By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

In pre-European California the Yaqui people lived an agrarian lifestyle with limited crop cultivation and classic hunter gathering practices. Like most developing populations they had a wide range of survival skills and used the materials at their disposal to manufacture items that enhanced their lives. They made simple tools, weapons and shelters. They employed local plants as medicines and were talented basket weavers. They did not however possess the knowledge to create pottery capable of being placed on a fire for cooking.

The Yaqui observed that stones provided a method for transferring heat from a fire to a basket of ground acorns and water without burning the container. Needless to say it was a laborious process to heat and re-heat stone after stone, but the Yaqui prospered on the benefits of cooked meal included in their diet. The stones were an evolutionary change agent in the lives of the Yaqui.

In his latest book “Becoming a Spiritual Change Agent,” Mark Gilbert identifies some basic characteristics of a Spiritual Change Agent. They are persons who have the power to act, they are focused on a future of positive change, are actively engaged, consciously influence others toward that change and foster our collective relationship with the Divine. Gilbert further defines a Spiritual Change Agent as one who is aware of our relationship with the power and presence that crated us and recognizes the value of developing that relationship toward enhancing the possibilities of life’s expression for everyone. This dynamic “type A” definition is fitting and important to creating a more spiritually aligned world, but there too, is something to be said for the “cooking stones” among us.

Every week we see in our churches, seminars and meeting rooms’ people who come for the lesson and leave. Maybe they took a class once or twice, maybe a workshop, but generally they are not recognized as leaders nor do they fit Gilbert’s definition as Spiritual Change Agents. They are cooking stones.

These quite spiritualist hear the lessons, they recognize their power and practice in their own private ways. Their lives are changed, their outlooks improved. Like the Yaqui stones they just need to be reheated and set back into their lives to radiate Spiritual Truth.

Every day these cooking stones are placed throughout our communities. Corporate offices, schools, service providers and retail outlets are the baskets with co-workers and customers the meal. Their heat radiates outward fueling a constant evolution. They work without flash, or show and little recognition.

It is proof of our evolution that the environment is warming. Not in the sense of global warming, but an observation that humanity is moving glacially closer to its spiritual nirvana. We see coaches more concerned with the safety of their players, political conservatives recognizing the gender neutrality of human rights, and a general questioning of the militarization of local police forces.

We are shedding our fear and power based motivations. We are recognizing the power of love and permitting ourselves to be empathetic. We are expanding our comfort zones and crossing more easily into the unknown. And we are doing it more quickly with the trickle of revelations building to a cascade.

We are meditating more, listening to our inner voice; letting it calm our fears and empower bold engagements. We recognize our responsibility to define our experiences over letting our experiences define us. Each stone raises the energy of the meal because the meal is warmer already each time a stone is added.

Spiritual change agents lead the way and clear the path. Ministers, teachers and all manner of life coaches offer encouragement, inform and guide us regenerating our store of spiritual heat. Fire is a powerful tool, and spiritual evolutions can manifest suddenly and dramatically, but for slow steady cooking respect the power of a simple hot rock.

Learn more about Spiritual growth, personal empowerment and evolution of humankind at a Center for Spiritual Living in your community or on line starting at CSL.org and CSLFTL.org.

By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

In her book “The Soul of Money,” Lynne Twist talks about seeing the world through the eyes of her children (237). She is pointing out that the world they are inheriting is vastly different than the one their parents have known. The technological advances our generation has witnessed and assumed are not new to our children, they simply are normal elements of life. She asks on page 238, “What might it mean to grow up in a world where sufficiency was assumed, where generosity and collaboration were the prevailing human conditions?”

Twist is suggesting the possibility that tomorrow can be different. We can move into the future unburdened by the beliefs that have carried us here. We can evolve our thinking beyond the mindset that created the misperceptions we have been accepting as true. Like our children we can just assume new solutions without having to explain away false beliefs.

Our minds renew with each passing moment. There is nothing in our past that we are required to carry forward. There is much that we desire to carry forward, pleasant memories, loving relationships and acquired knowledge and skills make us who we are; but false beliefs and ideas are free to drop away like autumn leaves.

The tree grows new leaves in the spring and we replace our mistaken beliefs with new ideas that fall into alignment with our Spiritual truth. Ideas of sufficiency, prosperity, creativity, love and harmony. The Truth that has always been there, but concealed in our belief of separation from our source.

Like past generations who believed there was scarcity and lack, them or us, good and evil; our belief in a God separate from us has been blocking our access to the Truth. Our children are free of our false beliefs and our only responsibility is to stay out of their way.

