Spiritual Solutions

Beginning in the twelfth chapter of Genesis, we read how Abraham was guided by Spirit to leave where he lived to journey to a land which God would show him. He set off, taking with him his wife and his nephew, Lot, and they ended up in the land of Canaan.

Along the way they had prospered greatly, but then the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot quarreled and since they now had so many herds the land couldn’t support them. So Abraham suggested they go their separate ways, and being a generous man he gave the fertile Jordan valley to Lot, and Abraham went up into the hilly country.

It was there that God spoke to Abraham, with these words: “Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever.”

This is a great message for us all today, for we tend to be limited in our ability to see a greater horizon and all its possibilities. So, “lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are.”

In a sense, this is what we do in inner prayer and meditation. We climb to the heights of spiritual consciousness, get a larger perspective, a cosmic vision, see ourselves and the world around us with a wider sense of what we might call far horizons. We are lifted up out of an illusion of separateness, consciousness has a direct perception of awareness and we experience what the scriptures call the “grace of God.”

Charles Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity movement, once said, “Man can never discern more than a segment of the circle in which he moves, although his powers and capacities are susceptible to infinite expansion. He discovers a faculty in himself and cultivates it until it opens out into a universe of co-related faculties. The farther he goes into mind, the wider its horizons until he is forced to acknowledge that he is not the personal, limited thing he appears, but the focus of an infinite idea.”

In other words, it is not man’s geographical or material horizons that have held him in chains through the centuries, but the limited horizons of his mind. He has looked out to a limited horizon and has beheld a picture of evil and limitation and frustration, old age, certainty of death.

The great message of Truth which Jesus brought changed all this. He said, “Know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.” You shall see with a wider viewpoint, and you shall see more broadly. You shall see with a loftier insight from a cosmic perspective of Truth. We need to extend our horizons, add to our faith with the positive knowledge that there is more good for us, that there is more good within us. So how do we push back the boundaries and extend our horizons? Long ago the instruction was given. Isaiah put it this way, “A highway shall be there and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness.”

Jesus was a pioneer in the way of holiness. And in the early days of Christianity, the followers of Jesus were called “followers of the Way.” It is the way of wholeness; it is the way of Truth; it is the way of the cosmic perspective. Jesus went on ahead so we could follow the path, showing us how we too can deal with certain fundamental spiritual laws. He went over the obstacles, meeting the challenges in the midst of life, so that the way could be clear for us, the way of holiness, the way of demonstration, the way of going beyond the horizon to an expanded life. “Abundant living,” he called it.

So, resolve today that you will constantly lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, that you will cultivate a sense of far horizons and expanded vision, that you will see reality in spite of appearances. And the way will open before you.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com

Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend. You may also reproduce and publish this article if you also include this reference box. Thank you!

If you’d like to receive “Rich Words,” featuring weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at www.alanrowbotham.com
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My wife and fellow Unity minister, Kathryn, counseling a woman who was upset, frustrated and unhappy with her partner, told her gently, “Just be kind!” And truly, this is the key to happiness.

Moment by moment, as we go about our daily tasks, the answer comes. “Just be kind!” life whispers. Be kind. We do not understand. It is too simple. Yet life, considering that every individual in the world is unique, repeats again and again, “Just be kind!” There is a great hunger in the world today for simple kindness, as there has been for many years. It is brought home to us in so many ways.

Some time ago, a sensitive and highly gifted woman in this country found herself suddenly thrown amid circumstances where she had almost no privacy. As a result, she began to dislike people; she shrank from contact with them, wishing she might never have to see them. Her dominant desire was to escape to some desert solitude, where she could feel the freedom of space and the healing balm of silence.

That being impossible, she decided she would play a game with life. She would pretend that she was “Mother of the Universe,” and that all beings in it were her children. If they misbehaved, it was because they had not been brought up properly. She would have to tolerate their short-comings, and see what she could do to re-educate them.

