Emerson Center for

Spiritual Awakening

New Thought based in ancient wisdom ... 

the timeless teachings of

Religious Science

 

Dr. Susanne Freeborn, Senior Minister

Rev. Linda S. Siddall, Assistant Minister

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Ancient Wisdom Taught in a Modern Way!

Life Changes, Growth is Optional

October 8, 2000

Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.

Karen Kaiser Clark

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.  

Henri L. Bergson , French Philosopher

"Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet."

Jeremiah 6:17 

Changing our minds about the world seems to require that we first change our minds about ourselves.  This is a pretty interesting thing, since, if we really examine our own experience of how we human beings go about trying to change ourselves, most folks seem to go about this “ass – backwards,” kind of like the way children put on their clothes before they have any sense of left and right, front and back, inside and outside.

Maybe we resist change as James Baldwin wrote, “Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.”  He also wisely said:  “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others, the point being, you might as well start where you have the best chance of making a difference, with yourself.  Years ago someone told me that when we point out there somewhere looking for the answer for your problems, there are 3 fingers pointing back at you and your thumb, which tries to keep your balance while you engage in this silliness.  

“We don't change what we are, we change what we think we are.” Eric Butterworth.  So long as we keep looking out there somewhere for the answer, or for someone else to blame for why all our efforts come up short, we fail to take notice of the only common denominator in each and every circumstance in our lives:  ourselves.

In The Secret Door to Success, Florence Scovel Shinn said, 

“We must all have a watchman at the gate of our thoughts. The Watchman at the Gate is the super conscious mind.

We have the power to choose our thoughts.

Since we have lived in race thought for thousands of years, it seems almost impossible to control them. They rush through our minds like stampeding cattle or sheep.

But a single sheep-dog can control the frightened sheep and guide them into the sheep pen.”

And she wrote that before television helped to shorten our attention span! How could we employ anyone other than our true selves to manage this stampede of thoughts which appear to arise out of nowhere?  We think they are “our” thoughts, but if that were so, why would we continue to entertain unwanted thoughts?  Might there be something more to this?  Shinn referred to race thought, we can also thing of that as cultural bias or the collective unconscious.  What if thoughts come to us much the same way as the fog rolls over the Peninsula in the dawning morning?  And if that is so, what can make a difference? Ernest Holmes says conscious thought, and he taught us a special form or prayer in which we consciously change our thinking as a means of changing our experience in a way that mirrors the words, meaning and feeling we put into the prayer itself. 

French novelist, Colette, observed, “You do not notice changes in what is always before you.”  This is an interesting point.  How often do we walk around in our lives having not noticed the changes in those we love, in our co-workers and in our environment?  Imagine how this lack of presence in our own lives deeply affects our experience and our relationships!  We can make a practice of waking up to each present moment.

“All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Albert Einstein also believed that change occurs first in Mind. When Ernest Holmes began teaching people to change their thinking so that they could change their lives, he was sharing an idea that he had tried out.  Interestingly enough, Charles Darwin, whom so many think was a proponent of the idea that only the strong survive actually found that “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” and Confucius said “They must change who would be constant in happiness and wisdom.” Most of us wish to live wise and happy lives, though many may have become resigned about the likelihood of wisdom or happiness.  Resignation about ones ability to adapt to Life the way it really is most likely the source for many of the ills of our society.  Reclaiming ones birthright, ones natural intelligence, sense of wonder and love of life opens one to the experience of change, and naturally enough, to growth and development of oneself.

Life is fundamentally a matter of growing, a growth experience. Missing the mark is one of the ways in which we learn to hit the target. Failure is a vital part of achieving success. We have erroneously thought of success as "getting there" while actually success is "earning the right to be there." And earning means learning.  Setbacks, even failures, may be an important part of that learning.

Eric Butterworth, Spiritual Economics

Being willing to change allows you to move from a point of view to a viewing point -- a higher, more expansive place, from which you can open yourself to see far more of the big picture.  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.”  We really do have to change if there is any hope we will stop and notice life's real beauty!

Right before we moved away from Monterey, Dan and I were finishing up various projects.  One day this meant we had to drive up the hill to our friend Steve’s house.  Steve is a very successful recently retired businessman and lives way up on the hillside overlooking Monterey Bay.  We lived on the same hill, on the North side just a little way up from the bottom.  As I sat in the car overlooking the Bay it occurred to me, living in such a spot would have an enormous impact on how one experienced life.  In much the same way, the ability to shift ones point of view, the ability to change, gives one this kind of panoramic view.  It is truly amazing the freedom that comes when one releases attachment to a single point of view.  Famed folk song hero, Woodie Guthrie had some slightly salty opinions sometimes, and he had one about this.  He said, “Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.”  The truth comes with some salt sometimes and it is true nonetheless.

Greek philosopher, Heraclitus had a lot to say about change:

So Life changes.  Do you?  To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.  We must know that the Divine is within us already, or why would we have this persistent divine urge to improve?  And what is that resistant part of us about?

 “Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.” Goethe 

  “What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.”  

American Psychologist, Abraham H. Maslow 

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance."  

Alan W. Watts 

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. Persistent affirmative thought and meditation are the keys, just as Ernest Holmes said.  Here’s the reasoning that makes the difference straight out of the Bible:

"And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear." Isaiah 65:24 

Sufi teacher, Pir Vilayat Khan, says “The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”  It is our job to grow!  We have to wake up into life!  Even Confucius agreed with this idea, when he said “The perfecting of one's self is the fundamental base of all progress and all moral development.”  The way that we do that is through a regular daily practice of meditation and prayer.

