Spiritual Solutions

We all know what it’s like when change comes upon us suddenly. When we may have been trudging through the mundane everyday matters of life and something happens that perhaps startles us and brings us into a new awareness and our life is transformed for a while, maybe for all time.

I was reading from an old book of mine that I had read years ago, called How Jesus Heals Our Minds Today, by David Seabury. He was talking about an experience he had years before when he was on the coast of Normandy in a small fishing village. He went to a little gray chapel there where fishermen received a blessing before they went out for months at sea.

He was looking around the chapel and getting the feeling when he heard the priest say, from the opening words of Genesis, “And God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light.” He said that in this moment he was awakened, whether it was the lovely ambience of the little chapel or the earnest faces that were looking up, the patient women and the great-hearted men that were going out to sea once more, or whether it was hearing those familiar words spoken in a foreign tongue. Something happened that made him realize that, indeed, light is what is needed in our world and in our individual lives.

Light means illumination, it means understanding, and it means seeing ourselves in a new way. And when that light comes, it can indeed transform us. David Seabury said that for him it was a time when he had a feeling of ecstasy; he was able to look at his life and see the things that needed to be released and the way he needed to go forward. He realized how some of his friends had lost touch with their spiritual life and the healing that could take place if they could capture again that light of the truth within them.

We need to bring some light into our own lives, to see the truth of the perfect presence that is already within us. As we cast off our false beliefs, as we get rid of those old doctrines and the way we have seen ourselves for so long, then that perfect self can emerge and we can express the perfection of our God-self in the world. We can express the Truth, we can reveal the Truth.

As I was reading that story told by David Seabury, it reminded me of a passage of scripture in the ninth chapter of the gospel of John, where Jesus healed a man that was born blind. I think we can realize it is not only about physical blindness. It’s also about spiritual blindness as this relates to us today; the healing of spiritual blindness.

Like the man in the story, we have to wash the mud off our eyes. It’s interesting that Jesus used spittle and dust from the earth to form the clay he put on the eyes of the blind man. The spittle is from Jesus’ own being, so it is symbolic of the Spirit; which he then brings down to earth, or mixes with the earth. So we can mix the Spirit with our own earthly experience and put it on our eyes. Then we wash it off and we see with new eyes. The story says that the man went and washed in the pool of Siloam (which means “sent”) he and came back seeing. And all who saw him were amazed and mystified.

Prior to this, Jesus had been saying to the people, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” The Pharisees were challenging Jesus on this; they said to him, “You are bearing witness to yourself. Your testimony is not true.” And Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness to myself, my testimony is true for I know whence I have come and whither I am going.” He knew himself, he was true to himself. He said, “I bear witness to myself and the Father who sent me bears witness to me. If you would know me, you would have known my Father.”

It’s a matter of the inner Self, of being true to oneself, that is so important. Not only was Jesus true to himself, he taught his disciples to be true to themselves also. And he supported them when they seemed to go against the rules and dogmas of that particular time and culture. He supported them in their uniqueness, in their individuality, seeking to draw the Truth out of them. In the gospel of John, 20:21, it says, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” It says that he breathed upon them and said, “Receive the Spirit.”

How important this is to apply to ourselves. Just as he told the disciples to follow him, he’s telling us to follow him. He’s not talking about following him in his footsteps; he’s talking about following him in his beingness, in how he is in relation to the Father. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Act in this way, think in this way, feel in this way, and be in this way. Be one with God as I am one with God. Receive the Holy Spirit. The breath is the Spirit.

And the light began to dawn on them, but not right away. So what would it be like for us if we were to act upon this reality? What would it look like if we hear the Spirit within saying to us, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you? Receive the Holy Spirit.” What does it look like for you as you act upon that Truth in your being, as you are true to your own self? You find new life; new light and new life.

We can see that in the story of Pentecost, when they were all gathered together in one place praying. It says it was as though a mighty rush of wind came into the house and filled the house, and it was as though tongues of fire rested upon each person. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit. “Tongues of fire” means light, illumination, inspiration. And the wind is the breath of Spirit. They had an experience.

How would you tell of an experience like that?

You might say, “I was blown away.” “I was fired up.” “I was inspired.” “I was in ecstasy.” “I had a new realization, and my life was transformed in that moment.”

