October 15, 2006

 

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

October 15, 2006

CORE CONCEPT ONE:
APPLE PICKING

One of the favorite pastimes of Mainers this time of year is to pack the family in the car and head down some country road to the nearest orchard to pick apples, taking in the magnificent, brilliant-colored leaves on the way, and maybe, if you’re really lucky, get to have a hay ride to a pumpkin patch. And of course, enjoy a glass of cider and a candied apple.

Apple picking time. How many wonderful memories for so many of us. And of course, every Mainer has their favorite variety of apple. Mine’s a McIntosh. Every year I have to send my son-in-law out in Oregon a box of Cortlands, his favorite, for his apple pie. They don’t have Cortlands out there. What’s your favorite?
Did you know there are a thousand varieties of apples. There’s even one called beacon.

We’re picking the apples today, for the pies we bake tomorrow. If we pick Cortlands, we’ll have a sweet pie. If we pick Macs, we’ll have a little more tart pie, which many of us prefer. If we pick Red Delicious, we’ll have a more crunchy pie. If we pick Yellow Transparents, we’ll have a very mushy pie.
Remind you of anything? Like thoughts? We could say we’re picking our thoughts today, for the life we live tomorrow. If we pick loving thoughts, we’ll have a sweet life. If we pick tart thoughts, we’ll have a little more tart life. If we pick prickly thoughts, we’ll have a more prickly life. If we pick nonspecific, wishy-washy thoughts, we’ll have a so-so life.

So it’s always about consciousness. In Practical Application of Science of Mind Our founder Dr. Ernest Holmes wrote, “Our every thought is creative in our experience through the creative action of the Law of Mind upon it, so in changing our pattern of thought we do not change the nature of the Law but provide It with a new plan of action. And regardless of what our experience may have been, our new thought pattern is what counts now. We are not fighting anything, any idea of the devil, evil, or limitation. We are merely using our God-given right to choose the way we desire to think and through the natural normal creative action of our thought have it become manifest as our tangible experience.” (p. 15.3)

So we know that to change our life we have to change our thoughts. But the question is how do we do that in those times when our thoughts are running us, instead of us running them? How do we get control of our thoughts when they’re out of control? Well, I’ll tell you how I do it. In the words of one my favorite old cartoon characters, Popeye, “Me primes me own pump.”

Prime the pump. I love this concept of priming the pump. How many of you here remember the days of priming the pump? When I was little, in the days before we had running water in our house, we had to get water from the well. And the thing I remember about it is that sometimes you had to put a little water in to get water to come out. I remember working the handle up and down to get the pump to bring up the water because the pipes were dry.

It’s the same with our spiritual pipes. Sometimes we get to feeling like we’re dry, dried up, like we’re disconnected from the Source. We’re not, of course, but it can feel that way, especially when our thoughts of fear and anxiety and overwhelm are spinning around and around in our heads and we can’t seem to quiet them. That’s when we need to “primes me pump.” So let’s look at this action of priming the pump. “Me primes me pump.” Primes.
P - prayer
R - reading
I - introspection
M - meditation
E - exercise what we know
S - support

So let’s take a look at each of these elements. Because we really do have to keep our pumps primed if we want life to freely flow through.

First P - prayer. In other words, practice speaking our word. Every word we speak is a prayer. And we know from experience that spiritual mind treatment, our form of affirmative prayer, is very powerful. Speak your word in prayer. Ask and it is given. Talk to yourself. What is prayer? It’s not some mystical verbiage and intonations you have to learn to say in some particular way. It’s just you trying to convince yourself, your little self, of what your Higher Self already knows. If you know how to talk, you know how to pray. Our words and thoughts create our reality.

From the teachings of Abraham we learn, “If you are wanting to understand the balance of your thought, just look at what you are living. If you want to change what you are living—you only have to change the balance of your thought.” Our thoughts are our prayers.

R - reading, studying, taking classes, workshops, coming to Sunday services. If you wanted to get to know someone, you’d make time to spend with them. No time, you say? What if you were to fall in love with someone this week? Wouldn’t you find time—be obsessed with finding time—to be with them? “Not enough” is a way of thinking. “It’s just a thought and I can change it!”

The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that "American children and adolescents spend 22 to 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping. By the age of 70 they will have spent 7 to 10 years of their lives watching TV." That’s about 3 to 4 hours a day.

