Are you happy where you are?

balanceThere is a lot to be said for finding a new place to live. The problem, many times, is that we are moving to get away from something, and as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

What this meant for him was, when his wife died, he lost his faith and ran away from the truth of his wife’s death rather than confronting it, blamed it on God, and left his church, moved to France and found that his issue was still there with him. It was then that he realized he needed to not only allow himself to grieve, but to also confront the demons of his own making, in order that e could once again be happy and live his life as the uplifting, productive person he had always been before the tragedy.

I can understand where he’s coming from, because I have been on the same boat trying to get away, but I haven’t been able to get the boat to move, because I wasn’t dealing with life changing event. I wanted it to just go away, and of course it wouldn’t because I kept giving it life.

That realization alone is life changing.

If you can somehow be happy where you are, you can be happy anywhere. It will be at that moment that your life and location may reveal itself to you.

~rev jim
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The Joy really is in the Journey!

People say, “The joy is in the journey,” but they rarely understand what they are saying. You are in this focused time/space reality with goals and objectives that call you because as you identify a desire it literally summons life through you. Life summoning through you is what it’s all about —it’s not the completion of anything.
—Abraham, excerpted from the workshop: Chicago, IL on November 01, 1998

Wow! This has so hit home for me as developed my website for my first focus ministry., Spirit On The Road. And, literally it was a journey all over the eastern United States.

What I found out though, was that success isn’t always measured in dollars and cents. There are many facets to success. I experienced many of them along the way. There was a lot of travelling, which I did enjoy. I shared what I was doing with all the CSL communities along the way, and I met many wonderful people along the way. I cherished those years in my motor home. Ultimately, I was able to help a couple of spiritual seed groups get started, and introduced Science of Mind to a few communities that had been previously unserved.

As for it paying for itself, that never happened. It turned into an act of SEVA. That was ok, because I was fortunate enough to have a job that didn’t require a great deal of work during that period and still brought me a decent income.

I learned through this experience that the joy IS in the journey, not in the destination. Along the way I made many like-minded friends, and gave support to many who otherwise may have not been supported as they were. I visited a lot of new places to me, and experienced the diversity those areas offered.

~ rev jim
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What were you thinking?

I sometimes want to say, “What were you thinking?”

Then again sometimes I do say it, and I say to myself, “Oh my God, did I say that out loud?”

I am prone to saying things out loud that I don’t mean to, because I spend so much time in my own company.

I have for a very long time been aware, at least for me, that the things that I think about, that is, the things that I put my attention on, and desire to have in my life, actually do manifest for me. I learned that the hard way actually by dwelling on the thing that I didn’t want. You know how when you worry about something so much that it makes you sick. Or, you are getting ready for a job interview and you’re thinking that you’re not going to get the job. You just know that the other applicants have something going for them that you don’t.

Fact is, they probably did, if you’re thinking that way. They’re probably going into the interview thinking the job is theirs. 

Do you see the difference?

I’ve already given the job away to someone else by thinking, “I’m not good enough!” So,  what can I do about that? How can I be more competitive in the interview? I can start at home before the interview ever gets started by looking in the mirror and seeing myself in a different light. I can see myself as successful. I can see the job as mine. I can look at myself and tell me, “I am the perfect person for this job.” I can see myself in a new light.

“Everyone else, get behind me! This job is mine!”

In the beginning, the mind tends to revert back to the old mode of lack or inferiority, but if we work on catching ourselves, we can change that negative thought and  put ourselves into a place of greater expectations. 

We each have a unique gift. Whatever it is we do, we do it a little bit differently than anyone else does it. That unique approach can be a blessing, if we see it in that light. Each one of us has a singular way of doing something. Once we move beyond the protection of our ego, which has a tendency to say “No” or “Don’t do it” to anything it considers risky, which is pretty much everything we might think o doing besides sitting on the couch watching TV, we move beyond the fear of failure, or in spite of the fear of failure, and realize that what was so far out of the box for us, was the right and best thing to do.

It’s funny, how when we get out of our own way, everything unfolds perfectly.

When we’re speaking of ego and moving boldly beyond it, Ralph Waldo Emerson calls it, “getting our bloated nothingness out of the way.” That’s how much our ego thinks of itself.

~jt starke
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Truth

Truth-Ahead-compressedWhat is it about truth that seems so difficult to comprehend? Are we afraid that if we speak our truth that we will leave ourselves exposed or open to criticism? Is it that we think we may be caught up in a lie? Or, is it something even deeper?

If we are talking about a universal truth, we are speaking of something that is true for everyone, and many times, even that is subjective. The truth is. Whatever we share is our opinion. It may also be held by others, but invariably it is a version of a truth held by others.

Point: When we speak of God, some people may believe there is no God. Some may believe that it should be a small “g” god.Others believe the only God is that of the Christian God and all others are not the true God. That is true for many in almost all faiths. Some people believe God is a he, others a she, and still others believe God is without sex.

The point is, few agree on who or even what God is.

This leads me to the place where, I can only speak from the truth I know. The truth I speak, I do from my authentic self, and yes, I sometimes leave myself exposed to whatever, but when I do, I never have to worry about whether what I said is the same thing I told someone else. I never have to wonder, “will I get caught in a lie?” While I know my beliefs may have changed, and that what I believe today may not believe what I believed yesterday, I know what my old belief was, so the change isn’t a surprise to me, and I can say “Yes, I used to believe that, but my beliefs have changed.

In the authenticity of my sharing I have accepted responsibility for my beliefs.

