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

March 19, 2006

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE MALL:
LET’S DO LUNCH

Many years ago, back in my normal life days, I remember going to a Tupperware party. You all know what those are—or were. Are they still doing that? Anyway, the party director was demonstrating a plastic container shaped like a ham that you could put your leftover ham in to store it. And she said she had sold one of these containers to a lady who had put her ham in it and baked it in the oven! It seemed pretty incredulous to me, but she swore it was true.
Yet, isn’t that how we are? We’ve been given gifts and we don’t know how to use them properly. And often, in fact, we use them improperly, with disastrous results.

And one of those gifts is prayer. So I want to look at this idea of prayer today because I think we have some ideas about it that may not be working too well for us.

Let’s Do Lunch. When my kids were young and in school, and since their dad and I were both teachers back then, every August we’d make a family trip of it and head out to the mall to do school shopping. This was always great fun. And I remember vividly how my daughter Kathy, who was a joy to shop with because she has great taste and is very creative, but she would get hungry. And if Kathy was hungry there was no point in even trying to do more shopping. She wouldn’t be able to think of anything else. We’d have to stop and do lunch. Then she’d be ready to continue the shopping.

You might say she had to have her daily bread. But our daily bread isn’t just a sandwich we have for lunch. Ervin Seale in his book The Great Prayer says, “To the spiritual [person] bread is ideas of good and moods of pleasantness.” In fact, he says, “Prayer is not a physical function; it is the function of mind and consciousness. You do not pray for physical things; you pray for states of consciousness. For the thing you desire is only the image and likeness in physical form of the state of consciousness which produces it. Therefore to attain the state of consciousness is all that is necessary.” (p. 42)
When you think about it, metaphysically speaking, the mall is where the things we desire reside. It’s our field of possibilities. And the road to the “mall” is prayer. But like so many other aspects of our lives, we were never really taught how to properly pray. We’re baking our hams in Tupperware and getting some pretty weird results.

I was reading the other day about some rather strange instructions that had been found on some products you might find at the mall.

For example: On a hair dryer: do not use while sleeping.
On a package of bread: caution, hot when heated.
On instructions with an iron: do not iron clothes on body.
And it actually says on a Swedish chain saw: Do not attempt to stop chain
with your hands or teeth.

Well, thank goodness we do have some insight on how to operate on the Spiritual plane! And I love the way Dr. Seale puts it. He says “. . . it makes no difference what physical substances you eat; the only energy that qualifies or affects you is the mood in which you eat. If you make your health dependent upon the foods you eat you are dwelling in delusion. Eat all the vitamins you wish and neglect a change in consciousness and your health will remain as it was. . . Your consciousness is the only cause of your expressions—your body, your work and your experiences. Every time you enter into any feeling, good or bad, you are eating of that feeling and appropriating it into your consciousness.”

He goes on to say that “When you perceive this Truth that consciousness is all and that moods and feelings are its diversifications and particularizations, you will live as an entirely different being. Your daily bread will then be the moods and feelings which you feed upon daily and which you appropriate and make part of yourself. Your bread for today is the thing or quality you crave.”

This is the instruction he gives, “Assume the feeling of HAVING what you want and feast on that feeling until you are full of it. When you are full of it, you will not have the feeling of wanting it. This is answered prayer. For the desire must pass into the fullness of satisfaction. All this is purely psychological and must take place before any physical manifestation can appear in your life. For I AM is the true bread. Not, I will be. To eat of the idea of I will be is to claim that I do not have. Guard against making this just a false optimism or a foolish process of wishful thinking. The wishful thinker is still hungry. He has not eaten. You and you alone know when you are hungry and it is only yourself who knows when you are satisfied.” (p. 41-46)

And notice that the emphasis is on daily because you can’t eat tomorrow’s food today, any more than you can eat yesterday’s food today. Living in the past we’re always hungry. Living in the future we’re always hungry. It’s only in this moment we can be fed.

The Lord’s Prayer isn’t THE prayer, it’s a set of instructions of how to pray.

I love the way Dr. Seale explains these steps of prayer. He says, “. . . no environmental change [change in your life] can be made until there is a change in the consciousness. The environment of any individual is the expression of [that person’s] consciousness.” He says “You pray in order to get into another state of mind, another dimension of consciousness.” (p. 10)

And why is that so important? Because, you see, “. . . you can’t change your mood while you are aware of the problem.” Now think about that. You’ve got a problem. Something’s really bothering you, got you in a tizzy. But no praying you do is going to do any good while you’re aware of the problem! So how do we become unaware of the problem?
We must first “. . . go into the secret closet. . . take [our] attention from the evidence of the senses and go into the realm of pure feeling within. . . . Feeling is the movement of God. . .” Feeling is the movement of God.

