Inspiration

CHRIST LIGHT UNITY - A NEW THOUGHT CHURCH

"Sharing God's Love through Spiritual Community"

The Rev. Richard Kent Matthews

WHAT YOU SEEK

Check the self help section of your favorite bookstore and you will find a large selection of books that promise to help you find happiness. Follow their plan, their structure, their directions and you will become a happier person, guaranteed. You will find the love of your life, the money you crave, the career path you thought was unavailable. Some of the suggestions in some of the books make sense and may benefit you--at least a little--if you commit. But the books miss the point. You are not really seeking happiness, pleasure, or joy in and of themselves. You are seeking satisfaction. You desire it more than pleasure, more than happiness.

Satisfaction is attained through novelty--surprise--rather than familiarity. We step out of routine into the unknown. The human brain is wired by evolution for surprise because of the world's--of life's--unpredictability. Novelty, then, is what serves us. And novel physical challenges may be the best way to achieve a satisfied feeling. Sitting in front of the TV watching the news, the soaps, the sitcoms doesn't produce the satisfaction we crave. Yet, novel experiences may seem out of reach. Hated jobs, family stresses, illness, low self esteem and resistance to change can lead us to believe there is nothing that could satisfy us short of just walking away. But that wouldn't work.

Hidden within our everyday lives is a secret. It's an open secret, staring us in the face right now. It travels with us everywhere. It reveals itself in every situation. We usually don't notice how available it always is. What's the secret? It's simple. The world we experience is created within our own brain. Since we have created this one, we can create a new one. By now, we have read or heard that often. Yet, we still don't totally believe it. As long as we don't believe it, we will live in the world we have created. That is the paradoxical gift of the Universe. We are free to create a world of pain, a world of distress, a world of fear. And we are free to create a world of joy, peace, success, and, ultimately, satisfaction. It's our choice. It will always be our choice. No one is coming to save us. No one needs to. We are fully capable.

Now, that's novel!

What You Don’t Know About God and Should

“The word ‘God’ is not found in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek or Latin Bibles. The word seems to be derived from old Indo-European languages, particularly Persian and might possibly derive from Pagan sources.” (Wikipedia)

The biblical God has been a source of disagreement for centuries. The word “God” is not even a proper noun. It’s a title, a symbol applied to an enigma: a loving, caring Father, as well as a vengeful, jealous and seemingly power hungry dictator. The Old Testament refers to Him as YHWH (the Tetragrammaton), which is not a name; rather, it is a sacred Hebrew reference to the Unnamable, the Ineffable, the Invisible, deliberately left without vowels to make it unpronounceable.* To name is to define, and hence, limit by the definition. It is for that reason the God of the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament) remains nameless.

When New Thought communities speak of God, they are actually referring to:

• Mystery, the Source of All That Is, undefined, unlimited, everywhere present;

• Experience. As we walk through the world, we are constantly reminded of the Presence by what we see with the eye and observe with the mind and heart;

• Relationship. We recognize not only the Presence of God in the world, but the immanent presence of God in our life through interaction with others.

God, then, is not a unique and separate entity. God is the very essence of our being. We not only stand in the Presence of God, we are the Presence of God, standing.

This spiritual path called New Thought makes the most astounding—and in many circles, reviled and blasphemous—claim of all: you are the Mystery, you are the Experience, you are God in expression. God’s relationship with the world is made manifest in our relationships with each other.

In the final analysis, the only name for God that matters is Love—active Love. Without that, it’s just religion.

*English renderings of the Old Testament added vowels to read “Yahweh.”

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MEDITATIONS

Mini Meditation (Repeat this each morning and evening for one month and watch how your life begins to change for the better ...)

"I know that I am an Expression of the One Presence, the One Spirit that has brought All into Existence. My life is blessed and I share it with the world."

Click the title THE DAILY WORD for daily inspirational reading from the Unity publication THE DAILY WORD

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Inspiration page text (c) The Rev. Richard Kent Matthews