Spiritual Solutions

Are you bogged down in the belief in sickness and impotence? Then right now bring yourself to the present moment, and become aware that you can use your God given dominion over all things. God’s spirit of life, dynamic energizing life, dwells within you. It is there, and you have only to call it forth, put it into action, and you will begin to manifest perfect health in spirit, mind, and body.

Perhaps you have allowed yourself to be handicapped by fear and indecision. The first thing to do is to take your mind off the problem and perplexities and fix your faith in God. When you place your affairs in the Father’s loving care, all anxieties cease. Worrying incapacitates us for meeting life’s crises.

Use your faith, declare your dominion now. In II Corinthians 6:2 we read, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” And Jesus said, “Do you not say, ‘There are four months, then comes the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest.” (John 4:35)

Instead of having faith that sometime in the future your healing might take place, you can exercise your faith now, give thanks that your healing is already taking place and accept it now. “This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Ps. 118:24)

God is ever with you. Let Him quicken your mind, put the proper tools in your hands and lead you in the right decision. Through the guidance of the indwelling power of God you will be able to say the right word and do the right thing in every situation that may confront you.

If you seem to be weighed down by some circumstance, a steadfast faith in God will help you to lift up your head and to face the situation unafraid and confident. God’s omnipotent power is yours. God’s love surrounds you. His light is within you to guide you.

Perhaps you’ve allowed yourself to be fettered by hatred, resentment or suspicion. Turn your eyes instead upon the blessings of life and the blessedness of other human beings. If you feel that you’ve been treated unfairly, misused, or abused, it‘s time to exercise forgiveness. Then put it out of your mind. The only reality in any situation is the thought we have concerning it, the way we feel about it. This is the law of life.

“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely . . . think on these things.” (Phil. 4:8) Put the unpleasant thoughts right out of your mind by thinking of God’s goodness and greatness and love. Bless the person who has seemingly injured you. Behold the Christ in him or her.

Could it be that you have neglected the power of prayer? Prayer is the open sesame to the joys and riches of the kingdom, and yet we fail to use it.

Many marvelous answers to prayer have been outlined through the spontaneous faith of persons utterly unlearned in theology, psychology or metaphysics.

Remember the woman who came to Jesus for healing, hoping to push through the crowd to touch the hem of his garment without speaking or even being blessed by him? She probably knew nothing about the working of faith, but she had the secret of prayer. She had absolute faith, the courage to act, and the simplicity to accept. She used the necessary means. She believed if she could but touch the master, the healing would follow. And, confident in that faith, she pressed on, touched him, and was healed.

Simplicity of faith is the thing that always gets an answer, sometimes in the form of immediate, even seeming miraculous results. Sometimes, it may come slowly. Sometimes we lose patience and our faith grows weak. If we become faint hearted and fall back in our faith, then we must try again. Long years of wrong thinking, of imperfect practice, have often made deep grooves in the brain. It takes effort and continued practice before change.

Don’t be discouraged. Never give up. Keep faith in the latent powers within you. Remember those who have overcome insurmountable handicaps, and keep constantly in mind that you too can overcome. And you don’t have to wait. Whether your faith is small or great it is the key to riches of which you never dreamed. Remind yourself that “now is the acceptable time.”

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-eight 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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(Shakespeare: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2)

We Live in a Universe of Thought

Albert Einstein called the fundamental laws of our universe “God’s thoughts”; the latest thinking in physics supports the idea that, as Einstein’s fellow physicist Arthur Eddington said, “The stuff of the world is mind stuff.”

Swami Sivananda writes that “Thought alone is the whole world, the great pains, the old age, death and the great sin, earth, water, fire, air, ether.”

Thinking forms the stuff of our lives: the ideas that guide us, the technology that connects us, the wars that divide us, our jobs, homes, clothes, entertainments.

Thinking Shapes our Personal Responses

Thinking shapes our personal responses to this mind stuff.

Swami Sivananda; “Thought binds a man. Whoever controls his thoughts, is a veritable God on this earth.”