New light brings new life, new understanding, and an awakening to the Truth. Spiritual blindness can be transformed in an instant. “And God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light.”

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

If you’d like to receive weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at Rich Words.

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Here’s a great article by Kevin Schoeninger of Mind-Body Training and Spiritual Growth Monthly that I don’t want you to miss, because it highlights so well the difference between assumption and experience. So, I’ll just let your experience of the story speak for itself. . . .

Is It Possible To Move Beyond Judgment?

Have you ever been in the supermarket where you witness a mother or father struggling with their kids and yelling at them? Did you get upset at the “meanness” of these parents? Did you feel that the kids weren’t being respected and cared for? Have you ever been shocked to find yourself being that parent?

Or have you found yourself annoyed at a driver weaving in and out of traffic because he was only thinking of himself and putting the rest of us at risk? Have you also found yourself occasionally being that driver?

Do you get angry when you see wars of religion—one trying to dominate the other with its “right” point of view? Do you find yourself being intolerant of intolerance?
The web of judgment is certainly tangled.

Is it possible to move beyond that?

Let me share a brief story that opened my eyes about this.
 
As I related in last week’s post, my wife and I take an annual trip to Sedona Arizona for our anniversary. On this trip we like to take a hike up onto Cathedral Rock. It’s one of our favorite spots. The lush environment around the base of the rock is so peaceful and serene, while the heights of the perches at the top are simply majestic. Legend has it that this gigantic red rock formation has a powerful energy that comforts you and makes you feel like everything is O.K. It’s even said, as I shared last week, that, if you are open to it, you can receive messages from this rock.

Any judgments come up for you yet?

So, my wife and I are enjoying the two hour climb around the north face to east face and upward to the top. At several points, the rock gets pretty steep and some folks balk at this point. On my first time here, I had serious doubts and had to take a moment to relax and dig for some courage. To an experienced hiker or climber, it’s probably nothing too exciting or dangerous. Nevertheless, everyone seems quite accepting of varying levels of courage when you reach these points. The comfortable ones take a break and wait for the less confident ones. The fearless ones assure the scared ones that everything will be O.K.

When my wife and I reached the top, or as high as you can go without equipment, we took some pictures and then settled into a comfortable spot to rest up and enjoy the “energy” of the mountain. We lay down on the red rocks, my wife in the sun and me with my back against the cool red rock wall in the shade. I enjoyed the silence, punctuated only by the occasional “thunderous” helicopter flying by for a bird’s eye view. As an experiment, I asked the big rock if it had any message for me.

Shortly, there came a blustery, athletic presence storming up the hill, huffing and puffing. He took the top, had a brief look around, made some loud comments to his girlfriend, and then quickly began his descent. “In it for the workout,” came to my mind.

Next there came a middle-aged couple. When they reached the top it was clear that the woman was pretty scared. She stared at the way back down with trepidation. Almost immediately she began her descent, backing down on all fours, while being coached enthusiastically by her husband. “Missed the experience,” I thought.
Soon thereafter, came a barefooted girl with tattoos on her arms. She arrived at the top silently, like a cat, found a nice slab in the sun, and lay down with a smile on her face. “She’s really got it right,” I thought.

I followed suit, closed my eyes, and felt “soooo” relaxed against the soft, cool, red rock. I asked again for a message.

Before long these words came into my head: “Everyone’s experience is valid.”

I instantly felt how this released my judgments against those who “raced” up the mountain, were “too scared” to enjoy the experience at the top, or “too noisy” to listen and feel the silence. As I let this realization soak in, I understood it in a visceral way, in a way I hadn’t before.

Everyone’s experience is valid from their point of view. It makes sense to them given who they are, where they’ve come from, and where they are going. Who am I to judge that? I have no idea about any of those things for someone else.

In that moment, I felt free of judgment toward others and free to be myself. These two fit perfectly hand in hand. I’ve since discovered that, when I carry this phrase into life—“everyone’s experience is valid”—it frees me to appreciate the unique qualities that each of us bring to the table. The consciousness behind this phrase creates a fertile ground of understanding which can be used to resolve conflict and cooperate toward what we all truly desire—which is, at once, different and the same.

