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Fourteen years ago I created a workshop called Status Quo or Status GO! Just for kicks and giggles I went back to look at my outline and realized my workshops have changed a bit over the years. This one went deep, as they all do, but I was less focused on spiritual principles and practices back then. That workshop dived into what fears would keep us stuck in our lives, and what we could do about those fears. The premise behind the workshop is that if we address our fears properly, we can better move out of the status quo, the stuckness, and into more creativity, more liveliness, more GO in our lives.

Fast forward to current, and I just finished teaching a 4 week class based on a book by Dennis Merritt Jones called “When Fear Speaks – Listen.” This book talks about seven messengers of fear, and their descendants, and how those fears will keep us stuck in status quo unless we listen to the messages they have to offer.

This morning I was thinking about status quo, because the theme for this month in Centers for Spiritual Living is Unstatus Quo. And then in the daily meditation voice mail I recently received, it talked about superiority and inferiority and how our judgement of others as inferior to us really gets in the way of our good.

Here’s where I tied it all together: according to Jones in his book, judgement is one of the messengers of fear, and superiority and inferiority are its descendants.

Here are the messages we can receive from judgement, superiority and inferiority, if we allow it. Judgment tells us there is something going on within us that we don’t want to look at. And it is that judgment that allows us to feel superior to our fellows. Ironically, it is also that judgement that allows us to feel inferior to our fellows, because superiority and inferiority are two sides of the same coin. So we move through life judging others, an ego maniac with an inferiority complex. I’m sure you don’t have to think too hard to come up with times in your life when you have felt like this, or when someone you are familiar with that has those traits. Being like that causes a lot of trouble for us in our lives. And it keeps us stuck and limited, in the Status Quo.

What if you could move through life without judgement? What if you could move through life with a true sense of what it means to be humble, to know your strengths and your weaknesses and to be able to truly take your place in this life?

To not feel superior to anyone nor inferior. Feeling that way makes us feel separate from, and feeling separate from is a very lonely place to be.

What if we were to, instead, release all that judgement and superiority and inferiority and replace with humbleness, with meekness?

Here’s where our spiritual practices come in, and for our spiritual practice today I want to explore what it really means to be humble. And for that, I first go to what is probably my favorite part of the Bible, the beatitudes. In this wonderful teaching called Science of Mind, we take into account the fact that the lessons in the Bible were never meant to be taken literally, because they taught in metaphor in those days. And just as important, most modern versions of the Bible have been translated so many times that they are inaccurate, at best. I use the George Llamsa bible, which has been translated directly from the original Aramaic language of the day, and I rely on the wisdom of folks such as Llamsa, Charles Fillmore and Rocco Errico to help me get to the true meaning of the words. In true Science of Mind form, I bring you a metaphysical translation of “blessed are the humble.”

What that really means is delighted are those who place more importance on God than they do on material things.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Meek means yielding, pliable, flexible, unassuming. And the earth means our outer conditions.

What that really means is delighted are the yielding, pliable, flexible and unassuming, for they shall have control over outer conditions.

As beautiful and powerful as the beatitudes are in their entirety when translated this way, this article is more about moving out of judgement, inferiority and superiority so I’m going to leave the rest of the beatitudes for another time.

Remember, one of the ways out of judgement, inferiority and superiority and all the limitation that those traits cause for us, is to be meek and humble. To be yielding, pliable, flexible and unassuming, as well as to place more importance on god than we do on material things.

We have more wisdom to draw on however. Dr. Bob Smith, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, had a plaque on his desk. I actually have these words on my desk as well. Here they are: “Humility is perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble. It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around is seeming trouble.”

It never fails. Whenever I am feeling judgmental or superior or inferior, all I have to do is read those words and they bring me back to being right sized, which is another meaning for being humble.

One way to move from Status Quo to Status GO is to take a look at where we are judgmental, superior or inferior in our lives, and to transform those fears into meekness and humbleness. To being yielding, unassuming, flexible, pliable and right sized. And to do so by placing more importance on our connection with God in our lives than we do on anything else.

