Going to Ninevah (the hard way)

Picture found at Tanakh through world art

(re-sharing this blog post from 2 years ago)

Have you ever heard the voice of God?

Has God ever said “Get up tomorrow morning & go to Ninevah” ?

Maybe not, but I’ll bet you’ve felt that nagging feeling about helping someone out; apologizing to someone; or going the extra step on a task or project.

That’s the same voice of God – the divine “nudge” – that spoke to Jonah, telling him to arise and go to Ninevah.

Most of us feel it first in the negative, or reverse direction – often as young children and most definitely as adolescents. It’s that strong almost-audible voice that says:

“Now you KNOW you shouldn’t go there / do that …”

It is also as young children or adolescents that we often learn about Jonah as told in the Hebrew Scriptures and Old Testament.

Jonah heard the voice of God tell him to “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 

Jonah didn’t want to go to Ninevah and he made a decision to turn around and head so far away from Ninevah that maybe even God wouldn’t be able to find him. He went to Joppa and found passage on a ship headed to Tarshish.

Funny thing about people that God speaks to: they can’t hide.

God “…hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.”

Sailors are, by definition or custom, a superstitious lot. When this storm blew up out of nowhere, it was soon decided that this last-minute passenger might have something to do with it. When they cast lots (fortune telling, of sorts) the lots fell on Jonah and he ended up confessing that he was a Hebrew, and was running away from God.

They were beside themselves as the storm was tremendous and they didn’t want to be responsible for his death, but they had no idea how to survive and asked Jonah how to calm the sea. He told them that nothing short of throwing him overboard would help, so they tossed him into the raging waves.

The story might have ended here. Jonah made this disaster, he ignored God’s request and blatantly went in the opposite direction. Now he’s created a colossal mess and is about to be consumed by it. Sound familiar to anyone?

But God was not done with Jonah. Yes, Jonah had ignored God’s message, but God was not giving up on him and would not forsake him, or leave him in his hour of need.

¹⁷And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah ends up in the belly of a whale (great fish) – not a great place to hang out, I imagine but safe from drowning. Eventually the fish vomits Jonah out on dry land.

This is such great imagery, and a great spiritual lesson for kids and adults! Here are a couple of the lessons we learn from this story of Jonah:

1. When you put your foot on the spiritual path, you can’t continue doing things “business as usual” – our actions have consequences and sometimes they’re dire.
2. We can’t hide from the Divine.

Have you ever noticed that once you begin to read and follow a spiritual path, you can’t go back to your old ways?

This same concept – this counsel to stay connected to Source, or God, appears in many wisdom texts. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that the way out of the cycle of karmic birth and death is NOT to avoid the tasks required of him (i.e. the instructions or nudges from the Divine) but to perform these duties without a selfish attachment.

Krishna knows that Arjuna can easily get caught up in his own life, and actions and begin to act out of selfish motives – which would keep him in the endless loop of the cycles of life and death.

When Arjuna asks Krishna what binds us to our selfish ways, Krishna tells him that anger and selfish desires are the greatest enemies: they are the destructive powers that can compel us to wander away from our purpose. In the same way Jonah said “Oh I don’t think so,…” when God told him to go to Ninevah and wandered away from his divine purpose.

We learn from Jonah and the Gita that following our own self-centered urges, and ignoring the voice of God has consequences. In the 21st century – especially in America – we live in a very self-focused world. Does this mean that we are all doomed?

Not quite.

This where the rest of the tale of Jonah is instructive.

Jonah defied the instructions God gave him; he ignored that Divine urge and ran in the opposite direction.

But God did not say, “Oh well, Jonah – I ask for a little help and you run off, so good luck dealing with the consequences of your actions!”

Instead, God sends a great fish/whale to save Jonah from a certain death by drowning in the raging storm – a mess that he created by running away. The greatest lesson in this story is that we are not ever cut off from the Divine – even when our selfish and foolish ways should mean the end of us.

We may cause ourselves some rough seas. We may experience a close call and spend time in a really awful place,… but we are never cut off from the Divine – and there is always a way back.

In the belly of the whale, Jonah recognizes his folly and calls out to God. We are not cut off from the Divine unless we choose – Jonah chose to reconnect.

Wayne Dyer talked about that connection using the metaphor of the trolley strap in his work on the Power of Intention. He spoke of reconnecting to Source being like reaching up and grabbing onto that trolley strap.

