Tag: Spiritual Belief

I Love The Now

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Every time I hear Jimmy Buffett sing “I Love the Now” I remember that I always live in choice. I, like everyone else, have the perpetual opportunity to live in this present moment, this right now, or to live in the past and operate as though the experience I am in the middle of right this minute is exactly the same as something that happened before. Its easy to relive a memory and say “this is the same as that” because our minds like to pigeonhole events, circumstances and occurrences. It’s easy to do that. Some would say it is even natural and appropriate. If you are trying to avoid getting eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, or stomped by a Brontosaurus, it makes some sense to remember how one set of circumstances seems very similar to a previous set of circumstances. In fact, even subconsciously translating or projecting from someone else’s story might save your life if you are operating in survival mode.

Our bodies react to our memories exactly as though they are actual real-in-the-moment events. There’s no difference. In the Spiritual Thought from this past Sunday, Ernest Holmes (from A New Design for Living, p. 130) says “In whatever aspect of living we desire a betterment – be it in respect to health, abundance, or happiness – we have to know that it is ours now. We establish the pattern now, we accept what it is now, we know that it is our experience now. There is no difference between thought and thing. There is no time element in Mind, nor need there be in out mind. Whatever good we desire must be accepted as the present reality of our experience. Only now can it exist.”

If I create a fear situation in my mind, my body acts fearful, releasing adrenaline and cortisol, and my body gets ready to fight, flee or freeze. Basic physiology again. The bad news, according to the physicians and psychologists who study such things is that this internalized fear state, which may have been created by something completely imaginary, causes an internal physical-chemical stress on the body, and has a long lag time before the body can even begin to come back to its own balance, equilibrium and well being.

What if “this is not that”? What if this apparently threatening situation isn’t really inherently threatening? What if the Universe is predominantly a safe place and that all the events in my present experience can be viewed from a positive and supportive perspective? This doesn’t mean I’m going to be stupid and step out in front of a bus to see what happens, but it can mean that I don’t automatically interpret a conversation, and impression, or a look as antagonistic from the start.

Feels like a happier way to live to me. How about you?

— Janis

Greetings Beloveds!

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It is my hope that you and your families are in excellent health and finding more excuses for love and joy in life.

I am trusting that everyone will be forgiving of this mass communication, and hopefully pass onto others our brief update. Needless to say, it has taken me a while to be able to form the ideas of what this crazy experience has been like for us here in Abu Dhabi. A lot of processing going on. lol

It is hard to believe that I have nearly completed my 2-year teaching contract here. Prayer is an incredibly powerful tool, but one could have never expected it to be answered in the way it was–Wow! Not only has this opportunity provided for us financially, allowing Ryan the chance to work on his degree as well as availing us to travel to places that we NEVER would have thought that we’d visit, but it has been such incredible spiritual fodder. Living in a Muslim country has been such a tremendous experience for us, and we are ever so grateful for being able to experience Islam first hand. Prior to moving here, we, like many folks, thought that the Middle East was a place full of angry Muslims who were trying to impose their radical beliefs on others–I mean, that’s what the media tells us, night after night, right?? — everyone is Taliban and women are silenced and imprisoned by Islam. Whoa, so NOT true!! As Donald has said on more than one occasion, the news reports on the “exception” and not the “rule”. I don’t think I could possibly articulate the Peace and Love that I experience here, as people are so friendly, so hospitable, and so respectful. They don’t gossip, but laugh at their petty complaints and shrink from confrontation. It’s almost the complete opposite of the Western paradigm, which has probably been the hardest part of coping with this culture here–accepting that I have a lot of areas to improve on. lol Naturally, living in this environment has impacted my consciousness greatly, and I often wonder in awe what prayer I made to create this wonderful experience.

I just want to share a couple of Arabic words that are sprinkled into nearly every sentence here, and are so attuned with New Thought/SOM teachings, that have had a profound impact on me.

