Xploring Our Heart Links

New Thought

RELIGIOUS  SCIENCE

 - SPIRITUAL MESSAGES -
(click on title to link)

A Richness of Spirit
A Season for Non-Violence
The Art of Forgiving
Ascension
The Blessings of Truth-Telling
Body, Mind and Soul, The Blessed Triune
Creating Significant Relationships
Dream Catchers
How to be Healed
How to Take Turn-Around Action
In My View
Joy Joy Joy
The Joy of Interdependence
Let's Talk About Money!
Life's Own Fractals
Namaste
New Career, New City, New Century
On Shirley's Passing
Practicing Grace
Relationship Is A Process
Religious Science, What Is It?
Separate the Belief from the Believer
Spirit Speaks
'The Secret' continues...
"TOLERANCE" is a Dirty Word!
True Surrender
What's In A Name?
Work as Sacred Art

Unless where indicated, most of the following articles are written by the minister of the Center for Spiritual Living (formerly Science of Mind Center of Light) church in Coeur d'Alene, ID. For more information, call the church office at (208) 667-0462 or visit www.openinghearts.org.

NOTE: The parent organization, United Church of Religious Science has changed it name to the United Centers for Spiritual Living (9/2006).

- HISTORICAL BACKGROUND -
(click on above to learn more about Religious Science)

A Richness of Spirit

by Rev. Carolyn Holland
Science of Mind Center of Light, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
Copyright © June 2004 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

Traditional faith is dying. More and more people are finding traditional beliefs to have very little relevance in their lives today. Church attendance—except for a few charismatic organizations—has dropped to levels that call into question the viability of traditional organized religions. And what we have left in the void is a poverty of spirit. Like it or not, relevant or not, what the dying faiths offered was fellowship, a company of fellow travelers with whom to share joys and concerns, triumphs and tears. And out of that deep human need for the richness and depth of spiritual companionship, a new faith was being born, a new way of coming together. A way of joyful celebration of our humanness and our divinity, a way that sings of our beauty and magnificence, a way that honors all beings as holy creations.

Episcopal Bishop John S. Spong (Ret.) writes eloquently of his vision of the church of tomorrow in his book, A New Christianity for a New World. He calls it “Ecclesia,” which means “those who have been called out—called out of limitation, out of prejudices, out of brokenness, out of self-centredness, and into life, into love, into being, into wholeness, into a greater awareness of God.” His vision is that the community (so different that it would no longer be called ‘church’) would gather on a regular basis to remember and to celebrate who and what God is, and who and what we are in God, what it means to be a spiritual being having a human experience, and how we can be agents of life; to remember that we are initiated by God and completed by our own efforts.

His goal for such a community would be to express the life of God by loving wastefully, living fully, and being all we were created to be. And to not be the agent for the imposition of its ‘truth’ on anyone else, but to be the agent for the expression of ageless Spiritual wisdom: to step beyond our history into the experience of Life itself with its ever-widening, ever-expanding consciousness, to work for the realm of Spirit in every arena, to enhance the life of all, to expand the love for all, and to encourage the being of all.

I believe humanity has evolved beyond religions that produce more guilt than joy, more pain than hope, and more spiritual poverty than richness. I believe religions that promise a glorious afterlife while supporting a present life of guilt and fear and impoverishment no longer meet today’s spiritual needs. There is a readiness to see Spirit as abundance in all things, a readiness to accept ourselves as Original Blessings to the world, and a readiness to step into our heritage as expressions of Life itself. There is a growing readiness and even longing, to gather in spiritual community with others to expand our awareness and enrich our being.

There are already such centers of spiritual living that exist as beacons of hope in this changing world. As I consider such communities thriving all over the world, my heart fills with a richness of spirit that nothing material can match.

Several years ago, Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, realized that 1998 would mark the 50th memorial anniversary of M.K. Gandhi and the 30th memorial anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He noted that those dates (January 30th and April 4th) could mark a period that would be described as a "season."  That season could be a time to create an awareness of nonviolent principles and practices as a powerful way to heal lives and communities. It would also be a time to honor the dignity and worth of each individual.

There are several ways we can participate in this season as individuals, families and communities. We can pledge to honor ourselves, each other and the environment. We can express our gratitude for all of the gifts we have been given. We can practice forgiveness and demonstrate compassion. And we can always choose peaceful thoughts, words and deeds.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama reminds us that violence begets more violence and violence means suffering. Violence may achieve certain short term goals, but the long term outcome cannot be certain. Since our world is so interconnected and interdependent, we truly recognize the need for world peace.

PEACE IS MORE THAN THE ABSENCE OF WAR. True peace is a sense of tranquility and freedom based on a feeling of security and trust that all our needs are taken care of. When we trust in a Higher Power, by whatever name we use, we can attain a sense of personal peace. World peace begins with each of us. There can be no peace in the world if there is no peace in the individual.

I encourage you to think about the ways violence may show up in your world and how you can change things. I believe that by changing your thinking, you can change your life. If you focus on violence as a solution to your problems, you will attract more violence into your life. On the other hand, if you focus on peace, you will experience more peace in your life. Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

If we live long enough, we will almost assuredly be wounded by someone we love—and we will hurt . . . and hurt . . .  and hurt.

And if we come from a Judeo/Christian background, or a Buddhist, or Baha’i or almost any other spiritual path you can think of, we will be admonished to forgive. But I never did like forgiveness—I didn’t know what it meant. I thought it meant that I had to put on a happy face and tell the person who hurt me, “Oh, that’s all right. It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.”

And then I would have all that left over anger and many hard feelings to manage that I didn’t know what to do with, never mind the hurt I was feeling. So I was really happy to discover a spiritual philosophy that said no forgiveness is ever necessary because nobody can hurt you unless you let them, and since we’re all one, all forgiveness is self-forgiveness anyway.

That approach was okay for a while until it occurred to me that it just wasn’t working any more. For me, it was like the theory of Communism—looks real good on paper but it doesn’t quite cut it when it’s put into practice. Sometimes we need to admit that we’ve been wronged, that we’ve been treated unfairly, and that we didn’t deserve it. Sometimes we need to see things in a new way. Sometimes we need to forgive.

So what is forgiveness, really? Is it really saying to the other person or to ourselves: “Oh, that’s okay. If I didn’t have such a lowly consciousness, I wouldn’t have attracted such gut-wrenching betrayal in the first place. So it’s all my fault that you stabbed me in the back, stole my dog, ran off with my husband, went south with the company money, and forced me into bankruptcy. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa!”

We’ve just absolved the other person from all responsibility and taken all the guilt and shame upon ourselves! What if we DON’T have a lowlife consciousness? What if we have an okay consciousness, or maybe even a better than okay consciousness?

What if, by relieving the other person of their responsibility, we’re denying them an opportunity to evolve spiritually? What if, by not learning the art of forgiveness, the grace of seeing with ‘magic eyes,’ we too, have denied ourselves an opportunity to evolve spiritually?

What is forgiveness? Someone said it was granting the other person safe passage through our minds. Someone else said it was giving up all hope of a better past. Forgiveness is about setting ourselves free from a pain we never deserved. It’s not about the other person. They may never know or care that they’ve been forgiven . . . but we definitely will.

Jesus was teaching about forgiveness and one of the disciples asked how many times should one forgive—maybe . . . 7? And Jesus said, with a dry wit (and I’m paraphrasing here), “If you want numbers, how about 70 x 7?” Jesus knew it wasn’t about numbers or keeping score; it was about results. We forgive until we’re free. Forgiving is the only way to heal the wounds of a past we cannot change and cannot forget.

When we forgive someone for hurting us, we perform spiritual surgery inside our soul. We cut away the wrong that was done so we can see that person with new eyes that can heal us.

You see, choosing forgiveness is a path of spiritual evolution. It’s a gift we give to ourselves, a gift of insight. As we forgive, we gradually come to see the deeper truth about the other person, a truth that our hatred had previously blinded us to. It’s a gift of feeling: we begin to see them with restored humanity and we begin to truly wish them well. We start to FEEL differently toward them. We feel a desire for them to be happy, to be well, to prosper. And most of all, it’s a gift of love we give to ourselves, because love is the power behind forgiveness.

