God is Love/ Love is God

Here are a few bullet points to jog the memories of those who attended service on Sunday, December 15, 2013. The full text of the service can be read here.      

·        God is Love and Love is God

·        Life is the experience of Love and the quality of our lives is dependent on how much Love we “have inside.” (and are aware of and extend to other people and circumstances and conditions in our lives) It’s not just about other people loving us.

·        Love is all around us and what we do is fight off acknowledging it; fight off expressing it; fight off receiving it. Love is God; God is love. There is no love to be found; it is ever-present and only known through its expression.

·        If we didn’t spend so much time battling against receiving/accepting Love being offered to us, and giving Love to those who cry out for it, we’d recognize we are awash in endless unconditional Love.

·        Committing yourself to God is not committing yourself to religion. Committing yourself to God is committing yourself to extending love and seeing with love. When you are working with Love you are working with God.

·        Withholding the circulation of love and happiness withers your life; circulation of love and happiness expands your life.

·        Life is a choice

·        “What life do you choose for yourself?”

·        Whatever you’d like your life to be, choose to live it.

I’d like to recommend a video to watch on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIEIvi2MuEk (West Jet Christmas Miracle)

Here you can experience for yourself the feelings around the giving and receiving of unconditional Love.

Staying Afloat

Here are a few bullet points to jog the memories of those who attended service on Sunday, December 8, 2013. The full text of the service can be read here.      

·        Do you believe immortal life will be found after you die?

·        Do you believe immortal life can be experienced now?

·        Reminder: we were created in the image and after the likeness of God.

·        Therefore, in my opinion, the being part of us is immortal

·        Charles Fillmore: “When we finally understand the facts of life and rid our minds of the delusion that we shall find immortal life after we die, then we shall seek more diligently to awaken the spiritual man (Christ consciousness/ awareness of God) within us and strengthen and build up the spiritual domain of our being...”

·        The one idea I want to focus on from that statement is diligence

·        Proverbs 4:23, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it spring the issues of life

·        Our spiritual journey is about what we want to be (rather than what we don’t want to be)

·        God placed Itself in us at our spiritual creation and we have forgotten

·        Be diligent in gently taking your consciousness to task in remembering to express the spirit of God in all things.

·        Proverbs 21:5, “The plans of the diligent lead to profit…”

Prosperity Sunday 4 of 12

Here are a few bullet points to jog the memories of those who attended service on Sunday, December 1, 2013. The full text of the service can be read here.

·        In Mark 9:23 these words are attributed to Jesus, “…All things are possible to the one who believes.”

·        What does it mean to you to believe?

·        Butterworth suggests that belief isn’t believing in something but openness to something.

·        The whole universe of “God-Substance” is centered in you. There is nothing you can do to add to that or take away from it.

·        We may think the above is true of Jesus, but not of us.

·        In John 14:12 Jesus tells us we can do not only the works he has done (because all of the "God-Substance" of the universe is centered in us) but works that are even greater… and he qualifies it with if we believe.

·        Believing is the openness to something.

·        Ohm’s Law is written this was: V = I x R (voltage equals current times resistance). Ohm’s Law is used to perform a circuit analysis.

·        Metaphysically we can say: Experience of our Life = the current of God x (working thru) the resistance (or openness) of our Consciousness.

·        Personalizing this it becomes “Brad’s Law” Experience of my Life = God (working thru) Brad's belief system.

·        When my life isn’t all it could be I can perform a personal circuit analysis by asking myself, “How many “Brad’s” of resistance are present in my consciousness to the flow of the current of God?”

·        Butterworth: “The [belief] required to demonstrate prosperity is not simply a pious pronouncement, it is expectancy. You do not receive what you want; you do not receive what you pray for, not even what you say you [believe] in. What you will always receive is what you actually expect.”

·        The experience of our life is the direct result of what we expect and that is amplified by the ever-present current of God.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

This past Sunday several members of the congregation spoke a little bit about themselves and also shared a meaningful spiritual experience they’d experienced.

          There is no recap of those messages.

          In addition to the bullet points published on this pages, I also publisher the entire text of nearly every week’s talk. My sister Diane passed away on July 2^nd of this year. I spoke about that on Sunday the 7^th but somehow never published my talk.  You can read it here.  It is titled Positive Spiritual Practice.

Responsibility

Here are a few bullet points to jog the memories of those who attended service on Sunday, November 17, 2013. The full text of the service can be read here.

·        What is your primary responsibility in life?

·        Children? But what if you have no children?

