Science of Mind

Thanks + Giving

Science of Mind

‘Stop and contemplate the reality that every single thing right now around us–every chair, rug, lamp and table–was first an idea, and then someone set about to make it. Every piece of art, every movie, book and video game was first an idea, and then someone followed the inspiration and created it. Every moment of laughter, every conversation, every connection between us is first an impulse of love, and then we decide to be part of it. Every child, every smile, every time we hold hands, overcome a challenge and thrive beyond a heartbreak is an expression of life. Even a weed poking through the concrete or the act of sitting by a deathbed can be a sacred moment when we behold life and are grateful.’

Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World, spoken intro.

“What a Wonderful World” [1970 Spoken Introduction Version] along with Oliver Nelson’s Orchestra is a song written by Bob Thiele (as George Douglas) and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in 1967. Thiele and Weiss were both prominent in the music world (Thiele as a producer and Weiss as a composer/performer). Armstrong’s recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Intended as an antidote for the increasingly racially and politically charged climate of everyday life in the United States, the song also has a hopeful, optimistic tone with regard to the future, with reference to babies being born into the world and having much to look forward to. The song was initially offered to Tony Bennett, who turned it down. Thereafter, it was offered to Louis Armstrong. -RoundMidnightTV

https://youtu.be/2nGKqH26xlg

The Way of Chaung Tzu [Thomas Merton]

In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy men, nor did they single out the man of ability.

Rulers were simply the highest branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the woods. They were honest and righteous without realizing that they were ‘doing their duty.’ 

they loved each other and did not know that this was ‘love of neighbor.’ They deceived no one, yet they did not know they were ‘ben to are trusted.’

They were reliable and did not know that this was ‘good faith.’ they lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history.

They simply lived, lived simply, in the TAO of being. -dayle

“On this side of death we play roles. So long as we seek to please the audience, death, who needs no approval, plays us.” -Rilke

Matt Haig, author and journalist:

Look at the sky; remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity in order to see the smallness of yourself.

“Today, say grace thinking about the Earth, about every plant, animal and person who made it possible to enjoy the things you are grateful for. Recognize this as Spirit’s Grace during Itself into and through all creation.”

-Science of Mind

Cosmic Story

Science of Mind

“I open my self to this time and place made holy by my contemplation. I open my heart, my mind and my very being to be present to that vast and amazing cosmic story which is still being told, a conclusion that is not yet known but continues to reveal itself in all of its creation.

I contemplate this Living Presence, and I view this vase arc of goodness, truth and beauty that my eyes behold. My very being is filled with the wonder and awe of Its glory.

I am aware of that life, of that mind which in the mind of Christ Consciousness, I am aware that that life is my life and my mind now, and from this place, I speak my word. The word that I speak is peace. The peace that heals, restores and reconciles my life to all life. The peace that diffuses any perception of illusion of separation from myself or anyone or anything. I allow myself to be grounded in the experience of the peace, this beauty, this goodness that avails itself to each of us now.

I am aware that we are all a center of divine consciousness in this act whole. I know that each of us is family to our home —our mother, the Earth.[Gaia] I know this Presence was there at the beginning of all things. It is the Presence that sustains all things. It is the Presence that makes all things new. It is the Christ consciousness that incarnates in all creation.

This presence, the Christ consciousness, calls forth in each of us that which is good and noble. It is this Presence that invites each of us to co-create a world that is just, equitable and sustainable of all life, a world that words for all creation.

And so even now, as light gives way to darkness, I know that once again light is born from darkness. And so I am filled with gratefulness for light that gives us warmth, that guides us and renews us. Naming it good, I call it forth by saying may it be so.”

Daniel P. Scheid

The cosmic common good provides a larger moral perspective, but it also exhorts us to “sink our roots deeper” into our native place and to work for the good of our place on Earth. The cosmic common good enjoins us to adopt and intensify the many Earth-oriented personal daily choices and movements for structural change with which we are already familiar, for example reducing consumption and energy use, eating less or no meat, minimizing our dependence on automobiles. . . .

Sinking our roots in our native place on this fertile Earth, but with the larger perspective of the cosmic common good, may we become like the righteous, “like a tree planted near streams of water, that yields its fruit in season,” whose “leaves never wither,” and that “whatever [we do] prospers” (Psalm 1:3–4). May the larger perspective of the cosmic common good inspire us to live and to work for the good of all members of this vast and wondrous cosmos:

for the poor, the vulnerable, and all those imperiled;
for the contexts in which creatures flourish, and for the greater wholes of
      which they are a part;
for the order in creatures, by which they glorify the Creator;
for the good that creatures provide to other creatures;
for the good of the order of creatures, by which the cosmos is sustained;
for the emergent universe and the communion of subjects;
for the solidarity that binds us to all creatures;
for the promotion of justice for all creatures;
for the sacred that lies in the innermost being in all creatures;
for greater nonviolence and peace;
for the interdependence that shines like a jewel within all creatures;
for all of our relations above, below, and around us;
and for the land and this plot of Earth by which creatures come to discover
       ​the cosmos at home. 

