Xploring Our Heart Links

New Thought

 - SPIRITUAL MESSAGES -
(click on title to link)

A Jewish Wedding
A New Forgiveness
Accepting the ISness
Altitude and Air Speed
America the Soulful
Are You A Christian?
Being Above It All
Break Through to Pure Awareness
Certainty and Mystery
Compassion is "Springing" Forth
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani
Enemies or Partners?
Exploring Our Sexual Prejudice
Falling, We Are Given Wings
Freedom and Consciousness
It's the Gospel
Marriage and Commitment
Practicing the Presence
Prosperity Takes Many Forms
Questioning the Matrix
RAISING Our City-Consciousness
That Our JOY May Be Full
The Beginnings of World Peace
The Gifts of Ministry
The Yoga of Life
WANTED: Traveling Companion!

Unless where indicated, most of the following articles are written by Clare Austen, Senior Minister at Unity Church of Truth in Spokane, WA. Clare is a native of Camas, Washington and has returned to the Northwest after 16 years in Missouri. She brings to Spokane her passion for justice and diversity, her concern for the environment and her mission to invite all people, regardless of their faith tradition, into a deeper, more personal relationship with the Divine Spirit. To send for the church's newsletter, "Discoveries", please call (509) 838-6518 or visit their website: www.unityspokane.org.

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

A Jewish Wedding

by Rev. Diedre Ashmore
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © March 2001 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

Recently, I had the pleasure and the privilege to co-preside over a Unity/Jewish wedding with a rabbi. The wedding was beautiful. It was complete with a chupah, the Hebrew word for canopy, under which the couple said their vows. The reason it felt like such a privilege is that there are not many rabbis who will conduct an interfaith wedding ceremony. This Rabbi, Theodore Steinman was from Kent, Washington. He was most gracious and kind to me. The reason the ceremony was such a pleasure is because of the graciousness, openness and love of this couple and their families. At the risk of sounding ignorant to those knowledgeable in Jewish customs, I would like to share my experience of the wedding. Please forgive me if I offend anyone. It is not my intention.

The procession was comprised of two lines of people, the males on the left and the women on the right, led by the Rabbi and I. Behind us were the grandparents, next came the groom with his mother, then the mother of the bride and father of the groom, then the attendants, the ring bearer, flower girl, followed by the bride and her father. We entered the sanctuary to the sounds of a brass quartet. In the Jewish wedding ceremony, the bride's side and the groom's side are reversed from Christian weddings. In Jewish custom, the groom's side is on the left and the bride's on the right, as evidenced by the procession.

The Rabbi and I exchanged e-mail and spoke on the phone, planning the order of the ceremony and which parts each of us would do. I gave the opening prayer, welcome and the symbolism of lighting the unity candle, while the Rabbi administered the vows and exchange of rings both in Hebrew and English. As part of the Hebrew ritual, the couple drank wine from the same cup, then the groom, smashed a glass wrapped in a cloth with his foot, which symbolizes that which has been joined and promised in the rite of marriage cannot be broken.

The Rabbi gave me a white yamulke (the small round hat) to wear. I was surprised that I could wear it, but he assured me that I could, as some of the more liberal Jewish sects allow women to wear them. We both wore white stoles – his had Hebrew letters embroidered with navy blue thread, and mine was embroidered with gold thread with the Association of Unity Church's logo of the bird.

As I participated and observed the ceremony, I couldn't help but reflect upon the rich tradition and deep roots of Judaism from which our Christian traditions rose. I see a similarity of ritual between Jews and Catholics. As an example, that of drinking of wine and the wearing of the small hats the priests wear and the yamulkes the rabbis wear, and the wearing of stoles or robes.

After the wedding, both Ted and I received wonderful kudos, some saying it was the "most beautiful ceremony they had ever witnessed." What made it so beautiful? Everything! What made it beautiful was the love that was fully present, and the willingness of all to celebrate differences, yet similarities. I came away from the wedding feeling totally blessed and blissed. Many of the guests marveled at how well the two perspectives blended–and with good reason—Judaism is our grandparent.

In gratitude for the experience, I offer this Jewish prayer:

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A New Forgiveness

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © March 2006 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

Unity Church in Spokane celebrates A Season for Peace and Nonviolence from January 30, the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s death, to April 4, 2006, the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death. Along with hundreds of other organizations around the world, we hold these 64 days each year as a time to make a difference in the collective consciousness for peace in the world.

Though it can be discouraging to read about all the war and violence in the world, and wonder if this is the way it will always be, at Unity, we choose to make a difference through education, celebration, and believing in our human possibility. By living with greater peace in our hearts one moment at a time, we choose to believe that someday human beings will want to treat each other truly “as we would want to be treated.”

If you would like to join us this year in creating both greater inner peace and world peace, I suggest you think about the role forgiveness plays in your life. Forgiveness is one of the most important spiritual tools for peace. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most misunderstood, and thus difficult to practice. True forgiveness is not just ‘trying’ to forget that something happened. It is not ‘letting bygones be bygones.’ The forgiveness that will transform our hearts from suffering to joy and our world from war to harmony is a completely new idea of forgiveness.

The new forgiveness is a process of seeing through the destructive victim consciousness that lives in most of us. Our willingness to “feel” victimized drains our creative energy and blocks our access to greater happiness and well-being, including affecting our physical health. True forgiveness of self and others requires that we see a bigger picture of how our human behaviors affect one another, how our strengths and weaknesses, our self-awareness and our ignorance, all interact. The new forgiveness is about seeing our spiritual connectedness, not our separation.

This March, as a highlight for our Season for Peace and Nonviolence, Unity Church is bringing to Spokane the most powerful and passionate advocate for forgiveness in the world today, Colin Tipping, the author of Radical Forgiveness. And he is radical. The question for each of us is, ‘are we dedicated enough to the idea of peace in the world enough to give his ideas a try?’

Ultimately, says Colin Tipping, our divine purpose as a species is to know our true oneness with the universe and heal all the energies that do not support that truth—our greed, hurt, sadness, anger, and fear. But here’s the hard part to fully understand. In order for that healing or transformation of energy to take place, we need to deeply experience the complexity of human emotions connected to them. Transformation requires that we step out of our lethargy or denial and experience our full humanness. How would we do that unless those around us gave us the gift of their behaviors?

If we were able to see all hateful, negative or unskillful behavior as occurring for the purpose of healing ourselves and the world, then we wouldn’t feel the need to make others wrong. And without the energy of ‘judgmentalness’ we would have a world willing to learn from each other, cooperate, and live in harmony. It would be a world without war.

BUT. . . I hear you say . . . without judgment wouldn’t we be condoning bad behavior? I would say yes, in a way; however, it doesn’t mean punishment for what society deems a crime would immediately end. But as each of us stops internally “feeling” victimized and believing in victimization, the consciousness of our species will begin to shift. Hate, greed, and cruelty, and the fear that underlies them, will diminish over time through our commitment to love ourself and others no matter what.

If you are ready to look at your own victimhood and your judgments, plus the power of forgiveness and the possibility of greater freedom, I hope you will join us at Unity for Colin Tipping’s workshops, Friday and Saturday, March 10-11, 2006. Call the church for more information at (509) 838-6518. 2900 S. Bernard, Spokane, web site: www.UnitySpokane.org.

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Accepting the Isness

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © June 2005 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

How many times in an ordinary day do you experience something or someone, remember the past or anticipate the future, and say to yourself, this isn’t right, this shouldn’t be this way, if only this was different then…?

Author Eckhart Tolle says in his book Stillness Speaks (pg 117), “Nothing that happens is an isolated event; it only appears to be. The more we judge and label it, the more we isolate it. The wholeness of life becomes fragmented through our thinking. Yet the totality of life has brought each event about. It is part of the web of interconnectedness that is the cosmos.”

Tolle tells us that unhappiness comes not from the facts of our daily lives, it’s raining, but from our story about it, it’s a drab, depressing day. In each moment we create our suffering by our simple rejection of what is. It is the inner resistance we feel when we label our experiences or circumstances wrong or bad that creates this suffering.

The energy of resistance that lingers in our whole being when we label things as wrong is like a parasite that grows in us, draining our creative juices and diminishing our aliveness. Though it begins with thoughts held in the mind, it inevitably shows up in our body as discomfort, illness, or subconsciously induced accidents.

Unity’s co-founder, Myrtle Fillmore wrote of her mental resistance in the story of her healing from tuberculosis. In 1886, at age 41 she was told she wouldn’t live much longer. Then one evening at a metaphysical lecture in Kansas City, Myrtle suddenly understood that she had labeled her body as hopelessly diseased. She was transfixed by the idea that this was not God’s divine idea for her, and that by changing her mind, her body would respond.

