A MADCAP MIND

I realize more and more that my mind sometimes behaves like a wild runner. At certain times of the day, it races around helter-skelter, thinking about this, that, and the other, jumping from one thought to the other for no discernible reason. When I need to focus my thoughts, I can do it quite well, but in a free moment (as when I’m preparing dinner, for instance) my mind might go from planning my vacation next summer to regretting a remark I made earlier in the day to wondering who my new neighbor across the street is. Like some zany, madcap individual, my brain occasionally seems to spring around in a completely illogical manner. I’m not worried about this, because it’s the way all minds work a considerable part of the time. What bothers me, though, is that I sometimes fall into an old habit of getting carried away by these undisciplined thoughts. Instead of standing back and observing them as amusing but harmless mental shenanigans, I often get entirely captured by this unruly kind of thinking. I can spend many minutes mindlessly swept up in my thoughts, and then “wake up” and wonder where the time went. I guess what I need to learn to do is simply stay objective about my own thoughts. After all, my thoughts aren’t “me”. They’re simply passing phenomena, like the breezes, like birds flitting by, and the best approach to them would be simply observing and appreciating. Instead of getting “lost” in the stray thoughts that come my way, I should just watch and be amused by them. Like a sailor at sea, I should learn to enjoy the “waves” of thoughts that come my way without being controlled by them.

(first draft written 8.25.07)

PERFECT BALANCE

I’ve been having a difficult time with the various balancing positions in my yoga exercises, but the Universe itself certainly knows to keep its balance. If balancing is defined as a state of equilibrium where all forces are cancelled by equal opposing forces, then the Universe is a master of the art of balancing. There are countless forces at work in the cosmos, but they all seem to cancel each other out perfectly. There’s sadness, but there’s an equal amount of happiness. There’s the sorrow of death everywhere we turn, but life is always there too, flourishing and indomitable. There’s sickness, but health enduringly moves forward all around it. For every gloomy nightfall there’s an inspiring sunrise. What all this means is that the Universe is perfectly balanced, flawlessly poised, unconquerably steady and stable. What this, in turn, means is that there is actually no discord, no turmoil, no evil in the world. There seems to be plenty of evil in the world, but if we pay close attention, we see that good always annuls it with its own powerful pull. All that really exists, at the end of the day, are perfectly balanced forces cancelling each other out, thereby maintaining the eternal harmony of things. If the Universe were doing yoga exercises with me each morning, it could unquestionably teach me a few things about balancing.

(first draft written on August 28, 2007)

AN AUTO-PILOT LIFE

It’s become fairly clear to me that I have spent a sizeable portion of my life in a somewhat “mindless” state. I’ve been running mostly on auto-pilot, doing a thousand things each day with very little genuine awareness. I’ve gone from task to task like a robot. Day after day I’ve worked through the to-do list like a factory machine produces products. That may sound a little harsh, but I think it’s accurate. The truth of it hit me especially hard recently when I realized how very little awareness I have of my own body. I’ve had this body for 66 years, and in all that time I have paid little or no attention to how it feels or what it’s doing. When I’ve been sick or in pain, my awareness has kicked in, but otherwise I’ve carried my body around like a strange, unknown burden. How peculiar, that a person should be an almost total stranger to the body that keeps him alive! How odd, that a man should live a good part of his life with a virtual blindfold on, rarely seeing exactly what he’s doing, why he’s doing it, and what it all means!

