Oneness

A Paradigm of Oneness: Part 4

There is a widespread perception among religious advocates that humanity is living in a fallen state that began with Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God. According to this perception the consequence of this “sin” is the condition of separation, illustrated by the first couple being cast from the Garden of Eden. This assumed separation is a powerful belief that is reflected throughout all aspects of religious architecture, art, music and the commonly held theology of sin and salvation embraced as a defining element by most mainline Christian sects.

 The new paradigm of oneness begins with the recognition of unity between God and the individual. Understanding this unity puts us in the position of having already received the life, love, power and intelligence of God. Our acceptance of this truth allows us to begin now to express more of these divine gifts as healthier minds, bodies and more prosperous conditions without fear that we need to first earn the approval of God. As expressions of God, the question of approval becomes a moot point.

Because so many people have been influenced by the old belief that we are separate from God, there are many challenges associated with transitioning from a separation-based faith to a oneness-based understanding. We need to discern the difference and become aware of the times we are attempting to put new wine into old wineskins, of seeking to apply principles of unity while inadvertently holding the old belief in separation.

While separation from God is our perceived condition, oneness with God, our ever-sustaining Source, is our actual condition. In receptive stillness, open your mind to the truth that you are already one with God. There is no need to create a relationship, to reach out to something that is away from you. See yourself as an empty vessel being filled with the light and pure life energy that is God. The only condition is one of accepting receptivity of this living gift that is yours for the taking.

The Inner Calling

(Click for audio: The Inner Calling)

“Sometime, somewhere, every human being must come to himself. Having tired of eating husks, he will ‘arise and go to my Father.’”

Emilie Cady, quoting from the parable of the prodigal son given by Jesus, is stating an encouraging truth. The life many of us are living is likely but a representational fraction of the life that is trying to express itself through us. We sense the call to arise, to come up higher, and we translate this call into a vision of better, more freeing external conditions. The conditions we envision, however, may not be the true reflections of what God has in store for us. We are responding to the inner calling but we may not be fully surrendering to it.

Acknowledging that you are being called by God is the first and most important step toward the life you seek. Many do not realize that their desire for a freer life is really the expansive nature of God seeking to out-picture through them. By holding the thought that our desire for freedom is a product of personal ambition rather than a divine movement, we restrict the universal flow of greater good to a personal vision that will not exceed our senses-based understanding.

It is important to spend quality time laying aside all personal imagery of what we think our life can or should become and meditate on the inner call to arise. Jesus reminded us that it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. The giving of this kingdom is not an act that will begin once we prove to God we are worthy of receiving. It has already begun. Our job is to learn how to receive it in its unconditional, unrestricted form.

In your quiet time, focus on your inner urge for a better life knowing this urge is the voice of God drawing you up to a free and satisfying experience. The attitude of surrender will free you from the tendency to tell God what you need or want and will align your thoughts with the higher purpose. As you go about your day, affirm something like, “Thy will is now being done,” and know that everyone and everything is coming into alignment with this inner calling.

Know Thyself

A Paradigm of Oneness: Part 3

Our understanding of God plays a major role in the way we think of ourselves. The paradigm of separation causes us to live life trying to measure up to the expectations of a god we do not understand. Those living by this paradigm are vulnerable to control by guilt and shame and they seek to maintain a standard of behavior they assume will be pleasing to God. Those who do not adopt a religious or spiritual approach may still see themselves as incomplete and spend their lives seeking to address feelings of incompleteness by stockpiling things, positions and relationships they hope will give them the sense of completeness they crave.

Shifting to the paradigm of oneness we begin to see ourselves as spiritually whole, expressions of the Creative Life Force, and we have simply forgotten who and what we are. Our focus turns from outer to inner directed, an approach that holds as key the process of self-discovery. We begin to grasp that our desire for wholeness and abundance of all good is really an intuitive message rising from our inner depths, the voice of our native soul.