She wrote later to a friend, “It flashed upon me that I might talk to the life in every part of my body and have it do just what I wanted. I began to teach my body and got marvelous results . . . I went to all the life centers in my body and spoke words of Truth to them—words of strength and power. I asked their forgiveness for the foolish, ignorant course that I had pursued in the past, when I condemned them and called them weak, inefficient and diseased. I did not become discouraged at their being slow to wake up, but kept right on both silently and aloud, declaring the words of Truth, until the organs responded.”

In another letter she wrote, “There is nothing in human language able to express the vastness of my possibilities, as they unrolled before me . . . The physical claims that had been considered such a serious nature faded away before the dawning of the new consciousness, and I found that my body temple had been literally transformed through the renewing of my mind.”

Myrtle died in 1931 at the age of 86 years. She spent those 40 years after her healing telling her story and teaching others about the power of thought to change our lives and heal our bodies. I suspect she would be quite astounded to discover that in 2005 we have not yet fully comprehended and incorporated her discovery into our daily lives. We continue to create our own suffering by declaring that things are not supposed to be this way. Myrtle stopped believing tuberculosis was a problem to be solved and started loving her body, just the way it was.

Could we actually make a list of all the things we make wrong on a daily basis? What about the pain in our bodies, the flu we catch, our hair, snarled traffic, loud noise, the neighbors unkempt lawn? Do we resist our angry feelings, our loneliness, the friend who spoke sharply, the boss who doesn’t appreciate us, the spouse or lover who isn’t affectionate enough, our favorite restaurant that closed, the good buddy who moved away? Do we resent the state of the economy, the rising cost of health care, the acrimoniousness of politics today, the two party system, nuclear power, young people going off to war, racial mistrust, genocide, global warming, the extinction of species?

How many times in an hour do we declare out loud or to ourselves that things are wrong! Isn’t it clear to everyone, we wail, that these things aren’t supposed to be that way?

In an ideal world, where complete clarity of divine order pervades, all these things might not exist. But right now, at our current level of human consciousness they do and what does it benefit us to make them wrong? Does our opinion of any situation change it? Does the act of resistance make it better in any way?

No. What resistance does is drain our energy, obscure our thought processes, and invite disease and ‘accidents’ into our experience. This colossal waste of energy and attention then keeps us from discerning what could actually be done to make our life and the world a better place.

Our salvation comes from this essential self-awareness. The transformation of the entire human race begins with the same thought that Myrtle discovered long ago. My thoughts about this are the source of my suffering. Let us live from true peace and power instead of our unhappiness and do it by accepting in each moment that which simply is.

Reprinted with permission from Unity Church of Truth's 'Discoveries' newsletter.

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Altitude and Air Speed

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © December 2001 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

One day a young woman was feeling sorry for herself.She was not doing well in school, she had recently fought with her parents, and her boyfriend of two years had broken up with her. Angry and depressed she went out for a walk.

It was a cloudy, gray November day and nothing seemed to help. She turned down a street and noticed a very old, bent-over gardener raking leaves. He looked up as she passed by and cheerily waved. Though not feeling friendly she responded back to him with "How are you today?"

Instead of the expected response, he smiled and said simply "I'm grateful." This took her by surprise. What could he be grateful for? He was old. He obviously still had to work and his hands appeared knotted with arthritis. Then suddenly it occurred to her what a gift she had been given in this brief exchange. She realized how much she took for granted all around her.

As she continued down the street she said out loud "I choose to be grateful too." In an instant everything that had been troubling her seemed much more insignificant. From her new sense of gratitude she clearly could see that all her woes would soon pass. She kept walking and with every step she listed the good things she had in her life and the things she had to look forward to. She smiled inside and out as she gave thanks for it all.

Just being thankful for something, for anything, can release the power of our own inner spirit and can lift us up into a new  consciousness of ourselves and of our world. The power of focusing on what is 'honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent and worthy of praise' (Phillipians 4:8) means letting go of certain thoughts that seem logical, natural and essential to our human self.

I read somewhere that altitude and speed are a pilot's best friends. When flying, it may seem safer to our human logic to stay near the ground. But if there is trouble with the plane, altitude gives more time to find a safe place to land, and air speed increases the lift on the wings so the plane is less likely to stall.

In the same way it seems logical when we are hurting or upset to focus on our grievances and problems. It feels only natural to blame others and be resentful when they don't meet our expectations. But a willing heart and an attitude of gratitude are our spiritual altitude and air speed. Our willingness to say no to blame and resentment buys us precious time. It gives us room to gain a new perspective on a challenging or frustrating situation. Our thankfulness gives us the lift in consciousness we need to rise up and embrace new ways of being.

The holidays and the anticipation of a new year are great times to increase our altitude and air speed. Give thanks in advance for the gifts of the spirit this season has to offer. Release the temptations of self-pity, criticism, and resentment. They are dead weight to our own creativity, our dreams and goals. They can only drag us down where we cannot see all the divine possibilities waiting for us in every moment.

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America the Soulful

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © March 2002 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

The factors involved in our country's origin are complex. However, the simple version that most of us learn in grade school is that people came to America and founded a new nation out of a desire to be free of religious constriction. We call it separation of church and state and today the concept and what it truly means is hotly debated.

Unfortunately, some of those same ancestors who fought to be free from governmental interference in their beliefs became in turn the oppressors. They formed a new government and began telling those who followed them to this country how to believe. It is a common pattern for human beings. The oppressed become the oppressors. Many religious people today would fight to the death if forced to live by someone else's beliefs, but think nothing of condemning people who think differently than they do.

Christianity has been particularly guilty of requiring membership before people can be socially acceptable. The examples of religious intolerance in the ‘land of the free’ are too numerous to mention and are still very much alive in our country today. It mystifies me when I read that those who decry the banning of school prayer, and cite it as the reason for our nations decline in morality, are of the belief that the only kind of prayers that should be allowed in schools are Christian ones. Even a moment of silence is considered ‘pagan’ and thus not acceptable.

What I believe is missing in our national consciousness, especially our debate over the separation of church and state, is the clear understanding of the difference between religion and spirituality. Perhaps if we defined this difference we could live with greater integrity towards our nations founding principles and have a firmer base on which to build the America of the future. Although there may be many adjustments that need to be made in our national awareness, I believe this one clarification would help us mend a wounded nation and bring it into alignment with its stated foundation of truth, freedom and justice.

Religion is specific and codified. It sets boundaries and creates dos and don'ts. Our religions have given us structures in which we can grow mentally and morally. Religion has helped us define our relationship to a higher law and to build community with one another. But the boundaries inherent in religion have also encouraged judgment of others, often in very rigid and punishing ways. Thus religion has also been the greatest catalyst for division and brutality in our human history.

Spirituality is very nonspecific and holistic. It touches every part of our human existence including our body and our sexuality. Spirituality is discovering one's soul and letting a sense of what is sacred guide and direct our view of self and others. Spirituality encourages personal integrity which is a much more organic and life changing process than following religious rules out of fear.

Too often religion tells about God but does not give us an experience of the power of God. It is the difference between reading a recipe and eating delicious food. Spirituality invites us into a feast. A feast that our souls have been longing for but yet fearful of, because true spirituality doesn't have any dos and don'ts except what the individual's conscience dictates. It is scary for us to trust the human soul that much. It demands that we believe that good will always triumph.

I believe that spirituality is about experiencing the presence of God in our daily life, however we define God. When we are truly and confidently empowered by this presence we build bridges, create connections and give service to others. When we bring our soulfulness to the democratic process and infuse our politics with divine awareness, not religious partisanship, then we will truly be a great nation.

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Are You A Christian?

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © June 2004 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

When someone asks you if you are a Christian, what do you say? I have found that some people in Unity find it very easy to say yes and others struggle with the label Christian and what it means.

When I think about my family and my years in Sunday School, it is easy to identify myself as Christian. Christianity was a foundational element in the culture in which I was raised, and, for me, a positive influence. However, when I think now about the tenets of the Christian faith, as stated by my more fundamentalist friends and relatives, I don’t always feel comfortable aligning myself with Christianity. It seems narrow in its world-view and steeped in hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

Consider the destructive history of Christianity. Who wants to claim allegiance to a religion that sent soldiers to the crusades, where under the banner of the cross they slaughtered thousands of Muslims, Jews AND Christians? What about the inquisition and the witch trials where women, children and men were tortured and killed because they practiced a differing spirituality or were merely accused of doing so? Then there are our American forefathers (and mothers) who believed that people of African descent were not fully human, and thus justified the ownership of slaves by quoting the Bible and invoking God’s will. If that is not enough to defer your Christian enthusiasm, there’s the decimation of aboriginal peoples and their cultures around the world through missionary efforts to convert heathens to the one true faith. And, of course, there’s the holocaust.

What does it mean to say “I am a Christian?”