To close, I bring you this definition of humility from Ernest Holmes, in the Glossary of the Science of Mind textbook: “True humility does not mean self-abasement, but is rather that attitude which Emerson tells us is willing to get its “bloated nothingness out of the way of the Divine Circuits.”

Today, I move from Status Quo to Status GO by nurturing and strengthening my connection with God.

Whenever I get ready to sink into an affirmative prayer, what is also called a treatment, I first glance to my outer surroundings.  I don’t know why I do this and I’ve learned not to question why in such matters. But I believe this practice is a simple way for me to move into the first of the five steps of a treatment, which is to acknowledged that god is everywhere present.

Today as I went to move into a treatment, I looked out the window and noticed the wind.  I can hear the wind, making whooshing noises as it moves around out there.  So I knew it was a windy day.  But I saw the trees moving around and thought, “oh look!  God is dancing in the trees!”  

And then I moved into the second stage of a treatment, oneness, which is where I acknowledge that if god is present everywhere, it is also present in me, and so my next thought was, “oh look!  God is dancing in MY consciousness!”

And then my next thought was the third step of treatment, which is to state my word.  And so I know that God is dancing in my consciousness, and always has been, but today I feel it.  I feel that glorious presence of spirit moving through me as divine right and perfect energy.  I feel It as the ideas that are coming to me, from both within me and from other people.  I know this God stuff dancing in my consciousness is the result of fully feeling the feels of loss, fully appreciating the healing journey, fully knowing the gratitude for that has been and all that will be, and I also know that my every intention is now come to fruition.  All those beautiful ideas coming from the dance of Spirit in my consciousness are now so.  

And for that I am very grateful.  Which is the 4th step of a treatment.

And so I release it all, except the dance part.  Because I happen to love that dance and want more dancing!  And so I shall dance my way through the release of my words to that law that is also dancing with incredible joy at my words, delightfully accepting them and acting upon them.  Which is the 5th step of a treatment.

And I anchor it all with this:  AND SO IT IS!

Creativity.  It is one of my favorite things in life.  I’m not speaking about artistic creativity here, but about creating in our lives.  In fact, I was drawn to the liberation theology of New Thought, and specifically, Science of Mind, because somewhere along the line I learned that the philosophy taught one how to create one’s life.  Or how to recreate one’s life.  At the time, I was also searching for a god that wasn’t a religious god, and in Science of Mind I found both.  From the first class I took, I was off and running into a new way of life that continues to support me, reward me and fulfill me, each and every day.  Every day I create anew.  I do this by connecting and by examining my beliefs and thoughts, and changing them when necessary.

It gets pretty heavy does it at times.

So I’ve learned that it is important for me to regularly play.  Just play.  Play is why I have rocks in my life.  Play is why I have a garden in my life.  Play is why I have horses in my life.  Play is why I have dogs and cats in my life.  

Play is a big part of creativity as well.  Play can help us lighten up and change our perspective.  Changing our perspective is what coaches call reframing.  It simply means we view an event in our life differently, so that we can heal and move on and, well, play more.  

In the book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin, he says, “In play, there are no stakes. No boundaries. No right or wrong. No quotas for productivity. It’s an uninhibited state where your spirit can run free.”

How do you play?  Play is part of living Fearlessly Feral you know.  Gotta have the play time in there.  If you think you don’t know how to play, watch a little kid play.  Then go outside and do what that little kid did.  Kids play.  They just play.  It is suggested that we be as little kids.  Not all the time.  I’m not suggesting immaturity.  I’m suggesting regularly taking time out to play in and with something that you enjoy. For me it’s rocks and horses and gardening and dogs and cats.  For you it might be something entirely different.  Some folks like to build model airplanes.  Some folks like to take old cars and restore them.  Some folks like to make stuff out of wood.  Find or create your playground and go play in it.