Sometimes she knew the people well enough to make some constructive suggestions. If a person was cruel or critical or unkind to some other person in her home, she would tactfully try to awaken in him or her a truer sense of values, either through speech or through example. If someone was greedy, she would be generous. If someone was afraid, she would be calm and serene, and either explain to him or show her that there was nothing to fear.

If she was among strangers, as on a bus for example, and people eager for seats trampled over others to get them, she would imagine that they were her own errant children whom she loved in spite of their waywardness, misbehaving in surroundings where she could not easily correct them. Then she would visualize them as considerate, instead.

In any event, her game of pretending that she was “Mother of the Universe” promoted understanding, sympathy and tolerance, and she found herself loving people again instead of hating them, welcoming people instead of avoiding them, performing acts of kindness instead of being critical, enjoying harmony instead of feeling discord.

Friends, life is made up of simple situations; if we can learn to handle little tasks with love, they will become great, and so will we. Kindness is more than a virtue; it is a power in the up building and restoration of prosperity. It is the antidote for unkindness, the only cure for the aftereffects of unkindness.

Kindness may be administered by the least as well as the greatest. It will restore confidence, spread good will, enrich the consciousness as well as the coffers of the individual, business firm, and government.

Yes, the eternal cry of life is “Just be kind!” Be kind in little things. Handle little things with love, and you will be happy, unworried, even more prosperous and healthy.

Practice the spirit of mothering, of loving, of being kind and understanding, patient and tolerant. Not only will your individual world become harmonious and peaceful and happy, but the world in general will have just that more weight on the constructive side.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over forty years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com

Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend. You may also reproduce and publish this article if you also include this reference box. Thank you!

If you’d like to receive “Rich Words,” featuring weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at www.alanrowbotham.com
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Labor Day was a good reminder for us to take a little time to recondition the state of mind that colors every hour of our working days throughout the year. You may remember that Labor Day was set forth in 1882 to direct attention to the importance and dignity of work. It began as a holiday and in a sense a holy day.

When many are out of work at this time, but you are gainfully employed you might ask yourself the question, “Why do I work?” Because you have to? To earn a living? To provide food, rent, clothing for your family? If all you get out of your work is your pay and various fringe benefits, you are short-changing yourself.

We should work, not just to make a living, but to make a life, to release our creative potential, to fulfill some of the most basic needs of life. As Friedrich Froebel put it, “To embody outside oneself the divine and spiritual element within us.” The person who knows this is meticulous in putting his or her very best into what he or she does, in going the second mile, and in seeking to constantly improve the kind of service he or she renders.

It is significant that when the disciples James and John, whom the other disciples referred to as “sons of thunder” because of their energetic disposition, came to Jesus seeking to make sure of their future status, Jesus said to them, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be servant of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.” (Mark 10:43-45)

For many years this statement seemed a paradox, even absurd. Then business made a great discovery, that the key to success is service. Look around you, examine successful enterprises, and you will find they are in the main not those who are interested in quick profits but rather those who are ever striving to give greater value, more worth, more genuinely helpful assistance.

A doctor recently observed that in all his long years of practice he had found that those who are the healthiest and happiest are people who were habitually aware of the needs of others and tried to aid and support and give to them in every way that came to their mind.

The schooling of children should include the idea of service to others. Most children are concerned mainly with their physical well-being, but wise and responsible parents and teachers try to develop unselfishness and a spirit of service to others in them, which is the key to lasting happiness and success in this basically cooperative world. As Albert Schweitzer once said, that the person who would be really happy would be the one who has sought and discovered a way to serve. Their early years are the time to instill in young people the desire to “be about their Father’s business,” to make a positive contribution to the world and to the betterment of their fellows.

In the Gospel story, we find only a thumbnail sketch of Jesus’ years between age 12 and 30: “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.” (Luke 2:52) This has led to much controversy over what Jesus did, but whatever he did we can assume that it was a time of great commitment to “the Father’s business.”