During the time of Roman persecution, “Are you a Christian?” was the simple question asked as a litmus test. A yes answer meant death! To the people of that time who considered themselves Christians, there was little ambiguity. If they said yes, they were professing to be a follower of Jesus. They believed he was the long awaited messiah sent by God; that he lived, died and arose from the dead. They believed that if they lost their life in his name that their reward would be eternal life in heaven with him.

According to my Dictionary of Bible and Religion, there is evidence that the name Christian was originally a derogatory label given by the Romans to followers of Jesus to distinguish them from followers of other leaders. A Herodianus was one who identified with King Herod, an Augustianus was one who worshipped the Emperor Augustus, and a Christianus was “one committed to Christ’s cause.” As time passed, the name became accepted and Christians used it to refer to themselves.

The word Christ is Greek for messiah, or anointed one. Technically it refers to anyone one who is divinely chosen and commissioned for a task or role. The early Christians believed, as do many strands of Christianity today, that Jesus was the ultimate messiah and thus became Jesus Christ. Their litmus test for faith is based on the scripture John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

However, Christianity has really never been just one thing. Soon after Jesus’ death and continuing to present time, Christianity has been made up of differing groups believing a variety of things about the meaning of Jesus’ life and death, and the substance of his teachings.

For example, there are people who call themselves Christian who believe that Jesus was wholly divine, the only begotten son of God, and there are Christians who believe Jesus was a man, a prophet and a divinely inspired teacher whose life and teachings can transform lives. There are also those who consider themselves Christian who say Jesus came from outer space and brought a radical new thought system to earthlings.

There are Christians who believe that humans are born unworthy and sinful, and thus it was necessary for Jesus to be a blood sacrifice that atoned for our sin. Others, however, believe that humans are born pure and whole; ‘in the image of God,’ and the concepts of human blood sacrifice and eternal damnation are highly contrary to Jesus’ own message of love and forgiveness. And there are those who believe that humans are God; as the drop of seawater is part of the ocean, and Jesus was a living example of this awareness.

Christians in the Catholic church believe the Pope is the supreme Christian authority; the representative of Jesus on earth. Other Christians say Catholics are not Christians at all. They also exclude Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Unity, and many others.

Many Christians believe that all other faiths other than Christianity are erroneous and their followers are in dire need of conversion or they will suffer eternity in hell. However, many Christians believe that although Jesus is the foundation of their belief, there is truth found in all faiths and there are many paths to God.

Unity is certainly Christian in its languaging. Our co-founders, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, explored the writings of many of the world’s religions, then reinterpreted and incorporated the important truths they found, such as meditation and reincarnation, back into their own faith. I believe they did this not because they believed that Christianity had all the answers and was the one true faith, but because it was the framework most familiar to them and to the people in their community.

One of Unity’s most important tenets is that it distinguishes between Jesus the man and the Christ principle. Charles Fillmore wrote, “Christ is the spiritual mind in every individual.” It is “the name of the all-loving Mind of God in us.” Jesus, as we read about him in the scripture, clearly exemplified the Christ. We see in the biblical account of Jesus’ life a man who knew his true oneness with God. He was wise and loving. He embraced all people regardless of their behaviors and shortcomings. He was forgiving even when being persecuted and tortured.

Such mastery of the practice of unconditional love and ultimate peace of mind is the nature of the Christ. It is the messiah in us that calls us to save our own life and the world from ignorance, apathy, discrimination, and war. Jesus saw the Christ potential in all people. He said, “You are the light of the world.” And, “The things I do you shall do and even greater things shall you do.”

I believe this Christ nature is the true heart of Christianity, though it seems to remain hidden from those who do not have ears to hear or eyes to see it. And I believe that what Unity calls the Christ nature is mirrored in many spiritual paths. The mastery of mindfulness, of universal love and peace, is also Krishna consciousness and the Buddha principle. It is Yahweh and it is the Great Spirit of the Native American. I believe it is the essence of the universal truth found everywhere by souls hungry for it.

In truth I think it matters not whether we call ourselves Christian. Some of us will and others won’t. What matters is how we live our lives and whether any label we choose to use draws circles to include even those who have drawn circles to keep us out.

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Being Above It All

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © September 2005 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

Sometimes we can experience spiritual illumination in the most ordinary of moments. A profound awareness can arise out of our consciousness and change our day, our self-perception, or even our life. However, sometimes we are too quick to identify what something means. If we want to mine the real treasure of metaphysical thinking, we shouldn’t stop with the first idea that comes to mind. There are layers of understanding and multiple messages from our higher self (divine intelligence) hidden in every experience. Like dream interpretation, if you go to the standard text on symbols and look up what it means, you can gain a certain level of understanding, but if you stop there, you may miss the more profound message that the Spirit within you is seeking to draw to your attention.

One day my brother and sister-in-law were visiting from Seattle and I took them to one of my favorite places to walk. A few months previously I had discovered the 11th Street Bridge over Latah Creek. Though hidden away on a gravel road, it is minutes from my house and gives me access to trails on both sides of the creek. I was delighted to discover High Bridge Park and the wonderful feeling of walking in the cathedral-like space under the tall bridges there.

As we walked and talked beside the water, we heard the roar of traffic far above us and the rumble of a train overhead circling the valley and heading west. I mentioned to my brother and sister-in-law that despite the city noise above us, I had from my first time there, felt a sense of peace and awe. They agreed that the creek, the animals, the trees and wildflowers were like a little haven beneath the busyness above. We laughed as we acknowledged that the place we were walking was an interesting metaphor for the peace available to us just beneath the surface of our daily lives.

Long after my company left, I continued to think about our conversation. I wondered if there were other layers to the metaphor experienced in a very physical way on our walk. Had I really seen in that moment the richness of awareness that was there for me?

One thought that came to me was how some people never know the magnificence of their own being. They remain in the blind rush of traffic even when something within them urges them to come below. They refuse even the simplest self-reflection and scoff at the idea of an alternate reality to the one they experience on the surface of life. Their limited self-perception cannot fathom the world that lies beneath the surface.

Of course, one of the key elements of metaphysical thinking is that it points to the self. It is a wonderful process that really is ‘all about me.’ I can have insight about ‘them,’ but am missing the true gift if I don’t apply it to me. So I realized if I can see others as oblivious to the deeper things of consciousness, caught up in the noise and scramble of doingness, then that truth must also live in me.

I began to think that what I was being drawn to below the surface of my consciousness had to do with the larger picture of human spiritual evolution. I pulled out the book Sacred Eyes which has taught me so much about the evolutionary process of my own thinking. In it, author Robert Keck says:

We are living in an extraordinary time, a crucial juncture in history. It is an incredibly exciting, dangerous and opportune time, the magnitude of which is unparalleled in the long human journey . . . To be able to see what is important in a time like this, to be able to perceive the difference between the superficial and the substantive, and to be able to envision what is being born and what is dying in the womb / tomb of transformation, we must be able to look deeply into soul-level territory . . . [With] sacred eyes [we] can penetrate the superficiality of our day-to-day activities and gain insight into our personal integrity with the soul of humanity and the time our lives.

The ah-ha for me in this passage is seeing that under High Bridge, with its concrete arches as awe-inspiring as any Cathedral, I was called from within by the Spirit of the Universe to once again ‘look deeply into soul-level territory.’ If I had been too quick to name the feeling and give it meaning, I would have missed the more profound insight. Through that mysterious process called metaphysical thinking, I have received the challenge to examine my ‘personal integrity with the soul of humanity.’ I have discovered that I must ask myself once again ‘Who am I being and is that the person I have come here to be?’

It is clear to me that I am at a juncture in my life; a place where some goals have been achieved, some responsibilities ended, and some old ways of being have been burned away. I have the opportunity to stand in the valley beside the stream and ask myself what is most important. It is imperative now for me to sort out the superficial from the substantive, and to spend more time below the surface of my everyday life envisioning what is being born in the womb of my consciousness, and what unacknowledged limitations, by necessity, must die in the tomb of my thinking.

Reprinted with permission from Unity Church of Truth's 'Discoveries' newsletter.

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Break Through to Pure Awareness

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © March 2004 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

About a year ago an image came to me in a dream. It lingers in my consciousness, occasionally inviting itself into my meditation time. I am inside the earth. The earth is a pliable plastic bubble and I am pushing on its skin struggling to break free of it. I feel slightly claustrophobic. I am straining to breathe. I finally feel my hand break through the earth’s exterior and suddenly I easily slip through the membrane like the final rush of a baby being born. When I open my eyes, I am floating in deep space. The feeling of silence washes over me like the joy of seeing something almost too beautiful to behold. I breathe a great sigh and relax into the nothingness. Just before I close my eyes and drift into bliss, I see an umbilical cord stretching through space attaching me to the earth. I feel such love and deep appreciation for my planet and I am glad that we will always stay connected.

