By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

Ferguson is burning tonight and the nation looks for answers. Two sides are emerging on the outer edges of the question with most of us as usual somewhere in-between. One extreme stands in the name of law and order and their arguments seem reasonable from their perspective. On the other extreme lie unanswered questions and a craving for justice. The questions too seem reasonable from that perspective and most of us slide back and forth hoping the status quo will reassert itself and normalcy will re-emerge.

About 2500 years ago Plato recorded the thoughts of his teacher Socrates including his allegory of the cave that offers an interesting look at perspective and our social environment’s impact on its development. The cave was home to several persons who for purposes of the illustration were restricted to observing shadows of objects and people upon the cave wall without ever knowing the source of the shadows or that they even were shadows. In their minds the shadows were the real world.

All of us have our own version of the cave in our story. The opinions of our elders, siblings and extended families helped shape our own world view. Our tribe was always right and those folks on the other side of the hill have always been misguided. How easy our lives could be if those views were flawless and capable of holding up to the light of truth. Like the shadows on the cave wall however, those misinformed beliefs we are often willing to die for evaporate without a trace when illuminated by the truth.

In the allegory of the cave one person is released and brought to the surface into the light of day. Socrates describes how that person’s vision would adjust to the new reality seeing less at first and gradually able to understand more and more of their new world. Our Spiritual awakening follows a similar route for most of us. At first the light of knowledge may be so blinding we are unable to see anything of our surroundings, but slowly we see shapes in the brilliance and reflections of things in pools of water or panes of glass.

Spiritually we begin to understand that those “others” are more like us than not. They need food and water, shelter and a reason to be. They seek the same answers we seek. They cry when sad and laugh and dance when happy. They are us in all but name and the name is self-chosen not imposed by any god. They may have emerged from a different cave where the shadows were given different names and different stories but they were still shadows and no more real than the shadows of our own past.

The light we walk into is the same light. Our truth is their truth. Our shadows are no more real than their shadows. As we explore this new understanding of truth together a new experience arises for each of us; one that releases the shadows of our past and embraces the new truth being revealed to us both.

In Ferguson the establishment of law and governance draws on generations of privilege and a mindset that leans toward interpretations of social rules as they understand them. They have fallen into the trap or cave where the story has become the rules exist to protect the enforcers of the rules. Government in their view serves the government first and begrudgingly serves the populace only as a means of maintaining the status quo. Protect people sure, but only so the people will continue to ignore the government and demand little of it. Provide services too, but only enough to remove cause for the people to demand more. Build a bridge for everyone’s convenience, but only if it improves commerce and profits. Maintaining the bridge is an expense less easily sold, because no one is inconvenienced and commerce is not impeded.

From the other cave comes the view that building a bridge should be undertaken an act of love that benefits everyone and that bridges should be maintained because not doing so is irresponsible, even hateful. The expense of bridge maintenance is both less than building a new bridge and the jobs created are permanent to the community bolstering its economy and self-image as the home of a well maintained bridge and not a run-down unsafe derelict of times past.

Privilege serves to protect privilege. In Ferguson reports indicate that promises were made and broken. The forces of privilege seem to have been numb to the effect of breaking those promises and responded to the predictable outcome with more rigidity standing on the rule of law rather than admitting responsibility and seeking an inclusive solution.

From the other perspective came that predictable outcome where once again it was proven the side of privilege cannot be trusted to comply with the simplest of concessions. The injection of violence and destruction in the face of pleas to remain peaceful only served to fuel demands for more rigidity and enforcement perpetuating the spiral of distrust.

There have been valiant efforts in Ferguson to break the cycle. These seldom make the headlines and should. The solutions lie in the field where our commonality brings us together and that is the headline. The field where past misconceptions, false stereotypes and erroneous common consciousness is heaped onto a bonfire to be burned out of our foundations freeing them to support the natural way of love. The field where we stand for peace, respect and understanding, and we celebrate that news as the path into the future.