Daniel P. Scheid, The Cosmic Common Good: Religious Grounds for Ecological Ethics(Oxford University Press: 2016), 181–182. 

Whispers.

“We may stumble, but always there is that Eternal Voice, forever whispering in our ear.”

-Science of Mind, p. 33

Eschatological secret [ultimate destiny of humanity]; wise heart…secret hope. -Thomas Merton

Revelations of Divine Love.

Lady Julian of Norwich.

‘Julian says that we have in us here such a “medley” of good and evil that sometimes we hardly know of others or of ourselves wherein we stand…’

-https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52958/52958-h/52958-h.htm

COVID

25,000,000 U.S. Cases

414,000 + deaths.

From Krista Tippet, Saturday, January 23, 2021

This week’s Pause is written by Krista:

Dear Friends,

I’ve been thinking this week about vocation — from the Latin vocare, callings. Somewhere along the way in this culture a person’s vocation became synonymous with their job title, but I think of vocation as the full range of our callings as human beings. Yes, as professional people but also as family members and neighbors, parents and friends, and members of a body politic. Vocation is not so much about goals and accomplishments. It’s about how we orient our lives and our attention and our passions. At different stages in life, different callings emerge and take primacy — what we focus on and pay homage to with our presence, and what we fight for from the ground of what we love. 

To pick up the question of what is calling me and you is one way to begin to walk, each with our own offering, towards a new kind of wholeness in our life together. For there are callings in a time as in a life.

Some of us — many of us — are called right now primarily to get safe and fed and warm, to keep those we love safe and fed and warm. Some of us are called to place our bodies between other bodies and danger. Some of us are called to be bridge people, staking out the vast ground at the heart of our life together where there is meaningful difference but no desire for animosity.

And some of us are called to be calmers of fear. This calling is so tender, and so urgent, if what we truly want is to coax our own best selves, and the best selves of others, into the light. Fear is the primitive, powerful place our brains go when they perceive threat. It collapses imagination, closing down a sense of the possible. It looks for an “other” to blame, and it finds one. The anger that has consumed our life together on every side is fueled by pain and fear. 

This is an uncomfortable truth to take in, a fact not about life as we wish it to be but about life as it is. One of the most painful things for me to watch in the frenzy of our life together in recent years was the loss of any capacity to remember that essential contradictions run wild in each of us and are real, too, in whoever our “others” have become. There is a terrible but also a beautiful, and potentially redemptive, complexity at play whenever human beings are involved.

I wonder if now, more of us who are safe enough might feel ourselves called — to invoke Bryan Stevenson — to walk towards the reality that those who confuse and vex us are more than the worst thing we believe they are or have done. We might be called — to invoke an image Frances Kissling once gave me that has shaped my sense of calling ever since — to populate and build up “that crack in the middle where people on both sides absolutely refuse to see each other as evil.” We spend so much time and energy in this culture, so much fierce creativity, wishing to change other people’s minds. But in life as it is lived, we know that’s not how it works. Hearts soften, and then minds open. Pragmatic possibilities appear that our bodies and brains literally could not fathom before. 

The show we’re offering up this week is another kind of nod to our complexity — and to how hard a time we continue to inhabit. Even as I write this with passion I feel my body clenching, exhausted by the idea of greater callings. On some level, I’m just trying to get through the days. Katherine May, who I learned about when I asked people on Twitter what was helping them get through their days, reminds me that heeding my clenching and exhaustion is also part of the way forward. She meditatively explores “wintering” as a season of the natural world but also as a place our bodies and psyches need to go, a season that recurs again and again across a life. We cheat and dismiss this in life as we’ve been living it, but it has presented itself insistently in a pandemic year we might reimagine as one long communal wintering.

We can’t move forward without grieving all we’ve lost in the past year. Closer to the ground, this means we have to let in the fact of sadness — a precursor to pain and fear — with some reverence. If happiness is a skill, Katherine May says, so is unhappiness. Winter embodies the strange complexity of reality. It is the bitterest season, we blithely say. And all the while it manages not to be the death of the life cycle, as Katherine May reminds, but its crucible.