We know that Jesus’ father Joseph was a carpenter and it is most likely that Jesus worked as an apprentice to him, learning how to use a plane, a hammer and a saw. One has the feeling that he would be taught by his father to be satisfied with nothing less than excellence in work.

Does it seem strange to think of Jesus in this way? It could be that on many a day for nearly twenty years, Jesus’ chief contribution to the Kingdom of Heaven was to make a door that would close softly or a window that would not jam, a plow that was sturdy and a yoke that would not fret the necks of oxen. Years later, Jesus used this very image while looking into the faces of those who were weary and heavy-laden, saying, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me . . .  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:29, 30)

We can be sure that Jesus did not suddenly develop a high consciousness the instant of his launching out to be a teacher. We can be sure that he spent long hours of study and meditation, “waiting upon the Lord” on the hillsides of Nazareth, after his work was done and his shop was closed.

This phrase, “waiting upon the Lord,” is used throughout the Bible but almost universally misunderstood. To “wait upon the Lord” means to integrate yourself with the power and potential of your spiritual nature. Waiting is not a matter of time, but of consciousness. We don’t wait for God to tap us on the shoulder, but for us to stay our mind on God, to become a channel for creative activity. We can do this by “waiting” upon the Lord every morning, getting the inner vision and power to move into the day’s work with eagerness.

You can become a relaxed worker, a humble, effective and prosperous worker. Try to capture the importance of the rhythm of waiting and working, waiting for the inner vision and the creative impulse and working with quality and creative drive that give definition and purpose to your life. As Emerson says, “Let what you are doing be organic in your bones, and you open the door by which the affluence of Heaven shall stream into your life.”

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-nine years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com

Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend. You may also reproduce and publish this article if you also include this reference box. Thank you!

If you’d like to receive “Rich Words,” featuring weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at www.alanrowbotham.com
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The words, “In God We Trust” are emblazoned on every bill of whatever denomination of dollar it might be, but do we really trust in God or do we put our trust in the dollar itself to determine how we view our life experience?

Let me share with you some insight into the early years of the Unity movement revealed in the book Letters of Myrtle Fillmore, co-founder of Unity, as she responded to letters she had received, just to show what it really means to trust in God.

“You may never have suspected it, but this Unity work is a dream that has been nurtured and built from the invisible to the concrete through love and devotion and good hard work. It may never have occurred to you that my husband and I have put ourselves into this thing which God has given us to do, year after year, without personal returns beyond our ‘daily bread’ and clothing. I work here in the Unity buildings every day, and receive a salary, just as several hundred other workers do. I think a very capable business man or woman would not consider working for that salary. But it meets my personal needs; and usually I have a little each week with which to do what my heart prompts. . . .

“I smiled as I read of the state of your finances. I think I’ll tell you a little about mine! You know I am on a salary, just as the other Unity folks are. And sometimes I have a very definite place for all my allowance, before I even begin on my own individual needs. Sometimes I am obliged to draw upon the Fillmore account in order to do something I feel to be important. Usually when I find myself “strapped,” someone who doesn’t know the facts will send me a love gift. Last week I handed out just about all I could get my hands on and was looking for more, because I had places for it. This morning a letter came from a woman to whom I have written a few times, but whom I haven’t seen, in which there was a check for me for two hundred dollars. No particular apparent reason for her sending it; but evidently she and the Lord were aware of my use of money and replenished my purse in that happy way. So the money I had sent forth came back multiplied; I can replace the amount I drew out and still have plenty of “pin money” left.”

It is evident that Myrtle and her husband, Charles, had deep roots in the spiritual principles of faith and trust. What about you? Your faith and trust determine what your world is as far as you are concerned; whether you will make the most of circumstances and release the most of your potential. Without deep roots we merely exist; our lives are shallow. Unless deeply rooted in spiritual principles, we do not and cannot develop into individuals of stature and worth, such as we are intended to be.