When privilege understands its inherent responsibility to serve all mankind and those who see privilege as the problem understand their own power to create change; a shift of consciousness is inevitable. There is no one sided solution. Building a bridge requires designers, bankers, community leaders and laborers common and skilled. Remove any element and the bridge remains only an idea without form or worse; a shadow of a bridge doomed to fail when the light of truth illuminates it.

When those of us in the middle sliding back and forth realize that the status quo is shattered forever, that normal is in constant flux, and that change is the natural order of life; then we too grow our understanding, identify our commonalities outside our tribe and naturally accept the expansion of our community to include others once thought foreign and strange. Free of active suppression, the good from all our caves rises into the light of truth where we all see with common vision.

Human curiosity empties our caves one by one as those left behind wonder why the pathfinders have not returned, overcome their fear and follow into the light. Those unwilling to try eventually perish in their prisons and their fears and misconceptions die with them. Tonight Ferguson is burning, tomorrow it rebuilds as something between a fortress of fear and an inclusive community and a new normal emerges awaiting its next evolutionally push.

Learn more about your cave and the light beyond it at a Center For Spiritual Living near you or online starting at CSL.org or CSLFTL.org.

By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

Lust for revenge is embedded in our “common consciousness,” that collective memory or manual of human behavior we find so much support for in popular literature, myth and religion. Even traditional Spiritual teachings often find exceptions to their core curriculum in matters of “justice.”

Enlightened people from all paths have recognized the value of letting go and moving on. Ernest Holmes writes in the Science of Mind, “There is nothing to forgive, only a Truth to be revealed.” To forgive, we are accepting that something is apart from Spiritual experience and that duality thinking denies our Spiritual Truth.

Revenge is a poison that quietly erodes the spirit of the person who carries it. The action hero in the movies is driven to defy all manner of physical if not civil laws in the pursuit of a perceived justice, but they do so in an altered state of reality and with the help of movie magic. Real people make poor decisions, often deepen their pain and fuel the fires of internal discord long after the natural course of mourning could have moved them back toward normalcy.

We are trained from birth to rain death and destruction down upon our enemies. We are cheered and encouraged to punch hard, fast and often to leave our trespassers bloody and dazed to prove we are a force to be reckoned with. We are told we must be strong, but strong is seldom defined and our assumptions are usually wrong.

One mistaken assumption is that bending others to our will is an indication of strength. It is an illusion. Others may appear to bend to our will, but they are internally strong and not really changed. Another mistaken assumption is that we are motivated in revenge by love. We are motivated by fear. The fear that we appear weak; that we appear to not care enough to act, that we appear to not be in control.

Our Spiritual nature is to love. Spirit is love. The love that gives us everything we want, or at least what we believe we want. We are expressions of Spirit and know this because Spirit is infinite meaning we cannot be separate from it. Our freedom of choice allows us to act in defiance of our true nature and we can be very defiant.

We create civil laws to ensure human evolution is driven by our best ideas rather than the force of might. Violence takes strength but it is not strength. Violence is surrender to our most primitive fight or flight instincts. Strength is demonstrated when we turn away from violence, when we find the courage to forgive and move on. To do otherwise traps us in our past with no path into our future.

Tragic events require justice and our system of laws provides a method for justice to be served with minimal impact on the individuals charged with its enforcement. The police patrolman, or detective is only involved as a result of their profession and can act dispassionately while still being passionate about justice and compassionate in exercising their vocation. The judge and prosecutor go home at night knowing they have done their part but not consumed by their participation.

An individual who sets themselves to bring justice outside our system of laws becomes rooted in the injustice that initiated the revenge. They erode their own harmony and weaken their ability to heal. Forgiveness can only be practiced by the strong. Forgiveness places us into alignment with our Spiritual source; opens us to the flow of infinite power. And forgiveness is an inside job. Remember what Holmes said, “. . . only a Truth to be revealed.” To forgive someone else implies we have the right to judge them in the first place. We may like or dislike an action, but the person is an expression of Spirit the same as us. We are judging ourselves and we must forgive ourselves.