Our lives and affairs are completely influenced and shaped by the character of our thoughts. We are not limited by God’s will or by heredity or environment or by fate or circumstance – but by our own dominant state of mind.

The Unity writer, Imelda Shanklin, wrote: “Your mind is your world. Your thoughts are the tools with which you carve your life story on the substance of the Universe. When you rule your mind you rule your world. When you choose your thoughts you choose results. Your life is what you think: Think straight, and life will become straight for you.”

William H. Peck once said, “Your morning thoughts may determine your conduct for the entire day.” Optimistic thoughts will make your day bright and productive, while pessimistic ones will make it dull and wasteful. It seems practical and advisable to face each day cheerfully, smilingly, courageously, so that your tasks will be a pleasure to perform and progress will be a delightful accomplishment.

Think in the Heart

The Pueblo Indians told Carl Jung that all Americans are crazy. Of course he was somewhat astonished and asked them why. They said, “Well, they say they think in their heads. No sound man thinks in his head. We think in the heart.”

In Proverbs 23:7 we read “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (KJV)

To “think in the heart” is a form of higher seeing, or insight. Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of this higher seeing as true prayer when he says that prayer is “the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.”

Charles Fillmore, in Atom-Smashing Power of Mind, speaking of this kind of thinking, says, “Every thought of goodness makes a place, a form, and sets up a friendly habit in the mind that is permanent and that in your time of need ministers to you. . . .  

“Your thoughts give back results of the same nature as themselves. If in the silence you have earnestly held to the pure and good, you have built in you a place for the pure and good. Every true thought has made a place in your mind.”

In Philippians 4:8, Paul instructs us in this way: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

And Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a master of Chabad mysticism, put it even more simply: “Think good and it will be good.”

In other words, look for the good and you will find it. For, as Charles Fillmore has said, the Spirit of good is working through you.

The apostle Paul sums it up this way: “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”     (2 Cor. 3:2-3)

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-eight 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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In Psalm 37, three times we read “Fret not yourself . . .” followed by the admonitions to “Trust in the Lord . . . ,” to “Take delight in the Lord,” to “Commit your way to the Lord,” and to “Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him” and the positive results of so doing.

Yet how often do we find ourselves fretting about the future, fretting over our loved ones, our work, our health, our prosperity or lack of it. Many people are fretting about politics, about the trend of government, the problem of our cities, the protests of our young people. Certainly we should be concerned, and we should exercise the options available to us to participate in the democratic process of change. But fretting about conditions never helps anyone.

To “Trust in the Lord,” “Take delight in the Lord,” “Commit your way to the Lord,” and to “Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him,” means that we have to learn the cultivate the art of letting go. And most of us know this takes some doing when we are faced with certain conditions in our life. 

For myself, when asked about my wife, Kathryn, being recently in hospital and now in a rehab center, and then asking how I’m doing in all of this, I find myself saying all too often, “I’m hanging in there,” or “I’m holding on.” Most of the problems we fret about are bound to us by the hold we have on them. We have to let go and let God, or “trust in the Lord.” There is an answer to every problem and a right guidance for every turning of the way – and it exists within me even while I am facing the need.

Every person must determine for himself or herself whether he or she is going to go through life fretting over the challenges that come through change, or whether he or she is going to let the activity of the whole Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit) express through him or her. Letting go is a fine art, and like all fine arts it is achieved only through the discipline of practice. Fear tends to hold on, but faith lets go. Practice faith. Human love holds on, but Divine love lets go. Practice Divine love.

I love the ancient Taoist story about the old man and his son. Whenever you find yourself fretting over what the future holds for you, you might want to remind yourself of the story. It goes something like this:

There was once a farmer. He was a gentle and humble man. His wife had died a few years before, and he and his son lived near the border region in China. One day their horse ran away; they were dependent upon the horse. The neighbors came to console the man for the loss of his horse. He answered them, “Who knows what the future brings?”

Several months later their mare returned with a wild stallion. Everyone at the village marveled at the magnificent stallion and congratulated the man on his good fortune, saying, “You are wealthy now.” He answered them, “Who knows what the future brings?”

