Power of Oneness Spiritual Center

March 2008 Monthly Theme: “BEHAVING BOLDLY”

March 16, 2008 Topic: “The Spiritual Warrior”

A definition of a warrior is a person in engaged or experienced in warfare; a soldier.
A person who has shown great vigor, courage or aggressiveness.

A spiritual warrior is a different kind of soldier.

He or she is a person who has shown great vigor or courage, but is not aggressive, but assertive. You know the difference right? Aggressive is violent and antagonistic. Assertive is confident and self-assured.

A spiritual warrior need not ride on the back of a dragon.
Jesus did not ride on a Clydesdale.
He didn’t ride on an elephant.
Jesus didn’t even ride on a camel.
He rode on a donkey.

When looking at the text of the Christian liturgy for this period of time and also noticing that Christian history is tied into Jewish or Hebrew history, I started to realize the different aspects of the One Mind. And that makes sense, because, after all, we believe in the Unity of all life. The holidays should, therefore, be closer together, but now we’re now functioning in this man-made mind where time and space seem important. It totally messed up your minister last week. Anywhoo- The whole reason that Jesus was in Judea was because of the Feast of the Tabernacles.

This is the time that they commemorate the deliverance of the people of Israel from 40 years in the wilderness. Now we who have studied metaphysical Bible know that 40 is the number that represents how long it takes to awaken to your conscious identity. Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, and so on. But metaphysically, this feast represents the harvest and gathering of the energies of the soul and body (the place where we receive the impress of Spirit and the place that we manifest it into form). We’re gathering these energies and moving in consciousness. The Passover (is the passing over of the nervous energy of one plane of consciousness to another. It represents the inflow of Substance from objective to subjective centers. Like the V in the Science of Mind teaching symbol that shows from One into many. This union of spirit, Charles Fillmore tells us (Did I tell you I saw his actual office last week in Unity Village?) It was great. Anyway. Charles Fillmore tells us that this union of Spirit is brought about through faith in Spirit and the higher life. Well, I said Amen.

Well, after all, we believe the ultimate goal of life to be a complete emancipation from all discord of every nature, and that this goal is sure to be attained by all. We know that the Universe exists in the Eternal Now. (ooh, this is good). Each moment is complete and perfect within itself. In this Universal Harmony, justice without judgment is always automatic, an infallible Universal Principle. Right? So there can be no place for divine anger, unforgiveness or punishment.

Jesus knew this. He had already told them: Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment when they were nervous about him healing the man at the bath on the Sabbath. The Pharisees were whispering around, interviewing the man that was blind and was now seeing and plotting things…acting like they don’t know the God they are teaching about. Judge righteous judgment means be discerning. Be perceptive. It don’t mean to hate! (Judging by appearance is for the ego and is for the world of effects.)

So, all those things have already happened and Jesus is on the Mount of Olives teaching them not long after that. Understand that a mountain symbolizes a high plane of consciousness and a high state of spiritual realization.

This spiritual warrior is confident. He’s got the blessed assurance!!!

He’s teaching them and he’s drawing on the ground (cause they didn’t have blackboards and projector screens and all of that). He’s telling them about the Kingdom of Heaven and here they bring this prostitute forward. This is not unlike now when Obama is talking to us about how to have Heaven on Earth and here comes the media talking about Governor Spitzer and the prostitute. But we’re going to come back to that later.

So the disciples are distracted by these effects because they’ve got their own pain bodies and are carrying around their own grievances. They’re unconscious. They still have this dysfunctional egoic behavior. Okay, this is like Spitzer. He was in a war mind-set. He was making it his mission to eradicate evil, on Wall Street and with the prostitution rings and everything. He was supposed to be Mr. Clean. But Eckhart Tolle tells us in A NEW EARTH, “beware of making it your mission to eradicate evil as you are likely to turn into the very thing you are fighting against. “ It’s right there on page 74. Fighting unconsciousnessness will draw you into unconsciousness yourself. I’ve told yall that story about that one night when we were having a peace vigil in L.A. before the Iraq war and this woman was spewing all of this venom about George Bush. And I said, "he’s just a scared little boy." And she said, "No he’s not. He’s evil!" And I thought now what is peaceful about this? And that didn’t mean that I was judging her, that means that I was thinking about what I wanted to stand for in the scheme of things. And I knew that I’d better be careful if I say that my ministry is a ministry of peace. I’ve got to conduct myself in a peaceful way in order to model the peace I want to see. Rickie said so in the song: “I live to be the path of righteousness that surely brings the peace that I’m here to feel.” And baby, this world is bringing me all kinds of situations in order to expand me to walk my talk. Ooh, Lord. Thank ya! Anywho, Eckhart Tolle also tells us (yall got to get that book. We have some copies here. It may very well be the best book that’s every been written. I don’t know. It speaks volumes of truth. I think it’s gonna put preachers out of business.) But back to my preachin’, Eckhart Tolle tells us about the expression "the war against" this and the war against that. “Despite the war against drug and crime, there has been a dramatic increase in crime and drug related offenses in the past twenty-five years.” The prison population went up from under 300,000 in 1980 to 2.1 million in 2004. The war against disease has brought us antibiotics. Let me not get into that. I don’t want to scare yall about the antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. We need to really deal with some alternative approaches to disease that do not treat illness as the enemy. Our consciousness is the enemy.

