Swirling around in the light

Wrestling with angels, demons, questions, whatever......

I've always pictured the wrestling with the questions in some way where I was wrestling with an angel, a physical being of some sort with wings and everything, because this is part of what we do as theologians. I feel like I've always heard of it, and now I really like it, because it feels like something I've always done - just asking myself a series of questions until perceptions shift or change or come back to where they were in the first place. Oh the wrestling with questions of this class is truly what has taken me to the next level of my own personal spiritual evolution.

So do you allow hands on healing at your church?

It's sorta funny to me, because I grew up in Unity, and so, the parts of my childhood Unity always feel like what Unity really "is". One thing we did every year was go to a family retreat in the mountains of North Carolina and there was a variety of hands on healing services offered, and therefore, this must be a part of what Unity really is. 

So where does the light come from? Where does the energy come to?

For most of my life, in meditation, I have felt energy moving in and through my hands. I can feel energy off of objects and in the energy in rooms. With that, I have "sent" prayers through me, and never had I really thought of that as anything different. If energy moves through my hands, of course we could have hands on healing because to me, that's just apart of what we are apart of.

Oooh no, channeling?

This could not possibly be the fear people have of channeling, so I think, because the energy is coming from a divine source. It's not weird words from some ancient and wise being far away. This is the essense of God. But I could see how it can be seen as channeling, until I think of meditations of light.

But what about meditations of light? Light comes through you...

Something I have always defined as super Unity (again because we did it in my child hood) is meditations of light. So, the idea goes something like this, we are all meditating and then we take the love, light, energy, whatever, from our hearts, connect it together, send it out to our city, state, country, world, universe, etc. So, if hands on healing, is energy moving through your hands, how is this medtiation any different?

It's all the same to me... energy of hands and energy/light moving through us...

That is really how I see it, that this is all the same, same energy, same love, same light. When hands on healing is happening, we are asking for the healing love of God to move through us, and heal someone else. Yes, this could happen directly, but sometimes we are conduits for energy. I can see how each person could ask for it directly, but sometimes using this light, this peace, this joy, through someone who may be a more willing conduit than I can be during a time of healing... I can accept that. I can "buy" that. Far beyond either of these ideas, when I really do think of this, what I really think of is the fact that, it's worked for me and lots of other people that I know, and the proof is "in the pudding" so to speak. If this is effective and I have "felt" the healing energy move through me, then who's to say why it works. But it has been very effective, and this has been a good reason for me to decide that when I have a church, I would allow hands on healing, because I do feel like it fits with who we are.

Can you have a good life without God? Oh and what is a good life?

What is a good life?

For awhile I lived in New York City, and sometimes I would walk around the city itself, just in such complete judgment of it. It was gross, it was stinky, it smelled like urine and beer, and other gross things. It had graffiti. Parts of it were dangerous but just so many parts of it were gross. I remember once talking to people that lived there - this was their home. They weren't waiting for something that I would love - the beautiful coasts of Hawaii, the scenic mountains - this and only this - the city that I called stinky and gross, was their favorite place. I think a lot about where we "go" when we die, and in many ways I think that we go to some version of the world that we live in. I would say if that's the case, there are millions of people who go to the stinky parts of New York City. I've seen them live in their heaven on earth, and somehow the concrete jungle in that moment transcends what you see on the surface the happy life that you first arrive. 

Which still doesn't define a good life...

Because it's hard to define what is a good life. I tend to believe that having a good life is just having enough resources to have enough food and housing for your family - but if you define it that way - jail would also be a good life.  Sometimes people define this life so vaguely and so far away that no one would really be able to have it. It's also easy to see that someone else has the good life that you want - when you see them living it. 

I met a girl once who said the happiest time that she ever had was being homeless in the summer in New York City. She would go back and do it again in a "heartbeat". She had no home and had inconsistent access to food and yet the life that she had there was her favorite life. It was her heaven on earth. To her it was the good life. 

So do you need God to have a good life?

Aaah the God question, always something that comes out in the theological blog. You could cite examples of plenty of people who never had God in their life and had a good life. By that ideal you could probably even find hundreds of people who had what most people would consider a great life, the best of everything, great food, resources, and friends. 

