I mentioned during service this past Sunday my appreciation for the teaching of Unity minister and author Eric Butterworth. He remains one of my “go to” sources of wisdom and source material. As I was looking through some previous posts to decide what to share this week, this one grabbed my attention, possibly because of the provocative title. It is one that I originally posted over seven years ago. It is a good reminder for me as I hope it will be for you.
I am currently facilitating an 8-week study of Spiritual Economics by Unity minister Eric Butterworth. I was first introduced to this book more than 20 years ago and have facilitated classes on it several times since entering Unity ministry. As occurs with many, if not all books of this kind, the teaching touches me more deeply each time I revisit it. This time has been no exception. Butterworth is quite clear and direct in his approach to prosperity consciousness. This class has been a powerful reminder of the importance of knowing that each of us is, as Butterworth says, “The self-livingness of God.” Knowing and living from this TRUTH is the key to living a prosperous life.
Unity offers some very powerful teachings related to prosperity, as well as to healing and wholeness, realization and demonstration, and other aspects of life. For many of us, once we discover Unity, we read books, go to classes and workshops, and attend Sunday services to learn the principles.
Unfortunately, it often stops there. We learn the principles, continue to sign up for the next great class or workshop, but often our lives change very little or not at all. When it doesn’t seem to be working in our lives, we may begin to question the validity of what we are learning. We may question, “If all of this is true, why do I not have enough money; why am I still single; why have I not manifested the perfect job?”
If we are not living the prosperous life we desire, it is not because the principles we are learning are not true. It may be that we are not practicing the principles that we are learning, or that our practice needs to evolve to embrace a deeper level of understanding and embodiment. I have found this to be true for me. I share more about that below.
Unity’s fifth basic principle states, “Knowing and understanding the laws of life, also called Truth, are not enough. A person must also live the truth that he or she knows.” We live the Truth by practicing the Truth in our daily lives. Our lives are not going to be transformed simply by a mental understanding of the Truth. To transform our lives and live our dreams, we must be willing to put into practice what we know.
As the famous joke goes, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice, Practice.” For most of us, anything that we have learned to do and do well has taken practice. And, with enough practice, these skills become as second nature to us. We were not born knowing how to tie our shoelaces, but after someone teaches us how and we practice for a time, we no longer stop to think about it: we simply tie them. The same applies to learning the basics of mathematics. We learn addition, subtraction, and multiplication, which may seem foreign at first, but with practice, the basic principles of mathematics become a part of our consciousness, and we use them without having to think much about it.
Oneness is one of Unity’s primary principles. We teach that there is One Power/Presence which we often refer to as ‘God.’ Additionally, we teach that God is our essential nature. We are the pure potential and possibility of all that we understand God to be and our purpose in this realm of existence is to embody and express that “Allness” to the best of our ability at any given moment. Unity cofounder Charles Fillmore said,
“It is your mission to express all that you can imagine God to be. Let this be your standard of achievement; never lower it, nor allow yourself to be belittled by the cry of sacrilege. You can attain to everything that you can imagine. If you imagine that it is possible to God, it is also possible to you. Whatever possibility your mind conceives, that is for you to attain. This is the law; let none belittle himself or dwarf the Supreme by trying to annul it.”
I realize that while I have been a student of Unity and other New Thought philosophy for close to 30 years, I am still evolving in my ability to truly understand the depth of this Truth. Even though I have embraced the concept of Oneness, my Unity in God, I have not completely practiced it; in part because I have not truly grasped its deeper meaning.
Even in my daily practice, I can hold myself apart. Recently, I have gained a deeper understanding of Oneness. I am revisiting the ways I have “practiced” it and am opening to the awareness of how I can practice it is more fully so that I may KNOW it. My contemplative question has been, “How do I practice the principle of Oneness?”
As I meditated on the question this morning, the following answer came.
You must first remove your attention from the world of effect and focus solely on First Cause (God). Know your Unity in God and realize that all you perceive in the phantasmal world is an effect of your consciousness.
Turn your attention from the outer to the inner and reflect upon God. Contemplate the nature of God as Peace, Love, Joy, Harmony, Order, Unity, Beauty, and all the concepts/attributes you most often associate with God. Further, focus your attention there and merge your awareness of self with those attributes.
