What
Is the World We Would Like to Leave Our Great-Grandchildren?
06-03-01
Readings:
God
is infinite Mind and is not the possessor of anything material.
What God gives us is an abundance of intelligent, spiritual ideas and
when we become receptive to them, they provide us with the means to meet
every legitimate need.
Pg.4,
What Does God Want?
Dr.
Thomas Hora
Be
ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”
James
1:22, 27
Behold
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called
the sons of God.
Holy
Bible
What
Is the World We Would Like to Leave Our Great-Grandchildren?
Recently, I was reading a
letter from Jean Houston and found the question, “What is the world that we
would like our great-grandchildren to inherit?”
The question stopped me dead in my tracks.
It brought immediately to mind many ideas I have picked up from studying
Native American cultures. It also
brought a demon idea: FEAR.
The idea that we would be living our lives with so little thought to the
world that we would leave those who will follow us little of the beauty and
majesty of Mother Earth, this shot an arrow through my heart and I was stung.
I look out the window from my perch high up in this building and I see
the port and the industry it represents, I see the enormous new development by
the Bay and know that in some way both of these represent the future just as
powerfully as the body of water beside which they sit.
I see the ocean fog banks curling over the hills and know that the
beautiful sea is not so far away. These
are things that in my heart of hearts I want to be sure that we leave for our
great grandchildren. I cannot truly
say that any part of it is inappropriate, I can only ask was it done with both
heart and intelligence, keeping in mind who it will serve when we are gone from
here. I see beauty in what we have
done with what was given us. I see
beauty greater still in the earth out of which all things that we know seem to
be made. I am reminded once again,
of what Matisse said about holding his work up against what God had made to
measure if it could stand the test. We
seek to live on heaven now, not waiting for someday, when we earn our just
reward. Heaven is created now in
how we live our lives; in the ideas we carry within consciousness, in the ways
that we express Love. All of it
comes to us from a divine source over which we have little power, yet, God does
share some part of that creativity with us and it is up to us, it is the
fulfillment of our self-expression to choose how it is that we would use the
gift of divine creativity. This
creativity is something to which we are given access, but it truly is God acting
as and through us. Therefore, it is
our task, as suggested by Ralph Waldo Emerson, to “get our bloated nothingness
off the divine circuits” and to create of ourselves divine conduits for the
sweetest Love available. It is ours
to allow God free access within our being.
There is a reality that is beyond our material existence. It is not trapped in these forms, which we have called real.
All of these things change and that is the measure of their absence of
reality. The only thing that is
changeless is God and those qualities that come to us through God.
This is Grace, or the self-givingness of God to God’s own creations. As the Bible tells us “If a child asks her Father for bread
would he give her a stone?” We
know that God is intent on sharing the good of the universe with us in the same
way that a parent shares whatever good she can avail herself of for the benefit
of her child. Are we receiving
these gifts with the deep respect, gratitude, and Love that they so completely
deserve? Have you ever watched a
child squander what it is given? Are
we receiving our gifts as mature spiritual beings knowing that the supply is
endless can we ask for what we truly need and allow the flow to continue on to
another? This is a wonderful
generosity of Spirit. When there is
enough, there is no need to stockpile. But
the world does not tell us that we live in an endless flow of good.
We hear on the radio, read in the news and see on the nightly news a
series of stories of one horrifying disaster after another, one emergency arises
on the shoulders of another and we are led to believe that life is pretty
terrible affair with the rich getting richer, and the poor still losing their
shirts shot full of holes.
Sometime last year I got a
wonderful quotation from Rev. Michael Beckwith that applies here very well:
“To
paraphrase Einstein, you cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
Likewise, you cannot simultaneously prepare for heaven consciousness while
attempting to prevent hell from breaking loose in your life. You cannot
have it both ways!”
“Take
a stand with yourself and determine to embody spiritual empowerment by
consciously living an intentional life. Not setting a conscious
intention to take possession of your inner dominion causes you to be tossed
about on the waves of life while claiming it is the "will of God"
that you drown in your own lack of spiritual backbone. Again, you cannot
have it both ways!”
Just
listening to the local news will scare the hell into you if you let it.
At the top of the news, they are always giving us the gloom and doom that
we should stay tuned in to hear. It’s
as if Chicken Little has been put in charge of the headlines!
“The sky is falling, the sky is falling, news at 11!”
We are encouraged to buy into the idea that things are now worse than
they have ever been before. Listening to this stuff causes us to be torn in two
directions if we are not paying attention.