Katherine May helps me, and I hope she offers some restorative grace to you.

Krista

---

Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes, Center for Action & Contemplation:

…the American dream of freedom and equality could be made real through courageous action in a spirit of love, in pursuit of human dignity for all. This dignity includes all who suffer from homelessness, joblessness, purposelessness, carelessness, hopelessness.

Because our needs are so great today, and your care so constant, we know that you are rebuilding the network of compassion around new visionaries who you have assembled for this hour. Surprise us with the discovery of how much power we have to make a difference in our day:

—A difference in the way citizens meet, greet, respect, and protect the rights of each other.

—A difference in the breadth of our vision of what is possible in humanization, reconciliation, and equalization of results in our great city.

—A difference in the way government, business, and labor can work together, for justice and social enrichment.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kceBOoQxEA8&feature=youtu.be

As we are loved.

“A new commandment I give to you, the you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

-Jesus of Nazareth, John 13:34

~

‘I know why I celebrate the Christian message. It is because I am grateful for what I have learned from Jesus: to be courageous and dare to question the established ways of thinking;

to speak up about unjust laws;

to be fearlessly compassionate;

to reach out to those who are sick and suffering; to attend to my short-comings before judging others for theirs; to be empathetic and reach across tribal boundaries to embrace people of all kinds, even those who are traditionally thought of as enemies; to have personal dignity under stress and

not buckle under the weight of popular opinion;

to be true to myself when the masses disapprove; to be charitable and stand for forgiveness and help those who are disproportionately disadvantaged; to be down to Earth about my spirituality and to practice it; and above all, to have a direct and personal relationship with the Divine.’

-Rev. Dr. Edward Viljoen

~

I, the father of this universe, the Mother, {GAIA, Sofia, Bafflement}, the Supporter, the Grandsire, the Holy One to be know, the Wood of Power.’ -The Bhagavad Gita

The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things. -Tao Te Ching

In a moment of realness, the clouds in our mind clear and our passion is restored, and our walls crumble when no one is looking. It all continues and refreshes, if we let it. It all renews so subtly. -Mark Nepo

“Behold, I make all things new.”

☆☆•*¨*•.¸¸

Sacred star stuff.

‘‘The cosmos is within us, we’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself’.
Carl Sagan 

︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶

Everything is sacred. For at the depths of all is the essence of life that backs all things. Therefore, nothing falls outside the scope of the all-encompassing. There is not a place we go, not a person we talk to, not an event that occurs that is void of this divine energy.

All is sacred, yet as I reflect on my experience I realize how few things I view as sacred: that ignorant statement made by a politician, the destruction of sacred indigenous lands, the clear-cutting of forests, the racial inequities that swirl across the globe, even the person who cut me off in traffic.

Perhaps spiritual understanding is not bypassing these real experiences and covering them with a blanket of oneness. Perhaps instead it’s about seeing and realizing that collectively we can align with something deeper to alleviate the real suffering in the lives of billions of our and sisters and brothers on the planet.

Perhaps it is a deep understand that Mother Earth…GAIA…is the greatest temple there is, our bodies are products of this temple, and how we honor the sacred ground beneath us and the holy temple we move on each day is a gift we bestow to the creator. If Mother Earth…GAIA…connects us and the Sacred Spirit unites us, then what I do to myself, to the Earth or to another, I do unto all.

Maybe it is not about seeing sacredness everywhere but living my life every day in a sacred way.

-Jeffon Seely, author and international speaker

[Seely is committed to dissolving barriers and dedicated to helping individuals break down internal barriers, reaching their potential. -Science of Mind]

“Everywhere is the center of the world. Everything is sacred.

-Black Elk

onbeing.org

‘If you don’t shed a tear while you’re here,

         you will have missed the point.”

I allow myself to e grounded in the experience of this peace, this beauty this goodness that avails itself to each of us now.

I am aware that we are all a center of divine consciousness in this vast whole.

This Presence invites each of us to co-reate a world that is just, equitable and sustainable of all life-a world that works for all creation.

And so even now, as light has given way to darkness, we remember that one again light is born from darkness.

I remember to be grateful for the light to emerge once again.

-Science of Mind

Endarkment

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,” Carl Jung wrote, “but by making the darkness conscious.”  Reading this, I realize that in a whole lifetime spent with seekers of enlightenment, I have never once heard anyone speak in hushed tones about the value of endarkenment. -Barbara Taylor Brown, author & Episcopal priest

And so even now, as light gives way to darkness, I know that once again light is born from darkness. Those who read out to help strangers are living out the oneness that is part of our spiritual DNA. -Science of Mind

What are we only now coming “to know” through this time of not-knowing?   