Moses could not enter the Promised Land nor any of those who walked out of Egypt with him. The Biblical journey of forty years represented the purging of a generation of doubters making way for the unsullied to start anew. Alas it seems those who did not know Egypt grew up on stories about Egypt and the fix was in.

Our children and our newly freed minds are pure and fresh. Aware of our Truth we can maintain our purity through our choices, our children need only be allowed to blossom into the powerful Spiritual beings they are without stories of Egypt to infect their journey.

Industries are devoted to the inflation of the falsehoods of the common consciousness, but generations of seekers have been chipping away at the lies. We stand at the threshold of a new consciousness. The progress of generations past has been incremental and unperceivable and now we are here. Our next step takes us into a future of our own making. Pry off the lid and step into a world where joy, love and harmony inform every decision and energize every experience.

Learn more about the metaphysical interpretation of “Egypt,” Spiritual Truth and how to realign the common consciousness at a Center for Spiritual Living in your community or on line starting at CSL.org and CSLFTL.org.

By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

There is nothing new to the saying “Life hands us what we need, not what we want.” How we react to our gifts determines how often we continue to get what we need before we see what we want materialize.

We may be barefoot and soiled, feel hunger and want food, we may think we are poor and want wealth. We would like to have both the food and wealth delivered as soon as possible, now would be good. Instead we get a plate of mud. But it is okay, this is Life giving us this plate of mud and Life will continue to give us mud for as long as we need it.

If we see it as a plate of useless mud, we can pretty much count on there being an endless supply of it until at last we starve. If we see the mud as the raw material for making a brick, the supply is now tailored to our need for bricks. We can use the bricks to build an oven and only enough mud need be delivered for the oven’s construction.

Once we have a working oven, others will hear of it, including someone with grain but no way to bake bread. Spirit hooks people up like that, some would say nature abhors a vacuum and thus any need is fulfilled. The bread alone relieves the first issue of hunger, but now others hear of the bread and bring their wealth to trade. Some bring other food stuffs to be cooked, others bring trade goods of all types, coin of the realm changes hands, wealth circulates and grows.

We no longer hunger, we are acquiring wealth, and as a bonus, we now have a community of partners, customers, tradesmen and friends. Everything springing from a plate of mud; and our understanding that Life has given us what we need, including the wisdom to see beyond the plate before us.

It seems all is good in our world and we might be happy for it to continue this way. We are however evolutionary creatures and the need to grow nags at us to push outward while our contentment argues for the status quo. Evolution wins and we are delivered additional plates of mud. Mud is what the status quo sees, for it is content and does not want to change, but our Spiritual wisdom sees an opportunity. We already have an oven, and with it we can make better bricks and those better bricks can make a better oven.

With this new oven we can shape steel and the word spreads and someone with iron ore and no way to process it hears about our new oven. We shape the steel into rails and boilers; girders and rivets; wheels and ships and all manner of things never before dreamt of. We are able to build bigger and stronger and move things around the country and around the world and people bring new things to trade, coin of the realm changes hands, wealth circulates and grows.

Some of us begin to believe that we have created this enormous wealth, that we have created these wonderful things from our own minds, forgetting the One Mind and become fearful that others less wise and inventive want to steal what we have wrought of what we now believe is our individual intelligence and hard work.

We turn our attention to building fortresses and weapons, hording our good and forsaking our brothers who we now see as rivals and threats to our good. The flow of wealth dries to a trickle and those others dependent on its continued flow grow fearful too and plot to free the wealth from its prisons forgetting it flows on demand, value given for value received; they employ deceit and cunning to steal that which was never theirs, and always theirs, forgetting that wealth is transitory in human hands but always at hand in Spirit.

We become stagnate and fearful, angry, ugly and mean. We are stuck in a mud of our own making; we are sinking with our boots being sucked down into the mire. Some fortunate few stop fighting the mud; they see the raw materials for bricks; they forsake their boots and pull themselves barefoot and soiled to solid ground; they build an oven and others come, coin of the realm changes hands, wealth circulates and grows.

Learn more about Spirit, the One Mind and Life’s unexpected gifts at a Center for Spiritual Living in your community or on line starting at CSL.org and CSLFTL.org.

By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

If everything in your world today is absolutely perfect, if there is no more room for happiness, prosperity or creativity in your life; pray it never changes, and that prayer will be your greatest failure and a portal to certain disappointment. Change is coming; call it good, call it bad, but nothing stays the same and counting on it to do so sets us up for a mountain of trouble.