You may need to penetrate layers of self-conception that seem to refute your Oneness but persist until you sense that there is no secondary cause, not even that which you have previously considered to be your mind, your thoughts, or your perceptions.
Join in awareness with the One Mind, free from attachment to the world of form. And, from there invoke your power of Imagination to envision a world that embodies all the Divine Nature of God as the Divine Nature of you.
Activate your Love center in your heart space and begin to harmonize all in alignment to Love as you attract all that is in vibrational resonance with your newly awakened Unity consciousness.
Using your Faith faculty, see beyond the evidence of what is, that which is currently manifested, to perceive what is possible as you align your vision to see as God sees as you.
In conscious awareness of Unity or Oneness, know that all you could ever desire is realized first as you know your Unity in God. All that you could ever desire is here and now present as Consciousness. Know, too, that you are endowed with faculties, twelve of which Charles Fillmore discerned as The Twelve Powers of Man. These powers or faculties, which include Imagination, Love and Faith, when activated, strengthened, and embodied are your innate abilities that empower you to bring into manifestation all that mirrors your conscious awareness of what is already fulfilled in Spirit.
The consciousness of Unity in God is the ultimate definition of Prosperity Consciousness. Living from that consciousness, intentionally using your powers, brings forth demonstrations of it. First Cause/God moves through you, as you, to create that which embodies the attributes of Itself.
I have distilled from the above the following:
In order to know, truly KNOW God and all the ways God manifests, I must contemplate only God and let go of any idea of a self that is separate. I must invite and allow the revelation of God and know myself as one who can realize the full potential of all the “God-ness” that I Am.
I must release all attachment to the world of form and trust that the power, presence, and substance of God is demonstrating in perfect Divine Order in accordance with my knowing of myself as that.
I also must know that I can and will only demonstrate at the level at which I know myself in Oneness. I know, too, that I will only demonstrate “God-ness” in my life as I am able to activate, strengthen and embody the Divine faculties innate in my humanity. This is how important it is for me to know that I am the Source in expression, my Oneness in God.
My experience of wholeness, prosperity, and all that I desire depends upon it. Practicing this principle from the perspective of the deeper awareness will bring forth demonstrations in my life of wholeness, prosperity, love, peace, and joy that I know God to be. I am sure of it. It is a knowing I have for you as well.
I hope you will join me in my
recommitment to revisiting our Unity principles. My desire is that we invite a
deeper understanding of them so that we not only have intellectual knowledge of
them, but also embody them in daily living. My prayer is that these principles
come alive for us in ways that we have yet to imagine.
It’s February – the month of LOVE. This week, as I have contemplated what I will speak about this coming Sunday, I thought, well of course I’ll speak about love. It is the day before Valentine’s Day after all, the one day designated each year to celebrate love. Yet, I often struggle with how to talk about love. What is this think called ‘love’?
Attempting to define or describe love is like trying to define God. It cannot truly be done. Poets, mystics, and avatars throughout the ages have attempted to describe Love in words, but they are simply doing their best to depict a personal experience of Love.
Charles Fillmore, the cofounder of Unity, said, “We may talk about the wisdom of God, but the love of God must be felt in the heart. It cannot be described, and one who has not felt it can have no concept of it from the descriptions of others.”¹ Even though I do not claim to possess the words to adequately define or describe ‘Love’ I will share my current understanding of it.
Love, in its purest essence is God/Life/Divine Mind/Source/One in motion. It is the energy that underlies and connects all creation. Charles Fillmore also said, “Love is the uniting, joining force (energy) of Divine Mind.”² In the book of Genesis we read the authors depiction of the creation story, which is one attempt to understand the great mystery of how life began. The story says that in the beginning was God, and God moved upon the void and all things were created. I think of God’s movement as Love.
Further, in the Gospel of John we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…And, the Word became flesh.” (John 1) I assert that the Word was made flesh through the expression of Love and that the word made flesh is Divine Love.
Each of us is Love in our essential nature. It is our purest delight to stand in the presence of the God of our Being, to worship at the throne of Love, and be filled with the conscious awareness of Love. Then, we are to arise and go out into the world and Be Love.
Instead, we have created a false God, an idol. We have created a God of our own image, and we worship at its throne. This God is the amalgamation of our beliefs, opinions, preferences, religion, physical body, money, possessions and history. This God has a name. Its name is “Me.”
