ALL MY RELATIONS (A Talk About One-ness)

JOKE:

A Scottish mother visits her 
son in his New York City apartment and asks, “So, how do you find the Americans, Donald?”

“Mother,” says Donald, “they’re such noisy people. One neighbor won’t stop banging his head against the wall, while the other screams and screams all night long.”

“Ach, Donald! How do you manage to put up with them?”

“What can I do? I just lie in bed quietly, playing my bagpipes.”

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Tell me something, have you ever looked around at your family and taken it one step further to feel like you don’t even belong on this planet?

Well, you’re not alone.  So don’t get all comfortable in your misery here. I am here to help you to understand: you ain’t alone, baby. In fact, you are part of every living thing on earth … the world and everything in it is related to you.

I didn’t feel much like I “belonged” to my family. I have one powerful childhood memory that I would sit outside on the corner every chance I got. I would sit and wait for my tribal family to come and get me. They would ride up in feathers and robes, leading a spare pony just for me. I always wore a piece of clothesline tied around my waist, which wasn’t a problem usually. Although on Sunday mornings when Mom spent time ironing the crinolines & I tied a grimy rope on my waist, things got a little Italian around the house.

So many of us feel estranged from our immediate family and it’s popular to say “your friends are your family” or, as I’ve seen it recently: “God gave us friends to make up for our relatives” But time has proved to me that Desmond Tutu put it well when he said, “You don’t choose your family, They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.”

After being on Starship Earth for a while, we begin to see there are common threads that bind us all together. Our foods are different, our languages, our clothing…but that’s all detail. Basically, the same emotions apply: Who doesn’t want material success with a place to live well & in good health? Who turns away from good luck, plenty of money? Who doesn’t complain about their politicians or the rebelliousness of youth?

In my online world, I keep seeing the phrase “Unity Consciousness” to denote this common thread of thought. We want fairness to prevail, we want to be safe in public places, we want our taxes to make a noticeable difference for PEACE in the world.  Little did the Fillmores know what they so beautifully started would go global on the level of conscious awareness; but I’ll lay odds they’re applauding wherever they are now!

The continents may be drifting apart, but the regular people on them are uniting together insofar as their thinking less of war and more of peace.

The original title of Charles Darwin’s 1859 bestseller was On The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Its primary topic was the scientific theory that populations evolve over generations through natural selection. This was not acceptable to the Church of England which felt species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to other animals and, unfortunately, many times to other humans. While Darwin says ‘survival of the fittest’ twice in that book he uses the word “love” 95 times. I’d say that’s a terrific basis for a theory of evolution and one which is proving out!

He wrote:  “Let it be borne in mind how infinitely close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other.”

He also spoke of inter-species cooperation. If you think about it, our pets today prove that out. And not too many years ago we all lived with animals; if you kept chickens you got to have an egg hunt daily. If you wanted to go anywhere off the property, you saddled up the horse or hitched up the buggy. Our wake-up call was cattle lowing in the barn to be milked. We looked to our four-legs as co-workers, as guardians, as helpers and even as our mental health professionals as they’d listen to a lot more than we could tell anyone else… One life supported another, just as one life fed another.

Species cooperate in the wild pretty readily: In the southwest, pronghorn antelope regularly grab sage with their teeth to tear off leaves for lunch. When this happens, the sage sends out a chemical signal which triggers the tobacco plant next to it. The tobacco plant then breathes out – and it emits an odor that the antelope don’t like. In protecting itself, the tobacco plant is also protecting the sage. With such a beautiful and complex dance of life, it behooves you not to declare for your limitations by focusing only on the box step. Think your way out of that particular construction, pretty please!

Where does life come from? Is it just conception and procreation that brings in new living beings? In the early 1900’s, many experiments were done in Russia which proved out that life can arise from nonlife, and the cooperation of life with life is a ever ongoing. Gurvisch was one scientist who was intrigued by plants growing upward no matter what. He theorized that there is a “life force” which was  undeniable, and enormously powerful. He saw plants growing even through concrete so he decided this life force came out of the TOP of the plant. He experimented with onions. He pointed the top of one onion top at the side of another, while running a low electrical current through them both. He was amazed and gratified to have his theory proved out when the onion being pointed at started to grow a big bump in response to the pointing onion. This gives me hope we can get to the life-level of onions. That we can point to one another, send the electrical current of our thoughts and the higher-voltage current of our prayers, at each other and create new life.

In the 70’s, I read a book called The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Chris Bird. You may have heard of it? Some of the book is based on the research of a man named Cleve Backster who was an interrogation specialist for the CIA. On a day at the lab when he didn’t have enough to do, he hooked up the polygraph to a dracaena plant. Amazingly, the plant registered on the polygraph with a spike on the readout tape. So he started talking to the plant. He began a kind of whole earth movement toward “biocommunication” – play music for the plants, tell your plants you love them and then stand back & watch ‘em grow!