When we forgive, we reverse the flow of seemingly irreversible history—of our own history—of our private painful history. We heal ourselves. We perform a miracle that hardly anyone notices. When we forgive, we come as close as any human being can to the essentially divine act of creation. We create a new beginning out of past pain that never had a right to exist in the first place. We create healing for the future by changing a past that had no possibility in it for anything but sickness and the death of our dreams for a good life.

When we forgive, we see with ‘magic eyes.’ We walk in stride with God and we heal the hurt we never deserve.

We live in two worlds at the same time: the world of Spirit, and the physical world. It's challenging enough to live in one or the other, and to juggle both sometimes seems impossible, because what's true in one world isn't true in the other.

In this age of new/old spiritual thinking, we speak of enlightenment. The elders called it ascension—rising in consciousness—where there is a whole new set of rules. What is true in our three-dimensional consciousness (sickness, poverty, loneliness, war, crime) is totally untrue in fourth-dimensional consciousness.

For some reason or other, we have accepted this rising in consciousness as something so mystical and so mysterious that it has been saved for the high holy ones among us: Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad—maybe Thich Nhat Hanh and His Holiness, the Dali Lama, Mother Theresa, Hildegard of Bingen, and Meister Eckhart.

But the truth is, we are all ascending all the time. Just like a hot air balloon rises higher and higher as more ballast is thrown over the side, we move into new levels of consciousness every time we jettison some of our own ballast (baggage, false beliefs, etc.). And at each level, we take for ourselves whatever is presented for us at that level, and use it back here in this physical reality to create our heaven on earth.

And while thoughts are things, and when we change our thoughts our lives change, creation isn't done through thought, but through consciousness. There is a difference between thought and consciousness. Thought is the precursor of all manifestation and is totally transitory. When we embody (get it in our bones) a higher thought, it leads us into a greater state of consciousness from which new thoughts emanate. Consciousness, on the other hand, is a permanently evolving thing. The moment we ascend to any level of consciousness, an entirely new set of thoughts emanates from that point, just as rays of light emanate from the sun.

What is the highest thought we can embody? That we are all beings of the One God, sons and daughters of God-Goddess-All-That-Is, Godlings, always growing God-ward.

Last year, I gave a series of Sunday Service talks on various blessings. On one particular blessing talk called “The Blessings of Truth-Telling,” someone said I should also include the pitfalls of truth-telling. At first I thought it was funny, then after reflecting upon it, I realized that perhaps it should have a few caveats. So here are three that came to mind:

1. Be aware of speaking your most intimate truth to strangers—they may not want to hear it, and worse yet, they might insist on baring their soul to you!

2. Remember that you can’t un-ring a bell—once spoken, it can’t be taken back, even if you didn’t know you were confessing to a reporter from the local newspaper!

3. “Let sleeping dogs lie”—some things, by their very nature, belong in the closet. Please God, let us know which things those are!

That being said, I believe there are at least three components to truth-telling:

1. Speaking truth that comes from our experiences of life.

2. Speaking spiritual truth that has been given through divine revelation and/or through self-examination.

3. Speaking spiritual truth to ourselves, about ourselves.

And at least five blessings of truth-telling:

1. We show up authentically in our own life—people know who we are, and we know who they are; we’re dealing with authenticity rather than masks.

2. We have meaningful spiritual beliefs that empower our lives—no more mindlessly repeating meaningless rituals or memorizing empty dogma that has lost its “savor,” like the salt example Jesus gave: what good is salt that has lost its flavor? (Remember that 1980’s bumper sticker, “My karma ran over my dogma?”)

3. We remain teachable and thereby green, juicy, and growing, through the reception of the gift of the self of others.

4. Listening and being heard—receiving truth from others (it’s a gift).

5. It heals us.

Ellen was a woman in her mid-forties, dying from something terminal that had shown up in her body. She was a patient at the hospice where I was a Spiritual Care Volunteer. I had just started my shift and when I entered her room, her nurse and her counselor were already there, along with her family. She had become very agitated and they had gathered around her bed, trying to calm her, but she still struggled to get up, all the while repeating with some distress, “But I’m the real Ellen, she’s not!” She kept pointing to a space near the closet door, saying again and again that this other Ellen was an impostor, that she, pointing to herself, was the real Ellen. The nurse held her gently and whispered, “I know you are the real Ellen . . . I can see her in your eyes. I know who you are . . . I know who you are.” After a few moments Ellen settled back on her pillow, content that she had been seen and heard. Her last moments were moments of authenticity.

The immediacy of death often illuminates the way we lived. I don’t know Ellen’s life story, but I do know that her final concern was to be seen for who she really was. Perhaps she had worn a mask all her life, and didn’t want to die having people think that the mask, the impostor in her room, was the “real Ellen.”

Life lessons come from many sources. I learned a profound lesson from Ellen that day. I don’t want an impostor in my room when I die. I want to know and be known in truth. I want to live authentically, and let the chips fall where they may!

Dr. Ernest Holmes wrote, “To awaken oneself (to the Truth) is to be healed, made prosperous, happy and satisfied; to be made every whit whole, to be complete as we were intended to be.”

Truth-telling blesses us. We can design our lives rather than living by default. It all depends on how truthful we are.

Whenever I mention my church, which is quite often since it is so much a part of me, I am asked the same question, "What is the Doctrine of Your Church?" When that happens, I become a mute. Those who know me well, know that is normally not my behavior. As much as I have studied, it seems that I have not perfected the words which answer this question and one other: "Do you believe in the Bible?"

It isn't long after that before they inquire, "Do you believe that Jesus Died for your Sins?" This whole scenario happened to me yesterday morning and as usual I was at a loss for words. It is very hard for a Christian to believe that I can worship God, and not be Born Again. If I don't quote the Scriptures and argue Dogma, I must truly be a heathen, eh? No way!! After I picked myself off the floor, I began to try to answer in a way that would make her understand and control her urge to try to SAVE ME.

I said to her, "I believe In God, the one Spirit, one Mind, one Light and the all Loving nature of God. I believe that God is the creative power of the Universe, and whatever God is I am too. I know this because the Bible says 'And God made Male and Female out of his own image and likeness and Behold, he saw that it was very good.' (Notice how I worked the Bible into the conversation?) I continued to tell her that I am divinely sustained in all that I do and all of my needs are met by this Divine Presence that is in my heart and mind.

I guess that must have impressed her a bit. I say this because I know that many of the people who read this publication think as I do, but they don't know that there is a somewhat organized religion that believes the way they do. We see the medical profession and many others who are coming to realize that the blessed triune can now be called literally Body, Mind & Soul. My Church and others like it have realized that you can't heal the Body without the Soul, and then the Mind definitely comes along for the ride, usually leading the way.

We at our church are acting as a beacon of light to the people in North Idaho and Spokane and though we have only been here since 1995, we are growing in numbers and making a difference. Our dream is that world leaders everywhere will begin to realize that they too are expressions of God and then the Divine Presence in them will inspire them to find the way to make peace.

There’s a story about a group of tourists who were stranded somewhere in the countryside and given some old rations to eat while they waited to be rescued. They threw some to an old dog to see if it was fit to eat, and the dog seemed to be okay, so they ate it. Later they heard that the dog had died, and many of them began to vomit and had dysentery. So a doctor was called in to treat them for food poisoning. He was trying to find out what had happened and when the neighbors told him, he asked what happened to the body of the dog. The neighbor said, “Oh, we buried it in a ditch because it got run over by a car.”

We react not to reality, but to ideas in our heads . . .

In many ways—in MOST ways—we are more alike than not: we share many of the same fears, we want to love and be loved, we want to feel good about who we are, we want our efforts at life to be meaningful, and we want to connect at a deep soul level with others.

