Infinite presence.
February 23, 2017
‘We are on the verge of possibility. The individual or nation without a vision must perish until the vision is reborn.
What is our vision going to be in the midst of confusion, doubt, and uncertainty? It is either going to fall before the confusion and be destroyed, or something transcendent within us is going to rise and look to a certain future, to an eternal Reality, to a god-principle – – to an Infinite Presence, responding to us according to our acceptance.
There is no individual good. Good belongs to everyone. Good fulfills itself only as it multiplies itself; therefore, there is no good that belongs to you and to me alone, not final peace to us only as individuals.
The watchword is not exclusion but inclusion, and the more good we release, the more good we experience.’
-Science of Mind
‘…how things were.’
“You may have expected that enlightenment would come like zap! Instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first ‘aha,’ it can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds.”
-Ram Dass
Every pilgrim on a journey feels the exhilaration and glow of being liberated. Then, as the work of the new world becomes real and trying, there arises a want to go back to where we lived before awakening. Because in the challenge of growing, we can feel, “Oh, God, this is too hard. I just want to go back to before I was aware.”
Even we we give ourselves completely to life’s journey, there’s always a dweller on the threshold, trying to distract us from what matters, just as we arrive. Like those among the Jews who, after leaving Egypt and experienced freedom, went to Moses to say, “We really hate the desert. What do you say we go back? Sure, we were slaves but it was clean and were fed. It wasn’t so bad, was it?”
This undertow of consciousness is understandable and inevitable. Life always seems to progress by the expansion of revelation and the contraction of hard work.
As we awaken more deeply into the pilgrimage of the heart, there are always new things to lift and new things to build. It’s not just, “Oh, we’re awake! Isn’t everything wonderful?” The path of wakefulness is rugged and slippery every step of the way.
As we negotiate the real work of staying awake, we need to be vigilant with the pilgrim in us who wants to move forward and kind with the fearful one in us who wants to go back. For all I’ve learned, for all my wakefulness and sensitivity, for all the turns in my journey, there’s always a small voice in me ready to say, “Let’s go back. It’s easier to hide.”
This is a crooked path to enlightenment: two steps forward, one step back; two days of being heartened, one day of being disheartened. This is the dynamic of being alive. This is what we work with and for.
-Mark Nepo
#resist
#persist
#love
Be the peace.
Science of Mind
“Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’ Let’s use that same formula and say, ‘Be the peace you want to see in the world.’ When we are the peace in the midst of the turmoil, we open up to receive the gifts of the Spirit.
In this peace we are divine instruments through which the all good of God flows to us, through us, and as us.”
Blurring reality.
The term ‘Fake News’ blurs reality as language silos meaning and use. The question becomes, how do we communicate generally if terms and phrases hold different meaning depending on political perspective and ideology?