Either we will love and help one another or we will hate and attack one another, in which latter case we will all be one another’s hell. Perhaps Sartre was not far wrong in saying that where freedom is abused, society itself turns into heel.. (L’enfer c’est les autres.”) -Thomas Merton

Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus

This storm will pass. But the choices we make now could change our lives for years to come.

Humankind is now facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture. We must act quickly and decisively. We should also take into account the long-term consequences of our actions. When choosing between alternatives, we should ask ourselves not only how to overcome the immediate threat, but also what kind of world we will inhabit once the storm passes. Yes, the storm will pass, humankind will survive, most of us will still be alive — but we will inhabit a different world.

Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. But these aren’t normal times.

The coronavirus epidemic is thus a major test of citizenship. In the days ahead, each one of us should choose to trust scientific data and healthcare experts over unfounded conspiracy theories and self-serving politicians. If we fail to make the right choice, we might find ourselves signing away our most precious freedoms, thinking that this is the only way to safeguard our health.

[full read]

https://www.ft.com/content/19d90308-6858-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

How the Pandemic Will End

The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out.

Story by Ed Yong

The testing fiasco was the original sin of America’s pandemic failure, the single flaw that undermined every other countermeasure. If the country could have accurately tracked the spread of the virus, hospitals could have executed their pandemic plans, girding themselves by allocating treatment rooms, ordering extra supplies, tagging in personnel, or assigning specific facilities to deal with COVID-19 cases. None of that happened. Instead, a health-care system that already runs close to full capacity, and that was already challenged by a severe flu season, was suddenly faced with a virus that had been left to spread, untracked, through communities around the country. Overstretched hospitals became overwhelmed. Basic protective equipment, such as masks, gowns, and gloves, began to run out. Beds will soon follow, as will the ventilators that provide oxygen to patients whose lungs are besieged by the virus.

The White House is a ghost town of scientific expertise. A pandemic-preparedness office that was part of the National Security Council was dissolved in 2018. On January 28, Luciana Borio, who was part of that team, urged the government to “act now to prevent an American epidemic,” and specifically to work with the private sector to develop fast, easy diagnostic tests. But with the office shuttered, those warnings were published in The Wall Street Journal, rather than spoken into the president’s ear. Instead of springing into action, America sat idle.

After 9/11, the world focused on counterterrorism. After COVID-19, attention may shift to public health. Expect to see a spike in funding for virology and vaccinology, a surge in students applying to public-health programs, and more domestic production of medical supplies. Expect pandemics to top the agenda at the United Nations General Assembly. Anthony Fauci is now a household name. “Regular people who think easily about what a policewoman or firefighter does finally get what an epidemiologist does,” says Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

The lessons that America draws from this experience are hard to predict, especially at a time when online algorithms and partisan broadcasters only serve news that aligns with their audience’s preconceptions. Such dynamics will be pivotal in the coming months, says Ilan Goldenberg, a foreign-policy expert at the Center for a New American Security. “The transitions after World War II or 9/11 were not about a bunch of new ideas,” he says. “The ideas are out there, but the debates will be more acute over the next few months because of the fluidity of the moment and willingness of the American public to accept big, massive changes.”

[full read]

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/

7 Resources for Reliable Information About Coronavirus 

1. The World Health Organization

The World Health Organization (WHO) is publishing rolling updates on the coronavirus situation as well as useful infographics and explainers, and should be your first port of call for new assessments of what is going on.

The WHO has also got a really handy page on common coronavirus myths — covering everything from whether eating garlic or taking a bath can help prevent you catching it (they can’t), to discussion about what age people are most susceptible.

2. The National Health Service

The UK’s NHS is another excellent resource. It includes easy to understand advice about symptoms, and what to do if you think you have them.

It also gives details of how and under which circumstances you need to self-isolate, and for how long, and on how to get a self-isolation medical advice note to get to your employer.

3. The BBC Coronavirus Podcast

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has launched a Coronavirus Global Update podcast, which includes a daily round-up on the spread of coronavirus.

It also includes reports from affected areas, details of the latest medical information, and the impact on health, business, and travel.

4. COVID-19 Facts

The COVID-19 Facts website works to collate information from sources including the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the World Health Organization, and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

It also features a series covering myths around coronavirus, including analysis by the Economist Intelligence Unit of where the myth came from, and what experts say about it.

5. The New Scientist Podcast

The New Scientist podcast is becoming increasingly focused on COVID-19 — including episodes and pandemic preparations; the spread of COVID-19 and the importance of hand washing; the coronavirus vaccine; and a coronavirus special on disaster preparation and environmental change.

6. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The content platform of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Optimist, is sharing stories, research, and news stories about coronavirus from the Foundation.

The platform works to convene expert voices from across the global health sector, including sharing expert perspectives and updates on the response to COVID-19 — and you can also sign up for the Optimist’s news digest.

7. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

The LSHTM launched its new podcastLSHTM Viral in January 2020, in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, and is releasing a new episode every week. It specifically focuses on the science behind outbreaks and how we respond to them.

Meanwhile, the LSHTM is also launching an online short course, for those who want to better understand the emergence of COVID-19, and how we respond to it moving forward.

The free-of-charge course launches on March 23, and will cover topics like: how COVID-19 emerged and was identified; public health measures worldwide; and what’s needed to address COVID-19 in the future.

Given that everything is going to be the way it’s going to be, we’re left with an actually useful and productive question instead: “What are you going to do about it?”

-Seth Godin

Anticipatory grief.

Stocking up on compassion.

Name it.

That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief

Harvard Business Review

Anticipatory grief is the mind going to the future and imagining the worst. To calm yourself, you want to come into the present.

Finally, it’s a good time to stock up on compassion. Everyone will have different levels of fear and grief and it manifests in different ways. A coworker got very snippy with me the other day and I thought, That’s not like this person; that’s how they’re dealing with this. I’m seeing their fear and anxiety. So be patient. Think about who someone usually is and not who they seem to be in this moment.

When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you. Emotions need motion. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through.

It’s absurd to think we shouldn’t feel grief right now. Let yourself feel the grief and keep going.

https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief

‘A qualitative shift in our souls.’

#Bansky

Teach only love, for that is what you are. ~Course in Miracles

If one makes herself receptive to the idea of love, she becomes lovable. To the degree that she embodies love, she is love; so people who love are loved. ~Science of Mind

Everything Is Holy Now

‘I open myself to this time and place made holy by my contemplation. I open my heart, my mind and my very being to be present to that vast and amazing cosmic story which is still being told…a conclusion that is not yet known but continues to reveal itself in all of its creation.

I contemplate this Living Presence, and I view this vast arc of goodness, truth and beauty that my eyes behold. My very being is filled with wonder and awe of Its glory.

I am aware of that life…of that mind which was in the mind of Jesus the Christ…I am aware that that life is my life and my mind now, and from this place, I speak my word. The word that I speak is peace. The peace that heals restores and reconciles my life to all life. The peace that diffuses any perception of illusion of separation from myself or anyone or anything. I allow myself to be grounded in the experience of this peace, this beauty, this goodnesss that avails itself to each of us now.

I am aware that we are all a center of divine consciousness in this vast whole. I know that each of us is family to our home…our mother, the Earth. I know this Presence was there at the beginning of all things. It is the Presence that sustains all things. It is the Presence that makes all things news. It is the Christ consciousness that incarnates in all creation.

This presence…the Christ consciousness…calls forth in each of us that which is good and noble. It is this Presence that invites each of us to co-create a world that is just, equitable and sustainable of all life…a world that works for all creation.

And so even now, as light gives way to darkness, I know that once again light is born from darkness. And so I am filled with gratefulness for the light that gives us warmth, that guide us and renews us. Naming it good, I call it forth by saying may it be so.’

~Ninoska Duenas

Absence of fear…

…does anger follow?

‘…when one cherishes no desire, when one bears no hate, then is one said to have attained to the state of Brahma. -The Mahabharata

Fear is the only we shall be afraid of. It is not the host encamped against us, nor the confusion of war around us, that we need to fear; it is a lack of confidence in the good that alone should cause concern.

Through inner spiritual vision we know that evil is transitory, but good is permanent.

Then we should cherish no fear and when we neither fear nor hate when we come to understand the unity of life and then, our lesson tells us, we have attained to the state of Brahma (conscious union with God.)

Today my heart is without fear.

-Ernest Holmes

The Mahābhārata is the longest epic poem known and has been described as “the longest poem ever written”.Its longest version consists of over 100,000 śloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages. At about 1.8 million words in total, the MahābhārataAmong the principal works and stories in the Mahābhārata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Rāmāyaṇa, and the story of Ṛṣyasringa, often considered as works in their own right.

As a man thinketh.

“I have learned that it is what you put in your mind mentally what you think and do, that makes your person. And you can put any mental object in this mind and it will bring it into reality. So this means, we can program ourselves to be the people we want to be whatever the subject matter is, live in it by a mental physical program, a system of learning and doing, studying all the greats in that field and becoming greater. My program consists of _____________________________________.