Today I pay tribute to Dr. Ernest Holmes, the founder of Science of Mind, the teaching of Centers for Spiritual Living.  You know those questions that ask about the one person you would love to be able to speak with, or the one person who had the most effect on your life?  It’s this guy.  Dr. Ernest Holmes, and today was his birthday.  I was a child when I first became acquainted with the teaching he presented to the world in the form of a textbook in 1926, called the Science of Mind Textbook.  I had some other things to do in life, mainly drink, but when it came time to move to the next stage of my personal development when I was about ten years sober, I came home to that teaching and began seriously studying it and applying its principles in my life.  Each class I took, each workshop I attended changed me from the inside out and this teaching continues to do so as I live its principles.

I was unable to find out how many books Ernest Holmes wrote, but at one source I found 49 listings.  I own 21 of Ernest Holmes’ books and have read and continue to use every single one of them in my own studies and research, and for my own reminders of the truth when I need refreshers.  I read lots of other books, but I always begin and end with Ernest Holmes.  He called Science of Mind the study of spiritual psychology and that is where my heart is, in spiritual psychology.

There is a web site called the Science of Mind archives that has a wealth of information and this quote is in the bio of Ernest Holmes:  “Once, when asked to provide a concise definition of the Science of Mind teaching, he replied that it is a “correlation of laws of science, opinions of philosophy and revelations of religion applied to human needs and aspirations.”

So for his birthday I want to present to you some of my favorite Ernest Holmes quotes.  This is by no means all of them.  There are far too many to include.  And these are just from the Science of Mind textbook, and more specifically, the Introduction.  The text book itself is almost 600 pages long, and mine is filled with highlights and notes.  I didn’t include any quotes from his other books.

“To learn how to think is to learn how to live…”

“… trained thought is far more powerful than untrained,….”

“… the very air is vibrant with power.”

“The answer to prayer is in the prayer. But what is a prayer? A prayer is a movement of thought, within the mind of the one praying, along a definite line of meditation; that is, for a specific purpose.”

“We do not will things to be done; things are brought into being, not by will, but by the power of the self-assertive Truth.”

“It has been said that we can know God only in so far as we can become God.”  (See my podcast episode titled What It Does for my take on this quote.  You can find my Fearlessly Feral Living podcast wherever you listen to podcasts) 

“One of the great difficulties in the new order of thought is that we are likely to indulge in too much theory and too little practice.”  (This one quote is why, if you work with me, I tend to nag a bit about spiritual practice.)

“ We should learn to control our thought processes…”

“ A new light is coming into the world. We are on the borderland of a new experience.”

Happy Birthday Ernest Holmes!  I am so grateful for your contribution to the world, and to my life.

Quotes for today that are tickling my fancy:

Alan Watts: “If we cling to a belief in god, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.”

Joseph Campbell: “… to worship a god, you must become that god. No matter what you call the god or think it is, the god you worship is the one you are capable of becoming. The power of a deity is that it personifies a power that is in Nature and in your nature. When you find that level, then you are in play. That is the work of art in general, because art really is a worship.”

Me, yesterday, in conversation with a friend: “instead of going with the flow, I want to take it deeper. I want to TRUST the flow.” Because trusting the flow means I can truly let go. Sometimes, when I’m just going with the flow, I’m still attempting to control or manipulate it. Truly letting go takes trust. Which then means I must explore what it is I am trusting.

Then there is this, from Obi Wan Kenobi: “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.”

The Force is, for me, what god is.

And lest you scoff at me quoting fictional movie characters, I’ll just say that the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas, studied Science of Mind. It is my personal opinion that the concepts in the Star Wars movies are great illustrations of this wonderful teaching that has so effectively allowed me to live an even greater life than I ever imagined.

So here I am, trusting, embodying, having faith instead of belief. Asking myself, what does that look like in every day life? It is an interesting exercise in self reflection. If I trust, then I must also accept. Oh, and here’s another comment, made by me when asked by my horse trainer/equine therapist, as she does after every lesson “what did you learn today?”: “allow but continue on.”

This means I must allow what is happening (which for me means I don’t resist it, judge it, try to manipulate it, or attempt to control it) but also continue on with my mission in life. Whether that mission is to continue the horse back ride or to continue doing my minister work in the world or continue doing the laundry or continue to know the good for myself and others. I must allow but also continue on. And that takes trust, and embodying, and having faith.