Whether we choose to envision grabbing the trolley strap, or praying from inside the belly of a smelly, giant fish – we are well-served when we remember what Ernest Holmes taught about the voice of God.

“… Spirit is always with us, if we would but sense Its presence”  ~ Ernest Holmes

In the New Testament, Jesus told his disciples, “…lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world“ but there is perhaps no greater symbolism of the omnipresence of Spirit than that of the whale, or great fish that plucked Jonah from the depths of the sea.

It’s a strong story to remind us that no matter how colossal the mess we create in our lives; no matter how desperate the circumstances appear “… Spirit is always with us, if we would but sense Its presence“. 

And so it is.

(C) 2017 Practitioner's Path

Here’s the Kids Sheet – Jonah and the Whale (kids sheets) – for the story of Jonah

Birthing a New Model

(C) 2019 R Harmon

If you follow my blog at all, you may have picked up on the fact that I closely follow data on the shifts in our culture, and specifically the changes that are impacting organized religion.

Historically, churches and spiritual centers have had physical space (buildings, property) and hired a minister and other staff as dictated by the needs of the congregation.

I remember when the role of Church Organist was a full time position in every church, unless the minister’s wife was a musician and then the compensation was often added as part of the minister’s salary package.

By the time I began working as an Organist (1991), many churches had begun to move away from the full-time Organist/Director of Music model to one where the Organist was paid to show up on Wednesday night to lead choir practice, and Sunday morning for services. It was a part-time gig with no benefits package.

This change came about due to the financial realities stemming from a decline in members, tithes, and changes in church attendance. Today, as the decline in religious participation has accelerated, we see these same changes impacting the ministry.

As I continue to ponder the fate of traditional organized religion in the United States, I have come to question if any of this should have morphed into the big business that it became and struggles to maintain today.

The principles of spiritual living are universal Truths, and as such belong to everyone. Ernest Holmes – ordained Divine Science minister and founder of Religious Science – seemed to understand this, never wanting his teachings to be packaged into a religion.

“… Ernest Holmes never wanted a church, and wasn’t interested in religion. He only wanted a teaching ministry. … Holmes resisted it as he resisted too much organization. “To evolve a higher understanding of the spiritual universe, humanity and the church must be free, open at the top.”

SOM Archives

When the focus of a church or center shifts to finances, the mission becomes muddled. Instead of remaining “open at the top” and agile enough to evolve a higher understanding of the spiritual universe; churches and centers become obsessed with paying the rent/mortgage, funding repairs or updates, giving the minister(s) a raise (or paying them what was agreed to) and counting what gets put into the offering plate each week.

These organizations are not free and evolving higher understandings or open at the top – they are scrapping and scrimping to meet the payroll; worrying about their own survival and chained to very base financial realities of modern life.

Referencing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need, we know that an individual cannot evolve to a state of self-actualization if they are struggling with basic needs (e.g. survival). I can’t imagine that an organization – comprised of multiple individuals who are interested in the health of the organization – can evolve when collectively they remain mired in the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy.

This reality of financial turmoil then leads to feeling justified in charging money for classes that teach techniques for applying universal Truths, prayer work and more. And here is where I believe churches and centers have gone astray and where the wisdom of Ernest Holmes (e.g. no establishment of a religion) is so obvious.

The focus, I believe, needs to be on teaching interested seekers how to use spiritual tools to improve their lives, period. It should never devolve into maintaining salaries, rents and more. Easy to say; not so easy to back out of when almost the entirety of organized religion is up to their eyeballs in this money model.

A transformation is already in motion. Fewer dollars going into offering plates on Sunday morning; more church buildings are being put up for sale each month and difficult salary decisions being made every week in religious organizations across the country.

As I ponder the fate of the spiritual-not-religious teachings, I see the need for teachers and guides, but I don’t see the need for the role to be a salaried position. In fact, the very BEST teachers are those individuals whose lives are 3D examples of how the spiritual principles actually work in the real world. Don’t preach to me about what I should do – show me what’s possible by living your best life!

As Mitch Horowitz writes in the forward to Harv Bishop’s new book, New Thought (R)evolution, (See,… I’m not the only one saying these things)

“New Thought as an identifiably intellectual and spiritual movement, born out of the transcendental yearnings of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, has a less certain future.”

(and)

“New Thought, in its churches, books, and internal dialogues, has failed to mature.”