Last summer, while up at Unity’s Crystal Mt. Retreat at Mt. Rainier, I bought a book by Dr. David Hawkins entitled Power VS. Force. As I read the introduction containing the author’s life story, I began to feel something very familiar, something powerful and life-giving. I experienced a heightened awareness and a deep shift in my perception of self and the world.

It took me a week or so, but eventually I connected these feelings with my floating in space dream image. I realized that Dr. Hawkins’ story reflects to me my own struggle to step outside of ordinary consciousness and experience more of the Infinite Presence of which I am a part.

Dr. Hawkins is the survivor of two near death experiences. The first time, as a young boy, he was caught in a blizzard, and crawled into a snow bank. He writes of his memory:

“The shivering stopped and was replaced by a delicious warmth and then a state of peace beyond all description. This was accompanied by a suffusion of light and a Presence of infinite love which had no beginning and no end, and which was indistinguishable from my own body and surroundings as my awareness fused with this all-present illuminated state. The mind grew silent; all thought stopped. An Infinite Presence was all that was or could be and it was beyond time or description.”

The author was rescued from the storm, and although he never forgot his experience of heightened awareness, he never spoke to anyone about it. He grew up disdainful of religion, a non-believer in God, until he drew close to death once again.

By this time Dr. Hawkins had completed medical school and set up practice as a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed with a fatal illness and progressively became so ill that one night he felt he was about to take his last breath. Much to his own surprise he found himself wondering in that moment if there might actually be a God, and then he heard himself calling out to God for help. He describes it as a moment of complete surrender just before losing consciousness. When he awoke he says…

“The person I had been no longer existed. There was no personal self or ego left – just an Infinite Presence of such unlimited power that it was all that was….The body and its actions were controlled solely by the Presence’s infinite will. The world was illuminated by the clarity of Infinite Oneness, which expressed itself as all things revealed in their immeasurable beauty and perfection…Along with fear and anxiety, all ordinary motivations had disappeared. There was nothing to seek, as all was perfect. Fame, success, and money were meaningless…

Dr. Hawkins eventually returned to practicing psychiatry but with a highly transformed perception. “I discovered that I could perceive the reality that underlay personalities; I saw how the origin of emotional sickness lay in people’s belief that they were their personalities.”

Within a few years, in the midst of a now thriving medical practice, Dr. Hawkins felt a strong inner call to leave his work and pursue experimentation with higher states of consciousness. He isolated himself at first, learning to be in the bliss of Pure Awareness without a near death experience. During this time of experimentation, he didn’t work or give any thought to his earthly well-being. Eventually he realized that while he was in a human body, he must learn how to “be in the divine Presence and still function in the world.”

In his description of his experience of Pure Awareness, Dr. Hawkins says that everything and everyone in the world is luminous. The incredible beauty of all things shines forth in all its perfection. Where the world sees ugliness, he sees only timeless beauty. There are no boundaries or divisions. No here and there, then and now, or me and you. He says that when he looks at other people he sees himself shining in their eyes and in every moment he is completely an instrument of the Infinite Presence.

Dr. Hawkins describes this state of consciousness as absolute peace and relief from all suffering. He says, “When one realizes that one is the universe, no further suffering is possible.” He has also experienced physical healing. He became free of some chronic maladies and his eyesight normalized so that he no longer needed glasses.

As I read these remarkable things in the book’s introduction, one question was uppermost in my mind. It is the question played out again and again in my dream image. How does one break through into this dimension of consciousness? Dr. Hawkins gives the answer, at least it’s his answer. Like all great Truths, the answer is very simple but requires focus and discipline to make this way of life a daily practice. In case you are interested, here are Dr. Hawkins three simple requirements for enlightenment:

1. An Intense desire to experience Pure Awareness.

2. The discipline to act with constant and universal gentleness and forgiveness towards everything, without exception, including towards one’s self and one’s thoughts.

3. The willingness to hold one’s desires in abeyance and surrender one’s personal will in every moment.

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Certainty and Mystery

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © December 2005 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

Those who would accomplish great things in the demonstration of spiritual resources must have faith to lay hold of divine ideas and courage to speak them into expression. —Charles Fillmore, Co-founder of Unity

There is a necessary and growing distinction in our world today between religion and spirituality. According to the dictionary, religion is an institutionalized system of attitudes, beliefs, and practices centered around the worship of God or the supernatural, usually demanding scrupulous conformity. And spirituality is relating to God, the essential sacred, mystery in life, or to one’s own non-material essence.

Though there are many good reasons to clarify these terms, one of the most important to me is that religion tries to offer us certainty, and spirituality offers us a consciousness-expanding adventure into the unknown. As evolving beings, spiritually, as well as physically, it is our curiosity towards the unknown, and our questions about what is possible for us, that pull us forward into our greater potential as a species.

Religions, though often born of spiritual experiences, seem to devolve into static form, giving definitive and unquestionable answers to life’s questions. This certainty, and religion’s demand for ‘scrupulous conformity,’ robs our human experience of the beauty and mystery of spiritual unfoldment. Religion can lead us towards our spiritual journey, but it can often be more a roadblock than a roadsign along the way.

Religion and Spirituality are not always mutually exclusive. Spirituality can thrive within religion, and religious practice can be a natural outcome of spiritual discovery. I am hopeful that the heart-centered, mystical, experiential lineage within our current religions will continue to expand and will become more valued than ritualized practices and the demand for conformity of belief. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism all have practitioners or sects that seek higher consciousness rather than outward piety, and this seems to hold huge appeal to new generations who are rejecting hypocrisy and hungering for deeper spiritual food.

This trend away from religion that is devoid of spirituality may not be widely visible yet. In the news we hear about growing fundamentalism around the world. How-to books from Christian mega-churches are best sellers. And recently the Catholic Church chose a very regressive Pope. But I believe these trends evident in the news today, are but a last rally before the death of certainty. Our human need for certainty has always been a hallmark of religion, but our willingness to ‘go where no one has gone before’ will be the saving grace that true, profound, messy spirituality offers us.

I read an article recently entitled, Spiritual Incorrectness. It talked about how quick we are to condemn someone who expresses beliefs different from us, especially members of our own religion who think for themselves and question the way things have ‘always’ been. The author points out the interesting fact that most of the major religions of our world today began with someone who stepped out of the religious orthodoxy of their time.

The Hebrew patriarch, Abraham, rejected the multiple gods of the agrarian culture into which he was born, and established monotheism by following The One True God. Muhammed, prophet of Islam, believed the God of Abraham called him to reinterpret the beliefs of Jews and Christians and bring a new message to God’s people. Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha after he rejected both the materialism of Hindu culture and the asceticism of Hindu practice. Jesus didn’t renounce his Hebrew upbringing, but he criticized the hypocrisy he saw there, and Christianity was born with an emphasis on love and faith over keeping the letter of the law. Even Hinduism, which as a whole doesn’t trace its origin to an individual, is made up of literally thousands of sects that began with someone interpreting the familiar in new ways.

This article on Spiritual Incorrectness encourages the reader to dare to be different. This captured my attention because ever since I was a young adult, my own spiritual journey has been dedicated to questioning everything handed to me in my religious upbringing. And yet I see the ways that I have, at times, accepted the orthodoxy of a ‘new’ path. Today, as the spiritual leader within a religious institution, I am sometimes considered too out of the norm. I struggle to find that precise balance between the comfort of tradition and the invigoration of my evolving interpretations and practices.

When confronted with the difficulty of questioning comforting beliefs, I remember the stories of those leaders who have come before me. I pray for the courage it takes to listen to one’s own inner voice. A genuine spiritual journey of discovery requires great courage. It requires the letting go of certainty. It requires us to step into mystery and do it, not only for ourselves, but for the greater spiritual understanding of all human kind.

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Compassion is "Springing" Forth

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © March 2005 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

Most of us feel a sense of rebirth as we watch plants emerge from the ground and leaves return to the trees in the spring. The sense of transformation or resurrection we feel at this time of year can happen in an instant or be a part of a gradual process. Like the daffodil that seems to open overnight, sometimes our awakening occurs with one idea or in a mystical revelation. However, like the gradual greening of the world in spring, our transformation can take place one idea, one decision, or one action at a time. It is wise to always set an intention to experience a mystical revelation, and on an intentional spiritual journey it is even more important to take seemingly little steps in awareness that ‘bring spring’ into our daily life.

This year in our ministry as Easter approaches, we are choosing resurrection by practicing new ways of communicating with one another. Our intention is to develop our compassion for others and to discover our own needs and feelings through listening and speaking in new ways. Our guidebook is Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication: A language of Compassion. Our staff, board and other key leaders are studying the principles in this book as a conscious commitment to transformation in our spiritual community.