Even with the best of everything in your life without God, without some kind of spiritual basis, life could always be just a little bit better. Each person who lives good lives without God - or without a centered spiritual basis. Just to think of all the practices that are related to spirituality and God - including just taking centering breathes. If you are having the best life on earth, it could always be better some kind of spiritual practice. I am driven by this ideal the ideal that giving spiritual practices, even just being the person that is my own ministry, the ministry of my prescence, makes the people that I encounter and the world that I live in, a much better place.

Signs signs everywhere signs

What gives me the right to do ministry?

What doesn't give me the right? If this is God's business, is he really so booked up that I can't squeeze in? There have been many hours of my life that this thought process has run through me, but the thing is, God needs me more than I need God. In a manner of speaking, and that manner would be, the God business. It's easy for me to look at the many gifts that I have been given and see a clear trajectory towards ministry. I am no kinds of a holy woman who just tries to state that I don't need God or any such nonsense, but I do think that in terms of how churches seem to be falling apart, doesn't God need more advocates, more voices, versus less? So, going by that kind of a cost benefit analysis, God needs me more than I need God.

There have always been a series of qualities I've experienced that have made me feel that I have the right to do ministry. In the church that I grew up in, which is Unity (although recently I did have my hand down when Dr. Tom asked if I was second generation Unity, which I am, because, as per typical Unity seminary and general Unity experience dictates - we make fun of or generally demean those who grew up in Unity). In any case, the church of my childhood certainly states that just by deciding that I am going to do ministry, I have the right for it.

I have had a number of spiritual experiences that have lead me here. Lead me to the feeling of awe and intensity to my certainity of ministry. As I practice my full time ministry now, and watch the lives of teenagers and adult transform using these principles around me, I am certain that I am in the right place. I feel at the end of the day what gives me the right is the fact that I do this work, do a great job at it, and enjoy it. 

Intelligent Design and Spiritual Evolution

Last week in class Dr. Tom asked a question that I find really intriguing which is - are we evolving towards something or are we evolving as a result of stimulus in our enviornment?

I was an outdoor enviornmental educator at one point in my life, and I learned a few things about evolution. One points clearly to the idea that we are really only evolving as a result of stimulus in our envionrment. We have curly hair for example, because we needed to be able to survive cold weather, and curls will hold heat better. We have wisdom teeth because our ansestors didn't have good dental hygene and they lost teeth, so now we have a few extra as a result.

That said, I think of squirrels. Squirrels have a bad memory, and they will only remember, on average, about twenty five percent of the nuts that they hide. The other seventy five percent will become trees. So when you look at that, you realize that squirrels aren't forgetting as a result of something in their enviornment, but there is something bigger at play.

With all of this, I point to intelligent design. In science, that's the idea that there is something bigger that has designed all of this and put everything together. You could almost call it a science God. So, to think of squirrels this way, this is apart of intelligent design. They aren't forgetting the nuts as a result of something in their environment, they are forgetting because this is the design of something greater, something bigger than the squirrels.

I think of our own personal spiritual evolution in this manner. While I may be evolving as a response to something in my enviornment, I believe all of that is pushing me to a bigger and greater evolution. I can see personally how my own spiritual evolution has been in response to stimulus in my enviornment, but also, it has been moving me towards something greater. Something I can't see where I am at, but I feel as I move forward.

Soundtrack for this week

http://youtu.be/7nVr4Ys8zKM

I keep thinking we should be hearing this song at school, if we keep hearing Joan Osbourne's song.

Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode 

Your own

personal

Jesus

Someone who hears your prayers

Someone who cares......

The ministry of your presence -- a portrait of Christology

I met a woman in Houston, who explained a concept that I love - the ministry of your prescence. She spoke of the idea that being around someone, being in their presence was it's own type of ministry. She was a kind woman who took care of babies at the church there, and I remember her explaining this idea as we shared a hug. Her presence was perfect for babies, her sweet ministry of kindness and love, was evident even without words.

This concept becomes more evident when we think about Jesus of Nazareth.  Who would he be without his sense of Christ. What would his prescence be like to be around? Is the ministry of his presence as the Christ so overwhelming that it would bring tears to your ideas? Would this ministry of his presence as Christ be so obvious that we can't seperate it?

