Kathy Smith explores the quotes from Experience Your Perfect Soul and shares from her contemplation of them.
4-30-17 Weekly Gathering: Trust is its own reward
Topic: “Trust is its own reward”
Rev. Carrie Christiansen discussed how learning to trust has been a mystical experience for her.
The reading was Trust in the Creator from Michael Berg’s book,The Way: Using the Wisdom of Kabbalah for Spiritual Transformation and Fulfillment. Her reader was Rev. Helen Avery.
Tips from Regina ~ Lesson 105, God's peace and joy are mine
Today’s workbook lesson says, “A major learning goal this course has set is to reverse your view of giving, so you can receive. For giving has become a source of fear, and so you would avoid the only means by which you can receive.”
There is a divine law by which the universe operates. We introduced this basics of this law to the Gentle Healing Group when we read NTI Ephesians and NTI Colossians. In short, the law is this:
What you give, you receive.
Jesus put it this way in the New Testament:
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” ~ Luke 6:38
Divine law does not discern for you. It does not look at what you are giving and decide that you would rather receive something else. It returns to you exactly what you give.
Today’s workbook lesson is pointing out that because of divine law, you cannot withhold happiness from others and know happiness.
In actuality, you cannot withhold happiness from others. They will receive what they give. However, as an example, if spitefulness is in your mind, you will feel wounded or attacked by what others say or do.
Remember: What I think, I see. What I see, I experience. What I experience, I think.
Today’s workbook lesson asks you to think of “those brothers who have been denied by you the peace and joy that are their right under the equal laws of God” and tell each one “My brother, peace and joy I offer you.”
This is a good opportunity to also practice the Loving All Method. What is your grievance? Can you look at it in your mind now and love it? Accept it? Emotionally allow it? It would be good practice to do so, and then say, “My brother, peace and joy I offer you.”
Another suggestion: If you contemplate today’s lesson alongside the Loving All Method, you may see the great benefit in making the Loving All Method a way of life
April 30, 2017 Daily Quote
“If you want to ask a teacher, ask yourself and wait for the answer in silence.” Byron Katie
Tips from Regina ~ Lesson 104, I seek but what belongs to me in truth
This week we are looking deeply at happiness. I’ve said that happiness is natural, and when we are not happy it is because we decided we wanted something else. We judged a circumstance as something that should not be, and we decided we want it to be different.
Right now I sit in bed in Branson, Missouri. In about 90 minutes I will take my suitcases, go out to my car and drive to Springfield, Missouri for a gathering. It is storming outside. There is heavy rain and lightening. It’s been this way for hours. If there isn’t a break in the weather, I will get soaked when I leave. I have no umbrella, no raincoat and my car is parked far enough from the front door that remaining dry is an impossibility in the heavy rain. Once I am in the car, I will drive nearly an hour in the weather to the gathering I am to teach today. It’s possible some people will not come because of the weather. At least one person has already cancelled. I might have heard hail last night. I could go outside today and find my car has hail damage.
Should I choose to be unhappy? Will my unhappiness get me what I want? Heck, what do I want? Do I want sunshine and bird’s singing and lots of people at the gathering? Maybe I at least want dry clothes. Can’t I at least have a break in the weather when I carry my luggage out to the car? If God loves me, I will at least get that, right?
This is an example of the kind of thinking people choose everyday, probably multiple times everyday. “I want this!” our mind screams, and if it isn’t given we are unhappy.
“I want things my way,” but maybe the trees, bushes and flowers want rain. Maybe the thunder wants to roar. Maybe the storm clouds want to dance in the sky like native Americans around a drum circle. Maybe, just maybe, if I look at today with a little bit of openness, I will enjoy this weather powwow.
Today’s lesson tells us there must “be a place made ready to receive His gifts. They are not welcomed gladly by a mind that has instead received the gifts it made where His belong, as substitutes for them.”
We prepare the place for happiness when we let go of wanting what isn’t present. If it isn’t present, it isn’t a present. ~ha ha~ That’s just a silly play on words that just came to me. Get it? If it isn’t present (here), it isn’t a present (gift).
But seriously … It’s okay to want what’s here. Wanting what is here will never bring us unhappiness. If the sun is shining, love the sunny day. That is okay! But if the rain is pouring, love the rain. If you are wet, love being wet. If you have no money, love having no money. If you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, love not knowing what is going to happen tomorrow. The truth is, none of us really know that anyway. We only imagine we know.
Happiness isn’t really a choice. Unhappiness is a choice. If we stop choosing to be unhappy by wanting something that isn’t present, we will find more gifts here now than we can count, and happiness is one of them.
This life as this person is a temporary experience, like a novel or a movie. What’s happening in your scene now? Enjoy it! Love the temporary. Also take time to notice, you aren’t the temporary. The more you see that you aren’t the temporary, the more you relax, and the temporary can be loved just as it is now
Tips from Regina ~ Lesson 103, God, being Love, is also happiness.