Mitch Horowitz

My opinion on at least part of the reason New Thought has failed to mature in the latter 20th/early 21st century is that pursuit of fame and/or fortune has been the goal, and the sharing of spiritual principles has been the vehicle. The (anecdotal) evidence of this has presented in several ways.

If we look at the current crop of Hay House speakers, we can see that none of them are generating the same excitement, crowds or best-selling books – even though they are in essence, teaching the SAME THING that Wayne Dyer and Louise Hay taught and found extreme success in teaching.

In less lofty circles, we see multiple examples of ministers who go into the ministry do so with the hopes that it will give them a platform to speak to the world, not to necessarily “do the work” that is in front of them – serving their fellow humans – regardless of fortune or fame.

The problem here is not with the teachings, but with the goals of the teachers and organizations. As a global movement, we would be wise to recall the wisdom of Epiucurus:

“The love of money, if unjustly gained, is impious, and, if justly, shameful; for it is inappropriate to be miserly even with justice on one’s side.”

Epicurus ( 341–270 BCE)

History has shown that these principles will survive. Whether the modern-day organizations built up around them will survive is uncertain at best.

If there are to be heroes in this saga, they will be those who see the importance of the teachings as more critical than the maintenance of the hierarchy, and who work to usher in a new model – one that will support the evolution of a higher understanding of the spiritual universe and humanity; and that is free and wide open at the top.

I may not ever be classified as a hero – and that’s OK, but I plan to be (and am working now) on the leading edge of this transformation.

And so it is.

(C) 2019 Practitioner's Path

The Magic of Music

“Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.” ― Leonard Bernstein

In New Thought, and specifically the branch that emerged from the writings and teachings of Ernest Holmes (Religious Science), the founding principles laid out by Holmes are similar in structure to the creeds of Christianity.

Holmes fought against the establishment of a church – wanting his teachings to be pondered and taken by students back to their home churches and communities. He lost that battle and the Church-saturated culture that was the United States in the mid-20th century took the principles (that Holmes formulated based on his studies in Christian Science and Divine Science) and built a church-like organization around them.

It is this close resemblance to the Protestant Church (organizationally and in procedural matters) that makes the fate of the American church a concern to spiritual centers, too. But this is not a post about those matters.

The following are a sampling of the beliefs that guide Centers for Spiritual Living today:

WE BELIEVE in God, the Living Spirit Almighty; one, indestructible, absolute and self-existent Cause. This One manifests Itself in and through all creation, but is not absorbed by Its creation. The manifest universe is the body of God; it is the logical and necessary outcome of the infinite self-knowingness of God.

…in the eternality, the immortality and the continuity of the individual soul, forever and ever expanding.

…that heaven is within us, and that we experience it to the degree that we become conscious of it.

… in the direct revelation of truth through our intuitive and spiritual nature, and that anyone may become a revealer of truth who lives in close contact with the indwelling God.

… in the healing of the sick and control of conditions through the power of this Mind.

… in the eternal Goodness, the eternal Loving-kindness and the eternal Givingness of Life to All.

---

New Thought congregations are often populated with refugees from traditional religion. Once in the tradition long enough to be comfortable with a relationship with the Divine that incorporates their New Thought perspective and respects the tradition(s) from which they came, many people’s spiritual practices become a mix of New Thought with some traditional flavors added in for “texture“.

One of the most common mixing comes in the form of music. There are few mediums that evoke the strong emotional responses that a piece of music can.

Even the very traditional chant music (YouTube video embedded above) can be appreciated from a New Thought perspective. And it’s one way we can honor the late founders of New Thought, who were much more connected to traditional tenets of religion than their modern descendants.

So enjoy the music you love – whatever the season; and remember that when we say that we are all One – it includes even those folks who are still deeply grounded in the teachings we’ve moved away from.

One is one.

And so it is.

(C) 2019 Practitioner's Path

Get to the pool

It’s likely that at some point in our journey, spiritually-minded people come across someone whose life is in a shambles. This is not a judgment – it’s what they share with us.

In fact, I recently heard someone say this about their spiritual Center:

“There are so many people that need this teaching!”

No argument here. There are indeed multitudes of people who can benefit from the teachings of many metaphysical teachers,…if they are willing to take the first step.

Restoration, healing, peace, abundance and more are available to those willing and able to lift their heads and imagine a better moment, a better hour, a better day, a better year.

Cape Cod, Massachusetts (C) 2016 R Harmon

In John chapter 5 the Christian text outlines the story of the man by the healing pool.

Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ⁵ One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

⁷ “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

⁸ Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

John 5:2-9

When an angel disturbed the water in the pool, the first person to enter the water was healed, but no one else received healing benefits until the next time an angel came and stirred the waters.

When the teacher Jesus asks the man if he wants to get well, he doesn’t say “Yes!” but instead complains about how everyone and everything is preventing him from reaching his goal.

We all know someone (maybe several someones!) who can recite a grocery-list of reasons why they aren’t happy, peaceful, content, healthy, etc. (you’re thinking of them right now, aren’t you?)

While we can recommend a book or invite them to a metaphysical talk; the reality of the situation is that until they decide to “pick up their mat and walk“, they won’t hear the message, see the miracles, or feel the motivation. Spiritual journeys are intensely personal undertakings.

The lame man gets a lot of the press in this story, but an equally compelling aspect involves the multitude of people he complained about. They got information on how to heal and acted on it. They saw an opportunity to heal, and headed to the pool!

When told to get up and walk by someone in an authority position, the man did just that. But for many years before, he seemed unable to do this for himself. He had watched others heal themselves and surely had some concept of what he needed to do to achieve the same. Still he remained in a diminished capacity for 38 years.

Several metaphysical lessons emerge from this one story.

• we need to avoid complaining and blaming everyone/everything for our problems
• we need to make sure we’re not staring at the solution to our challenges day in and day out, and missing it by focusing on what others are/aren’t doing to us or for us
• when the Universe asks us if we want to be healed, the answer is YES!

Some people will see our lives as examples and want to learn more. When they reach out, it’s time to open the door. Our job is twofold: to make sure we’re not the man complaining by the healing pool – and to shine our Light for others (e.g. point the way to the pool).

Lastly, until we can walk on water, we should probably tamp down the urge to tell wounded people to take up their mats and walk.

When we are living, breathing examples of abundance, health, peace, joy (& more) in the world, we’ll attract others to us who are ready to “get into the pool”.

And so it is.

(C) 2019 Practitioner’s Path

Apocalypse How?

3pm (weekend): an American mall

I recently went to a mall that has one of the last remaining Sears stores in the region. It is closing at the end of the year, and I thought I would see what kind of deals I could find. I have only been to this mall once or twice in the 20+ years I have lived in the area, but I was still shocked at what I found – or rather, DIDN’T find.

Other than the folks hauling the deep discounts from the closing Sears store, and there weren’t even that many people there, the mall was empty.

For a weekend, it was devastatingly empty. In another store, a quick tally of the number of employees I saw, and the average sale per customer (I stood in line behind a few folks before checking out) told me they were in trouble too.

You don’t have to be a math whiz to look around at the infrastructure supporting once-bustling businesses and know that there’s a problem.

In another neighborhood, just a few miles up the road from this mall, one Summer weekend I drove my grandchildren around a deserted mall parking lot, explaining the changes that we were seeing. I told them that when I was their age or even a little younger; these shopping malls were brand new and the stores on main streets in small and mid-sized towns everywhere started to close like the malls are closing today.

a (former) American mall

I’m certain that if there was a way to “save” these expensive behemoths (shopping malls), someone would have figured it out by now. The numbers have been telling the story for some time.

The truth of the matter is that like the downtown department stores of the 1960s and earlier, the large shopping malls of the late 20th and early 21st centuries are quickly fading into history.

There are many reasons for the changes – just as there are many reasons for the shifting landscape in church affiliation and attendance in the United States.

A 2019 Gallup survey reported that membership in a church and affiliation with a particular religion fell precipitously over the past 2 decades, noting that “The past 20 years have seen an acceleration in the drop-off, with a 20-percentage-point decline since 1999 and more than half of that change occurring since the start of the current decade.”

If the current trends persist (10% decline each decade, and accelerating), churches are in even more trouble than they realize. And if that’s not pause for thought on its own, the patterns and trends in giving show additional data for concern:

• Tithers make up only 10-25 percent of a (typical) congregation.
• The average giving by adults … is about $17 a week.
• 37% of regular church attendees don’t give money to church.
• 17% of American families have reduced the amount that they give…
• 7% of church goers have dropped regular giving by 20% or more.

There’s no playbook for this scenario,… or is there?

What can we learn from the Retail Apocalypse?

As Amazon and other online retailers began to dominate the shopping scene, traditional retailers had to make some hard choices. Sixty-eight (68) retailers have declared bankruptcy in the last 4 – 5 years, making it hard to know what is coming next.

