Video

8/28/11 Rev. David McArthur

We have spoken of near death experiences, life after death, reincarnation; of healing and healers like John of God and the healers that are here every first Wednesday. And there are other gifts. But 1 Corinthians 13 says, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

As with any gift, people fall into a bell curve. There are a few as gifted as Edgar Cayce or John of God. The other end is people who think they are more gifted than they really are. Most of us have some gift that with some development can be used rightly. But without love it is not of value. This is tremendously important and a challenge. As you work with your gift, what comes is the truth within yourself. Do not give away your power that is within you. The answers aren’t out there. They are within you – your connection with spirit within your own heart.

Every time you can’t break through, the teacher does come, but the power and responsibility are within you. At times when you feel you are under attack, it is very difficult to respond with love. Respond first with feelings of compassion for yourself as if for a good friend. From that experience, respond with compassion for that one attacking you. Choose to respond with understanding, with what is fair, with care for that person. Respond with love.

“As a child…” When we go through the maturing of our spirituality, we shift from the brain as the instrument of interpreting, to the heart being the main way of interpreting life. “The three remain– faith, hope, and love. The greatest is love.” What is there to respond with? Choose love! There is that which guides, supports, heals. The greatest is love. Choose love. Create that which you seek!

8/7/11 Karen Taylor-Good

Have you felt that as time went on your prayers were unanswered? Sometimes the answer is no. You might ask, “What went wrong?” or even say, “Thanks a lot, God!” I even prayed just to be “a little more right.” But prayers must be specific. I knew I had to “get a bigger pan!” I had to ask myself, “Do I really want to be those things I thought I wanted to be?” It’s ok to hurt. It’s ok to cry. Then I realized I did have my words, my music. And I listened to that voice inside as it got louder – I went to church and took a pledge to say “yes” to life. So I had to say “yes” when asked for a “small” favor. Great things happened quickly. The world came into focus. Although I had no idea what it looks like, I knew Someone does. So I wrote
“I don’t always get what I want – I get what I need…  I prayed for strength. I got pain that made me strong.  I prayed for courage. I got fear to overcome.  I prayed for faith. My empty heart brought me to my knees…”
You are being pushed and pulled for a reason. Doors are closing for a reason. Life can leave you confused, stressed, and angry. But it’s perfect. And these Unity principals work all the time. Let go of things you can’t use. With the weight off your wings, you’re going to fly! Pat yourself on the back for still being here. You couldn’t have done it without you!
Say “yes” to life. We sometimes say “no” unconsciously. Say “yes!” Make this the week – say yes to life as often as you can. For seven little days, say YES!

7/31/11 Jasmina Agrillo, with Rev. David

During brain surgery, Jasmina experienced a connection with healing spirit that stayed with her throughout her recovery period. “The light stayed with me. It was with me. I could feel it through my heart. When I’d feel good, it was with me. I…used that heart energy and the light… My job was to help myself, [to] bring in that energy, that laser light.”

Seek the miracle experience beyond your understanding. Deal with fears using the heart power, that “aha!” energy. At the Casa de Dom Inacio in Abadiana, Brazil, where Jasmina experienced healing from entities channeled by John of God, there are rooms of people “sitting in the current”, holding the spiritual power in meditation.

You do your own healing. Ask for energy to increase your intuition to know what is needed. Accept that there is a period of recovery. Use your power to attract your blessings, your bliss and healing. Bring in the appreciation – surrender, faith, trust. List every blessing desired. Release negative, unhealthy emotional ties to heal the physical need. Go through emotional healing, grieving, and release trauma to be able to accept the manifestation of wholeness. When doubt comes in, go back. Meditate. Write down the details of what you want. There is constant guidance just from asking and moving in the direction of the fulfillment of your desire. Stay focused on heart, spirit, and prayer. Stay with it.

Heal the past to have the energy and purpose to be about your purpose now. Everything needed to be on purpose and be about the work that is yours to do is given.

Affirm for yourself the potential of healing!