Ernest Holmes wrote in the Science of Mind that “We may be quite emphatic in saying that we think the Universe exists for the expression of Spirit, and man exists for self-expression, because man is the expression of Spirit.”  We are meant to express ourselves “in and through the environment.”  Holmes later in the same paragraph said it is not necessary that we leave an impression or that anyone remembers us. “All that means anything is that while we live, WE LIVE, and wherever we go from he we shall keep on living.”

Ever notice how we human beings search around for other people just like ourselves to hang around with?  We look for people to agree with us and place a high value on finding those people.  Ever notice what a rut that agreement creates after a while? Someone named Alan Lampkin said,  “A rut is a grave with no ends.”

The Kabala says, 

“Every phase of evolution commences by being in a state of unstable force and proceeds through organization to equilibrium. Equilibrium having been achieved, no further development is possible without once more upsetting equilibrium.  Whosoever acts spoils it. Whosoever attempts to keep equilibrium loses it. A journey of a thousand miles starts in front of your feet.”

And the Buddha says in the Dhammapada: 

“Those who have high thoughts are ever striving; they are not happy to remain in the same place. Like swans that leave their lake and rise into the air, they leave their home and fly for a higher home.” 

So let’s see what we can do about “flying high.” I’d like for you to remove whatever you have on your lap and get into a seated posture in which you could remain comfortable for a few minutes, feet flat upon the floor, spine straightened as if there were a slender cord which you could gently tug upward without changing ones experience of relaxation.  Tuck your chin slightly and you will naturally achieve this state.  [RAJA YOGA MEDITATION AND VISUALIZATION]

Let us all now close our eyes and we will share a brief meditation and visualization based upon the Raja Yoga Meditation which is very, very old. We may now picture ourselves seated upon a beautiful velvet throne that lies within our hearts, making ourselves comfortable, burrowing in, and yet straightening our spine, as if a golden thread were placed within the spinal column and then gently tugged upon, so that our chin seems gently tucked a bit toward the throat.

Breathing gently in and out, in and out, noticing the familiarity of our breath, we remember that God is as close and familiar as our breath. As the breath comes in notice its movement, notice how it feels, as it moves in and how it moves out of the body. Notice the calm places between the breaths, the places where there is a still point between the in-breath and the out-breath and once again between the out-breath and the in-breath. These are the known in Hinduism as the "Gateways to God." Silently, gently say to yourself "Ham" on the in breath and "Sa" on the out breath. Allow yourself to notice the still point between the breaths, gently allow yourself to notice the calm that this brief focus on our breath brings, let us gently chant silently within, thinking to ourselves:

"Om Namah Shivaya" from the Sanskrit, which means "I honor the inner Self."

Gently repeat this silently inside yourself for about two minutes. (or as long as 15)

Picture your Self seated as you are with a beautiful golden light emanating from your heart. Picture this light radiating out forward from your heart in the shape of a cone into the room where you sit. This radiant light says with deepest feeling "I love you. Be at peace. Know that you are God." You beam this light now beyond this room into the surrounding neighborhood in front of you.

Now imagine this cone of golden light expanding into another golden cone of light from your left shoulder and extending its light over the land and into the nearby towns and beyond saying to all "I love you. Be at Peace. Know that you are God." And when that is accomplished, imagine another golden cone of light emanating from your heart and through your right shoulder that moves out into the state and then the nation saying to all without exception "Be at Peace. Know that thou art God. I love you." And as that beautiful warm golden light satisfies its mission notice another golden cone of light forming from the back of your heart and emanating behind you, radiating out your words "I love you. Be at peace and know that you are God." And while you are so doing, radiating out now in many directions, and on everything this light shines without exception, notice another beam of light radiating now from the bottom of your heart extending deep into the earth saying "Be at Peace and know that you are God. I love you." Now notice these beams of light dividing and multiplying until your heart is an infinitely radiant source of light extending these words out into the Universe beyond anything that you can imagine, beyond political divisions and scientific discovery, including all that is known and all that remains unknown, extending these words into the heart of all creation "Be at Peace. I Love you. Know that thou art God."

And when you feel complete in the sending out of blessings, gently draw the cones of golden light back within your heart for safekeeping, drawing your attention back into the room until you can feel comfortable in opening your eyes.

[Shared with love by Rev Dr. Susanne Freeborn, who adapted this meditation from one learned from her teacher, Dr. Bill Little]

Being conscious is

cutting through your own melodrama

and being right here.

Exist in no mind, be empty, here now,

and trust that as a situation arises,

out of you will come what is necessary

to deal with that situation

including the use of your intellect

when appropriate.

Your intellect need not be

constantly held on to

to keep reassuring you

that you know where you’re at,

out of fear of loss of control.

Ultimately, when you stop identifying

so much

with your physical body

and with your psychological entity,

that anxiety starts to disintegrate.

And your start to define yourself

as in flow with the universe;

and whatever comes along ~

death, life joy, sadness ~

is grist for the mill of awakening,

Not this versus that

but

whatever.

Ram Dass

We are reminded now of what Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”   It is good to remember that we grow a little every time we do not take advantage of somebody else's weakness.  We can first turn to our own spiritual practices to bless them and strengthen our own experience of God right here and right now.  This practice engages us, as Mahatma Gandhi recommended most wisely to “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Warmly Celebrating Spiritual Growth and Abundant Life in an Open Community

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Last modified: August 23, 2002