Believing that we can bend the rules with prayer is the first step into that mountain of trouble. Traditional western religions have unanimously fostered the mistaken belief that we simple humans are subject to the whims of a distant but nosy God. A god that keeps track of everything we do, noting when we are bad or good little boys and girls with the purpose of settling the score on judgment day. No coincidence that it sounds more like a line in a popular Christmas song where the fate of our holiday gifts hangs in the balance.

Believing we can plead, barter, or bargain with God sets us in the sights of the cosmic landslide. The proper use of prayer has nothing to do with pleasing anyone. There is no trade off, give and take or submissiveness to it. Prayer is an affirmation of our power, the power we must recognize as our own; the very nature of our being.

An affirmative prayer is the shovel we use to move the mountain. Every time we affirm our spiritual power we move a little bit of our troubles aside. We remind ourselves that we are faster than the landslide, bigger than the mountain.

Often it may appear that the mountain is bigger than us and our shovel is having little effect. It can be helpful in these times to have a partner in the work. Having someone else to pray with or for us lightens our individual load and is common practice in most religions.

Each shovel full reduces the mountain and as it shrinks each shovel full takes a bigger and bigger relative bite from the mountain. This is the power of our faith in our own spiritual nature growing stronger.

Our experience teaches us that all mountains can be reduced over time. In those moments where our faith is strong our shovel is large and powerful reducing any mountain in short order. With regular practice we notice our mountains are more easily recognized and reduced before they grow large.

When we have abandoned our faith or forgotten who we truly are our mountains grow tall and challenging. We can in desperation surrender to faith and find it waiting for our call or we can be inspired to claim our power and find it was never lost. Or we can keep throwing dirt onto our mountains and grow them bigger still.

Our affirmative prayer, our shovel, is an instrument for change. It changes our mountains of trouble into vistas of joy and harmony. It empowers us to step out of our comfort zones to experience the fullness of life.

When we deny our power we live afraid a vengeful God is waiting to pounce and strip away our meager comforts. When we claim our power fear evaporates because we know there is more being revealed with every step and we race to see what unfolds next. It may be another mountain, it may be disappointment, but we can handle it, we have a tool for that.

Learn more about affirmative prayer, prayer partners and your spiritual power at a Center for Spiritual Living in your community, or on line starting at CSL.org or CSLFTL.org

By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

Expecting others to read your mind is certain to bring disappointment.

It is hard being perfect and others not recognizing it. You are always right and others disagree. It waste so much time. You have to argue to get them on your side or worse do it their way and have to fix it later. Everyone should think the way you do. We are after all of One Mind are we not? Well — not so much.

It seems although there is only One Mind, we, sentient beings that we are, are blessed with the freedom of choice. It is this freedom that separates us on our human level. Each of us has been influenced by our very own nurturing environment, one that defines us as unique individuals. We inform our choices through these influences and through our choices develop a library of experiences that inform future choices.

We seek out and bond with others who share our beliefs. The mutual area where we overlap with others may be large or small but it is unlikely to be total. Those areas outside the mutual space influence what transpires within the mutual space fueling a continual evolution. This evolution is the purpose of our being here.

Remember we are expressions of Spirit, God, the One Mind, or Universal Intelligence if you prefer. Our freedom is the vehicle through which Spirit gains experiences. All wisdom is within Spirit. Every idea is within Spirit, but even the intelligence that is Spirit cannot generate the experiences we enjoy without our thoughts, our heartfelt beliefs putting the Law (God’s quick reaction force) into motion.

The seemingly random, often illogical choices of human kind set into motion the creative forces of the Law in ways un-stimulated Spirit could never produce. Would not because the Law cannot act independently. It is, to be blunt, dumb as a post. It can create whatever we believe, but it cannot generate an original thought. It cannot screen out our “bad” ideas, nor steer us toward more Spiritual choices. It receives our directives and produces an effect. Like a computer executing an inaccurate command string, it does exactly what we tell it to do, whether we want it to or not.

Imagine our existence without evolution. Forget the whole monkey to man argument, think about this morning. Without the basic force of evolution you would not have gotten out of bed. That is evolving from being in bed to being out of bed. Take another step back and realize just waking up is an evolution from sleeping. With just those two examples we can see existence as we know it completely unravels without evolution.

Where then is the logic in expecting anyone to think exactly as we do? Our very existence depends on our eternal evolution. That evolution is fueled by the uncommon beliefs carried by those with whom we share common beliefs. Expecting anyone, even someone emotionally close to know what we are thinking at any given moment is doing a disservice to yourself, the other person and the very essence of Spirit. It is a sin, a mistaken idea.

