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April 5, 2015 – Resurrection: The Vision Keeper & Forgiveness

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04/05/15 Rev. David McArthur
Resurrection: The Vision Keeper & Forgiveness

Every Easter story begins with the experience of dawn, the coming of light where there was darkness. Mary, Jesus’ mother, had been the one person at the cross who was different from everyone else. For her son, she was a vision-keeper, someone who holds for others the awareness of their potential within as powerful spiritual beings for complete healing.

I remember the experience of another mother who was a spiritual seeker, too. How she got a call that her daughter had been in an accident and was in a coma, and that if her daughter ever woke up, she’d not be able to speak or take care of herself, that she would never walk again. This mother responded with, “I don’t believe that. The God I know is greater than the limitation that you tell me.” This vision-keeper reached out to over 3000 people to be in attunement with her daughter, and when she got to speak to her, her daughter awakened. The young woman began to recover. She learned to focus the brain that had been so damaged. Today she is an active, vibrant member of our community. She took a hold of that power and presence within her and used it to build a life of wholeness. Her vision-keeper, her mother, wrote a poem of what Mary must have felt.

I must let Him go. My arms would hold him close, though; my heart would hold Him dear, as that place in the stable long ago, for He is not mine to keep. He belongs to the One that gave Him to me. So I must let Him go, though my heart cries as He suffers so, and I want to keep Him for me. His path has been laid since before the world was to show us the kingdom within. So I know that I must let Him go.

How many people do we have in our lives that are in pain, in struggle, addiction, loss, lack. We are their vision-keepers. And we have the incredible spiritual honor of knowing with them who they are, no matter what. The potential of resurrection in their lives is always there. Hold that for family and friends, and (the hardest one of all) for yourself. It is the only reason we are on that journey. Step into that dawn, that consciousness. Break apart that which is less; bring forth what is more. Say “Yes!” to this consciousness of wholeness.

There’s one more piece that brings about this demonstration of resurrection, this new awareness, something we accomplish with the spiritual power within us. Jesus had to do that. For Jesus at the cross there is one moment that makes the entire difference. Had this moment not happened I do not believe we’d be celebrating this event today. It’s the moment of forgiveness. This wonderful intelligence and power that flows within us gets blocked by our resentments, by our judgments. His response was, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” One of the greatest moments in the change of consciousness in the history of humankind.

That prayer to “Father”, the presence and power within, for forgiveness released that block within Himself so there was no resentment, no judgment. The way I usually get to forgiveness is called “desperate” prayer, at the point nothing else is working. At the most painful spot in my life that’s what I did, and it released me from the resentment and pain. Not the physical pain—the other pain: we are separate, right and wrong, who does what. In that beautiful experience of forgiveness we take the “wrong”, the lesser, and we turn our vision to this all-loving goodness of God. That is freeing; that is wholeness. It is always there. So what ever is going on, here is the truth: “There is only one presence, one power in your life—the all-loving goodness of God.” Step into that new day, that beautiful wholeness and fullness. As spiritual beings it is the desire of that presence to bring it forth in our lives. What a joy it is to step into that love without any limitations! There is absolutely nothing whatsoever that anyone of us can do to lessen that love. It’s just not possible. From His experience on that first Easter, Jesus has become the symbol of the all-loving. And because you are, I am grateful!
 

March 29, 2015 – Being Completely Connected

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03/29/15 Rita Marie Johnson
Being Completely Connected

I was exhausted from overwork and desperate for peace. One night I remembered “coherence” and that it was how to move into peace. I fell asleep and dreamt that the phone rang. I picked it up, “Hello”? “This is God.” “Okayyy…” “You’ve been trying to do too much. Just work on you Rasur Foundation and everything will be all right.” So I resigned from the University and other work. I see now it lead straight to the success of the Foundation and all the way to my new book that I am releasing here today!

I usually didn’t pray until I got desperate about something. I wasn’t connected. My inner phone was off the hook. I led a life of connect—disconnect. Connect—disconnect. You see, my feelings had been taking me away from being connected. But I learned to open, to go under my feelings and find my needs which produced the feelings, and it was coherence that would get me to insight and answers.

