June
25, 2006
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Martin Luther King, Jr., in being asked to publish some of his sermons, wrote in the preface to his book, ““. . . a sermon is directed toward the listening ear rather than the reading eye. . . I offer these discourses in the hope that a message may come to life for readers of the printed words.”” This is my hope for you, dear reader.
——Rev. Linda
June 25, 2006
MORE THAN ENOUGH:
INFINITE POSSIBILITIES
What if you could do anything you wanted to? If you could do anything, think outside the box now, anything, no physical laws to stop you, no one to question you or ridicule or judge you, no limitations of any kind—physical, mental or emotional. If you could do anything you wanted to, what would you do? Walk through walls? Fly? Walk on water? Don’t think it’s possible?
My sister and I used to walk on water all the time. Of course it was in the winter when it was frozen. Actually, we used to skate across the lake to a friend’s house on the other side.
But three men went out fishing. And they’d just rowed out to the middle of a lake when one of the men stood to his feet and said, “I forgot my lucky hat.” So he hopped out of the boat and ran atop the water toward the shore.
“Wait for me!” the second man hollered. And turning to the third man he explained, “I think I left my lucky lure back at the car. I’ll be right back.” And he stood up, leaped out of the boat, and ran across the water toward the shore.
“Hmmm,” the third man said to himself. “This walking on water thing must be easier than I realized.” “Hey! I’m right behind you!” he cried, and he jumped out of the boat to follow his friends. But instead of landing on his feet, he fell through the water with a splash.
“Oh, dear,” the second man said to the first as they watched their buddy frantically treading water. “I guess we should’ve told him about the stepping stones.” (from Bits & Pieces, July 2006, p. 10)
So who had the greater consciousness? I think it was the third man. Sure he ended up wet from trying, but at least he held it as a possibility that maybe he really could walk on water.
Infinite possibilities. Our possibilities are as infinite as our thoughts allow them to be. Did you get that? Our possibilities are as infinite as our thoughts allow them to be.
Now the first 2 fishermen were very successful in getting to the shore by using the stepping stones. And that’s fine. It kept them dry. Our founder Dr. Ernest Holmes said, “Since our spiritual understanding is not sufficient to enable us to mentally set bones, we call in a surgeon; since we cannot walk on the water, we take a boat. We can go only as far as our spiritual knowledge takes us. Principle is Infinite, but we shall demonstrate Its power only at the level of our concept of It.”
He goes on to say, “Do not let any one discourage or belittle your efforts by asking, ‘Why don’t you walk on the water? Jesus did.’ . . . If we had the understanding which Jesus had, we would be able to walk on the water. I am not at all confused by the fact that we do not do this today. Someday one will come along who knows how to walk on or over water. We are probably on the verge of a great spiritual awakening.” (SOM, p. 219)
Do you believe it? I do. A couple years ago at Asilomar, Bill and I were in a session where everyone there, including us, chopped a board in two with our hands. This spring at the ministers convocation, our Religious Science ministers, at one of the sessions, walked on red hot coals without burning their bare feet.
We are powerful beings. But these things don’t just happen by chance. There’s no capricious genie-god out there somewhere that sometimes grants our wishes and sometimes doesn’t. The “genie-god” is within us. And we decide within our own minds the outcomes of our experiments in this life.
What we’re doing here is practicing thinking. I love to read stories about healings that people have experienced, especially when they tell the thought processes they used. It’s not so much about the thoughts themselves as it is about the conclusions the thoughts led them to.
One of my favorite stories is one of Ernest Holmes and Reginald Armor when they were in San Francisco giving some lectures. One night Ernest received a phone call in their room at the hotel where they were staying. It was a man’s voice who said, “Hello, can you come over to my room for a few moments?”
When Ernest went to the room the man was drunk, so drunk he couldn’t get up off his bed. The man explained his alcohol addiction to Ernest and asked him to help him. After making sure the man really did want help, Ernest went down to the bar and got a bottle of whiskey and took it to the man. You see, Ernest knew that habits are not successfully treated through willpower.
The man was told to drink all he wanted. And if he wanted more, Ernest would get him more. Meanwhile, Ernest went back to their room and told Reginald they had work to do. They began doing spiritual mind treatment by taking turns treating out loud for 10 to 15 minutes each. They did this for several hours until they both felt a sense of release for their friend, and they could only see the perfect free man, contented, happy and radiant.