I think about two situations of Jesus when I think about him being the Christ or not the Christ. One I think about is him with the woman at the well. She touched him and he said "your faith has made you well". But her faith in what? In her own Christ? Or in this ministry of his presence? I would argue it's the latter truly. So can there really be a Jesus without this part of himself - can we reallly seperate Jesus from the Christ?

The other situation I think about in this scenario is when Jesus turns the water into wine. At one point, his Mother was like (pardon my modern day paraphrase) "come on Jesus, just go ahead and do this". Which means he probably performed many miracles at home, which means that's his Christhood showing and shining.

Seperation of the two seems impossible and at very least improbable. We are living in a fantasy world to think of the idea of seperating the Christ and Jesus - because if there was no Jesus the Christ, the stories about his presence, his Christ presence, would cease to exist entirely.  

Prayer and the Fidelity Arrow

I worked for a time for a popular Unity prayer line and learned a few things about the way that we "do" prayer. One thing that was obvious from the beginning was that we pray "from" God and not "to" God. That said, one of my favorite prayers that we used was like this:

The Spirit of The Lord goes before you and makes your way easy and successful. 

The concept of this always reminded me of the Fidelity commericial. In this commericial for financial planning, the green arrow which created a line would just "show up" going before the person, showing them the right way. This God outside of ourselves, moving forward like a green arrow, fixing things prior to our arrival, feels oddly like a fairy tale. There's a magical God outside of ourselves going ahead of us, which assumes that God is not only an outside entitiy, but an outside entity that lives in the future, knows what we are going to do, and also, this entity can change the way things are going to be in our favor. When you are praying for success and in this case, when you really need a win, there's nothing more comforting than feeling like something will go before you and fix everything. 

Shall we pray to God's Presence and Power in the Cosmos, opening ourselves to the infilling of Spirit? Or Shall we center on the Spirit within, allowing it to emerge?

We are Unity after all, so we ask ourselves - how would Myrtle do this? Which one did she do? When you consider her, sitting in her chair, with a picture of Jesus in the other chair, the answer does seem to be that she prayed to God and certainly not from God. But the evolution of her consciousness includes the fact that she prayed from the space of God over time. "I am a child of God and do not inherit sickness" was her affirmation and being a child of God does imply that in time she would become a God. Kittens become cats when they grow up, and would it be any different for children of God? Is this not praying from the essense of the divinity that she is?

Of all of the ways that we look at prayer, I can't say with any great certainity that I would completely leave out the idea that we don't pray to the prescence in the cosmos. I may have all of the parts of God, but I have never created a planet. I have not nor do I know any other humans who have created a seperate species of beings that can live outside themselves. (Children not included.) Sometimes, in certain situations, it is nice to think that there is a presence so much greater than myself that I can give my now seemingly insigifigant problem in the face of the cosmos. If God is all powerful and all present, can't I turn over my challenges to this part of myself?  Some people have great success with this method of prayer, of praying to this being.

Theological questions tend to bring up more questions. Growing up Unity, I do remember certain points in my growing up years that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I could feel something completely, visualize it, I could create whatever "it" was. The magic side of focusing on that Spirit within can mean that you have great material success.  When we pray, we are trying to touch the Absolute. We are taking something grand and using it to create the life that we desire. We are molding the world we live in with the very substance of the Divine. Sometimes this requires using the idea of a great big God with skin on. Sometimes it means going within and living from that space. If both work for different people at different times, we have to accept that the answer isn't as simple as one or the other. Sometimes it's nice to think of a God that goes before you, like the Fidelity arrow, fixing everything along the way, and it is good be the one fixing everything, to be that empowered, as children of God, we are in training apparently, to be the "real thing". 

Embracing the negativity bias

A friend of mine recently was talking about a concept of a negativity bias. Instead of noticing that we have at a lake with a beautiful view, we are trained to stay safe, and so we notice the crocidile first.  This is an intelligent design - we are trained to think about the objects in our world that could create a risk of our own survival. In Unity there is a tendency to shy away from anything negative because of Law of Attraction. If thoughts held in mind produce after your kind, paying attention to your thoughts becomes an important task.  With the concept of a bias towards being negative, and the general idea that we would only want to create positive things, how do we move forward without beating ourselves up when the evolutionary safeguard pulls our consciousness into negative thoughts? Could this be the reason that positive thinkers often times are seen as unrealistic? 