·        Your spouse/ partner/ significant other? But what if you are not in a relationship?

·        The planet, humanity, social justice?

·        What, as the saying goes is, “Yours to do?”

·        In regard to the world, I have no idea. In life I would say it’s to be responsible for your consciousness, now. (or as it’s sometimes said, “Know Thyself”.)

·        This is first and foremost, not to the exclusion of anyone or anything else, but always ahead of any responsibilities in the world.

·        Everything you make yourself responsible for in the world is greatly enhanced by “knowing yourself.”

·        When you take responsibility for your consciousness, the world is transformed.

·        You are an important part of the transformation of the world.

·        “It’s not primarily what you do. There is something more primary than what you do and that’s what you express through your state of consciousness. What you do flows through your state of consciousness.” (Tolle)

·        When we get upset about what we perceive others do not know, about them being unconscious, it would be good to put into action these words of Jesus, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)

Prosperity Sunday #3

A few bullet points to jog the memory of those who attended service Sunday, October 27, 2013 - to read the full text, click  here.

          * On the last Sunday of each month we are reviewing one chapter from Rev. Eric Butterworth's book SPIRITUAL ECONOMICS, this is "Prosperity Sunday #3."

* This week's chapter is The Law of Visualization, “Having seen and felt the end, you have willed the means to the realization of the end.”

* From the book, page 49, “We have been conditioned to believe that life is lived from the outside-in. We see things “out there,” and we react with attitudes and feelings about them. Without question, what we see is as it is.  [and thus we think] Seeing is believing!”

* According to that statement, seeing is believing, our eyes tell us what we see. Our eyes report back to the brain what is there in front of us.

* A paragraph or so later Butterworth writes, “What the mind sees is not this picture that is communicated to the brain, but what your awareness has conditioned you to see. In other words, seeing is not believing; believing is seeing! You see things, not as they are, but as you are.”

* If we actually saw what was in front of us, no two people could ever have a differing opinion about what occurred.

* This chapter tells us how we see and how we need to think. These are two very important things to know.

* The first of those two things, how we see, is, “We see with the mind.”

* Now, how do we need to think? When things in our life go awry, we generally think, “I’ve got to set this right.”  Butterworth suggests that, “More important than setting it right is seeing it rightly.”

* What Butterworth means by seeing things rightly is recognizing that our experience of what’s occurring “out there” is a reflection of what’s occurring within us.

* Charles Fillmore wrote, “Turn the great (bulk) of your thinking toward ‘plenty’ ideas and you will have plenty regardless of what men about you are saying or doing.” Prosperity page 13 (insertion is mine)

* On page 57 of the book, Butterworth writes one sentence that gives us advice on how we need to think. In my opinion it’s the single most important sentence in the book. Again, in my opinion, taking this advice on as your living experience is the single biggest step you can take toward turning your life to one of prosperity.

* “The secret of achieving prosperity lies in so vividly keeping yourself centered in the inner focus of affluence that you literally exude the consciousness of it.”

* Here’s another way of saying the same thing: The secret of achieving prosperity lies in deeply, vividly, believing within you in the ever-presence of affluence (prosperity) that you literally radiate the consciousness of it.

* This one sentence is the core. Don’t forget it.

* If you have not yet come to live and understand this, you will.

* I believe in you wholeheartedly.

Faith and Prayer

A few bullet points to jog the memory of those who attended service Sunday, October 20, 2013   -   To read the full text, click here.

         *Faith is the key to the Kingdom of Power within you. One of the aspects of the Kingdom of Power within you is the ability to create. 

          *Our way of thinking creates the experience of our life.

          *Faith is powerful and we all have faith. Our faith is either positive or negative. I don’t believe there is any such thing as no faith (“I don’t really have any faith.”) or neutral faith (“I’m neither here nor there about that…”). When we don’t have positive faith we have negative faith.

          *It is valuable to do an occasional self-inventory to observe the quality of our thinking; is it positive or negative? (all non-positive thinking is negative)

          *The quality of our thinking shows us the type of faith we are expressing.

          *When we are engaged in negative thinking, we are expressing negative faith and that faith unlocks the creative power within us in a way that works against our Good.

          *When we are engaged in positive thinking, we are expressing positive faith and that faith unlocks the creative power within us in a way that works for our Good.

          *When you pray, pray in a positive manner (unlocking “positive creative power” within you), affirming what you would like to experience in your life. All Prayer is answered through inspiration. Pay attention to your thoughts and the people and circumstances around you.

          *God Loves everyone; no exceptions.

          *God answers all prayer; no exceptions.

