It’s 5pm and the great masses of cloud to the south are lit by the setting sun – radiant gold slowly shifts to apricot and then sinks into the dark gray of the shadowed billows below. The sky around them, a brilliant blue a few minutes ago, is fading to almost white…
It’s strange to see this autumn sky when so many leaves are still on the trees! The trees think it’s September; the bulbs think it’s February; the geese started flying south in September and were flying by again this week. .. Hmmmm… I’ve suggested in the past that the climate here on the Oregon coast is feeling a lot like the way it was decades ago in the San Francisco area – is this part of that process?
Friends came to visit this afternoon and mentioned that a licensed Unity teacher read a long litany of world problems in the prayer process at church yesterday morning… clearly Emilie Cady’s admonition (in Lessons in Truth and How I Used Truth) not to describe or discuss that which we don’t wish to experience more of didn’t last through that teacher’s training, (sigh!)
We must find a way to free ourselves of the temptation to accept unheavenly appearances as worthy of our attention!
Is it so deeply ingrained in our culture to focus on what’s not okay?
Hmmmm… the small-self/Adam man/ego operates on distinctions. If normal is everything’s fine then something is distinctly different by being not okay – and ego gets to point it out. If everything’s the same good, always and everywhere, there’s nothing for ego to play with “borrring!”. God/Higher Self doesn’t make distinctions – only ego/small self does. (“The News”, being all about distinctions, is by definition, then, an ego-trip!)
So how does development happen when there’s no distinction? Ah, A Course In Miracles tells us “by extension.”
Divinity experiences more, deeper, fuller, rather than different, better, worse, other-than. All beings within Beingness are extensions/expressions of all the same qualities – in varying patterns of wonderful…
Ah! That’s why I was inspired to look at the sunset sky! Are clouds better, worse, or different when compared to each other? No, they’re just fascinating variations of the same wonderfulness. They billow up, they stream down; they shred into pieces, they roll on by; they take myriad forms – and none of them is permanent. But the essence we call “cloud”, with all its qualities, is.
Likewise, Being, with all its qualities, is. It make take any number of interesting forms or colors in the moment and move in all kinds of fascinating ways over time, but all of those are temporary expressions of one Being.
Humanity is the same. And mind. And spirit. And the universal Substance/quantum field. They all take myriad forms of expression in the moment and move in all kinds of ways over time, but every apparent distinction is just a temporary expression of one essence.
Hmmm…. This is the truth of the Native Elder applying the term Coyote or Raven or Deer or whatever other archetypal name to the individual expression as it appears in the moment and moves through time.
In our culture we focus on the individual expression in the moment; in theirs, the focus is on the eternal essence. In ours, the manifest form is what is important; in theirs, the ongoing, ever-changing-yet-always-the-same Spirit-as-Life is all that matters.
The European-American, trained to live and see and act from ego/small self, finds the Native concept incomprehensible and that way of seeing life “borrrring!”. The Native Elder, knowing the deep peace and joy that is possible in that way of thinking/acting, can’t conceive how or why anyone would think otherwise. Only the Native youth, ripped away from the elders’ careful demonstration of Truth, is inclined to follow the European egoic pattern – and experience its pain.
So, is it possible to live in this world without focusing on distinctions between individual expressions? Yes – but only by keeping in mind the Truth that what is being perceived is simply the archetypal Being expressing in the moment and moving through time – which is another way of saying that each individual, event, or situation we perceive is the All/Spirit/Being/God in expression.
And this means, of course, that any unheavenly distinction we perceive is our own ego/small self trying not to be bored.
Blessings of heavenly expression/extending be yours!
It’s strange to see this autumn sky when so many leaves are still on the trees! The trees think it’s September; the bulbs think it’s February; the geese started flying south in September and were flying by again this week. .. Hmmmm… I’ve suggested in the past that the climate here on the Oregon coast is feeling a lot like the way it was decades ago in the San Francisco area – is this part of that process?
Friends came to visit this afternoon and mentioned that a licensed Unity teacher read a long litany of world problems in the prayer process at church yesterday morning… clearly Emilie Cady’s admonition (in Lessons in Truth and How I Used Truth) not to describe or discuss that which we don’t wish to experience more of didn’t last through that teacher’s training, (sigh!)
We must find a way to free ourselves of the temptation to accept unheavenly appearances as worthy of our attention!
Is it so deeply ingrained in our culture to focus on what’s not okay?
Hmmmm… the small-self/Adam man/ego operates on distinctions. If normal is everything’s fine then something is distinctly different by being not okay – and ego gets to point it out. If everything’s the same good, always and everywhere, there’s nothing for ego to play with “borrring!”. God/Higher Self doesn’t make distinctions – only ego/small self does. (“The News”, being all about distinctions, is by definition, then, an ego-trip!)
So how does development happen when there’s no distinction? Ah, A Course In Miracles tells us “by extension.”
Divinity experiences more, deeper, fuller, rather than different, better, worse, other-than. All beings within Beingness are extensions/expressions of all the same qualities – in varying patterns of wonderful…
Ah! That’s why I was inspired to look at the sunset sky! Are clouds better, worse, or different when compared to each other? No, they’re just fascinating variations of the same wonderfulness. They billow up, they stream down; they shred into pieces, they roll on by; they take myriad forms – and none of them is permanent. But the essence we call “cloud”, with all its qualities, is.
Likewise, Being, with all its qualities, is. It make take any number of interesting forms or colors in the moment and move in all kinds of fascinating ways over time, but all of those are temporary expressions of one Being.
Humanity is the same. And mind. And spirit. And the universal Substance/quantum field. They all take myriad forms of expression in the moment and move in all kinds of ways over time, but every apparent distinction is just a temporary expression of one essence.
Hmmm…. This is the truth of the Native Elder applying the term Coyote or Raven or Deer or whatever other archetypal name to the individual expression as it appears in the moment and moves through time.
In our culture we focus on the individual expression in the moment; in theirs, the focus is on the eternal essence. In ours, the manifest form is what is important; in theirs, the ongoing, ever-changing-yet-always-the-same Spirit-as-Life is all that matters.
The European-American, trained to live and see and act from ego/small self, finds the Native concept incomprehensible and that way of seeing life “borrrring!”. The Native Elder, knowing the deep peace and joy that is possible in that way of thinking/acting, can’t conceive how or why anyone would think otherwise. Only the Native youth, ripped away from the elders’ careful demonstration of Truth, is inclined to follow the European egoic pattern – and experience its pain.
So, is it possible to live in this world without focusing on distinctions between individual expressions? Yes – but only by keeping in mind the Truth that what is being perceived is simply the archetypal Being expressing in the moment and moving through time – which is another way of saying that each individual, event, or situation we perceive is the All/Spirit/Being/God in expression.
And this means, of course, that any unheavenly distinction we perceive is our own ego/small self trying not to be bored.
Blessings of heavenly expression/extending be yours!
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