universe. I am one with all things.”

FINDING FAITH - 3

Where can we begin to unravel this ‘God’ question?

First we are seeking to explain our own existence, and the existence of others, and the existence of the things we see and touch all around us. We see that these things are complex; they appear to be the work of intelligence - especially us!

At this point the superstitious person makes a leap of faith and says, “There must be some great Power out there that made all this - including me.” Certainly that is one way to interpret what we observe. Religious superstition, as it turns out, often works!

The practical mystic takes a different direction. This person says, “There must be intelligence in the universe - in fact, I know there is, because I know I am intelligent. But since I see signs of this intelligence in everything, everywhere, then this Intelligence must be part of the very fabric of the everything.”

The conclusion is that we are part of a self-organizing universe, in which this Mind, this Intelligence is inherent throughout. In fact, we assume that this Mind is the creator of what we see, because after all creation is a mental act. Creation is not mindless, it is the result of a mental impulse.

There are only two possible conclusions.

One is that there is a Mental Force beyond myself that creates, throughout the universe, which we can call God, or any other name we want.

The other is that I myself am an insane Godling, merely imagining all that I think I see, with the entire universe inside my mind.

If I choose the second conclusion, then I am imagining you right now! Don’t worry, I won’t make you disappear!

FINDING FAITH - 2

I’d to say a word about those who don’t believe in God - and that is this:

The kind of God you don’t believe in doesn’t exist!

The images of God that we usually learn are either: the white-bearded old guy at a table with a big record book, or an angry guy with a staff or pitchfork or some pointy thing, ready to spew forth lightning or some other kind of wrath. There are Hindu gods with umpteen arms and two heads, and whatever else. There are animal-headed gods, animal-footed gods, and fierce monstrous beast gods. And finally, there are people gods, such as Odin and the ever-popular Jesus.

To the serious skeptic, non of these are very convincing. For one thing, none are recent - for another thing, the difference between history and mythology cannot be sorted out. To have faith, we must have more. We must have real knowledge, that comes from our own experience. We must have a commonsense faith.

When we teach the Science of Mind, we let you explore and practice for yourself till you can see the connection between your innermost desires and your experience. We teach practical mysticism - things you can try out. We show you have to build faith by trying it out.

Faith is something that many people have trouble with, because they have encountered situations which have caused them to be untrusting. Mistrust in things and people, all aspects of Creation, may lead us to mistrust the Creator as well. Do you honestly believe that the world, the universe is there for you? Or do you believe in Murphy's Law, that there is a built-in aspect to reality that means it is "gonna getcha"?

FINDING FAITH - 1

What is faith?

Faith is confidence in something you can’t see or touch. It is knowing that something is there, even though you can’t see it.

We live in a world of scientific progress - how is it that we could have faith in an unseen intelligence that can guide us and work for us? Doesn’t that smack of the old world of superstition? Let's examine the issue.

The issue of faith breaks down into several questions:

• The first one is “Is there a God”
• The second one is “If there is a God, does that affect me?”
• And third, “If there is a God, and It affects me in some way, how does It affect me?”
• Finally, “If there’s a God, and It affects me, what should I be doing about it?”

The reason this is an issue faith is that most of us think we have never seen God. Most of us think we have never heard God. We are not sure if there’s anything there, and we don’t know if It affects us anyway. Do we even have an idea of who or what God is?

So what do we do about that? There are several approaches that people take:

• Some of us search high and low for God, and most don’t find anything. There is no office door with a “God” sign on it.
• And some people take the whole issue on faith, and with little or no evidence, we act as if God was there, and try to figure out what that means to us, and what we should do. These are people of blind faith.
• Some people reject the whole issue and refuse to believe in what they can’t see. These are the blind skeptics.
• Some of us ignore the whole issue, and get on with life. These are blind, period!

Which of these approaches is the right one? Would it surprise you if I said I think they are ALL missing the boat?

More next time...

