A few days ago the LightPath Center in Bend, Oregon posted a presentation I did for them on how we can respond to what's going on today in a way that leads to thriving, not merely surviving...

​One more note about this virus…
 
In the science of mental healing practiced within the New Thought tradition it’s been found that every physical condition is reflective of, and a useful pointer to, a psycho-emotional condition. Looking at the SARScorona-2 virus from this perspective provides some possibly useful insights:

1. Virus infections in general tend to indicate issues around boundaries, letting another’s will override our own –
   • This virus in particular attaches to cells on boundaries that protect tissue.
   • In today’s world most people spend most of their time in work situations where they feel they must set aside their own intentions and preferences in favor of the manager’s or owner’s.
2. Respiratory illnesses in general, have to do with expression of ideas, opinions and emotions – the more difficult it is to breathe the more likely the issue is suppression of unexpressed thoughts and feelings –
   • This virus is most likely to affect the respiratory system
   • In today’s world, even though there are many ways to communicate, the expectation, both at work and in social situations, is that only certain kinds of things may be said or talked about
3. Illnesses associated with the heart generally have to do with ongoing fear – particularly of loss
   • The people most likely to deal with intense symptoms with this virus are those dealing with heart issues
   • In today’s world, the role of most media has become to point out all the reasons to be afraid, to the point where strangers are to be avoided and what was normal for people growing up even one generation ago seems irresponsibly reckless to most parents today.

Being aware of these correlations helps us understand why this particular experience is so widespread at this point in the history of our culture – which is, today, worldwide.

I'm leading a new group through the 12 lessons of Emma Curtis Hopkins, using the workbook edition of my book, Unveiling Your Hidden Power; Emma Curtis Hopkins' Metaphysics for the 21st Century.  
Several people have asked to have the classes recorded and someone offered to do so. The plan is to upload each of the recordings on Youtube. 

CLICK HERE for audio versions of me reading highlights of the lessons, with commentary and explanations.

For the Memorial Day service at Florence Unitarian Universalist Fellowship this year, I chose to talk about the amazing amount of research that has been done into the experience of "passing away", or "crossing over." Here's the video of the talk: (CLICK HERE).
In the talk I mention several films that provide some insights into the experience:

• What Dreams May Come, with Robin Williams (how our belief system affects our experience)
• Resurrection, with Ellen Burstyn (what the NDE process looks like & how it can affect us)
• Defending Your Life, with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep (how one "Hollywood" belief system could interpret the common stages in the experience)
• Saved by the Light about Danion Brinkley (how the experience can transform us, with a description of the process that his highly consistent with other accounts).

None of them are "accurate" for all folks but each provide a piece of the puzzle.

Some of the authors I mentioned (among hundreds that are out there) are:

• The Education of Oversoul 7 by Jane Roberts
• Life Between Lives and Journey of Souls by Michael Newton
• Saved by the Light by Danion Brinkley
• The Betty Book by Stuart Edward White

The video ends before I finished the talk (ran out of battery, I'm told), so I'll take this opportunity to share my final comment:
   A friend of mine has committed her life to being a LightWorker, has sold everything she owns, and lives in hotels and other peoples' homes as she is called around the world. I called her early one morning and we talked about how the world is changing and how our lives are being changed in the process. Toward the end of the conversation she said to me "... in my meditations I've been told that we're doing something nobody has ever done before. We, all of us, are lifting the consciousness of the whole of humanity. The angels and archangels, and all the avatars can only love us through this process - they don't know how to guide us because they've never done it. When this process we're in is completed, no one will have to 'pass over' again - 'the veil' will be gone."
​
Thank you for being the folks who are raising humanity to such a high level of consciousness.

​When we understand that what we read in the Hebrew Bible in English today was written thousands of years ago by people who spoke a very different language and thought very differently, and that it’s been translated multiple times over centuries, by many different people, all of whom thought differently about the world than we do, we begin to realize that what the original writers said and what we hear may be radically different. Even the new translations, mostly from the Greek and some from the Hebrew, are based on modern American and European thought patterns rather than the ways people thought in the Middle East thousands of years ago. So, even though the original writing, and even the translations, may have been “revealed,” what they were thinking then and what we think when we read what they wrote are often very different.
This is particularly the case with what has come to be known as “The Ten Commandments.”
Many Jews today, reading the chapters in Exodus or Deuteronomy in which the list of ten is presented, don’t translate the Hebrew as “thou shalt” but as “thou dost.” This is because, while all the languages derived from Latin (including English) include an “imperative” form, a person commanding someone to do something, the far more ancient biblical Hebrew does not. And, while in English we use verbs to talk about past, present, or future actions, in biblical Hebrew verbs describe an action that is complete or incomplete—no time is involved.
It turns out that the verbs in the list of ten are all written in the second person (you), masculine, singular, imperfect (an incomplete action—“man, you’re cutting yourself”) as opposed to “perfect” which would be a completed action (“man, you have cut yourself”). The result is very different from what most of us were raised on.
As written, the opening Hebrew sentence can be most correctly translated as, “Hear, Oh Israel, I am the Lord your God who has brought you out of the land of the Mizraim (which is usually translated as Egypt and refers to the sons of Noah’s son Ham); you have no other gods greater than I.” It’s then followed by a series of verbs, each preceded by a symbol that is read as “lo” and means “no” or “not.”
This means that, when we look at those familiar verses in Exodus, we need to see them a new way: they’re not rules for us to follow, but promises!
They tell us that, when we accept the Almighty One as the Love of our lives, the Source of our existence, and the Power beyond all powers within or around us, then, in fact, we can’t ever allow a desire for money or property or any idol to be more important than our desire to commune with The One, or covet anything, much less steal; we would always honor our elders as guides to experiencing that One, and we would never be inclined to kill another!
Now that’s something worth celebrating! No wonder the Hebrews or Israelites (children of God) as they began to call themselves after hearing these words, held the tablets that bore them as holy!
May we all know the peace that comes of accepting this fact of our history as truth in our hearts!