You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. Angela Davis

Be a sacred warrior…say what few are willing to say. And act.

‘Emerson said that we see what we animate and that we animate what we see. How careful then we should be to guard our thoughts, not only to keep them straight, expecting only the good, but equally we should consciously expel every thought that denies good.

❧ Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind

‘A person experiences life as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison and, through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness.’ Albert Einstein

‘As I fan the divine spark within me, my desire is that my life is a great flame, igniting another and another until the world is glowing with love.’

❧ Rev. Dr. Gale Stewart, New Mexico

Thoughts and meditations.

The flower doesn’t dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes.

-Mark Nepo

It is the tending of our own souls that invites the natural process of love to begin. I remember my very first tumble into love. I found such comfort there that, like Narcissus, I became lost in how everything other than my pain was reflected in his beauty. All the while, I was addicting my own worth, empowering him as the key to my sense of joy.

If I have learned anything through the years, it is that, though we discover and experience joy with others, our capacity for joy is carried like a pod of nectar into our very own being. I now believe that our deepest vocation is to  root ourselves enough in this life that we can open our hearts to attract others. In other words, in being so thoroughly who we are, an inner essence is released that calls others to experience our personal light.

It seems the very job of being is to ready us for such love.

In this way, the Universe continues through the unexpected coming together of blossomed souls.

So if you can, give up the want of another and be who you are, and more than not, love will come at the precise moment you are simply in love with you. [Nepo]

Identify one trait makes you feel good about who are are: your laugh, your simile, your ability to listen, or the sound of your voice.

Notice how this effects others.

These small moments are the beginnings of love. They do not yet have definition.

Take a moment. Give thanks for your small goodness and for the potential love of others.

A hunger drives us.

We want to contain it all in our naked hands,

our bribing sense, our speechless hearts.

We want to become it, or offer it-but to whom?

We could hold it forever-but, after all,

what can we keep?

Not the beholding, so slow to learn.

Not anything that has happened here.

Nothing.

There are hurts. And, always, the hardships.

And there’s the long knowing of love-all of it

unsayable.

Later,

amidst the stars,

we will see: these are better unsaid.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, from the Ninth Duino Elegy

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle. 

-Plato

Science of Mind/Ernest Holmes:

This was the Christ speaking, the son begotten of the only Father-the Son of God. Humble in his humanity, compassionate in his tenderness, understand the frailties of the human mind, he let the Great Spirit speak through him, in words of love and sympathy. He proclaimed his divinity through his humanity and taught that all men are brothers.

Rev. Dr. David Goldberg:

The Sanskrit word karuna is translated as compassion, which means active sympathy or the willingness to bear the pain of others. Closely related to karuna is metta, loving kindness.

It’s important to remember also that genuine compassion is rooted in prajna or wisdom. Prajna is the realization that the separate self is an illusion. This takes us back to not attaching our egos to what we do, expecting to be thanked or rewarded.

In Essence of the Heart Sutra, His Holiness the Dalai Lama writes, “According to Buddhism, compassion is an aspiration, a state of mind, wanting others to be free from suffering. It’s not passive-it’s not empty alone-but rather an empathetic altruism that actively strives to free others from suffering. Genuine compassion must have both wisdom and loving kindness. That is to say, one must understand the nature of the suffering from which we wish to free others (this is wisdom), and one must experience deep intimacy and empathy with other sentient beings (this is loving kindness). [Right Action and Compassion, Barbara O’Brien, April 2018]

A New Year Prayer

I know there is but One Mind, which is the mind of God, in which all people live and move and have their being.

I know there is a divine pattern for humanity and within this pattern there is infinite harmony and peace, cooperation, unity and mutual helpfulness.

I know that the mind of humankind, being one with the mind of God, shall discover the method, the way, and the means best fitted to permit the flow of Divine Love between individuals and nations.

Thus harmony, peace, cooperation, unity, and mutual helpfulness are experienced by all.

I know there will be a free interchange of ideas, of cultures, of spiritual concepts, of ethics, of educational systems and scientific discoveries–for all good belongs to all alike.

I know that, because Divine Mind has created us all, we are bound together in one infinite and perfect unity.

I know that all people and all nations will remain individual but united for the common purpose of promoting peace, happiness, harmony, and prosperity.

I know that deep within each person the Divine Pattern of perfect peace is already implanted.

Now declare that in each person and in leaders of thought everywhere this Divine Pattern moves into action and form, to the end that all nations and all people will live together in peace, harmony, and prosperity forever.

-Ernest Holmes

´*.¸.• .¸. ❥❥¸¸.☆¨¯ .¸.¸¸.☆¨¯`❥❥

This precious human birth is unrepeatable. So what will you do today, knowing that you are one of the rarest forms of life to ever walk the Earth? How will you carry yourself? What will you do with your hands? What will you ask and of whom?

Today you are a precious and rare and awake. It ushers us into grateful living. It makes hesitation useless. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.

-Mark Nepo

Ishvara

“We are waiting on the Divine Presence and listening to the voice of intuition, we come into a consciousness of peace and a realization that we all belong to one human family.

For surely God desires peace on earth and good will among (wo)men, and Christmas is the day of good will among (wo)men. It is a day when we find a common cause and gladly make our gifts of love to each other in the spirit of him who said, ‘Love one another. … It is your Father’s/Gaia’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.’

“Today, as our thought ascends in prayer, our good will is going out to the whole world. Today our great desire is that peace and good will shall come among all people and all nations, binding all together in golden chains of love.”

-Science of Mind

Love looked down and saw hate. “I will go there,” said Love.

“The ability to respect the outsider is probably the litmus test of true seeing. And it doesn’t stop with human beings and enemies and the least of the sisters and brothers. It moves to frogs and waters and weeds. Everything becomes enchanting once we have full sight. One God, one world, one truth, one suffering, and one love (see Ephesians 4:4-6). All we can do is participate.”

-Richard Rohr, Center for Action & Contemplation

You didn’t come into this house

so I might tear off a piece of your life.

Perhaps when you leave,

you’ll take something of mine:

chestnuts, roses, or a surety of roots.

-Pablo Neruda

“What makes Neruda such a great poet is the largeness of his heart, and through is large kindness, he suggests that giving heals and that until we step into that space between each other and try, nothing can happen. But once we do, giving and receiving become the same, and we all grow stronger for going there together.”

-Mark Nepo

17 years ago today.

‘Only wisdom confounds Satan and all his wickedness. Pure holy simplicity confounds all the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the flesh.

-St. Francis, Salutation of the Virtues

Prayer: The wisdom that comes from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, and considerate, full of mercy and good fruits, without any trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

[photo: 9/11 memorial in NYC captured from above]

9.11

3,000 died that day, and many more since the terrorists struck, the first responders and those who stayed for weeks and months trying to repair the city.

The Guardian

September 11: nearly 10,000 people affected by ‘cesspool of cancer’

By Erin Durkin in New York

“Tens of thousands of people who lived or worked in the neighborhood at the time found themselves breathing in air thick with toxic fumes and particles from the pulverized, burning skyscrapers. Many have since become sick, many have died and new cases are still occurring all the time that are linked back to the poisons that were in the air around the wreckage.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/10/911-attack-ground-zero-manhattan-cancer

“Yes, it still hurts, and we still mourn. Our beliefs do not change the fact that we suffer from the experiences of our human existence. We should mourn our dead and feel horror at violence. We should seek justice, commemorate the bravery of first responders and honor the sacrifices of the many people who pulled together in countless small ways to comfort and support each other.

As metaphysicians, however, we do not stop there. We set our eyes and hearts to looking beyond what happened to what can come from it. For there is always something good that can be belated, whether or not we can see it in the moment. There is always love, showing up in ways big and small. We saw it for days, weeks and months after 9/11. Surely, we can keep that movement going even after 17 years. As for me, I intend to feel the pain, honor the courage, seek the path to forgiveness the best I can and always, always return to love.”

Affirmation: I remember those who died, those who save others and those who were so misguided on this day 17 years ago. I hold them all in my heart and remember that I am one with them all in the One.

-Rev. Katherine Saux, Science of Mind

Indivisible wholeness.

“The whole of humanity, “forms, so to speak, a single living being.” In Christ we form a single body, we are all “members of one another.” For the one flesh of humanity and of the earth “brought into contact” in Christ “with the fire” of his divinity, is henceforward secretly and sacramentally deified.”

Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism, 2nd ed. (New City Press: 2013), 46.

“Even science confirms that there is no clear division between matter and spirit. Everything is interpenetrating. As Franciscan scientist and theologian Ilia Delio often says, “We are in the universe and the universe is in us.” Christ’s very nature mirrors this universal reality, that we are all one, just as he is one within himself.”

-Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation

~

Presence of Spirit Everywhere, Dr. Ernest Holmes

The Spirit of God, which is Life, is present everywhere. Like the air we breathe, It presses against us. On the mountaintop, in the valley, in the desert, and in the ocean–there is no place where Life is not. Therefore, in whatsoever direction we move, we move in God. In God we live, move, and have our being.