Those soul level relationships are important because they call us out of our isolation and societal conditioning. Ram Dass called it our ‘SOMEBODY’ training—that being SOMEBODY was the most important thing one could do, and that we only become SOMEBODY when we have achieved external success which was usually somebody else’s idea of what success was. And so we become fake people, “hollow suits.”

To create significant, meaningful relationships with others, we first have to have an authentic relationship with ourself. One ‘hollow suit’ can only connect with another ‘hollow suit’ at the ‘please pass the salt’ level. If I’m coming from my SOMEBODY training and you’re coming from your SOMEBODY training, we’re both coming from a place of competition and fear. We are continually sizing up the other: are you richer, do you have a bigger car, house, boat? Are you thinner, younger, older, taller, shorter? Are you butcher, baker or candlestick maker? Are you worthy of having a significant relationship with, or not?

The Truth is, all our relationships are significant, whether we recognize it or not. They are significant because they always offer us an opportunity to “come up higher” in consciousness, no matter how elevated we believe we already are. We can either choose to continue the upward spiral or not.

Setting your intention is a good place to start creating significant relationships because intention is transformative! And it’s transformative in a couple of ways: when it works out exactly the way we envisioned, and when it doesn’t. It’s easy to see how it’s transformative when it happens as we intended because we then feel loved and blessed by the Universe. But it’s a little more difficult when it doesn’t.

When we’ve prayed (and intention is a form of prayer) and affirmed and it’s not happening, we are called to look at what has shown up. What seems to be true about intention is that we don’t always get what we pray FOR, but we always get what we pray FROM. So, where is the intention coming from? If we have prayed from a place of unworthiness or lack, then people and conditions that reinforce that place in us keep showing up in our life. And if we have unhealed issues around our own relationship with ourselves, then we cannot possibly stand in the Truth of our own being as a person of God who has the right of inheritance to the Kingdom, and can call God “Abba, Dad, Mom, the Beloved.” If I don’t have an authentic relationship with Who I Really Am, then how in the world can I ever expect to have one with the majesty and beauty and Presence of God in Form that you are?

And if my prayer/intention comes from a place of separation from the capacity to create and have loving, deeply meaningful relationships in my life, then they’re not ever going to show up as long as that sense of separation is the platform on which I’ve built my prayer/intention.

Relationships help heal us into Reality, that place of holiness that knows we are One, by calling us to come up higher in consciousness. Tukaram, a 16th century Indian poet, said it so well:

I could not lie anymore so I started to call my dog “God.”
First he looked confused,
Then he started smiling, then he even danced.
I kept at it…now he doesn’t even bite.
I’m wondering
If this
Might work
On people?

What is your dream? What dream has been stirring inside you for all these years? Maybe now is the time to take that dream out, look at it and take action to bring it into physical existence. There is no time like the present. What are you waiting for? One thing the events of Sept. 11th have shown us is that we need to live fully present in each moment because we never know when our time to leave this earth plane will come.

During the month of October we focused on creating and experiencing our dreams. The first step in doing that is to Engage the Spirit (or whatever name you choose to call that Power greater than you are). With God or Creator as our Silent Partner, nothing is impossible. We have access to all the wisdom, courage, and power in the Universe to make our dreams a reality. Divine Creative Intelligence is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere present).

The next step is to actually Spin the Dream. Dreams are bigger than goals. Goals are usually ego-centered and easily accomplished. Dreams are spirit-centered and are bigger than we are. That is why it is necessary to engage the Spirit to accomplish them. We must also have a clear intention for our dreams, so that Divine Essence will be able to guide us to the right people and right situations that will enable us to experience our dreams.

There will be times when we will need to Endure the Storms that may arise. Again, another reason to engage or connect with Spirit. We also need courage and commitment to manifest our dreams. Courage is not absence of fear, but action in the presence of fear. We can continue to move ahead in times of doubt and uncertainty when we have courage. And if we aren't committed to our dreams, the first time achallenge comes along, we give up. Rather than allowing the challenge to strengthen our resolve, we let it throw us off course and we toss (out) our dreams saying, "I guess it wasn't meant to be." That's just a cop-out because we are unwilling to endure through the storm.

Finally, we need to Share the Dream with others. You may have heard that it takes a village to raise a child; it takes a community to prosper a dream. When we support each other's dreams, our individual dreams are supported. And when we make our dreams about more than just ourselves, we give ourselves room to be more than we are right now.

What is your dream? Is it bigger than you can accomplish alone? Is it a dream that inspires you? Will it bring good to others? When we connect with our Higher Power, we can endure any challenge that comes along on the road to accomplishing our dreams. "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

Norman Vincent Peale recalled this story from a trip he had taken to Hong Kong with his wife and some friends. As they wandered through the shopping district, they came upon a tattoo parlor and stopped to look at all the different kinds of tattoos one could get. Dr. Peale saw one that said “Born to Lose.” He was intrigued by it, went in, spoke to proprietor and asked, “Why in the world would anyone want to get “Born to Lose” permanently tattooed on their body?”

And the proprietor, in broken English, said, “Before ‘born to lose’ on body, born to lose in mind.”

Many spiritual teachings know of this basic belief, and now more and more psychologists are beginning to understand that it is done unto you as you believe.

If my self-talk is that I am a victim and that life is hard, nobody loves me, that everybody is out to get me, and that I can never win at anything, I will attract conditions into my life to prove I am right. And my physical body begins to show it: my shoulders slump, my feet drag, my eyes become downcast, everything sags! And pretty soon, if I don’t change my mind, something really nasty could show up in this house I live in.

What is truly important is that if we create most of our physical dis-eases by holding negative thoughts and attitudes, we can change it, reverse our position in the law of cause and effect, and bring about a healing. Many doctors and other scientists believe that 99 percent of all illnesses begin in the mind, and if they began there, it’s there that we must look for a healing.

In our spiritual philosophy, we have a “formula prayer” that we call “spiritual mind treatment.” Its power lies in our agreement with the Truth of our Being—that God/Goddess/Spirit, or whatever name for First Cause you choose, is all there is, and that everything that was made, was and is created from this God-stuff, including you and me. As Ken Wilber says, it “always already is whole and complete.”

“Treatment is definite spiritual thinking within ourselves,
upon ourselves, about ourselves, to change ourselves.”

It is not an act of petitioning God, or begging, or making bargains. We are not asking God to give us anything, which is the definition of prayer that most of us grew up with, and is another reason we don’t call what we do ‘prayer’ (most of those prayers went unanswered, and many of us lost faith in the power of prayer as we were doing it). Instead, we are healing within ourselves a belief that we are separate from God, from good, from love, from prosperity, from health. It’s a spiritual healing treatment that we give ourselves, a treatment of Truth to heal misperceptions about who and what God is, and who and what we are in God.

I invite you to try an experiment. Every day, for however long you choose, spend time contemplating these two things:

 1. Assume that God is all there is, and tell yourself all the reasons you can think of why you believe this could be so.

 2. Begin to identify yourself, the very essence, the very life of yourself as being one with God’s life.

The healing happens because we have placed ourselves in alignment with the Truth of our Being and we’re working with the natural law of cause and effect.  Remember, it is done unto us as we believe.

Do You Practice OVERWHELM? Ever feel overwhelmed by life? Do you feel victimized by stress, and do you ever hear yourself saying, "poor me" and then begin to whine? Do you ever find yourself paralyzed with indecision? If you do, then you might be "practicing overwhelm." What's a person to do?

When the pressure we are under weighs so heavily that it feels as if it could crush us, we are living in overwhelm. But, if we practice joining our minds with what we know and believe is a Higher Power, a Higher Intelligence, a Higher source of Divine Guidance, then we can lift our thinking to a higher perspective where the paths through those very human experiences become open and wide and full of sweet ease.

So, for just a moment, stop what you are doing—take a deep breath—and let's see if we can let go of overwhelm and move into fully enjoying the good life.