I invite you to think about your own communication this spring and see where it may need some transforming. Here are the four basic steps that when used together create deep, compassionate, life-changing communication:

• Describe upsetting or annoying events without using any words of condemnation or judgment towards others. For example, “John works too much,” “Cindy is aggressive” or “You were complaining” all carry judgments that might cause the other person to stop listening. When that happens it is unlikely that we will find a loving resolution or get our need met. It is important to learn how to describe an event with ‘just the facts.’

• Learn to effectively express basic feelings. Many times we say “I feel” when we are not expressing our feelings at all, such as “I feel misunderstood,” “I feel that you should know better” or “I feel like I’m not good enough.” These are judgments about self or others, not feelings. Although the book gives us lists of possible feeling words, such as inspired, relaxed, joyous, confused, or annoyed, most often our feelings fall in the basic categories of mad, sad, glad, afraid, or ashamed. These five are easy to remember and when we begin to identify them, we discover the great healing power in being clear with ourselves and others about our feelings.

• Take responsibility for our feelings by expressing the need that lies behind them. For example, “I feel angry when you say that, because I want your respect and I hear your words as an insult.” Or, “I feel disappointed when you say you will do something and not do it, because I want to be able to rely upon your words.” Identifying our essential need or desire and speaking it to others mean being vulnerable. And it is by being vulnerable that compassion is born in the listener who is then more likely to want to meet our need.

• Make requests of others in a positive, specific and clear manner. Too often our requests of others turn into demands, are vague, or loaded with what we don’t want the other person to do. Use specific, action-oriented words such as ‘I would like you to clean your room once a week’ or ‘When you borrow something from me, I would like you to put it back where you got it.’ Being positive and specific greatly enhances the possibility that our need will be met and our lives enriched by loving relationships.

Add to these basic steps the habit of reflecting back to someone what you think they are saying or asking and you will begin to transform your interactions with others. Marshall Rosenberg says it is tempting at times to think this is too much work or the process is overly structured. Just like learning any new language, it is awkward at first, but the rewards are immense.

By starting with self-awareness, honesty, and commitment in our communication, we can ‘bring spring’ to our human collective consciousness. By learning to heal conflict and express needs, we have the power to transform our world and, one relationship at a time, eliminate war.

At Unity Church, our lives are being so touched by this book that we gave a copy to each member of the Spokane City Council in January.

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Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © September 2001 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

I received my notice to renew my vehicle license just before I left Missouri for Spokane. I didn't do it, because I knew I would be licensing my car in Washington and would have time to do it when I arrived. I was in town one week when I found out my Missouri driver's license had expired last fall. I have no idea how I missed my renewal notice.

After arriving in Spokane in February I contacted an insurance agent since I knew my car insurance would also be lapsing in March. I told him about my driver's license and he said he would love to work with me, but he couldn't actually insure me without a driver's license. I immediately went to pick up the Washington State Driver's Guide to study for my tests and found out it is usually 4-5 days between taking the written test and getting the appointment for the driving test.

I studied the book for several days and went in and took the first test. I was praying a miracle would happen and the wait between tests would not be so long, because I was eager to get both my insurance and vehicle licensing complete before they expired. I passed the test and went back to the desk to ask for my next appointment. The woman left her station for a moment and came back to tell me they had an appointment available right then. I couldn't believe it. It was a miracle. "Prayer works" I said to myself. She told me to get my insurance card out of the car and the examiner would be right with me. I dashed out to get the card and glanced at the date. March 9th. That was today, wasn't it, I said hopefully? I rushed back in and asked the date and found it was the 10th. My insurance had expired the day before and I was not allowed to take the test.

By the time you read this I am sure it will all be taken care of. But there were many times throughout the weeks of this saga when I whined "Why me?" As I told the unfolding story to our church staff I said "I know there is a lesson in this for me. What is it with everything in my life expiring at once? And what am I learning from this catch 22? I can't license or insure my car without a driver's license and I can't get my driver's license without insurance!"

When I told this story recently to a friend, she reminded me it is more helpful and more in line with our Unity principles to ask "What is the gift for me in this?" instead of "What is the lesson in this for me?" It is a small change maybe, but perhaps an important one. A lesson feels like homework, drudgery or punishment. But a gift is a wonderful surprise. My friend also shared with me an affirmation that she has been working with during a difficult time in her own life. These words were written by a long time metaphysician. It says, "It is all Good. It is all God. It is for me and I demand to see the blessings in it."

I was still repeating this affirmation when the very next day I received an e-mail that included a quote from Theodore Rubin. It said, "The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem." I laughed out loud. I was caught. I had been thinking that very thing.

Once more I said to myself "prayer works." Only this time I meant not that I had received some 'thing' that I had been praying for, like the instant manifestation of a driving test appointment, but that I had received the gifts of friendship and words of truth that put my problem into God's perspective.

When Jesus was on the cross, just before his death, he said, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" These words have most often been translated as "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But George Lamsa, the Syrian scholar, believes this phrase should be read differently. Lamsa made it his life's work to study the Aramaic language and to translate the Bible from his knowledge of Jesus' original  language instead of from the Greek. He says the root word from sabachthani means to keep or preserve and that a truer meaning for Jesus' words would be, "My God, My God, for this was I kept?"

Was Jesus seeing the gift of a higher purpose in the most painful moment of his life? Could it be that the true Easter message is not that we will never feel crucified, or that God is absent from us in those painful moments, but that our problems, challenges and, yes, even the tragedies are gifts of resurrection to our soul. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, the gifts are always there.

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Enemies or Partners?

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © December 2004 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

During this election year in America, we have heard countless times how important it is to pursue our enemies. “To hunt them down and kill them.” Ironically, this is said by ‘Christians,’ who profess to follow teachings of Jesus. But wasn’t it Jesus who said to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you? Didn’t Jesus tell us to turn the other cheek and resist not evil?

Who is the enemy? Is it Islam? Or is it the terrorists found in all the world’s religions? People who ignore the spiritual teachings of their faith and twist their minds to believe God is on their side? Who justify hate, revenge, murder and destruction?

Or is the enemy found within us? Is it I Lord? Are my fears and prejudices part of the problem of terrorism in the world today? If so, what am I willing to do about it?

I think it is unfortunate that many Americans right now are choosing to make the Islamic religion our scapegoat. Islam has become the latest acceptable place to focus our fear, our sense of powerlessness, and to practice decidedly unchristian hatred and revenge.

Thankfully there are also many in our country who refuse to let ignorance determine our course of action and our future. In September, our church was invited to be the site of a workshop on understanding the Islamic faith. This two-day event was sponsored by the Northwest School of Religious and Philosophical Studies in Coeur d’Alene. It was part of their series on world religions and they brought three Islamic leaders from around the country to share Islamic beliefs and practices with us.

I was looking forward to this event, and yet I realized I also had many questions in my mind about it. Would these men excuse terrorist behavior? Would they present only the things they think we want to hear, but as many would assert, really have world domination as their ulterior goal? Would they defend their treatment of women? And how would they respond to me, a woman in spiritual leadership?

My fears were not instantly put to rest upon first meeting the presenters on Friday night. They were polite, but distant, and showed no interest in their audience or our beliefs. They were very professional. Their presentation was organized and detailed. The first session was an overview of worship practices.

They described how they pray five times a day to keep a consciousness of God foremost in their lives. I was fascinated to hear the intricacies of this prayer practice and to see it demonstrated for us. I felt very much at ease as they patiently answered our questions. In response to one, a speaker acknowledged that some Muslims do this prayer practice because it is required or they want to look pious. But that most do it because their souls hunger for connection with the holy. Knowing this is true of most religious practice, I was glad for the honest answer and I felt it displayed a vulnerability that created a new energy in the room.

On Saturday, we learned that Muslims have ritual cleansing before each prayer time where they wash their bodies as they recite, “Oh Lord, make me pure and clean.” We were told how PRAYER is the second of the five pillars of their religion. The first is the DECLARATION OF FAITH. It sounded very similar to how Unity uses an affirmation to hold a guiding principle in mind.

CHARITY is the third pillar. Many Muslim communities assess their members each year according to their wealth and a portion is required to be given to the ill, unemployed, handicapped, or to a fund for stranded travelers. In other communities, charity is a matter for one’s own conscience.

FASTING is the fourth pillar and is practiced in the month of Ramadan. During this religious observance, no food or water is taken during daylight hours and the individual searches within themselves for weakness, unkindness or unforgiveness, and resolves to be cleansed of such thoughts or behaviors. In some ways this is similar to Lent, the Christian season of letting go and inner preparation for Easter.

PILGRIMAGE is the fifth pillar. At least once in their life every Muslim is encouraged to make a journey to Mecca, the birthplace of Muhammad. The special time of year when pilgrimage occurs is called Hajj, and as travelers enter the city of Mecca to pray, they put on plain white robes as a symbol of everyone’s equality before God.