Tompkins & Bird took Backster’s data a little farther and hooked up houseplants to an oscilloscope. Later, they proved that if you gave a plant a way to generate an electrical current, it would open your garage door for you when you got home.  You’ve probably heard about the researchers who set up cameras to find out what pets do at home all day. What they discovered was that when the owner THOUGHT about heading home, their dog went to sit at the door to wait. (Cats, however, headed for their food dishes.)

In 2000, Professor Pacheco (a neurobiologist) heated beach sand to luminescence, killing all lifeforms that might have existed in it. He poured this sand into a test tube partially filled with distilled water. He sealed the tube & autoclaved the test tube as a double measure of killing off anything alive in it. He placed this sterile test tube next to one with DNA in it, ran a low, 7 Hz current through them both. That same 7.3 Hz current Gurvisch ran on the onions. After 24 hours, a thin layer had appeared on top of the so-called “sterile” beach sand water – and the scum was filled with DNA! There are other experiments on the books as well, primarily out of Russia, which have also shown a case for this. It’s called “spontaneous generation.”  And Pacheco was replicating prior experiments. He wasn’t the first to do stuff like this.

I have firsthand experience with spontaneous generation when the last banana in the basket births an entire cloud of flying dots which seem eager to be inhaled, for some reason. There are a number of experiments which proved life generates from non-life, they just didn’t agree with the mainstream belief system – remember the Church of England blinders? Power structures don’t like challenges.

Nature’s SO not stupid. The bacteria that form spontaneously in nuclear reactors eat radiation. Microbes form where they are needed. There are microbes in 99.9% of all space dust. What does that mean? It means what we have supposed is cold, empty, dead space is alive with potential.

Unity co-founders called on life source when they healed themselves, Myrtle of TB & Charles his stunted leg. They reached into the invisible with just their belief and brought back tangible results. Which results they then shared with a world hungry for some hope that there might be such a thing as spontaneous generation. It put everything on an equal footing, really.

We stand on one rung of the evolutionary ladder. We like to think it’s the top rung. I’m not sure it is. When I see the poetry of a horse running through a field, or the fabulous understanding of a service dog in the pediatric ward of a hospital, or even a flock of starlings wheeling in some grand ballet of a sunset – I have to pray we can achieve this kind of Unity Consciousness. If you think world peace is a challenge, try getting people to agree on the channel to have on at the Laundromat!

Kinesiology (muscle testing) can show us that thinking a negative thought about someone weakens them. Even something as simple as, “I don’t like those shoes!”  Even when that person doesn’t know about the thought. If negative thoughts disperse energy, guess what the positive thoughts do? There’s a reason the Pope does this. And the Dalai Loma, this.

Has anyone here called Silent Unity for support? How did you feel about their message? Didn’t you immediately feel the support of their loving words couched in prayer? This group maintains such a high level of energy among themselves that their words become an organic source of support even as they speak them to you. These words shine a light in a very dark space sometimes. They can show us a doorway we were sure did not exist as we dialed them up.

I don’t think Mother/Father God made us and then wandered off. I think when we found out just how powerful we were, we shooed them off, saying “We wanna do this ourselves now! You can go.” But it’s now time to invite the divine back into our lives and recognize each other’s divinity. Recapture that unqualified recognition that a loving parent has for even the most stubborn child. In order to do that, we need to acknowledge ourselves, each other, our beautiful world, from the vast ocean whispering a lovesong with every wave, to the smallest junco whistling a little song before grabbing up a seed on our patio. We need to start hearing the beauty of the world, tasting the glowing colors our eyes see, speaking to others the words we would ourselves love to hear someone say to us.

It is up to us Unitics to start. Somebody has to be the first to beat their sword into a ploughshare, after all. There’s a reason we are called to speak living words.

I have every faith we can shift the entire world once we acknowledge our relationship with its every aspect.

Look around the circle today when we do our Peace Song. Know these are your community, that each and every one in touch with each and every other one has more unspoken wishes in common that only need to be spoken together to be made manifest. Wishes like good health, world peace, true love. Thinking a bad thought? Send out a quick “Cancel, cancel, cancel!” We need to make the space we all occupy life-size.

Feel free to test the world’s relationship with you. I took a two-mile hike once in a forest. About the time I ran out of energy I also ran out of trail markers. I stopped to figure things out. And because I trust the world is looking out for me, I looked up and told God “I need a sign here.” Two seconds later the tiniest yellow moth wobbled by, going left. I said, “Thanks!” and turned left. The parking lot was fifty feet away. Let the world show you, let it be your active ally, not just scenery out there. Trust your perceptions!