The disciples were trying to kill the woman because of their own issues. Jesus figured out that they were set on being in the realm of effects. So he said, okay. Whoever is here that has not made a mistake, throw the first stone. If anybody is here that has never missed the mark (cause that’s what sin means), be the first one to hit her with a stones that will eventually kill her. Everybody backed up. And Jesus is like, hey, nobody here is persecuting you. Go on. Begin again. And be Who you truly are.

And he goes back to them and tells them, you need to listen to me. Focus on God. If you are going to roll with me, you’ve got to see the Light. (That was John 8:12. Yall won’t see it like that, but I’m just breakin’ it down.) Jesus said “I am not of this world.” He wasn’t interested in living in dirt. He wanted to lift himself and draw all men and women unto him. His eye was single. That’s what we’re talking about today.

A spiritual warrior doesn’t need to carry a sword. Thy rod and thy staff comfort me. He goes riding into Judah on a donkey, fully armed in high consciousness. He went to Bethany first and brought his boy Lazarus back from the dead. He even saw the mourners crying about Lazarus and it says, Jesus wept. He was weeping for himself as well. Yes. He knew that these same people loved him and would love him more once he touched the conscious I Am in Lazarus and brought him back to Life. He felt compassion for himself, for the mourners and for Lazarus. But he was armed in Truth.

As are we all. We believe in the incarnation of the Spirit in all, and that we are all incarnations of the one Spirit. Because each of us is an incarnation of the One Spirit, all life is inseparably One. That’s why Jesus was crying. Even though we are Spirit, we are still having a human experience.

But Mary knew. Lazarus’ sister. That’s why she wiped his feet with her perfumed hair, because the feet represent understanding and the fragrance represents the love. She was representing the devotional side of soul and loving Jesus’ understanding of Who he is.

That’s what being born of water and the Spirit is about. Oh, Lord. Yall wanna talk about Gospel. Ernest Holmes told us there is a Divine Wholeness, a total interconnectedness at the Source.

He could ride on that donkey knowing full well that a week later, people would be yelling: "Crucify Him!" He could look Judas in the face too. He wasn’t into reacting. Eckhart Tolle’ tells us nonreaction is not a weakness but a strength. That’s a spiritual warrior! Another word for nonreaction is forgiveness.

The Pharisees live inside of us and they need to go. They are those little “me’s inside that enjoy making someone wrong.” We’ve got grievances. A grievance is a long-standing resentment. A grievance will contaminate all areas of your life. While you think about that past event and feel your grievance, its negative emotional energy can distort your perception of an event that is happening in the present or influence the way in which you speak or behave toward someone in the present. This is when you’re in the grip of the ego. You’re not functioning in your Higher Self.

I stumbled upon a grievance that I didn’t even know I had. I had held it for 27 years. And when it came up for healing, it was ugly. But you’ve got to be honest with yourself to see what you are harboring. You’ve got to be vigilant of both your thoughts and your emotions. Your body will tell you. Some of you saw Louise Hay’s movie Friday night. You know what I’m talking about.

You get crazy, literally crazy and it’s because of the baggage of old thought and emotion that you’re carrying. That’s why we’ve got to stay in the present moment. "Do you wanna know the way? The way in is the way out." "Turn within," like Rickie BB says and "see the Face of God."

And I’m not saying it’s easy to forgive. And Eckhart Tolle’ tells us “trying to let go, to forgive, does not work. Forgiveness happens naturally when you see that it has no purpose other than to strengthen a false sense of self, to keep the ego alive. But if you stay in this moment, you are likely to hear your Higher Self.

Ernest Holmes tells us "Because each of us is an incarnation of the One Spirit, all life is inseparably One. There is a divine Wholeness, a total interconnectedness at the Source. Despite my occasional feeling of separateness, this Oneness is irrevocable and eternal." It is Who I Am. All humans are One with God, One with each other, and One with all Life, animate and inanimate.

In closing, I want to tell you about Jill Bolte Taylor. By trade, she was a neuroanatomist.

She studied the brain because her brother has schizophrenia. She dedicated her career to study mental illness.   One morning, a blood vessel exploded in the left half of her brain. She could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of her life. She became an infant in a 37-year-old woman’s body. But she lived to tell the story.   She explained that the two hemispheres in the brain are completely separate from one another. They process information differently.   The right side of the brain is like a parallel processor in a computer. This deals with present moment. It thinks in pictures. It learns kinesthetically through movement. It gets information by energy that explodes into an enormous collage and reveals what this present moment is by the senses, what things look like, sound like, feel like, taste like, etc. We are Energy being connected to the energy all around us through the consciousness of our right hemisphere.   The left side of the brain is like a serial processor in a computer. It thinks linearly and methodically. It’s focus is all about the past and the future. It takes the present moment and picks out the details from this moment, organizes, categorizes, and projects into the future all of our possibilities. It’s the ongoing brain chatter. It’s the voice that tells us what to put on our grocery list. It’s the voice that says “I am.” This makes me feel separate from you.   So that morning, when she woke up, pain (like biting into ice cream) gripped her and released her (twice). She got up and got on her full body exercise machine. She looked at her hands and they looked like primitive claws. She looked down at her body and it looked weird. Her experience was that she was witnessing herself on this machine. Her headache got worse. So she got off of the machine and as she walked away, everything in her body has slowed. Every step was rigid and deliberate, without fluidity.
She had no external perception. She’s focused on internal system. She heard the dialogue inside her body - like the brain telling muscles to contract, etc.