God is one undivided and indivisible Wholeness, one divine and spiritual Presence, our universal and all-encompassion Person. Perhaps it is a little difficult for us to understand the meaning of such an all-inclusive Person, but the very fact that we are personalities presupposes such a conclusion. Our endeavor, then, is not so much to find God, to discover the Divine source of our personal being, as it is to become acquainted with God.

Today, I consciously commune with the Spirit. I know that it presses against me and flows through me. I endeavor to feel this presence as a living reality in my life. Knowing that the Divine Presence is in everyone, I sense that the Spirit is in everyone I meet. I do my best to respond to this Spirit. Seeing It everywhere, I keep my consciousness open and alert that I may better understand the union of all life with its pure and perfect Source.

~

‘There is no one in this world who is not looking for God. Everyone is trudging along with as much dignity, courage and style as the possibly can.’ -Hafiz

“It’s nice to know we are all looking for God. It’s nicer still to know that we can find God in each other. After all, we’re all doing the best we can, with as much courage and style as we can. […] I have truly found that judgments, which are usually condemnations, are built on assumptions. And assumptions are built on quicksand–they suck up my good sense and my loving heart, so that as I drag someone down, I go down, too.”

-Rev. Katherine Saux, Science of Mind

He who possesses one [of the virtues] and does not offend the others, possesses all; and he who offends one, possesses none and offends all; and every one of them confounds vices and sins.

-St. Francis of Assisi

Outwaiting the cloud.

Science of Mind:

There is a place where we begin and leave off physically, but there is no place where we begin and leave off mentally or spiritually.

If we do not merge with others in cooperation, in unity, and in happiness, we may be certain that there is something in us that feels it has been rebuffed or rejected.

Mark Nepo:

In truth, the heart, like the Earth, is continually blanketed by ever-changing atmospheres that come and go between who we are and how we leave our days.

If we could only suspend our judgement when clouded in the heart. For many skepticisms are born from conclusions draw while unable to see, as if any kind of understanding will prevent the clouds from coming or going, again and again.

But no clouds last forever.

The Earth and all that grows from it knows this well. So does the heart and everything that grows from it, in spite of all our very understandable pains.

For in the beginning…

Science of Mind

’It all starts in love, and it all fades into love. Love is all there is. Some people may have an issue with using the word God. That’s perfectly all right. Substitute the word love for God, or Gaia, or Spirit. In doing so, scripture takes on a different feeling. For example, in the beginning, Love created the heavens and the earth.

Love is stronger than any force in the Universe. Love—the deep, unconditional love—has the power to change everything.

When we love the whole race with the whole heart, then we shall enter the presence of [love] who is love. -Christian D. Larson

‘For once full of light…’

I begin to realize that in inquiring about my own origin and goal, I am inquiring about something other than myself. In this very realization I begin to recognize the origin and goal of the world.

-Martin Buber

“Meditation or contemplation helps us to know how to find the spots of spiritual stasis on which we can rest. There is deep satisfaction and sometimes a safe port in life’s storms to be found, even in the simplest of spiritual practices.

We believe that all things have consciousness: mineral, animal, plant, human and Divine. We believe that that consciousness is everlasting and immortal and that it is constantly expanding and evolving. We believe that the perfection of being is within us and that we can experience it to the degree that we are conscious of it. The ultimate goal and purpose of life is to discover and manifest freedom in everything, and everyone can attain this.

We trust in the unity of all life, and that everything in this Intelligence is unfolding back to where it originated, which is spirit Itself.”

-Science of Mind

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains.”

-Walt Whitman

“In loving ourselves, we love the world. For just as fire, rock, and water are all made up of molecules, everything, including you and me, is connected by a small piece of the beginning.

In this way, I’ve learned that loving yourself requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world—our own self-worth.

All the great moments of conception—the birth of mountains, of trees, of fish, of prophets, and the truth of relationships that last—all begin where no one can see, and it is our job not to extinguish what is so beautifully begun. For once full of light, everything is safely on its way—not pain-free, but unencumbered.

I realize—make real before me—that this moment, whatever it might be, is a fine moment to live and a fine moment to die.”

-Mark Nepo

This day.

‘I affirm that this is the day that God has made, that it is good, and that I find fulfillment in it.’ Psalms/Science of Mind

’The more spacious and larger our fundamental nature, the more bearable the pains in living.’ -Wayne Muller

’The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you ar e in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.’ -Mark Nepo

Even if we don’t get a thunderbolt to the mind, we can know that wisdom walks with us every step of the way. -Rev. Dr. Margaret Stortz

[Photo: South-Central Idaho]