Today’s workbook lesson begins with this:
“Happiness is an attribute of love. … Yet can the mind deny that this is so, believing there are gaps in love where sin can enter, bringing pain instead of joy. This strange bellef would limit happiness by redefining love as limited, and introducing opposition in what has no limit and no opposite.”
“Sin” is that which should not be. It is impossible to be happy with something if we judge that it should not be. This judgment, which is the fundamental judgment and the root of all judgments, is what we need to learn to let go of. There isn’t one circumstance that we can withhold from our love, our happiness, our forgiveness, because if there is any circumstance that we withhold from love, we have deemed that to be separate from love. Metaphysically, we withhold healing from anything that we withhold love from. We also withhold healing from ourselves in the same instant.
The decision not to love something, not to be happy with something, not to forgive something, is the cause of all suffering everywhere in the world.
This week as you read the Loving All Method, contemplate it deeply. Look at those situations that you want to withhold from love, realize those are situations that you’d like to see healed, and then remember that love is the only healing power. We cannot guarantee that a specific situation will be healed by your love, because many others may still hold judgments against it, but we can guarantee that your love will heal something. Not least of all, your love will heal you. We can also guarantee that your love will never add to a problem anywhere. When you love, you subtract from problems; you do not add to them.
The Loving All Method is generous. It gives you options. If you find you cannot love something, you can at least accept it. If you find you cannot even accept it, you can at least emotionally allow it. “Emotionally allow” is the same as Rest, Accept and Trust with the feelings you have about it.
Read today’s lesson again, and notice how clearly it points to the Loving All Method as an important practice in accepting truth. If love is all there is, if God is all there is, then happiness is all we experience. If we do not experience happiness, we have defined something as sin. Pause, look at it. Notice you have decided that should not be, and then practice the Loving All Method with it. Love it if you can. Accept it if that is the best you can do. Emotionally allow it if love or acceptance is too much of a stretch for you now.
Gotta go. Dad is calling me to breakfast. Gotta love it
April 29, 2017 Daily Quote
“When you fight against something you make it far more powerful than it is without your resistance. You create its power. In fact, it does not exist without that resistance and fight.” A still mind is a world at peace. Peace in, peace out.” Rita Friedman
April 28, 2017 Daily Quote
“You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” James Allen
Appendix to Week 16 Homework ~ The Loving All Method Audio
During the Gentle Healing Discussion Group this Thursday, Ken Gibson read the Loving All Method from Michael Langford’s book, The Direct Means to Eternal Bliss.
Tips from Regina ~ Lesson 102, I share God's Will for happiness for me
Today’s workbook lesson tells us that we think pain and suffering buy us something, something that we want. If we are not perfectly happy, this belief is in our mind. It may not seem that way. It could even feel offensive if someone tells us that we are unhappy because we think unhappiness will get us something that we want, but it’s true.
One example: When we are unhappy with the government or its policies, we think enough unhappiness like ours will generate the change we want to see.
Some of you may have thought, “Well, yea!” when you read that. There might even be a fear that if you aren’t unhappy, the change you want will never happen.
This belief that unhappiness will get us what we want is a deeply held belief, and it is completely screwed up. The only thing this belief does is keep us from being happy when we could be happy. Metaphysically, that’s more sinister than it may sound since our energy goes out and paints the world we see.
If you want the world to be a happier more secure place, offer it a happier more secure person. Give what you want to see by being what you want to see.
In Chapter 15 of “The Untethered Soul,” Michael Singer wrote:
“[Unconditional happiness] leads you to absolute transcendence because any part of your being that would add a condition to your commitment to happiness has to go. … You have to transcend the personal, and as you do, you will naturally awaken to the higher aspects of your being.”
Happiness is the way to contribute to a better world, and happiness is the path to enlightenment. If you are not choosing to be happy now, there must be something else that you think you want. What is it?
Don’t simply read this and say, “Uh-huh,” or click Like. Read this and look. Whenever you are not happy, you think you can get something from not being happy. What is it that you think unhappiness will get you?
Will people start acting the way you want them to act?
Will people give you attention that you want?
Will God grant your wishes like a genie?
Will your thoughts quit coming?
Will you quit making mistakes?
Will your health get better?
Will someone love you?
Just what do you think you have to gain by being unhappy? What is the hidden desire that unhappiness is chartered with resolving? AND can you see that it is not your true desire? Are you willing to let it go, and simply be happy ???
Be happy even if people act differently than you would have them act. Be happy even if you don’t get attention from others. Be happy even if your wishes are not granted. Be happy even if the same thoughts keep coming in your mind. Be happy even if you make mistakes. Be happy even if the body isn’t healthy. Be happy even if someone chooses not to love you.
Do you share God’s Will for your happiness? Are you ready?
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