Such are my thoughts today as I move out into the world to get a massage and do a wedding. And see the completion of the derockifying of my riding trail. WEEHAW! Can’t wait to ride on it!

Today I trust, embody the good, and have faith. Oh, and I play today. And because I also want to play a bit, because play is always a part of things in my life, I’m going to include an oldie but a goodie meme I made three years ago. Because it takes trust, embodiment and faith to do things that are considered crazy, delusional and ambitious. And that, my friends, is what a life looks like when one lives in trust, embodiment and faith.

What if wishes really could come true? Check this out!

I found the turkey wishbone this morning. 

Which immediately reminded me of that old saying, something about if wishes were fishes. So I googled it. (Don’t you just love google?). Here’s what came up: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride" is a proverb and nursery rhyme, first recorded about 1628 in a collection of Scottish proverbs, which suggests if wishing could make things happen, then even the most destitute people would have everything they wanted.” And then this was also there: “K.C. Jones says when someone would wish for something, it used to be cute to reply: ‘And if wishes were fishes we'd have some fried; And if wishes were horses, beggars might ride.’ "

And this led me to a story I would like to share with you. Because there’s a way to do more than wish. There’s a way to have those wishes come true.

First of all, a bit of history:  my mom was the one who taught me about the wishbone in the turkey.  She would clean those wishbones and stash them someplace until they dried out, then proudly produce one, ask me to pull one end while she held the other end, and if it broke off in my favor, I got to make a wish.  Somehow she managed to arrange it so that it always broke off in my favor.  At least that’s the way I remember it.

Anyway, today is the day after thanksgiving and I am now prepping for annual round of turkey soup and turkey noodle casserole and of course, turkey sandwiches.  And I found the wishbone.

I also had a question posed to me a few days ago by a wise friend, upon learning that it was my birthday.  He asked, “so what are your intentions for this next trip around the sun?”

Now, my wise friend is a Science of Mind minister, like me, so I knew precisely what he was asking.  Because in our world, we know that a setting of an intention is actually an affirmative prayer.  And as I voiced to him my intentions, which I had previously voiced to no one else, I asked myself if I was really ready for this?  Because in my world, this setting of intentions stuff is powerful.  And the answer came back, yeah, I’m ready.  Also in our world:  our prayers tend to be of the affirmation type, not the beseeching type.  In other words, we don’t ask a god or the universe or whatever outside of ourselves to please do this for us.  We instead know that as we are, as Ernest Holmes put it, unique and individualized manifestations of god, we can simply speak our word and know.

We actually have a formulaic 5 step prayer for this stuff.  Yep, an affirmative prayer.  

Not a wish.  Not a goal.  Not a resolution.  But an intention.  There are very real differences between these things, which, by the way, is why I don’t do new year’s resolutions.

Back to the prayer:  

Here’s that 5 step affirmative prayer in a nutshell:  God is, I Am, It is done, Thanks, Bye!

Now, because I’ve been doing affirmative prayer since god was a child, I can do the shortened version of this thing and put feeling behind it and know.  

But let me break it down a bit.

In Science of Mind classes, we are given an acronym for this formula.  By the way, this is basic foundational Science of Mind stuff and it is taught in all beginning classes, because everything else basically builds upon affirmative prayer. Oh, and while I’m here, we sometimes call affirmative prayer “treatment.” So if you ever experience a Science of Mind person asking you if you have a treatment request, what they are really asking you is if you have an affirmative prayer request.

So here we go:  

R U R T R?

Are You Ready to Receive?

Five steps.

The first one is Recognition.  I recognize God.  Now, you can flesh out this step in whatever way appeals to you.  The key here is to move into a feeling space with it. This isn’t just intellectual heady stuff.  Thought plus feeling equals power and when we do an affirmative prayer, we begin with this first step recognizing the existence of a god in whatever form, and we begin to feel stuff by doing that.  I tend to flesh out this step with things like God is all good, all the time.  I might add some qualities of spirit as we like to call them.  God is love, god is power, god is peace, god is joy.  And for good measure, I usually add that god is everywhere present.