          *Have faith in that.

The Healing Power of Gratitude and Extending Love

Charlie Brooks spoke on Sunday about his experiences at the time of, and after, his motorcycle accident in June of 2012.

          Clearly Charlie felt blessed by the fact that two registered nurses were present among the people who stopped to help after his crash in the desolate spaces east of Albuquerque, NM.

          There were two things that really stood out to me about Charlie’s comments:

·        When he was speaking about experiencing the Presence of God he said, “Just allow it to be. There is tremendous power in allowing and extending Love.”

·        Charlie was seriously physically damaged from the accident and spent many, many days and nights confined to his bed. Rather than focus on what might be viewed as his unfortunate condition he spent his time in meditation and prayer for others.

Thank you, Charlie for sharing your story with us and demonstrating the healing power of gratitude and extending love to others.  We are blessed because of it.

Prosperity Sunday #2

There is no abbreviated version for Sunday, October 6, 2013. Please click here to read the full text.

Go To Your Roots

A few bullet points to jog the memory of those who attended service Sunday, September 29th, 2013   -   To read the full text, click here.

 “I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13, not “I can do all things through my own individual strength and power.”

 

Paul is talking about a man and I think he misses the point. He’s talking about a man rather than what the man, Jesus, demonstrated – what I would call, “God in our soul.” (Soul=sub-conscious mind where divine ideas are present and out-picture into our physical life according to our thinking/belief)

What Jesus demonstrates is, as I said, God in our soul. When God extended Itself (created us), It placed in our soul Its likeness and image – not that we then take It unto ourselves as our individual power. I would say it’s more like the link to that power.  We open the door to that link and connect to the power that’s “on other side” and together, in partnership, not on our own but in partnership, we have power and can do all things.

The road to success, spiritual and otherwise, hasn’t been a straight, easy drive.   

In 1976, Steve Chandler had an interview with the famous bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger had recently retired from his sport, and Chandler asked him about his future plans.  Arnold replied, "I'm going to be the number one
box office star in all of Hollywood."  Chandler wanted to laugh, but he restrained himself.  Here was a guy with the body of Goliath, an accent as thick as paste, and almost no acting experience.  Box-office stardom seemed an unlikely goal.  But Schwarzenegger had thought it through very carefully.  He said, "It's the same process used in bodybuilding.  What you do is create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture, as if it were already true.”

 This is precisely what Jesus was saying in Mark 11:24 when he said, when you pray – pray believing that you have ALREADY received!

 

There is a lot of truth in a tree. A tree is lush at the top. It has leaves. A healthy tree goes far out and gives you shade. But any gardener will tell you that if you water or fertilize the tree, you have to circle, on the ground, the outermost branch line. This is where the ends of the roots are. You cannot see the roots, but they are there.

Here’s the point: a tree is identical on top to what the root system is underneath.

It is the same with us. There is a root system and a foundation in your life.

What you are rooted in in your mind is what appears in your life.

What are you rooted in and what’s the depth and breadth of those roots?

It can be a very real, powerful foundation, if you have a solid root system that is grounded in an awareness of the presence of God.

We need deep roots in God. We need to unlock that link I spoke about earlier… to the awareness of the Power and Presence of God.

How do we do this?

1.                              We have to consent to the magnificent power of God coming though us.

2.                              We must also travel in a circle of positive friends who believe in us and believe in what we can, and God can, achieve together… not in what we cannot do.

3.                              Pray believing that you have already received.

4.                              And in the words of Molly Friedenfeld, “Focus on faith and grow your roots strong so no one can make you believe in something that is not good for your soul.”

 

 

Practice Your Best

A few bullet points to jog the memory of those who attended service Sunday, July 28th, 2013   -   To read the full text, click here.

 ·        Some people make waves and some people make way for things to happen.

·        If you wanted to experience health, would you study disease? If you wanted joy, would you study depression? If you wanted to have a happy marriage, would you study divorce?

·        This is the way the world approaches life. We study weaknesses and try to improve or eradicate them in order to have a positive experience.

·        This, it seems to me, is how many of us approach our walk along our spiritual path.

·        Does knowing what does not work make what does work, work?

·        Study/ practice what does work in whatever it is you wish to accomplish. “What doesn’t work” will become evident because it will be in glaring contrast to what does work – you won’t have to wonder.

·        Sometimes we make the same old decisions that are driven by our weaknesses.  It seems easier, but is it? Is it easier to make the same old choices and stay where we are in awareness when we long for a different experience?