One day the son mounted the wild stallion but, not knowing the ways of the stallion, within a hundred meters he fell off the stallion and broke his leg. The leg healed but the boy limped. The villagers went to console the man. “What a terrible misfortune,” they said. “Now your only son is a cripple. Your living will be limited and, worse still, how will your son be able to care for you in your old age?” The simple man answered his neighbors, “Who knows what the future brings?”

“He’s a simpleton,” the neighbors said of the man.

A year later, a tribe from across the border was preparing for war. The army arrived in their village and every young man was drafted except the lame boy. He was of no use to the army. He stayed home.

It was a dreadful battle, and only a few of the boys drafted returned alive. The lame boy cared for is father until his father’s death.

“Who knows what the future brings”

God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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 Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-eight 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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Your prayers are needed for my wife and fellow Unity minister, Kathryn. She fell a week ago last Friday and ended up in hospital – no broken bones, but greatly disoriented. After observation over the weekend she was discharged to a rehab center, where she is at present. This is the reason you didn’t receive a Spiritual Solutions newsletter last week – you might say I’ve been otherwise engaged, running back and forth. So your prayers are welcome for both of us in this time of need and challenge. Thank you!

Blessings,

Rev. Alan Rowbotham

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THE GRACE OF GOD

21st Day, Friday. Read Matthew 5:17-20, 38-48. “As far as the east is from the west,

So far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

Grace means good will, favor, disposition to show mercy. Therefore, we do not hold ourselves as bond servants of the law, but as recipients of the grace of God, as sons of the Most High.

The grace of God extends to all people, not alone to one sect or creed. All men are equal in favor with God.

The grace of God is greater than the laws of man. We may make certain laws and restrictions for ourselves and “his servants ye are whom ye obey.” If we are servants of the law, our obedience is unto death; if we are servants of righteousness, our obedience is unto life. To become recipients of that which the Father would bestow, we should take the element of grace into consideration; that even beyond what we ask, seek, earn, or deserve under the law, God is more than willing to give.

God, as the great creative principle of the universe, will always meet us more than half way. By becoming receptive to the “grace of God,” we receive the measure of God’s provision, which exceeds any of our imaginings.

I realize that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”; that is, the real saving, redeeming, transforming power comes to me through the work that Jesus did in establishing for the race a new and higher consciousness in the earth. I enter into that consciousness by faith in Him and by means of the inner spirit of the law that He taught and practiced.

I affirm: “Through the grace of God I am forgiven and healed.”

Questions:

1. Define “grace.”

2. How far does the grace of God extend?

3. How may we become recipients of that which the Father would bestow?

4. How does the redeeming, transforming power come to us?

Through the grace of God I forgive, and I am forgiven.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

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 Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-eight 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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LOVE

9th Day, Friday. Read I John 4:7-21.

Love, in Divine Mind, is the idea of universal unity. In expression, it is the power that joins and binds together the universe and everything in it. Love is a harmonizing, constructive power. When it is made active in consciousness, it conserves substance and reconstructs, rebuilds, and restores man and his world.

As I make a perfect union between my mind and the loving mind of the Father, I realize a goodness everlasting and joy beyond expression. The point of contact is a willingness and a seeking on my part. “Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

Love is that mighty power, that divine quality of God that is expressing through all mankind, and cannot be suppressed by any outside force. I now firmly declare that it is expressing through me, and that no environment or external condition can hinder it. Any unloving condition of the world is no bar to my exercise of love; in fact, it is an incentive.

I am not afraid to pour out my love on all the so-called evil of the world. I deny the appearance of evil, and affirm the omnipotence of love and goodness.

The word love overcomes hate, resistance, opposition, obstinacy, anger, jealousy, and all other error states where there is mental or physical friction. As divine love enters into the thought process, every cell of my body is poised and balanced in space, in right mathematical order as to weight and relative distance.

In quietness and confidence, I affirm: “God, in His love, fills me with new life. In His name I am cleansed, strengthened, and healed.”