In the book, Psychogenesis, metaphysician Jack Addington wrote: "We all get caught up in the confusion that results from whirling around too fast on that outer rim of life." Fortunately, he gives us calm assurance that there is HOPE. There is something that we can consciously do to get out of overwhelm and into mastery-level living. Addington says, "When that happens in our life, we need to go within, to become still and contemplate that inner peace that is never confused, never in a hurry, never disturbed. It is the truth of our being. It only awaits our recognition of it."

It was the phrase "whirling around too fast on that outer rim of life" that caught my attention. That phrase fell too close to home for me. With our full lives, full schedules, full calendars, and all the other factors that most of us deal with, it immediately reminded me of that whirling, spinning Tea Cup ride at Disneyland. It reminded me of how it feels to live out of control—another way of experiencing overwhelms.

Well, it's time for us to take control. If you are in that whining, whirling, overwhelmed mode, you have three minutes to give it up!

As practicing Truth students, we know that there is no personal history or past experiences that are bigger or more powerful than the Great God that resides within us. We celebrate and embrace the teachings of Jesus, who came to give us a new mindset. He didn't present his lessons that said, "I'm the only one that can do this." He didn't come to give us formulas. He came to give us an example of a new mindset—one that could be a call to turn-around, for after all, repent means "to turn around."

Dr. Ernest Holmes, author of The Science of Mind and the founder of Religious Science, wrote "The same power that had previously kept me in bondage now sets me free." So when we allow overwhelm to become how we live our life, then we can use that as a reminder to choose to experience turn-around events and be set free.

Here are four attitudes or practices we can use to create our own turn-around moments, and to not allow ourselves to hopelessly spin into overwhelm. These actions, attitudes, and practices are found at the heart of all great religious and spiritual disciplines and in the writings of mystics and teachers down through the ages.

1. Develop Spiritual Maturity
Spiritual Maturity is our willingness to completely align with God in everything we do. Being Spiritually Mature is to fully realize that the energy behind everything we do comes from the Divine, and that the energy within every other person comes from the Divine as well. As with all our experiences, we select how we express that energy.

A Turn-Around Affirmation: I make the commitment this day to strengthen my awareness, understanding, and knowledge of God, which is my True Self. The more that I am conscious of Spirit, the more that Spirit fills my consciousness.

2. Practice Spiritual Gratitude
It's easy to feel gratitude when we receive something good; it's easy to feel grateful when we meet the love of our life or we are successful in the world. Spiritual Gratitude is not circumstantial. It rises from a true knowing that God is our Source, in good times and in bad; on rainy days as well as the sunny ones; at all times in the middle of life's challenges.

A Turn-Around Affirmation: Praise God, the Good, from whom all blessings flow into my life. There is an infinite, everlasting outpouring, overflowing radiation of all-inclusive supply of everything for everyone at every moment in time and space. And nothing is ever missing or withheld.

3. Practice Pause Power
To practice Pause Power means that when those overwhelm feelings surface, we can choose to pause—to stop right where we are and to stop whatever we are thinking, to be reminded that before we react, we can pause and make a conscious decision of how to respond. Practicing Pause Power is an instant opportunity to seek God awareness to assist us in bringing forth good.

A Turn-Around Affirmation: I practice pause power and make a conscious decision about how I want to respond, how I want to react, and how I want to reach out. I choose Truth over travail, Love over longing, Dominion over disappointment.

4. Understand True Prayer
Finally, prayer envelops all of the above. With prayer, we are consciously aligning ourselves with Divine Wisdom, Perfect Peace, Love, Forgiveness, and Joy. As we align our thoughts with spirit, we can then trust fully.

A Turn-Around Affirmation: Today, I let my prayers be a communion with my Higher Self, a more glorious self, and I let it be the affirmation of who I am. I am calm. I am peaceful. I am happy. I am whole.

 So, the next time you find yourself whirling around too fast on that outer rim of your daily life experience, take yourself to a higher place in consciousness—a place that is never in a hurry, never disturbed, never overwhelmed. Beloveds, it is the truth of our being, and it only awaits our recognition of it. This is when we personally experience a turn-around moment and that's when we move to a center of peace and sweet ease.

Now, isn't that the way you want to spend these delightful days of summer? God Bless.

I am a liberal. There. I said it. Right here, right now, in North Idaho, I take my stand as a liberal.

I even announced it in church one Sunday morning a few months ago. I thought surely no one would show up the following week, but by golly, there they were! So it seems that our Center is an enclave of liberals in this great state of conservatives. There are a few conservatives in our congregation, which is a good thing, and we not only tolerate one another, but there’s a real love and acceptance—not always of our politics, but always of Who We Really Are.

My being a liberal embraces and is in agreement with Rabbi Michael Lerner who says that we need a spiritual left. People like the Rabbi, former Dominican priest Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, retired Episcopal Bishop John S. Spong, and Sr. Joan Chittister, columnist for “The National Catholic Review,” are all taking stands for more openness and inclusiveness of thinking in traditional religious denominations.

Many of us spiritual liberals left our faith of origin long ago in search of something—anything—to feed that hunger. We formed spiritual support groups, founded churches and centers, drummed, sang, danced, prayed, meditated, and discovered nontraditional denominations that encouraged our spiritual development. The phrase “spiritual but not religious” was coined just for us.

It’s like herding cats to get us to agree on everything, and the likelihood of that happening is nil, but here are some things my spiritually left-leaning friends and I hold dear. Feel free to add your own, to agree, to disagree . . . or not.

   1. We believe in the sovereignty of each being to make her/his own life-choices.

   2. We believe in a Divine, Holy Something (not quite sure What) out of which everything was/is made, including ourselves; therefore, we are all one at that rarefied level.

   3. We believe that no one has a lock on God, goodness, grace or love, including us, and that each has the right to discover Truth for him/herself.

   4. We believe it is done unto us as we believe, and when our beliefs change, so does our life.

   5. We hold loving-kindness and compassion as two of the most important qualities of life.

   6. We value freedom: personal freedom, political freedom, religious/spiritual freedom, freedom of choice.

We are also very good at hiding. It has been said of us that we are the best-kept secret ever! So my question is, how different would it be if each of us—when our friends, family, coworkers, inquire about what we value, what we believe—were willing to enter into discussions—not debates or arguments, not trying to convert one another, nor with an intention to make-right or make-wrong—but with an aim toward understanding and acceptance? It has to begin somewhere, and the ones with the greatest level of willingness on both sides of the aisle are the ones called to begin the conversations.

Joseph Campbell said that the presence of joy is a sure sign of the Presence of God. That being said, those of us on a spiritual path ought to be the most joyful people in the world. YES? YES!

But are we? The great paradox is that we are not. If each of us was really on fire with the joy of God’s Presence, no building, no stadium, no structure on earth would be big enough to contain all the people who might want to gather and celebrate Life! YES? YES!

What if you knew that you could be joyful in spite of your circumstances?

If we knew that everything that happens in our life—positive, negative, good, bad, light, dark—contributes to our spiritual growth and development, and to the richness, depth and meaning we make of our life, can you imagine the unlimited joy we would be?

If we knew that above and beyond all the lies we’ve told ourselves—about who we are and how the world works—is a greater Truth, a greater good than we have ever held as possible, can you imagine the joy we would live with?

If we really knew that we are immortal beings, birthless, deathless, that our earthly existence was only a parenthesis in eternity, can you imagine the joy we would have?!

If we lived even most of the time in the awareness of all this, we would have such joy that it would confound the world! And can you imagine how the world would be watching us if they saw deep, abiding joy within us in spite of the challenges and ‘opportunities for Growth’ that they know we have? Walking a spiritual path isn’t a walk without problems. (I know, I know. It’s not politically correct to call them “problems,“ but I’d like you to get past the issue with the word and hear the essence of the message about joy!) In fact, I think people who have chosen to live a spiritual life have as many problems as anybody else. The difference is not in the amount of these challenges, but in our perspective of them.

When we see Life truly, we have joy in spite of our circumstances. When we see as the world sees, we are often robbed of joy.

