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.

The Truth hovers over human folly like a flock of carrion birds patiently waiting for life to flee a wounded animal. We struggle with our ego minds to present a picture of human superiority over little things like politics, morality and destiny. The Truth cares not of these things and allows us our illusions while all the time bathing us in its love. When the struggle has gone out of us, when at last we admit there is nothing more we can do, the Truth cants its wings and glides down out of the sky to return us into itself. Desperation is one path back into our Truth, the one most of us choose. The desperation of having done everything humanly possible and finally coming to peace with the idea that our answers lie outside our human self. Another path is available to us; the path of inspiration that opens before us when we understand how the world works, the natural world unspoiled by human ego.

The Truth is simply what is, all of what is. Call it Spirit, God, Higher Power, call it Fred it does not matter because it speaks all languages, knows all words and assigns no value to any. The Truth knows our hearts. Anyone who has ever played with the family dog calling it all manner of horrible things using the same voice and body language used when praising it for a good deed knows that the dog knows your heart through the tones and movements and is not offended or frightened by the words. We can fool ourselves into believing the words; the words of our parents, our friends, coworkers, classmates and perfect strangers, but Truth is like the dog, seeing through the ruse and loving us in spite of our silly attempts at deception.

In art the illusion of depth and scale is created by assigning a vanishing point to a drawing. It is the point where all parallel lines in the picture merge as illustrated in a photograph of railroad tracks disappearing over a flat horizon. A crafty artist knows the vanishing point does not need to be on the canvas, it can be a point is space existing more as an idea than a physical place. Adherence to its purpose and existence is the only device the artist must employ. Truth lies at that point and all ideas and beliefs emanate from it and converge at it. Keeping that point foremost in our minds keeps everything in perspective. The artist can create works that appear to defy the point’s existence, but art is the manipulation of illusion so even when the art appears distorted it is only because the artist knows and uses the Truth. We appear to defy our Truth with the application of our power of choice. The human condition appears to be a chaotic and distorted and we leap from one illusion to the next thinking we are in control. Movie heroes can jump blindly off a roof and land in a passing truck full of empty boxes, our experiences are rarely so fortuitous. We do take leaps of faith however and where our focus is fixed on our Truth, the Truth delivers to us the fruit of our belief. Where our focus drifts and we place our belief in our ego mind the Truth still delivers to us the fruit of our belief and we are left grasping at the air because we have placed our belief in a non-existent “other.”

Centers for Spiritual Living’s vision is “A world that works for everyone.” (CSL.org )Speaking at a recent gathering its President, Dr. John Waterhouse mused on expanding that idea to include “Envisioning a world where everyone understands how it works.” The world already works for everyone. The world is the Truth in action. In our ignorance of how it works we make unproductive choices. We think we are separate from God, or that there is no God. We follow customs laid down over generations without questioning how they came to be. We assume that because we are separate from God that God plays favorites, or there being no God we are on our own with no consequences to our actions and beliefs. In a world where everyone understands how it works our ego minds make choices in alignment with Truth. Prosperity manifest without greed, we remain healthy because we choose healthy life styles, our creativity flows because we are in harmony with creation and our relationships are symphonic, love responding to love. Understanding how it works, understanding that we are all simply individualizations within the One resets our perspective opening us to inspiration. Our Truth remains patient.