The Thing Itself! Revisited

This episode could also be called God's Nature is our Nature, which is, in fact, what our Centers for Spiritual Living Global Themes calls our topic for this week.

But I'm going old school today, and sticking with my original title.  I've done an episode on The Thing Itself before.  Last year, January 9, 2024.  You can find it HERE

Historically, in Centers for Spiritual Living, many Centers have done a review of the Introduction of the Science of Mind textbook. This episode interprets the first section into everyday language that you can use to apply in your every day life.

The Sections in the Introduction are titled:  The Think Itself, The Way It Works, What It Does and How to Use It.

I'll be following up this month with the other three sections.

I hope you enjoy it!

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Transcript

Welcome to Fearlessly Feral Living!  Broadcasting to you from the Woogie Ranch, out here in the back 40 of northwestern Nevada, where I’m a half hour away from the nearest gas station and grocery store! 

Our MISSION is to provide a strong and unshakeable inner foundation that works for long term successful living.

Our PURPOSE is to activate inner self awareness.

Our VISION is a world in which everyone lives wild and free.

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I want to begin my talk today by asking you to close your eyes if you are comfortable doing so.  Take a deep breath, and sink into that glorious god space.  Now, imagine, if you will, opening the Science of Mind textbook for the first time and seeing these words:

“We all look forward to the day when science and religion shall walk hand in hand through the visible to the invisible.”  

Imagine seeing these words: “to learn how to think is to learn how to live.”

And these words:  “the very air is vibrant with power.”

And these:  “Freedom is the birthright of every living soul.”

Imagine hearing our teaching called spiritual psychology.  If you are a lover of psychology like me, that will make your heart sing.

Imagine being told that all your thoughts are creative.  Imagine the possible initial fear of hearing that, coupled with the excitement of the power to create. The anticipation.

Imagine reading that divine nature is our essential, true nature.

As you bring yourself back out of these wonderful imaginings, I hope that, like me, you are experiencing gratitude, excitement, enthusiasm, and maybe just a tiny bit of apprehension at the vastness of our power that is possible if we only embrace this teaching.  If we can only move from intellectually thinking that we are a part of god and it is a part of us, and into the heart space of knowing it, of feeling it.  Of experiencing that vast glorious thing called oneness.

And right there, with the first section in the science of mind text, we bump up against generations of tradition and teachings that have told us we are separate from god.  And not only that, but that we also need an intermediary, such as a pastor, priest, or Jesus, to get to god.  And not only that, they have repeatedly indoctrinated us with the concept that if we do not believe all of this, we are going to hell.  And sometimes we are ostracized.

I can understand why sometimes this teaching might seem out of reach.  Impossible to embrace.  Difficult to learn. Especially if you were brought up in a traditional religion.  I was lucky.  I had no such qualms.  When I rediscovered this teaching, I was ready and quite hungry for it.  I had no such early indoctrination in my life.  My mother was an atheist who taught me fierce independence and my father became a SoM practitioner when I was six years old and a SoM minister when I was 21.  I only had glimpses of this teaching from him because I did not live with him full time, and when I did, he was usually on the road, playing trumpet.  But it was enough.  My first experience with the teaching that god is our nature, our divinity is automatic?  My dad gave me a book when I began asking serious life questions.  The book was called The Three Magic Words, by US Andersen.  I guess, at the time, it was one of the go to books for folks in our movement. Sort of like books by Eckhart Tolle or Brene Brown might be today.  My father told me that I couldn’t cheat and go to the back of the book to find the three magic words.  I had to read the entire book. I was a teenager at the time.  Of course I cheated.  The three magic words?  I am god. 

Yep.  Let that sink in a bit.  As far back as when I began to explore such things, I was told I was god.  

Imagine growing up with an atheist mother and a new thought father and being sent to live with a catholic family for a while when my mom needed a break.  Yeah. I was a bit confused.  Those Catholics tried to indoctrinate me.  None of thaat made any sense to me, even with my child mind.  But I did grow up conflicted. If so many people referred to god as something out there, and separate from us, how could it be wrong?  That still small voice within me kept at it.  I knew that traditional teaching was not for me.  But it was a journey to get to where I fully embraced the truth of who and what I was.

So yeah, by the time I came home to a church of religious science in my 40s to begin to study this teaching in earnest, I had no problem with this concept.

Even Jesus told us we were gods.  John chapter 10 verses 34-36: Have I not said you are gods?  John chapter 14 verse 20: "On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." 1 Corinthians 3:16 "Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?"

In Hinduism: "Atman is Brahman" (The Self is the Supreme Reality)

In Buddhism, there are sutras that teach that all sentient beings have the potential to attain Buddha hood.

In Islamic mysticism (Sufi): the essence of god permeates all creation.  Rumi is a well known Sufi poet who once said, “You are not a drop in the ocean.  You are the entire ocean in a drop.”

And in spite of this concept of oneness, that we are god and it is us, the resistance to it is powerful. I encounter people in this movement almost daily that refer to and think in terms of a god separate from them. I’ll just say this:  you will never hear me refer to god in the third person. And if you missed grammar class in school, that means you will never hear me refer to god as something out there that does things or wants things.  You won’t hear any of this god willing stuff from me. 

Because quite frankly I don’t like to limit myself like that.

