"HIDDEN POWER OF THE I AM"

Today I want to talk with you about a subject that is so incredibly important that it is almost like magic. And it would be magic if it weren’t for the fact that it is so incredibly real and true. You might find the ideas that I have to share with you today to be deep. If that is so, bear with me. I will endeavor to be precise in what I say so that it might be understood by all of us. Although this is a topic that you might have heard expounded upon before, I venture to say that some of the perspective that I wish to share with you today may be entirely new. But I guarantee that it is understandable. Otherwise, you would not be here today absorbing these ideas. What we’re going to examine today is the power of the I Am.

A scripture that took me years to understand was the one where Moses was on the mountain communing with God. When Moses was ready to go back down to the people and accept God’s direction to lead them out of Egypt, he wondered what credentials he should use to add clout to his presentation. He asked, “Who shall I say has sent me?” The answer that he received was, “Tell them, ‘I am that I am’ has sent you.” That’s your standard King James translation.

For some reason, when I was young, that just didn’t quite make sense. I am that I am. I mulled it over and over for years. I am that I am. I am that I am. I am that I am. I am that I am. I am that I am. I am that I am. I am that I am. I am that I am. Just what did he mean? And what does it mean to me?

I AM. Somewhere along the way I began to wonder if those words somehow had a special meaning. I mean something beyond special, more like something almost magical. You know, we’re sort of conditioned to believe in magic because of things that the more orthodox churches teach, like taking the words “whatever you ask in my name” to be absolutely literal. In my name. Here they’re talking about Jesus. But was Jesus talking about Jesus, or was he talking about his father? Was he talking about God? And if that’s whom he was talking about, and whose name he was referring to, was that name, then, possibly “I am?” Whatever you ask in my I Am name?

Well, we’ve got a problem that begins to develop with this sort of thinking. If God’s name is “I Am” then what happens when we say things like “I am tired,” or “I am angry,” or “I am sad?” Are we talking about us or are we talking about God? Or, are we talking about both? Perhaps that’s it. I am that I am. “Know ye not that ye are children of God?” But, if that’s true, then for me to say, “I am” and follow it with anything which is less than that which is true of a child of God, is to take God’s name in vain, so to speak. It is to lie, to not tell the truth.

Well, we know from a talk that Alan Stanley gave several years ago that in John, Jesus is reported to have said that Satan is “lies, and the father of lies.” So when we make any claim about ourselves, whether aloud, or in the silence of our own hearts, that is missing the mark of our innate divinity, i.e. negative and limiting “I am” statements, then we are causing Satan, or the devil, to appear to be real. The reality is only in appearance, however, for we know that the true identity of Satan is a lie; therefore it’s only existence lies in the mistaken belief in the lie. The lie is not true. It is a lie. Therefore it does not really exist. It only appears to exist so long as the lie is believed.

For instance, for years many people believed the earth to be flat. That belief didn’t alter the fact that the earth is round. The belie fin a flat earth was a belief in what was not true. However, as long as the belief persisted, those who believed it acted accordingly and were careful not to discover that the earth is really round.

So, perhaps there might be some very special meaning in those two words, “I Am.” Then some 25 years ago, while searching for deeper meaning in I Am, I made an astounding discovery. The phrase, “I Am” is composed of six sounds: I, E, A, O, U, and M. Those are the five vowels in our alphabet, followed by the consonant M. There’s something very interesting about those sounds. First, of the whole alphabet, it is only vowels that can be pronounced with the mouth open and the tongue and throat practically relaxed. A, E, I, O, U. These are vibrational letters, they are action letters, they are open letters. And all five of them are found within the term, “I Am.”

Now, let’s look at M. Of all of the consonants, M is the only one that can be pronounced without opening the mouth. Furthermore, it has a sum to it that is like unto a chant. Mmmmm. The other consonants are: B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, Z. But M, Mmmmm, is different from all of the rest. And it is the closure to I Am.