Questions:

1. Define “love.”

2. What happens when love is made active in consciousness?

3. What is necessary to make a perfect union between our mind and the loving mind of the Father?

4. Is there any bar to our exercise of love?

I express love to all, love that is balanced with wisdom. My prayer is: “Lord, make me a channel for the expression of Your love, day by day.”

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

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 Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-eight 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 year 2010 can be the best year you have ever known if you will have it that way. To make it so, you do not need to draw up a long list of good resolutions, although these are fine if you can keep them. Whether you have already made some resolutions or not, I suggest you adopt a policy of great expectations instead of good resolutions.

A spiritual law as exact as the laws of gravity, electromagnetics, and atomic fission, stands in back of this phenomenon of great expectations. Jesus stated it in the gospel of Matthew in this way: “Go; be it done for you as you have believed.” (Matt. 8:13) and “According to your faith be it done to you.” (Matt. 9:29) In the J. B. Phillips’ translation we read: “Everything will happen as you have believed it will.” Could you not characterize these statements as saying that convinced expectation is a forerunner of a certain outcome?

What are you expecting in 2010? Your expectations will have much to do with what the year will bring you.

God made you in His image and after His likeness; therefore, it follows that you are creative, even as God is creative. You create your own circumstances through your thinking, feeling, believing, and expecting faculties of mind. Many of the great men of the world have known this. Thomas Carlyle put it this way: “Man makes the circumstances and, spiritually as well as economically, is the artificer of his own fortune.” Disraeli said, “Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.”

Behind every outward circumstance stands an unseen, invisible thought, feeling, or word – an expectation of good or ill. The Bible tells us: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” (Prov. 4:23, KJV) The “heart” here means our deepest inward convictions and beliefs about what we think we are worthy of having, in the outer, as a part of our life experience.

The word to be stressed as yo make your own blueprint of your expectations for the upcoming year is “great.” Great expectations! Make those expectations large, if you would experience the largeness of God’s abundant giving. All the good and great desire for more health, wealth, and happiness, is really His own spiritual desire to fulfill Himself in and through you – in a joyous, rich, and expansive way of life.

Remember, only a happy new you produces a happy new year!

I would like to share with you a prayer, coming to you straight from my own heart. I pray that this year may be a truly happy year for you, a year filled with rich and wonderful belessings. I pray that it may be a year in which you walk in close companionship with God, a year in which you know and feel God’s loving Presence enfolding you and your loved ones. I pray that this may be a year in which the good is magnified in your heart and in the heart of every person, a year in which all of us may come to see more clearly our oneness with one another. I pray that, in the words of Psalms 65:11, “Thou crownest the year with thy goodness.”

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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The sounds and signs of Christmas are all around us.

So in this special season of the year, I’d like to share with you some of my own Christmas memories and insights.

The first Christmas tree was a small tree that was brought home by Martin Luther in Germany. He brought the tree home because he had seen it out in the snow and the snow was glistening all around it; he brought it home as a symbol of life. He tied candles on that Christmas tree because he said

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In a poem called “The Explorer” one verse goes like this:

“There’s no sense in going further – it’s the edge of cultivation,”
So they said and I believed it; broke my land and sowed my crop,
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop.
Till a voice as bad as conscience ran interminable changes
On one everlasting whisper, day and night repeated so:
“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look beyond the ranges,
Something lost behind the ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!”

God has endowed man with the gifts of life, of wisdom, of creativity, of judgment – and with the tools of the material world around him. We are told, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.”  (I John 3:2)

Why? Because we are involved in a great experiment to see what we can make of ourselves. Despite the tremendous developments of the world around us, the only world that has meaning to each individual is the world within him or her. And he or she is the only one who can explore that world!

In the creation of humankind, each person is made just a little different from others. There are no carbon copies, so no one experiment by one person can give a stock answer that will benefit everyone. Each person must undertake the experiment for himself, to see what he can do with this thing that is within him – this thing called life, his life, his very own special gift from God, his own uniqueness.

We seem to be made up of flesh and blood, a hank of hair, a few clothes, and certain conditions and surroundings. We seem to be very much the product of our environment.

But while we are thinking these thoughts, along comes an Emerson or an Einstein, a Schweitzer or a Jesus, and all the world marvels at such people and says that they are not made of the same kind of stuff that you and I are made of.