Honor and recognize the differences that unite us. We are blessed with an advanced capacity for communication. Use it to express clearly and notice how others act or react to determine whether they are understanding. This requires paying attention, listening, watching, and using our inner sense of judgment to insure we are clearly understood. This can be simple and natural or may involve a complete retraining of our people skills.

We are part of the problem when others not reading our minds upsets us. We have the power to make ourselves understood, and we do share the Spiritual One Mind. If our interpretation of events is upsetting, we owe it to ourselves to allow for the revelation of additional information until our interpretation is in alignment with Spiritual Principles. Peace, harmony and love are our natural state. Anything not, invites reexamination.

We are indeed perfect but apparently incomplete. We are a paradox, perfect by the very nature of our incompleteness. We are cast out, to borrow a Biblical phrase, into this human existence as the means to generate unique experiences.

Our mistakes or unprofitable evolutions, inform our future choices. Our time is never wasted, it is invested in our education. Our planet has a few more decades of resources to fuel our economy as we know it. We evolve and prosper or perish defending the status quo. Our sun has a few billion good years left in its life. We evolve and learn to live on other worlds or evolve beyond physical bodies, but we do evolve beyond the status quo, as they say at closing time, “You do not have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

We honor Spirit when we recognize the value of different opinions. Each has evolved through unique circumstances and each embodies some element of Truth. Like the various chemical elements of our physical world these Truths complement each other joining to form new compounds and reacting to destroy others. It is a process of growth dependent on destruction.

Thankfully, each of us is perfect and thus able to see and understand the process. Our challenge is that not everyone does understand the process, and ignorance, like a single drop of dye in clear water, distorts our collective experience.

Although life would be somewhat boring, it would seem much easier if everyone understood it the same way. If we reach a point where we do read each other’s minds, we will understand each other and the evolutionary process will cease for lack of new ideas. Now that would be disappointing.

Learn more about Spirit, Spiritual Mind, the One Mind, Spiritual Law, Universal Intelligence, The Science of Mind and the power within you at a Center For Spiritual Living near you or online starting at CSL.org or CSLFTL.org.

By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

Do you miss being angry? One of the unadvertised effects of spiritual enlightenment is the surrender of any right to remain angry. The key word here is “remain” angry. We deny anger at our own risk. Bottle up emotions and the consequences are well known, and never pretty. However, remaining angry is a choice.

On the road toward enlightenment anger becomes less satisfying. Before enlightenment a good story was a crafted work of art. A minor incident in traffic occupies the imagination for the duration of the trip so the story could have the best possible presentation to share with anyone willing to buy in. It was always a good way to start a round of “Ain’t it awful,” around water cooler.

Anger still pops up, often as a deflection of fear. Recognizing that it really is fear quells the heat of the emotion. We empathize with fear. We comfort a terrified child; we recognize that screaming at them does not allay their fear. We apply ourselves to making fear go away. The idiot that cuts us off in traffic does not make us angry, he terrifies us with the reality of possibly dying and the realization that we may have contributed by our inattention.

Dying is easy, but no one wants their stone to read “That was stupid.” Recognizing fear for what it is allows us to move quickly away from anger toward empathy for ourselves. WARNING: Feelings of empathy directed toward the self often opens avenues of empathy for others. Addressing our own fears puts us in the other guy’s shoes. Maybe he is late picking up his daughter from pre-school, maybe his boss just embarrassed him in front of co-workers, maybe he is an idiot; a sterling example of God’s work in that ideal.

We can reserve the right to become angry. We can allow ourselves to feel that emotion, and with enlightenment more and more easily get over it. Recognize it for what it is and recognize that our anger hurts only ourselves. No one else cares how we feel. If they engage at all it is to defend their own anger. Anger is a solitary endeavor in that neither party really cares at all about the other’s anger.

Since anger really does not feel all that good, the enlightened have learned to shut it down pretty quickly. Have they discovered some new magic, a drug or therapy known only to the most privileged and learned? Hardly. Recognizing our Spiritual selves, aligning our consciousness with our Christ nature comes through education and practice.

Workshops, classes, affirmative prayer treatment, and various forms of meditation teach us to process, more than react. Our bodies give us clues, evaluating our thoughts causes us to notice whether they are comforting or confounding. We can choose how we prefer to feel and embrace thinking that takes us there.