Enjoy your practice,

Kevin

Kevin Schoeninger

If you are interested in knowing more about the Mind-Body Training Community and Spiritual Growth Monthly, I can tell you that I have enjoyed several of their programs and the Spiritual Growth Monthly newsletter for several years. You can go to Raise Your Vibration / Core Energy Meditation (Gift Page) for a powerful free meditation technique.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan Rowbotham

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

If you’d like to receive weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at Rich Words.

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Many of us have had great dreams for ourselves and then let them die. They were dreams that started within us and then perhaps we let them get caught up in outer things and we’ve lost our direction and motivation for their accomplishment.

There’s a great analogy I find in the book of Ezekiel about the valley of dry bones. It says, “The hand of the Lord was upon me and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley; and lo, they were very dry. And he said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered ‘O, Lord God, thou knowest.’

Again, he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

Of course, this wasn’t really about bones at all. It was about lost dreams. He was talking to the Israelites, who had started off with great dreams of God’s presence and the things that with God they could achieve. Then they got caught up in creating idols and so on.

But he is speaking not only to the Israelites; he is also speaking to us. We have started off sometimes with great dreams, guided from within, and then we’ve let them die. We’ve let them get caught up with outer things, outer concerns, outer circumstances, outer situations that have caused our dreams to shrivel up and die. And we end up with a valley of dry bones.

But he says it’s not all over yet, because you can prophesy to these bones that the Lord God will come and clothe them with muscle and skin and sinew, and will breathe into them and make them live.

So the prophet prophesies to them, and the bones begin to come together, and the muscle comes on them, and the skin comes on them, and they stand up. But there’s no life in them. It’s like us, we sometimes look like living beings but we’re not; there’s no life in us, there’s something missing. And what was it? It was the breath of God.

So God says to Ezekiel, “Breath on them, speak to them again, prophesy again and say to them that the Lord God will breath on you, and the breath will be in you.” So when the breath comes in they live, the dreams live again.

Our dreams live when the breath of God moves in us. This is what makes us uniquely human and uniquely divine; the breath of God is that which moves us to our highest good. If we align ourselves with that awareness, then we find that our world has changed. The outer things are still there, but we’re not so caught up in them; they are transformed because of our inner perception of them as we put God first in our lives.

No matter what is happening, no matter what challenges come along, we are centered in God’s presence and live in a conscious realization of our oneness with God. We really know for ourselves that there is only one presence and one power; we are centered in that knowing and able to move out into all situations with confidence.

When we are not living according to the Truth of our being, not living God’s purpose, we’re not living our wholeness and we feel divided, separated from God and separated from the Truth within ourselves. In order to come together, it takes the breath of God. We only find real life when we are moving with that breath of God.

You may remember some of the last words that Jesus said to the disciples before his ascension. He said, “Wait for the presence of God and the Holy Spirit will bring the power to you.” The “breath of God” and the “Holy Spirit” are the same. The Holy Spirit is the movement of God; it’s the whole Spirit of God in action through you. We can identify it with the wind or breath; we cannot see the wind and in the same way we cannot see God’s movement, but we can see what the wind does and we can see what God does in our lives.

We may think of ourselves as being like sailboats, only moving in the right direction when we open our sails to the breath of God. In that way, we become more malleable to the movement of Spirit within us instead of thinking that we have to force the pace. We become still, and listen more in order to open ourselves to the Spirit of God.

Remember, in the story of Pentecost, it said they were all together in one place. That means they were in integrity, they were united in prayer in one place or one consciousness. And it said it was as though there was a mighty rush of wind that came to them and filled the house, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

They were all changed after that experience. They began to speak and to understand one another even though there were different races; in other words, they spoke with the language of Spirit. And they were permanently changed.

So we know that change is possible within us and for us, as it was with the disciples; when we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit or the “wholeness” of potential within ourselves, our dreams can live again.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

If you’d like to receive weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at Rich Words.

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Several years ago, I had time to be with my grandson, Rowan, who was visiting from England. He was eleven at the time and came over by himself. We went to Disney, the Magic Kingdom, and then Universal Studios. We went on all the rides, Space Mountain, Back to the Future, Terminator 2, Alien Encounter, Jaws, Twist, and all those kind of things. Then we spent a day at home to recover, and planned to go to Adventure Island in Tampa on the Friday.
 
Kathryn and I had a cat we had adopted after a friend of ours who owned her died a couple of months previous. Tanya was a calico, about three years old, and skittish; she hid under the bed at the slightest provocation and with our grandson being there she spent a lot of time under the bed.

