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Stepping Up Our Spiritual Practice 04-29-01
Readings “The
conscious mind is spirit[i]” If
one wishes to demonstrate prosperity she must first have a consciousness of
prosperity; if she wishes health she must embody the idea of health. A
consciousness of health, happiness and prosperity can be induced within through
right mental and spiritual practice. By consciousness is meant the inner
embodiment of an idea; the subjective image of the idea; the mental and
spiritual equivalent of the idea. [ii] Knowing
this in your own thought, work in perfect peace and calm; always expect; have
enthusiasm; and have a consciousness of love; that is, a radiant feeling flowing
through the personality at all times. If one hasn't this she should treat
himself until she does have it; for without it, she is diseased in mind. Treat
until you feel an inner sense of Unity with the all Good. There is One Mind, and
the moving impulse of this Mind is Love. In
choosing words in treatment, say anything that will induce the right mental
attitude. Giving formulas is a mistake, for how can any one put a spontaneous
thought into the mind of another? Any one can stand in front of a dead man and
say, "Arise," but who is going to have the consciousness to make this
happen? [iii] You may
feel like dwelling on your limits or your fears. Don't do it. A perfect
prescription for a squandered, unfulfilled life is to accommodate self-defeating
feelings while undercutting your finest, most productive ones.
~ Marsha Sinetar ~ Stepping
Up Our Spiritual Practice Today
our central idea is “stepping up our spiritual practice.”
Most of us have plenty to do in our lives already, so this may sound a
bit like the minister telling you that you now have more things to place on your
to-do list, and we all know that there are things that we place on those lists
that never get done. So the point
of why we would step up our practice needs powerful discussion if it is to
escape such a fate as falling out of existence. One
of the things that I have come to know over the years is that those things that
we do not think or do something about on a regular basis seem to cease to exist.
We have to engage in a conscious “bringing to life of our ideas” or
they are lost to us. The story
about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is exemplary of what I mean. Each of us can think of something that we once loved to do
that we no longer spend any time doing. In
a sense, this old love of ours is dead. And
we each know that it is not dead forever, but dead so long as we do not
consciously put some energy into thinking about and doing the very thing
that now lies dormant in our imagination. It is not that we cannot do this thing, it is not that this
is actually dead for all time, but that we have stopped any conscious intention,
any conscious willingness to be or do this thing. I
know that my husband Dan used to run nearly every day.
When I met him he was competing in races, including marathons and
triathalons, and yet he has not run for many years now.
I used to go out dancing a lot and now I don’t.
We all have powerful reasons for giving
up these activities. I
married a man who is not committed to dancing.
He is not wrong in any way for the fact that I do not often dance
anymore. I, on the other hand, did
not create new ways that I could dance and be in integrity in my marriage.
It did not feel right to go to the places where I once danced, without my
husband, and I did not use my creative power to find a way to keep this part of
myself fully expressed. So now, I
dance only very occasionally. One
of the kids has to get married, and there are only four of them!
All kidding aside, we know that these reasons are powerful because we are
living with the outcome of how this power has worked in our lives.
When we come to some choices in our lives, something about those choices
we have made inadvertently chips off a piece of our self-expression.
It is as if that part of ourselves no longer has form, existence or
expression and often we don’t even know why.
Sometimes these things change in imperceptible ways until one day we
notice that something we once loved has become a dim memory.
Not only that, but we get used to it being this way. Our memories of the joy of this part of ourselves dims, and
once we get to a “certain age” we blame it on no longer being young.
How many times have you winced when someone said “When I was young I
used to do that with the best of them!” I
want to remind you today that in our mind there is no age.
There is only that which we give energy to, and that which we starve by
giving it no attention. If I look
at this in a personal sense, this doesn’t mean that I have to spend the rest
of my life dancing only occasionally, it means that, if I choose to, if I am
willing, I can get the reasons out of the way that I once placed on the path of
this self-expression. I can stop
generating “stopping” and begin learning to dance now.
I could just begin moving! Now
if you will, I would like you to close your eyes, take a moment, and think about
something that you used to enjoy doing. It
could be something fun like dancing or running, it could be your meditation
practice that was dropped during a time of stress and busy-ness, and consider if
you would now like to clear the way to finding a new approach to getting that
activity, interest or practice back into your life.
If you get a “No” about any particular activity or interest, think
about something that you have always thought you would like to do, perhaps you
have some regrets about having done nothing about it.
Set aside any considerations about how outrageous or small this thing
might be. Those considerations
don’t matter for the purposes of this exercise. I am going to allow a few
moments of silence here for you to consider this. Whatever comes up, don’t try
to figure it out, judge or evaluate it, and don’t figure out what you have to
do to get it back. Just let that
idea up for some air for now. When you are ready, when you have located some
unrealized or mislaid interest or activity, gently open your eyes. We
all need, at one time or another, to release the reasons we have in place for
the things that we love that we do not make real.
Each of us here knows the power of our own words, and yet, from time to
time, maybe more often than we wish to recognize, we fail to use this creative
power for good. Here
is brief personal insight from a book of meditations by theologian Frederick
Buechner: I
remember sitting parked by the roadside once, terribly depressed and afraid
about my daughter’s illness and what was going on in our family, when out of
nowhere a car came along down the highway with a license plate that bore on it
the one word out of all the words in the dictionary that I needed most to see
exactly then. The word was TRUST. What do you call a moment like that?
Something to laugh off as the kind of joke life plays on us every once in
a while? The word of God? I am willing to believe that maybe it was something of
both, but for me it was an epiphany. The owner of the car turned out to be, as
I'd suspected, a trust officer in a bank, and not long ago, having read an
account I wrote of the incident somewhere, he found out where I lived and one
afternoon brought me the license plate itself, which sits propped upon a
bookshelf in my house to this day. It is rusty around the edges and a little
battered and it is also as holy a relic as I have ever seen.[iv] Often
we forget the basic principles we learn early on in our metaphysical studies.