  • In’shallah: directly translated, it means “God willing”. It is almost synonymous with the word, YES, and it implies a promise, a trusting, a knowing that something is going to happen. Whenever something in the future is described, “In’shallah” ends the sentence. When someone asks you to do something, this is your response. Even though this expression seems commonplace, I don’t know if I can really articulate what a powerful word this is. It has personally reminded me that every intention is prayer that Spirit is eager to manifest; and it is not an “if….” but a matter of “when…” So I love hearing that “God is willing” to do something for me when I make a request.
  • Alhumdiallah: This means, “Give thanks to God”, and is the response you give when someone asks you ” How are you? — How’s it going?”– Whoa! — isn’t that interesting? I love when someone asks me this question, because it gives me a moment to pause and feel grateful for this body and this life that I have. I think, “Yea, thanks to God, I am here, having this breath and sharing this moment with you. Pretty cool.”
  • Asamalakum: This is what you say when you want to say “hi” to someone, and it means “The Peace of Allah Be Upon You”. How cool is that? I remember when I went to Catholic mass, the part of the service where everyone shakes hands and says “Peace” to each other used to be my favorite time. But now I get to do it ALL the time! It is wonderful to be in the awareness that you are offering Peace to people you meet, recognizing that the Spirit of Life is “upon them”. I think this is my absolute favorite Arabic expression because of this.

As you might imagine, we are in no hurry to leave the “sandbox”, our amusing term for the UAE. We are content to stay at least another year, or at least until Ryan completes his degree–In’shallah! lol However, we hope to see many of you when we come to visit this summer in August. We may only be able to come to one Sunday service because of our schedule, but we feel hopeful that we might be able to meet up some other time to officially catch up. Know in the meanwhile that you are always in our prayers and thoughts, and that we love you very much.

May you continue to enjoy your journey into your Divine enfoldment, as I know you are a blessing and a joy to this world. We look forward to seeing you soon!

— Judy Imamudeen

Graves’ First Law: “Use It All”

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Driving home after potluck today and pondering all I had heard during services this morning, I reflected on a comment that Rev Donald made during his talk. Graves First Law: Use It All. That would have to include the good, the bad and the very ugly. The good is pretty easy, unless you are like my stepdad who doesn’t think he deserves a fabulous life. He does, but he has to own that realization, and since he doesn’t, it is done unto him as he believes and his life is less than wonderful.

The bad and the ugly take a bit more work. So let’s see what I can do with this. The other morning I woke up with an intensely sharp pain in both my right wrist and my right ankle and I knew I hadn’t done anything particularly physical that would have created that specific effect, so I got really quiet and asked the question “What’s this about?” The almost instantaneous response was that I was feeling severely limited in my movement and my choices. That’s what was manifesting in my physiology. Once I named and owned the feeling, the physical sensations disappeared within moments and have not returned. It didn’t have to be a big, gut-wrenching deal; it was as simple as a change of heart-mind. If there’s no baggage or history that needs to be shifted or cleared (that has more stamina than the present awareness), then it really can be that simple.

What about the very ugly? What about someone misrepresenting me and disrespecting me to others? That’s pretty ugly. And it happens. What then? Well, obviously to tell the truth and clear the air, cleaning up the mess as best I can without thrashing or trashing the other, because that doesn’t serve either. But then what? Forgiveness? Oh, that. If I carry around and magnify a hurt, then I’m the one hurting myself. The other isn’t hurting me, though they must be hurting pretty bad to do and say those things about me. To forgive another who seems to have wronged me can take a good bit more prayer and journaling work on my part, because there’s a part of me that would like to have a gigantic pity-party and play victim. The Adult of God in me, as me, knows that I’m never a victim. I’ve chosen to participate in this game for some unknown reason and I may never know exactly why. And that doesn’t matter either.