On the Thursday we hadn’t seen much of her, but I knew she’d been out from under the bed because the food had been eaten. Then when we got up Friday morning, the food hadn’t been eaten and I wondered where she was. I asked Kathryn if she’d seen Tanya last night and she said she hadn’t. So I thought well maybe she’s still under the bed; I looked under the bed and she wasn’t there. We looked everywhere in the house, in all the closets and everywhere around – no cat! She was gone; she was out of the house somewhere.

She must have sneaked sometime on Thursday, so she’d been out all night. So what did we do? We started to worry, right? We hoped she hadn’t gone too far; we hoped we could get her back, we hoped she hadn’t been hit by a car, all those kind of things. And we all had places to go, Rowan and I to Adventure Island and Kathryn had some appointments. So Rowan and I looked all around the neighborhood, we went on the roof and looked all around the roof; there was no sign of her. All around the house, nothing there, and to different gardens down the road, but nothing. She was nowhere in sight.

We called the SPCA, Friends of Strays, and the animal shelter; we put a “lost calico cat” sign on a tree, and then went on our separate ways. The animal shelter people said we should come there between 4:30 and 5 pm to check on the “found” book, so we thought we’d call there on the way home from Tampa. But we got stuck in traffic in Tampa and realized they would be closed by the time we got there, so we went straight home.

As soon as we got home, I asked Kathryn, “Is Tanya here?” She said, “Well, I have a story to tell you.” She said she got home about three o’clock and she felt moved to go out in the back yard and sit there in a chair and pray. She said, “I felt that I really needed to get deeply still and pray. I prayed out loud, ‘in the name of Jesus Christ.’”

When you pray “in the name of Jesus Christ” you are praying in the nature of Jesus Christ, and you are praying in the nature of God within you. When you pray in that consciousness you are accessing all of the wisdom and power of the living God.

So Kathryn said she got really, really still, and then she opened her eyes and made a move to go into the back yard next door. She looked back at our roof, and there was the cat!

There was a small deck on the roof of the house we lived in at that time. So Kathryn went up the spiral staircase which led to the deck. Tanya was way over on the roof, and so Kathryn sat down with her back to the cat and just murmured her name, “Good girl, Tanya.” Finally the cat came up to her and started nudging her and loving her. Tanya was a big heavy cat and Kathryn couldn’t get hold of her and she still had to get back down the steps. So she went down and got some food and water and brought it back up for her.

We came home around 5:30 pm and Tanya had come down from the roof and gone into hiding again. Finally she scooted around and came in the back door which we had left open.

The important lesson here is that we found her because Kathryn prayed; she took time to be still and to pray instead of hurrying around doing the busy work. When she did, she looked up and there was the cat.

How often we tend to do things the hard way, instead of the easy way! It’s prayer that brings about right action and positive results. When you bring things together in prayer then good things begin to happen for you.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

If you’d like to receive weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at Rich Words.

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Today I want to take a look at the true source of power. What is our true power? All of us need daily power. I talked with someone the other day and said, “How are you doing?” He responded, “Well, I’ll be all right if I can just get through the day” That’s a pretty heavy situation to be in. But in a sense, many of us feel that way, if only we have enough power to get through the day, if only we have enough power to do the things that are ours to do. We need that daily power and we need to know the source of that power.

After the resurrection, the disciples were sort of in that same situation. They’d gone to what was known as the Upper Room and they were feeling dejected, helpless and powerless; they didn’t know what to do with themselves or which way to turn. And Jesus appeared to them. He instructed them to wait in the city, to wait in Jerusalem, until the promise of the Father came.

We can find that story in the gospel of Luke, also in the book of Acts which records the activities of the apostles after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. It says “He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father.” Then a little later it says, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”

These were tremendous words of hope that he gave to them. And we know that, after this time, we come to the experience of what has been called Pentecost. Pentecost was actually a Jewish celebration fifty days after Passover, but we remember Pentecost for different reasons. I won’t go into that at this time because I want to focus on the steps to realizing the true source of power so we can begin to apply it to our daily lives.