George Elliot once said that no human being can live a whole and wholesome life unless rooted to some particular spot in the soil. The spot of soil we allude to also means for us a working philosophy, an orientation of spiritual principles without which we lead superficial lives with only surface roots; and the winds of worldly experience easily bowl us over.

There are two aspects to every strong life, rootage and fruitage, receptivity and activity, relaxation and tension, leaning back and moving forward. But he or she who cannot do one cannot do the other very well. He or she who is unable to rest cannot work effectively either. He or she who cannot let go cannot hold on very firmly. He or she who cannot find footing cannot progress. If one cannot let go, one has nothing substantial to rest on; one hasn’t grown dependable roots and doesn’t know how to surrender, to “let go and let God,” letting go of imaginary boundaries and allowing a greater flow of God’s good. This ability to “let go and let God” creates greater clarity of all that is already ours and who we really are in Truth.

With strong roots you can withstand any wind; and this is what we are urging – building an awareness of your inner resources, an awareness of your divine son-ship, the Christ in you.

Faith and trust go hand in hand; they are not “blind” but are deeply rooted in a conscious awareness of the activity of God within. With trust we become open to all the possibilities available to us in any particular moment and we have a willingness to take the steps needed to change our current life experience. Not only that, but we have the courage to move beyond what we previously thought was possible and we develop a sense of certainty that everything will work out fine even though we may not have proof at this time. Just as Myrtle Fillmore found, we are provided for from within; and this consciousness brings a profound feeling of safety and security even in the midst of adverse circumstances.

I firmly believe that when we accept the idea that we are plenteously provided for from within, and also act as if this were true, something happens . . . the taproot begins to grow, so to speak, and the entire experience begins to unfold. In that consciousness we never know lack, we never feel insecurity, we are never helpless. We are rather like the one described by the Psalmist, “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.” (Ps. 1:3)

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-nine years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com

Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend. You may also reproduce and publish this article if you also include this reference box. Thank you!

If you’d like to receive “Rich Words,” featuring weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at www.alanrowbotham.com
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The following story appeared in Alan Cohen’s newsletter recently, with his thought-provoking suggestion that we look within ourselves to discover the treasure waiting to be brought forth in our own life experience. Enjoy!

Earlier this month the nation of India discovered a nearly unbelievable treasure locked in the basement of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum. The cache of gold statues, diamonds, and jewels was accumulated through donations to the temple by wealthy families over a period of 500 years.  Locked in six tightly secured rooms, no one has viewed the booty for over 150 years.         

     The value of the find is currently estimated at a minimum of $22 billion, perhaps much more.  Indian leaders are now deciding what to do with the treasure, the sum of which exceeds India’s annual budget for education for the entire nation of nearly 1.2 billion people.

     Since what you see outside you, including public news, represents what is happening inside you, the news is good for all of us.  You have an extraordinary treasure hidden in your basement. You own a royal fortune of talent, insight, creativity, vision, love, and connection to universal wisdom. Like the treasure at Padmanabhaswamy, your cache has largely been locked away.  Yet the day comes when the riches are liberated and put to good use.  No one benefits from gold sitting in a dark chamber, especially when circulating it can improve the world. How many people in India can be fed for $22 billion? How many homes could be built for the many impoverished there? How many children could be educated so they can create better lives for themselves and their families?

     I think it symbolic and appropriate that the greatest hidden treasure of all time has been unearthed in one of the most overtly poor nations on the planet.  No matter the appearance of lack or bleakness the outer world shows us, there exists an invisible gift to offset it. The issues of the world seem insurmountable: the ecological crisis, financial deficit, war, hunger, and social and moral decay. Yet there are answers and healing for all of these pressing issues if we just look below the surface, and go within.

     The deity of the Trivandrum Temple, Padmanabhaswamy, represents the Hindu Lord Vishnu asleep. Perhaps Lord Vishnu is waking up as an inspiration for all of us to join him.

Read more of the story

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-nine years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com

Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend. You may also reproduce and publish this article if you also include this reference box. Thank you!