(first draft written on August 31, 2007)

ONE-NESS

I’m relaxing tonight, partly because I’m beginning to understand an important fact about life. I grew up with the idea that the nature of reality was what might be called “many-ness”, but now I see that it’s much closer to “one-ness”. From my earliest memory, it was impressed upon me (by family, friends, the media, and the overall culture) that life consists of many different people, many different situations, and many different ideas, all of which are struggling with each other. Life, as I learned it growing up, was a tug-of-war between countless elements. My job, I grew to believe, was to protect myself from harm and try to win as many of the daily contests as possible. Now, however, in my 7^th decade of trying to figure things out, I’ve come to understand that the many-ness approach to reality is simply wrong. Instead of being many, the Universe is just one. It’s not a confused collection of disparate material entities, but rather a single, unified, and harmonious expression of itself. The entire Universe, I see now, is as unified as a single cell. As in a cell, everything that happens in the Universe happens for the good of itself. What this means for me is that I should give up struggling and worrying, because there’s no other person or other thing that’s out to hurt “me”. In fact, there’s no “other”, period, and no separate “me”. There’s just the one united and eternally successful Universe, of which I and everyone and all of our so-called problems are a part. We’re all part of a single grand enterprise called Life (of which death is just another part), as closely knit with each other as the molecules in a cell. This realization, to me, calls for a lot more relaxing than struggling.

A NEW POWER

“A new power is in operation.” --Romans 8:2

The above quote is the only truth I need to remember today, because it concerns the only important quality in the universe – power. If I can come to an understanding of the nature of real power, and stay in touch with this power, I can be constantly satisfied with life. When I think about it carefully, it’s clear that dissatisfaction always springs from a sense of a lack of power, and so if I understand what power really is, and stay near it, then it’s obvious that I will never be dissatisfied. (Unhappy, perhaps, but not dissatisfied -- and there's a huge difference.) This quote tells me wonderful news. Power is where all good originates. It’s not so much that the power at work in the universe is “new”, but that it is new to me. It’s the power of thought, of infinite Mind – a power that, despite my spiritual studies, I still don’t thoroughly believe in. It’s a power that calls out to me to turn away from the ultimately ineffectual power of matter and material things and toward the ever-present power of Spirit. It’s a power that creates everything and runs everything. Nothing happens without this marvelous power of Mind, God, Allah. It’s a power that will be present with me all day today – this cool, clear day in autumn.

--written in October, 2007

THE EVER-PRESENCE OF PERFECTION

Most people believe that perfection can never be a reality, but I believe that it’s always the reality. It seems to me that every present moment is utterly perfect, simply because it is what it has to be. As this current reality right now, the present moment is entirely without fault or defect, which is the definition of “perfection”. I personally may not like this moment the way it is, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is exactly what it must be. I may wish this moment was a “happier” one for me or for others, but that doesn’t make the moment any less complete the way it is. This moment, and any moment, can’t be anything but what it is, which makes it perfect. This may sound somewhat insensitive, because we all know that a moment can be full of intense pain and suffering, which would seem to surely not be a perfect situation. But I would say, rather, that it’s not a happy situation. I personally may not enjoy a particular present moment, may not be happy with what’s happening at that moment, but I can still recognize and accept the fact that the moment, right now, is exactly the way it must be. I may not be pleased with this moment, but I can be at peace with it. I can even, perhaps, honor it as another perfect moment in a universe everlastingly full of them. I guess I’m talking about seeing the big picture instead of the small, “personal” picture. To me, personally, many moments are annoying, unsatisfactory, and painful, but in the big picture of the 15 billion-year-old universe, I try to see that each moment is a necessary part of a measureless and harmonious system that has kept itself running smoothly for eons. My personal situation may be sad and agonizing, but the situation of the universe as a whole is always perfect, and I am part of that general perfection. I just have to step back – way back – and get the big, perfect picture.