·        “What you are supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.” (advice Maya Angelou received from her grandmother)

·        In the book of Mark, the disciples are arguing over who among them is the greatest. Jesus tells them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

·        We think of ourselves as “human being.” Perhaps Jesus was saying put the human identity and all the variations of the personality last and let the body and the personality serve the spirit.

·        Living from Being first is living from strength.

·        Living from strength brings success.

·        Jim Kaat pitched for the Minnesota Twins in 1966. That year his pitching coach asked him to primarily practice his best pitch rather than spend time trying to improve his weaker pitches. Jim Kaat pitched from his strength 80-90% of the time that year and won 25 games. (only 3 pitchers have won more than 25 games since 1966!)

·        In life, Love is your greatest strength. Utilize it

·        Kathy Lamancusa tells the story of her son, Joey, who was born with club feet. By age three, with lots of medical assistance, Joey was able to walk normally. The doctors said, though, that he wouldn’t be able to run and play like other children.

·        Kathy and her husband never told Joey he’d had a deformity or that he probably couldn’t do what other kids could do. In seventh grade Joey made the cross country team and participated in competition with mostly eighth graders.

·        Joey never knew he was supposed to be limited because his parents never told him.

·        You are unlimited. Never tell yourself (or anyone else) otherwise.

·        The human part of us has the tendency to give others our opinion. How much better to give others a piece of God's opinion - which is always optimistic, always positive. God would say to Joey (and you), yes there is a WAY! No matter what you have, no matter what obstacle you have faced, no matter what block has come in your life, through My power you can do all things.

·        And so it is.

Positive Spiritual Thinking

No recap for yesterday, just the full text

July 7, 2013
           My sister, Diane, died unexpectedly last Tuesday morning. She was kind; she was generous; she was accepting, and she was present when you spoke with her. You felt like you were the only one in her world.

There is an old story about a king. He had a beautiful ring and he had three sons. Each son wanted the ring. When the king died, he left three rings for his sons with a note. The note said, "My dear sons, one of these rings is real and two are fake. The way you will know who has the real ring is that the son with the real ring will always be kind and generous to all people." Each of the three spent the rest of their lives proving they had the real ring.

My sister Diane must have had one of those rings because she was kind and generous.

Diane was not religious. She didn’t go to church.  She didn’t engage in conversations about spirit.  In fact, I’m not sure I ever heard her utter the word, God, yet she lived a life of what would be described as, “the Christian ethic.” 

People were attracted to Diane because of the way she lived.

It is the same with religion. We can go throughout the community and talk a good game about Unity, but that doesn't change anyone… and talking a good game certainly doesn't change us. What changes us is when we live it-- when we become our spiritual path.  Then others - Kids grand-kids… anyone else - look at us and they see there is something in us they would like to have.

Living an attractive life begins with a positive lifestyle, with a

positive mind, with positive thoughts. There is not one person here this morning who would not say they are a positive thinker. Every person here believes they are positive. But are you positive all the time? Are you filled with a faith, a zeal, and an experience of God which gives you the extra power to know God is with you every second of every day?

          I’m not saying that we never have negative feelings or as I am having the week, feelings of sadness and loss.  At the same time I’m having those feelings I am aware of the indelible Presence of God. In my sadness there is a positivity that is staunchly present.

          There is a humorous story told about being positive. It involves two men named Sam and Jed.

          Sam and Jed determined they could become wealthy by hunting wolves.

          So, they started out, because in their part of the country a live wolf was worth a $5,000 bounty. They went out and searched for wolves day and night. After a few weeks they still hadn’t seen one wolf.

          Then one night they fell asleep and when Sam woke up he noticed they were surrounded by about 50 snarling wolves with flaming eyes and bared teeth.

          Sam gently nudged his friend and excitedly says, "Jed, wake up! We're rich!"

          That is a funny story, but it is the type of positive attitude I want us to have; even when things don't look good to every one of your five senses. To know that with God, somehow, someway, that everything is alright, or that this (whatever it is) is going to turn out to be a positive. I would like you to have such faith in God that you know; that you know; that you know with God this situation is going to turn around for your betterment.  That you are going to use every situation in your life, the good times, and the bad, to be grateful to God. You are going to have an awareness that God is with you so much that only good can come out of this situation even if it appears in the beginning that only bad can come out of it.