7/17/11 Rev. David McArthur

What do we do about those things which show up when we are about to go to sleep, or at 3 a.m. when we can’t sleep? Unity has the commitment we call practical spirituality. Part of the power of being a spiritual being is choosing how we feel when stuff shows up. Daily, the emotional structure of our mind jumps to protect ourselves when that person or that situation shows up. We perceive those things are not of God, but we know God is good all the time. This is a duality, but we can choose to move from that duality to oneness.

There is a simple way to work with those people and things that stimulate our perception of duality. We have the power to let it go. Jesus taught, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the alter and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23,24; New International Version.) The altar is where we become one with God, where we give our gift. Simply bring the being or situation into consciousness and pray: “God forgives you and so do I.” Repeat it 3 times, bringing it into your spirit, mind, and body. “…then come and offer your gift.” Your gift is your intention – peace. That is what you had given away, and the only way to get it back is to give it. So pray, “God forgives you and so do I. I send you peace.” (See yourself give or send peace and love in a figure 8. That’s giving with non-attachment. Send it around the people or situation and then see it cross over and go around yourself.) You can also pray for the other “person” in you, that part of yourself you criticize the most.

At the end of your day, ask, “where in this day was I not at peace?” As you do this over time you create a list. And you create a consciousness of forgiveness. Can you do this for a week? – a month? – a year?

Catherine Ponder reports a woman told her it profoundly changed her life. As she practiced this formula of forgiving, she experienced great peace and release of past judgments and unhappiness. Some things took a year for this. And then this person was even healed of an “incurable” illness. Such healing happens because it opens a person to the divine nature of wholeness. There is no limit in our lives except that which we put there. God doesn’t have any limits for you, when you raise the consciousness within you!

Pray, “God forgives you and so do I.” “I send you peace.”

7/10/11  Rev. David McArthur

NDEs (near death experiences) and re-incarnation are beautiful understandings of the unfolding of the soul. But what are we to believe of afterlife experiences, of what takes place at the time of death or right after? Listen to the place in your own heart where you experience what is valid and what is not, and always remember God is good all the time!

Death is perfectly safe. What happens when the soul releases the body? Much of what we believe is shaped by the thought forms we have built up, our traditions and our experience, that draws us to that which embraces the transition. Regardless of which tradition we come from, we all expect some common experiences, such as support of loved ones there to help us make this major transition.

Life review at the time of death is very different. When we were in the body we were more judgmental, but this review is in the state of divine love, to bring understanding. We can choose where we go from here. We draw into the experience that which supports the soul. There is a huge variety of choices – an infinite variety. Some are still closely tied the the Earth experience, and will have “body consciousness” and focus on family or academics, as before death.

We still have choices for soul development. In John, 14, 1-3, Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” In the accomplishment of Christ Consciousness, where the soul has fullness of spiritual awareness, “there are many rooms” or areas for the soul’s development. Some are close to the path the soul had on Earth. Edgar Cayce said the soul can also go to other “planets” or frequencies (vibrations) of experience for development of the soul’s consciousness. They are really weird, and don’t relate to our 3rd dimensional understanding. Yet the sense of self (a different sense of self) is there. The soul touches realms of energy and consciousness different from what we know here, to bring growth and different dynamics. It is beyond what we can figure out, but infinite in choice, infinite in potential.

It is natural to sense contact with one who has just passed. They are telling that they are all right, and affirming that their presence goes on. It can happen even after long periods of time. Very often there is contact through dreams. An emotional connection. One of the beautiful things is to understand that even though the being goes on to some other plane, our love touches and blesses them, and theirs us. But our work is here and now. We are to focus on the choices we have. The important thing is that we are enfolded in so much love that as we grow through the many changes in this life and in death, we are taken care of every step on the way!

7/3/11  Rev. David McArthur

Reincarnation.  As we step beyond this life experience – as in life after death – what is important?  What has meaning for me?  For Charles Fillmore it is importance only so far as it touches our work here and now.  Traditionally, Christianity taught we only live one life and then go on to our next level.  Both reincarnation and “one life” are valid.  God works with infinite paths and capacities to come forth.  Perhaps some of us are slow learners and need to come into this world again.  Not remembering our past experiences on Earth is a gift.  It is so we might start anew to address what is here.  That is why it is so difficult to remember.