Jesus’ words remind me also of the Old Testament, when the prophet Isaiah was speaking to the exiles from Israel who were in Babylon. He was giving them similar words of hope. He is talking about the presence of God in our lives, and says, “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” There we get a vision of new strength, new vitality, a surge of energy that comes when we tap into the true source of our power.

So God meets us where we are, bringing us blessings all the time. But we have to be open to receive those blessings. So, what is the source of true power and how do we find it in our daily living? What hinders us, what stops us from receiving God power? It’s available to us all the time as the promises say: wait for the promise that will renew you. But we don’t always experience it. And why is that? What hinders us?

There are two things really that hinder us from experiencing God’s presence. The first one is hurry, and the second one is worry; hurry and worry. We tend to do a lot of both. We think we have to hurry to get places, but the thing that falls by the wayside when we get in a hurry consciousness is our time of true prayer. That is the first thing to suffer, because we don’t give enough time to it. We might say, “I don’t have time to pray right now because I have to hurry up, I have to get somewhere, to do something.” So the prayer often gets pushed to the back.

Hurry hinders us, it begins to ease the awareness of God out of our lives and we begin to slip away from the true source of power. The power is not out there somewhere; the power is truly within us. We can only find that power if we take time to pray, to get still and open ourselves to receive it. Hurry interferes with that; and the other thing is worry.

Worry hinders us receiving God’s blessings. And how does it do that? It blocks the flow of good to us, because worry simply means that we’re not trusting God. We say we believe in God and trust in God, but then why do we worry? We all do it, we worry. Worry gets in the way of us feeling and knowing God’s presence because we’re not really trusting. We may believe in God but we’re not really trusting God.

We have to begin to really trust God, to let the hurry go and to lessen the worry. Then we can begin to receive the blessings of God’s presence.

If we would just take the time to get still and pray, the answer will come; our direction will be there for us, our way will be opened. But we must take the time, put aside the worry, and take the time to pray.

The disciples recognized the importance of prayer. It says in the scripture that they did stay in Jerusalem in the Upper Room, “and they were all there, in one accord, in prayer.” Mary, the mother of Jesus, and other women were there, and the brothers of Jesus were there. And they all prayed together.

Sometime later, at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit touched them as Jesus had promised, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”

Daily power is our greatest need and prayer is our greatest resource. Sometimes we think of the demonstration of power as a brute strength, assertiveness, and aggressiveness to get things done and to thunder through life. But that’s not true power.

True power is never noisy, it doesn’t beat the drum, it doesn’t toot its own horn, it never puts people down, and it never belittles others. True power takes decisive action and claims authority of the inner self as is necessary, but it doesn’t make a big fanfare of it. True power is always demonstrated in gentleness, but sometimes we forget that and think we have to put on the big show.

David, says in one of the psalms, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress; in him will I trust. Thou savest me from violence and thy gentleness hath made me great.”

Unfortunately, we often equate gentleness with meekness and think of it as weakness. But it’s not so, for in true gentleness and in true meekness there is strength. Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Some might say “That’s not really true, because it’s the pushy ones who inherit the earth, the ones who are aggressive and assertive and want to take over, they inherit the earth.”

Now, the translation of the Greek word “meek” really means “tame,” in relation to having tamed the powers within ourselves, having them in harness as it were, in order to move them in the right direction, to be aligned with the true power within us. That’s what the word really means; it doesn’t mean weak at all. It implies a sense of serenity, a sense of centeredness, of harnessing those powers within us.

In the French translation of that same passage, it translates to “Blessed are the debonair.” That gives us a totally different feeling, one of courtesy and charm. Put those two translations together and we can come up with a word in our contemporary society that really characterizes this attitude of being. What is that word? Cool!

“Blessed are the cool.” When you are cool, you have it all together, you don’t get upset about things, you don’t have to push your way through things; you are smooth, you are cool, you go through things easily, you project an image of gentleness and confidence and you move forward with assurance.

St. Francis de Sales says, “Nothing is as strong as gentleness, and nothing is as gentle as true strength.” It’s prayer that gets it all together, and when you get it all together you suddenly find that you have that secret power that goes before you to make your way safe, easy, and successful.

God is blessing you now, as you stay cool!

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

If you’d like to receive weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at Rich Words.

