SHH......IT HAPPENS!

When we adopt a lifestyle of spiritual practice, and begin to move our spiritual understanding from the head to the heart, there are gradual changes that enter our life. The study of the Science of Mind is one such practice, as it opens up an avenue for understanding the Bible at a deeper level, and also introduces a more effective approach to prayer. Combine this with meditation or any other technique for inner mind exploration, and you will find these changes will show themselves.

Co-incidences

One such change is the appearance of coincidences. We call them GMCs or "God-Managed Co-incidences" because things will happen to you that seem entirely beyond random chance. In fact these things are likely around you all the time, but your focus on the materialistic business of living will have blinded you to them. As you sharpen your intuition, these things will become obvious.

Harmony and Flow

Another change is that the flow or harmony of your life will start to improve. Again, much of it will be driven by the changes in your perception, in that you will see the flow of things - but that does not mean there will not be real and effective changes in the harmony of the workplace, the neighbourhood, and within family relationships. People often find that the annoying people in their life, the gossipy neighbour, the whining relative, the needy child, will either change, or else they will no longer pick you as their target. You will have been 'immunized'.

To the point of this story, however, you likely cannot completely eliminate all negative events from your life. If you can, I will want to know your secret. We live in a world in which random events occur and what we do through our practice is to tilt the odds by removing ourselves from the chaos. We change the odds toward the positive through our change in belief.

But, stuff still happens - often when we let our thoughts drift to the negative side, but even when we have done what we can, we still have to live in the world, unless we are so rarified in our thought that we can float to the clouds.

Conscious Response, not Unconscious Reaction

That is when the third major change shows up. When things do not go our way, how do we respond? In fact, do we react rather than respond? Our reaction to the negative event is the greatest change of all. How do we handle a setback, and accident, or even a death (other than our own)? The Science of Mind teaches us to be RESPONSIBLE, that is, ABLE TO RESPOND, not just react. Reaction is the unconscious experience of an event, while responding is the conscious experience of an event.

An Example

The other day I was cutting oak mouldings to trim an archway in our kitchen. To fit it around the cupboard edge, a careful cut had to be made. I followed the age-old advice and measured not once, not twice, but three times before setting my saw. Then I proceeded to cut on the wrong side of the pencil line! Shh........it happens!

The moulding was particularly expensive, and I had prefinished it with several coats of lacquer. There once was a time when this mishap would have been followed by rage, curses, perhaps some foot-stomping. What would all that have accomplished? Nothing, but that would not have stopped me in the past. As it was, we considered whether to buy another piece ($25 for oak) and finish it (about $8.00 for another can of spray lacquer) or whether to patch in a Quarter inch sliver, about two saw blade widths. The latter is what we are doing.

Nothing in this world is perfect. The Bible tells us this. The entire physical world is an approximation, an estimation, of a pure and perfect idea. That's why we can imagine a perfect circle, but no one can make one. Atoms and molecules are lumpy things. But as we approach perfect understanding, though we see "as through a glass, darkly", we make the way as smooth as possible for ourselves, and for all who know us.