My
teacher, Dr. Bill, would periodically suggest from the pulpit or in counseling
that people take a break, a vacation, from listening to the news or reading the
newspaper and then, take the opportunity to intentionally observe what affect
this had on ones consciousness. Invariably,
people would report being less stressed out and more optimistic about the
future.
This
is not a suggestion that we act like happy idiots, paying no heed to what is
going on in the world, but simply to stop and notice how much mindlessly
negative information we allow to carom around within our minds.
The design of this exercise is that we might develop our own powers of
discernment if we observed within ourselves what is really going on in the world
rather than simply sucking up the dramatic way it is presented in the press.
How much do we allow a walk around our neighborhood to affect our
consciousness? Do we notice the
trees, the plants, the temperature and qualities of the air we breathe?
Do
we notice the trash on Highway 101? I
was driving over to Palo Alto this week and I could not believe what I saw.
How weird is it that people are driving around in $50,000 cars and there
is a ton of trash on the road? Perhaps
practicing this kind of observation of life the way it presents itself in the
moment, this practice of regular discernment would aid us in our inquiry.
When
I was growing up my grandmother taught me rhyming homilies that I still
remember, here is one:
When
a job is first begun
Do
it well until it’s done
Be
the labor, great or small
Do
it well or not at all.
Now
I know that may sound like a perfectionist mantra, but it is not the intent with
which it was taught me. What she
was saying is that if I was going to do something that I would be happiest if I
really threw myself into it. Half-assed
efforts were not encouraged in my grandmother’s house.
She was the one who taught me to garden, to love flowers, to bake and how
to clean, all things for which I am still remembered by my friends.
The great energy that she taught me to put into what I do has been a
mainstay of my character. So with
that in mind, I wonder, what kind of world am I leaving behind for my
great-grandchildren? Have I been
sharing these values and others that I have learned with those for whom they
might make a difference?
I
ask again, “What kind of world would we like our great-grandchildren to
inherit?” I don’t think I want
that world to be so very different from the world we live in now.
This may seem a surprising thing to say, given crime, racism, and gender
and sexual-preference discrimination. These
are our most difficult areas of growth for this time and these are the areas
that we have discovered the greater depths of our selves.
Each generation will have its own spiritual challenges.
These challenges call for us to fully engage in our spiritual practices.
As
metaphysicians, we are challenged to become fully aware of the invalid thoughts
plaguing us so that we might change our thinking.
Ernest Holmes spoke of humility very little in either version of the
Science of Mind. In the 1926
version, which he wrote when he was still a young man, he said in a section
entitled “Factors Necessary for a Dynamic Personality,” “SUITABLE
HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY AND GENUINENESS These attributes keep one from being
over-ambitious and from being too aggressive.”
Perhaps,
it is in the later version, when Holmes teaches what Science of Mind has to say
about Jesus that we find the proper attitude and its purpose:
“To
the illumined, has ever come self-realization and I-AM-NESS.
Who could proclaim himself to be the way, the truth, and the life,
unless he had understood that God indwelt his own soul?
The Christ Spirit comes to all alike, proclaiming itself as the Child
of God, even unto the humble in spirit.
Proud of his divinity yet humble before the greatness of the Whole,
Jesus spoke from the heights of spiritual perception, proclaiming the
deathless reality of the individual life, the continuity of the individual
soul, the unity of Universal Spirit within all person.
This was the Christ speaking, the Child begotten of God—the Son of
God. Humble in his humanity,
compassionate in his tenderness, understanding 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 humanity is our brothers and
sisters. No man ever lived who
valued the human soul more than Jesus, for he knew it to be the
personification of God.” [1]
We
know that the lazy ways, the difficult and thoughtless ways, that we continue to
think, these are the mental equivalent for the negative conditions we experience
in our lives. This will also be the
case for our great-grandchildren. The
kind of humility that Jesus demonstrated is required, for to effectively
pray, to effectively reconcile ourselves to the errors in our thinking, we have
to set aside any notion that we already know the answer. We have to set aside any embarrassment about being
“wrong” in our thinking. We
must forgive ourselves and anyone connected to our errors as we set them aside
and return to the what the mystics have always said about self-discovery.
This is the most important thing that we can leave our
great-grandchildren, our spiritual practices, an open and developing
consciousness in a world in which to practice them. This material world in which we live requires that we be
conscious stewards, just as we have been conscious stewards of our selves.
Our regrets for our mistaken ideas make us terribly uncomfortable,
embarrassed and it is hard to know what to do with those kinds of feelings.