We must forgive ourselves for not being fast enough, not knowing enough, not being home enough or not seeing the clues before us. We must get comfortable with the fact that life evolves in spurts of unexpected episodes and we must be strong enough to recognize that all our good intentions aside, sometimes we simply cannot do enough. Nor are we supposed to have done more.

What we can do is accept our fear of being judged and release any perceived need to judge others. With that burden lifted we can face our fear and turn it into our strength. The strength to see the face of God in everyone and in our mirrors; then forgive ourselves for ever thinking it was ever any different.

Learn more about Spirit, Spiritual nature and the power of love at Center for Spiritual Living in your community or online starting at CSL.org or CSLFTL.org.

By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

We seem to live linier lives. We are born, mature, age and die. If that were the sum total of it linier thinking would certainly be the logical extension of that picture. Oddly, we often use that template as though it were the nature way of things. A preponderance of evidence suggests otherwise.

The Moon circles the Earth and our planet orbits the Sun. The Sun flows along as its Milky Way galaxy spins through space. Our own blood flows through a circulatory system filled with oxygen that gets converted to carbon dioxide, filtered and refreshed countless times throughout our lives.

Even our seemingly linier lives are segments within a cycle. Along the way to our eventual physical demise the majority of us have children who carry forward biological and environmental characteristics influenced by the past, but shaped in their future. Over generations the human race is evolving toward a Spiritual purity known only to Spirit itself before the human experiment was proposed; returning to its starting point.

During our short segment of this evolutionary journey we tend to lose sight or are never aware of the bigger picture. We gravitate toward short term goals and fleeting rewards. More affluent societies consume beyond all proportion to their numbers. Relationships are often shallow and unable to endure the normal bumps we encounter from day to day.

The phrase “He who dies with the most toys, wins,” is taken to be true and deserving of pursuit. We acquire things at the cost of prudent planning or reasonable considerations. We go into debt for houses that are too large, cars that are too fast and accessories designed to be obsolete long before they warrant replacement.

In this bigger picture even our money is cyclical. In the smaller picture our consumerism is dead end spending. On the Spiritual level the time and money we give away expands its impact and returns to us in its natural cyclical nature. The few dollars we release toward charitable goals not only benefits the recipients, but in doing so, stimulates local and global economies. It also establishes a relationship with Spiritual flow.

When we acquire goods for our own enrichment the flow of prosperity is stifled. Funds released without conditions flow unrestricted. Likewise freely given time reaps benefits of unpredictable prosperity returning to the giver. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum so visualize a catastrophic release of pressure from a vessel and the resulting impact of inrushing material to fill the void as an illustration of the prosperity cycle. The more released the greater the return.

Hoarding begets trash, confusion, vermin and a visit from the Health Department. Keeping a clean house, giving away redundant belongings and unlocking our wallets to good causes opens our consciousness to more good flowing through us. Volunteering is a natural human instinct. Before there was commercialism there was a natural need to connect with our fellow humans, pitching in and getting things done for the common good. This is our Spiritual self shining through, our natural way.

We often approach giving as a requirement; that is our segmented self not seeing the full cycle. Giving is the way of Spirit, the force of the Universe that gives us everything we believe we can have. Spirit gives with unconditional love, never questioning or judging our choices. When we hold back we are empowering fear and a belief in limitation. We are greater than that. We are Spiritual beings privileged to be having a human experience and demonstrating our recognition and connection to our origin by kicking down the barriers to our prosperity and letting it flow through us unobstructed. The cycle completes only to start again.

Learn more about the natural flow of prosperity and your Spiritual self at a Center for Spiritual Living in your community or on line starting at CSL.org and CSLFTL.org.