Joy comes from knowing that we are, as Ken Wilbur says, “already always” in complete unity with God. When we realize we’re accepted and pre-approved by God, there’s a greater sense of self-worth, and we can know and accept this as true for everyone else.

Joy comes from having hope in the future. And, without hope grounded in faith in the future, there is no joy in the present.

Here are some reasons why I believe we can be joyful in spite of circumstances:

1. Because we know all the power and presence of Life itself is with us. Not some power and some presence, but ALL power and presence. So no matter what you’re going through at this moment, wherever you are, know that the Infinite Love of Pure Spirit is with you.

2. Because we know there is a power for good in the universe greater than we are and we can use it! The power for good is the Law of Attraction, and we can change what we have attracted by making different choices.

3. Because we know that we have within us—always immediately available—an infinite Strength. “The power within me is my perfect strength to meet all life’s opportunities for growth!”

It is my prayer that you discover your joy, the wellspring of the Holy Presence within you, and that your life is blessed!

Human life is about relationships. When we first come into this world we are dependent on our parents or others to take care of us. Then as we mature, we become more and more independent. We can do things for ourselves. And then the time comes when we realize we that when we work together with others, we can accomplish more than we could just working alone. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This interdependence is called synergy.

The same is true on the spiritual path, as well. At first we are dependent on our teachers to instruct us. Then we need to take time on our own for deep reflection, contemplation and meditation. This is the time that is necessary to connect with Higher Divine Intelligence or Spirit. Once we are traveling our own spiritual path and secure in our divinity and unity, we can then reach out to others to help them awaken to the magnificence of their true essence.

The one thing we can always depend on is that we will be divinely guided, guarded, directed and protected. This Divine Essence, God, is our constant companion, through the joyful times as well as the sorrowful times. There is no spot where God is not, regardless of how the presence of Divine intervention may or may not appear in our experiences.

Every major religion has its own version of what has been called The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This sounds so simple, but do we practice it day in and day out? When we are faced with a challenge in our lives, do we look for win/win solutions or are we into pointing fingers and trying to fix the blame on someone or something else? Are we trustworthy? Do we keep our word?

These are questions we can ask ourselves on a daily basis. Not only ask them, but answer them honestly. We cannot expect others to trust us and be truthful to us, if we aren’t trustworthy and honest with them.

The great leader Gandhi once said, “Interdependence is and ought to be as much as an ideal as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.” And as social beings, I believe we are here to love and be loved by each other; to treat each other with compassion and respect.

Is there a place in your life where you can be more understanding? Is there someone you need to forgive? Are you tuned into your Higher Power so that you can weather the storms of life? Are you willing to work interdependently with others to bring about an even higher good in life?

Let’s all work together to bring about more peace, more joy, more love on this planet. As we take care of ourselves, each other and the environment, we can truly bring about peace on earth, good will toward all humanity.

In our minds, we give a lot of bandwidth to money: talking about it, trying to manage it, obsessing over it. Those who don’t have it, want it; those who have it, want more of it. Thoughts of money aren’t very far from our consciousness no matter which side of the line we stand on. So, spiritually speaking, what is this stuff we give so much of our time and attention to, other than paper coupons and metal tokens? (It’s a good thing we’ve moved from a currency of say, chickens or sea shells to barter with; it would be hard to get those chickens out of an ATM!)

Our currency is not even backed up by gold in Fort Knox anymore. And as we saw in the dot-com crash, we can’t depend on the stock market to set its value. We worry not only about our own currency, but about the Japanese yen and Chinese currency, and the Canadian dollar and the Deutsche mark . . . we just worry about money! So it’s time to get clear about money.

Jesus did NOT say that money is the root of all evil; the quotation is, “The LOVE of money is the root of all evil.”

What we know about Life and our place in it is that we are a part of a self-sustaining system, and the Creative Process that causes the Universe to be self-sustaining has to be operative in our affairs and causes our affairs to be self-sustaining. We just have to follow the logic here! You see, Infinite Wisdom is trying to tell us that if we are wise in our use of money, and are receptive to the idea of money, we will always have money. Nothing good is ever withheld from us when we love Who We Really Are, and believe that money is good!

Next, we have to be willing to live in a state of change, a state of financial flexibility, and to meet it without fear. We have to be so convinced that money is a spiritual idea that it just always runs in the background, like the operating system on our computer. And when we notice that our money barometer is low, the program kicks in and reminds us that it’s all a matter of circulation, and if it’s down now, it is also on its way back up.

The third thing is that we have to know we’re worthy of having money and of enjoying it—simply because of who we are and simply because we showed up on this planet and drew breath. And not “just enough” (money). I’m talking about enough to do what you want to do at the instant you want to do it.

So if money—either too much or too little or ‘just enough’—is on your mind and if what you’ve been doing about money isn’t working as well as you’d like, try something different; you can’t lose!

Try redefining your concept of money—that money is God’s idea of financial circulation and is a spiritual activity, and how we handle our money is a spiritual practice. Then we will always have money, because the law of prosperity is based on the perpetual circulation of God’s ideas in the Infinite Mind.

Try this affirmation:

“I recognize that money is God’s idea of circulation in my financial health, and I accept the concept of money as a Divine Idea without limitation.

 I am grateful that I can receive plenty to maintain me in ease and freedom.”

Have a happy, prosperous summer!

Forrest Gump's mother told him that life is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you're going to get.

I think life is more like a fractal than a box of chocolates. A fractal is any pattern that reveals greater complexity as it is enlarged. Thus, fractals graphically portray the notion of 'worlds within worlds.' When fractals are set into motion and perfect balance is achieved, it starts over, just like a screensaver. It's about rhythm and balance and chaos, which is so amazing because that's exactly what happens in our lives—well, in my life anyway. And I know I'm not alone. I've seen it happen in too many lives over the years.

Dr. Ernest Holmes wrote, "Nature will not let us stay in any one place too long. She will let us stay just long enough to gather the experience necessary to the unfolding and advancement of the soul…nature demands the change so that we may advance." And the Buddhist teacher, Lama Surya Das wrote, "We all have a trigger point that invites change into our lives."

Several years ago my life fell apart. Really, deeply, fell apart. It didn't just crumble around the edges, it broke apart in the middle, right in the heart of it, and for about seven years it was the absolute worst period of my life. I found myself in a waking hell, that Dark Night of the Soul—but I didn't know it. At the time, I was the reigning Queen of De'Nial—I had robes and a scepter and everything—and then apparently it reached that trigger point of change and that led me to take a course in journal writing.

An assignment in the journalizing class was to draw, not to use words, but to draw a picture of our current emotional state. "First," I said to myself, "I have to invite it to present itself for me because I have no clue except that it feels like a black, stinky mass in the middle of my soul."

That was a turning point. The fractal that is my life began to find balance again. It started moving more gracefully, more joyfully; it’s changing complexity no longer so paralyzing.

What I've learned is that change never happens until we have the tools to deal with it. (The old-fashioned way of saying that is, "God never gives us more than we can handle." Except that God never gives us illness, poverty, loneliness or any other brokenness. Not that we don't experience those things from time to time, but they come from our own thinking and beliefs, not from God.) Each of us has a resident wisdom that knows when the time for change is and calls it to us. It's not that God, the old white-bearded man in the sky sends it to us. It's the Lord of our being, that Resident Wisdom, our Soul, the Presence of God as US, who has absolute faith in our capabilities and potentialities because he/she/they/them/it knows itself as us, and therefore knows when the time is right for change.

It's when WE don't know that and we run screaming, "Why me?" Or we light up in denial and head for our favorite addiction—food, drugs, alcohol, work, sex, television, or any number of other things, for relief. And the prayer that tears out from our soul is, "Lord, just don't make me look at that grief, pain, suffering, loss, betrayal—nothing good for me can be in that." But see, that's exactly where our good is at the moment. The Sufi poet Rumi wrote, "Don't turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you. And don’t believe for a moment that you're healing yourself."