Like an old nemesis that haunts our past we may find ourselves missing the anger sometimes. There are so many people willing to support our anger. There are entire industries devoted to its well-being. We do not need to be responsible. We are justified and only the one we are angry at can bring us back to peace. Unfortunately, they are not aware of that and in our righteousness we fume in solitude.

There is a place for anger in our lives. It tells us when it is time to re-evaluate a relationship. It tells us something is out of harmony and ready for a change. Anger is a great motivator and can carry us through where fear might paralyze us.

We have employed anger so consistently through our history that it seems natural and normal; a human emotion. Humans however, are expressions of God, and anger is not a characteristic of God. The “angry” God portrayed in the Bible is a myth, stories told to impart the consequences of pushing against our Spiritual selves.

Humans are taught fear and anger. Love comes naturally because the power of the Universal Intelligence, Higher Spirit or God is love. Love gives us whatever we believe we want. It is a consequence of our freedom to choose that there are no filters on Spiritual love and our belief is acted on by Spirit without judgment.

Believing we are not enough, gives us the appearance of lack. Believing someone else is our enemy brings us evidence appearing to support that belief. Believing our leader’s interpretation of events is the only possible interpretation allows us to dehumanize anyone out of our belief.

These are conditions that cause God to appear angry. Our beliefs are out of harmony with Spirit so our world spins out of control. We cannot accept our part in creating the illusion so an angry God is easier to blame. So, follow the reasoning here; if God gets angry, and humans are made in God’s image, voila, human anger is normal and Godly, we are off the hook.

There is something to miss about anger. The simplicity, the freedom from responsibility, and the company of fools it surrounds us with; until we remember how it makes us feel. Like missing the high of recreational pharmaceuticals, until we remember how the morning after feels and the knowing that anything else is better.

Learn more about Spirit, Spiritual love, Universal Intelligence, affirmative prayer treatment, and demystify your understanding of God at a Center for Spiritual Living in your community and online at CSL.org and CSLFTL.org.

By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

September 11 occurs this week and for all of us old enough to remember, the date is seared into our collective memory. The events of that day in 2001 evoke shock, rage and incomprehensible frustration. Shock and rage over the events themselves and frustration because our instinct to strike back was inhibited by inadequate intelligence.

Historians continue to examine the politics leading to the heartbreaking events, the failures of that day, and our subsequent choices. Tragically, conventional investigation is unlikely to ever address the root causes or recommend actions to right them. Our basic school of thinking is mis-directed. We are struggling to swim when our objective is to fly. We are looking for human solutions to human conditions as if more of the same could produce different results.

Science of Mind teaches us that we are Spiritual Beings having a human experience. The only thing forced upon us as human beings is our freedom to choose. After that we are on our own. We are free to live in harmony and we are free to deny our Spiritual nature.

We redoubled our intelligence efforts in the wake of 9-11. We scoured the planet looking for a target for our guns. Eventually in our frustration we determined it was better to strike at anything rather than do nothing. Historians will be sorting out that decision through political lenses for decades to come, and we are no closer to the answers we seek.

Imagine the possibilities if instead of seeking revenge we refused to take the bait. How would it affect our world if we sought justice without malice, dialed back on rhetoric and focused on our commonalities worldwide instead of our differences? Perhaps recognizing our Spiritual nature is a first step toward resolving our human challenges.

Our Spiritual nature is fueled through love. Love provides us with creativity, prosperity, healthy minds and bodies, and healthy relationships. Our Spiritual nature is to build and interact with each other as though we were one. Spiritually we are one, joined seamlessly with each other even as we experience our human selves individually.

Imagine the possibilities if instead of throwing our resources into upgrading our military intelligence we redoubled our efforts to rejoin the Universal Intelligence that is the source of our collective existence. Very few of us are unaware of our Spiritual nature. It shows up in many guises, but to the observant eye it shows up all over again and again.

During the World Cup games a television commercial featured four men forsaking their own comfort to line up like soccer players defending their goal in front of a bus bench to shield a woman seated there from a splash kicked up by a passing vehicle. The commercial was promoting the sport, but employed the basic Spiritual principle of working jointly to serve anonymously toward a common good. It was effective because we all recognized that Spirit within us. It was a “feel good” moment.

On September 11, 2001 passengers on United Airlines flight 93 acted anonymously toward a common good. They knew they were thrust into a horrible situation and chose to join their fates in a last ditch effort to thwart the hijacker’s mission. We rightfully honor these people as the heroes they are and wonder whether we would have done the same.