We spend so much of our time and energy worshipping at the throne of the idolized image of “me” that we have little or no time left for the true God of our being. It is any wonder that the first of the Ten Commandments is “You shall have no God before the one true God” and the second is, “You shall not create any idols.”
This idol worship separates us from the awareness of the Love that we are. Let me be clear, there is nothing that can separate us from the Love of God (Romans 8:38). However, in our minds, in our humanity, we believe that we are separate from God, from our fellows and from all creation. In this separation, we are not consciously aware of Love. The illusion of separation results in fear. When “Me” becomes our God, we fear. Fear creates pain and suffering.
Fear stimulated by idol worship is the root cause of all the pain and suffering in the world. When that pain and suffering is left unexamined and unaided it escalates and often erupts in acts of hatred and violence. We witnessed it all around us in explicit and implicit acts of violence.
Worshiping the idol called “Me” is also evident in fanatics of all religions who are unwilling or unable to question long-held beliefs, and who are reluctant to hear and attempt to understand another’s perspective. They fear the loss of the sense of the safety and power their dogmas supposedly provide. This fear plays out in acts of violence against those who hold differing beliefs and those whose actions do not comply with their religious edicts. These violent acts may be as stringent as genocide, or as subtle as name-calling or refusal of service.
We can also witness idol worship demonstrated more subtly in the power struggles within our own government and in corporate greed that pollutes the Earth and our environment and enslaves workers in developing countries. They are all acts of violence resulting from the fear stimulated from worshiping the idol of “Me” which manifests in the beliefs in “my power,” “my money,” or “my prestige” and the anxiety stimulated by the thought of losing them.
So, how do we awaken to the transforming power of Love?
We must practice daily meditation in which we withdraw our focus from the things of the world that often entice and entrance us and surrender in the silence to the Spirit of Love within. In meditation, we focus in the heart and allow the energy of Love to radiate from that center until our entire countenance is filled with Love. As we practice meditation our true Spirit of Love is remembered; we are delivered from fear and our awareness is transformed.
Mentally, we must engage the practice of denials to cleanse the mental body of thought energy that is based in fear. Using denials, we refuse to give any energy or power to fear thoughts and invite the power of Love to clear them away. Following denials, we continually affirm the truth of Love. Charles Fillmore offers the following affirmation to condition the mind with truth:
“I am the abode of love. I am filled and thrilled with the mighty magnetic forces that love uses in doing its work. I am powerful and active to do only good, and I see only goodness and purity everywhere.”¹
Additionally, it is important to read spiritually inspired books, poems and treatises on the power of Divine Love. In addition to books by Charles Fillmore, and other Unity authors, I recommend On Love by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. As Paul said, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
Lastly, but certainly no less important, the transformation must take place on the physical plane as well, meaning through our actions. I suggest doing at least one thing each week that stimulates some level of fear when you contemplate doing it. If considering it elicits fear, you can rest assured that some form of idol worship is at play. For example, if you are inspired to reach out to an old friend you haven’t seen in years, and the thought stimulates fear for you, chances are very good that there is some aspect of the “Me” idol that is ostensibly being threatened. It may be the fear of being rejected. If so, I encourage you to hold yourself with empathy and compassion and allow the fear to be present. Do not attempt to resist it or deny it. Softly breathe into the heart. Invite the power of Love to fill your heart and radiate outward. Feel yourself totally embraced in Love. Allow Love to transmute the fear. Then, in faith, step out and do the thing you were inspired to do.
This is especially true when the fear is related to sharing our unique gifts and talents, connecting with others through acts of love and compassion, and sharing loving expressions of mercy and justice. We can trust and know that our actions are inspired by the Love that we are. Each time we allow ourselves to face the fear, allow Love to transmute it, and act from inspiration, we strengthen our faith and awaken more completely to the transforming power of Love.
Love is the power that transforms us. Love is the power that transforms the world. As we awaken to the conscious awareness of love, our hearts and minds are renewed, and our lives are transformed. When we are transformed, our lives become active expressions of Love and the world is transformed.
This
is my prayer, “May humanity awaken to the transforming power of Love, and may I
lead the way.”
¹ Talks
on Truth, The Development of Divine Love
² Metaphysical Bible Dictionary
