Spiritual Solutions

There may be many times in our lives when we become discouraged and disheartened, but there is a way out of every limitation that never fails and an infallible method of achieving personal happiness and harmony.

Whatever you might want or need from life, you can find the solution in the midst of any conflict that is holding you back. You can be confident and secure as you participate in all that each day holds in store for you. You can be fearless in the face of seeming obstacles or challenges.

As a starting point, we might understand the universal availability of the answers that we seek. For ages on end human beings have let themselves be frightened or awed or confused by what has been called a mystery, the mystery being the universe. We have chosen to view the universe as a vast, unknown system.

This basic mystery has given rise to the belief that most of our questions are unanswerable, that the right answer in most instances is something that people are not supposed to be able to discover. From this idea has sprung the kind of thought that our destiny is in the hands of a mysterious, unknowable deity whose purpose and ways are naturally unfathomable.

Of course, there is a force, a universal creative energy. We generally call this force God, but it‘s up to you what you call it. I think of God as Spirit or Universal Mind, a vast, unending sea of awareness in which I live and move and have my being. God is my ever-present help, my source of strength and comfort in every situation.

There is no greater power than the power of God at work on my behalf; therefore, I need not be afraid of any person, circumstance, or condition. God’s law of order prevails, and I am confident that I will see it at work in my life and in the world.

The right answer to any problem does exist because this is an ordered and orderly universe, not a haphazard system governed by chance and whim. It is not a cold, disinterested universe. One of the finest, most encouraging truths you can know is that the answer you seek is seeking you. It is meant that we should find the right answer to our problems. God, the force that moves this orderly universe, wants us to find the right answer. Remember well these words of Jesus: “it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

There are, I believe, four basic steps to finding the right answer to any problem: Willing, Allowing, Trust, and Surrender.

First, get still in mind and body and be willing to experience that state of being you desire. Just the willingness will bring the experience to you. Try it for a moment by being willing to experience a state of peace and serenity. Immediately the Divine Flow will bring that experience to you through your intention and your willingness.

Eric Butterworth called this step the invitation, making yourself open and receptive, believing the answer already exists for you.

Second, allow yourself to experience the outcome or state of being you desire. This cements your willingness in place, in consciousness. To use the analogy of a telephone call, willingness makes the call and allowing picks up and answers the phone.

This second step Eric Butterworth called inspiration, something that comes to you, often just a quiet reassuring kind of knowing in some indefinite form, a feeling that you are approaching a solution.

The third step, trust, contains within it several elements: your ability to open yourself to all possibilities, the earnestness to take the steps to bring about any needed change, courage to move beyond what you previously thought, certainty that everything is all right even if you do not have proof, and a sense of safety underlying everything.

Eric Butterworth called this third step ideation, an idea or series of ideas that flow into awareness from Divine Mind that are yours to work with to put into use or expression. You may have to choose and sort the ideas, to link them together in such a way as to work toward your right answer.

The fourth step, surrender, means letting go of imaginary boundaries and allowing greater flow, which creates greater clarity of who we really are. This step, Eric Butterworth identified as an incubation period which calls for patience, wisdom, and confidence in the right outcome.

If the solution does not develop in your affairs immediately, remember it is already done. What you need is ready for you. Its complete manifestation in your life and affairs may be delayed a bit for various reasons, but there is no need to despair or become despondent. Of course, you must not expect delay; very often a solution appears quickly. But if the answer does not come at once, then be wise enough to accept the incubation period, for such times often give rise to good in even greater measure than when ideas come full blown.

You can be confident that you will see God’s law of order at work in your life and in the world. With God’s power and strength supporting you, you will be successful in all your endeavors. Know right now that you are opening the door to greater good.

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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Thanksgiving Day is almost upon us, and at this time it brings me to thoughts of family. Our family is scattered around the globe, in England, New Zealand and Australia, as well as around the United States in California, Washington State and Iowa.

We’ve had some additions to our family in the last couple of months – two great-grandchildren, a baby boy in California and a baby girl in Washington State, and our nephew and his wife in Australia had a baby boy.

We had a great visit with our granddaughter Emma, from England, recently. She and two friends from the university where they are students came to Florida to do some research on hurricanes and hurricane preparation. It was refreshing to see the enthusiasm and exuberance they brought to their task, and the enjoyment they got out of it all.

Our grandson in England recently graduated from Gloucester University with a Bachelor of Science degree and honors, and is now running a gym and teaching physical education and nutrition. And our granddaughter in California graduated earlier this year from San Diego University with two degrees.