If you’d like to receive “Rich Words,” featuring weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at www.alanrowbotham.com
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Herbert Spencer, English philosopher and sociologist said, “We are ever in the presence of an infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed.”

He was speaking of the fullness of God, or the kingdom of God that is ever with us, this “infinite and eternal energy” which is waiting to be drawn upon, as dramatically illustrated in the gospel of Luke (5:4-7):

Jesus, surrounded by a throng of people, stepped into Peter’s boat and pushed away from the shore, then taught the multitude from his position in the bow of the boat. Finished speaking, he told Peter to put out into the deep and let down his net, to which the response was, “But Master, we toiled all night and took nothing; but at your word I will let down the nets.” This was done, and right away so many fish were caught that the nets were near breaking. They beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and soon both boats were filled brimful with an enormous catch of fish.

The fish were there all the time, but the fishermen had to put out into the deep; they had to avoid shallow thinking; they had to change their consciousness.

We might call this a miracle, but all the remarkable things performed by Jesus – or by anyone else at any time – are done under laws that we may learn and use, as others have done. Fish represent ideas; the sea represents infinite mind. Prosperity and abundance come forth from infinite mind, through a plenitude of ideas. Wherever you are, God is. Therefore, wherever you are there is an answer; there exists abundance, myriads of ideas.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” It is imagined by some that the Kingdom is found only after much striving and seeking, in some later life, or in some far-off heaven in the skies. But Jesus points to the very vital Truth that the good we seek is already within us. Prosperity originates in mind; and we must let down our nets of faith, believing that we can be channels for the expression of prosperity and ideas. Jesus puts it very candidly: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” (Matt. 7:7)

To ask is to claim, to demand, or to create the conditions that make the result inevitable. You ask for guidance or for supply or for life by claiming your oneness with the Source and getting into the flow and expecting the results. The supply is there, but we must put out into the deep and let down our nets; we must alter our faulty, self-limiting attitude.

If we will just shove off from the shoreline – the line of depending upon the security of other people or our jobs or our material possessions – and put out into the depths of spiritual inspirations and quiet meditation, we will find unsuspected possibilities flowing forth from within ourselves. Sometimes the deep waters of spirit, the hidden potential, the greater good, have been obscured, frustrated, hindered, and blocked over many years.

If you have a block in your consciousness, keeping you bound in fear or inadequacy or poverty or sickness, put out into the deep right now, let down your nets, and claim your oneness with the “infinite and eternal energy from which all thing proceed.” God is your all-sufficiency in all things. Believe this. Press out from the shallows of human thinking. Believe, and then act believing. Get into the flow of the fullness of God and you will experience new confidence, new creativity, and a movement toward a whole new life of success and fulfillment and self-confidence.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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Rev. Alan Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-nine years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com
 

Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend. You may also reproduce and publish this article if you also include this reference box. Thank you!
 

If you’d like to receive “Rich Words,” featuring weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at www.alanrowbotham.com
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It is within our very nature that we are always longing to excel, to rise higher, to overcome. Most of us never cease to long for a better life, for greater freedom, for more abundance.

This is as it should be, and we can be sure that happiness and all the good things that the earth has to offer can be ours when we affirm them with faith and are persistent in working towards them. If you long for something that will bring fulfillment or betterment into your life, that will make your life richer or more beautiful, then certainly follow your desire. Look for and seize the better possibility.

Every person is endowed with the gifts and the powers to enable him or her to seek for oneself a trouble-free, happy life. Everyone can rise from the worries of experience; everybody can live better. One only needs to realize that in every situation in life there are only two possibilities, a negative one and a positive one. It is very important which possibility we consider and accept.

Should we meet with opposition and hostility, obstacles and adversities, the negative possibility leads only to despair and failure. The positive possibility on the other hand leads to the mastery of life. All we have to do is to choose the best possibility each time, and make use of it.

We always have that choice. There are always two possibilities. One is to search history books and biographies for the elements that brought great persons to success. Such data is often full of minor details that can easily lead one into imitating such people instead of learning to unfold or to develop one’s own powers and abilities to become a real person.