What I want to share with you is that when we embrace the concept that we are one with god, that there is no separation, that divinity is our very nature, that we are each unique and individualized manifestations of spirt, and that freedom, peace, power and joy will be ours if we embrace this one thing – all of that is true.

So that’s part of that first section, that god’s nature is our nature. 

The other part of that first section deals with our thinking.

This teaching can be very simple. All we have to do is know with all of our heart and soul that we are one with god, and it with us, and then change one thing.  Our thinking.  

Simple but not easy.

I know folks who know what they are thinking and refuse to change it, thus remaining stuck in limitation. I know folks who couldn’t identify a feeling if it bit them on the rear, and some of those folks stubbornly maintain that self awareness is not a spiritual practice.

To learn how to think is to learn how to live.

We learn how to think through consistent and persistent use of the spiritual practice of personal self awareness.

We must not have a passive relationship with our thoughts. We have to know what we are thinking and feeling at any time of day.  We have to be able to actively access that knowledge at anytime, and to then be able to ascertain whether or not what we are thinking is limiting us or enlarging us, and if it is limiting us, we have to be able to change those thoughts and keep them changed.

A good self awareness practice is essential to learning how to think.  I’m not sure why we never taught that self awareness was a spiritual practice, but I’m glad we are teaching it now.  I do a self awareness practice every day.  I’ve been doing a self awareness practice for so many years that it is pretty much my default now, although in times of stress or fear, I go back to my old default, which was total shutdown, unable to feel a thing.  I’m just grateful I’ve been doing self awareness as a spiritual practice for long enough that now, when I shut down, I usually become aware of it sooner rather than later, and then I once again change my thinking and open up again.

So we’ve got this thing, this stuff that is, ultimate stuff, invisible essence, this divine nature that is a part of us.  And we’ve got our thinking.

And these two things hang out in our consciousness and have conversations and guess what?  They create!  We have within us all the power of god, and all the intellect of our thinking, and we have this law that always says yes to our thoughts. And we create.

When I teach this concept I like to say that thought plus feeling equals power.

And boy, we have power in spades.  Because we are each unique and individualized manifestations of spirit.

We just have to embrace that power by embracing oneness, and by learning to think.

I have a little invitation for you to be able to more fully embrace the concept of oneness.  It’s a cool little spiritual practice that I like to do.  

Here it is: get up every morning and set an intention for the quality of spirit you are going to embody for that day.  If you have been around here for any length of time, you may have heard someone talk about qualities of spirit. Here’s some of my most favorite qualities: joy, compassion, peace, love.  I once spent several months setting a daily intention for compassion, because I felt like I needed a little extra boost in that area.  I got all sorts of situations and people in my life where that compassion came in handy.  And most importantly, I learned that where I really needed compassion was for myself.  I sometimes do this practice as an experiment.  A challenge to this principle.  If love is the most powerful force in the world, let’s embody THAT and see if it can change this situation.  And so I do that.  And I’ve always discovered that love is indeed the most powerful force in the world.  And since love is another aspect of god, well, you figure it out.  So if you want a deeper connection with god, if you want to really FEEL the presence of god within you, you might want to give this practice a try.

So now that we’ve got the oneness thing down, let’s move on to our thinking.

Our work at any point in our spiritual journey is to recognize the connection between our current life experience and how we’ve been co-creating it. And again, some of us immediately go to shame and blame.  We ask ourselves, if I created this in my life, what is wrong with me?  What was I thinking? We go to blame sometimes.  If only I had done this or that, thought this or that.  I am going to encourage you to remove blame and shame from your vocabulary and your consciousnesss.  Nothing good ever comes of that.  The simple truth is that some times change is what is up for us if we want to live more successfully.

And this change can only come from awareness.

In this awareness, we can fully embrace the power of our mind, our thinking, our thoughts, and our beliefs. When we have a passive relationship with our thinking, our thoughts are not intentional; they become reactions to something in front of us, something from our past, or a concern about our future. Regardless of the stimulus, whatever we consistently hold in mind is what we are placing into the law of creation. It’s wise, then, to stay present to what we are thinking. Let us come to grips with our mind, both its conscious and default tendencies, and see how we can move ourselves into intentional co-creation.

I repeat, when we have a passive relationship with our thinking, our thoughts are not intentional, they become reactions to something in front of us, something from our past or a concern about our future. 

So the call to action here is to form an active relationship with our thinking.  To be aware of our thoughts at any given time of the day.  And to be able to change those thoughts if necessary, without judgement or condemnation, but instead with compassion, unconditional love and acceptance.

In order to have an active relationship with our thinking, we must have a personal self awareness practice.  To me, this is as important as drinking water.  It is necessary, and it is indeed a spiritual practice. 

My belief is that we can’t realize the promises of this teaching unless we have a consistent and persistent personal self awareness practice.  

So in addition to the suggestion of setting an intention to embody a quality of spirit each day, I am going to add another invitation:  and that is to get in touch with your feelings each day, and your thoughts.  Just become aware of them with no judgement.  If necessary you can decide it is time to change them, but no judgement is necessary.  And remember, your feelings and thoughts are not the boss of you. 

To conclude, we are one with god, and we each have the same power that god has, and we access that power by and through our thoughts. And we can know and feel our oneness as well as our thoughts by consistently doing spiritual practices.  Ernest Holmes said that sometimes around here we indulge in too much theory and too little practice.  Do the practices.  You’ll be glad you did.

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