As you can tell, we are proud of our growing family. We just wish they were closer in proximity so we could be together more often, especially at special holidays such as Thanksgiving.

I know there are many people without families, and it is especially hard at holidays when families traditionally get together. But for all of us, I think we can expand our understanding of family to include everyone. In other words, that in truth we’re all family, one with one another. We can reach out to friends and all people to embrace them in the consciousness of family and share love and gratitude with each other.

Notice I said we can embrace and reach out to share love and gratitude. That means love and gratitude begins within, and is not dependent upon external circumstances. Thanksgiving starts within us, it’s not a matter of what am I thankful for, but what am I thankful from? What am I grateful from? Let your consciousness rest on a divine flow of gratitude from your inner being. We can be grateful from that consciousness that we are forever one with the divine flow, giving thanks from the consciousness of oneness with God.

I remember Janie Paulson, the former Unity minister, who loved to sing and have everyone sing “We’re a family; we’re a family, a family of love!” Be still – know your oneness with God; that God is the one reality at the heart of you; that you live and move and have your being in the heart of God. Get your consciousness in tune with the divine flow, giving thanks from that consciousness. As the song says,

“Our family is a little world,
Of ten, or six, or three;
Our family is a larger world
With billions just like you and me.

“We live together, that’s the way;
We live together as we say,
We’re a family, we’re a family,
We’re a family of love!”

As Paul says, “Give thanks in all circumstances.” (I Th. 5:18) He didn’t say “for” all circumstances, he says “in” all circumstances. In other words, you have the sense of gratitude, and you give that gratitude, that praise, that thanksgiving regardless of what the conditions and circumstances are around you because you are keeping in touch with the divine flow. You give thanks from the consciousness of your oneness with God. You are grateful for the realization you are a spiritual being and that you have within you the capability to cope with all the changing circumstances of life.

When you begin with gratitude in this sense, I think you will find that gratitude and thanksgiving will take on an entirely different meaning. In the process you will have a much broader perception of the inherent good that is within all things, and you will begin to find that it is much easier to give thanks for the many blessings in 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 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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There is a flow of love and harmony everywhere, whether you are aware of it or not, and whether you are consciously moving in it or not. This is what the omnipresence of God means. In life we are on a journey from unconscious to conscious. You do not leave the Presence of God or the flow of life and love when you are negative or resistant. You leave the consciousness of the Presence, the consciousness of harmony and love. Yet the potential for harmony and its outer expression bringing light to those who dwell in darkness is always present within you.

I am reminded of one of the most significant events in the history of Christianity, the transforming experience of Paul on the Damascus road. You may remember the story. Paul, or Saul as he was called in those days, was very much involved in persecuting the Christians. He made a career out of it. He was a sincere person who devoted his life to stopping the spread of this upstart movement. While on the road to Damascus, nevertheless, he had the cosmic experience of a blinding light which left him physically in pain for several days, but which gave him an insight into his relatedness to the spiritual process so that he was guided to go to Damascus and visit a disciple named Ananias.

Visiting Ananias, he had some conversations that helped him to open his eyes. It is said that the scales dropped from his eyes, and his sight was restored. He then suddenly came out as a tremendous advocate of the Christian teaching and became one of its leading supporters. Here was man whose whole life was dedicated to the destruction of Christianity who suddenly became its chief advocate and spokesman. He had a complete reversal of life and threw himself into the new cause with all the ardent, twenty-four hours per day self-abandoning zeal that he had previously invested on the other side. Whereas previously he brought nothing but darkness and fear, he now brought light, love and inspiration into the lives of others.

If you have the desire to change your life, to be or do more or have more, if you have spent many unhappy moments wishing and hoping that you could be different, that you could overcome some overmastering weakness, then consider well the unmistakable meaning of Paul’s encounter for a moment. Paul revealed that a person can change.

The reason for Paul’s conversion was not that God had worked some special miracle for him because he was a specially endowed creature, but because he had the potential for change within him. Even though he might not have been consciously aware of it, he had the innate desire for change. The first step for us is to believe that we can change, that we err when we say, “I’m only human – what can you expect?” We are not only human – we are divine. We must look to the divine within us and begin to think about and act from strength rather than weakness.