Written on October 14, 2007

I awoke this morning with this thought: every moment today will be perfect. I went directly to my dictionary and found that one definition for “perfect” is “excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement”, which will be true of each moment today. No moment will be able to be improved. The universe has spent untold billions of years preparing each of today’s moments, and each one will be precisely what it is required to be. Some moments may not be exactly the way I want them to be, may seem troublesome, inconvenient, even sad or tragic, but even those moments will be perfect -- exactly fitting the need in a certain situation and for a certain purpose. With my self-centered short-sightedness, I probably won’t be able to perceive how all the moments perfectly suit a need, but in some far-reaching way, they definitely will. Every moment will be the only reality that exists, which means it will be entirely faultless, which means it will carry immeasurable good for me and the entire universe. My job today will be to accept and embrace each moment exactly as it is, and to look for the rightness of that moment. I guess you could say my task today is to willingly receive the gift each moment brings me – which should be cheerful work, since each gift will be unflawed and ideal. Sounds like a good deal to me– accepting approximately 57,000 gifts. Sounds like I’m in for a fairly nice day.

-- Written on Monday, December 03, 2007

From now on, whenever I get into one of my ‘controlling’ moods, I should try to keep in mind some rather astonishing facts I uncovered in my reading yesterday. As I was searching the internet, I happened to stumble upon the fact that the earth rotates on its axis at a speed of about 1,000 miles per hour, and that it travels around the sun at the astounding speed of 67,000 miles per hour. When I read that, I sat back in my chair and tried to take in the idea that I’m living on a ball that’s traveling at unthinkable speeds. While I’m sitting in my quiet apartment staring at my computer screen, the ‘ship’ on which I’m a passenger is tearing through space in a breakneck way, both twirling and zooming – and it’s been doing this for at least 15 billion years. Now, in the future, when I get bogged down with thoughts of controlling any and everything in my life, I need to remember these marvelous truths about this universe that I’m part of. Billions of years ago, the cosmos created itself and started stars and planets spinning and rocketing, and it has been successfully engineering its own life ever since. The universe controls everything, from the pumping of my heart to the rotations of planets, and it does it in a smooth and harmonious manner. My question for myself should be, “Where do you come off thinking you have to control anything?” I am an infinitely miniscule (but nonetheless vital) member of the immeasurable team called the universe, but I am not the coach or the manager. I am like a wave in an endless ocean, and can a single wave control what the great ocean does? In the future, when the urge comes over me to “get things under control”, I hope I can recall the great facts of reality, and just relax and enjoy the unbelievably rapid ride the universe is providing for me.

-- written on December 25, 2007

I awoke this morning with the familiar and somewhat anxious feeling that I “must” do many things today, but, thankfully, before too many minutes passed, I remembered that there is only one thing I must do – and that is be entirely open to and accepting of each present moment. Each instant today will be an infinitely powerful miracle, a unique unfolding of life that has never happened before in the history of the universe. Each moment will be entirely unavoidable (which makes resisting it foolish, even insane) and will reveal itself exactly as it must. It will literally be all there is and will be utterly perfect as it is. So (I said to myself as I brushed my teeth) why not relax, drop all resistance, dismiss all worries about whether I will get 10,000 things or 0 things accomplished today, and happily embrace the only moment there will ever be – the flawless and all-powerful present?

--written on January 4, 2008

LIVING LIKE A SPECTATOR

I had some fun this afternoon thinking about the word “spectator”, wondering whether I could live my life as much like a spectator as a participant. This wouldn’t mean not doing anything – being a passive, indolent observer – but simply keeping an objective eye on things as life unfolds. As I go about my daily activities, I could calmly watch myself, as from afar, observing the curious events that befall me. Perhaps, instead of a deadly earnest contest, I could think of life as an interesting game, with me as both an enthusiastic participant and fascinated spectator. One thing is certain: as a spectator I would never be bored. At each moment there are major miracles unfolding everywhere, even inside me. From the constantly changing activities surrounding me, to the endless “in and out” of my breathing, to the nonstop stream of thoughts, there is always something astonishing making itself known. To appreciate the ever-shifting phenomenon of life, all I would have to do is stay quiet inside and pay attention. Boredom would be out of the question. Who knows, it might be a fine way to live.

