Principle #5

 

We’ve come to the end of our series on the fundamental Unity principles.  We covered the first 4, let’s review…

Principle One: There is only one Presence and one Power active as the universe and

as my life, God the Good. God is all power, all knowledge and everywhere present.  God is not out there somewhere, but in us and around us. (Take that in and truly feel it)

 

Principle Two: Our essence is of God; therefore, we are inherently good. This God

essence, called the Christ, was fully expressed in Jesus. We are not born into sin, but

into blessing. Jesus came not to be an exception, but to be an example to us all. (Take that in and truly feel it)

 

Principle Three: We are co-creators with God, creating reality through thoughts

held in mind. We recognized this as the Law of Mind Action – Our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs have the power to create our reality. In other words, how we see our experience, and what we make our experiences mean, create our reality. (Take that in and truly feel it)

 

Last week we looked at, and experienced, the Fourth Principle: Through prayer and

meditation, we align our heart-mind with God.

When we take the time to get quiet, to go within and connect with our true

essence, that of Spirit, we align our hearts and minds with the One Mind and One

Heart, God. Denials and affirmations are tools we use. (Take that in and truly feel it)

 

Throughout this series, we’ve looked every week at how to live the Truth we know

through our thoughts, words and actions.

 

We saw that to live the first principle is to become grateful for whatever appears in

our lives, to trust that it truly is all good; to know as we learned in Romans 8:28 that

everything is working together for good for those that love God, and work according

to God’s purpose.

 

To live the second principle is to recognize our own innate goodness, and the

goodness of others, and to act accordingly. This means to not only see the best in

each other, but to expect the best from one another…. to truly behold the Christ in

everyone we meet. We saw that practicing the second principle is to become more

loving, more forgiving, more compassionate, more interested in the awe and

goodness around us than in whatever else is showing up.

 

Using the first and second principles as a foundation for practicing the third principle,

we saw that living it requires us to examine our most closely held thoughts, beliefs

and opinions, and to become willing to let go of those that don’t fully support us in

showing up as our true wonderfulness. The third principle teaches us that we live

from the inside… out.  We are creating our world through those thoughts and beliefs.

 

Last week, we practiced the fourth principle in the service, using Unity’s five step

prayer process: Relax, Concentrate, Meditate, Realize and Give Thanks. As with all

the principles, it’s important that we live this practice daily. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, co-founders of the Unity movement, knew this to be true and spent hours every day in prayer and meditation. Still at Unity Village, the staffs schedule regular prayer times throughout the day. And of course Silent Unity is our 24 hour a day prayer ministry.

Prayer is at the heart of our Unity message and movement.

 

SO we come to Principle 5 – Knowledge of these spiritual principles is not enough. We must live them.  Or, it is not enough to know the Truth; we must put that Truth into action in our lives. Or as we like to say, Put feet to your prayers.

You have probably seen this quote on Facebook, though I do not know who wrote it, but I love it just the same; “Spirituality must be lived, not just studied.  All the books in the world will not help us if we do not live what we have learned.”

The Truth you know is the Truth you use. Otherwise, it is only theory and has no power to change your life. We must live the Truth we know. This principle frees us from inertia and stuck-ness. It frees us from pain, caused by the split we feel, between what we believe, and how we can behave. It frees us to act on our beliefs and live the rich fulfilled life that God has intended for us from the very beginning.

 

We talk a lot about truth in Unity, as evidenced by the Fifth Principle. We talk about

“truth principles” and refer to ourselves as “truth students.” We talk about capital “T”

truth and little “t” truth. We consider Lessons in Truth to be one of our foundational

texts, and become more than a little offended when someone, anyone, questions

“our truth.”

I mean, don’t we love our truth and don’t we always tell the truth?

 

Well, no, not really. We tell our perceptions of the truth, or we share our opinions

about what happened, but very frequently, this isn’t actually the truth. It’s not that

we’re deliberately not telling the truth, it’s just that we see people and things through

our filters, our history and our perception of what’s happened. That old ‘domestication’ keep showing up.  To tell the truth, literally, is to tell what has happened, or not happened, in physical reality, regardless of how we feel about it.  And we are responsible for how we act no matter how we feel.

 

So what does it mean to truly live the fifth principle? It means that through our thoughts, words and actions, we are willing to live the Truth we say we know.

As a community, what are these truths that we say we know?  First, we say we know the five principles, and are committed to practicing those principles in our daily lives.

Motivational speaker and author, Jim Rohn has said; “Some things you have to do every day. Eating seven apples on Saturday night instead of one a day just isn’t going to get the job done.”

People can only see what is in your heart through your actions.  That’s the Truth you know.  Imagine there is a bank account that credits your account each morning with $86, 400.  It carries over no balance from day to day.  Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day.  What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course?

Each of us has such a bank.  Its name is time. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds.  Every night it writes off as lost whatever of this you have failed to invest to a good purpose.  It carries over no balance.  It allows no over-draft.  Each day it opens a new account for you.  Each night it burns the remains of the day.  If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours.  There is no drawing against ‘tomorrow.’ You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, love and success.  The clock is running.  Action is needed Make the most of it.

One of the greatest challenges in creating a joyful, peaceful and abundant life is taking responsibility for what you do and how you do it. Again, living your Truth. As long as you can blame someone else, be angry with someone else, point the finger at someone else, you are not taking responsibility for your life.

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” Jane Goodall.  IN other words, how you spend your seconds.

To merely abstain from wrong thinking is not enough, there must be active right thinking.  Thoughts create action, action creates habits, habits create character and character creates destiny. See how negative thoughts can change your life just as positive thoughts can?

Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?

 

 

James 2:14-18, tells us; What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds?

 

 

The common question we ask is, “Where did I meet God today? And where did I miss God?”