The great moment in the life of Paul was the sudden impact of an idea that had obviously been running through his troubled mind for years. Have you ever puzzled over a problem for many hours or even days and months, and then suddenly said, “Oh, yes, I see,” suddenly when the light breaks through? It has been said that “there is nothing in all the world more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

Paul had always been intrigued with the Christian idea, though like many of us he had resisted it, argued over it, and put his whole weight against it. Paul’s bitter and long struggle with the Christians was really an inner struggle with himself and his growing faith, a war being waged between his keenly developed intellect which reasoned against the Christ idea and his sensitive feeling nature which felt the truth.

We need to provide for ourselves opportunities to change our thoughts, manners, actions, through incentive, open-mindedness, and an eagerness to keep in step with life itself. This is what the study of Truth will do for you. There is little hope for change in your life unless you make frequent encounters with dynamic ideas. Eventually, one of them will hit you with the force of blinding light. It matters not what your weakness or problem may be, when you receive the impact of a dynamic idea, “the scales will fall from your eyes.” When we truly let go, or stop looking in a certain direction and start looking in another, we will find that the change for the better is not only easy, but divinely natural.

Paul’s experience of blindness is a symbol of this change of seeing. He could no longer see things as he did. He was helped by Ananias to see things in a new way. So, we too can begin to see the possibilities of a new way of life, of healing, adjustment, new blessings. Therefore, dare to behold and see yourself as already expressing and experiencing these things. Look for them, and expect them.

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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We’re getting some new windows on one side of our house next week, and it got me to thinking about how our soul could sometimes do with new windows. It is said that your eyes are the windows of your soul; that means they’re not only for others to look into to catch a glimpse of your soul, but they are the windows through which your soul looks outward. So, ask yourself what you see when you look at your life, your world and others in it.

I am reminded of the scriptural passage in Isaiah 54:2, God speaking, “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; hold not back, lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.” It seems to me that we often need new windows to look through, to “let the curtains of our habitations (where we habitually dwell) be stretched out,” to see a larger vision for ourselves and for others. We need to grow in conscious awareness of God’s ever-present reality, in which we “live and move and have our being.”

As God said to Abraham (Gen. 13:14-15, 17) “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 . . . Arise, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” We are talking of awareness, of being aware of the benevolence of God active in your life right now and the gifts that are continuously given. This is the nature of God; it is the lovingness of God presence omnipresent, giving of itself in, through and as you. As it says in the scriptures, “We love because God first loved us.”

I well remember the words of James Dillet Freeman that made a distinct impression upon me when he spoke at the Unity church I attended in 1969, which at that time was located in Arlington Heights, Illinois. He said, “Look with the eyes of love.” I have found that when we really do that we align ourselves with our true nature, and we see rightly.

In answering the question, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” a question which was meant to test him, Jesus, referring back to the biblical books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, responded “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” he is giving us an imperative, to enable us to dwell in the warmth of our own Divine support. For to live is to be in relationship. If we look with the eyes of love at the other person, we will see that his life is as it is because of the way he is seeing life. We will be looking through a new window and making an attempt to stand with him or her and to see as he or she sees. One of the best ways to try to understand someone is to see the good in him or her. In many places in the scriptures it implies that this is the way of the saints, those who love God in themselves and in others.

All true saints have one characteristic: their ability to relate to all people, to walk and talk with all persons, to identify alike with the leper and the criminal, the disfigured and the stupid, the thief and the alien, the coward and the heretic, with the beast of the field, the bird of the air, and the fish of the sea. Somehow these saints comprehend the shared existence of creation.

A saint is one who is fulfilling the process; a saint is what one is intended to be. Jesus demonstrated the potential in all persons; he showed what a person will be if he or she releases his or her imprisoned splendor. This is what all religions are about, despite doctrinal differences: the proper way to be a spiritually mature person. It is the first and foremost lesson of life. The more creatures unlike yourself you can identify with, the more fully do you reveal what you can be.

Our problem is that we do not know or love ourselves fully enough to be able to truly know and love others. We can identify with the similar, and not with the dissimilar. This is why we tend to organize in groups or categories of people with common traits or needs or backgrounds.

By nature we are generous and loving, but we often frustrate and restrict our impulses in very subtle ways. We must challenge ourselves to change the tendency of simply looking at people, and try to look with them through the same window, which means that we must first accept the fact of their existence and thus the significance of their lives and our shared experience. In this way we are able to empathize and walk in their shoes for a while, as we together look through what may be for us a whole new window.

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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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

————————————————————
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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Today, Monday, April 18, is the thirty-fifth day of Lent. Lent is the period of time during which we can prepare ourselves for the Easter experience.
 