Which leads me to the next step:  Unification.  God and I, we are one.  Oneness.  No separation between me and god.  I usually have some fun with this step.  I am a godling.  A little godling running around on this earth. Notice the first person singular by the way.  And if you don’t know what that is, review your grammar class but basically we do this stuff in I statements. Not you and not we.  There’s reasons for this which could get me way off track so I won’t go into them now.  Just speak in I statements.  If you are curious and want more, take the Foundations class.  Let me know.  I can offer that one.  Anyway, back to the unification:  I am a unique and individualized manifestation of spirit.  (That’s from Ernest Holmes by the way).  God is living and moving and breathing as and in and through me.  And one of my other favorites, I am a drop in the ocean, god is the ocean.  The key is to realize here that there is no separation between us.  There isn’t a god out there.  Only in here.

Next step:  Realization.  This is a fun one.  I love love love this step.  Because in this step I get to affirm and know and feel as if it is already true.  So we state this step in the present tense (see comment about grammar), as if it is already happening.  And we get to state how we are feeling about this event.  So we don’t necessarily affirm the event, we affirm the feelings we will have when the event comes true.  As an example, I’m going to out myself here and give you one of the intentions I stated to my friend when he asked.  You are the second to hear my intention for this next year.  My intention this year is to manifest a healthy, equal, romantic relationship with a wonderful partner who is open, loving, kind and has similar beliefs to me.  Now, that’s pretty specific.  And no, I don’t and won’t outline that in my prayer.  But I do have it mind because those things lead me to the feelings I will get when this comes true:  peace, joy, a sense of companionship, intimacy.  So in reality I am affirming those feelings. My prayer is for those feelings to manifest within me. The rest of it, the manifestation of the perfect guy in my life at the perfect time, well let’s just say I am now in partnership with a Law that always says yes to my word.  How I get there isn’t entirely up to me, although I do have some footwork to do.  Like BE the partner I wish to attract. Which means I get to also BE open, loving, kind.  And I get to really know what my beliefs are.  So when I BE these things, I activate the law of attraction that Ernest Holmes speaks of in an ENTIRE CHAPTER in the Science of Mind textbook.  So, I affirm the feelings.  I BE the qualities.  Notice there is no other action that needs to be taken. Although I will freely admit that sometimes I do find it necessary to do some footwork.  For example, I need to work on just how open and loving I really am.  Yeah, when we affirm this stuff, the first thing that usually happens is that opportunities will arise for us to take care of our own shit.  Which is why I asked myself if I was truly ready to affirm this intention.  I knew what I was setting myself up for.  It’s good.  It’s ok.  I’m ready.

Then I give thanks.  Express my gratitude.  Because it is already done in the Law, that delights in doing precisely what I affirm, every single time.  

Then I release into that Law, which basically means I let it go.  It is done.  I need do nothing more with it.  As Eddie Watkins Jr. sings in one of his songs, you don’t bury a seed then dig it up again to see if it is sprouting.   I leave it be.

And anchor:  and so it is!

That’s it!  

That’s the story of how I got from a wishbone to an affirmative prayer.


In Christianity, a superficial understanding of prayer is that it is a beseeching to an outside entity.  This idea of prayer is so ingrained in our culture that even people who claim not to be Christian, who replace the word God with the word Universe, still beseech to an outside entity.  They say things like, “I’ve asked the Universe to help me with this.”  

This superficial understanding of prayer has never worked for me.  I’ve always felt “victimy” praying to an outer entity, and always felt like there was something missing with those prayers.  The reality is that prayer goes much deeper than simply asking a God separate from us to do something for us.  The reality of prayer is that it has the power to change us from the inside out, and when we change, our world changes.  

In Science of Mind, Ernest Holmes says that prayer “changes the mind of the one doing the praying.”  And in the Bible, it calls us to “pray without ceasing.”

How is one to pray without ceasing?  And what is the real power behind prayer?  I believe that prayer is a guiding light, not something to be used when we are in need.  Prayer is a way of being, not words.  The traditional way of praying is a very good start.  Now let’s take it a bit further.