The other, the better possibility, is to get only the essential fundamental principles, to learn from the experiences of these people the success method for the art of living, the insights, the thoughts, the decisions which are helpful not only to them but to all, to know the mind-principles by which they succeeded. Because the implication is, “What God has done, God can do; what man has done, man can do.” And this means you can do too.

You know you can’t walk two roads at the same time. And yet, while walking on the one, you may still be wondering whether you should have taken the other one. Haven’t you had this experience? You make a choice, but yet you keep wondering all the time if it was the right choice, wondering what the other choice would have brought?

We can become free of such inner conflicts when we consider that there are two sides to everything, and that our happiness or unhappiness depends on the side to which we turn our thoughts, our eyes, and our steps. Every situation in life is like a door which offers two possibilities. It is either open or it is closed. If it is open, we can stop in front of it or go through; if it is closed, we can accept it with resignation, or we can knock and open it.

Life always puts before us two possibilities: the poor one is to look for things which are unpleasant, negative, sinister, disarming, and to turn our steps as well as our thoughts despondently in that direction; on the other hand, the better possibility is to look at all that happens for the good, to look for the encouraging, the bright, and the unlimited. This is the road that leads higher, and the one on which things and circumstances will turn out to be sources of happiness.

Eric Kasner once wrote, “If somebody is unhappy, he has two possibilities of change. He may either improve the situation, or improve his opinion about it.” The first one he can’t always do, but the latter choice is always open to every person.

You always have that choice. We can always improve our opinion about things. We can improve our attitude, the level at which we see things, view them, deal with them. The important point is that change of perspective, change of attitude, brings with it great changes in the situation also. It is vital that we consciously choose the better of the two possibilities.

The art of living happily and successfully consists in taking each situation and making the better choice the first time, in other words by acting under guidance. Every situation offers two possibilities. When you learn to look at yourself and your environment from a higher and brighter viewpoint, you will discover new possibilities, find better solutions for your problems, dare to venture into new experiences, and to exchange the old life for the new one.

We have at each moment the possibility of beginning a new life. It begins with the transformation of our thoughts from the hidden obstacles to the friendly helpers with our seeing, affirming, and choosing the best of every situation, the positive possibility.

As soon as we set the law of mind-action into motion consciously in a positive way by affirming our strength, ability, joy, happiness, success, and then by immediately acting according to our new and positive outlook, we enter a whole new life which leads us higher and higher and which is happier and happier, and more successful in every way.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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Rev. Alan Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-nine years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com

Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend. You may also reproduce and publish this article if you also include this reference box. Thank you!

If you’d like to receive “Rich Words,” featuring weekday inspirational quotes, you can subscribe at www.alanrowbotham.com

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Kahlil Gibran, in his book The Prophet, says, “What is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether.” In other words, prayer is a matter of conditioning our minds to God rather than conditioning God to our needs; it has to do with opening our lives to God, with the expansion of our consciousness.

Eric Butterworth suggests that if you owned a cabin in the mountains and wanted to make it fresh and habitable after a long winter, you wouldn’t have to induce the air in through the doors, or plead with the sunlight to bathe the windows. No, the instant you open the doors and windows, air and sunshine surge in of their own accord. Similarly, prayer is simply opening our lives, so that we may receive whatever God has been trying to bestow. It is conditioning our lives to God.

Jesus says, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matt. 6:8) You may say, “So why ask?” Simply because the doors and windows of your soul tend of themselves to close tightly, barring out the help and inspiration of God, that which God is seeking to impart. So you could say that prayer is to our lives what air-conditioning is to the home, it provides us with freshness and emotional humidity and temperature.

The prime purpose of prayer is to recreate our sense of oneness with God, to expand our consciousness beyond our limited horizon of thought and thus to realize who and what we are.

And startling as it may seem, God does not have what you want. God is what you want; God is the answer. Let your prayer be to claim your spiritual unity with God, and remind yourself that you are His child; get into the self-livingness of this divine process and one with the life and substance which is.