THE COSMOS AND US - 6

So now that we know where we came from, what exactly is out there. Many scientists believe that there must be more like us - like us meaning thinking, aware beings who express their creator as best they can.

The search still goes on and one. The SETI program, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is run out of Berkeley, California. In the words of Eric Idle of Monty Python fame:

"There’d better be intelligent life somewhere out in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger-all down here on earth."

I’m less pessimistic than that. For those who like to bet on a really long shot, the SETI-at-home project uses the screen saver on your computer to process data from the SETI program. You can use the spare time on your computer to run analysis on the data from the giant radio telescope at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, helping the folks at Berkeley look for the LGM’s - Little Green Men. They probably aren’t green, but you can bet they likely won’t look much like us. A million years from now, WE won't likely look much like us!

A Trillion stars in each of Billions of Galaxies - doesn’t it just make you wonder? In the words of the first long-distance telegraph message by Samuel Morse, “What hath God wrought?”


END

THE COSMOS AND US - 5

The materials from a previous Nova explosion form the heavy elements which our planets are made of, while the sun is still composed mostly of hydrogen gas, being turned to helium.

The key materials of our planet are carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and a lot of other things, including metals like iron. Many of these have been formed by complex nuclear cycles in a larger sun than ours, perhaps at the core of our galaxy. We really are made of star-stuff, each of us.

The planets came together the same way the stars did, a bunch of space debris pulled together by its own gravity. Our earth got luckier than most, and came together at the right distance from the sun to keep us alive. The Martians didn’t have that kind of luck, and neither did the Venusians. That’s likely why we can’t find them today.

On our Earth, there is no reason to suppose that life formed any differently than the stars did. There is an intelligence within all things that presses forward to become more and more. That intelligence has evolved into us, and continues to press onward, to greater and greater glory. We cannot be the end.

All human life on Earth has DNA that is identical to 99.99%. We are brothers and sisters, all of us. Recent work shows that all modern people can be traced back to a population of less than two dozen, some 200,000 years ago. This includes all colours and races of humanity.

The Mind within the Universe has brought us up from the ooze of Earth to express itself and be itself. We can have no greater glory than that. We get to express the creative energy of the builder of the stars. We have not merely been brought out of the ooze, but out from the Stars, where it was hot, so that we can be cool.

THE COSMOS AND US - 4

Gravity is a fundamental property of any mass - a pull that it exerts on every other mass by the warping of space-time around itself. It pulls material together till the temperature rises from the increase in pressure, caused by the increasing proximity of material particles. Once temperature reaches a certain point, a nuclear reaction begins, fusing hydrogen into helium - and we have the beginning of a new star. There is an equilibrium reached, where the energy of fusion balances the pull of gravity, so a new sun can stay there for a very long time. Our own sun will last trillions of years, and then we’ll be back to kerosene to keep warm, unless we get some fusion of our own.

As hydrogen is converted to helium, it eventually gets depleted, and the reaction runs down. When the hydrogen runs low, there is no fusion energy to balance the gravity, and the star collapses on itself. What happens get depends on whether the star is large or small compared to our sun. If the star is small, it will flare up in size as a new cycle begins, turning helium into carbon, a mix of fission and fusion.

4.2 times the size of our sun is known as ChandraShekar’s limit. Above this limit, the gravity is large enough that when the hydrogen cycle is over, the collapse will trigger a new nuclear cycle - the carbon cycle. When this cycle is triggered, the star explodes, throwing material out into space. This is called a SUPERNOVA. The explosion disturbs new clouds of gas, triggering the birth of many new suns. More importantly it throws the material into space that planets are made of; leading to the eventual birth of our kind of life.

Note the intelligence to make this happen comes from within the Universe itself - not from outside. The forces and tendencies are built in to the fabric of space and time. No, it’s no accident, neither do we have to look to an outside God. Ours is an inside job. The kingdom is within. Both Galileo and Darwin are vindicated.