By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

Election Day is fast approaching and the rhetoric is ramping up. Every candidate and every issue being decided is flawed in some way. There has never been nor will there ever be a pure uncontaminated choice. Voters hoping to see a clear path illuminated by celestial beacons and a chorus of angles need to get comfortable with disappointment.

Politics is a reflection of our everyday lives. No issue stands alone isolated from the thousands of variables that factor into our decision processes. We want to conserve oil by driving less, but the soccer game ends at six and the kids need to get home to complete their science project so we drop them off only to drive back to the civic center for an important Council meeting. Our candidate of choice has a checkered past, but the opponent is a stuffed shirt for everything counter to our beliefs.

Do we stay home in frustration declaring the end of civilization is at hand or do we do the best we can with what we have to work with and stay alert for course corrections down range? Freedom includes not only the right but the responsibility to change our minds when new information emerges. Freedom cannot include the choice to remain unchanged, for that choice is self-imprisonment, the opposite of freedom.

Political choices become clearer when a few simple truths are observed. Listen to the arguments and ask: is this argument presenting verifiable facts that are pertinent to the question, or is it appealing to some perceived fear? If it is the former, how important are those facts to the big picture?

If a candidate for County Comptroller has been convicted of embezzlement; that might be important. If the same candidate has an issue with maintaining healthy body weight, it hardly bears the same significance unless your county’s taxes are paid in Twinkies. Fear is a powerful motivator and influencer of decisions, but seldom supported by facts.

Suggesting the candidate above lives a lavish lifestyle in spite of his company’s financial woes evokes a fear of dishonesty, but no facts. Has the company done well in the past allowing the principles to divest past compensation in wise investments? Does the company produce a product no longer in demand? Could the company be doing better or is it reflecting circumstances beyond its control? A case in point is the buggy whip manufacturer who invested in Ford Motor Company before closing his doors forever. The buggy whip employees may have been left out in the cold, but through no criminal act of their employer.

We frequently empower our fears when making life choices. It is a mistake. Fear is believing a false thing to be true. It is false because it has not happened, it is a projection of a possible future however unlikely. We accept a life partner because we are afraid we will die alone. Really? What are the odds that if we move on from our current arrangement that we will never find another circumstance with better experiences? It is a crowded planet, any soul unhappy alone has a target rich environment to explore for a solution.

Appealing to our fears is a proven campaign tool but one we all need to be wary of. There is no value to it. It builds walls that block the light of truth. It diverts our focus from the fear monger’s agenda. Look at the values the candidates support. Look past what they say they have done and look closely at what they have done.

Are their decisions helping to raise the tide or are they dragging an anchor? Are they claiming to help while stripping away rights and social safety nets? Are they moving human evolution forward or clinging desperately to an imagined “better time?” Are they building better prisons or setting free our souls to grow closer to our Spiritual Truth?

The barriers we erect for ourselves, the confines of our judgments are restrictions rather than protections. The outside always finds a way in. The walls only trap us inside and limit our maneuvering room.

It is the same in our lives as in politics. When we shut people out by our judgments we lose the value of their contributions, the lessons they bare. When we retard evolution by clinging to our past, our story, we deny ourselves the opportunity to create a better tomorrow. When we act to maintain our own power at the cost of other’s empowerment we deny both. When we succumb to fear we enable others to dictate our experiences and perpetuate stagnation.

In our lives there is a clear path illuminated by celestial beacons and lined by choirs of angles; it is revealed to us when we brush away the webs of lies and thickets of fear we build through our inattention to Truth. Politics may be a rougher row to hoe, but the same tools come into play.

If the path is unclear, change directions. If government is misdirected, realign it. If your values require force and fear to maintain, let them go. Spiritual values stand on their own without an army or police force to bolster them. Spiritual values are the natural state or existence, the light dispersing the shadow. Shatter the walls and let your light shine.

Learn more about Spiritual Truth and self-empowerment at a Center for Spiritual Living in your community or on line starting at CSL.org or CSLFTL.org.

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.