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It is through the images in our lives that we really begin to tap into the truth of our being and to give expression to it. Even in times of challenge or loss we can move on through it to the healing, because as we tap into the truth of our being we connect with our Divine self and know the truth of God’s presence in our lives. We know that no matter what is happening, the love is there, the life is there and is streaming forth through our loss whatever it may be.

But we don’t often start with that; we have to go through the process. We have to first acknowledge our loss, whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, the loss of a relationship, or perhaps a child has gone off to school somewhere. When we begin to identify and accept what it truly is that is our loss or challenge we can move through it.

We have certain images that we carry in our minds about the situation. It may be an empty nest; it may be a chrysalis. Sue Monk Kidd, in a book called The Heart Still Waits, relates how when she was going through a mid-life crisis finally came upon an image in her mind of a chrysalis, of a caterpillar that had formed a cocoon.

She realized she was going through a time of incubating the darkness and that she couldn’t rush the process, that even when moving toward new life she had to incubate within that darkness and couldn’t force the chrysalis to open. But she recognized that out of that chrysalis would emerge the new life of the butterfly. And she knew that if she focused on the butterfly, the representation of her true self, she would be lifted out of the pain and darkness.

Sometimes it’s in the familiar images of life that we are nurtured and begin to reorient ourselves to the truth of ourselves and that life goes on; we must release and let go of the things that have held us, of the things that have bound us to them. There comes a time to move on, to let go.

It was really not until after Pentecost that the disciples were able to understand and look back and value the experience that they had gone through. Then they were able to take the riches they had shared with Jesus and apply them in their own lives. They recognized that the Spirit was alive in them also and they had a sense of new vitality and new enthusiasm and began to look forward toward life.

We all have our Pentecost moments. We get to that point of awakening, of opening our eyes to the truth of our being that we hadn’t really seen before. We move beyond the thoughts we had about what happened to now feel and know that new life within us. Love’s great presence is always with us, lifting us up, healing us and moving us through the limiting experience.

An image that really speaks to me is contained within a quote by Rabindranath Tagore. He says, “When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart. And where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”

Think of those new melodies, think of that new song that is waiting to be sung in you. It’s there, new roads, new ways are being revealed to you, new country is opening up to you. God in you is saying, “I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” It’s always there for you, if you will let go.

In the book of Lamentations there is a wonderful quote of how we can move through this process of recovery. It says, “This is what I shall tell my heart and so recover hope: ‘The favors of Yahweh are not all past. God’s kindnesses are not all exhausted. Every morning they are renewed; great is God’s faithfulness.’”

There is new country waiting for you, there are new melodies that yearn to be sung in your spirit. Even in the most desolate times the season of springtime, of new life, is always awaiting you.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

If you’d like to receive weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at Rich Words.

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You’ve heard of the saying, “It’s a hard act to follow.” And that certainly might be said about the story of the resurrection. However, I suggest it was not a hard act but a heart act. It was a heart act, an act of love, of reaching beyond seeming human limitations to draw on the strength and the power of the living God.

We can follow that heart act in our own lives. Even in the midst of our losses, even in the midst of challenges and when we don’t understand them there is a presence and a power to draw upon that is enfolded in and contained within us, the very love of God. The presence of God is the presence of love within us; our true nature is that of love. As we let that be our focus we can begin to make our lives a heart act instead of a hard act.

We often struggle with our lives and make it a really hard act. But we can change that and instead make it a heart act. Sometimes it comes through suffering and loss. When we experience challenge or loss, our hearts often seem to become paralyzed, we don’t know what to do, we become stuck, and we are not able to move on. We get in our heads to see what’s going on and we don’t come into our hearts because it’s just too painful.

It reminds me of the true story of a young man who was twenty-four years old and had bone cancer and had to have his leg amputated from the hip. He became a patient of Dr. Rachel Naomi Ramen, who worked with him for two years to try to bring him into a new sense of himself after the tremendous loss he had experienced. He was embittered, angry, and even full of hate toward people who were well.

So she had to work with him to have him understand that he had lost not only his leg but much more than that. He had lost the sense of his own personhood, the sense of his own being, the sense of his oneness with God. She had to help him reflect upon what had happened, to look at it and sit with it, not to avoid it but to look at it.

She had him draw his life and draw how his body looked, how he felt about himself, and to try to tap into his deeper inner self.

It was toward the end of the two years she worked with him that he really started to come out of it and he began to visit hospital patients that had experienced serious losses of their own.