 
Assignment 35
 
Man already is above personality and above individuality, a complete being because he is a moving part of all that is. All the division of his being are but the surface judgment – the real, complete of him is not in any way a separate entity.
 
It is only in becoming aware of the whole does an individual lose the separate self. Man is divided into families, cities, countries, religions, races, but above all and through all is the One, the transparent race of God! God, is the one essence that cannot be divided in any way, but only “seems to be” in the realm of man’s conclusions.
 
We feel we are changing, and yet that which we think we are changing into we already are in reality! We always have been the outer expression of a timeless, all powerful essence that in our groping we have named God. We have separated ourselves in our thinking and feeling from this which cannot be divided or changed in reality. We know many things that are not true.
 
We speak of the new being and the new race of men, but we are simply going to shake off our dream world of outer beliefs and consciousness and come into our own, that which we have always been – perhaps it will be coming forth out of a nightmare of unawareness, a maze of illusions, and the cobweb of not knowing.
 
“There shall be a loftier race than e’er the world hath known, shall rise. With flame of freedom in their souls and light of knowledge in their eyes.” (Symonds)
 
We must realize our spiritual nature before we can reap its benefits. You are this which is, which always has been, and which fills all and all. This is true of every living soul. We are the executive power of this which is being. It is being all of us. Why do we not use the power and authority that is ours?
 
We cannot lift ourselves from the heavy drunkenness of what we think we are. We do not conceive of our possibilities. We are only aware of flesh and blood, body and brains. These are but the outer garments of the Spirit. You are the most important thing in all the world to you, for you are all potential Power! This potential includes the body, the human form, as well as the mind and the soul.
 
 
(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, Thursday, April 7, is the twenty-sixth day of Lent. Lent is the period of time during which we can prepare ourselves for the Easter experience.
 

Assignment 26
 
As human beings we are not restricted or limited although we accept limitation on every hand. There is no boundary line for our accomplishment. We belong to the illimitableness of time and Spirit. We think of ourselves as restricted by the limitation of our human concept of ourselves or by the accepted limitation of our physical bodies. In truth there is no limitation.
 
The whole world, as we see it, is the wrong side of the picture. We see only the back of the canvas. The beauty is on the other side, the side which is named the “within.” This inner side is the side of feeling, knowing and true expressing and it is the real of life. How you feel about something is the real of it!
 
We have glimpses of this illimitable, immeasurable essence of our being in our sleeping dreams as well as in our waking dreams and visions. This very age in which we live is conclusive proof of the reality of the dreams of man. Proverbs tells us, “Where there is no vision the people perish.”
 
The very dreams, visions, plans and true desires of our heart are but the urgings of the Indwelling Power and Spirit of our being for expression and fulfillment. Never forbid your Soul the right to dream, for to dream is to conceive as possible a new state of being and it is the first movement of reality; much like the quickening of a child in the womb. The dream is the quickening of that which is to be, brought into reality by believing.
 
There is a realm of pure ideas within us that is to be brought forth through our minds, faith and word. It is from this realm that we bring forth Life and all its implications. This realm was called the Kingdom of Heaven and was the main theme of all the teachings of Jesus.
 
Heaven is within you, the storehouse or treasure chest of your good. It contains all that is expected of you on your earthly journey. All that we are and can ever be is stored in the round tower of your heart. We open the windows of heaven by acceptance, with praise and thanksgiving the invisible abundant mind essence. This essence flows through our minds from ideas to expression. Heaven is the orderly realization of ideas and they must be completed by bringing forth on earth.
 
 
(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, Sunday, March 27, is the third Sunday in Lent. Lent is the period of time during which we can prepare ourselves for the Easter experience.
 
Here is the message for the third Sunday in Lent:
 
 
Conservation
 
We need to conserve the precious substance of life. We destroy our bodies by fear, hate, condemnation, worry, or mental turmoil of any kind. Mental and emotional strain is the greatest power against us – it is our misuse of the life substance by our failing to recognize and acknowledge the Life which is God.
 
We renew and recreate our bodies, and open the doors of our mind for free flowing ideas as we conserve this sub-stance of life with awareness of God-life and to refuse false beliefs.
 
God is the substance of life, ever present! We were created of this substance; it is eternal, ever-renewing and everlasting. We waste this substance by following the sense mind. We are wasting the only substance on earth that can heal our bodies and set us free. It is the God substance we use by action of our mind that renews and recreates.
 