And then I got a shock—lymphoma! It was now really time for me to learn to pray. I turned to Myrtle Fillmore’s story. She would take a picture of Jesus as her point of focus. She would talk out loud. She probably told Him she was stuck, that she was discouraged and confused. “I don’t know what I’m doing to block divine healing.” So I did what I imagine Myrtle had done, and I also used the three steps of non-violent communication as prayer. First you name your feelings. There is scientific evidence that this reduces the amygdala’s reactions. Then name your needs. This activates our empathy and we become more compassionate. Thirdly, move into coherence in your heart. The positive aspects, or “good mood” of coherence then enable insight to come to you. My insight was “Look among your virtues.” That didn’t make sense. A virtue blocking me? Oh, I realized, I always thought it was a virtue to keep my feelings to myself. So I won’t swallow them anymore. That’s what is making me sick.

Myrtle had applied it every day and she was healed. So I’d do it every day, not just when I needed it the most. For the first time I had a rich rewarding prayer life. For example, with my lymphoma, I couldn’t fund raise for Rasur. So I named my feelings and needs. That takes the “charge” off. (I have them; they don’t have me.) This time I got “Stand in the glory of the gift you have to give.” What? Oh..if I embody what I teach (to pray every day) then my finances and needs will be met. And they were!

I’d been focused on all that stuff “out there”. We must have a rich prayer life to have any changes in the world. This is the first time I have shared my prayer life. We are divinely designed to become completely connected. Say, I am completely connected through prayer. I am completely connected through prayer. I am completely connected through prayer.

March 22, 2015 – Beauty & the Beast, Part 2: Embracing the Pain

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03/22/15 Rev. David McArthur
Beauty & the Beast, Part 2: Healing the Pain

Our assignment last week was to heal our pain from past relationships. A change of perception will move us to the wholeness that we are. “Beauty & the Beast” talks of this spiritual awakening. It pictures the Kingdom of Heaven where divine love is caring for and supporting us in every moment. We can see the gifts (but not the giver). We can enter into our heart, into the feeling of goodness, the divine presence, by breathing the feeling of ease. But to grasp spiritual awareness is to forfeit life as we have known it.

Beauty (our feeling side) consciously enters the presence of the ugly fearsome Beast. How do we move into the conscious presence of “ugly” (the pain we carry from past experiences)? We must accept and be aware of it consciously. Breathe ease and hold the feelings in the heart. If we are in our head we go into the blame circle. But in the heart the spiritual energy holds it without judgment. It just is.

Beauty’s perception of the Beast begins to change. She still sees ugly, but also sees nobility, caring, and wisdom. Simply holding the ugly in our heart we begin to see more. Our perception changes. Beauty asks for some time to return to her family and what she misses. The Beast won’t refuse her anything, but warns “if you don’t return I will die.” If we don’t return to healing, the opportunity to heal changes. So Beauty returns to her family and soon forgets her promise to go back to the castle. She dreams one night she is in the castle and the Beast has died. So the next day she hurries back to the castle with intention, searching out of care for what had previously been frightening and ugly to her. She has grown.

Drafted to serve in Viet Nam, Arthur’s love for his wife Marina carried him through the ugliness he found there. Unfortunately, she found another and broke his heart. He used meaningless relationships, drugs and alcohol to cope, until he realized he had to change. He found a new relationship and happily remarried. Then Marina arrived to make amends. His terrible heartache returned. He had moved on but had not healed. The purpose of forgiveness is not to develop excellent coping mechanisms, but to heal the pain and find freedom from it. He went to his heart, where he had compassion for his pain that was real. He healed, and now says, “whenever I recall those days, I can do it with a smile…I can experience that goodness because it is here.”

Beauty finds the Beast near death. Compassion washes over her. You too can embrace the ugly within and feel the compassion in your heart. The tears of compassion break the ugliness and there is only healing, beauty, love, wholeness, freedom. I embrace my pain with compassion. I am free. I embrace my pain with compassion. I am free. I embrace my pain with compassion. I am free. That beautiful power and light that flows through us is no longer blocked and flows to those around us and creates that state of consciousness known as “happily ever after”!
 