He lived in Palo Alto, California, and one hot day he was going to the hospital wearing shorts and of course his prosthesis, his artificial leg, could be seen. He walked into the room of a young woman about his own age that was deep in depression because of the loss of both breasts. She was so depressed she wouldn’t even look at him.

The nurse had left the radio on in the room to try to cheer her up a bit, but she was just lying there with her face turned away from him. At first he didn’t know what to do, so to get her attention he unstrapped his leg and took his prosthesis off. Then he started dancing around on one leg and snapping his fingers to the music. He came around the bed so she could see him dancing. At first she ignored him and then she took a little look. Finally she burst out laughing and said, “If you can dance, man, I can sing.” Her response to her loss changed in that moment.

Dr. Ramen said that, after the two years, she was reviewing his progress and they were looking through some of the drawings he had done. They came across a drawing of a vase that had a deep crack in it. She had asked him to draw a picture of his body as he saw it, and he drew the picture of the vase with the deep crack across it. She remembered that when he drew that, he was gritting his teeth with anger and rage and bearing down hard on that crack across the vase. He saw that vase as his life that was broken and would not hold water any more.

As they went through the pictures, he saw that one. He took it and said, “You know, this one isn’t finished yet.” And she said to him, “Well, would you like to finish it now?” He said, “Yes, I would.” He took a yellow crayon and he put his finger on the crack in the vase and he said, “You see this crack? This is where the light comes from.” And he began to draw streams of light coming out of that crack in the vase.

We can become strong at the broken places, because there is a power and a love there for us that endures and which we can draw upon through all situations. Yes, he had sustained a great loss but that great loss turned into triumph once he began to feel his own wholeness and he was able to touch people’s lives in a new way. Yes, he may have lost a leg, but he hadn’t lost his true being. That’s the important thing.

What is the image that you carry about the losses in your own life? Is it time for you to revisit that image and let the light of God’s presence stream forth with new life? It’s a heart act you can follow.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

If you’d like to receive weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at Rich Words.

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THE RESURRECTION

Easter Sunday. Read John 20:1-18.

Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Its inner meaning and spiritual significance is the awakening and raising to spiritual consciousness of the I AM in humankind, which has been dead in trespass and sin and buried in the tomb of materiality.

“I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” The resurrection is the raising up of the whole person – spirit, soul, and body – into the Christ consciousness of life and wholeness. This Jesus did. The tomb could not hold His redeemed perfected body temple. Resurrection is accomplished by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit.

Every time we rise to the realization of eternal, indwelling life, making union with the Father-Mind, the resurrection of Jesus takes place within us. All thoughts of limitation and inevitable obedience to material law are left in the tomb of materiality.

Jesus was born into the race thought so that He might reconstruct it in conformity with the divine law. He thus became our Way-Shower, our Saviour, our Helper.

Today the light of Truth is illumining my mind, and I rise up in the majesty of my divine sonship and proclaim myself to be the child of the Most High, free from all belief in sin, sickness, and death.

I affirm: “In unity with Christ I realize that I am resurrected into the life, light, and power of God.”

Questions:

1. What is the spiritual significance of Easter?

2. What is the resurrection?

3. How is resurrection accomplished?

4. Why was Jesus born into the race thought?

Christ within me is the resurrection and the life. Christ within me is the power that enables me to rise triumphant out of every trial.

About the Author of Keep a True Lent

Charles Fillmore was an innovative thinker, a pioneer in metaphysical thought at a time when most religious thought in America was entirely orthodox. He was a lifelong advocate of the open, inquiring mind, and he took pride in keeping abreast of the latest scientific and educational discoveries and theories. Many years ago he wrote, “What you think today may not be the measure for your thought tomorrow”; and it seems likely that were he to compile this book today, he might use different metaphors, different scientific references, and so on.

Truth is changeless. Those who knew Charles Fillmore best believe that he would like to be able to rephrase some of his observations for today’s readers, thus giving them the added effectiveness of contemporary thought. But the ideas themselves–the core of Charles Fillmore’s writings–are as timeless now (and will be tomorrow) as when they were first published.

Charles Fillmore was born on an Indian reservation just outside the town of St. Cloud, Minnesota, on August 22, 1854. He made his transition on July 5, 1948, at Unity Village, Missouri, at the age of 93. To get a sense of history, when Charles was eleven, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; when Charles died, Harry Truman was President.