There are many billions of Galaxies, each with trillions of stars. Some are dying now, some just forming. Some are going to go Supernova, and seed our Galaxy some more. Some, like our own sun, will grow old and die, and turn into a cold dwarf star one day. This is star evolution, and it matches the evolution of life on Earth. In fact, it is part of the process.

More to follow .....

THE COSMOS AND US - 3

Now, we can’t deal with whatever was before the Big Bang, because there WAS NO BEFORE. Time itself began for us at that point.

Stephen Hawking, in his book ‘A Brief History of Time’ deals with what happened next.

The Bang consisted of pure energy since the particles we know today could not have existed at the temperatures there must have been. But as the expansion took place, the temperature dropped, just as air trapped in a tire or a balloon feels colder when it get out. The expansion causes a cooling. And the particles that make up our atoms were formed as the cooling took place.

Here’s where we get the first inkling that Intelligence is built right in to the fabric of our Universe. From a pinpoint, there is nothing to suggest that the whole Universe shouldn’t just have been filled uniformly up with basic atoms of Hydrogen, with protons and electrons, and the odd neutron here and there. A uniform hydrogen ‘soup’ could not produce us.

There is a very modern branch of mathematics called Chaos Theory. What it shows it that pure chaos or randomness cannot be sustained. The tiniest of perturbations is inevitable, and leads to spontaneous creation of order from chaos. There is a movie called The Butterfly Effect, based on this idea - that a tiny perturbation creates a huge alternation of things over time. The title comes from a saying - that a butterfly flapping its wings sets in motion the stirring of air that starts a tornado.

In the case of our early Universe, hydrogen clumped together into clouds, till the clouds were pulled together by their own gravity, forming suns. The initial disturbance will have been a slight amount of turbulence in the early Big Bang, as energy condensed into the first particles of matter.

The bringing forth of order (non-randomness) out of chaos (randomness) is built right in to the nature of our physical universe. It is part of the Law by which we live.

THE COSMOS AND US - 2

Of course the down side of the fundamentalist view is that if there is no evolution, then we aren’t going to improve any more, either, and we’re stuck with ourselves as we are. That’s not so bad, I guess, but given all that we think is wrong with us, I’d like to think there was some hope that we’d keep getting better. You’d think God wouldn’t give up quite so easily, either! We need a little bit of evolution just to sort us out.

Well, it turns out the two questions are related quite a bit, because where we came from starts with a good look way, way up.

Our story today starts with Hubble. Not the telescope in space, but the guy it was named after. Early in this century, Edwin Hubble, who I believe was at the Yale observatory, noticed that the further a star was away from our galaxy, the faster it was moving away from us.

There was a German named Doppler who first figured out that vibrations from something coming toward us get shifted upward in frequency, and they get shifted downward when the thing moves away from us. Kids notice this - that’s why their model planes and cars all go like this: Neeeerrrrrowwwwww! The only difference was that Doppler did the math, which the kids hate to do.

So Hubble used the Doppler Effect to figure out that the closer you got to the edge of whatever, the faster things were moving away. It seemed that the whole Universe itself was getting bigger. Hubble calculated and charted the distance and speed of a lot of stars. That’s how you get your name on a nearsighted telescope, I guess - but of course NASA has fixed the Hubble so it sees right out to that edge that the real Hubble couldn’t. That’s evolution of a type, in action.

Well, the Hubble expansion meant that the Universe was smaller once, and when you do the math, it turns out that about a dozen billion years ago, the whole thing would have been smaller than a basketball. Sort of a pocket Universe, except there were no pockets. And something caused it to blow out of the pocket and start expanding. Now there’s a mystery. Maybe our Universe came out of another dimension, or maybe we’re the rear end of a black hole in some other universe, who knows?

The expansion process is called the Big Bang. The ‘whatever it was’ that started the Big Bang is that mysterious impulse that bewilders the scientific community. Since it is a mystery, we call it God!

More about that later.

THE COSMOS AND US

Ever since we humans discovered that we could think better than the other animals, we have been thinking a couple of things that has bothered our Western religions:

1) We have been looking up, and wondering what is out there, and
2) We have been wondering where we came from.

The answer to both these questions is in the same spot - the stars. No, I don’t mean the answer is in your horoscope! Those can be fun, but about as helpful as a good cup of tea or another Valium. I mean the actual stars, where the materials that form our bodies were made. But that’s a long story.

Some sciences were just meant to upset the churches. Astronomy is one of them. Ever since Galileo was locked up for saying the earth wasn’t the centre of the Universe, the Catholic church has had to back off and apologize for being wrong. Actually, I’m not sure if they apologized or not, but they said they were wrong, and since it took them over 500 years, I guess it doesn’t matter much. Most of the other churches beat the Catholics to the punch on that one, and Galileo can pretty much start the year 2000 with a clean slate. Too bad he’s dead.

That pretty well sums up the history of people looking up. The more we learned, the more we rubbed up against the dogma of traditional religion, as a class I once took in Bible History showed.

The other question, where we came from, is the other sore point. Darwin took a stab at partially answering that one, and once again, offended the churches, which surprised Darwin, since he thought he was just helping out. In this case, the Catholics beat many other churches to the punch. Last year, they admitted that Darwin was more or less right, only three hundred years later. Who says improvement isn’t possible? But the Fundamentalists, are still holding out, insisting that the whole thing happened in 6 days, which doesn’t leave much time for evolution.

(See my book on www.lulu.com called Creation and Evolution)


More on this to follow......

NEW SERIES OF BLOGS - TO BE DETERMINED!

Time for a new blog series - I think it's time to take a different tack for awhile.

I am thinking of either a series on philosophers or science and how it links to spiritual teaching.

Watch for the results of my pondering!

LIFE AND THE LAW - YOUR PURPOSE

So, your big life Purpose is unclear, you haven’t a clue how to find it, and you don’t know where to start. What do you do?

Well there is something you can do. All of us share one common purpose in Life, and that is to connect with our inner Spirit, and start to reveal the good qualities of Spirit out to the world around us. Our search for true purpose begins there.

The qualities include Love, Peace, Joy, Abundance, Courage. All these are recognized by us as good when we see them in the world around us. All of these are there within us, waiting to be reflected. When you spend some time thinking about these, and searching for them inside and outside of yourself, you will find that your life is transformed, a bit at a time.

As you find yourself changing, you will get new insights about your place in the world. Your purpose will become clear. Some call this being born again, we call it getting to know who you really are. You are that Intelligence passed on from the instant of the Big Bang - a fragment of the Mind of the Universe itself.

I have faith in you. Your path lies bright ahead.

LIFE AND THE LAW - FAITH AND PURPOSE

So how can you have faith in your own life, your purpose?

1) First work on knowing who you are.

There is a new way to look at the world. We are taught to think of matter possibly having spirit in it. Today we know better - Spirit, or Mind, IS the main stuff; and it creates all matter. First Intelligence, then form. First Idea, then form.

2) Know that you are no accident.

There are no accidents. There is a random factor that operates on a small scale. But there is a guided purpose at work on a grand scale that stack the deck, loads the dice, and overcomes randomness.

If this were not so, then evolution would be downward as well as upward, and over billions of years we would have made no progress.

You cannot get a donkey from a pigeon’s egg, and you can’t get a carrot from an acorn. Everything flows out of the potential in the seed. If you trace your origins, back, and back, and far beyond back, you eventually get to the Big Bang that created the Universe. The potential for YOU was there, or you couldn’t be here. We are the children of the Big Bang, and it’s time to remember that.

3) Your purpose will be known if you are open to it.

Twenty years ago, I would never have believed I would be writing this. I know now that my purpose is to learn, and to teach. I will do this by speaking, and by writing.