What I believe about life controls everything I do. My beliefs are like riders controlling the reins, and I am the horse. If my belief says that the world is a matter-based, scary place, every thought and action will be guided by that belief. Even the smallest, most insignificant act will be steered by my belief in the threatening nature of life. It’s impossible to overstate the power of beliefs. All the billions of people on the earth are operating, right now, under the guidance of their beliefs. If you could somehow harness all the power of these beliefs, it would easily be the strongest power in the universe. The wonderful truth hidden in all this is that I don’t have to believe in the matter-based, menacing nature of life. There is another way of seeing – believing in – life, and that is that life is spirit-based and harmonious. If I approach each day guided by that belief, I experience a very different kind of power and a totally different kind of life. Life becomes an enjoyable game instead of a fight to the death. Nonstop struggle is replaced by eternal harmony. It’s as simple as changing riders on a horse.

Written on Thursday, March 06, 2008

This morning, shortly after I awoke at my usual 4:00 a.m., I was moping around my apartment, berating myself for not getting organized, not getting enough accomplished, not getting any brilliant ideas. I was feeling like a failure already -- someone with no direction, no inspiring thoughts, no special qualities. I was beating up on myself with great ferocity. Fortunately, however, I came to my senses fairly quickly and realized the silliness of my thinking. I realized that, once again, I had fallen into the trap of seeing the universe in the totally wrong way. I was thinking of it as composed of isolated 'me' and a zillion other isolated entities, when in truth it is all one, all unified, all harmonious. There isn't actually a separate 'me' that has to get organized, get things accomplished, and get brilliant ideas. There's only the one infinite ocean of life, of which 'I' am an integral part. I can no more be separately responsible for accomplishing things than a wave can be separately responsible for getting things done in the ocean. The vast ocean, not the individual waves, performs all the work, and the infinite universe, not an isolated 'me', does all the necessary tasks.

As I slowly realized this comforting truth, I relaxed, let go, and started simply watching this miraculous universe carry out its wishes. I saw that, for the rest of the day, I could be a spectator, moment by moment, at an utterly astonishing performance.

THE GIFT OF DEATH

The lead story in the afternoon news today is the sudden death of the beloved television correspondent, Tim Russert. As I listened to the radio commentator reporting the death in somber and shocked tones, I found myself feeling a touch of sorrow. A man who was, by all accounts, a loving and dignified human being had died, and he would be missed by many. There would surely be tears among his family and friends, and news stories tonight would mourn his passing. Surprisingly, though, my thoughts slowly shifted from this single death in Washington to the vast wave of deaths that was moving across the world on this day. It is estimated that approximately 155,000 people die each day around the globe – 155,000 people who will be mourned and missed today by loved ones, 155,000 people who brought some special goodness to the earth and tomorrow will have disappeared. The earth, figuratively, is flooded with tears of grief and regret even as I type this. Right at this moment thousands and thousands of my fellow humans are lamenting an incalculable loss. Do I dwell on this because I revel in morbidly pessimistic thinking? I don’t think so. These reflections merely help me to keep things in perspective, to see “the big picture”. Tim Russert was part of an enormous and irresistible surge of human death which sweeps across our planet every single day, and, in a sense, he will be missed and mourned not one whit more than the poorest and most forgotten person in the morgue. Mr. Russert gave great gifts to the human race in his short life, but so, in their own distinctive and perhaps unseen way, did each of the 155,000 people who will die by midnight tonight. All of their deaths are worthy of being announced on the evening news, for the earth will miss each of them in special and profound ways. But while we mourn the passing of these thousands of people, including the celebrated ones like Mr. Russert, we should also try to find some peace in our hearts, some way of seeing the absolute necessity and rightness of all these deaths – for death is an essential part of life. On this day, while so many are dying, even more are being born. Estimates are that nearly 200, 000 new human beings are being welcomed all over the world today, and – as strange and insensitive as it may sound – it is because of death that there is room for these little ones to thrive and prosper. Tens of thousands depart and tens of thousands arrive. We wave a sad goodbye with our tissues and we offer a welcoming embrace with our smiles. It’s simply the way it always has been, the way it must be. The truth is that death is life’s greatest gift to itself. The flowers spring up in April only because the leaves crinkle and tumble in November. We mourn for the loss of Mr. Russert and the 155,000 others who will leaves us today, but lurking somewhere in our hearts must be a smile of acceptance and peace as we think of so many thousands of new-born babies bursting into the arms of our fortunate human race today.