“The soul never takes birth and never dies at any time nor does it come into being again when the body is created. The soul is birthless, eternal, imperishable and timeless and is never destroyed when the body is destroyed. Just as a man giving up old worn out garments accepts other new apparel, in the same way the embodied soul giving up old and worn out bodies verily accepts new bodies.” ~ Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Krishna to Arjuna

We create our life choices, “mathematically” taking ourselves to our next experience.  We create our own worlds.  The people in our worlds are there because we have made a commitment to each other to bring forth in each other what is meaningful and purposeful, so that beauty and magnificence that is Spirit might be fulfilled in each of us.  Mahatma Gandhi was a “great soul” (mahatma) who brought out the magnificence of what a soul can be, to show others to create a life that is meaningful, that is commitment fulfilled.

Coming back in reincarnation is not punishment, but shows a great love which allows us to learn of our creation that we might choose the learning.  Always there is the great love which lets us learn through experience.  John 9:1-3, “As [Jesus] passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

It is not about karma (retribution or punishment), but bringing out the love.

6/26/11 Garrett Riegg, J.D.

Objective, statistical evidence sheds light on ancient beliefs and current theosophical tenets regarding
life after death. Much evidence is derived from Near Dearth Experiences, or NDEs. Although NDEs
are clothed in different images from different religious backgrounds, they almost always convey the
same message. They are mystical, spiritual experiences. They all share a sense of certainty, gutfeeling,
or inner knowledge – a “gnosis”. A majority of NDEs include the panoramic life review which
occurs in a matter of seconds. It is a re-living of every life experience, not as a judgment, but as an
exercise for learning how one’s life has affected every person that subject’s life has touched. It is
instantaneous and life-changing.

We use “story” to connect with others heart-to-heart. HeartMath has demonstrated that the heart is
powerful, that people in “coherence” can change DNA, either twisting or untwisting the DNA chain, (a
standard scientific measure). Hard science is showing that this other higher level or plane of thought is
real. Those reporting stories of NDEs describe the plane as a place of total understanding and love, out
of the body, with heightened senses, a state of bliss. They very often report passing through a tunnel,
with the presence of a being of light, in complete love and trust. They report altered space and time in
a heavenly realm. They experience the awareness of special knowledge and spiritual insight, of deep
learning of love and the universal message.

A young women relates the remarkable story that in her NDE she was enveloped in love and perfect
peace. She says she was being cared for, out among the stars. “I felt I understood EVERYTHING –
the law, the order, and the math of the universe.” She went on to say, “ One’s religion is written in your
own heart. You are just who you are. You are here to love divinely and master who you are to raise to
it’s highest level you own true self!”

6/19/11 Reverend David McArthur

Spirit is at every gathering and it always has an agenda. It wants to give to us and to give through us. Step into the giving and receiving. The experience of the heart is at the core of Unity teaching, as in Myrtle Fillmore’s experience of healing her final stage of tuberculosis. Heartmath experiments show that our intentions affect even our DNA. With the coherent, ordered pattern of the heart – the state of love – the DNA responds to the intentions. We have the ability to change the cells of the body!

How do we, like Myrtle Fillmore, deal with those experiences in which we are aware there is something better? While in the deep state of love, speak words of focused intention into the transformation you seek. It is not the thought alone. Go into the state of feeling deep love for the cells of the body over and over again. It takes the deep feeling of love. The power of Spirit moves through our very nature to wholeness, which is our nature. When there is a part of us which still carries pain it comes up to be healed or else we act it out. The importance is that we address it and bring it healing. Out job is to call it into wholeness. To do it, move into the state of love.

Bring it into the experience of groups and communities of which you are a part, where there are people in pain, when there is hurt that expresses and needs attention. When there is a past that needs healing. Our minds are very good at explaining right and wrong. “I’m right and they’re wrong.” That doesn’t heal. Move into the love. It takes away the separation, the “explanations”, and we move to where there is connection. Instead of standing in expression of pain and resentment, move to harmony. Within your family and community see the disharmony not as wrong but in need of healing. Bring the intention and the love. Spirit gives the invitation and provides the way: Love and Intention. Bring love and intention into your family and community. What a joy to be that instrument! – to live the pattern of wholeness in our lives and in our communities. Step into wholeness, love, and joy together!