March 15, 2015 – Beauty & the Beast, Part 1: Healing Relationship Pain

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03/15/15 Rev. David McArthur
Beauty and the Beast 1 – Healing Relationship Pain

When we carry past relationship hurt within, our mind wants to protect us with words like “me”, “them”, and “righteous indignation”. Such words of separation cause pain and express fear. This can be healthy at one level, but we use such words to escape our assignment (which is to heal the inner). The outer will change. Jesus said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? …You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Sometimes I hate that, but on this assignment I also heard wise words of responsibility, caring, healing, connecting.

A story with very helpful images on this path to wholeness is “Beauty and the Beast”. A merchant, lost in a deep dark wood in a storm, finds a wonderful sunlit castle. There all his needs are met—food, a bed, even breakfast. For his daughter, Beauty, he plucks a rose. Immediately an ugly, terrifying beast confronts him. “Your life is forfeit!” The horrified merchant strikes a deal. If Beauty came to live in the castle with the Beast, all would be provided her, but each evening she had to sit down and dine with the Beast. Pretty clear spiritual symbolism isn’t it? There is no lasting satisfaction in pursuing material goods. The brightly lit castle in the midst of the dark forest is obviously the Kingdom of Heaven, and we are aware that Divine Love provides all our needs. But we pluck the rose (spiritual understanding) for the feelings of the growing soul. Once you take it, life as you know it is over. To embrace and enter into spiritual understanding, you must sit down with your Beast.

It’s the ugly we see inside ourselves. Deal with that pain. That’s your journey, your assignment. Enter the heart (the castle grounds). Breathe the feeling of Ease (that everything is provided by God). Give permission to yourself to feel the pain. The head will enter into blame/control. But breathe Ease, and just hold the pain in your heart. Your brain does not have to protect you from something that’s not there. There’s no need to fix, blame, or judge. Breathe Ease and hold the pain in your heart. Invite the power of your spiritual heart to flow in and start the healing. I breathe Ease and Hold It in My Heart. I breathe Ease and Hold It in My Heart. I breathe Ease and Hold It in My Heart. It is important to fulfill our assignment to heal the past relationship pain, the hurt, we carry. Then we can move into that place we know as “Happily Ever After.”!
 

March 8, 2015 – Tithing — A Four-Letter Word…Love

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03/08/15 Sheila Gautreaux, L.U.T.
Tithing – A Four-Letter Word…Love

My friend, Dot, joyfully told of the card and money she had prepared for her grandson Langston’s birthday. I could tell the card was filled with love. She was so excited. When you select a gift with such care you imagine how great the loved one will feel when they open it. Give like that when you tithe to wherever you receive your spiritual instruction, support, and enlightenment, your spiritual good. Give by joy. The energy of connection with the universe, when giving from joy, goes out into the universe and the universe is inspired to return it. When giving in joy you are also giving to yourself.

If 10% is fearful for you, you can start small and graduate to 10%. Why 10? 10 is the number of perfect balance, of the balance of masculine and feminine, of resplendent love. It is the divine number, and reduces to 1—indicating our oneness with the universe, that when we are aligned with the universe we are connected and there is no difference between us and God.

When I lost half my income I stopped tithing. Then I started losing track of money; I just couldn’t find it. My paying engagements started drying up. Then I fell and broke my wrist. What was going on? Then I remembered I had quit tithing. So I immediately wrote a check. In fear I had stopped tithing, but then when I did give I gave in love. To give only because you get is not in alignment with the law of giving and receiving. In a month or 6 weeks I was clearly in a better situation.

You can tithe not only money, but your time or service. Give somewhere, somehow, to someone. Are you giving in love to your family? To you community? To your job? Our goal is to give in love across the board, giving in love to our world. Seek to live a life of giving love. The steps are listed in the attached outline.

This week look at every place you go, and give in love. Be aware of how you are giving to our world. Even how you speak is giving. Find a way to give love even if it’s just a little bit, because love changes everything.

I give you love; I give you peace; I give you joy. May you find this every day in your life and relationships.
 

March 1, 2015 – Learning Prayer — Sending Love

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03/01/15 Rev. David McArthur
Learning Prayer – Sending Love

As a child I really didn’t feel connection to anyone “up there”. As a young man I started meditating and my experience of the reality of prayer changed. Later, in the tragedy of losing my wife, I learned the power of prayer. I entered into forgiveness and found peace. Through the experience of prayer it was given to me.

