Janelle

by Carolyn Crawford

The first time I met Janelle she was kicking in the door of her beat up old car which wouldn’t start. She was all of 19 years old and fresh out of prison. I suggested if she wanted to sell the car she should keep it in the best shape possible. She agreed and let go of her anger for a moment.

We became fast friends or perhaps a better description would have been big sister, little sister. She couldn’t hold a job because of her anger. Her mother was a weak woman, an alcoholic and incapable of being any help. Janelle was a reformed tweeker. Drugs had been the only way she could get along with herself. I helped her get a new car and an apartment on her own. I got her work training as a ballroom dance teacher and she was brilliant. She learned patterns easily but when it came time to work with new students, her immaturity got her fired. She didn’t have the language skills or the patience. She opted to become a stripper which of course led to bad company and drugs again. So she decided to move to Texas to live with her fundamental religionist father who had strict rules which she couldn’t follow- not surprising. She ran away, ending up with a boyfriend in Florida and got pregnant.

She returned to Tucson to have the baby and gave it up for adoption as she couldn’t take care of herself- let alone a child. She now ekes out a living doing office work for my ex-husband. She is however growing up. Her spirit has been crushed but a new love is reviving her. We talk now and then. I give her books to read slowly leading her to a new thought perspective.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are the tasting the taste this minute of eternity
We are the pain and what cures the pain
We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours

– Jalaluddin Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I Can…

We each remember the story of The Little Engine That Could, that we first read as children and then some of us read it to our children (and some even grandchildren) with the not-so-very hidden message that no matter what the obstacle, if I think I can overcome it then I will put my muscle and mind into it and I will succeed. We tell ourselves and our children this story, and it is a true story.

Holmes tells us this again and again. It is one of the main operating principles in the Science of Mind. “Law of Life is a law of thought — an activity of consciousness — the Power flows through us. The Spirit can do for us only what it can do through us. Unless we are able to provide the consciousness, It cannot make the gift. The Power behind all things is without limit, but in working for us it must work through us.” (SOM 141.2)

The way I read these words, and ponder that dear old childhood story is that I recognize that I choose what and how I wish to experience my life. We all do, whether we know it or not.

Patanjali said, “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”

I’m going for an ever yet greater, more expanding, joy-filled life … and I ‘think’ I can. How about you?

–Janis

I Want That!

We think we know what we want. But do we, really?

Conscious wants are those things we are aware of wanting in our lives. Unconscious wants are those things that we are unaware of wanting, which can include things we say we don’t want. Unconscious wants might be old thought patterns, possibly survival patterns that may or may not serve us any more. They typically have strong emotions attached to them: fear, rage, grief, loss, anger, etc. Metaphysics teaches that a thought plus a feeling yields a demonstration, an outcome. Both the thought and the feeling can be either constructive or destructive. Thought is the filter and emotion is the mechanism that helps create the object of our focus, and both operate with the Principle (the law of choice and consequence) that’s always working.

If an unconscious want is in conflict with a conscious want, and especially if it has strong emotion attached to it, the conscious want is overridden. William James accurately observed, “The unconscious mind rules the world.” As an example, we may consciously desire to be prosperous, but if we have an unconscious belief in the need to struggle, or an unconscious want to prove our lack of deservedness, then the unconscious want neutralizes our potential and our desire for abundance.

Thinking about unconscious wants in the same way we think about conscious wants may seem confusing at first. Consider, “Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed,” from the Bible. An unconscious defamatory want can be viewed as something that wants to be recognized and healed because it is inconsistent with the Truth. Therefore, it reveals itself in order to be recognized and healed. If we add to this, the quote from Job, “What I fear the most is upon me.”, we have another piece of the puzzle. Taken together, we have some clues about the power of unconscious wants.

If we start by viewing experiences and conditions in Life as only feedback, feedback about our thoughts and nothing more, then we can take the emotional intensity out of them. We can choose to look at our experiences simply as information instead of making negative conclusions about ourselves. Our tendency to conclude that our experience is right/wrong, good/bad, etc., or to conclude that we are right/wrong, good/bad, etc., does not really help us. When we pretend that a condition is more than just feedback, we tend to forget that we always have choice, and that we can change our thinking, which is the real cause of the condition in the first place. Our outcomes are nothing more than our own thoughts manifested; however, because of our tendency to judge them, we experience victimhood, suffering, etc. From this shifted viewpoint of “It’s only feedback,” we can look at our experiences as nothing more than feedback and not empower this other stuff.

We are always at choice, have always been at choice and the Law always says “Yes”. Can you recognize and empower what you really want? Obviously, the answer is “Yes” again. So the next question becomes, “Will you?”

If It Ever Works, It Always Works

Dr. Ernest Holmes wrote, “If Principle ever works, It always works.” In plain language, Principle is the law of cause and effect, choice and consequence. If we really want what we say we want in Life, our part is to keep our minds focused on what we want, rather than on what we don’t want. This is not always easy and sometimes it seems virtually impossible.