To know thyself is to know God. Paraphrasing Emerson, each individual is an inlet and may become an outlet to all there is in God. Such a statement is impossible to grasp from the paradigm of separation. From the paradigm of oneness, however, we understand that by turning our attention within and opening our minds and hearts to the inner fountain of life welling up as an eternal spring of divine energy we become channels through which this energy is expressed, temples of the living God, as the apostle Paul phrased it.

Emma Curtis Hopkins said, “The highest is the nearest.” It only makes sense that God, our eternal source of life, love, power and intelligence is accessible and ready to spring forth through us in ways that express healing, prosperity and right action.

You are God in expression, a manifestation of the Creative Life Force that brings all things into being. Hold this thought and you will see yourself as you truly are.

Understanding God

A Paradigm of Oneness: Part 2

 “When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence.”    Ralph Waldo Emerson

Much of the old paradigm of separation requires various ways of influencing God’s behavior and attitudes. The paradigm of oneness involves understanding and cooperating with God as the Creative Life Force that is unfolding through us. God is infinite Being whose characteristics are life, love, power and intelligence. God is omnipresent and accessible to all people at all times regardless of their beliefs or lack thereof. As we open ourselves to God as a living presence we find a warm and loving companionship, steady guidance, and inspiration that leads us to the establishment of inner and outer conditions that allow for unlimited expression of all that God is.

Emerson points to the all-important process of examining our understanding of God, to determine whether it is actually ours or if our views are simply those that have been passed down to us through others. In her book, Lessons in Truth, Emilie Cady makes this important statement:

I cannot reveal God to you. You cannot reveal God to another. If I have learned, I may tell you, and you may tell another, how to seek and find God, each within himself. But the new birth into the consciousness of our spiritual faculties and possibilities is indeed like the wind that “bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit” (Jn 3:8). The new birth takes place in the silence, in the invisible.

Spend time in quiet listening. God, at the center of your being, is present and accessible to you now. Be still and know.

The Paradigm of Oneness

Part 1

There are two streams of spiritual thought based on completely different premises. Jesus compared these to old and new wineskins:

 Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved (Matthew 9:17).

Then as now these two streams of thought have at their heart a trinity of values, the starting point of all logic that follows. These core values consist of 1) the understanding of the nature of God, 2) an understanding of the nature of the individual and 3) an understanding of the nature of the relationship between God and the individual. Whether you consider the spiritual convictions of an individual or the theology of an entire religious denomination, grasp the perspective each holds of this trinity of values and you have the key to their spiritual logic as it applies to the range of subjects explored in this article.

Traditional religious thinking, the old wineskin, is based on a paradigm of separation between God and the individual. We are born in sin (the fall of humankind) and in need of redemption if we wish to gain eternal life. The purpose of religious thought and practices is to guide us into salvation, a uniting with God in heaven, an event that occurs after the death of the body.

In contrast, the new wineskin thinking (which is not actually new) is based on a paradigm of oneness; unity with God. From this view, the challenge is that the individual has become senses-based and has lost the awareness of their unity with God. The objective of the new approach is to awaken to the truth of our oneness with God in day-to-day living.

Many who are drawn to the new way of thinking still carry elements from the paradigm of separation. This mix of old and new interferes with or cancels out entirely their attempts to implement the new concepts. In other words, they are attempting to apply the principles and logic of the paradigm of oneness while unconsciously holding on to a paradigm of separation.

The challenge to each person is to become aware of this dual trinity of core values and challenge themselves to take a deeper look at their understanding of God, of themselves and how they see their relationship to God.

Why the Near-Death Analogy?

I want to thank all of you for responding so favorably to my newest book, Native Soul, Unlocking Your Life’s Potential. Many have asked questions about various aspects of the book which I am happy to answer here. The following is a question that has, in some form, come up frequently:

Why did you choose near-death research as a basis for understanding our spiritual nature?

NDE (near-death experience) research brings to our attention an empirically-based revelation of a truth long held by those on the spiritual path: our essence is not brain/body based; it is something much more.