Stop thinking how poor, how sick, how inadequate you are, and remember how wonderful you are. You might even affirm, “I am a wonderful child of God, wonderfully created and wonderfully sustained.” The ancient Sanskrit root word from which our word “prayer” is derived is the word “paloa,” which means literally, “judging oneself to be wondrously made.” Prayer is not what you do to God, but of what you do to yourself, changing your conception about yourself, opening the windows and doors of your soul, letting the light of Spirit flow through you and in you to work its healing and prospering power.

Prayer readies your heart and mind to receive and respond to the activity of the Holy Spirit or the whole Spirit of God within you. It is the affirmative acceptance of the greater good.

So much of prayer has been supplication, begging, petitioning. This implies a primitive concept of God. It makes the assumption that God withholds from some while giving to others. It implies that God can be argued with, bargained with, and reasoned with, that He is impressed with human opinion, that He can be coerced.

Jesus had tremendous power because he always worked in harmony with the indwelling presence of God; his mind and heart were conditioned to let the infinite condition express. Jesus accepted the divine law as the law of his life; he freely used it by speaking the affirmative word. Jesus said, “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32), and he had no doubts about the divine will to heal and to prosper. He spoke the affirmative word and accepted the positive answer even before it manifested; he prayed the prayer of affirmation, of mind-conditioning.

We get into a negative or “no” consciousness in which we inhibit the expression of the perfect life and intelligence of Spirit. The affirmation conditions the mind to God-consciousness; it renders us to the activity of God that is ever in us, that ever seeks to lead us to our highest good. An affirmation is saying “yes!” Yes, to health; yes, to prosperity; yes, to harmony. It is giving conscious consent to the great affirmative; God’s ceaseless longing to perfect Himself through His creation.

No matter what the difficulty, as Jesus says, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” (John 7:24) What is right judgment? Emerson answers this in his definition of prayer, “The contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.” No matter what the appearance may be, you can identify with the “I am” at the center of your being. Take the highest thought possible, which is “I am whole, a perfect child of God. I am right now one with God, one with life, one with intelligence, one with supply.” The prayer is to know this, not to tell God to do something, but to know the Truth about yourself and to condition your mind and every fiber of your being to respond to it.

The idea is to evoke the feeling of being or having that which you want or need. Remember, Jesus says, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24) He is saying that you should believe that you see it even before you have it, so that then you will receive. This may seem strange at first, but it is a fundamental law. Through prayer, condition your mind with that feeling, and good thoughts will come forth.

Unless prayer gives you the feeling of health, prosperity, and harmony, then it really hasn’t succeeded. So prayer must involve the stimulation of the feelings. It is “the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” as far as health is concerned, for example, but you must accept it, you must believe it; you must feel your oneness with it. Act as if it were already true and thus your conditioning of mind through prayer breaks down the self-doubt and limitation and false ego, and lets that perfect healing light shine in and through you.

Accept the idea for you that God is the answer, that God is your life, your support, your security, and prepare yourself by opening your mind and heart, conditioning yourself for life through prayer.

Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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Rev. Alan Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-nine years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com

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Today, Wednesday, April 13, is the thirty-first day of Lent. Lent is the period of time during which we can prepare ourselves for the Easter experience.
 
 
Assignment 31
 
There is no need of lack of any kind. The law of God does not take into consideration a deficiency of any kind. There is no normal natural void. There no space in God’s world that contains nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum. There is no true emptiness. The only seeming empty place is in man’s conscious mind when he is unaware of is fullness. We can only be separated from the abundance of God by the width of a thought in our mind.
 
Man has lived so long with a mixed consciousness; it is what the Scriptures call double-minded. “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:8) We have been so filled with double-mindedness that we no longer know what is true and what is untrue. We have named things good and evil, clean and unclean, virtue and vice, until we are saturated in nothingness. We are bored with the things we name good and fearful of the things we call evil – when all the time there is only Spiritual Substance. 
 