Do we collectively have the courage to act with love instead of reacting in fear? Can we nudge humanity back toward Its Spiritual self by rejecting generations of conditioning? Spirit, God, the Universal Intelligence is neutral on our choice. We can live in harmony or continue to deny our nature. Stars will continue to be born and continue to burn out, planets will form and be destroyed. Life will flourish and flounder. Our decision affects only ourselves and the experience of life we enjoy.

Of course, as each one of us decides to stop adding to the disharmony of our shared existence, a shift will occur. The retreating ice sheets at the end of every ice age lift great weight off the continents and a general uplifting of the Earth’s crust occurs. The continents rise without thought and the world changes and experiences possibilities never imagined under the ice.

It is a difficult decision to step away from tradition, conditioning and training. It is difficult to turn toward a perceived enemy and extend empathy and understanding. It is difficult to forsake comfort and safety to act anonymously toward a common good. It is human to turn difficult into doable because Spirit rises to the occasion without thought and it is our nature to explore possibilities never before imagined.

Learn more about Spirit, Universal Intelligence, and your unimagined possibilities at a Center for Spiritual Living near you or through online education. Visit CSL.org, and CSLFTL.org to see you are not alone in believing what you have always suspected is True.

Two young girls are prominent in the news this week. Thirteen year old Mo’ne Davis displayed skill and poise pitching her team into the Little League World Series and an unidentified nine year old entered the national stage when she pulled the trigger on an Uzi sub-machine gun.

Ms. Davis’s story is being well parsed in the mainstream media. She stems from an environment that encouraged her to accept her natural talents and develop them to a level beyond the common place. Ms. Davis demonstrates the power of the human mind when it is open and receptive to its Spiritual Truth.

Spirit or God is the source of everything we are, know or imagine. It is infinite, therefore everything and every idea is some part of it. Spirit is love and creates constantly from the beliefs we project into it.

Clearly Ms. Davis has either consciously or unconsciously aligned herself in harmony with the creative energy of Spirit. She believes at her core that she is skilled and capable of delivering devastating pitches. She knows that her skill is useless until she hones it with practice and coaching.

Our coaches personify a conduit for that infinite pool of knowledge we are spiritually tapped into. Practice is to our muscles as regular affirmative prayer is to our beliefs. Repetition builds strength and memory for both. At the time of need both well trained muscle and belief kick in and “auto pilot” us through the challenge. Muscular endurance keeps us in the game and confident belief keeps us in harmony with Spirit, receptive to important nuggets of wisdom and self-confidence when we need them most.

Ms. Davis also demonstrates the confidence and demeanor of a spiritually aligned person. She has talent, and she knows its source is something greater than she alone. She knows too that she is not alone on the field and that she is part of a team. Her interviews are refreshing in their candor and humility.

Upon hearing of the tragic shooting by the nine year old there was a temptation to jump into judgment. Although no civil laws were broken, the mindset of the girl’s parents seems questionable to some, but understandable to others. Unmistakably these are not evil people. The accident occurred at a family outing, the kind of thing every family enjoys.

Target shooting is a time honored sport. It is part of Olympic competitions. What body of fears leads a family to believe there is a need for its children to learn the use of automatic weapons, weapons whose only practical use is to kill people? This kind of fear suggest a belief in scarcity. A belief that divides the world into those who have and those who want. A belief that those who have must defend themselves from those who want and a belief that wanting justifies taking.

If God were separate from its creation, such scarcity might exist. If humans had to beg from God, or promise homage to God an uneven distribution of wealth would be the natural state. God is infinite and by definition cannot be separate from its creation. Therefore all the wealth of creation is instantly available to all.

Mo’ne Davis has not stolen her skill from anyone else, she developed what was hers to use. She accepts victory and defeat with equal aplomb and grace. She is still a championship pitcher, she is still a pioneer in her sport. These Truths about her never need defending. She demonstrates an understanding of Spirit and how it works.

The tragedy on the gun range is as much a part of Spiritual creation as the talent claimed by Ms. Davis. Its lessons may remain a mystery for some time to come, but one day an evolutionary shift will be rooted in it. Whether the shift is personal for someone involved, for an unrelated stranger or society in general a shift is evolving.

Spirit does not judge our human events and no good comes from our filling that gap. Spirit builds on our beliefs with each event a building block of our belief. We can choose to be inspired or we can succumb to our fears. We can evolve and grow or cling desperately to false ideas of fear and scarcity. Spirit loves us either way.

Putting the messenger above the message dishonors both.