Taking the very ugly further, Rev Donald clarified his First Law by adding, “It’s all there for our good, so use it. It’s either there for our awakening, or for our joy.” Rev Donald suggests another possibility: “Look for the gift in it.” Finding the gift in misrepresentation and/or disrespect takes me even deeper, to see what I’m calling to myself, furthering my journey along my path of awakening and expansion. Maybe it’s to recognize that I have an old belief that I need to be punished. Perhaps I just need to further clarify my boundaries in my interactions with others.

That’s my take on the idea. What’s yours?

— Janis

Janet and Jeanie

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My sister Janet died in the middle of February. On the day she died, I opened to this poem by St. John of the Cross from the book, Love Poems From God:

My soul is a candle that burned away the veil;

Only the glorious duties of light I now have.

The sufferings I knew initiated me into God.

I am a holy confessor for men.

When I see their tears running across their cheeks and falling into His hands,

What can I say to their great sorrow that I too have known.

The soul is a candle that will burn away the darkness,

Only the glorious duties of love we will have.

The sufferings I knew initiated me into God.

Only His glorious cares I now have. (p. 305)

In the last days of her life, Janet was in a tremendous amount of pain as her bones disintegrated from bone cancer. With any movement, she would moan in pain. From brain cancer and the morphine, she really wasn’t able to talk much, and not like before. As I was with her, I would sometimes think, “Oh my gawd. I want to do all the inner and outer work and the healing and growing that I need to in order not to end up dying the way she is.” The beautiful thing about it was that she knew these stages were coming, and as Rumi says, she allowed herself to die before she died. She contacted everyone that she knew and cleaned up any lingering unfinished business or wounds. We didn’t have much to clean up and I always I felt so treasured. She saw the best in me, the beauty of my inner bring, and she forgave the rest or else gave it no energy. Ultimately, she did that for everyone.

I think that through this very powerful experience, Janet burned away huge amounts of karma and illusion. When I attune to her now, I see her in mists of golden and white light as she prays for her family, her loved ones, and all of humanity. She surrendered deeply to Love, dying to her old sense of separation, and she is now reborn into an awareness of what Rev. Donald said in his prayer on Sunday, “I now know that all is Love.”

With her death and transition, something new was born in me as well. It is a deep desire and commitment to love and to see the highest good in everyone; to forgive, so that I can be free to let Love Itself flow through me in the way that my sister Janet learned to do. She truly took a “Leap into Love,” surrendering everything, and as a result, experienced who she really is and Life Itself. For her modeling of that to me, I am deeply grateful. I just hope to do it without going through what she did, but instead, clean up and transform my life every time I remember to remember that it is all Love. In that way, I hope to take on “the glorious duties of Love” that St. John of the Cross wrote about in his poem. I want to do it by choice, without being faced with a terminal illness as she was.

It is not easy to even contemplate, but through her, I can experience the glorious end result. For this parting gift, I give my deepest thanks.

– Jeanie Underwood

Where I Look From Determines What I See

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Say what?

When riding to a work site with a colleague, he was bemoaning how nothing was working the way he wanted it to and how unfair life was. It was his favorite litany, his well-worn groove, describing how he experienced his life. The next thing I knew, a sparrow fatally dive-bombed itself into the windshield of our rental car. Startling to say the least, it reinforced my colleague’s perception about everything wrong in his life.

While stopped at a red light today, I saw a single dandelion growing in a sidewalk crack. It was perfectly formed, tall and proud. Glorious. It brought to mind an incident with the homeowners association (HOA) where I used to live. Texas was having a drought then too; we were on water restrictions.

One November day, I got a nasty-gram from the HOA about the weeds in my front flowerbed. I looked. It did need weeding, so I did. In December I got another nastier nasty-gram on the same topic. That letter I ignored, because I had weeded and thought it looked pretty good for a flowerbed in winter. In January, I got a very irate nasty-gram which said that they were going to send someone out to weed my flowerbeds, and send me the bill, because obviously I was ignoring them.