The recognition of God living within, always present, is the power in action “which to know aright is life eternal.” God is not the God of the dead but of the living, Jesus said. God of the living is always present awaiting our recognition.
 
Charles Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity movement, says, “Our youth we love so well never really dies, it merely falls asleep in the realm of the subconscious. We let go of the life idea.”
 
We must renew in us the idea of life and free the energies to renew and recreate. This is the beginning of the process that will overcome the last enemy, death. We live in the New Age, the age of restoration and revelation.
 
To our human mind these ideas seem impossible, but all things are possible with God and with man when he embraces God ideas. The human consciousness is limited and limiting. We worry and fret ourselves out of the Kingdom of God which is within us. Constant attention to the God idea within is to release and quicken the vital substance.
 
Joy and happiness, love and faith, oneness with others, expectancy, anticipation, believing in the things our heart tells us is real and true is the way of Conservation – is the way of the restoration of the physical body, it is the beginning of the journey to Easter morning.
 
 
(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

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Today, Thursday, March 24, is the fourteenth day of Lent. Lent is the period of time during which we can prepare ourselves for the Easter experience.
 

Assignment 14
 
There is a great universal impulse in life we call desire. It is that which causes us to go forward. Desire goes before every act of life. Desire is filled with love, zeal, enthusiasm, and interest. It is the essence of good.
 
Desire is the power that carries the inner idea or ideal into outer expression or manifestation. To be without desire is to be without zest for living.
 
This desire is called Zeal in the Scriptures. It is energy and without it there would be stagnation and death. It is inspiration. It must be direct from the inner spirit. If it is used from the outer it is wasted, for it is such a mighty force.
 
It must be quickened by Spirit and by our own greatest need for expression, which is God –given – God expressing. It incites us to glorious achievement for it is for a Divine purpose.
 
Desire is the fire of life, the stirring power, and cannot be denied. Without it we are indifferent, careless, ineffective, and become drifters in the inner field of development and growth.
 
As human beings we are too politely calm, too well mannered, too conscious of what others may think of us. We wear a false face. Because of this false concept the urgings of God in the heart are left unstarted and unfinished and inner deterioration begins. The life of God is impaired.
 
Desire is part of the creative power. When we are touched by desire, there is an interior change, we are fired by Spirit. An inner flame consumes all fear and insincerity, new life pours through every cell – there is physical renewal, and the mind is quickened.
 
Desire is the powerhouse of God, the Divine flame that blazes new paths. It is God pushing us into new and greater expression of our most perfect being.
 
Desire is a facet of love, when desire grips our whole being, spirit, soul, and body; it is the purest activity of God. God is Love. “Love and do what you like,” St. Augustine said. For if you truly love – you can only be God in Action!
 
 
(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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Today, Sunday, March 20, is the second Sunday of the Lenten season. Lent is the period of time during which we can prepare ourselves for the Easter experience.
 
Here is the message for the second Sunday in Lent:
 

Imagination
 
Man creates and brings forth in the inner realm of mind, in the same manner that a child is conceived and brought forth. Man is a creator with thought and feeling. These are the two witnesses as man and woman are the two witnesses to every human conception.
 
Our imagination in its truest form is thinking in detail with joy and happiness. Imagination is conception. The love and joy of conceiving holds firmly the new form until it is manifest. This is an individual process, an immaculate conception. When an object is formed in mind only the mind can conceive it; projected in the world of form it becomes a manifestation.
 
The creative power is constant, always at work, with or without discipline and control. We must always have imagination – one with the Spirit of Truth within. We have the power to image and to bring forth the likeness of whatever we image – good or seeming evil. All power has been given us in the choice of what we shall image.
 
Herein lies the greatness of creation, but herein also lie the forming of the unreal, the fantasies, and untrue beliefs, unsupported by Spirit. They cannot last for they are not created of Divine Substance, Truth!
 
But these impermanent figments of the mind are accepted as real by man the creator, and cause him untold suffering and actual lack both in spiritual and in material ways. We have the power to re-think, re-direct our imagination and to choose a new form, thus producing a new heaven and a new earth.
 
Ordinarily we think of imagination in relationship to things we have no hope of attaining. But anything we can connect with ourselves and accept as possible can be conceived by imagination and brought forth in the world of affairs. Do not underestimate your power as a human being, for you are moved by God!
 
Keep your imagination firmly entrenched in the pattern of God. The pattern of God is revealed by the movement of your heart. God is the Soul of man, sees Himself as man, gives Himself in man. Man in his highest expression, is God manifest on earth!
 
(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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