So the second step in prayer is to “Now call the feeling that you desire to have. . . It is possible to get so lost in this feeling that for a time all else is blotted out. You have made a change in consciousness,. . .you have left one mood and ascended to another. . . you feel a great sense of gladness, a sense of joy and thanksgiving.” (p. 12)

You see, we can always find underneath every physical desire we have, a spiritual quality that is the real desire. It’s the consciousness of peace or love or freedom that we want, not the thing. And that’s the feeling we must come to.
At the mall there are all kinds of shops. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” What am I going to feast on? What shall I choose from the menu for lunch? Think about all those stores, all kinds of them.
There are love shops: jewelry stores, Victoria’s Secret, and candy shops. There are Beauty shops: art work stores, Thomas Kinkade Galleries, and hair salons. There are wisdom shops: book stores. There are peace shops: kiosks with potpourri and candles, and music stores. There are joy shops: toy stores and tons of clothes shops.

The great Jewish prophet Jesus of Nazareth taught us to enter into the closet to pray—into our secret place—within. Dr. Seale says, “This is the same as saying that the only power that answers prayer is within you.” And what is this power? Life! “Life unconditioned and unmanifest.” (p. 14)

The problem is we don’t know we’re divine, that we have this power within us. We’ve been told and it’s been input into our “computer brain” that we’re not good enough, that we’re not smart enough, that we’re not worthy, that we’re not loved, that we’re dirty, miserable, terrible, sinners, and we’re being punished for it by suffering and struggling. It’s a virus that’s playing havoc with our lives. We have to remove the virus. And we can do that through prayer. Prayer is our anti-virus program—Norton. Maybe God’s name is Norton!

But seriously, in prayer what we do is become aware of the Presence of God. To do that we must quiet the 5 senses—“. . . shut out the world of form and things. . . . You forget all the definitions of yourself” as a physical being, that you’re a “Maineiac,” or a father, or a daughter, or an accountant, or poor, or rich, or sick, or healthy. The only thing you know about you is that you ARE. In other words, just simply become aware that Life is, the Presence of God, Consciousness is.

And as those of you who’ve taken Foundations and other classes know, that’s the first step of spiritual mind treatment or what we call affirmative prayer. We start with First Cause, Source, God, and the 3 Cheerios—Omnipresence, Omnipotence, and Omniscience.

Just simply sense being alive, the Great No-thing, undifferentiated Life, Life before It takes form. Everything you see in the physical world is God manifesting Itself into form. Dr. Seale reminds us that “The Expresser and the Expression are one.” (p. 16) You are God bearing witness of Itself. God is the impersonal part. You are the personal part.

We’re free to use that consciousness as we please—to bring it into any form we want to, including joy or grief, ease or struggle, freedom or suffering. It’s always our choice and we have the power. But when we think about “doing lunch,” isn’t it more fun with someone else, a friend, a partner, someone? We all know healing is an inside job, but having someone to support us in it is so encouraging and insightful.

And now get this—we always choose what we love. Now you ask “what!? That can’t be. You mean I’m choosing to struggle and suffer, and I love it?” Yep.

And I’m telling you this from my own experience with trying to let go of my own struggling and suffering. Because when I’ve been willing to honestly and sincerely surrender—give up my pain, my struggle, my beliefs—I’ve discovered just how much I really want to keep them. Because who would I be without them? We can get so attached to our suffering and our drama that it becomes our identity, to be a victim or a martyr, or whatever we see ourselves as. We love to play the role. And we draw to ourselves an audience that loves that kind of theatre and we just revel in it, don’t we?

But if I change that role, if I become whole, if I become free, if I’m now joyous and healed, that audience is going to disappear and who will be left to love me? And what will be expected of me, now that I don’t have an excuse anymore?
You know what we’re doing? We’re going to the Food Court and eating from the garbage can! Oh, we read the menu—we STUDY it, we memorize it, especially the right side.

But we have to make a selection and put in our order—real prayer—and then eat the food, experience the Presence, and taste it, feel the feeling we want, then chew it up and swallow it.

What’s keeping us from choosing our good over our struggle and suffering? Are we willing to vomit up that poison and eat of the fruit of Life? Let’s remember this week to enter into the closet often and feel the Presence of God.

Let’s do lunch.