Starting with the premise that we are all expressions of God makes the whole idol worship thing seem a little ridiculous yet therein lies the crux of a good percentage of the world’s misery. The message is, “We are all expressions of God encompassing all the qualities of God.” How did it ever get twisted around to be, “I am the one and only messenger of God and woe to anyone who doubts my word or the authority bestowed upon me by the one and only God almighty who, by the way, is totally off the rails sometimes and might pull the cork on this whole life on Earth experiment on a whim if you don’t tow the line?”

God does not play favorites. The idea that any one person rises above all others is not a God thought. God is an equal opportunity employer and each of us equal in our ability to use our spiritual qualities. None of us has the power to pull down the entire human race all alone and the power of Spirit is such that all of us working together could not destroy what is in essence a creation of Love.

Human history is alive with examples of those who have tried to force their will on the world and alive with examples of Love bringing us back long before we even neared the edge of our humanity. God is found within, ignore those professing special anointment; they are confused.

There is a reason why meditation is a solitary endeavor. The most ardent practitioners of meditation, the prototypical monk alone on a mountain somewhere in the outer hinterlands is under no one’s influence but his own. Alone with God, the monk recognizes he is God, and in his isolation can believe so without the intrusion of external disturbances to the seamless connection he enjoys. Introduce a single new player and the balance shifts dramatically.

In any pairing of earth beings there develops a co-dependent relationship. A healthy co-dependency keeps both parties fairly equal with one’s strengths complementing the other’s. It worked out pretty well in the early evolutions of humankind that the male could do the “guy” stuff while the females raised the children and attended to developing our “feminine” qualities. Those feminine qualities are that part of us that pushed our evolutionary envelope with the eventual result of making the division of “guy” stuff and “girl” stuff less vital for our survival as a race. Development of our feminine nature is our awakening Spirit within.

If we could stop at the development of healthy co-dependencies our ascension back into pure Spirit would most likely have occurred a long time ago. If the God power had an intention, it must have been that we demonstrate what freedom looks like.

One of our constant demonstrations has been to delegate power. We choose less healthy co-dependencies allowing some to control while most others do the heavy lifting. When the Bible says “The meek shall inherit the Earth,” it is these heavy lifters it refers to. These are the people who are content to live in service caring for their families and communities from a point of giving. These are the people in closer connection to their Spiritual Truth.

The “controllers” do not by nature take control. It is given freely, often because they are able to provide answers to life’s mysteries. “Why did my child die?” “It is God’s will!” “Oh, okay then, I trust you to know that, so I accept you are the authority on all things God. So tell me, what else does God want from me?” A dramatic and over simplistic example but boiled down, all too true.

We give authority to those who fill the gaps in our knowledge. Being human, it is comforting to have someone to call upon. Being human, it feels good to be put upon a pedestal and being human some among us begin to think we deserve to be there. Our history is an endless story of one after another who came to think they had a duty to educate anyone who did not put them on a pedestal.

A handful have perhaps earned their place on high. They never raised armies to impose their will, but armies have followed their example. Others have raised armies to impose their will and often used misguided worship of the true examples as a controlling device. Who in their right mind would leave home and hearth to trudge off to war so someone else could get rich? But say it is for God (our version, not those other guy’s version) and well, all righty then, kiss the wives and babies good bye and off to slaughter we go.

The message is “We are all expressions of God encompassing all the qualities of God.” God is a builder. God is love expressing. We demonstrate our Godliness, our Christ nature by embracing and acting through love. Any other choice is a diversion from our natural state. The only Spiritual messenger is the silence through which Spiritual Truth reveals itself.

It is said that if we meet along the road anyone claiming to be the Buddha we are to kill him. This is not a call to commit murder. It is a recognition that our Spiritual self is not our human form, not of this world. It is an illumination of the Truth that an idea that is not reflective of our Spiritual Truth must be rejected fully, killed, to allow our Christ nature to shine. It is saying any interpretation of the message is contaminated, in the same way the message in the “telephone” game becomes garbled passing from one player to the next.

Giving ourselves permission to listen to the silence, trusting ourselves to recognize our Truth, empowering ourselves to act from our heart requires only loving ourselves. We are all One, who else is there to love?

Our messengers often come in the form of conflict. Narrow minded people, mean people, ignorant people and our own confusions are messengers. Each brings an opportunity to learn a new facet of ourselves, to examine it and make a choice.

We are not tempted to worship the people who bring strife into our lives. Does it make any more sense to worship the bringers of Truth? They are one in the same. As our understanding grows our Truth becomes more evident. We choose from love more often and more readily. Self-destructive choices are less and less attractive as the benefits of healthy choices become more apparent.