This is where we are wrong, because in reality an individual will never discover anything outside himself greater than he himself is inherently. When you hear the words of great persons, or hear great symphonies, or see masterpieces of art, these experiences are awakening within you that which has always been there, something within you that corresponds to what the masters have done and are doing. In a sense, they are giving you back to yourself. This is one of the many adventures of self-discovery in the great experiment of life.

If you actually believe in a power greater than you are, you come to know that you, as a human being, have nothing to do with the processes of life whatsoever. You live, but you did not create your own life; you think, but you did not create your own mind; you are spirit, but you did not make that spirit.

All at once we are confronted with a thought so stupendous that it almost staggers the imagination: There is something in me that is greater than I appear to be! And that something really isn’t myself, as a mere human being, at all. It is something which is God expressing Himself as me, something which is me as God sees me, something which is limitless, all-powerful, all-knowing. And because this something is spirit, it is always experienced to the extent of my realization, my faith, my vision.

St. Thomas Aquinas once said that there are only three really important endeavors in life: to have faith in the right things; to hope for the right things; and to love the right things. That is our job – and to press on in the expansion of our consciousness, to increase our faith in the infinite power that resides within us as the self that is yet to be.

(This article is adapted from an 1976 essay by Rev. Eric Butterworth, The Explorer)

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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On that Thanksgiving Day in 1969, I wasn’t feeling particularly thankful as I entered the third floor of the Activities Building which at that time served as Unity Village Chapel.

I had just started ministerial school that summer, but it seemed that everything was falling apart. I had just gone through a divorce, my four children had returned to England with their mother two years to the day that we had come to America with all our hopes and dreams, and my father had died in England two months previous.

I’d not really been aware of Thanksgiving Day for the last two years, although I do recall we had been invited to dinner with friends. We didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving Day in England, you know. 

So I didn’t seem to have much to give thanks for on this day, set aside by Presidential proclamation for personal and national contemplation of the blessings of life.

When The Rev. Jane Paulson invited us to join in a meditation of thanksgiving I was feeling pretty raw inside from my losses. But something broke inside of me and I began to cry.

Then instead of focusing on what I had lost and didn’t have anymore, I began to give thanks for what I had and where I was.

By the time The Rev. Sig Paulson stood up to give his message my tears had stopped and I was in a more receptive state.

As Sig spoke he began to lead us in a series of ever-escalating affirmations of thanksgiving, and my tears began to flow again. I felt like breaking down and sobbing.

At the end of the service I rushed out of the building and over to the Peace Chapel, a small chapel with just six chairs for prayer and meditation. Fortunately for me, there was no one else in there. I lay down on the floor and sobbed my heart out.

Then I sat in one of the chairs and a great quiet and a deep peace came over me. I felt the flow of Divine Love through me, and I intuitively knew the true inside story of Thanksgiving.

Not only did I have many things to give thanks for, but I also had a new consciousness of the indwelling Spirit of God to give thanks from.

This concept of Thanksgiving will open a way for a dynamic experience if you really think about it for yourself.

Look away from the challenges and needs, whatever they may be, even from the obvious blessings of life, and make your inner contact with the creative process of Spirit. Let your mind think God thoughts, good thoughts, and positive thoughts.

Rather than looking around and wondering what you have to give thanks for, you will rejoice in what you have to give thanks from. Practice it today, so that this day will be for you a release of tremendous power and you will know for yourself the “inside story” of Thanksgiving.

This new insight into the deeper meaning of Thanksgiving can also help prepare you for the reawakening of the divine level of the Christ in you as we move into the Christmas celebration of the birth of the Christ child.

Recognizing the Christ within you is the most glorious thing you can possibly experience. You can begin at anytime to show your true identity, and this recognition will bring about the rebirth that Jesus referred to when he told Nicodemus, “You must be born anew.”

Kathryn joins me in wishing you the richest Thanksgiving and Christmas of your life, rich not only in the outer things, but rich in warmth and friendliness and new understanding.

God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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