But that’s only the beginning. I Am is English, it is western. Where does that leave the easterners? Well, it turns out that the east has a unique word of special spiritual qualities. That word is AUM, or OM. What sounds make up this word? A, E, I, O, U, M. Exactly the same sounds as I Am, only in a different order. At this point in my explorations into I Am, it began to get very eerie. Where did those two most important terms, which have the same sounds and tremendous spiritual importance, come from? Is there something deliberate going on here? And if so, who or what is the instigator?

Peculiar? Oh, my friends, we’ve only scratched the surface, for you see, we’ve been doing all of this in the English language. Ours is a language that had been around for less than 1,000 years. There was no such thing as English in the time of Jesus, or the time of Moses. There was no language in those days that even resembled today’s English. So where did all of this come from? Could a person have concocted this and promulgated it so that it would encompass the world? Or was it rather something beyond a person?

Well, if English didn’t exist when Moses was on the mountain, then what was it that God really said? What is God’s real name? For that, we’ll have to go to the George Lamsa translation of the Bible. Again, we’ll look at our scripture for today from Exodus 3:13-14. “And Moses said to God, Behold, when I go to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am AHIAH ASHAR HIGH (that is, THE LIVING GOD); and he said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: AHIAH has sent me to you.”

AHIAH ASHAR HIGH is Aramaic. Let look at what those who are familiar with the language have to say about it. My elementary understanding of Cabalism is that it is partially a belief that the individual letters of the Hebrew alphabet individually represent different aspects of the energy of the universe that is God. Furthermore, the religious writings that we know as the Bible are actually full of mystical meaning understood only by meditating upon the various aspects of universal energy represented by each letter in each word and their relationships with one another. To demonstrate what that might mean, let’s take a cabalistic look at our Aramaic name of God.

The letters of these three words are as follows:

AHIAH – Aleph Hay Yod Hay

ASHAR – Aleph Sheen Raysh

HIGH – Yod Hay Vav Hay

I AM = AHIAH = Aleph Hay Yod Hay

Aleph – “the unthinkable life-death, abstract principles of all that is and all that is not.”

Hay – “the archetype of universal life. When it is confirmed upon Dallet, it allows it to play the game of existence, in partnership with the intermittent life-death process.”

Yod – “projection of Aleph in temporal continuity. So Yod (in Hebrew: the hand), is the opposite of Aleph, it’s partner playing against it the game without which nothing would be.”

Hay – “the Archetype of universal life. When it is confirmed upon Dallet, it allows it to play the game of existence, in partnership wit5h the intermittent life-death process.”

After meditating upon this, I find that I AM, AHIAH, means “All that is expressing through temporal continuity as universal life.” I’m going to repeat that. The I Am that God is, and which you are, and which I am, is all that is expressing through temporal continuity as universal life. My friends, that’s what the energy of the letters of the Aramaic/Hebrew name of God, as reportedly given to Moses, means.

And that meaning has obviously been carried over the ages through means that are beyond our comprehension, into our current language. I Am is the absolute total expression of universal life as all that is expressing in this temporal continuity that we think of as reality. Those words, I Am, are a creative wand through which we can, and do, participate in the ongoing divine act of creating the reality of our existence and the reality in which we live. That is a magic beyond magic. God, the creator, constantly creating through us, as we will.

I am life. I am joy. I am peace. I am prosperity. I am wholeness. I am wonder. I am fulfillment. I am harmony. I am enthusiasm. I am will. I am oneness. I am renunciation. I am wisdom. I am zeal. I am order. I am understanding. I am imagination. I am power. I am God in expression. I am love.

- posted by Charles DeTurk @ 12:00 AM

 
"PRACTICING THE PRINCIPLES"

Today’s topic, “Practicing The Principles,” was chosen for me when I asked my wife, Sherri what she thought I needed to talk about. I’m certain that she recommended this topic because she’s very aware that it is an area in which we could all use some additional work.