As our time together progressed, I felt I came to know each of the three as unique individuals and they relaxed and allowed themselves to get to know us too. They had plenty of facts about their religion for us, but slowly we were allowed to see their faith. Each of them did this in his own way—sometimes with delightful storytelling and humor, occasionally with a willingness to laugh at themselves.

I think all those present would agree that our most profound conversations centered around terrorism. We had many questions and our presenters answered them unflinchingly. They were honest about their personal beliefs and adamant in their condemnation of those who hate and kill in the name of God. They shared with us the passages in the Qur’an that must be ignored in order for terrorists to do what they do.

For me, in a way, attending this workshop was a pilgrimage to greater understanding. Not just of Islam, but of myself too. There were many aspects of Islamic spirituality that inspired me on my own personal journey. Often in those two days, I wished that all people everywhere could have the same experience of seeing up close the face of someone for whom they hold many negative assumptions. What transformation takes place when we can see the other in a whole new way!

On the wall next to my computer is a calendar, and for the month of September it displayed this quote by Nelson Mandela, “To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy and that enemy becomes one’s partner.” As I thought about my workshop experience, I remembered something I learned about Gandhi, whose life greatly influenced both Mandela and Martin Luther King. Gandhi was criticized by his people for attending events with the British, for eating dinner with the very soldiers and politicians who were killing his followers during nonviolent protests. But Gandhi was very clear that the best way to get rid of your enemies was to turn them into friends.

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Exploring Our Sexual Prejudice

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © September 2004 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

We human beings have accomplished many things once believed to be impossible. We have gone places that at one time were unimaginable. However, there are still adventures into the unknown beckoning to us. Most of these are not out in the world but in our own psyches. One, yet to be fully explored, is our sexuality. More feared than any mountain, wild river or deep sea trench, especially in our American culture, our diversity of sexual identity and practice is now one of our greatest challenges for inquiry.

Recently my church made a foray into this land of prejudice and misunderstanding. We approached the subject of sexual diversity through three avenues. We examined our own culture’s narrow view of what is ‘normal’ sexual behavior. We looked to the Bible to see where our belief systems are rooted, especially our view of homosexuality. And we created opportunity to know the hearts of some of those who have been labeled ‘not normal.’ Here are some of the things we discussed and experienced.

Most of us like to think we know what normal is, but in other cultures our normal is turned upside down. On our journey to greater understanding we looked to sociological studies from around the world. Here are several examples that helped us see beyond our own self-imposed ‘normal.’

• The Mehinaku people of the Amazon rain forest believe kissing is a disgusting sexual abnormality. They ask, ‘Why would anyone become aroused by exchanging saliva?’

• The Mangaia people of Polynesia start teaching sex to their adolescents at age 13. These young people learn to be good sexual partners by having sex with adults and they are encouraged to have lots of sex before choosing a marriage partner.

• The Dani people of New Guinea view sex as inconsequential except for reproduction. Both sexes have very little sexual drive and they have no concept of female orgasm.

• The Abkhasians of southern Russia regard a woman’s armpit as highly arousing and therefore only to be seen by her husband.

• And many of us have heard stories of the Arctic tribes who consider it hospitable for the husband to offer his wife to a male visitor for sex.

For many, many generations of Christians the Bible has stood as the purveyor of morality. It is assumed that we all know what it says about homosexuality and that its teachings are clear. However, like all biblical study, it is important to delineate what we have come to believe the Bible says about sexual morality and what it actually says without its tradition-based interpretation. If we look for the historical and sociological climate in which certain texts were written, it can make it easier to separate out our long-standing assumptions.

The word homosexual is not used in either the King James Bible or the Revised Standard translation. The word sodomite, however, is used five times in the King James Version of the Christian Old Testament. It is enlightening to note that the writers of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, who worked from the original Greek manuscripts, changed the word sodomite in all texts to read ‘male cult prostitutes.’ This certainly could indicate that the behavior that was ‘an abomination unto the Lord’ was not same gender sexual contact, but the selling of sex in the name of the God.

The derogatory term ‘sodomy’ comes from the Genesis story of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is commonly believed that God condemned these cities because of their homosexual behavior. However, a closer examination certainly casts doubt on the validity of this interpretation.

The only description found within the Hebrew Scriptures of why these cities were destroyed states the reasons as sinfulness and wickedness. Genesis 13:13 “The men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord,” and Genesis 18:20 “…their sin is very grave.” Taken at face value, separate from what we think we know, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah could have sinned in any number of ways.

The connection between Sodom and homosexuality is based on one incident in this story. In Genesis 19:1-9, God sends two angels to the city of Sodom. (No reason is given, but this passage follows Abraham’s bargaining with God to save the cities if only ten righteous men can be found there.) Abraham’s nephew Lot, who is striving to save the cities from God’s destruction, takes the angels into his house hoping they will be on their way the following day. The men of Sodom, however, come to Lot’s house and demand to see the strangers. They say, “Where are the men who came to you tonight. Bring them out to us that we might know them.” This is the phrase on which all traditional references to Sodom rests.

The word ‘know’ certainly does have a sexual connotation in some biblical texts, but it is used in many more instances where it simply means ‘to understand.’ This could mean the men of Sodom were trying to understand why the strangers had come to their city.

It can be argued that Lot assumed they were wanting the visitors for sex, because he then offered them his virgin daughters instead. However, the reputation of Sodom and the development of the word sodomy, seems to be based more on an assumption than fact from the text.

We also examined the Hebrew purity code in the book of Leviticus which condemns men who “lie with other men as they would with a woman,” but it also sentences to death adulterers, those who commit incest, children who disobey their parents, and those who dishonor the Sabbath. It is evidence of how taboo our sexuality still is that Bible literalists have modernized their thinking about killing people for these offenses, but remain adamant about condemning same-gender sexuality.

In order to educate ourselves further and move from the intellectual to the heart, we invited a panel of transgendered individuals to join us for an evening and tell their stories. These people were all born with male bodies but with female gender identities, and their lives have been filled with confusion, shame, and hiding. However, now, through the support group in which they participate, they are discovering the power of being authentic and healing their shame.

We learned that some transgendered people go through hormone therapy preparing for surgery that will create bodies that match their gender identity. Others choose to not have surgery for various reasons, but live as women either full time or part time depending on their life circumstances. Some of them are married, or have been married, and have families. Sometimes their families know about their transgender and sometimes not.

When asked how they knew they were really a woman and not a man, one panelist responded “How do you know you are a woman?” “I just know,” was the answer, and the response was simply “So do I.” Another question was about sexual attraction. Are all males who feel female attracted to men? The answer was no. The panelists made it clear to us how separate our human gender identity is from our sexual preference.

The evening was one of curiosity, compassion and, sometimes even tears, as our assumptions were challenged and our hearts were opened to people who suffer from the hateful prejudice that comes from ignorance. We not only learned a great deal, we made new friends.

Author Eckhart Tolle says that prejudice is reducing the aliveness of a human being to a concept. Our exploration of sexuality and our spiritual beliefs, and especially our dialogue with people considered ‘abnormal’ certainly took us far beyond mere concepts and hurtful labels. At the end of our journey we expressed our hope that someday all human beings will grow up feeling honored for the beautiful expression of God that they are!

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Falling, We Are Given Wings

by Rev. J. Ron Jones
Former minister of Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © September 2000 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

I recently officiated at a memorial service for the mother of a church member. Her passing was not a surprise. She was in her eighties and had not been well for more than a year. She had lived a good life. And her death was, as they say, a blessing. Her family and friends were there. They spoke positively of her life and of her loving nature. Old familiar hymns like "Nearer My God To Thee" and "The Old Rugged Cross" were played. Then everyone moved on to the cemetery for a grave site remembrance. All in all, it was a good death and a good celebration of a life well lived.

Then, during that same week, I counseled a church member who is still grieving the passing of her mother over a year ago. She wanted to know when the pain would end. I'm not sure how much comfort she received from me. And then, that very same week, I counseled another member whose spouse was recently diagnosed with a slowly progressing and often fatal disease. She wanted to know how to remain strong and positive for her spouse while being real about her feelings. Again, I shared some heartfelt but inadequate words.

All in all, I've been very much aware of endings of late.

Endings such as deaths are not always predictable. Some catch us off guard, like when a plane crashes into the ocean and we see the faces of the victims in the newspaper. Then it doesn't seem routine at all. It appears to us that these people have died before their time, and we try to make sense of it. They didn't make it into their 80s, but died much sooner. That's harder to understand.

Death, like life, is often not smooth or easy. At whatever age someone dies, it may seem that our business just wasn't finished. Maybe there were things in our relationship that didn't get said. Maybe they couldn't say it. Maybe we couldn't say it. And now it's too late. We're left. It may be that a relationship didn't have time to heal. And, of course, a relationship can end without a person dying. It may be that we're leaving a place. (It may be that I'm leaving a place. That may even be the reason I'm writing this article.)