I wanted to really know about prayer. Unity asked me to step into the spiritual being I already was, and to open and receive my good that was already there, not to ask someone else “outside” of me. This experience of prayer I still did not really understand. There’s a difference between knowledge and understanding.

Rev. Mary Wessel established the Unity ministries throughout Montana. I met her when she was 104 years old. She lived on the top floor of a home which overlooked a beautiful valley and mountains. When I stepped into the room Spirit opened my eyes and I saw vibrant ribbons of light flowing out through the window like highways and I knew what she was doing. She was in a ministry of prayer. And later, even with mountains between us, I knew those ribbons of light reached to me and many others. It is powerful and it makes a difference. It is the sacred experience of love supporting each other as we go through this Earth experience.

I invite you to bring someone into your awareness, into your heart, who needs support. Now send that love that you are feeling. Enfold that love over them. At this moment you know for that person they are loved. Tell them You are loved. You are loved. You are loved. Divine love through your heart enfolds them now. Feel that beautiful love. Know this transforming power creates, and that it enfolds them here, now.

I invite you to join us as a spiritual community to pray at noon (or whatever time; Spirit doesn’t get hung up on time) for every person that has asked for prayer support. Pause for a moment and let them know they are loved. What we discover then is that each of us is loved!
 

February 22, 2015 – Pinocchio – Through Fear to God

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02/22/15 Rev. David McArthur
Pinocchio – Through Fear to God

Pinocchio begins with a glorious story of our creation myth. Geppetto (the Creator) makes Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy gives him life. A living puppet without strings, Pinocchio becomes famous, but ends up caged. (As we look to the outer for fulfillment, there are limitations.) To be free of the cage, Pinocchio had to quit lying to himself.

He went to Pleasure Island where there are no rules. Soon he and the other pleasure-seeking boys turn into donkeys, showing addiction to the Earth experience; it’s falling asleep into the density of the animal consciousness. It doesn’t work. But he listens to Jiminy Cricket, his consciousness, and gets off Pleasure Island by diving into the ocean (his consciousness).

He has to find Geppetto, his creator. (The focus is now on the divine.) Entering into his subconscious, the ocean, he finds Monstro the whale (the greatest fear). It isn’t easy for him to get into the whale. Here Jesus tells us how: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. “ (Matthew 7:7)

My own personal journey into the “whale” will perhaps encourage some to enter into their fear. It began when my wife was murdered. I felt if God is a lie I wanted to know. So I entered into my fear. When the murderer’s family was interviewed I got to be a part of it, and I got to see how their Pleasure Island was taken from them, how the pain took it all. I did not see evil anywhere. I saw how our choices affect others. I saw that Geppetto, the Divine Presence/Law, was a gift with no strings. A gift of power and choice. Goodness was there.

Pinocchio burns the boat inside the whale (fire is a symbol of transformation) so that the whale would spit them out. The whale (the fear) is gone. In my journey into my whale, I asked if the love was real. I went back through every moment—the act, the choices, the pain, what was said, what happened to the family. Everywhere I touched there was love. Love so powerful it brought something even greater—a love which allowed choices, consciousness, actions. There was not anything else. No second power. An amazing gift of love to every single person there. It’s not just that God is good. That’s not enough. God is love all the time. And All the time God is love. No more whale. I could see the reality we live in, the most amazing choices. I could see we can place our attention on anything we want. And when we put it on this powerful love we see that God Is All Love All The Time.

February 15, 2015 – Romance – I Love You

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02/15/15 Rev. David McArthur
Romance – I Love You

Today we’re talking about a sacred experience between 2 people, that beautiful relationship which happens with couples. It comes from that simplest understanding that God is love, and when we experience it we experience God. It changes us and the way we perceive. We see the other through divine eyes. It is a unifying power.

Told that if he’d survive at all he’d be a quadriplegic, a young man fixed his eyes on his wife and mouthed the words, “Maybe we should let me go.” She replied, “I will support whatever you decide, but I am in it for the long run.” The next words she spoke gave him his life back. “You’re still you. I love you.” He mouthed, “This is way beyond ‘in sickness and in health’”. It was Christopher Reeve—Superman! Their love went beyond their vows. She saw him and he saw her as they really are.