Of course those who are already on the spiritual path need no empirical proof that we humans are spiritual beings expressing through physical bodies, that our true being is, as Walt Whitman expressed, something much more than that which is contained between our hat and our boots. The scientific approach into the NDE phenomenon is, I believe, an area where scientific research and our spiritual interests find a happy and productive marriage. NDE researchers inadvertently speak a language already familiar to those on the spiritual path. They speak of the infinite nature of the individual, unity with the cosmos, unconditional love, the impact our thinking has on ourselves and others, and, most important, the fact that the appearance of death as an end to life is not real, that life, not death, is the one, all-important reality.

That science can prove that a person whose bodily functions have ceased entirely can observe their body and environment from a point outside the body poses a direct challenge to medical science’s current paradigm that our essence is a brain-based effect. Likewise, that an individual who has no interest in religion of any kind can experience a universal, unconditional love so overwhelming that they find no words to describe it poses a challenge to the common religious notion that God’s love is something that must be earned. Additionally, the fact that joy and beauty and powers beyond comprehension are experienced by those who merely merely step outside their body challenge the belief that concerted effort in positive thinking is the key to tapping our life’s potential.

When you approach your spiritual path from the perspective that that which you are seeking is already fully present and completely accessible, you turn your executive faculty of faith from a blind groping for something to an understanding that, as Meister Eckhart pointed out, that which you are looking for is that which is doing the looking.

Personally speaking, my interest in NDE research is not grounded in descriptions of what happens when we leave our bodies. My interest lies in what people discover about the nature of themselves when they have such an experience. The completed soul is a treasure buried in the field of many inaccurate notions, many false religious beliefs, many scientifically accepted yet unproven hypotheses.

NDE research, coupled with our understanding that the true nature of Reality has a spiritual rather than material basis, promises to bring much light to how we see ourselves and how we experience the world in which we live.

Again, thank you for your interest. I welcome your comments, insights, and questions.

Bondage or Liberty, Which?

“Every man believes himself to be in bondage to the flesh and to the things of the flesh. All suffering is the result of this belief. The history of the coming of the Children of Israel out of their long bondage in Egypt is descriptive of the human mind, or consciousness, growing up out of the animal or sense part of man and into the spiritual part.” –Emilie Cady

In this statement, Emilie Cady points out that the essence of individual suffering has more to do with our belief system than with anything that is built into the natural scheme of life. This is important to understand because it means there is always something we can do when our life is moving in directions we do not understand because things begin working against us.

Each one of us undergoing an evolution of consciousness. We are moving from the concept that we are mental/emotional beings with a spirit to the truth that we are primarily spiritual beings expressing through a physical body in possession of a mind capable of producing thought and emotion. Our spiritual identity, though buried beneath years of misperception, is whole and complete and exists always in a state of liberty.

We do not achieve true liberty by affirming it or by trying to eliminate all the negative thinking and emotion that binds us to limiting conditions. We achieve liberty by seeking to become aware of that in us which is already free, that which has never been subject to the self-imposed limitations that stand in the way of the quality of life we all instinctively long to experience.

In your moments of meditation, acknowledge that there is within you a whole and completely liberated level that is seeking your attention now. Simply accept this truth and put your mind in a receptive attitude with a statement like: I am now open and receptive to the fullness of my free and unhindered nature. I now let this true core of my being come forth in peace and in harmony.

Every moment of our life is a choice we make toward bondage or toward liberty. Choose liberty and your life will reflect the freedom you crave.

The Principle of Giving

Part 12

“Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:38).

Emma Curtis Hopkins wrote, “You have but one thing to give, namely, your attention.” If you apply her observation to the statement attributed to Jesus, you begin to see why giving is an important key to the kingdom.