Have you ever been in a relationship that was just cooking along, everything was great, you were deliriously happy and so was your partner, everything was perfect—and then, for NO REASON, you began to pick fights with each other and it just slid downhill faster than you could catch it and drag it back up again? Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, the relationship teachers and counselors, teach that when we reach the edge of all the good we can accept, this happens—and that it happens to almost every couple they've ever worked with, including themselves. It's that rhythm, balance, and seemingly chaotic fractal activity of life.

It's like changing grades in school. We learned all that first grade could teach us, and then we moved to the second grade, and the next, and the next, and the next. When we’ve learned all that one stage of consciousness can teach us, we have to move on. We've had the tools to deal with it as each grade became more and more challenging, thanks to what we've learned the year before, and the year before that.

So, I invite you, if you're facing a hill that seems too big to climb, call on the Lord of your Being, your God-self, to show you how to re-establish wholeness and balance in your life.

You may be amazed at what God can do.

In a story written by Henry Van Dyke called “The Other Wise Man,” he tells of a fourth wise man, a Zoroastrian astrologer and physician named Artaban, who planned to join his colleagues on a journey to pay homage to the Messiah whose birth was foretold by the stars.

But Artaban kept missing them, sidetracked again and again by the pressing needs of those who crossed his path, until at last, thirty-three years later, old, tired, and his fortune spent in the service of others, he found himself in Jerusalem at Passover, being swept along the street in a tide of people.

People were excited about a crucifixion that was taking place. The earth started to rumble and shake, and a heavy tile fell off a building and struck Artaban on the head, severely wounding him.

“He lay breathless and pale, with his gray head resting on the young girl’s shoulder, and the blood trickling from the wound. Then the old man’s lips began to move, as if in answer, and he seemed to say, “Not so, my Lord! For when saw I thee an hungered and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw I thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? When saw I thee sick or in prison, and came unto thee? Three-and-thirty years have I looked for thee; but I have never seen thy face, nor ministered to thee, my King.”

He ceased, and the sweet voice came again. And again the maid heard it, very faint and far away. But now it seemed as though she understood the words:

“Verily I say unto thee, Inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, thou hast done it unto me.”

Every Christmas I read this story and every year it reveals to me a deeper truth. This year it’s telling me to look at the boundaries I have drawn: Do they still serve me? Did they ever serve any purpose other than to separate? “Everything in this circle is either me or mine, and what’s outside of it doesn’t concern me.” It seems easier to draw circles that exclude than include. After all, those people over there, wherever ‘there’ is, are different. They don’t look like me. They talk differently. They live differently. Why should I care about them? They probably don’t give a fig about me. Circles of exclusion. Boundaries drawn, battle lines defined. Ken Wilber wrote that the more solid the boundary, the fiercer the battle to defend it.

What would it be like if we, Americans, Afghanis, Iraqis, Africans, Indians, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, Democrat, Republican—all of us—erased all the boundary/battle lines we have inherited/drawn/strengthened, and lived from the deepest level of love and acceptance? Not tolerance, mind you—we tolerate gum stuck to the bottom of our shoe, but true acceptance of one another? I suspect life on this planet might be more peaceful. I suspect we would teach our children through our words and deeds the deeper truth, that at the absolute level of Being there is no us and them, no boundaries of separation, just beautiful, magnificent expressions of the One.

So, this Christmas season as we exchange gifts and serve one another, may our greatest gift be our greeting:

“Namasté. . . the Christ in me greets the Christ in you.”

Can a woman from Colorado find happiness in Idaho? The answer is yes, if that woman is starting a new career in a new city in a new century. Let me introduce myself for I am that woman. My name is Sheryl Rogers and the Science of Mind Center of Light in Coeur d'Alene is my first church. It was very fitting for me to start this new position on January 1 at the start of the new millennium with all that new beginnings imply.

My call to the Center of Light actually began in July 1994 when I was passing through Coeur d'Alene from Montana on my way to Moscow to visit a minister friend of mine. I fell in love with the area and wondered at that time what it would be like to live here. And now I know. What a beautiful expression of God's bounty you have in Northern Idaho!

It was shortly after that trip that I decided to enter Ernest Holmes College to begin my ministerial studies. The three years passed quickly and I was anxious to get started, but I knew Spirit would guide me to just the right place at the right time. It took two years of learning patience and divine timing before I would realize my dream of raising the consciousness of those around me through the teachings of the Science of Mind.

Religious Science churches teach Science of Mind philosophy that can best be described as a transdenominational incorporation of the laws of science, the opinions of philosophy and the revelations of religion. It was founded by Ernest Holmes in the 1930's in Los Angeles and has grown to over 200 churches and teaching centers worldwide today.

There are two basic principles on which the teaching is based: 1) God is all there is and 2) thoughts are creative. We believe that God is the Source of all Life, Love, Beauty, Joy, Peace, Abundance, Light, Wisdom. And since we are made in the image and likeness of God, we have access to all those same qualities in our lives.

The way we bring those things into our lives is through our thought processes. As Jesus, the great teacher said, "It is done unto you as you believe." We co-create with God or Spirit or Divine Creative Intelligence (whatever term you want to use for that power greater than we are) our lives through what we call the Creative Process. Just like a farmer who plants a tomato seed in the soil and reaps a tomato plant, we reap the seeds we have sown in the creative Universal Mind of God. If we don't like what we are reaping (experiencing) we can sow new seeds (thoughts, beliefs) and change our outcome. Change your thinking, change your life!

For example, if I want to bring more love into my life, I need to be more loving to all those around me. Like attracts like. And "what goes around, comes around."  The Universe acts as a great mirror, reflecting back to us the beliefs we pour into It. If we don't like the life we are creating for ourselves, we can change it by changing our belief systems.

We are not only a teaching church (we have several levels of classes where you can study the principles in depth), but we are a practicing church. Spiritual Mind Treatment, our name for affirmative prayer, is based on the teachings of Jesus. When prayer is combined with faith, lives are transformed. As Ernest Holmes, our founder, said, "I would rather see a student of this Science prove its Principle than to have him repeat all the words of wisdom that have ever been uttered. It is far easier to teach the Truth than it is to practice It."

Starting in June we will be facilitating a Master Mind group. This is a group of people who meet together in an atmosphere of trust for the purpose of supporting, affirming, and believing for each other. When we surrender to the Master Mind of God, any problems or challenges are resolved  in  amazing  ways.  "For  where  two  or  three  are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them." (Matthew 18:20)

The Science of Mind philosophy teaches that Divine Spirit is the ultimate truth of all being, and that by drawing upon that Power and using it intelligently, we can enjoy meaningful, prosperous, and fulfilling lives.

My friend Shirley died shortly after 5:00 p.m., January 25, 2004, from cancer. I received an e-mail from her husband Dave, about 3:00 p.m.—sent to their circle of friends and family, telling us how the hospice team had to visit early in the morning to help her through a deeper level of pain—then his e-mail about 7:00, that said: “It is with a broken heart that I must inform you that Shirley passed away just after 5:00 p.m. …”

Though I am saddened that I shall never see her in the flesh in this life again, never hear her sing, never have coffee with her or share a secret, I am excited for her new adventure. She now knows something I have long since forgotten, and likely won’t know again until I step through that thin veil that separates us from the next life. Though not eager to join her, I must admit a little envy, and a major curiosity, about what she’s experiencing now!

Shirley would have wanted her life to have meant something (and as I reach deeply into our friendship over the years), to not only celebrate it but to find meaning.

She could sing! Lord, how she could sing! She wasn’t very big physically, about 5’4”, maybe 110 pounds soaking wet, but the voice that came out of that body was extraordinary!  When she arrived for coffee one morning, she had a cassette tape and said she’d like me to listen to something. On the tape, a woman sang “New York, New York”—really belted it out. It didn’t dawn on me until nearly the end of the song that it was Shirley, this petite, soft-voiced woman, who was singing. I was blown away! She shyly asked, “Do you really think it’s good?”

The first time Shirley sang at church, I noticed her overwhelming fear. She was shaking so badly her clothes were trembling. Sitting next to her, just before she rose to sing, was like sitting next to a poorly tuned motor that was running. But as she sang, the fear disappeared and the music carried her. And it happened every time!

