There is a Tide

One of Diane Hennessy's Roses

Something exciting is happening! Roses are blooming! Beauty is everywhere. I can feel it! Can you? There are so many things it could be. Last week I wrote about spring fever. It could be spring fever but it feels more definite and concrete. It could be Easter which is around the corner and all of Christianity is focused on new beginnings. It could be the energy that came from our town hall meeting last week in which we discussed the pro's and con's of selling our building and buying something with cash!  I am feeling the opening to greater and greater possibilities.

In the play, Julius Caesar, Brutus is speaking with Cassius and utters these immortal words: 

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;/ Omitted, all the voyage of their life/ Is bound in shallows and in miseries. /On such a sea are we now afloat, /And we must take the current as it serves, /Or lose our ventures."

Spiritually, it is partially true. We are always surrounded by that tide. When we know we are in the flow of Divine Energy we know good things happen because we are corresponding to the divine nature.  We are reminded that when we trust that divine mind, good is at hand. We don't need to make anything happen. We need to be available and willing for it to happen. 

The second part of the quote which could be fiscally true, is spiritually false. It is incorrect because it elicits fear. When we experience fear, we cannot feel the truth of our faith. It is either fear or faith; it is never both fear and faith.

So as mindful spiritual beings, we do our work. We examine our own motivations, actions, thoughts and beliefs. We look to see if we are making decisions from a sense of our history and lack or from a place of possibility and empowerment.

Are you a possibility thinker? Are you bold and certain? Or are you hesitant and cautious? Are you too quick to react?

The second part of the quote says that if you don't act now, you will struggle forever. As students of the Science of Mind, we know that is no way to think. Creative Mind is forever providing new possibilities. If there were only one tide, what a mean-spirited God that would be. "Oops, you missed it! better luck next life!"

I believe in a loving creative power that had so much faith in each one of us, that it set us free to discover our divine nature for ourselves. Every moment that One is making all things new. There is a new venture. We are encouraged to take action.

So we come to a Center such as this one. We grow in awareness. We listen to that voice for God within and we take action.

Sometimes we can only see part-way to our goal. But keeping the faith, and doing our work, the path is certain to unfold in perfect order. 

Let's trust in the wisdom of divine mind in each one of us to guide us to the right and perfect answer regarding our building and in all other decisions.

It is April and I am experiencing a little bit of spring fever, defined as  a feeling of restlessness. I have been researching short pieces for a wedding I will help officiate in August. Part of my research led me  to a website for on-religious weddings. On it I found a quote which I will share with you in a few minutes. 

First let me tell you that in 1968 in order to complete my Bachelor of Education degree, I needed one last undergraduate class. I chose an introduction to Philosophy -- Philosophy 101. It wasn't exactly Philosophy for Dummies but it was a course that touched upon the well-known philosophers from Plato to Kant. I was young and found most of it exceedingly ponderous. (By that time in my education, I had decided that most so-called intellectuals were neither scholarly nor bright. I was a jaded twenty-year-old!) Then our professor added to the prescribed reading list the book, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I adored the book. It helped me change my mind about the course.  It spoke to the larger concepts that the other philosophers were writing about but in the form of a timeless allegory about love and innocence. It spoke to my heart. It is about a prince from another planet who learned about life from the people and creatures he met on Earth.

By the time I got to this course, I was burnt-out. I had been taking classes without  a break for three years. No summer break. No spring break... just the next class. I was trudging through my higher education. I wanted to be finished with it so I could get to the real work of changing the lives and hearts of teenagers. I had sailed through high school but my grades in University were disastrous; the only "A" I got in University was in Philosophy 101.My enthusiasm for the philosophy class had a great deal to do with the book.  I hope you enjoy this excerpt from The Little Prince.

"'To establish ties'?"

"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

 "One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .""What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that--in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . ."
The next day the little prince came back...  

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . ."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:
 "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

Perhaps the solution to my spring fever is to find a friend that I can tame.According to Saint-Expurey, I will need to be patient. It will be much more important to be myself  rather  than to speak or do anything in particular.  "Only with the heart can one see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

'99 Years of Private Lessons' Sunday Service

I choose Love this day. I know that Love always points me in the best direction and my conviction swells as I absolutely know this to be true. And So It Is!

Transformation and Evolution

Bhaksar & Sudha: Oneness Blessing Trainers 

Our theme for the month of April is "Spiritual Living Through Evolution and Transformation."
"We do deep inner personal work of self-discovery and healing to reveal the greater truth of our divinity, wholeness and freedom."

Coincidentally, I was approached by a woman last week to see if we would be interested in hosting a Oneness Blessing. Since I was introduced to the Oneness Blessing years ago, I was happy to give up my normal Sunday morning 20 minutes meditation time for them.

The Oneness Meditation is designed to give participants a deep experience of the Divine. The meditation originated in India but does not belong to any religion, faith or doctrine.

When I Googled Oneness Blessing the first article I acme to was on the website of Deborah Lindeman, a hypnotist from Fort Collins, Colorado.

"The Oneness Blessing is a process by which we are re-connected with this quiet, intelligent center of ourselves."

That sounded great to me and exactly the theme of our focus for the month of April.

Later in my research, I found some very negative articles about the founders and their character and motives. However, when you Google "Centers for Spiritual Living" the second item that comes up is "Centers for Spiritual Living Cult."

From my experience we are less like a cult than anything. We help people understand how their thinking has a direct influence on their lives. I leave it to the individual what it is they want to think.

If you intend to come to receive the Oneness Blessing on April 9th at 10 AM, please come a little early so you can be seated by 10 AM.

Here is another coincidence. This week in our history of the Science of Mind class, we are studying Ernest Holmes' book The Holmes Papers: The Philosophy of Ernest Holmes. 
On page 4, Dr. Holmes writes:

"In looking over these generations of teachings of India, we find a very great concept of unity of all life.  They believed in one god and only One; they didn't call it God; they called it the Absolute, or Brahma, but it doesn't matter what you call it. They believed in one Presence and one Power, and only One in the Universe. They believed (which later came out as a theosophical teaching) in the mind that sleeps in the mineral, waves in the grass, wakes to simple consciousness in the animal, to self-consciousness in the human and to cosmic consciousness in what they call the upper hierarchies, or ascending scale of evolution, ad infinitum."

I am very curious if my own experience will be different than it was the first one. Since I know that one cannot step in the same river twice I know it will be different, I am curious about how it will be.

By the way, I do not believe in coincidences! Everything is always perfectly unfolding as it should.