According to CB Insights, these retail bankruptcies fall into a few themes:

• Decline of physical retail – With the shift to e-commerce, fewer and fewer customers are shopping at big-box physical retailers and malls. Additionally, many of these physical retailers have lost the cache they once had as new direct-to-consumer brands with a hyper-focus on specific products have taken off.
• Digital laggards – Many big-box retailers either failed or were too late to establish an online presence. …retailers that don’t adapt quickly enough inevitably fail to compete.
• Mounting debt – Crippling debt,…has forced many retailers to declare bankruptcy.

One comment by a successful disrupter struck me as important to ponder:

“…disruption [is] a way to innovate and so blatantly change things for the better that you become an industry standard.”

Harry’s co-founder

What can churches and spiritual centers take away from lessons-learned by the Retail Apocalypse?

I’ll start with the digital laggards issue. Churches and centers are mostly aware of this need, and working at various levels on getting up to speed. There must be digital giving enabled, online access to (just about) everything and the general business practices must come into alignment with the rest of the business world. I’ll give churches and centers, across the board, a letter grade of C+ on this.

Next is the issue of money. In the retail space it was crippling debt, while for most churches and centers I suspect the issue is likely that of poor cash flow. Either way, it’s a money problem. Here I think the model of how churches and centers manage their budgets needs to change.

Full-time ministers with benefits and housing payments may need to fall to the pages of history, and multiple part-time ministers may need to be considered. Part time ministers can work another job for benefits and other necessities (like a salary that supports them and their families).

Before anyone gets angry about this, consider that most of the congregants in your pews are working multiple jobs to keep their heads above water, so… yeah. I’ll give churches and centers a B- on this one. It’s higher than the digital issues because some denominations (Methodists for one) have been assigning ministers to multiple churches and the Catholic Church has been combining parishes continually over the past decade or so, seeming to understand this as an option.

The last point that we can consider from the retail apocalypse data is the issue of disruption – also know as innovation.

The problem with innovation in churches and centers is that most belong to organizations that write all the rules. This hierarchical structure type is slow to move and slower still to accept and adopt change. The cynic in me says this is because the people writing and enforcing the rules have the most to lose if things change. Overall I give churches and centers a failing grade here.

The success stories emerging from the Retail Apocalypse show that the businesses that narrowed their focus and stepped way outside of the norms are the ones making news, profits and strong leaps forward.

Churches and centers aren’t looking to make profits, but they are businesses – and need money and customers (congregants) or they won’t be around for very long.

The takeaways from the “winners” among the crash and burn of traditional retail have some common themes:

• Simplicity (easy access to their products/services)
• Narrow focus (not trying to be everything to everyone)
• They connect directly to their target audience, using the tools that audience wants (e.g. eCommerce)
• They didn’t listen to the “we can’t do that!” chorus (I’m sure Warby Parker founders heard a few of those statements when they wanted to sell prescription eye wear to people online)

It remains to be seen whether the demographic and societal changes outlined in the Gallup poll (earlier in the blog) ultimately impact church/center attendance and membership or there will be a pivot point that starts to change the trajectory. What is clear is that doing things “the way we’ve always done it” or making only the changes we are comfortable with, is a death sentence.

I look forward to seeing (perhaps to being a part of) the disruptive force that will lead the change that is needed in this still-important corner of American life.

(C) 2019 Practitioner's Path

Related blog posts:

• Organized Religion in the Gig Economy
• New Paths
• Millennials and the Spiritual Disconnect

A Gift of Healing

Thank you for coming along on the 30 days of healing path this past month. I hope that you found the verses, accompanying pictures, and the origins of each to be insightful, inspiring and more.

Please be sure to check out the book with all 365 days of the year annotated with a quote, verse, poem or other reading.

With the holidays coming, I can think of no better gift to give someone, whether they have everything or need everything.

Invited to Thanksgiving or other holiday celebrations this year? The hard copy version of this book (~ $8) would make a perfect host/hostess gift and will last long after the wine, cookie tray or pumpkin bread!

Available at Barnes & Noble

Peace & blessings!

Day 30 (Healing)

Oh Great Spirit of Surprise,
Dazzle us with a day full of amazing embraces,
Capricious, uncalculated caring,
Great hearts, kind souls and doers of good deeds.