Perhaps the most profound statement found in the Bible is “He who is without love is without God.” Love is greater than even marriage. In the most hostile climate of northern Scotland Peter and Eileen Caddy were known for their beautiful gardens. Years later I contacted Peter. He had a new wife and child in Hawaii! He explained that Eileen’s purpose and his had changed. Love doesn’t own. It releases when the connection doesn’t serve the soul’s growth. It doesn’t mean that love is not there and vibrant. It is part of love—letting go.

An ice skater from the age of four, Ekaterina Gordeeva was partnered with Sergei when she was 11, he 15. They skated as a pair for the Soviet Union and in 1988 took Olympic gold in Calgary. Their partnership blossomed into love, and soon into marriage and a beautiful baby girl. In Lillehammer in ’94 they again took the gold. The next year, while they trained in Lake Placid, Sergei collapsed onto the ice dead from a heart attack. He was 28.

Ekaterina was not sure she could skate without Sergei. But at the stadium for his memorial service she felt Sergei’s presence right there beside her. Hearing her coach say, “just trust Sergei” she skated to the music they had used to win the gold. She said she never felt so much power. “I didn’t have a thought in my head. It was all in my heart—my soul.” She later spoke of how they had agreed to smile at each other every day, and every day to say one extra time, “I love you.”

God is love and goes beyond time. Remember feeling that love for your special person and say, “I love you.” So one extra time each day this week say, “I love you.”

February 1, 2015 – Snow White – God is Good

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02/01/15 Rev. David McArthur
Snow White – God is Good

Each archetypal symbol in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is some aspect of ourselves on our spiritual journey. When the soul enters the Earth it loses sight of its identity as a child of God, taking on a false idea outpictured by the stepmother, the Queen. She goes to the mirror. That outpictures our insecurity. We are concerned how people see us. We need the world to like us.

The Huntsman cannot kill Snow White (the feminine, our feeling side). He thinks he can hide her like we think we can hide our feelings. The 7 Dwarfs (the 7 chakras) can be seen as not fully grown, an early picture of our spiritual development. The mirror tells the Queen that there is something more powerful, more beautiful than she. So the poison apple.

The Dwarfs are so dualistic. Full of fear that Snow White is dead. But it is a false fear. Our journey is to know fear but learn there is nothing but God. Snow White is taken up the mountain by the 7 Dwarfs, the 7 centers of knowledge. It is the rise of awareness that there is no duality. But they cannot put her in the ground because they are still touched by her presence. The Prince just has to come riding by. He is also us, the thought part of us that knows but cannot feel. He finds the feeling self (Snow White) deep asleep. So we open to our feeling world and find incredible beauty with Love’s First Kiss.

A young 20-something guy lost his very closest companion, his dog, and plummeted into a deep depression. His friends wanted to help, so held a memorial. The young man wrote a eulogy, but found it difficult to deliver. “I could barely continue, but right at the point where I released myself into my feelings there was a pinpoint of light through my grief, and a smile. This point of happiness expanded rapidly, vastly, and immensely into a paradoxical experience of grief and happiness, into a greater sense of well being than I had ever had.”

 Give into that where the soul is awakened. It is not loss because there is only one power—the goodness of God. There is no fear. It is beautiful. Once we touch it there is no more evil Queen. She holds no power over us. This is what Jesus and Lao Tzu taught. God is good all the time. Yes, there is strain when things all come apart, but God is good all the time. This week there will be someone to challenge you, but check it out: God is good all the time.

I Am There
By James Dillet Freeman

Do you need Me?

I am there.

You cannot see Me, yet I am the light you see by.

You cannot hear Me, yet I speak through your voice.

You cannot feel Me, yet I am the power at work in your hands.

I am at work, though you do not understand My ways.

I am at work, though you do not recognize My works.

I am not strange visions. I am not mysteries.

Only in absolute stillness, beyond self, can you know Me as I am, and then but as a feeling and a faith.

Yet I am there. Yet I hear. Yet I answer.

When you need Me, I am there.

Even if you deny Me, I am there.

Even when you feel most alone, I am there.

Even in your fears, I am there.

Even in your pain, I am there.

I am there when you pray and when you do not pray.

I am in you, and you are in Me…

When you get yourself out of the way, I am there.

You can of yourself do nothing, but I can do all.

And I am in all.

Though you may not see the good, good is there, for I am there.

I am there because I have to be, because I am…