Several years ago, I stood up in front of a rather large group of people and spoke passionately about principle, specifically asking people to define the principles underlying their actions. No one ahs ever asked me what principles I was talking about. So, we’ll talk about that this morning. What are these principles that are periodically referred to in our time together? And just what are we supposed to do about them?

First of all, I think that we need to step back, and I mean way back, and try to get an overall view of what reality is all about. I’m sure that you’re aware of the fact that the more we know, the more we know we don’t know. At our present time in history, we are probably doubling our knowledge every year. Nine out of every ten scientists who have ever lived are alive today. And for all we know now, we are aware of even more of what we don’t know. With that in mind, however, let’s take a look at what we do know and the part that principle plays in our reality.

When we think of the universe in which we live, we most often think in terms of a physical existence, those aspects of reality that we can see, hear, touch, taste and small. That’s the physical universe. We know that it is made up of atoms. We know that there are only 92 different stable atoms that occur on their own throughout the universe. The reason for this is that there is a mathematical structure to the atom that determines how many electron charges can surround, or orbit, an atom’s nucleus at different levels. This is a mathematical principle that applies to atoms. We could call it a law, but I don’t like to call it that because people make laws and laws are often flawed.

A principle is, rather, something that we can count on to always be true, and that is evidenced by the fact that its effects are consistently manifest. People speak of the law of gravity and how it causes things to fall down. However, if you have ever taken any of my classes, you might remember that there is no such thing as up or down. Those concepts are all relevant. And therein lies the flaw in the law. Gravity is actually a principle that states that all masses attract one another. The larger and more dense the mass, the greater the attraction. It is the cosmic balance between all of the masses in space that causes celestial entities to orbit one another.

The discovery of the set of principles that underlie the actions and interactions of all matter in the physical universe are the goal of science. And science has come a long way in its discovery of those principles and new ways in which to use them, often to the benefit of millions of human beings. But it is not the principles of science and physical universe that we are discussing today.

Today I want to talk about principles that exist in the metaphysical realm of existence. The metaphysical being that part of our existence that is beyond the physical, that has no length, breadth, depth, weight, or temperature. The easiest way to sometimes get a handle on what we’re talking about here is to think of an idea, particularly one that may appear to be a totally new idea. Have you ever had a new idea, an idea that you knew didn’t come to you as a result of something that you had already thought about or experience, but rather came from some place that might have a rather musty feel to it? A number of geniuses have used the term mustiness to describe their more crystal ideas. They state that they seem to have a feel that they have come from somewhere else.

What are those ideas? Where do they come from? How do they get there? Some might claim that they’re nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain. But that’s merely the result of the idea, the way in which it catches our attention and our awareness. But what about the idea itself and the way in which it seems to be able to travel instantaneously? Well, in the metaphysical realm of our existence, there is not only no length, breadth, depth, weight, or temperature, but there is also no time. Yet, there are very definite principles in that realm of our metaphysical existence.

One of those principles has to do with what’s sometimes called the “law of mind action.” Simply stated, this says that whatever you concentrate upon will become manifest. Do you believe that to be true? as a person thinketh in their own heart, so are they. Job said it in a negative context when he stated, “The thing I feared has come upon me.” Another way that it is put is, “whatever the mind can see, and believe, it can achieve.” Do you believe that? Well, if you do, realize that "principles" implies a converse to itself. The converse is, “whatever world is manifesting around you, it is because of what you have concentrated upon.”

This is an important principle for us to understand because it identifies us as creators. But I don’t mean creators in the simple sense of creatively painting a picture, or writing a book, or singing or playing a song. Those are all expressions of creation, but the creation itself … oh, that’s where the incredible majesty lies. Each human being is a true creator.