The world is here to heal you. Won’t you return the favor? If you think about your relationships with your family and feel they may not be either friends or well-wishers…don’t give in or give up; simply reach for a good thought, even if the best you can muster wouldn’t win any Nobel Peace Prizes.

The beautiful name for an intelligent cosmos which constantly adapts to life is “Auto poetic.” The truth we have been taught about life only being available through evolution-based reproduction, or some random mutation effect is only a small part of the information available now.  Be vigilant for your world. Pay attention so that your ears are the first to hear God’s message through the world directed to you, and your heart be the first to perceive its wholeness.

Repeat these after me: I AM a giver of life. My success brings success to everyone I know and then to everyone in the world. My love speaks through the vibration of my heart.

Thank you.

Good Morning Beloved

A man and his wife were awakened at 3:00 am by a loud pounding on the door.

The man gets up and goes to the door where a drunken stranger, standing in the

pouring rain, is asking for a push.

“Not a chance,” says the husband, “it is 3:00 in the morning!”

He slams the door and returns to bed.

“Who was that?” asked his wife….

“Just some drunk guy asking for a push,” he answers.

“Did you help him?” she asks.

“No, I did not, it’s 3 am in the morning and it’s pouring rain out there!”

“Well, you have a short memory,” says his wife. “Can’t you remember about three months ago when we broke down, and those two guys helped us? It was raining then,

too!  I think you should help him, and you should be ashamed of yourself!  God loves drunks too, you know.”

The man does as he is told, gets dressed, and goes out into the pounding rain.

He calls out into the dark, “Hello, are you still there?”

“Yes,” comes back the answer.

“Do you still need a push?” calls out the husband.

“Yes, please!” comes the reply from the dark.

“Where are you?” asks the husband.

“Over here on the swing set” replied the drunk.

June gold  imagination

Topic: Discover True Self

Affirmation: Centered in the Divine, I discover more of who I am and all that I am capable of being.

This month of June, the theme is Discover your true self.

Do you know your true self?   What does it even mean to know your true self?

St. Teresa of Avilla said, “For the most part, all our trials and disturbances come from our NOT understanding ourselves.”

Do you think that is so?

It was Job who said, “Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.”  Job 3:25

I agree with those assessments.  We all are becoming aware that our thoughts create our world.

I saw this quote, don’t know who’s it is, there was no acknowledgment –“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Definitely a YES!

Why do you think we have the ‘urge’ to learn about ourselves?  We go to classes, read books, we attend seminars.  We spend millions of dollars in all kinds of therapy; and for what?  Many would say to figure out why whatever is happening to us is happening.

We’ve heard it many times, in many different ways:  Know thyself; the Kingdom is within; live within out.  All this I knew but it didn’t register deeply until I read Eric Butterworth’s “In the Flow of Life”.  There I read the words Eric Butterworth said fully and completely: “We must know ourselves because it’s God who we are getting to know.”

Our ‘traditions have told us that we are separate from our Creator.  It’s that belief of  separation that leads to our feeling of being alone, lost sometimes, afraid.

We are not separate from Spirit.  We ARE Spirit.

We just need to find that connection again.  To re-connect.

My mentor from my early years with Unity says, “God is in the yearning.”

That’s why I think we do all the searching.

We are attempting to connect with the Power within us, that central core that is Divine.  That part of us that is of the WHOLE.  That whole is you and me and everyone and everything.

This month’s Power is Imagination.  (The word imagination always reminds me of the movie, Miracle on 34^th Street, Santa and little Suzy…she learned to BELIEVE with the Power of her imagination!  And through that belief and the use of her imagination she was a part of a miracle.).

When we put the power of our imagination to work for us, much may be accomplished…and THAT is our prosperity!

And that is our Prosperity message for this month…using your imagination…and using that imagination to get to know and understand yourself.

Your imagination is among your most creative mind powers. You are always creating through your imaging faculty. By deliberately directing your imagination towards what you want, you can begin to transform your life. Through your thinking, you accumulate a mass of ideas and with your imagination you make them come into a form of prosperity.

Divine Ideas are our gift from God, from the Divine.  It’s what we do with those ideas, if we choose to do anything with them that is our prosperity.

As we imagine different scenarios, we figure out what we want in life, who we wish to be, how we wish to act or respond.  All this happens first in our imagination.

In our Tuesday class this week we have been learning, or re-membering, the power of the heart and its purpose in directing our choices.  So, we shouldn’t think of the brain first when it comes to learning about ourselves, we should be connecting with our heart, become conscious of our Divinity and learn from that space.