Know that you have an unfulfilled purpose. So do your children. So do the people that drive you craziest. All those people you just can’t stand - Aall are here for a reason - and all have a chance to find out who they are, and be transformed in the process.

Can you believe that for yourself? Can you respect that for other people?

Finding out is so important, that it should take a fair bit of your time. Can’t you feel something urging you to live more, be more, love more, see more? Abundant Life is what Jesus taught. That means more of everything Good.

LIFE AND THE LAW - FAITH

There are several things we can do to realize our faith.

1) Realize that we already have faith in many things.

We have faith in the sun rising, in science, in doctors, in microwave ovens. For crying out loud, we have faith in Lloyd Robertson, according to the surveys, so why not in God and our own future?

2) Recognize that faith is based on knowledge;

It’s not all blind; our faith in science is based on our knowledge and understanding of Science. You can build faith in God by building and understanding of God; and you can gain faith in yourself by getting to know your true self better as well.

3) Look for the faith OF God.

Understand that only God, the creator of all things, has perfect knowledge; so we are not seeking Faith in God, we are seeking the faith OF God. When we unify our mind with the Creative Power, we also unify with Universal Knowledge. All things that exist are written in the Mind of God, because it is the very fabric of the Universe. That means that at some level WE KNOW.

We think we have an idea how long a cold will last; God, as the Mind of the Universe, knows exactly how long it will last. Faith consists of a certain knowledge of the unseen. That knowledge does not belong to us as individuals; only at the level of inner Spirit do we have this knowledge. This is where we are at one with God.

LIFE AND THE LAW - NO ACCIDENTS

So what if you don’t now what your life purpose is?

What if you’re just too busy to care? What if you don’t get any feeling that you have a mission in life?

Start with the knowing that there are no accidents.

Everything that happens, no matter how bad it looks, contains the seed of something good in it. The Science of Mind is a teaching that shows you how to grab the good out of any situation.

The starting point is to realize that the cosmic pattern is always asserting itself in the background of every situation. It cannot do anything else; it’s nature is to create always; and always move toward greater good.

Our narrow viewpoint blinds us to the cosmic possibilities in each circumstance, until we deliberately move our mind to a point of cosmic awareness. We get to this point through TREATMENT of our Mind.

Our mission is to fully realize the Potential that is there at every step in our life, no matter how it might appear.

But it takes time to reach a Cosmic awareness; some of us might never do that; what do we do in the meantime?

Well, this is where FAITH comes in. Faith is a knowing that things are working for Good, no matter what they look like. It is a feeling of certainty that things are OK. That certainty is hard to get hold of, sometimes.

LIFE AND THE LAW - MEANING

What does it mean to you if your life is not an accident?

• It means that you are here for some reason, and you should find out what that is.

• It also means that your life is a precious thing, and it should not be wasted. It has a great value, even if you cannot see right now what that value is.

• It means that the creative force which drives all things is part of you right now. It is that voice which cries out for order instead of chaos, for life instead of death, for love and faith instead of fear. Ernest Holmes said this in a prayer treatment; “There is but One Life, and that is my life now”

LIFE AND THE LAW - RANDOM BUT NOT BY ACCIDENT

Don’t confuse the random processes found in evolution with the Spirit that guides it. If evolution was totally random, things would evolve downward just as often as upward. This is not generally what we find. We find that an overall trend lies behind things, and this trend is up.

Any knowledge-based system does this. As more knowledge accumulates, the system gets more complex and more sophisticated. In the same way, Life has gotten more complex. We are more complex than the dinosaurs, (even if we’re smaller).

In the same way, as we learn more, our thinking becomes more complex, more sophisticated. In the words of Jesus, “We put away childish things” as we grow.

So your life is not an accident. It’s a gift from a creative principle which determines the very nature of the Universe. This principle lies behind everything from the creation of suns to your toenail.