goodness

July 13, 2014 – Sleeping Beauty, Part II: One Power

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7/13/14 Rev. David McArthur
Sleeping Beauty, Part II: One Power

The “folk scripture” Sleeping Beauty is our story. We have forgotten we are children of God. Like Sleeping Beauty, everyone of us has touched that “spinning wheel” and felt pain, lack, hurt, rejection, and we have fallen asleep to the greater presence and goodness because the pain has numbed us. We need the Prince (our seeking mind) to bring the true love kiss moment. It is the acceptance of our union with the pattern of God within.

But the Prince is captured and put in chains, as we are bound by the chains of our experiences. However, his chains fall away, as do ours, when the focus is put on the truth, the Presence, through the feelings of love. The Prince picks up the Shield of Virtue, which is our capacity of choice to focus on the greater goodness, and heads into the field of thorns and cuts through them. Thorns are all the things we “have” to do, the things that are not true. Our perception makes the difference. The choice is to focus on the good.

But the mind is good at finding why we can’t. Enter the dragon, the great old God-thought of the “fear of God”. Or you feel you have to be a cynic—that’s your dragon. It is only fear.

We also looked at Jasmina Agrillo and her struggle with a brain tumor. From the brain surgery she lost all control of her body. She did discover she could see “…my heart and my brain. I could see my brain go into seizure with emotional stress. And I’d see my heart light up with the song of a bird. I could then see that energy go from my heart up to my brain. What I could see was the power of my healing heart.”

She chose to journey through the thorns up into the tower, the “secret place of the Most high,” according to Emily Cady, that “… is the point of mystical union between man and Spirit (or God in us), wherein we …feel our oneness with the Father, and we manifest this oneness.” Jasmina said, “I learned it is one thing to experience the presence of God. It is the other part of the journey to become love.” She had to reconstruct her life one small step at a time. She had to choose to bring the “true love kiss” to every thing she tried to do. She built a great new life.

Then the tumor returned. This time she chose spiritual healing. But let me be clear, surgery and medicine are equally manifestations of the Presence in healing. She chose to rebuild her goodness one choice at a time. That’s the way it is done. What ever comes up, just choose the goodness, because God is good all the time! God is good all the time! All the time God is good!

If it’s all good, then why the pain and suffering? The story tellers have brought out “Maleficent” to tell us. What is the pain and suffering for? —We’ll answer that next week.
 

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April 13, 2014 – The Heart’s Path to Freedom: 6. Ask & Appreciate

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4/13/14 Rev. David McArthur
The Heart’s Path to Freedom: 6. Ask & Appreciate

We have been hurt. We feel we’re not ok, not good enough. We have loss by death, and the death of dreams. It hurts. We’ve hurt others. We carry that pain too. And when we say “There is only one presence and one power, the all-loving goodness of God”, a part of us says, “I doubt it”.This part says God isn’t good all the time. But we say it not because at that point we believe it to be true, we say it to take and move our attention away from what’s too difficult, too draining, too hurtful for us to live in, and start heading in a different direction. I wanted it to be true when I first experienced deep pain; I asked to know. I saw the presence of a God of infinite love, that the pain I carried was immersed in love. And it healed. Now it took me a while to understand that there was present a love that could heal me and free me, and that what I had experienced was only the goodness of God.

Over the past weeks I have shared with you the steps of the HeartMath tool called CutThru. The steps are a cascade of heart feelings and energies, a single flow to a point of wholeness. Each step is a powerful spiritual tool in it’s own right, but they lead us to where we soak the pain in the love that is within us. It brings the healing. The first step: embrace your pain. What love it is to look at that part of us that is so hurt and say yes, you are there. Next, turn on the power of your spiritual being through your heart: breathe love. It opens us to this flow, this infinite power and transformative energy within the universe. Once you are in that powerful spiritual place, step up to the eagle view and see what is there. Tremendous wisdom within brings clarity. It is the descent of light into darkness. From there pull the feelings into the heart and hold them there in neutral. Not finding them good or bad, not needing to suppress them nor empower them. Then soak them in love through compassion for yourself. An amazing thing happens—the self, in its pain for so long, begins to experience peace. It heals. Sometimes it’s the first time you do it; sometimes the tenth. Then you ask for the wisdom and guidance that is there. This isn’t a guidance technique, it is a healing focus. But sometimes when I go there and I ask, Spirit begins to show me how to make changes.

To complete it, to let it move deep into the cells and anchor within, use the power of appreciation. Say yes, this is now my reality. I am whole. I am no longer the instrument of pain. I am the instrument of love. Receive it with open-hearted gratitude and appreciation. I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful. Let it move deep deep into your consciousness.