She could not define the boundaries of her body. She didn’t know where she began and ended. Her molecules blended with the walls. All she could detect was energy. Her left hemisphere brain went silent (like a mute button). She found herself inside a silent mind. She was captivated by the energy around her. She felt expansive because she had no boundaries. She felt at one.
Then her left hemisphere said to her, “we’ve got a problem. We’ve got to get some help.” She responded: I’ve got a problem. I’ve got to get some help. Then she immediately drifted into la-la land again. She was disconnected from her brain chatter.
Any stress related to her job was gone and she felt lighter in her body. Any stressors were gone. She felt a sense of peace. She lost 37 years of emotional baggage. It felt like euphoria.

Then her left hemisphere said to her, “you’ve got to focus. We’ve got to get some help.” She was wondering if she could drive. Then she looked down and saw that her right arm went paralyzed. She realized that she was having a stroke. Then she thought: "This is so cool." Now remember, she’s a student of the brain. She does brain research for a living. But now, she was studying her own brain. And she said to herself: "I’m busy. I don’t have time to have a stroke.’ I’ve got to call work."

She couldn’t remember the number for work but she remembered that she had a business card in her room. She had a bunch of cards but when she looked at them, they all looked like pixels. They looked like symbols. She didn’t know which card was her business card. Every now and then, she would have a wave of clarity when she reattached to normal reality. And she thought she located her card. It took her 45 minutes to get one inch inside the stack of business cards. In the meantime, this hemorrhage is growing in her head. Now, she does not understand letters, numbers or a telephone, but it was her only plan.   So she started matching the shape of squiggles on the card to the shape of the squiggles on the phone pad. But then she would drift back into la-la land and she couldn’t remember if she had already dialed the numbers or not. So then, she had to cover the numbers with her right (stump) hand so she would know where she left off.   45 minutes later, her colleague picks up the phone and says rrrrrrrr (She said he sounded like a golden retriever. It sounds more like Scooby-Doo, to me). She says this is Jill. I need help. What comes out is rrrrr (and she sounds like Scooby-Doo) when she hears her voice on the phone. He realizes that she needs help and he calls an ambulance.   Inside the ambulance, she curled up into a fetal ball. At one point, she felt her energy lift. She felt her spirit surrender. In that moment, she knew that she was no longer the choreographer of her life and that she might live or die. She said goodbye to her life.

When she awoke the next day, she could not identify herself. She felt enormous. Her spirit soared wild and free. She didn’t think she could fit her enormous self into her body. She realized that she was alive and could find Nirvana. She saw a world full of loving, compassionate people that could come to this space at any time. They could choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. She realized what a gift this experience was and what insight it could be. It motivated her to recover. 2½ weeks after the hemorrhage, surgeons removed a tumor the size of a golf ball pressing against her language centers. It took her eight years to completely recover.

She answers the question: Who are we? And she says:

We are the life force power of the universe with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. We have the power to choose who and how to be in the world right now. We can step into the right hemisphere and declare I am the life force power of the universe. I am the life force power of the universe with 50 trillion molecular geniuses that make up my form. I am at one with all that is. Or we can step into the left hemisphere where I am a single individual, separate from the flow, separate from you. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual….Neuroanatomist…   These are the we inside. Which will you choose? Which do you choose? And when? The more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peaceful we will be and the more peaceful the world will be. And she thought that was an idea worth spreading.   Meredith Jordan tells us: “Whatever you have forgotten, you can remember. Whatever you have buried you can unearth. If you are willing to look deep into your own nature, if you are willing to peel away the layers of not-self you have adopted in making your way through the tribulations of life, you will find that your true self is not as far removed as you think." -- Meredith Jordan  

Invitation:

Remember our divine nature.

Remember our spiritual commitment.

Face the challenges that life presents calmly and peacefully while looking into the mouth of the dragon.

Remember who we really are.

Remember we are divine emissaries. Think, feel and act accordingly.

We are spiritual warriors with a blessed assurance! The highest God and the innermost God are one!!!

The heart is the bridge between Heaven and Earth.
Remain clear and centered in the midst of this turbulence where the two rivers converge.

Be the channels of light, love and healing power that we were meant to be (even) in that moment, in the attendant confusion and disorder that appears before us.

We are God’s emissaries sent to Earth to be the vehicles through which this light, love and healing power can be expressed.

Peace and blessings!