If we are called to pray without ceasing, it means we are called to BE prayerful, 24/7.  Prayer, in a deeper sense than the beseeching sense, means communion.  It means connection.  I’m sure you have had times in your life when you felt disconnected.  Alone.  Lonely.  Loneliness is not about a lack of people in our lives.  It is about being and feeling disconnected from that beautiful power that exists in this world, that Power that is everywhere present.  The reality is we can not be disconnected from It, because It really is everywhere present.  We’ve just shut ourselves off from It.  

We shut ourselves off from It by judging others.  We shut ourselves off from It by hatred.  We shut ourselves off from It by putting up walls of defense.  We shut ourselves off from It by acting in ways which run counter to our deepest beliefs and values.  And when we shut ourselves off from It, It never goes away.  It just affirms our way of being, because that, in essence, is what we have been praying for.  It always says yes.  So we judge and hate and build walls and separate ourselves further from It by separating ourselves from our fellow humans.  We live in terms of us and them.  And we get lonelier, and sicker, and more and more hateful and judgmental, and we wonder how God could be doing the things he is doing?  And then we shut ourselves off from God even more because now we are mad at Him.

I am finding it necessary to take a deep breath now.  Breathe.  Breathe out that pain and misery born of ignorance, and breathe in relief, and truth, and the love of God.

Because in reality that is really what God is.  It is love.  That’s all.  But that is quite a bit.  It covers everything.  In some circles there are seven qualities,  or attributes, of Spirit that are mentioned.  Those attributes are love,  light, peace, power, joy and beauty.

I’m going to make an assumption here and assume that you believe that God is indeed everywhere present.  Another way of putting it is that there is no place where God is not.  No place.  You are here.  And if there is no place where God is not, then God is in you.  

I’m going to make another assumption and assume that you believe that the qualities of God are indeed love, light, peace, power, joy and beauty.

If you believe that there is no place where God is not, and if you believe that the qualities of God are love, light, peace, power, joy and beauty, then you must also believe that YOU are made of love, light, peace, power, joy and beauty.   And if you believe in what the Bible says, then you believe that the way to pray is 24/7, without ceasing.  

If you believe all that, then the way to pray is to embody those qualities of love, light, peace, power, joy and beauty.  All day.  Every day.  As best as you can.  This is the mystical and very deep power of prayer.  When we strive to pray like this, prayer does indeed change the mind of the one doing the praying.

In Sanskrit, prayer means seeing oneself as wonderfully made.  How much more wonderful can you get than to think of yourself as the essence of love, light, peace, power, joy and beauty?  

I am reminded of the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.  You may know it as the 11th step prayer if you are a 12 stepper.  This prayer goes like this:  

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.

The prayer begins with a beseeching to an outside entity, but then, it moves deeper.  It asks for us to become peace.  It asks for us to become love instead of hatred.  It asks for us to forgive instead of perpetuating the offense.  It asks for us to bring harmony to discord.  It asks for us to speak the truth.  What truth?  OUR truth!  This calls for an extraordinary level of self awareness, which calls for a regular practice of introspection, which is another form of prayer, and the topic of which could be another talk or blog post.  Back to the prayer.  This prayer calls us to replace our doubts with faith, our despair with hope.  It calls for us the Be the light, shining on the darkness of hatred and judgement and bigotry and shame.  It calls for us to be joyful.  It calls for us to turn away from such self centered and selfish motives as wanting consolation, understanding and love and to turn towards consoling others, loving others and understanding others.  And it tells us that when we do this, we find ourselves, our true selves.  Thus that old self, that lonely miserable old self, dies, and we reawaken to an eternal life that is filled with so much love, light, peace, power, joy and beauty that we sometimes wonder about it.  How can I, a lowly human, be filled with so much love, light, peace, power, joy and beauty?

And here’s the kicker to this prayer:  it is in giving that one receives.  In Science of Mind we call this the Law of Attraction.  This law says that what we give, we receive.  I find it somewhat ironic that we are back to where we began, beseeching to an outside entity, only now we have received that which we have asked for, because we have become that which we have asked for.