Along with the grief we feel, there may be other emotions. We may be angry at them for leaving. How dare they do this to us! We may, on some level, feel a sense of relief that they're gone. Maybe we're glad to no longer feel such a sense of responsibility for them. And maybe we're filled with regret that we didn't do the things we hoped to do with them. On top of everything else, we may feel guilty for having the emotions we're having.

Once a person is gone, all kinds of emotions show up. At first we may simply feel numb. We just try to get through the day. And as the days go by, we slowly come to have a better perspective on what has happened. Our perspective on the world changes. Things are not as they appeared before.

When a parent dies, our sense of the past dies, too. Our world has included our parents, and now they're no longer here. We have to carry on. When a spouse dies, the present disappears. The familiar routines, the companionship, the physical connection-all gone. And when a child dies, they take a parent's future with them. The rest of our lives no longer looks the way it did before. It won't play out the way we imagined it would.

When we experience loss, we're forced to see our lives differently. Who we are in relation to everything around us changes. We see the world through a new set of lenses. And that can take some getting used to.

When my mother died, I was in my first year of graduate school. This was an angst-filled time for me, and losing a parent certainly didn't help. My mother's cancer took a turn for the worse, and she died suddenly during my spring break. I was there physically but not really emotionally. I remember being in a fog. I compensated by taking charge of things. My father, Jane, my brother and sister, our children, the entire extended family grieved. I was too busy.

I returned to school after being home for a week. My classmates offered comforting words, most of which I don't remember. But I do remember a conversation I had with a professor who tended to say what was on his mind.

He heard my story and quickly summed things up: "Well, you're like an orphan now." I have to say the word orphan hadn't entered my consciousness yet. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Whether I was ready for it or not, it gave me a new sense of myself in the world.

Whether we're ready for it or not, the process of grief happens. It's different for each person and for each loss. It's not something we can predict. Sometimes a loss or a separation will catch us off guard, and we're surprised by its dimensions.

Yes, there are the stages of grief we know about: the bargaining, the denial, the anger, the eventual sense of acceptance. Most of the time they happen, but it's not a neat and tidy thing. We may think we're through with one phase, but then it'll pop up again. The process is more circular than linear. It's a process that goes on long after the memorial service is held. It's private and we can't predict it and we can't rush it and we mustn't let anyone else judge it. Because sometimes we can get stuck. We can't move on. We just can't let go no matter how long it's been. It may be we're just not ready. It may be that something's standing in the way-something in the relationship is unresolved, and we can't let it go. It may be that we need help. Or it may be that all we need is time.

One realization that's often comes with the process of grieving is that we're not in control of things, and this isn't always an easy thing for us to accept. We may have the world ordered just as we want it, and then a loss throws all of that into chaos. Our response may be to try to control all that's left, to carve out our niche. As we become aware of the precariousness of life, we decide to build up our defenses as much as possible. We must, after all, try to control our little corner of the world.

It's said that we're born with an awareness that we will die; and that we live with an aversion to that. As we experience losses in our lives, that awareness is present and we're left trying to figure it out. We're shaped by our experiences, and we live out of those experiences and the life scripts that we're given by our parents. They, too, affect how we see the world.

And, at some point in our process we gain a new awareness of something universal. Loss and grief become not something that afflicts us alone but something that connects us with others. We come to know that it visits every household at one time or another. We can't escape it.

There's a story about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air-until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. "My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what's going to happen to me!" Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave looking grim, and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?" The first wave says, "You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be obliterated! Isn't it terrible?" The second wave says, "No, you don't understand . You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean."

Separation and loss comes to all of us eventually. It may be when we're young. It may be when we're older. Eventually we lose someone or someone just up and leaves us. We come to know we're all part of the common ocean. And no matter how prepared we think we are, no matter how much we think we've experienced it before, we're affected and changed somehow. Our view of the world is reshaped and recast.

As a minister, I'm always amazed to see how we all manage to carry on at such times. There's something in us that moves us forward regardless. Even when we face an incredible loss, there's still a reaching out for life. At first we get by day by day. It's all we can do. But somehow most of us do it. It's when we come to the end of our rope that we're asked to step forward into the unknown and continue on with life. We take it slowly, and we don't necessarily know the way, but the life force within us keeps moving us in that direction.

Eventually we come to a place where we're able to see a little more clearly. Our darkness is illuminated. We become able to see something in ourselves we weren't able to see before. We come to understand life in a different way.

The severed relationship itself changes. It goes from being something we have with someone who's in front of us and talks with us to a relationship with someone who's inside of us. When they're not physically present we hold the relationship within us. The love we once felt coming from the outside is now a love that fills us from within. When we hold the relationship inside of us, our capacity to love and understand grows. We see our sense of Self grow. With our sorrow comes a different sense of love. We would not choose it, but there is a grace present that seems to call us forward.

Grief can be a lifelong journey. It has a defined beginning, but there is no fixed destination. At first we crawl and then as we stand up, we stumble along a path that may not look familiar. And then, one day, our footing starts to feel a little stronger. The relationships in our lives don't go away, but they carry on in us and in those who come after us. We come to understand them in a different way. We become opened up to life, whether we want to be or not.

In our grieving, Kahlil Gibran says, there is a well in us that is hollowed out by our tears. Eventually, that space will open up and become filled with life and the capacity both to feel sorrow and joy. It's all part of the whole.

Grief can be a lifelong journey. It's full of ups and downs. It connects us with the mystery of God at the center of life. We don't always know when we will be done with it or where it will lead us. We are asked to be open to what the future may hold.

Loss is not something we choose in life. It is simply what happens in life. However tremendous the losses we face, we're changed by them. They call forth strength and wisdom in us that we may not know we have. And alongside the pain is an opening for joy. With this opening for joy, may we make great sky-circles of our freedom. When we're falling, may we find wings to lift us up. We affirm that, with God's help, we can.

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Freedom and Consciousness

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © June 2006 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

July is the month when we Americans celebrate our freedom. We signed our Declaration of Independence from Britain on July 4, 1776. In the history books, we learn that this was an extraordinary act of courage and vision on the part of the men and women who helped birth a new nation. They were seeking freedom as commonly defined; the state of being without restraint, bondage, limitation or repression.

Unity’s founders, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, broadened the dictionary definition of freedom to include, “a sense of complete well-being . . . the result of regulating ones’ life according to Principle, not according to what anyone else may think or say.”

From a Unity perspective, we might see the founders of our nation as, in truth, expressing this Divine Freedom as part of a growing evolution in spiritual consciousness. In fact, we would say that there is never true freedom for people or nations unless it arises out of an expanded awareness of the presence of God in all people, places, and events.

Today we can look back and see that those who wrote, “We hold these truths to be self evident,”were actually looking far beyond what was evident to the ordinary consciousness in the world of their day. Surely they were listening to the voice of the infinite Spirit that continuously calls us to greater awakening and the resultant freedom.

We Americans love our nation and everything it stands for as stated by the writers of our constitution. Unfortunately, our pride has often turned to arrogance, blocking the courageous and visionary voice of Spirit within us. When we take an honest inventory of our nation, we can see times when we have acted from our highest ideals and have gained the respect of the world and other times when we have failed to make our spiritual principles our yardstick for success.

In one of her recent online newsletters, author Caroline Myss describes the American progression over the last fifty years towards greater political and spiritual awareness. She says the 1960’s decade was the great awakening for the consciousness movement. The idea that we as a nation might be entrenched in a meaningless war was the catalyst for rebellion against many social norms. A sleeping giant within us came to life. It was a chaotic time. A time of breaking free of restraint, but one that carried the message that we must be personally active in making conscious change happen: politically, socially, racially, and spiritually.

She then says the 1970s moved us from a time of revolution to a time of involution, from an awareness of outer freedoms to inner freedom. “We turned inward, into the excavation of our psyches, our emotional natures and our intellectual territory.” She says this is the era where we discovered the presence and power of our unconscious, our wounded child and the archetype of the victim. And most importantly, out of that, we laid a new foundation for the freedom that comes from ‘wholeness.’ In this decade, we began to honor ourselves as body, mind, AND spirit.

In the 1980s, Myss believes the consciousness movement, filled with new inner awareness, moved on to a mass commitment to evolve on a planetary level. We wanted freedom for everyone. We suddenly caught the vision of our whole planet at peace. (Do you remember the Think World Peace bumper stickers and the takeoff on it, Think Whirled Peas?) With the rise of electronic technology, the planet became networked as never before, and the ideas of wholeness, freedom, and inner empowerment spread everywhere, especially into the business arena. Motivational workshops became popular and business seminars on the well-being of employees followed. In the eighties, there was a willingness to discuss international politics and a sense of hopefulness around our planetary unity.