          For instance, there is a story of Ole Evinrude. Evinrude wanted to take ice cream to his girl friend to propose to her. So in a very romantic way, he got some ice cream and he asked her to join him on the shore and they got into his rowboat with the gallon of ice cream. They were going to row over to an island in Oconomowoc Lake, a small lake outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he would serve her ice cream, maybe sing a little bit and then propose. By the time he got to the island the ice cream was all melted. The problem was that it was all melted over the bottom of the boat and all over the girl.

          It is hard to be romantic when you have sticky, homemade ice cream melted all over you. Needless to say, it did not go well; in fact, he never married the girl. But what he did do that day was vowed that he would spend however long it took to make things better.  Ole Evinrude invented the outboard motor, perhaps, so that sometime later on someone could make it to the island with frozen ice cream.

          When your ice cream is melted and when you feel sticky, how is God going to turn it around? You have to take it into prayer and you have to ask and wait to be Divinely inspired. You may have to have courage to act on things that other human beings haven't acted upon before, or the courage to act in a way that those around you aren’t.

When you do, everything is going to turn out alright, or maybe even better than alright; your whole life could change as it did for Ole Evinrude.

          On display at the French Academy of Sciences is a shoemaker's awl. It looks like an ordinary shoemaker's awl, but behind the little awl are both tragedy and victory. It fell one day (early 1800’s) from the shoemaker's table and it put out one eye and damaged the other eye of the shoemaker’s nine year old son, a tragedy. Within weeks the child was blind in both eyes and had to attend a special school for the sightless. At that time, the blind read by using large carved wooden blocks which were clumsy and awkward to handle.  When the shoemaker's son grew up, he devised a new reading system with punched dots on paper. To do this he used the same shoemaker's awl that had blinded him. The man's name was Louis Braille. He used the tragedy with God's help to flip it around into victory. That is the power of God. That is the power we each have.

          And I have faith that each of Diane’s kids and grand-kids (and another sister, Judy) will be able to flip the loss and pain they feel into a “victory;” that the darkness the feel becomes a bright light for them because they let themselves grieve instead of stuffing their feelings; because they take a positive memory-path and that they come to remember a life well lived by their mother, grandmother, sister.

          Positive thinking is more than just blind faith. The power of positive thinking is awesome.  When you make your human mind available for the positive God thought, you are less susceptible to depression, depression that sometimes robs the human being of power. You are less susceptible to physical ills. You have a proven power that you can achieve more in your life.

I heard that one of Diane’s grand kids stated he was her favorite.  Another objected that she was her favorite.  A few more joined in saying that they thought grandma liked them best. My sister Diane was always loving, present, and optimistic with her grand kids and I believe that’s why each of them though they were her favorite.

I’d like to conclude by reading a story that came to my email inbox just yesterday:

“I had a very special teacher in high school many years ago whose husband died suddenly of a heart attack. About a week after his death, she shared some of her insight with a classroom of students.

          As the late afternoon sunlight came streaming in through the classroom windows and the class was nearly over, she moved a few things aside on the edge of her desk and sat down there. With a gentle look of reflection on her face, she paused and said, "Before class is over, I would like to share with all of you a thought that is unrelated to class, but which I feel is very important."

          Each of us is put here on earth to learn, share, love, appreciate and give of ourselves. None of us knows when this fantastic experience will end. It can end at any moment. Perhaps knowing this is God's way of telling us that we must make the most out of every single day."

          Her eyes beginning to water, but she went on, "So I would like you all to make me a promise. From now on, on your way to school, or on your way home, find something beautiful to notice. It doesn't have to be something you see… it could be a scent-perhaps of freshly baked bread wafting out of someone's house, the wind rustling the leaves in the trees, or the way the morning light catches one autumn leaf as it falls gently to the ground.

          Please look for these things, and cherish them. For, although it may sound trite to some, these things are "the stuff" of life. The little things we are put here on earth to enjoy. The things we often take for granted. We must make it important to notice them, for at any time..."

          The class was completely quiet. We all picked up our books and filed out of the room silently. That afternoon, I noticed more things on my way home from school than I had that whole semester.

          Every once in a while, I think of that teacher and remember what an impression she made on all of us, and I try to appreciate all of those things that sometimes we all overlook.

          Take notice of something special you see on your lunch hour today. Go barefoot. Or walk on the beach at sunset. Stop off on the way home tonight to get a double-dip ice cream cone. For as we get older, it is not the things we did that we often regret, but the things we didn't do.”

          This is how I will remember my sister Diane.

          She was kind. She was generous. She took the time to be present and positive with every little thing with her grandchildren… and she was always willing to stop for ice cream, to laugh, or to look at a butterfly.

          She always loved me and for that I am grateful. 

After all, I was her favorite. :)