So go out into the world.  BE love, light, peace, power, joy and beauty.  Every time you find yourself judging, remember.  Every time you find yourself separating yourself from the sunlight of the Spirit by building walls of us and them, tear down those walls.  Every time you find yourself hating something or someone, replace that hatred with love.  Every time you discover an example of sadness, bring some joy to it.  Every time you want to participate in feeding disharmony by choosing a side, instead seek to understand.  BE the voice and the example of Spirit in your every action and your every thought.  Allow to die a natural death pessimism and negativity, and replace that with optimism and positive thinking.  

And watch your life resurrect into something new and wonderful; and what you have prayed for manifest.

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Yesterday was Chinese New Year. It is the year of the pig. Unfortunately I have no pig photos for you. I even know a pig. His name is Winston. Winston apparently likes his belly scratched, but he is also a bit wary of strangers, so I have yet to experience the pleasure of scratching his rather large belly. The last time I saw Winston, his mama had put him on a diet and Winston was not a happy pig.

However, it is said that most pigs are happy, as well as good tempered, kind hearted, positive and loyal. And prosperous. I guess that accounts for Winston needing to go on a diet. He has an abundance of food!

If you are wondering whether this is going to just be a rambling about pigs, not to worry. I’ve got a point; two actually. It’s just taking me a while to get there. First point: You get a do-over. It is New Year’s all over again. How are you doing on those resolutions which never work? Take the do-over. Or did you take my advice and set intentions instead of resolutions?

Either way, you get a do over. Thank the Chinese for it.

The other point of my post is the prosperity piece. Pigs are a symbol of prosperity. Now, I did a bit of research, as I like to do, and discovered that this prosperity thing only applies under certain conditions. If if you were born in a year of the pig, watch out. Apparently, not so much prosperity coming for you. What are those years you say? According to Wikipedia, they are: 1947, 2031, 1995, 1971, 1923, 1935, 2007, 2019, 1983, 1959. Don’t ask about the 2031. I have no clue.

But here’s the thing. I’m a Science of Mind New Thought kind of person. This means I believe in the power of thought and the Law of Attraction. This means that if we set an intention for prosperity, then prosperity we shall have. Of course, there is a lot of other stuff that goes into that, but I’m just going to leave that right here for you.

Today, you get a do-over on New Years, and you can rely on the pig. Go for it. Prosperity.

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I have a sticky note on my desk that reads, "A lot of spiritual work is dealing with the idea that we are separate from God."

In my experience, it is this idea of separation that causes feelings of loneliness, stress, overwhelm, burden, anger, isolation, distrust, doubt, guilt and any myriad other host of negative feelings.

I have never believed in a God separate from me, but I never voiced that, because of a perception that most people believe in the separate "God in the sky" version of Spirit.  Even many so called alternative religions believe in a Force separate from us humans.  Every day I hear folks say things like, "The Universe will provide."  It's still a separate God, even if they are calling it something different.   I could never make sense of a separate God.  And when I returned to my childhood roots at a Center for Spiritual Living and began to take classes, I soon learned why:  One of the first things we are taught in our classes is that God and I, we are One!

In fact, that concept is the first of ten of what we call the Core Concepts of Science of Mind. It is also the first statement in a list of "We Believe" statements that have been adopted as a way of explaining to newcomers who we are and what we believe.

Ironically, around these parts we don't tell anyone what to believe.  But we do have ten statements telling everyone exactly what we do believe. Here is the first of those ten:

"We Believe in God, the Living Spirit Almighty; one, indestructible, absolute and self-existent Cause.  This One manifests Itself in and through all creation, but is not absorbed by Its creation.  The manifest universe is the body of God; it is the logical and necessary outcome of the infinite self-knowingness of God."

The part that says we are each free to believe what we wish is the part where I interpret that rather wordy sentence in my own way.  I choose to interpret it thusly:  I believe in God, it manifested itself in and through me by knowing me.  Yet God is much more than that, it isn't just me.

The ramifications of such a belief, or lack of one, are far reaching, and the subject of another blog post, but for now, I will leave you with this:

God and I, we are one!

How do you feel about the concept of being one with God?