We get so hooked on the “realness” of our material lives that we lose
track of that which never changes, the spiritual Truth about ourselves. We begin to believe in the troubles, the circumstances and
the melodrama that arises around such beliefs.
Our relief comes only when we remember who and what we are and act as if
we know that life is all good, that life is really all God and that we are
included in this allness and goodness, that this is the nature of our being, for
we too are some small part of God. The
nature of reality is all good. I
am reminded of hearing Johnnie Colemon speak at the I.N.T.A. conference in
Phoenix in 1998. She stood tall and proud with her well-manicured hand on her
hip and she declared, “Remember, your words have POWER, and that POWER is
given to any words that you follow I AM with.”
The following reading is from the 1926 version of the Science of Mind: UNITY It
is well to remember that the enlightened in every age have taught that back of
all things there is One Unseen Cause: In studying the teachings of the great
thinkers we find that a common thread runs through all-the thread of Unity.
There is no record of any deep thinker, of any age, who taught duality. One of
the great teachings of Moses was, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One
Lord"; and the saying, "I AM that I AM," was old when Moses was
yet unborn; for it had been inscribed over the temple entrances for generations.
We may go back much farther than Moses and find the same teaching, for it crops
out from the literatures and sayings of the wise of all ages. Jesus taught this
when He said, "I and the Father are One," and in the saying, "The
Father that dwelleth in me." This
teaching of Unity is the chief cornerstone of the Sacred Scriptures of the East
as well as of our own Sacred Writings.[v]
So if you are saying I AM
and following it with words of limitation, remember, those are the words that
will define your life. This is the way that it works. Words of limitation simply
set into motion a Law that pervades all of life.
We have the power to say what is. This is not to say that words of
limitation are a BAD thing. They are not when used consciously. I AM a dancer, but that is not ALL that I AM.
I AM Dan’s wife, but that is not all that I AM.
I am your minister, but that is not ALL that I AM.
I take all of these roles and many, many others up in my arms and I LOVE
that these are mine to be, and I take up this possibility that there is an
infinite number of creative and wonderful ways I can complete the sentence that
begins with I AM. Ernest Holmes
said “The conscious mind is spirit.”
The Buddha said when asked who he was “I am awake.” If
we would bring consciousness to the way we fill in that blank after I AM, we
will have stepped up our spiritual expression.
Our words have great creative power.
If we would just TRUST that power that is resident within ourselves and
use it consciously the quality of our lives and of our experience would spiral
up far beyond the place where we can see ourselves right now.
Where we are now is the most temporary of places. Remember to say to
yourself: “I am awake.
I am conscious in everything I say and do.
I am alive with the attributes of God, I AM made of the same essence as
God and I honor that divinity within myself and all those with whom I come in
contact, for I AM Love! This is what we all are.” Think
about the progress you have made in your own life.
That idea that you brought up in our meditation deserves the application
of such consciousness and it deserves the power of your word being given to it.
God is always listening to you. God
is listening for the possibility of your life and for the potential of your
dreams to be realized. There
is something called a commitment move in rock climbing.
I know you have seen, at least in movies, what rock or mountain climbers
do, and it does look scary. I have
done the barest beginning levels of this, so I share this from personal
knowledge. You don’t have to
climb Mt. Kilamanjaro to learn this move. You
can do this right here mentally in your seats with me.
Mountain
climbers are all roped together for safety.
You could say that this symbolizes that we are all in this together, or
that we do life in a Unity that expresses as a multiplicity of form.
Interesting that this fact of being connected points to safety, isn’t
it? When you are climbing up or
down the face of a rock or a mountain there is a point when you have to move one
way or the other, and you can’t go back once you’ve done it. You are committed and all of life moves forward along with
you. When we are all hooked
together, we have to move together. In
other words, you have to TRUST that where you are going is a better place than
where you are now. There is a
moment when your foot is neither connected to the where it was, and it is not
yet where you mean it to be. This
can feel like a great rush of energy or it can be scary as hell. The choice is ours to make what we will say.
How
we experience our experience has two stages here.
First, in the creative way we set up the adventure, and then, the story
we tell ourselves about it when it is over.
We are in charge of both parts. A “commitment move” is a way of
moving your life forward in a way that expresses your faith in the adventure
that life represents. The thing is that if God is in everything, there is no part
of this commitment move that is solitary or separate from God.
When we remember that we live, breathe and move within an atmosphere that
is truly, in all of its beingness, God, we are not alone.
In fact, we are not now nor have we ever been alone.
Truly to step up our spiritual practice is to recognize what was there
all along, that we are Spirit, each and everyone. Thank
you for being here today! SELF-EXISTENCE It
is difficult to grasp the idea of self-existence; but we can do so to a degree
at least. For instance, we might ask the question, "Why is water wet?"
There is no reason why; it is wet simply because it is its nature to be wet. If
we were to ask the question, "Who made Life?", it could not be
answered; because if we were to assume that some power made Life we would not be
supposing that Life is First Cause. We must grasp the fact that, in dealing with
Real Being, we are dealing with that which was never created. When did two times
two begin to make four? Never, of course. It is a self-existent truth. God did
not make God; God is. This is the meaning of the saying, "I AM THAT I
AM." All inquiry into Truth must begin with the self- evident fact that
Life Is. The Truth is that which Is and so is Self- Existent. "Never
The Spirit was born; The
Spirit shall cease to be never; Never
was time It was not; End
and beginning are dreams."
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