Your life flows where your attention goes, so the key is to begin giving your attention to the area you want to see “running over.” You may be saying you want more prosperity but you are experiencing lack. If you use the guideline that the measure you give is the measure you are getting back, you will quickly see that you are giving more of your attention to lack than to prosperity. Otherwise you would be experiencing prosperity.

Perhaps you have not grasped the truth that you are a limitless expression of the Infinite, so you are hanging on to the idea that you only have limited resources. You can begin to give your attention to what it means to be a limitless expression of the Infinite. As such, how would you think? How would you behave? How would you feel when life suddenly nudges your self-defined parameters?

You and I are not only products of evolution, we are processes of evolution. A successful process of evolution is one that contributes to and builds up the environment it inhabits. A process that takes more from its environment than it gives destroys its habitation and sets itself on an inevitable course of extinction.

We all know people that drain us, and we all know people that leave us feeling better than when they found us. These latter are the givers, the ones who are enjoying great returns on their gifts.

In all you do, strive to be a giver, one that leaves people and circumstances in a better condition than you found them.

Living Your Truth

part 11

A man went out to plant, and some of his seed fell along the path and was quickly eaten by birds. Other seed fell among rocks where there wasn’t much soil. The seed sprang up quickly, but because there was a lack of soil, it did not root properly and the young plants were quickly scorched to death by the sun. Other seed fell among weeds, and the weeds robbed it of nutrients so it yielded no grain. Still other seed fell in good soil, and it grew well, yielding great abundance. (Paraphrase of Mark 4:3-9).

This is a parable of spiritual ideas and their reaction to various types of consciousness. Let’s say that someone makes the statement, “You are an expression of the Infinite and you can do whatever you want with your life.” One person will hear this, like what they hear, but then go about their life, business as usual. This is the first condition of consciousness, where the seed is snatched up quickly by birds.  The second condition of consciousness is one that hears the statement but their mind is so full of preconditioned ideas of lack and self-doubt (rocky soil) that this idea seems too radical to be true, so it takes no root in their thinking. The third condition of consciousness hears the statement, but their mind is so consumed with the chores of daily living (weeds) that this new idea receives none of their energy and has no influence in their thinking. The last example in the parable represents a state of consciousness that takes the idea seriously, and begins the process of measuring everything it believes against this new benchmark of Truth.

This is an excellent explanation of why there can be such varied levels of experience in the human species. The range between poverty and opulence is wide. The interesting point to observe, however, is that this vast range of discrepancy does not exist in any other species but the human, and this parable explains why. We possess a creative mind and we alone can decide how we will use this mind.

James suggested that we become more than “hearers of the word.” He said we must become “doers,” to seek to live the Truth we know.

 

Yes and No

Part 10

“You have heard that it was said to the men of old, `You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil” (Matthew 5:33-37).

If I were to reduce this piece of advice to a couple of lines, I would say it like this: Do not bind your future actions by things you have no control over. Stay in the moment and either accept or let go of each issue as it arises in your mind.

For example, you set a goal for yourself and you say, “I swear to God I’m going to achieve this thing.” It will only take a little time, a couple of rattles, and one good blow to get you to break that promise and admit that the thing was too high a goal, or that you didn’t deserve it, or it wasn’t God’s will. If, on the other hand, you set your goal, and each moment you examine your thoughts, feelings, and actions in light of whether they add to or take away from your objective, you have a very different situation. Say ‘yes’ to the things that add to the completion of your goal and ‘no’ to the things that do not, and you will eventually accomplish your goal.

Say you want to lose weight. You say ‘no’ to cake and ice cream and ‘yes’ to celery. You say ‘no’ to sitting in front of the television for hours and ‘yes’ to long, vigorous walks. You say ‘no’ to affirmations of being fat, and ‘yes’ to affirmations that associate you with your perfect weight. And this is true in everything.

If you are not succeeding in the achievement of your desires, it is because you are saying ‘yes’ to things that defeat your vision, and ‘no’ to things that would advance you.

Become conscious of how you employ this very powerful activity, and every step you take will be the right one.