With his wife Myrtle, Charles Fillmore founded the Unity movement and Silent Unity, the international prayer ministry that publishes Daily Word. Charles and Myrtle built the worldwide organization that continues their work today, Unity School of Christianity. Through Unity School’s ministries of prayer, education, and publishing, millions of people around the world are finding the teachings of Truth discovered and practiced by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore.

Charles Fillmore was a spiritual pioneer whose impact has yet to be assessed. No lesser leaders than Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and Dr. Emmet Fox were profoundly influenced by him. Dr. Peale borrowed his catchphrase of positive thinking from Charles Fillmore. Emmet Fox was so affected by Fillmore’s ideas that he changed his profession. From an engineer, he became the well-known writer and speaker.

Charles Fillmore – author, teacher, metaphysician, practical mystic, husband, father, spiritual leader, visionary – has left a legacy that continues to impact the lives of millions of people. By his fruits, he is continuously known.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

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 Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

 If you’d like to receive weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at Rich Words.

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RESTING IN GOD

40th Day, Saturday. Read Isaiah 11:1-10; 12:1-6.

After Jesus’ crucifixion He was laid to rest in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus represents the expression of the I AM identity. Arimathea represents an aggregation of thoughts of lofty character, a high state of consciousness in us. Joseph represents a state of consciousness in which we improve in character along all lines. We not only grow into a broader understanding but also we increase in vitality and substance. We are resting in God, and at the same time gathering strength for the power of greater demonstrations to follow.

A degree of cleansing, a wiping out of sense consciousness has been accomplished. By mentally reviewing our experiences, we recognize that nothing is really destroyed, but rather transmuted. Through faith we take stock of the progress we have made and find that we are getting a consciousness of radiant substance and of a higher life. Nothing is lost. When sense consciousness is raised to a higher plane all that belongs to it is saved with it.

In reality the invisible cannot be seen, touched, or comprehended by the outer senses, yet in this realm a great and mighty work is being accomplished.

Today I realize that the leaven that “leaveneth the whole lump” is the Truth. The word of Truth within me is not idle, but quietly spreading from point to point. This process will continue until my whole consciousness is vitalized by the Holy Spirit.

I affirm: “I rest in the consciousness of eternal life and strength, and I am made perfect.”

Questions:

1. What does Arimathea represent?

2. What does Joseph represent?

3. What happens when sense consciousness is raised to a higher plane?

4. What is the leaven that “leaveneth the whole lump”?

Father-God, I rest in the consciousness of Your presence within me and about me. I rest in the consciousness of Your life and perfection within me.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

—————————————————–             

 Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.

Please feel free to publish this article in your blog or newsletter or share it with a friend, as long as you include this resource box.

 If you’d like to receive weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at Rich Words.

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CRUCIFIXION

39th Day, Good Friday. Read John 19:1-42.

Jesus’ crucifixion on Calvary was a final step in a work that had been going on in Him for thirty-three years, and when He arose He was entirely free from the carnal mind with all its limitations. He had overcome all the carnal tendencies which He had taken on that He might free the race from its bondage.

The word crucifixion means the crossing out in consciousness of certain errors that have become fixed states of mind; it is the enactment by a master of the final extinction of carnal mind, the giving up of the whole personality in order that the Christ Mind may be expressed in all its fullness. This is represented by the crucifixion of Jesus.

Calvary means “the place of a skull.” The carnal mind has appropriated the brain and its skull and it is here that the final battle is fought. Every time we give up error there is a crucifixion.

The three days Jesus was in the tomb represent the three steps in overcoming error. First, nonresistance; second, the taking on of divine activity, or receiving the will of God; third, the assimilation and fulfillment of the divine will.

I deny the self that I may unite with the selfless. I give up the mortal that I may attain the immortal. I dissolve the thought of the physical body that I may realize the spiritual body. This is a mental process with a physical effect.

I affirm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

Questions:

1. What was the final step of Jesus’ work?

2. What does the word “crucifixion” mean?

3. What does “calvary” mean?

4. What do the three days Jesus was in the tomb represent?

God’s spirit in me is invincible and indestructible. Thank You, Father, for Your spirit in me that gives me victory over death itself.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

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 Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions.