Feeling Confused?

Following my lessons the past two Sundays, I have received inquiries concerning my recent encouragement to “lean into” our human experiences, including our grief. In my lessons I have talked about allowing ourselves to be fully present with our feelings, while also maintaining conscious awareness of our spiritual nature. I hold that the true freedom we all seek lies in our willingness and ability to be fully present for whatever life presents us with in any moment, even those things that stimulate feelings we identify as “negative.” My lessons, while comforting and affirming for some, seem to have been confusing for others. I would like to offer additional thoughts here in hopes of bringing clarity.

I believe the questions I received stem from the New Thought teaching that the Absolute nature of God as Good is the only reality and that to acknowledge anything other than that limits our realization and manifestation of our Absolute Good. A common affirmation of faith in Unity is “There is One Power and One Presence active in the Universe and in my life – God the Good, Omnipotent” which aligns with Unity’s first of five basic principles listed (here).

The second principle states that each of us is an expression of the power affirmed by the first principle. Therefore, our essential nature is of God, thus divine. Further, the third principle states that human beings experience life according to our way of thinking and feeling, thereby confirming our humanity and our authority over our life experiences.

Therefore, the question arises, if we allow ourselves to be fully present with our feelings and acknowledge our fearful thinking while feeling our painful feelings, aren’t we just going to create and experience more of the same?

?Confused?

I struggled with this conundrum for a time myself. My thought was that feeling the pain, fear, grief, and the like only served to give energy and validity to the illusion of the experience I was not enjoying. I questioned why I would ever want to do that, believing that by doing so I would likely attract more of the same into my life.

I completely understand that confusion can arise when attempting to understand New Thought philosophy and metaphysics. Trying to comprehend how the Absolute realm relates to our relative experience as human beings can be confounding. Through my own questioning and exploration, I continue to have new insights and make discoveries as I endeavor to embrace it all. What follows are some of my current perspectives.

God is Absolute Good

If, as we teach, God is Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omnipotence, then it is nonsensical for us to assert that there is anything that exists outside of God, including our thoughts and feelings, even the ones we judge as “bad” or “negative.” How could it be possible that only thoughts and feelings which we determine to be “good” or “positive” are part of God? Believing that we can be aware of, not to mention give power to something that is outside of God is not only arrogant; it is ludicrous. We attempt to create God in our own image by deciding what is and is not God. Thus, we limit our experience of the Allness that is God.

Unity principle states that God is Absolute Good with a capital ‘G’. That does not mean that we believe that only the thoughts, feelings and demonstrations that we, from our limited human perspective deem to be “good” as opposed to “bad” are God. The meaning of ‘Good’ in the Absolute is difficult, if not impossible to verbalize because any terminology is limited and therefore limiting. However, the best we can offer is that Absolute Good refers to Divine Ideals, such as Harmony, Order, Perfection, and the like. These ideals exist in the Absolute and may be manifested in our human experience. The Absolute Good that God is underlies everything, even though we may not perceive the “good” in it.¹

We Decide “Good” or “Bad” in the Relative

We are meaning-making beings. We begin learning the already agreed upon meaning of most things in our environment from the time we are born. And, we continue to make meaning of everything and everyone we encounter. That is human nature. Because we are often not consciously aware of this fact, our unexamined thoughts and meanings form our worldview, and we experience our lives based upon them. In this way, we experience life according to our way of thinking.

We decide what is “good” or “bad” according to the meaning we assign it. When we decide something is “good” we experience the effects of our assessment. The same is true for the events we deem as “bad.”

In truth, all events are neutral. As William Shakespeare once wrote, “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Life is Consciousness

We create our life through our thoughts, feelings, words and actions which reflect our perception. And, our perception is determined by our perspective – the consciousness from which we perceive the event. As Emmet Fox so famously stated, “Life is consciousness.” As Unity cofounder Charles Fillmore stated “Consciousness is the sense of awareness, of knowing. The knowledge of any idea, object or condition.”²

Our power as spiritual beings having a human experience³ is to claim the power of our awareness and to consciously choose where we focus it. The power of awareness lies in choosing what we will allow to abide in our consciousness.

Thoughts and feelings abide in our consciousness, mostly beyond our awareness, unless and until we decide to make them conscious, meet them directly, and allow them to transform.

Thoughts and Feelings are Energy

Thoughts and feelings that we ignore or suppress do not dissipate; they remain in our consciousness as energy that will continue to increase in intensity. They will continue to require additional effort from us, whether conscious or subconscious, to keep them “under control.” These unacknowledged and unexpressed feelings will eventually eat away at our life energy. They can create disturbances in our physical and emotional well-being.

Unity cofounder Myrtle Fillmore shared her experience of this in How To Let God Help You. She shared that in her healing process she asked Spirit within what was keeping her body from getting well. It was revealed to her that while she was taught and believed that not expressing feelings was virtuous, that in fact, denying her feelings was contributing to her continued physical dis-ease. She said, “I determined to handle all that came to me, rather than swallow it, and allow it to irritate, cut and weaken my nerves and organs.”⁴ Her body began to be restored to health as a result. A modern day depiction of this same realization is portrayed beautifully by Anita Moorjani in Dying To Be Me.

We Are Not Defined by Thoughts or Feelings

I wish to be clear that I am not in any way encouraging that we allow painful feelings or emotions to consume us, or that we should identify with them. On the contrary, I am suggesting that by acknowledging them and allowing ourselves to feel them, we free ourselves from being controlled by them. We are not our thoughts or feelings. We are not the events that happen in our lives. However, when we ignore or suppress them, we give them the power to define our lives.

Thinking and Feeling are Gifts

Our thinking and feeling natures are gifts of the Love, Power and Intelligence from which we are created. They are beautiful expressions of our Life Energy. Allowing ourselves to fully experience, feel, and connect with our individual Life energy helps make us fully alive, fully whole spiritual beings having a human experience.

You Are Not Alone

Please know that I am here to support you, to the best of my ability, in whatever life event you are walking through. You do not need to face your feelings alone. As author Mark Nepo says in his book, The Endless Practice,

“As if by design, life is demanding enough that no one can make it alone. This ensures interdependence. It seems a requirement of experience: to receive Life in its Wholeness, we need to hold each other up, and open.”

If you are looking for a place to explore your questions and a home for spiritual growth, please join us for classes and Sunday messages at Unity Spiritual Center of Denver.

¹ Heart Centered Metaphysics, A Deeper Look at Unity Teachings by Rev. Dr. Paul Hasselbeck

² The Revealing Word by Charles Fillmore

³ Pierre Teihard de Chardin

⁴ How To Let God Help You by Myrtle Fillmore