I will suggest to you that the very best thing you can do with these
vexations is to use them as a motivation for deepening your spiritual practices.
After all, the troublesome nature of such thoughts leads us to abandon
these ideas, which have been the mental equivalents of our greatest challenges.
Troublesome feelings serve us for our highest good and we can be equally
grateful for the role they have played in our awakening once again to the divine
within ourselves, the deeply beautiful, mystical truth of our being.
These same amazing and wonderful challenges that have strengthened our
characters and brought us closer to knowing ourselves are the true legacy that
we leave our great-grandchildren. Here
is something more from Holmes, entitled:
WHAT
THE MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT ABOUT THE INDIVIDUAL
All
of the great mystics have taught practically the same thing. They have all agreed that the soul is on the pathway of
experience, that is, of self-discovery; that it is on its way back to its
God's House; and that every soul will ultimately reach its Heavenly Home.
They have taught Divinity to Humankind.
"I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most
High.” They have told us that
our destiny is Divine and sure; and that Creation is Complete and Perfect NOW.
The great mystics have all agreed that our lives are ours to do with as
we choose; but that when we turns to "The One," we will always
receive inspiration from on high.
They
have told us of the marvelous relationship which exists between God and the
individual, of a close Union that cannot be broken; and the greatest of the
mystics have consciously walked and talked with God, just as we talk to each
other. It is difficult to realize
how this could be; it is hard to understand how a Being, so Universal as God
must be, can talk with an individual; here, alone, the mystic sense reveals
the greater truth and knows that, Infinite as is the Divine Being, It is still
Personal to all who believe in Its Presence.
It is entirely possible for an individual to talk with the Spirit; for
the Spirit is within humanity, and "He who made the ears" can hear.
[2]
This
will be the case for our great-grandchildren.
Be ye of good cheer and deep intention for the future of our
great-grandchildren. Visualize them
discovering who they truly are. See them recognizing the truth in every situation.
Jesus said “Ye shall know the truth, and the Truth shall set you
free.”
By compassionately engaging
in our own spiritual practices, by continuing to discover what we will through
living our lives conscious of the essential spiritual nature of each individual,
we create a ready environment for all those who will follow us. Take a break from the common knowledge of doom and gloom,
return to the interior awareness that knowing the good that God already always
is brings and know that this awareness, this consciousness is a gift of the
divine that will be there for each who follows us here. There is nothing that we must fix, there is nothing that we
must “want” the perfection of the Divine is ever-present, ever-available
across all time, all space, for all who shall ever be.
Allowing God to move through us on a daily basis, this is how we prepare
the world for our great-grandchildren. By
engaging all our innate and divine capacities and fully expressing the divine
individuality bestowed upon each of us, we prepare a sacred place in which the
future can be born. It is in
allowing ourselves to fully become present to the Love of God for all of
creation; it is in this way that we allow the expression of the divine ideas
necessary for the world into which our great-grandchildren will be born.
This is a sacred activity, a divine responsibility and through conscious
co-creation with God, through our spiritual practices of prayer, mindfulness,
and meditation we turn to God. In
so doing we prepare a perfect place for the future to unfold. We can now allow into our hearts the love, the peace, and the
fertile ground in which we know once again the Truth of our eternality reveals
itself to us. This Truth is
timeless. This Truth has ever been
and shall ever be. Responsibility
comes of honoring this Truth without squandering the gift of life now or in the
future.
Affirmation
There
is a power for good in the universe, greater than we are, and we can use it.
Let us now and forever remember that it is in this holy moment that our
opportunity to consciously co-create with this sacred power exists. Join me in knowing fully and peacefully that the future is,
and ever shall be, the now and has always and shall ever been
secure. There is no other moment
and we affirm our intention to live in the moment responsibly, lovingly,
peacefully, and wholly.
Release
with me now any worries, concerns and fears.
Affirm with me now that we are the worthy stewards of the earth and that
we shall honor its beauty and bounty by accepting what we need, when we need it,
and leaving in the divine flow that which can be better used by another, knowing
fully that our supply is endless. Our
supply is within the divine and not merely in things.
God is Infinite Supply and cannot be limited.
We release all greed and grasping and affirm God in me, as me, is me.
We accept this healing of our thinking with great thanksgiving.
Join with me now in saying, And so it is!
Thank you for being here
today.
[1]
Ernest Shurtleff Holmes, 1938 Science of
Mind (with some gender-inclusive editing)
[2]
Ernest Shurtleff Holmes, 1926 Science of Mind
Emerson
Center for