Picture the whale that was so entangled in fishing nets it was surely going to drown. For hours divers cut each rope with great care until finally the whale was free. In it’s freedom, it circled the divers many times, then went to each one and touched him, “I am grateful.” And the next, “I am grateful.” To each one, “I am grateful.” And it went away, free. We’re going away free, acknowledging the deep deep deep gratitude on our hearts for this love, this power that brings us to whole. I don’t begin to understand, but I know it’s there, and I know it’s real, and I am grateful. Join me, I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful. Whatever it is, there is a power and presence in you that is pure radiant love. It is wholeness, and it brings forth its wholeness within us. And for that, in my life, and in yours, I am grateful!

October 27, 2013 – God Touches

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10/27/13 Rev. David McArthur
God Touches

I remember hearing something that at once I knew was true, yet I did not understand. It was from Emily Cady. “God is the name we give to that unchangeable, inexorable principle… the creative underlying cause of all things… In each individual, He becomes…a personal, loving, all-forgiving Mother-Father…[but] God is not a being having qualities, it is the very good itself…All love in the universe is God. [When you love, that’s God.] All the wisdom and intelligence…is God.” From Charles Fillmore, “I am now in the presence of pure Being and immersed in the Holy Spirit of life, love, and wisdom.” Like experiencing the night sky full of an infinite number of stars, we sense we are part of something greater that moves through us all, as a wave is but a part of the whole ocean. We don’t get to live there, but we touch it and we know it is real.

Having fled a raging forest fire which swept down upon her home, Sandra McFall asked her friend Paul to go back with her that first time. Her greatest fears were realized as she saw the total ruin of her home. She was a professional artist, and had not only lost her home, but her workplace and much of her work as well. Paul did find in the ashes a picture of Sandra’s father that had survived relatively intact. She remembered how she and her parents, as missionaries in Africa, had lost that home too to fire when soldiers swept through destroying everything. She remembered how her father had told her then that everything she needed was inside her. Back at the diner, Paul produced a book he had retrieved from the ruins. It was her mother’s Bible. It was still full of the many notes her mother had made whenever she had seen the touch of God in their recovery from that earlier loss. Sandra resolved that from then on she would count her “God touches” every day.

So everyday I count 5 “God touches”. #1 is that I open my eyes each morning. My thoughts go right to #2—coffee! How it’s so carefully grown and processed and delivered to me. What about that first smile of the day? All that love—that is God. And then stepping out into the fall breeze and sunshine! And when I turn the key and the car starts right up, that’s God—all those parts put together and delivered to me at my fingertips. Emilie Cady said, “It’s not that God has power; God IS power.”

Are you willing to do five a day? It can be the smile you see, the food you eat. The more you are aware of, the deeper is your experience. “Divine love touches me right now!” “Divine love touches me right now!”

October 27, 2013 – God Touches

by

10/27/13 Rev. David McArthur
God Touches

I remember hearing something that at once I knew was true, yet I did not understand. It was from Emily Cady. “God is the name we give to that unchangeable, inexorable principle… the creative underlying cause of all things… In each individual, He becomes…a personal, loving, all-forgiving Mother-Father…[but] God is not a being having qualities, it is the very good itself…All love in the universe is God. [When you love, that’s God.] All the wisdom and intelligence…is God.” From Charles Fillmore, “I am now in the presence of pure Being and immersed in the Holy Spirit of life, love, and wisdom.” Like experiencing the night sky full of an infinite number of stars, we sense we are part of something greater that moves through us all, as a wave is but a part of the whole ocean. We don’t get to live there, but we touch it and we know it is real.

Having fled a raging forest fire which swept down upon her home, Sandra McFall asked her friend Paul to go back with her that first time. Her greatest fears were realized as she saw the total ruin of her home. She was a professional artist, and had not only lost her home, but her workplace and much of her work as well. Paul did find in the ashes a picture of Sandra’s father that had survived relatively intact. She remembered how she and her parents, as missionaries in Africa, had lost that home too to fire when soldiers swept through destroying everything. She remembered how her father had told her then that everything she needed was inside her. Back at the diner, Paul produced a book he had retrieved from the ruins. It was her mother’s Bible. It was still full of the many notes her mother had made whenever she had seen the touch of God in their recovery from that earlier loss. Sandra resolved that from then on she would count her “God touches” every day.

So everyday I count 5 “God touches”. #1 is that I open my eyes each morning. My thoughts go right to #2—coffee! How it’s so carefully grown and processed and delivered to me. What about that first smile of the day? All that love—that is God. And then stepping out into the fall breeze and sunshine! And when I turn the key and the car starts right up, that’s God—all those parts put together and delivered to me at my fingertips. Emilie Cady said, “It’s not that God has power; God IS power.”

Are you willing to do five a day? It can be the smile you see, the food you eat. The more you are aware of, the deeper is your experience. “Divine love touches me right now!” “Divine love touches me right now!”

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