Somewhere along the way though, she had lost confidence in herself and fear had taken over, a fear that kept her from music for many years. It occurred to me today, at a much deeper level, that we’re like that, you know. We pick up a lie, or many lies, about ourselves and we take those lies and build a prison for ourselves out of it; then (we) voluntarily walk in and lock the door behind us. And so many times we let our talents, our gifts, our love, languish and die behind those prison walls. Or, we step out just a little, just enough to get that longing-for-self-expression monkey off our backs for a moment, then quickly retreat behind the walls of what we believe to be the safety of our prison home.

God knows, we don’t want to LIVE OUT LOUD! What on earth would people think if we had the audacity to pull out all the stops and LIVE OUT LOUD? What if we were criticized, judged and found wanting? What if they laughed at us? What if we made a mistake? What if we tried and failed? What if I really am unworthy, or unqualified, or too this, or not enough that?

I’m asking myself this morning, “How would my life be different if tomorrow morning I awoke without any of the baggage I’ve carried for so long? What would be different for me if I reached into my treasured bag o’ lies and found that I couldn’t grasp even one that I had used to define myself, that each slipped through my fingers?” For one thing, I would know that since the lies have no reality, no substance, then Who I Really Am must be in the bag marked “Truth,” that I, we, are “created to be a companion of the Infinite,” that I, we, are “the outcome of the desire of Spirit to make something which expresses the same life that It feels Itself to be – Beauty, Form, Color, Life, Love and Power…because the Spirit wants to enjoy Itself.” (Creative Mind, Ernest Holmes)

I would know the prison-house I built so carefully is also not real—it’s all smoke and mirrors, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I would run into the field and find Hafiz and dance with the Moon, kiss the Sun, and be drunk with the Wine of the Beloved! I would LIVE OUT LOUD, joyously and lovingly stand in my Truth, and let life’s chips fall where they may. I would know that Spirit has given us the blueprint…just take a look at the no-holds-barred creation that constantly is taking place in the Universe. Those spectacular, awe-inspiring Hubble telescope pictures from deep space tell us there is nothing shy or retiring about how God shows up in and as creation. Spirit is telling us, giving us permission to strut our stuff, to live out loud, to fill our lives with Beauty, Form, Color, Life, Love and Power!

Thank you, dear Shirley, for living out loud, for sharing your life, your gifts and your love.

And now, excuse me, please. I hear the Beloved calling to “Come. Dance with Me.”

In honor of my friend, Shirley Mason.

“Grace” is one of those interesting concepts that is so difficult to define. But very simply put, GRACE is lagniappe—a French word that means ‘a little something extra.’

Grace is about receiving—not earning, not being good enough, not finally being perfect enough to deserve it— just simply receiving it. Grace is a gift of the Creator. We can’t control it and we don’t have to reach some vague state of goodness to deserve it; it comes at the initiative of Spirit.

Grace confounds certain very natural human tendencies. I want to believe I am in control, and I want to believe there are certain things I can do to make sure I get all the goodies I possibly can! Most of us expect the gifts of the Spirit to be given out according to our need, or our petitions, our prayers, our acts of compassion and love. But grace does not work that way. It’s about receiving. It teaches us to let go and let God. We are not in charge of it, and we don’t have to be. We just need to stay open to receiving the sacred.

So if it’s out of our hands, if it comes unbidden, how can we enter into it as a spiritual practice? By living in the moment, and recognizing it when it takes you by surprise.

Grace is the freebies: when something good happens unexpectedly, when some kind of reward comes to you without you having to work for it, when an opportunity presents itself and your first reaction is that you don’t deserve it, when the right person shows up at the right time, or just the perfect information comes to you that seems like a gift. That’s Grace or sometimes called “synchronicities”.

Grace is a bit of beauty stumbled across on a morning walk: a cloud formation, a bright flower face tucked away near a rock, or a sudden glimpse of light through forest shadows that takes your breath away. Grace is a piece of music heard through an open door that stops you for a moment; it’s the look of recognition and acceptance in a stranger’s eyes.

The spiritual practice is to be aware of those times, acknowledging them as the activity of Grace, and being thankful for being held so closely in the heart of God.

Practicing grace is walking in receptivity of the everyday sacred. The Sufi poet Rumi wrote:

“That which God said to the rose,
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,
He said to my heart,
and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”

May you walk in Grace, my friends, and hear what God is saying to your heart.

During the month of February at the Center of Light, we focused on relationships – relationships to God, to self, to others, and to money. Regardless of what kind of relationship we are talking about, relationship is a process that demands careful, conscious and continuous attention. We can't just establish a relationship and forget it – it requires constant nurturing if it is to thrive, let alone, survive.

Our relationships also serve as mirrors for us: we know that what we distribute in the Universe by way of thoughts, words and deeds are reflected back to us. If we are loving in our relationships, we will receive love in return. Conversely, if we are disparaging in our relationships, that is what we will experience in return.

The spiritual journey, like most relationships, is never a straight line. All relationships have their ups and downs. There are times we may feel closer to Spirit than at other times. But we must recognize that Divine Intelligence is always with us and only wants the highest and the best for us.

The secret is not in the learning, but in the remembering, of this great truth. We all have this awareness at the soul level. Our task is to bring it into conscious awareness so we can find comfort in the spiritual truth that "God and I are one."

Ernest Holmes, the founder of Religious Science tells us in the Science of Mind textbook, "The only God man knows is the God of his own Inner Life, he can know no other. To assume that man can know a God outside himself is to assume that he can know something of which he cannot be conscious."

God, or Infinite Being, is difficult to explain in words: It must be experienced. To describe the indescribable would be to bring It down to a human concept. And yet, that Indwelling Presence, as infinite as It is, is still personal to us. Our daily spiritual practices of meditation, prayer and contemplation are how we commune with our Higher Power.

Let us take time each day to establish and nurture a relationship with God. It is in the stillness that God speaks to us. Do we take time to listen? Or are we busy doing, rather than being? Are we human doings or human beings? In Neale Donald Walsch's Communion with God, we are told, "There is nothing you have to do, but be. There is nothing you have to be, but One."

A friend said, "I think there's a church that believes the way we do."What a discovery! A church that teaches what I always believed was true but didn't think anyone else did, not to be confused with Christian Science (some similar roots) or Scientology (no similarity). Religious Science, teaching the Science of Mind founded by Ernest Holmes, a mystic and genius who never intended to found a church but simply to teach Truth. He researched all the world's great religions and the resulting composite is the Science of Mind. It's about the Mind/Body/Spirit connection. The textbook is based on the Bible.

There is a power for good in the universe and you can use it. It created us and everything—out of itself—which is love. It's called God and many other names. It is not exclusive to one religion or one culture or one way of believing. It is all inclusive and embraces everyone - Christians, Jews, Hindus, Moslems, Native Americans, etc. The underlying Truth of all religions is God, not a person like a superbeing, watching us just waiting for us to do something wrong, but a living presence, an Energy, an Essence, a magnificent Power, a Universal Being (verb) who loves us. We are each responsible for ourselves and our lives are the result of choices we make. God does not do things to us but through us. There is only one power and it depends on how we use it as to what we experience. If we don't like what we are experiencing we can change it by making a different choice.

There are Spiritual Principles that govern the spiritual universe just as there are physical laws that govern our physical world. They work the same for everyone with no exceptions. Every thought we've ever had, backed by a feeling, is stored in the subconscious and affects our life today. We can change this by using positive prayer which we call "spiritual mind treatment," knowing the truth and stating it as if it were already so; accepting our good, knowing that God knows our every need, knowing that we never get a question without the answer, a problem without the solution. It's about believing we are worthy of God's gifts. It truly is "done unto us as we believe." We believe we are spiritual beings here to have a human experience.