From that place we choose those gifts, ideas, ways of thinking and believing that we wish to add to our tool box, which we wish to be a part of our integrity, which will guide us in our beliefs.

We imagine it first to see if it fits for the moment.  And we always can re-evaluate, as Charles Fillmore says, and choose to change our minds if it doesn’t fit for us at any time.

Think for a minute about the things you used to imagine…what where they? (A Unity in Rehoboth Beach!)

Charles Fillmore tells us, “With our imagination we lay hold of ideas and clothe them in substance.” Through our imagination we behold things in spiritual essence, in true perfection. The imagination is the universal language as it pertains to a language of pictures. A picture of a cup of water is understood by people of every language.

We picture it into substance, into being.

There are two basic uses of imagination-conditioned and open-ended.

Conditioned imagination kind of defines itself – it concentrates on what you want. Seeing it, speaking it, imagine yourself with it. This can work in quick and spectacular ways but it can be limiting. Getting an abundance of what other people have is not proof of a “prosperity consciousness.” It’s almost like copying someone idea.  And that’s fine if THAT is what you are wanting.

It is important, however, to stay open and receptive to what Spirit has in mind for you.

In the open-ended imagination, you do not just ask for those things you already know exist but for those ideas that are not yet manifested into the material. This is the realm in which all new things are created. This is the realm of prosperity.

Some say, when working a manifestation, “This or something better.”

How are you clothing your prosperity: with lack or abundance? Conditioned or open-ended?

Think about it….

We are created in the image of the Divine and we have the power to create mental images that then can be brought into the physical plane. This does take focus plus the support of the power of faith, wisdom and understanding. Together these powers can create prosperity in the form of peace, joy, health, love, the new heaven on earth.

Unfortunately, we learn to function in our dis-function.  We fall into the thoughts of others, the Collective Consciousness we discussed last week.

Most people become their thoughts – they do not HAVE thoughts and feelings; the thoughts and feelings have them.

Check yourself…where have your thoughts been?  Where are they now?

Probably where is Sandy taking this???

Some say we have NO imagination!  No, that’s not it.  We are not using our imagination, 96% of our lives are ruled by the subconscious.

Dr. Phineas P. Quimby, one of the earliest proponents of New Thought said, “When people say, ‘It’s all your imagination.’ They seem to mean it is nothing. On the contrary, imagination is probably the most powerful faculty of the human mind and thousands of practical men today know that what the mind images becomes experience and fact.”

How often have you heard that statement; It’s all your imagination?

And even Professor Dumbledore answered Harry, when he asked, “Is this real or is it all in my head,” by saying, “Of course it’s in your head, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

We never out grow our imagination.  But we do stifle it.  We think we need to conform.  And maybe, in some ways and places, we do.

But Henry David Thoreau reminds us, “We are constantly invited to be who we are.”

So, BE that person.  As long as you are not hurting yourself or another being, BE.

“Just be yourself.  Let people see the real, imperfect, flawed, quirky, weird, beautiful, magical person that you are here to be.”

James Dillet Freeman reminds us, “It is our imagination that gives us the hope of being more than what we seem to be. Imagination is the creative faculty of mind, and many of the most useful, productive, and extraordinary works in the world of us human beings begin as works of imagination.”

1. Buckminster Fuller said, “Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren’t any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person. ”

So, try to pray with images and not just words. Even in our prayers, sometimes words just do not convey what it is we want to convey. Try praying in images and leave the words out. Pray thanksgiving.  Pray peace. Do these in images.

When in a challenging situation, visualize it in peace, resolved for the best of all concerned.

Remember imagination is a universal language. A picture is worth a thousand words. Show God you desire true prosperity through your imagination.

Meditation –

Would you like to develop your power of imagination more? Try these steps and affirmations:

Cleanse-clear away the picture on your mind’s screen that you no longer want. Replace it with something you really want. Affirm: I erase all false images from the screen of my mind.

Consideration-reflect on images that show you the way you want to look and be. Affirm: I reflect on pictures in keeping with my spiritual goals.

Discriminate-old thought and pictures may return. Be discriminate about what you give “free rent” in your head. Affirm: with God’s power, I can sort out the good and discard the false images from my mind.

Observation-the more good you see and incorporate into your life the more that will come. Take time to give thanks for what is and to savor the good around you. Affirm: I observe God’s good everywhere.

Behold-what we persistently behold we manifest. Affirm: I behold the Christ in myself and in others.

Discernment-prayerful time on what is mine to do or have. Affirm: I am open and receptive to spiritual insights from God.

Vision-see through the eyes of spirit. Affirm: My eye is single to the good.