Spiritual Substance is the essence of our bodies. It flows through our minds like wine. It is the unchangeable, intrinsic, whole, complete, absolute, essential, and indispensable something that exists; and because of it all that exists came to be. Out of Spiritual Substance as the activity of mind comes all material good, first as ideas and then as all things needful, such as wealth and abundance in the outer.
 
In this field active believing is the magic wand. All outer good stems from the inner push we call desire. Desire means “from the Father.” Every thought and word brings forth a reaction in Spiritual Substance.
 
Out of Spiritual Substance comes the essence that feeds our bodies. It is not the meat and bread that builds the body but the invisible essence. It is not the heat-producing calories or the energy-producing vitamin that is vital to life. It is the invisible Spiritual Substance.
 
Spiritual Substance is love in action, and without love no human being is fully alive. Its absence causes the body to lose its resiliency and the flesh to dry up. Old age is love forgotten. None need be old! Without love, children wilt and die. Spiritual Substance invisible lies back of all matter and form. Spiritual Substance cannot suffer loss, it can never be depleted. It is God! “I have meat you know not of.” (Jesus)
 
 
(This series of Lenten messages was first developed by Unity minister Dr. Sue Sikking, founder of Unity-by-the-Sea, Santa Monica, California, author of God Always Says Yes and Seed of the New Age.)
 
 
God is Blessing You, Right Now!
 
Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham
 
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Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-nine years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions, at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com
 
To subscribe for free weekday inspirational quotes, Rich Words, go to www.alanrowbotham.com
                                                 
Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend.
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Today, Saturday, April 2, is the twenty-second day of Lent. Lent is the period of time during which we can prepare ourselves for the Easter experience.
 
 
Assignment 22
 
We all live in a world with which we are so familiar that we know it not. How can this be? We are so cognizance of forms, of that which we see with our eyes and touch with our hands that we are completely unaware much of the time of an invisible, knowing Being, and the realization of a Presence that maintains and sustains the length, breadth, and height of any and all forms in outer manifestation.
 
When we realize or become aware of something that fills all and more especially of something that fills us individually, we move into the fourth dimension of life. The fourth dimension is a state of being in which the inner invisible essence of life is so real to us that we are never separated from it. This must be a day by day awareness that we never walk alone or move or think or act without inner guidance.
 
We at all times are capable of managing our life; we can be a King, a ruler in ourselves. This authority we must take if we are to walk the everyday path of life in sureness. We all know there is always an answer. We know that our troubles, challenges and difficulties are the most precious things in the world. They are life! They are our assignments for development, the ground in which we grow.
 
Only by day by day living can we reach our goal of accomplishment, which is the Joy of Living! Let us meet life on the path where we find it. To be in the midst of life is to fulfill life; it is the advancement of life.
 
What comes to you is not important, but how you meet it is the thing. When a storm is coming at sea everything is latched down to ride out the storm. A good skipper is one who has come through many storms.
 
Never apologize or have shame for the experiences of life. There is no self-justification or self-condemnation. Everything is fulfilled in thought and feeling. Do not accept evil, accept experience. All challenges of life are to walk through, not to break you or beat you down.
 
A problem comes again and again not that you may overcome it by force, but that you shall know the nothingness of it and the reality of yourself. Move into life, give yourself to life, and let life take you over. Don’t sit in the ashes of life. Get up and build a new fire!
 
 
 (This series of Lenten messages was first developed by Unity minister Dr. Sue Sikking, founder of Unity-by-the-Sea, Santa Monica, California, author of God Always Says Yes and Seed of the New Age.)
 
 
God is Blessing You, Right Now!
 
Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham
 
——————————————————————–
Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-nine years, invites you to subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, Spiritual Solutions, at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com
 
To subscribe for free weekday inspirational quotes, Rich Words, go to www.alanrowbotham.com
 
Feel free to share this article in its entirety with a friend.
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