THE INVINCIBLE POWER OF LAUGHTER

On this blog, I seem to keep going back over old ideas, "rehashing" the same basic thoughts -- but I guess that's what I'm enjoying so much. More and more, the truths of life seem fairly simple. Not that life is "easy" for me to understand -- far from it -- but the proper way to live life, or the best approach to life, does seem less complicated as the years pass -- and a big part of that relatively straightforward approach is simple acceptance. It seems to me that acceptance is at the heart of what Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, St. Francis, Shakespeare, Whitman, etc. taught us about living. I guess non-resistance would be a synonym here, for Jesus said we should not resist evil with more evil, but rather rise above it with good, with love, with kindness, with gentleness, with acceptance. There is immense pain in the world today, and the only way to overcome it -- prove its ultimate inability to harm us – is, oddly enough, to accept it. That doesn't mean being "happy" that people are in pain, or ignoring it, but it does mean being at peace with it. It's happening, so I have no other sane choice, really, than to be at peace with it. The Buddhists talk about the difference between pain and suffering, and I believe Jesus would have agreed with this. The Buddhists and Jesus knew that we all have pain in our lives, sometimes severe, but it becomes suffering only when we turn away from it, run from it, refuse to accept it. Non-acceptance always produces fear -- and no words were used more often by Jesus than "don't be afraid". He knew that fear is the only real enemy -- that fear (non-acceptance) turns pain into suffering.

So, if we humbly and totally accept the fact that there's pain in the world, and in our lives, this can (at least sometimes) enable us to "deal" with the pain and eventually overcome it, because acceptance frees up the overwhelming power of all that is not pain -- love, gentleness, patience, kindness, perseverance. If we're not so busy resisting and fleeing from pain, we're free to face it, look at it carefully, even marvel at it, and then get to work changing the situation. Acceptance and non-resistance brings a peacefulness, an openness, that lets in the real power in life -- the power of harmony instead of discord.

In a previous post, I mentioned Jay Leno, primarily because the best kind of comedy and humor is, in a way, all about acceptance. If we can laugh about something, we have accepted it. Of course, the same is true, strangely, of crying. If we can heartily cry about a situation, we have accepted it. Laughter and tears are brother and sister. Remember crying because you were happy, and joking about something because you were scared? Both laughter and tears mean we're not fighting our pain, running from it, denying it, hiding from it. We're facing it, working on it, and slowly moving through it. I've often thought about the people in China and Burma in the last few weeks, and how, in the days after the tragedies, their gradual, hesitant smiles with friends must have brought them strength to deal with the situation. Soon after the smiles there probably came a little quiet laughter as they found the wisdom to see that life is ultimately good and continues on. Perhaps they are starting to see, again, "the big picture", in which everything, not just earthquakes and cyclones, is enormous, immense, awesome, and wonderful (in the sense of 'full of wonder'). Perhaps they're seeing that even a little child playing ball in a street is something amazing and inspiring, every bit as incredible as a natural disaster. Perhaps they're seeing the wisdom of a quote from Dr. Seuss: "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." In other words, maybe the people in China and Burma are gradually coming to see that, yes, many of their children's and friends' lives are over, but the fact that they once lived and flourished and brought joy to everyone is worth celebrating, and maybe even laughing about, as they review good memories. Maybe laughter, in the end, is always more powerful than tragedy.