The man was completely healed of any desire for alcohol and never took another drink. (The Essential Ernest Holmes, p. 120)
I love this story because it reminds me so beautifully that we are not our addictions. And so much of what I see as my own downfalls are some kinds of addictions—addictions to my ways of being that I don’t want to give up even though they play havoc with my life. My addiction to my ways of doing things. My addiction to certain thought patterns that keep me from truly expressing myself in greater ways. My addition to my own brain chatter, to the thoughts of my past, to my perceptions of my past experiences. My addictions to resistance to my good. These are all addictions. They may not be of alcohol or drugs, but they are substance abuse, because thoughts are substance. Thoughts are substance.
We get addicted to our thoughts of smallness—to seeing ourselves in smallness and living in that. We get addicted to our procrastination, our chaos, our stories of how we’re victims, our not-enough-ness.
What if, instead of limiting lack, we began to think in terms of infinite possibilities. What if I really believed, as Ernest and Reginald did for that man, that I am conscious that I am pure Spirit, poised and at peace within myself. That there is nothing in me that craves any of those negative beliefs. That I’m not seeking to escape from anything. That I meet every issue of life without fear. That there’s nothing to run away from, nothing to avoid. That at all times I have a sense of well-being, of happiness, of security and of self-expression.
And that there is no memory of ever having received any pleasure or benefit from playing small, or procrastinating, or being chaotic, or playing the victim, or thinking I’m not enough. And there is no anticipation that I can ever receive pleasure from those thoughts. The Spirit within me is satisfied. It is radiant. It never seeks to escape from Itself. It exists in Its own sense of self-adequacy. It exists in joy, in freedom and in peace.
What if we could all catch a glimpse of that? You know what would happen? Our thinking would be so expanded, we would begin to see miracles in our lives so often we’d finally stop calling them miracles and understand that it’s just the Law at work doing what It does with our thoughts.
We are as limitless as our thoughts are expansive. “Principle is Infinite, [and] we . . . demonstrate Its power . . . at the level of our concept of It.”
How much of It can we conceive? How big is our God? How deep is our Source? How great is our belief?
I use the computer every day. In fact, I spend hours at it every day. But my computer is kind of like my brain. I only use a very small portion of what it’s capable of doing. And because I know just enough to “get by,” I sometimes go into frustration and anger (Bill will vouch for this) because it won’t do what I want it to do. I don’t want to take the time to learn how it works, so I can use it to make my life work more efficiently.
We have work to do here. We are the ones who must accept infinite possibilities into our conscious thinking so that they can happen through us. And when we do, we open the way in consciousness for others to see those possibilities. Every time you share your demonstrations, you’re opening the consciousness of humanity to greater possibilities. We need to tell our stories. We need to let our little lights shine. And when we do, we find they’re not so little!
We need to stop flirting with life, as Dr. Ruth Marcus likes to say it. She says, “Flirting with life isn't enough. Your commitment is what makes the difference.”
Where are you flirting with life? What dreams do you have that are still tucked away in your heart somewhere after all these years? What projects do you have setting still on the back burner waiting for something to move you to action again—flirting with life as it just keeps marching on in time? What books started, waiting to be finished. What connection wanting to be made? What forgiveness crying to be given? Flirting with life.
Where are you flirting with Life? Want a clue? Look at where you are the most afraid. Where are you most resistant? I believe it’s time for all of us to move beyond flirting!! The whole Universe is conspiring to manifest through us to be all that we are meant to be. Why prevent It from doing so? Let’s make a commitment together to be fully involved in this Divine Relationship.
In closing I want to share with you something Dr. Holmes wrote in The Philosophy of Jesus. “We have been so accustomed to thinking of Jesus as a man filled with love and compassion and human kindness that we have overlooked something else about him that is equally important. Jesus had access to a spiritual Power that he used in every way. To him it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should be able to tell the paralyzed man to walk, or multiply the loaves and fishes, or still the wind and waves.” (p. 9.1)
He goes on to say, “Jesus definitely set about to prove what one [person] with God could do. He demonstrated for all ages that just one person, with implicit faith, can do anything. If there is any one fact that Jesus emphasized beyond all others it was that what he was doing others could do also, if they believed they could and if they believed in God. Jesus knew that one [person] with God was a majority.” (p. 19.4)
But here’s the thing. We have to use it. He says, “One [person] with God is a wonderful idea, and it will be even more wonderful when we realize that that one [person] is ourself. But that one . . . is not ourself unless we include God. It is one [person] with God that we must emphasize. God exists everywhere and in [It] we live and move and have our being. The Spirit is within us as well as around us and we can have no life apart from It. All the life of the Spirit, then, belongs to each one of us, but, in a certain sense, we only have as much as we use.” (p. 20.3)
So let’s stop flirting with our Good, our God, and commit to that relationship in a real marriage that works to make our lives better, more free, more abundant, more loving, more alive, more beautiful, more radiant, more wise, and experience more of those infinite possibilities.