Then came the 1990s. Our motivational awareness became merely self-serving. Myss describes this as a time when consciousness raising lost its way. Inner freedom took a back seat to the promise of instant wealth with the economic boom. She says, “Social consciousness . . . [dropped] to the end of the line of concerns.” She believes a narcissistic wave hit us and our path to enlightenment took a detour to a more self-centered focus.

I believe this overview of our nation’s journey to both freedom and enlightenment is helpful, but only if it becomes a signpost for what is next for us. As we celebrate the birth of America each year, it is important to look at both consciousness and freedom and ask ourselves where are we willing to go from here.

One thing is clear, we can’t go back. We can’t afford the blind rebelliousness of the 1960s. It didn’t bring us true freedom. We have learned too much about ourselves, and our inner process, to thrash around simply tearing down what doesn’t work. Neither rebellion nor constant complaining is the answer. We will find freedom when we utilize the power of our vision, practice our listening skills (to each other and to our own inner voice), and seek collaboration and team building in order to discover what does work.

We must continue to release ourselves from the bondage of victimhood. I believe this is one of the greatest gifts from 9/11. The 1970s helped teach us to acknowledge our pain, but awareness of it is only the first step towards healing. Understanding the nature of our pain is but a way station. There is no freedom if we make our home there. We will be infinitely freer when we take complete self-responsibility for our lives and the world, owning our mistakes and making amends wherever possible.

We can’t let our cynicism rob us of our peace and freedom. The vision from the 1980s of a world operating at a new level of consciousness and global unity must stay alive in us. I believe that, like many dreams, it was given to us before the way seemed possible so that it might draw forth from within us the necessary wisdom and skills.

As a nation and a human race, we cannot afford apathy or isolationism. Yes, as a movement in consciousness it appears we lost our way in the 1990s, but detours just teach us more about ourselves and show us what doesn’t work. Caroline Myss says America needs to learn that we are part of a whole, just as the liver and heart are both important parts of the body. It does not serve America to be powerful, economically healthy, or ‘free’ at the expense of other nations and peoples, just as it wouldn’t make sense to use a medicine that heals the heart but damages the liver. We must apply our holistic thinking to our politics and economics as well as our bodies. Freedom for any necessitates freedom for all.

Freedom for all truly can begin right now. It begins with each of us making a commitment to put our spiritual unfoldment at the top of our to-do list and taking time every day to practice the principles that both Unity and America were founded on. In his book, The Revealing Word, Charles Fillmore writes about the nature of freedom. He says, “We can never know the full meaning of freedom until we abide in [God]-consciousness . . . ’If therefore [God] shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.’ John 8:36.”

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It's the Gospel

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © December 2003 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

The word gospel means Good News. But where is the good news in our world today? The list of things we have to be pessimistic about is endless. War, poverty, hunger, disease, increasing violence, environmental devastation, hopeless teens committing suicide, and political polarization so entrenched that the emergence of creative, lasting solutions to the problems seems impossible.

Yet I have found some truly good news that gives me hope for our future. Dr. David Hawkins, in his extraordinary book Power VS. Force, says that each of us who are willing to envision the creative solutions to the world's problems, and work first in the arena of our own consciousness, can balance out many of those who are disempowered and stuck in a consciousness of hopelessness.

He says, "Although only 15 percent of the World's population is above [a] critical consciousness level.., the collective power of that 15 percent has the weight to counterbalance the negativity of the remaining 85 percent of the world's people…Were it not for these counterbalances, mankind would self-destruct out of the sheer mass of its unopposed negativity. The difference in power between a loving thought and a fearful thought is so enormous as to be beyond the capacity of the human imagination to easily comprehend. (Power VS. Force, pg 282-283)"

Dr. Hawkins goes on to tell us what good news that is not only for our global community and its future, but also for us as individuals as well. Even those who practice a spiritual discipline, and work to maintain a higher consciousness, can have days when we become discouraged. We may feel frustrated with the state of the world and participate in criticism and condemnation of people and events. However, Hawkins says, "…even a few loving thoughts during the course of the day more than counterbalances all of our negative thoughts."

Dr. Hawkins has created a scale he calls a Map of Consciousness. Using what he considers scientific methodology, meaning 'predictable, repeatable and universal' outcomes, he has calibrated the level of positive, life enhancing energy found in attitudes, beliefs, individuals, organizations, and events.

Created over a twenty year period of research, the Map of Consciousness is designed to show even those who have not previously awakened to the power of their thoughts, how choosing one's attitudes and actions can have a positive impact on their lives.

The Map is a scale from 1-1000. Shame and guilt are at the bottom of the scale with energy calibrations of 20 and 30 respectively, followed by apathy at 50, grief at 75 and fear at 100. Though all of us feel these emotions from time to time, if we predominantly live in these energy states, we are stuck in self-defeating, energy-draining patterns

Up the scale we come to anger at 150 and pride at 175. Though these states of consciousness can also be very destructive, Hawkins has determined that at least at this level on the scale there is some energy freed up for change to occur. Anger and pride have the potential to motivate us towards greater awareness and thus greater happiness and productivity.

Anything that makes the scale at an energy level of 200 has a net positive effect. Emotions and attitudes above 200 draw not only our own consciousness into greater awareness and creativity, but does the same for the global consciousness as well. At 200 we find 'courage' which emboldens us to move forward and set goals. The courage to see good things ahead is essential to our bringing them forth.

Moving up the scale we can see the emotions, attitudes and states of being in which humanity's bright future lies. There is willingness at 310, acceptance at 350, and love, joy and peace at 500, 540 and 600. Just as we all have moments in the low range, most of us have glimpses of these higher energy levels also.

The challenge, that Dr. Hawkins' work so clearly puts before us, is to not settle for glimpses, but live at the energy level of joy and peace. He believes this is possible for us. However, it means that in each and every moment we have the choice to save ourselves or accept defeat. We can live in our hopelessness or create a discipline that then becomes a way of life.

One thought of willingness, acceptance or love can change our day. One person can make the difference in our world. That's the gospel truth!

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Marriage and Commitment

by Rev. Clare Austen
Unity Church of Truth, Spokane, WA
Copyright © September 2006 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

In December of 2004, I met a man named Rick who became my best friend and lover. We share many of the same interests and values and it wasn’t long before we began talking about a future together as partners in life.

The difference between our story of meeting and falling in love, and the story of many of our friends who are gay or lesbian, is that we had the option to be legally married. Unlike our friends, we could enter into a state-sanctioned relationship which brings with it numerous financial, legal, cultural, and emotional benefits.

Rick and I had many times discussed our belief that extending the privileges of marriage to all our nation's citizens was a basic human rights issue. Since I am a clergy person, we had discussed how we both believe religions should be able to define marriage in any way they want (just as they define God or heaven and hell), but the state should not be in the business of discriminating.

We often said that if we ruled the world every couple would have access to a 'civil union' (perhaps we would find a better name) for the purposes of legal and financial protection. And then, if they wanted, they could have a spiritual ceremony in any religious institution where they were welcome.

As our relationship progressed, we began to make plans for our wedding day with family and friends. One day we realized we had never discussed getting a marriage license. We were suddenly very uncomfortable with the thought of accepting the privileges of marriage that are denied to others. And we were shocked that we had not considered this earlier. But we recognized that that is the nature of privilege. Those who have it are blind to the value of it. Privilege, whether it is straight over gay, white over black, or the economically advantaged over those who are less so, is taken for granted. One who has privilege rarely thinks about the quality of life of those who live without that same privilege.

Rick and I realized we had a choice. We could participate in unearned privilege or not. We agreed that we would at least like to think that we are the kind of people who would not have joined a club that excluded Jewish people, or have eaten in a restaurant that banned African Americans.

In all honesty we decided to see what we would be giving up before we declared our intention. We spoke to friends and searched the Internet for references to the benefits afforded married couples. The list is extensive, some sources giving as many as 1,100 individual advantages inherent in the granting of a marriage license.

We had friends, both gay and straight tell us we would be fools to not take advantage of such tremendous financial advantages. Who would we really be helping by making such a decision they asked? What difference would it make?

There is an old story of a man who came upon a whole beach full of starfish stranded by the tide. When he began to pick them up one at a time and throw them back into the ocean, someone asked him what difference it would make, and he answered as he hurled one more out into the surf, "It makes a difference to that one."

That finally was our answer. Maybe our risking societal criticism and losing financial advantages wouldn't make marriage laws change any quicker, but we believe every small act of congruency with what one believes makes a difference in the world. Our choice to have a 'wedding,' a huge celebration with our family, friends, and my congregation, without getting a marriage license, made a difference to us. And, it has given us a myriad of opportunities to educate others on the injustice of our marriage laws. Th