Does that make sense?

In The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz speaks of living an “impeccable life,” and this means doing nothing that harms anyone else while at the same time reaching for your highest possibilities of you. Is this the impossible to attain ideal? Not if you make it your truth every day.

Just imagine what the world might be like, if everyone lived an impeccable life!

~ JT Starke    http://spirit-edu.com/

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Me? Let go of my story?

“Be patient where you sit in the dark, the dawn is coming.” ~ Rumi

let-goJust as the periods between light and dark are cyclical, so to are all things in life. Life as we know it is cyclical as well. we are born with nothing and we pass on from this life with nothing. Life is designed in a cycle that upon renewal, there is no baggage to take with us. Some people take a whole lifetime to realize that, some more than that.

So, this dark and light, what is it? Is it to be feared?I don’t think so. It’s the yin and yang, the beginning and the end, the good and bad. You can’t really experience one without the other. You may be able to minimize the negative effects or the fallout, but you can’t have one without its corresponding polar opposite. Life is a cornucopia of experiences. you sometimes have to wade through all the different possibilities in order to find the experience you’re looking for. You don’t have to dwell on or immerse yourself in the thoughts or experiences that come into your sphere, but you may need to acknowledge them, bless them and release them.

Life is funny. The more you resist or deny the experiences that move through your sphere, the more they persist. If you were to just allow it to present itself and say “no thank you” that thing would just cease to be.

But, then we would have to let go of our story, wouldn’t we?

~jt starke

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Do Your Thoughts Create?

My question today is, “do you believe that you create your life by the thoughts you have? Can you, knowing that there is strife in the world, that there is killing in the world, really believe that you exist in a world of your own creation?

Thinking about that for a moment, are you responsible for that killing or that strife? Heady thoughts, aren’t they? Chances are each of us may be to some degree by our thinking the general lower thoughts of humanity that says, “they deserved that” or “they are bad people not good like me” and other things of the same ilk.

Does that make us bad people? No, not really, it just means we’re human beings with human frailties and judgments. We have thoughts that are historically human thoughts based on our geography, ethnicity, spiritual or religious upbringing, and many other factors that cause us “unknowingly to act the way we do. It can be difficult to know that we are being unjustified in our thoughts and actions sometimes as we float through life, because we do “feel” fully justified in our actions.

Sometimes we get involved in situations that we don’t even realize may be callous or hurtful to a group or section of the population that has, in truth, done nothing to deserve it. One example of this is or was military veterans returning from the war in Vietnam. During this time of political upheaval in our country our boys were returning from the war ill prepared for the horrendous greetings they had to endure at the hands of the young idealistic protestors of that unwanted conflict.

They, in essence, were treated as the enemy, when, in fact, most were conscripts of a war that nobody wanted outside of the government and corporations. Sadly, they were the easiest and most visible group for protestors to attack and get press. So, these men who spent most of their time just trying to survive in an untenable situation were smeared by the protestors and became a focus of the press, while the “directors and suppliers” of the war continued with business as usual.

So, did we contribute to that? Many of us did. I was guilty of it by protesting the war on campus in college, and even though I never called anyone a baby killer or threw red paint at anyone, I was still responsible for that general condition. And it wasn’t until I was drafted in my senior year of college that got to know the people who were the cannon fodder of the war, and realize that damage that we did to another human being in our idealistic unknowing.

And’ this is not an isolated incident. It has been going on since the beginning of time. Imagine if we didn’t consider our way of doing things better than anyone else’s way. Imagine what the world might be like if there was universal respect for everybody as individuals without regard for religious beliefs, ethnic heritage, sexual proclivity, or geography. Imagine if we wanted the highest and the best for each and everyone. Imagine the world without labels, without judgment.

If we as individuals can begin to see the good in each other and let this good by our guiding theme in our life, we can indeed begin to see the world as a safe place, as a place where our children are safe, where we are safe. This is how we can begin to live stress free in this world of our own creation. We don’t have to change the entire world ourselves. We need only change the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves within this world. The future is as bright or and dim as our thoughts. It is heaven or hell right now. We sentence ourselves to prison or paradise.

Where do you choose to reside? How do you choose to see your life?

Affirmation: I choose to live my life in complete and awe inspiring love and joy!

in Love & Peace,

rev jim

Spirit Education

Allow the inflow of the new!

In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.

Howard Thurman

 

In the quiet of your thoughts, have you ever noticed that there’s a certain knowing the comes to you, that a certain idea is brought forward in your mind, when you allow all things to just refresh themselves and you just release those things which no longer serve you.

It’s the same thing as when I have a problem I can’t solve and I just walk away from it, forget about it, then come back to it from a different perspective, from a different idea, or from different way of thinking and all of a sudden the answer appears from outside the confusion which was there in the beginning which was nonproductive and now there is the answer. It was so easy. I did not see it in the beginning and it suddenly appeared to me because I had a change of mind, a change of thought. I created a void, a place which allowed for the new thought to come into my life. I changed my despair to hope, my fear that there wasn’t an answer into the answer.

And at the same time I know that it wasn’t me the answer came from. It came through me from God, I cleared the way in my mind for the answer to be revealed to me. It was always there because God is always with us and as soon as I cleared the way it was revealed to me.

Next time something in your life seems to be troubling you, let go of it, walk away from it, forget about it, release it from your thoughts, release the idea and just find something else to do, then come back to it with a new mind, with a clear mind, and with a clear thought that the answer is there already and you’ll be surprised. It will be there.