LIVING TRUTH TODAY

Hello,

In a universe of beauty and wonder, of awe, if you are paying attention, why are our everyday affairs so full of strife?

Why are our politics adversarial, our corporate world competitive, our religions antagonistic (or at least elitist)?

Part of the reason is our conditioned response to see ourselves as separate from everyone and everything. Another part is our biological development as competitive creatures believing in lack and limitation. Still another is the failure of our spiritual traditions to evolve with our scientific and technological advances - we have magical/mythic religious beliefs in a world of rational scientific advancement.

The Enlightenment didn't really catch on, following in the traditions of the teachings of Jesus and other Great Ideas that did not really take. Oh, we have a great tradition of arts and letters in the west as a result of the Enlightenment, and we have Christianity as a result of an interpretation of the teachings of Jesus - but are either of these close to universally applied today in the form in which they were intended?

The teachings of Jesus - that God is Love and that each of us is part of that Love - were lost in the creation of the Church as a political organization with the need to get as many converts as possible and to please the powers that be in order to become a "state religion." Paul and his progeny in the clergy distorted the loving, radical message of Jesus, returning to an essentially Old Testament view of God as a moody, punishing, angry being. The Christianity of today, as diverse as it is, cannot be called loving in the main - too many wars, too much suffering.

So what are we to do?

My suggestion is that those who have come to believe a deeper, more loving idea about who and what we are - regardless of the tradition, or lack of tradition in which that belief has evolved - do what we can to spread the word. This will, of course, lead to much derision, opposition, and worse.

The reaction to "The Secret" is a case in point. While an imperfect work (what isn't?), "The Secret" brings the idea of oneness and the innate ability to affect your own life in a profound way to the public consciousness. Oprah gets it, many more mainstream people do not. No surprise there.

My tradition, Religious Science, is one that follows the teachings of Jesus, while not deifying the man Jesus - he is no more divine than you or I - which means that he is completely divine, as are you, as am I.

So being divine is nothing special - everyone and everything is divine. Failing to come to understand this causes suffering. Coming to recognize this does not free one of suffering, but it does greatly reduce that suffering.

What I wish the people from "The Secret," who are getting all this media time, would say is: "When you live the beliefs that are contained in this film, you will be more happy than if you do not."

End of report. What else matters?

Religious Science may not be producing great numbers of movers and shakers in society, but it is producing large numbers of people who are taking dominion over their own lives - and are happier as a result. They are happy, they are doing good works, they are practicing kindness, they are healing themselves and others. They are not doing harm (not much anyway - it's amazing how much less harm you do when you stop being self-destructive); they are changing the energy of the planet.

There are other similar pathways, and we all can learn from one another. It seems that part of the pathway is to learn to be unattached to outcome - to allow others to do what they will and to stay centered in Truth. That is a high calling and it is not easy. But there it is.

"Love the Lord thy God with all your heart and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself," said Jesus the Master Teacher. Loving God means loving yourself - for God is manifest as you, as me, as that guy over there. What a beautiful idea. Maybe it's time it caught on.

Love and Light,
RevLockard