THEIR SIDE AND OUR SIDE

June 10, 2008

“The young man exclaimed, ‘Oh master, what shall we do?’

He answered, ‘Don’t worry about it. There are more on our side than on their side.”

-- 2 Kings 6:16

In the above passage, the servant is terrified because their camp seemed to be surrounded by an overwhelming enemy. However, Elisha, the “man of God”, was completely calm in the face of this seemingly devastating threat, and his response to the servant explains why. Elisha understood a fundamental truth that I have a hard time remembering in stressful times. He knew that, no matter how much power the material threat appeared to have, he – and all of us – have way more power inside us. On “their side” – the side of material perils – there is seeming strength, but on “our side” – the side of mental (or spiritual) force – there is infinitely more strength. To Elisha, it was as clear as a problem of logic or math. Any material threat is limited. It always has a beginning and an end, a top and bottom, and boundary lines beyond which it is not effective. It’s measurable, and therefore will eventually wear down and come to its end. On the other hand, the spiritual resources which all of us always have “on our side” for immediate use are totally unlimited. Qualities like courage and kindness are not measurable, and therefore have no beginning nor end, no boundary lines beyond which they falter, diminish, and disappear. Does patience have an outer frontier, beyond which it cannot exist – or does it go on forever and ever, as long as we believe in its power? Does courage eventually get used up, like the gas in a car – or does it last for days, months, and years, provided we have faith in its power? Can any limited, finite, material threat defeat a spiritual power like acceptance – or does acceptance overpower and conquer any and all threats, on the condition that we allow it to work its magic? Elisha knew the answer to these questions, and he prayed that his servant would have “his eyes opened” so that he, too, could see the happy truth of their situation.

THE FOOLISH UNIVERSE

June 5, 2008

It occurs to me this morning that the universe is rather like a good comedy show – maybe a Marx brothers farce. All of creation seems a bit absurd (in the Charlie Chaplin sense), at least when I view it from the perspective of my private little mind. In so many ways, life makes no sense to me. Things happen which seem entirely unreasonable, irrational, and perverse. Contradictions abound: one minute I’m faced with wondrous happiness, and the next I read about a mind-numbing tragedy. If I try to “figure all this out” – try to analyze and “make sense” out of what occurs in this universe, I’m left with the feeling that it’s utterly absurd, much like a Saturday Night Live skit.

And yet, surprisingly, this realization is exactly what helps me to relax. If the universe is absurd, it just means that little, isolated “I” can’t figure it all out, and that I should stop trying. The universe is not a puzzle that I need to spend my life trying to solve. Rather, I should think of it as a very entertaining show – a zany comedy/tragedy, a farce, a series of crazy Jay Leno routines. Sometimes the show is funny, sometimes it’s sad, but it’s always interesting and engaging, and – this is essential to remember – it’s always just a show. To be sure, it's often a thoroughly sorrowful show, one that makes me feel like I am the miserable main character -- but if I'm patient enough, and remember that I actually don't have to be onstage but can just watch "myself" from the audience, the scene will soon change to a happier one. It always does. The point the Marx brothers and all comedians try to make is that life is not as serious as we make it out to be. It’s an eternally changing, endlessly renewing, and amazingly varied performance, and perhaps I need to relax, settle into my seat, and appreciate the astonishing and beautiful craziness of it all.

"ME" ... OR THE UNIVERSE?

Every so often the truth comes home to me that I have spent a good portion of my life thinking (and worrying) about my own individual, separate welfare. Even this morning, as soon as I awoke I began planning how ‘I’ was going to have a good day today. I passed a schedule of upcoming events through my mind, sorting out activities that would be beneficial to me from those that could possibly harm me. I began fretting a bit about whether I would have enough time to complete all the tasks that seemed necessary to make this a good day for me. I wondered if I had all my priorities straight. Everything was ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, and ‘mine’ – and that, I’m afraid, is the way I spend many of my thinking moments. Even when I’m thinking about others, it’s often in connection with how their lives affect mine – how they make me feel happy or sad, how they bring peace or turmoil to my life. Even when I’m thinking about how to help my students become better readers and writers, it’s frequently because ‘I’ want to appear as a better teacher. Everything centers around ‘me’.