The following is a response to a recent request by email - How do I begin to bring my new, perfect companion into my life?

1. Make a list of everything you appreciate about each one of the people you've been close to in your life. 
2. Combine those qualities into one list.
3. Look at your own self to see how those qualities manifest and
   
4. if they aren't, ask if you're expecting someone else to fill them in for you
5. Look at your own self to see how the things you haven't appreciated about those people are also in you - and do the work to release them (see Ruth's Method for Releasing the Past on the home page of this site)
6. If you're not depending on someone else to fill in missing parts, your companion will be there shortly
7. If you think all those qualities are outside of you, do the work to get where you can accept those qualities as part of you - and therefore of anyone you would build a life with.

It's a truism that the moment we're fine without anyone in our lives, the perfect companion shows up. And, we'll know they're perfect because everything we appreciate about ourselves and the people around us are present in them. So appreciate and enjoy!  

A student asked this the other day, and I thought I'd share my response with you...
For me, it's been a gradual process. I started by - and still need to be - observing all the times that what I thought about  (pleasant or unpleasant) came into my experience, recording in some way each incident, and practicing observing it as it happens.  We often refer to such incidents as synchronicities.

Then I started managing my thoughts, so what I focus on is what I want more of, canceling or erasing any other kind of thought (and yes, I'm still practicing at that one too :)  I focus on the qualities, the characteristics, not the form, as in mutually supportive relationships, comfortable home, easy transportation.

AND I sing songs and read texts that support my understanding that the universe is, in fact, as Wallace Wattles says, supporting and supplying my needs and desires, which helps me remember that truth while living in a culture that's designed to operate in contradiction with it. 

I trust that my having worked through it makes it easier (and faster) for others to do so.

Blessings on the journey!

I recently had an opportunity to go back into a book I had created some years ago - a book with a title I've never liked, but whose message is a powerful one for all of us.
 
The original text was by a man with the unfortunate name of Wallace Wattles. His book launched a whole body of material that has been called "the masculine arm of New Thought": books and lectures on how to create a prosperous life. It was also the book referred to in the film The Secret, as having turned Rhonda Byrne's life around at a particularly dark time.

I've understood and applied the principles he teaches for many years now, but it wasn't until I read (and rewrote) his first few paragraphs that I really got the fundamental basis he was working from
.
Here's what Wattles has to say:

• No one is kept in poverty by limits in the supply of riches; there’s more than enough for all. …In truth, the visible supply is practically inexhaustible, and the invisible supply really is inexhaustible…
• Nature is an unlimited storehouse of riches; the supply will never run short… 
• The formless substance responds to the needs of mankind; it will not let humanity be without any good thing… 
• Nature exists for the advancement of life, and its primary impulse is the increase of life. Because of this, everything that can possibly enhance life is bountifully provided.

The book he wrote is called The Science of Getting Rich. The book I created (at the request of and with the wonderful folk at Beyond Words Publishing) includes his text along with an updated version, with simpler language and exercises. 

Someone sent me an email recently, asking why I talk about divine power.
​I thought I'd share my response...
Having grown up in a world that seemed anything but divine, I became agnostic. My studies of anthropology, however, said all human cultures honor something beyond the brain-body experience, so it seemed a reasonable working hypothesis.

​My continued studies of culture, psychology, and philosophy showed me lots of different models and ways, but no clear evidence. My journeys inward, however, led me through distress to a different kind of experience - wordless, nameless, very real.

My journey through a major health crisis (described in my book Finding the Path) introduced me to a Presence within that guided me through great distress into healing. Part of that journey included Reiki training, which introduced me to something that flows through us which anyone, anywhere, can experience and share and that, through simple intention, changes peoples' physical and emotional experience. Teaching others how to access this something has shown me that, truly, we all can tap it and use it.

My study of systems demonstrated that all systems, of every size and type, are part of one great whole and are sustained by a flow of matter-energy-information through them. My learning to trust in that flow and the Presence within has led me to do and say things I was not capable otherwise of doing or saying, including experiencing islands of peace in the violent neighborhood I lived in.

My communication with folks who are elsewhere on this planet and those who are no longer incarnate has given me experiences of a loving sharing of wisdom/energy among resonant beings, regardless of form - and helped me feel the process by which resonant fields overlap and reinforce each other. 

When I say divine power, I'm including all these experiences and understandings. It's not some cliche I learned in church (never heard it there, actually :) ) In scientific terms, it is called the intelligent energy of the quantum field. In psychological terms it's the highest resonant aspects of the collective consciousness. In philosophical terms it is the metaphysical noumen. In religious terms it is the divine power and presence - by whatever name a given cultural group uses to call it.

It's everywhere, in everything, flowing through the All-That-Is, supporting and sustaining every being. All forms of matter are temporary condensations of that divine power in alignment with individual intention. All personal experience is the result of the projections of our perceptual framework on that flow. 

Everywhere. Always. In and throughout this space-time continuum we call reality. 

And so it truly is - which is why I talk about it. Thanks!