So I went outside and looked again, determined to see what they saw. Eventually it hit me. They weren’t recognizing my flowers as flowers because they were different than everyone else’s flowers. What I was recognizing as native plants, they saw only as nasty weeds. I went inside crafted a letter, letting them know I wasn’t ignoring them, I had in fact weeded in November upon receipt of their first letter. I also explained that I had worked with a horticulturist who specialized in native plants that could prosper in the absence of supplemental irrigation, since we had been limited in our water usage for a while. I offered to have this horticulturist speak with them about plantings that would be better for the environment, if they were interested. The silence deafened.

I also recognize the truth of this viewpoint when it comes to interpersonal situations. If I believe someone is basically on my side, then I am more likely to take any apparently challenging comments as useful and if I believe someone does not have my best interest at heart, I am much more likely to take it badly. Its just human nature, and at the same time, its a decision over which I have huge choice about.

As Master Teacher Jesus said, and Holmes so often quoted, “it is done unto you as you believe”. It is this perspective that I strive to look from and my belief about the world and how it works that determines what I see in my world.

Is this true for you, too?

– Janis

Sunday, 3:11am – Shut Up and Drive

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In the wee hours this morning I was reflecting on a conversation with a friend when I blurted out “Shut up and Drive”. It wasn’t intended to be offensive. I wasn’t even intending to say it. I thought the quote “Shut up and Drive” was from the movie ‘Thelma and Louise’. It isn’t. It’s the title of two very, very, very different songs, neither of which I ever remember hearing. I feel like somehow we are each being sandpapered and polished to do *great works* that only we can do. And only we can each do them. I don’t like that thought and yet, at the same time on some level, I feel like its time. And it’s right.

It sounds incredibly big-headed, too big for my britches and some part of me just wants to shrink over to the corner and vanish into the wallboard instead of doing *this thing*, whatever it is. There are times that I feel that Marianne Williamson quote (about being frightened of our own light, our own brilliance) taunting me, chasing me down the street, pointing and laughing. I don’t like it at all and I’d just as soon go iron a shirt, clean a toilet, or something incredibly, routinely and safely, mundane.

And yet…

One Sunday morning some years ago, I spoke at a Spiritualist Church in Houston. A friend had asked me to speak on the Harmonic Concordance and I said, “Sure, why not?” I didn’t even know what it was, but I figured I could pull stuff together. I had taught 7th grade earth science for two years, I could certainly do this. So I started reading and studying and thinking and gathering information and nothing, absolutely nothing would come together. There was no flow, no form, and no sense. As the date got closer, I intensified my striving. Finally the weekend of the talk rolled around and I still had nothing but jumbled words and I was beginning to really sweat over it. The night before the Sunday morning talk, I had only the barest hint of anything and I felt like it was garbage. The morning of the talk, I cobbled together some things, disjointed but adequate and I went and did the talk. I was only relieved when it was over.

And then, being a Spiritualist Church (a completely unknown commodity to me), the host, my friend, asked if anyone had received any messages for anyone else. Several people stood and delivered messages. I became fascinated, completely curious, about what I was observing. Then this diminutive man in this three-piece brown polyester double-knit suit stood up with a message for me, the speaker. So i stood up, as I had seen others do and he said something to the effect of, “You had three angels standing with you when you spoke; the biggest guardian angel I have ever seen, a scruffy drunk Irishman angel and a little blue haired fairy angel. The Irishman angel was shaking his head sadly and said something like, ‘she’s never going to just trust and speak, that she will always have the words she needs.'” I sat down dumbfounded and wrote his words down precisely. I still have the feeling in my body. Holy cow. I heard that challenge, and responded. Never again did I massively prepare a talk – even technical ones. I’d do the charts and graphs and the ubiquitous Powerpoint slides, so I could show people what I had seen, but I never, ever wrote another talk. And it has always worked.

Two owls are hooting outside with each other at this moment. The cadence: one-and-two, three four … who are you not to be? As soon as I write these words, they stop talking to me. This feels like a similar challenge and I don’t know presently where it is headed. With a knot in my stomach, I say ‘yes’.

You?

— Janis