Think about how much time we spend each week filling our brains and our subconscious minds with information and thoughts that don’t resonate with Absolute Truth, and don’t bring us real joy. We need to “eat” “good food”—good thoughts—to produce good lives. Garbage in, garbage out.

If you were wanting to become a car mechanic, or a lawyer, or a writer, or a teacher, or a CPA, or a piano player, you’d read, find all the information you could about it. You’d take classes, practice it. Go to a garage, or a law office, or school, or CPA’s office and hang around, volunteer to help in whatever way you could, or maybe get a part-time job there doing anything you could just to immerse yourself in that atmosphere—be around that energy field, people with those ideas, to learn and experience all you could. You’d probably even start taking a look at your own car or your own taxes, and so forth, and start applying what you learned.

It’s no different with the Science of Mind. The more we read, study, listen to recordings of talks and New Thought music, and hang around others who study, think, practice and talk about it, the more it becomes “real” to us and settles into our subjective minds and then takes form as beliefs.

I - introspection, contemplation, journaling

The only place we find our own truth is within. Yes, we need to read and study what others have come to know. But in the end, that’s their truth. It can help us along the way. But we must all come to our own understanding. And the way to that is through introspection. We must contemplate the things we read, or listen to. Think deeply and question everything. And journaling our feelings and insights is a powerful way of coming to greater understanding of who we are as the I Am.

M - meditation. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of going to our center and spending time there just being. We do so much in our lives. It’s essential to balance out the doing with just being, to “rest in the goodness and the strength of God. . . in me” as we heard so beautifully in the music this morning.

E - exercise, experiment. Don’t take my word for it that this stuff works. Don’t take anyone’s word for it. We all have to prove it for ourselves. Put it to the test. Use it! Exercise it. The Law is our good and faithful servant, a principle to be put to work. Speak your word specifically, and expect results. Watch for them. The Science of Mind is for you to experiment with and test it for yourself.

S - support. I call it Popeye’s spinach for strength. I’ve put this S for support on the end of PRIME because I’m coming to see more and more how profoundly this idea of support is making itself known in our world today. I believe the message is coming through loud and clear that we need to work together, support each other, in bringing about the change we so desperately need in our own lives and on the planet. We need each other. We have to learn to ask for and accept support from those who truly understand the spiritual work we’re doing.

It’s like we need a sponsor. We need to be each others’ sponsors. We’re all so addicted to things, so attached to something or someone we think we just can’t live without, something we’d be extremely angry about if it were taken from us, something we turn to even though we know it’s not good for us. What are you addicted to? . . .
The more we focus on those things, the more of them we get. It’s just the way the Law works. It’s impersonal. It always gives us more of what we focus on—no matter what it is. It can’t help it. It’s a principle, like mathematics or electricity. It always works no matter what the reason is we’re using it.

So the more we can get support to help us focus on the truth instead of our addictions, the more understanding and wisdom we get. And the more we focus on supporting someone else and being there for them, the more support we find coming for us.

Look at your life to see what you believe. Do we really believe the 3 Cheeri-Os, the Omnipresence, Omnipotence, and Omniscience of God? When we’re in the midst of despair, I doubt we’re believing it. Because if we did, we wouldn’t be in despair! Oh, there’s That Within Us that does know it’s true, but I’m talking about believing it in our subconscious mind, in our human brain mind that has been filling up with false ideas since infancy.

It’s the journey we all have to make from the head—oh, it’s a nice intellectual idea—to the heart, where we know and we know that we know that we cannot be disturbed by anything.

We are continually creating tomorrow with our thoughts today. It’s hard for us to believe that because it doesn’t usually show up immediately and we’re not aware we’re doing it. But we are constantly picking the ingredients for our next cooking adventure. If we’re throwing vinegar into the bowl instead of honey, no matter how much we say we’re making cake, it’s not going to be sweet. If we want our lives to be a certain way, we must be deliberate in creating them that way. It’s really that simple.

And to do it, we must stay centered. We must keep the pipes open for the water to flow through. We must say with Popeye, “Me primes me pump.”
P - practice speaking our word and that is prayer
R - reading
I - introspection, contemplation, journaling
M - meditation
E - experiment, exercise
S - support, Popeye’s spinach for strength
These are the gems we want to pick while we’re in this apple orchard of life.