The world clamors for attention, distracting us from the Truth and from our real desires. However, the secret to peace of mind, health, emotional balance and all the good in life is to keep our minds focused on these things, rather than their opposites. This way, Principle can work for us for these positive supporting ideas instead of for us for something else.

The swamp opossum Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Jesus said, “Our only enemies are in our own households,” (i.e. in our own minds). If we can see these so called enemies as nothing more than misjudgments or misperceptions, then we can choose again and experience a different outcome. We can embrace beauty, magnificence, power, intelligence, joy, and discover our desired Life in all Its glory.

I heard a song a long time ago. “Nothing is too wonderful to happen, nothing is too good to be true, nothing is too good to last forever, everything is possible to God, through me and you.”

Open your hands, heart and mind and accept more than you ever thought possible. If Principle ever works, It always works, and It’s working right now in you, and it is capable of fulfilling your greatest dreams if, when and as you choose It.

To Desert the Truth…

Saturday, I dumped a 24 oz cup of scalding hot tea over my hand and down the front of my sweater and pants leg in a coffee shop. It may have splashed on my sandaled, essentially bare feet, or not. I don’t know. The table had wobbled when I set this cup down and the whole cup went over. My first thought was “What??” My second thought was “No.” People around me started reacting, panicking, certain that I had gotten burned. Ummm, no. My pants legs were quite cool, almost chilled. My knuckles were stinging a bit. I looked at them and mentally said ‘No”. It was as if they said ‘Oh, OK.” and they calmed down. There was quite the commotion, and I went up to the counter and told the barista that they needed to remove that table from service because it was dangerous. I got replacement cup of hot tea, and I burned my tongue when I took a sip.

One of my friends tells about one morning when she woke up the muscles in her back seemed to have gone into spasm and seized up. She could hardly walk. She fainted, and when she returned to her senses, she was lying on the floor. When she came to, she was scared and asked the Divine what she should do. She heard, clear as day, ‘to desert the truth in the hour of need is to prove that we do not know the truth.’ (SOM 282.4) Oh that. So she started praying, not in a begging or beseeching or fearful way, but knowing that all was truly well and that she was actually OK. It only took one prayer, said with certainty and conviction. Within 20 minutes or so, she could get up off the floor and walk relatively unencumbered to the kitchen. She had a bruise on her chin from where she hit the floor.

I used to firewalk several times a year. The only time I got burned was the first time I walked, only on the pads of my toes, corresponding to the reflexology points for sinus congestion. My toe pads blistered up slightly, were totally back to normal within 12 hours with no medicinal care on my part (besides washing the dirt and ash off them) and my sinuses stayed totally clear for about six weeks. When I pondered this, I determined that it happened for three reasons. First, so that I would actually believe I had walked on fire; second, so that I would actually believe that the acupressure or reflexology points really were what I thought they were and did what I thought they did, and third, to recognize that I really did have that much control over my reality.

Why would I tell of these events? It isn’t to assert that my friend and I are in any way, remotely, special. It is to point out that we are each and all actually infinitely more capable and responsible for how we handle what happens in our lives, and what we create in our lives, than any of us are actually willing to concede.

Why is that, I wonder?

– Janis Farmer

Enemy or Opportunity?

Vernon Howard wrote,

We lose enemies when no longer having a false need for them.

WOW! What a powerful and accountable viewpoint.

We lose enemies to our self-expression, or threats to our person, or the experience of other people resisting our life expression, when we no longer have a false need for their behaviors or stimulae. I interpret this as “No one is against us and every thing and every one is FOR us. Or, at the very least, these things are there for our benefit.”

In example, when we have eliminated our doubt or uncertainty about some aspect of our life, when we are clear about the life we want, people don’t challenge us about that which we were doubting. It never even occurs to them. They doubt us because we get them to.

Every thing and every one in our life gives us feedback or information about our OWN point of view.

Everything and everyone helps us to awaken and to see where we are “on the map” in our life. This is tremendously good news! With this viewpoint we can experience every aspect of our life as a blessing. We can experience every person and every event as a gift we have given ourselves to awaken to how we are defining and interpreting our life. With this information, if we like the outcome, we can reinforce our point of view. And if we don’t like the outcome, we can change our point of view. The liberation potential is HUGE!

If may be hard at times to keep this point of view, when we get fired or divorced or experience illness or injury or financial crisis. However, if we can look at these events as supportive of our awakening, then maybe, just maybe, we can learn something about ourselves and can move into the experience FROM power and awareness, FROM the possibility of betterment.

It has been said many times and ways: “Whatever you focus on expands in life.” Well, there you have it!

Would focusing on how awful it is help to create an experience of possibility, or would it create an experience of victim-hood and potential despair?

When we look for possibilities and potential in a situation, we feel like we are more in the driver’s seat than when we feel at the effect of the same situation. And by definition, we can also see more possibilities and potential when we look FROM that point of view. It’s hard to see wildflowers while focusing on the thickness of the forest.

If you find an enemy in your life, give up the false need for that enemy and see what you might create from the situation.

Best Blessings,
Rev. Donald