One possible idea in all of this moving forward is this: that instead of using the negativity bias to create better, we attempt to ignore, downplay, or pretend it doesn't matter. Often times this can create the opposite of it's intention - by trying to avoid our tendency to the negative, we focus on it more, thereby giving it more power. This is where life becomes sticky and confusing - we avoid a natural tendency, and create through this avoidance. 

Charles Fillmore says, "Thinking PLUS feeling equals demonstration". The avoidance of negative feelings creates more negativity, because a pattern is created whereby we use our energy to create MORE negative feelings and situations into our lives. This is almost an elmentary Unity mistake - a rookie mistake if you will - of thinking that the way to create the life we want is to pretend it's the only thing that exists. 

The way to move forward is to use the negativity bias. In the movie Princess Bride, when Wesley and Buttercup are reunited, they end up in a swamp. The swamp has a few dangers, and because of that, they figure out the way to work around them. If we learn to work with our enviornment, with everything that is going on, we have a better chance of really creating the life that we want. 

Reflections of the Experience of Unity from a Home-Grown Native

Are you a refugee, emigrant, or home-grown native?

I am a home-grown native. I have the background of being raised in Unity and the more unique quality is - that I have stuck with Unity as my faith since my childhood. Unity is a faith of people who primarily find Unity later in life (which happened for my Mother) so it is a faith of personal choice. This is what makes growing up in Unity tricky - if you grew up in this faith - how did you choose it? One common thread of Unity people is talking about how they found this "best kept secret" and bonding over the fascinating ways that synchronicity brought them to the very place they are seeking. When you grow up in this faith, you don't have that tie, per se, because it is the faith you inherited. 

I choose this path - the path of Unity at age thirteen at a Youth Of Unity rally in Florida. This was a weekend for high school students which is led by the teens themselves. I remember how spiritual experience of being so far away from home church where I intellectually knew all of the right answers to being at a place of having a spiritual experience - this was the experience of Unity. I choose this path at the end of the weekend, when I was at closing circle, I remember walking to it, and experiencing heaven on earth. I was in my peers completely accepted - pure acceptance and love from teenagers is nearly unheard of for any heavy girl in America. This love and acceptance taught me more about what Unity really is - I really experienced the presence of God in that moment. 

A closing circle from a Youth Of Unity event at Unity of Fairfax, Virginia

An intellectual experience of Truth is common for home-grown natives - and often times - this is why they leave Unity. Oftentimes people who are responsible for teaching Unity Sunday school don't have a lot of Unity experience (they are either emigrants or refugees). I was taught as a child all kinds of things which are debatable if they are Unity or not. There would be times where I was having to be able to explain in the easiest way to write affirmations, or the best way to say prayers, or what the right answer was, was more important than just experiencing what Unity has to offer. We simplify Unity for children and sometimes the way that is done renders it impotent in it's working power. Youth of Unity provided an opportunity for me to experience Unity.

I worked with a woman once who was very traditional Christian theology. I was nervous about sharing my Unity faith with her - I grew up in the Bible Belt and it was generally a bad thing in my childhood to talk about going to Unity with people who were traditionally Christian. Somehow the question came up "What did you do on Sunday?" I told her I attended Unity, which I was scared to say. She told me a story about a friend of hers who had a near death experience. In the experience, she went to "heaven" and the hallway (which had a typical white hallway) had many doors. Each door had a symbol of faith on it. You picked the door you went through, but everybody ended up in the same room. I know there are differences in faith, vast differences and allowing ourselves the opportunity to be real with those is important, but I like that idea. I like the idea that in the end, we all end up in the same happy place. I envision that I will have the same feelings of joy and peace that I have at a closing circle of an event, where all of the energy that is the very essense of the Divine moves through me, in me, as me.