What’s strange about this is that it means I’ve spent a sizeable part of my life in ignorance of the grand universe as a whole. While I’m worrying about what I’m going to be accomplishing in the next hour, countless miracles are occurring all around me, and I’m missing most of them. The sun is shining superbly outside my window while I fuss about what tie I should wear. Great grey trees are standing silently and beautifully in the park while I debate about which book I should read next. Blood is flowing magnificently through my body while I obsessively plan the lessons for my classes. My lungs are expanding with perfect precision while I try my best to secure some private satisfaction for myself.

Today perhaps I can unload this burden, this enormous weight of self-centeredness. Perhaps I can turn away from my tiny, isolated ego and open up to the grandeurs of daily life around me. While I’ve been worrying about ‘me’, a majestic universe has been ceaselessly unfolding, and it’s time I noticed. It’s time I set down the heavy load of egocentricity and started enjoying the show.

THERE’S ALWAYS PLENTY OF LAUGHTER

June 2, 2008

As I was walking into the grocery store yesterday, I saw two women laughing together on the sidewalk, and it suddenly occurred to me that this is happening all over the world. At any given moment, probably more than a billion people are laughing all around the globe. I may not be laughing, but there’s certainly plenty of laughter happening -- here, there, and everywhere. I may be in the depths of some personal sorrow, but at that same moment, guaranteed, laughter is rippling from New York to Jakarta, from the north to the south pole. The truth is it doesn’t matter if I am not laughing at a particular moment. What matters is that laughter is happening throughout the world, and I am part of that world. If the world that I am part of is doing a lot of laughing each moment, doesn’t that mean that I am actually part of the laughing, and shouldn’t I rejoice in that fact?

THE ONLY AUTHORITY

(written on March 26, 2008

In today’s reading, the centurion says “I am a man under authority”, meaning he understands the chain-of-command and knows who’s the ultimate commander-in-chief. This system of authority was obviously so clear to him that it was a central part of his life. He always had it in mind, which made it easy for him to see where the real power lay in any situation, no matter how small.

Today, I hope I can be as clear-headed as the centurion, always aware that the ultimate power – the only power – lies with infinite Thought, infinite Mind, the eternal God, Allah, the Tao, the Universe.

...................................................

Everything is a belief. Sickness, health, failure, success – whatever form my life seems to take today will be caused by a belief I am entertaining. I can’t overestimate the incredible power of belief. At any given moment, the power of belief around the world is immeasurable.

................................................

There is only one cause. An amazing truth, that each of the zillion things that will happen around the universe today can be traced to one infinite cause – Thought, Universal Mind, God. Things happen because God happens.

EVERY DOOR FLEW OPEN

June 1, 2008

Along about midnight, Paul and Silas were at prayer and singing a robust hymn to God. The other prisoners couldn't believe their ears. Then, without warning, a huge earthquake! The jailhouse tottered, every door flew open, all the prisoners were loose.

-- Acts 16: 25-26 (in The Message, a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson)

Today every door has flown open. Actually, none of them were ever closed, but I didn’t realize it. Like many of us, I thought I was a prisoner inside a material body inside a material universe, threatened on all sides by every imaginable peril. It’s what I grew up believing, and my beliefs have held me prisoner. Today, though, I’m going to behave like a suddenly liberated prisoner, because the universe is far different than I thought it was. A wondrous “earthquake” of thought has destroyed the material restraints. I understand now that I live in a spiritual empire (the “kingdom of God”, as Jesus called it) where the only ruler is the eternal and boundless present moment. There are no doors, no locks, no walls, no separations. All the prisoners -- including me -- are loose.