From "What We Believe" by Ernest Holmes:

"...We believe in the incarnation of the Spirit in everyone and that all people are incarnations of the One Spirit. We believe in the eternality, the immortality, and the continuity of the individual soul, forever and ever expanding. We believe that Heaven is within us and that we experience it to the degree that we become conscious of it...We believe in the unity of all life, and that the highest God and the innermost God is one God. We believe that God is personal to all who feel this indwelling Presence. We believe in the direct revelation of Truth through the intuitive and spiritual nature of the individual, and that any person may become a revealer of Truth who lives in close contact with the indwelling God. We believe that the Universal Spirit, which is God, operates through a Universal Mind, which is the Law of God; and that we are surrounded by this Creative Mind which receives the direct impress of our thought and acts upon it. We believe in the healing of the sick through the power of this Mind. We believe in the control of conditions through the power of this Mind....We believe in our own soul, our own spirit, and our own destiny; for we understand that the life of all is God."

If you resonate to the teachings of people like Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Neale Walsch, Louise Hay, Bernie Siegel; if you are looking for a non-traditional church that respects your unique spiritual path, are willing to take responsibility for your life, want to rewrite your life-script and create your own possibilities; if you believe in dealing with Reality, perhaps we are what you are seeking.

Say to yourself right now, "The Spirit within me is whole; The Spirit within me is Perfect; The Spirit within me is complete."

Even though Spirit is invisible, I want you to see beyond forms and facts and realize who you really are. You are not just the physical form itself, you are the divine idea of God made manifest. Therefore, the invisible becomes visible through you and you are the visible manifestation of God and Divine Spirit. God is Divine-Giving.

Spirit gave us Free Will, and you have to know that you don't have to feel the way you feel when you are unhappy. The choice is yours, whether you want to live in misery, poverty, pain and hell, or peacefully, healthy, prosperous and living in Joy.

When you separate the belief from the believer, the solution appears and the answer comes through. Sometimes old beliefs are immersed within your subconscious mind. In these cases, you must release the old beliefs. Don't hold on to them if you want to be free from a life of guilt, doubt, and misery. When you release the old beliefs from your subconscious mind and refuse to live and feel that way any longer, these beliefs will disappear.

There will always be people in life that will rub you the wrong way, but if you have the deep conviction that life is an adventure and you know that you have the power to handle the situation no matter what it is and to everyone's satisfaction, you will find the perfect solution to any problem.

If, however, you believe that poverty is yours, the Universe will continue to make you poor. If you believe pain honors God, the Universe will continue to let you have pain. Ask yourself what beliefs do I have that is destructive, whether it is past or present, or what memory and feelings are still hurting me. Make the decision today to release them and do what you have to do to make sure they go away. And the Law of the Universe will honor that.

Spirit speaks to us in many ways: through others, through coincidence and through that still, small inner voice of wisdom. When we think about God speaking to us through others, we usually think of angels. Throughout history angels have been viewed as God's messengers. In the Old Testament three angels/men appeared to Abraham foretelling of the birth of Isaac, even though his wife, Sarah, was 90 years old. There was also the angel who appeared to Zechariah in the temple foretelling the birth of John the Baptist and the angel who appeared to Mary speaking about the birth of the great Master Teacher, Jesus.

We all have guardian angels, whether we recognize them as such or not. We all have within us that still small voice of wisdom that we may label intuition, inspiration, insight or conscience. When we listen to that voice, which can appear as a "gut"  feeling, it's the same thing as having a guardian angel on our shoulder, whispering in our ear. When we are grateful and respectful of the angels, we will be able to hear them clearly.

Angels are not limited to disembodied cherubs with wings that hover around us. God's messengers can also appeared to us in the form of what we would label ordinary human beings. We never know who might be an "angel in disguise." We've all heard stories, and maybe even been the recipient in one, of times when a stranger seemed to come out of nowhere to rescue someone in a storm or find a missing child. These are times when it is evident that angels are among us.

Then there are times when people don't appear to be angels at all, but more like enemies. Many times our greatest "enemies" are our greatest teachers/angels. We have attracted them into our lives to bring us the gift of a life lesson for our soul to grow and expand in consciousness.

We also attract into our lives, those situations and circumstances that will help us to experience even more out of life. Many times these seem to be by luck or chance or coincidence. There is no such thing as coincidence. Nothing happens by accident or chance. God doesn't make mistakes. Deepak Chopra in his book "How to Know God" calls coincidences "angels without wings." He goes on to say, "Synchronicity is built into us at the genetic level, but our conscious mind chooses to ignore this fact."

Some people say coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous or in the background. This makes sense to me. I suggest we live in expectancy that each person we meet is an angel and that every experience will hold a gift for us. The more we are in tune with our highest self, our Higher Power, with Spirit, the more we end up in the right place at the right time enjoying the exquisite flow of life.

Have you seen the movie, The Secret* by Australian filmmaker Rhonda Byrnes? It’s been on Oprah and on many of the television talk shows like Larry King and The View, and you can find clips of it on YouTube.com, MySpace.com and hundreds of other places on the Internet. It truly has been a marketing phenomenon.

The message of The Secret is that we can be, do, or have whatever we keep before us in consciousness. And all we have to do is create a ‘vision board’ with pictures of whatever it is we want, do our affirmations, and keep a gratitude journal, and voila! There it is! Sounds so simple! But is it, really?

That said, it does give voice to the Law of Attraction—an ancient teaching originally (supposedly) from Hermes Trismegistus—whereby “energy follows thought, activity results from attention, and the nature of the activity corresponds to the nature of the thought,” or in other words, what we think about, comes about. But is that all of the teaching? No. There’s more. Thoughts without emotion—those that just flit through our minds and don’t have much of an emotional charge—don’t do much in the creation department. It’s those thoughts we have held for so long that they have become a belief that really count. It’s the ones we hold with a strong emotional charge that appear at our door, such as love, or hate, fear, denial. In Scripture, didn’t Job say, while sitting in the ash heap lamenting the loss of his family and his riches, “the thing I feared most has come upon me”?

It happened because he poured megatons of fear into his prayers to keep his family safe, and the fear-energy called that very thing to him. He blamed God for the boils that covered his body and for the bandits that swept down from the hills and killed his family and stole their livestock, as punishment for his, Job’s, sins. But it wasn’t God’s doing. It was the Law of Attraction in action, and it works today just as it did in Job’s time.

We are vibratory beings; all life of any sort is pure energy at its core. You, me, rocks, trees, puppies—we all vibrate uniquely according to who and what we are. And we are vibratory magnets. We attract to us the essence of the energy that radiates from us: love, peace, and prosperity if those are the dominate thoughts and feelings we hold, and at the other end, anger, hatred, illness, poverty, loneliness.

The real ‘secret’ behind The Secret is that God, Goddess, All-That-Is, Source Energy, First Cause, Creator, Hey You—whatever one chooses to call Ultimate Reality, is the true essence of who we really are. We can never be separated from that, and when our physical-being energy comes into alignment with our Essence-energy, our lives become almost magical. We begin to lead what others might call a charmed life—doors open, love happens, prosperity appears. In The Secret, The Reverend Dr. Michael Beckwith says, “You can start with nothing, and out of nothing and no way, a way will be made.” We create our lives either by default or design. Whichever way we choose, the Universe always says Yes!

*www.TheSecret.tv

These days, you can't escape the word "tolerance" anywhere in the media.

After forty years of legislation to end racial discrimination, Congress insists that "tolerance" is the key. In the aftermath of September 11th, many political leaders are calling on us to practice "tolerance." After the Matthew Shepherd gay-bashing incident, Clinton called for more "tolerance." Many cities throughout the country have a Museum of Tolerance or a Wall of Tolerance. And many corporations conduct "tolerance classes" and "sensitivity training" as part of their diversity programs.

But think about it …

Would you want to be merely tolerated? Would you want others to be sensitive to you?

Wouldn't you rather be embraced, regardless of your race, creed, sexual orientation, or social status? Wouldn't you rather that others not be sensitive to you, but instead be completely understanding and accepting?

Imagine a world in which others cherish your uniqueness and at the same time, see their own humanity in you!

Such a w