Our habits evolve. The comfort of fatty sugary foods is replaced by the energy of fruits and vegetables; fidelity in relationships becomes more important that racking up a score or “looking for love in all the wrong places.” The new habits become ingrained in our processes and one day we look back and wonder how the old ways ever held sway over us.

The messenger becomes irrelevant as we embody the message. Spirit ask nothing of us. It has no ego or need for recognition. It is not “out there” wanting. It is us, all we see, think or imagine. Worship? No! Honor It by recognizing It in all of creation starting with ourselves.

Learn more about our relationship with Spirit at CSL.org or CSLFTL.org

So many of life’s experiences are right in front of us, known by all, but often ignored. Robin Williams has with his passing chosen to bring into the light the experience of clinical depression. Most importantly none of us who are not afflicted with the condition can relate to it in any way. Even those with family or acquaintances in depression cannot really know what the stricken knows. Our ignorance is our shield and our attempts to relate can at best be hollow shells of understanding.

Our Spiritual Truth is love expressing. Harmony, creativity, love and prosperity are our birthright and the general norm for all human expressions of Spirit. Growth and evolution of our souls is the natural direction.

Depression is movement away from our natural state, but as a human condition continues to be part of our Spiritual whole. Whether caused by chemical imbalance, a physical trauma, or social conditioning the effect on the patient is real to them and rips at the very fabric of their soul.

For most of us the challenges we endure gift us with the discovery of strength and spiritual growth. Those among us who know depression are somehow blocking the process within themselves that allows most of us to evolve beyond the challenge. Many of us never grow tall enough to play professional basketball and most of us live well in spite of that deficiency. If one is determined to be a professional basketball player and simply cannot because of their size; an unhealthy condition may ensue. We may not understand the obsession, but it exist all the same and we can attempt to corral it, but if the subject is not equipped to adjust their thinking, we can only continue to love them as they are.

So it is with the depressed among us. We may never know the cause of their behavior or even that they are afflicted with this additional challenge. We can only relate to them as we would any other. They are Spiritual beings having a human experience. They are us, part of the whole.

Robin Williams blessed us with laughter and tears. His talents in retrospect may clearly have been masking deeper issues even from him. His drive may have been his sanity running as fast as it could attempting to stay ahead of the fears that haunted him. Robin’s gifts of observation and exposure of human folly, dramatic enactments of human interactions, and playful expressions of unconditional love are recorded for posterity; his final gift, the heart wrenching premature extinction of his life opened our eyes to an uncomfortable all too common condition.

It seems easy to say we are never alone and help is just a call away, but is it? When our individual mind is convinced it is alone, or persecuted or insufficient in some way, how can we penetrate the defenses it builds up?

We experience a form of survivor’s guilt when too late we learn of a loved one’s surrender to their depression. We think there should have seen a clue or should have acted on a clue we now recognize. I do not think Robin intended for us to suffer for him. I think in his own reasoning there was nothing left for him to do.

Robin’s influence on our collective experience is undeniable. Perhaps in his thinking he was being expected to repeat past successes over and over, and mostly to enrich others. Perhaps his Spiritual self could not stay at the same level doing the same things and because of his depression mind set saw no other way to grow. Ernest Holmes writes in the Science of Mind textbook, “. . . we will constantly expand and increase in knowledge and understanding, thereby continuously growing in our ability to make use of the Law (creative force of Spirit). In time, we shall be made free through It.”(271.3) [For more about Science of Mind see CSL.org or CSLFTL.org]

The entertainment industry loves a winner, and a sequel to a winner, and a something that resembles a winner, but on a smaller budget, so Robin may have felt stuck and unable to continue expanding in his human world. He may have looked at all the wonderful things he has done and wondered why nothing seems to have changed.

In his own life Robin was able to move mountains, but on the larger scale the mountains buried him. He gave and he gave and the world seemed unchanged. Were his sights set too high? Did he think it was his failure that left the world seemingly no better off that he found it?

We are not alone and as Spiritual beings we are continuously interconnected. Our human selves are better equipped when we remember, when we remind others with every interaction that they too are expressions of the One. No one of us can move evolution alone but through his talents Robin enlisted millions and we have evolved.

We are better for his having passed our way and the world continues to evolve as each of us shares the gifts Robin has given us. His final gift of awakening us to a human tragedy may simply have been a way of passing the baton as if saying, “I have shown you the way; enjoy the journey, my road ends here.” And we love him for it. We accept the gift and take the next step more aware, better able to love unconditionally, with the courage to evolve out into the unknown.