~ Molly Fumia

#30 Days of Healing

Taken from the book, “Prayers for Healing: 365 Blessings, Poems, & Meditations from Around the World”

Blessings in Passing

When I first began to study what I refer to as “larger spirituality” – spirituality not confined within a single dogma or worldview – I got a mental picture in my head when someone would use the phrase, “daily practice“.

I envisioned a room or at least a corner dedicated to their “practice” and often I immediately moved to the many barriers I had in my life that would prevent me from being able to sit in an incensed room in yoga pants for an hour every morning.

That’s not what they were saying – that was my filter. I learned down the road that while some people may have something like that going on, many others do not. A daily practice is as unique as each person, and requires no specific accessories.

In studying the works of Joseph Murphy and Neville Goddard, contemporaries in the early part of the 20th century (Goddard passed on in 1972 and Murphy in 1981); I am always struck with the sheer simplicity of their approach to prayer, or “knowing the Truth” about someone/something. It was from this perspective that I began, unintentionally, an extension of my own daily practice.

I live in a suburban neighborhood, and as I drive to work, I pass many people walking along the streest: school children, with and without parents; dog walkers; commuters walking to public transit and others. One morning I noticed a teenaged boy walking along the street. He was alone, and did not look happy. He was on the heavier side, and walked as if he dreaded arriving at his destination.

I immediately felt compassion for him – middle school and high school can be challenging places to exist – and so I held the thought for him that today was a much better day than usual. Driving past people, even on a neighborhood street, doesn’t leave much time for a long, complicated blessing. Plus, I have no way of knowing what each person would need: so my thought that day was a knowing that the blessings of the Infinite were upon him.

I am particularly moved when I see school kids walking alone and appearing to be sad; dreading the day ahead or trying to recover from whatever they experienced at home before walking out the door.

I think of the following from one of Joseph Murphy’s prayers:

I know that (individual’s name) is surrounded by the sacred circle of God’s eternal love, and the whole armor of God surrounds her/him and s/he is watched over by the overshadowing Presence of God.

Joseph Murphy

(Archangel Michael)

Since I don’t know the names of the people I drive past each morning, an easy technique is to simply accept that they are accompanied by the holy Presence and watched over in all they do.

If I am stopped in traffic I may add a visualization of a grandmotherly angel or two if the child/children are small, or a warrior-like archangel if they are teens.

Skeptics will roll their eyes (& aren’t likely to be reading this blog), but readers across the New Thought canon know that many of the teachers whose work form the foundation of the movement taught and lived this Truth: a thought held in the human mind is connected to the Infinite Mind and will demonstrate or manifest.

Over time this simple teaching has evolved into an organized religion (at least 3 versions at last count), each of which has added dogma, regulatory guidelines and complications that are unnecessary for the process to work, but that are understandable in the world of Caesar. And yet, the truth remains that the Good that is possible requires no prescribed order of words or official interventions.

In one of his most beloved talks, “Live in the End“, Neville shared the following:

“Do you know a friend who is unemployed? Well, then, see him as gainfully employed, and don’t tell him, that you may brag tomorrow. Don’t boast. Just see him gainfully employed.”

Nevill Goddard, “Live in the End”

Neville’s life work was a testament to this process. Many have studied and applied this process – some within, but I suspect most outside of formal religious or spiritual organizational structures.

There will be those who say, “How do you know it works? What if you’re just deluding yourself and wasting your time?“

I know that this works when I use it for myself, and for the people around me who seek out my knowledge on such things. For the people I pass on the street, I may never know if my simple blessing thought was helpful or not.

But let’s consider this: at one point, a VERY long time ago, everything that we see (and much more that we don’t/can’t see) was part of an infinitessimally small, dense and hot singularity…and then BOOM!

An explosion and rapid expansion, heating and cooling of matter…13.7 billion years later, here we are. The fact remains that the preponderance scientific inquiry to date suggests that we all come from the same stuff. We are indeed, all connected.

I can’t single-handedly fix all the problems carried around by the people I meet or encounter each day. There are days when I’m not sure how I’ll manage my own issues, and those within my inner circle. But I can apply the principles I’ve studied and learned and used with success in my own experience.

If nothing else, my own knowing of peace and Good for the random people I pass on my commute helps to put me into a better space, which means I show up at work in a positive and beneficial (to me and to others) state of mind. I also believe that there is Good to be planted and blessings to be harvested when we know peace, joy, healing, love and more for those we meet along our way.

And so it is.

(C) 2019 Practitioner's Path