From a new perspective, divinity of all things become obvious

Once upon a mystic graffiti 

After a week of spiritual education at Unity of Palo Alto, California, I was open and experiencing an spiritual awakening. It happened on the trip home, I was a passenger in a car, and we passed a truck on the freeway that had graffiti on it. In the enlightened state of awareness, I knew that everything, even if I had previously judged it otherwise, was in fact, divine. I felt an overwhelming sense that everything, each and every part of the graffiti on a truck on a random Los Angeles freeway, had a purpose and a reason to be there. At that moment, I felt aligned to each part of the universe. I had an awareness that everywhere I was at, I was at that place at the right time for a reason. 

Each of the paint here seems so random, but it is apart of a greater pattern of divinity. 

Is everything divine?

Yes, everything is divine. We are divine. Each piece of the physical universe that we interact with is exactly where it is supposed to be. There is nothing that could happen in the "wrong" way. This concept is the one that I struggle with when I think of people hurting. I have a great sense of compassion. Everything is divine isn't just a thought I throw around for the fun of it. When I am most aligned with the God of my being, I experience a world that is divine. For me it feels almost like a heightened state of awareness and sometimes I experience these as almost glimpses to what is always possible: living in a state of full integration with the essence of the God of my being.

If everything is divine - what is divinity? How can anything be divine if everything is divine?

The idea here is that sometimes if too many "things" are the same "thing" - it lessens the value of that "thing". Divinity is the very substance of the universe, I believe in a higher intelligence that runs through each part of the universe that is apart of a divine pattern. This idea of a limited divinity also speaks to a concept that divinity is something "over there". I don't know what each atom in the universe is made of, but the source of it I know for sure - this is the same divine source that I am made of. I do not think that divinity is like the concept of a stock - that there could be less of it and therefore it would be something there could be more of or less of. Awareness allows the opportunity for us to filter our experience of and with the divine. 

How could possibly everything be divine?

It is easy when you are asking this question to point to the many obvious things in the universe that aren't divine. There is a nearly in-exhaustive treasure trove of "bad things" to rule out the concept that everything is divine. From the personal internal self doubting voices in our minds to a garden variety of pain and death and wild unfairness in the world creates easy evidence about a lack of divinity. My knowing of the divinity comes from facing horrific situations that created a faith rooted in the certainty of my divinity and the divine substance in all of the universe. Through awareness of my divinity I am able to overcome anything. Our divinity, our light is present and active in everything and constantly evolving into a greater expression of this divinity. 

Embedded Theology Pre-Class Assignment

            Growing up in Unity, it can sometimes be a challenge for me to distinguish my embedded theology because many of the theological ideals that I can think of are things that I did learn as a child. There is no great divide for these concepts which is more common for people in Unity. Looking at myself objectively I can narrow down my embedded theology into two concepts: Jesus theology and positive theology. That said, each part of my theology has some version of Unity ideals within them, because I learned most of my spiritual concepts at Unity as a child.

            I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and while I grew up in Unity, most of my family and nearly everyone I grew up around was Southern Baptist, or at very least, a garden variety traditional Christian. I believe that Jesus is a person version of God. I believe that Jesus is the great example. Jesus had a great presence that transformed lives because of the level of his consciousness. His presence of love is what changed the world that we live in. This consciousness of love transformed and healed the world because of the energy the consciousness that Jesus brought forth. Sometimes I find that I have contradicting beliefs because I believe he was a virgin, but part of me beliefs that he was married or romantically involved with Mary Magdalene. Jesus had a relationship with time and space that was beyond the physical realm, which is how I felt about the Loaves and Fishes story even as a child. I also have an embedded through process that I could be similar to Jesus, which is the embedded version of the Christ within philosophy. 

            The rest of the theology that I found embedded within me was what I labeled as positive theology. The rest of my theological ideals were some version of what I was taught in Sunday school that I label as positive. I was taught that my thoughts are powerful and create my reality. I believe that what we think we create and therefore I could literally make anything happen. I believe that illness is an option which can be less than compassionate at times. I believe that we are always creating our own reality. I believe we can re-create nearly anything that has happened and any experience can have a positive spin which can help us have a happier life.

            My embedded theology has strong ties to Unity, which makes looking at it a challenge. That said, a childhood belief of Unity has evolved by continuing a life of our great faith.