Let’s look at it this way. The universe is physically composed of 92 self-regenerative chemical elements. So is each and every human being, composed of all of the same 92 self-regenerative chemical elements. The ratio of the elements to one another within each human being is the same as the ratio of the elements in the rest of the universe to one another. The universe has 92 basic building tools. You have the same 92 basic building tools. Through the application of numerous principles the universe in which we exist has been created by using those 92 tools.

Those universal principles, as we have already said, are non-physical. They are totally metaphysical. They are comprehended and applied through consciousness. Therefore the universe has consciousness. This is what we refer to when we speak of God, through the idea and the concept and the word God does not even begin to measure up to the incredible magnitude of this conscious awareness which they try to represent. It is consciousness that uses the principles of the universe to mold the 92 basic tools of the universe in the grandeur in which we exist.

Each one of us, each human being, has conscious awareness, consciousness. That consciousness is not separate from the consciousness of the universe. Rather, it is a part of it, it is an expression of it, it is an aspect of it, it is an example of it. That consciousness which we each possess has the same power and capabilities to mold the 92 basic tools into the reality in which we choose to live.

In order to best do this, it is to our benefit to know and understand the principles of the universe and how they work. Science endeavors to do this and to spread its findings through the educational systems. So much for the physical. But what about the metaphysical? Well, when it comes to that, we’re essentially on our own. Intelligent contemplation is not highly stressed in our society.

When I managed a computer department, I discovered that each time I ran an ad for some position for which we were hiring, that we were inundated with 100 or more applicants and resumes. Then one day I wrote an ad that changed all of that. In fact, we were often lucky if we got even one applicant for these new job postings. What did I change? I merely added 6 words with the requirement that the applicant “must be able to think logically.”

That, in a manner of speaking is what we need to do if we’re truly going to grow. Oh, I don’t mean that we must logically figure everything out. What I was looking for when I added that line to our job postings was a person who had enough intelligence and self-awareness that they didn’t have to constantly be told what to do and how to do it and then be watched to see if they did it right.

I’ve mentioned in some of my classes that I am an outlaw. The idea is taken from a line in Bob Dylan’s song, “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” where he says, “to live outside the law you must be honest.” And that’s what we need. See, in order to live outside the law, one must accept personal responsibility. They must think for themselves. They must have the confidence to act when they feel that action is called for. They must be honest and aboveboard in their dealings with others. When living outside the law, one does not have the law to rely upon, to fall back upon. Now, interestingly enough, those who honestly live outside the law are often the most law abiding of people, in appearance. But the motivation is different. What’s in here, the head, and here, the heart, is different.

So, our understanding and practice of the metaphysical principles of the universe is largely up to us as to what we know about it and what we do about it. But that doesn’t mean that we’re alone. There are limitless sources out there to help us alone and steer us in the right direction. But we must always remember that the most important source is always that source which is within us. By “within us,” I don’t mean that it is inside of us. What I really mean is that it is an integral part of us. It can’t be separated from us. That’s why we often think of it as being “within.”

But discovering and understanding the principles of the universe is only setting the stage for our true purpose in being. We are here to put those principles into action, to become the creator that our creator intended us to be, to be a channel for principle to express through us to create a more beautiful and majestic reality.

In our efforts to discover, understand, and become a channel for the expression of the principles the universe, we are often tempted by those around us to follow their example, sometimes merely because there seems to be more of them than there is of us. One of the ways in which we are sometimes sidetracked is through the practice of what is known as prayer.

Many people in this country have gotten the idea that when they pray for a particular situation that they must be specific in their prayers, that they must list every single last item that needs to be prayed for. Their prayers are requests, or even sometimes demands, that some super entity listen to their specific direction as to what needs to be done. Honestly, I ask anyone to go out here in the desert on a clear night, away from all of the lights and all of the other reminders of human intervention, and then get still and contemplate how it is that wall that which surrounds you came into being, and then tell me that any single human being is evolved enough to “tell God anything that God is to do.”

Let me share with you James Michener’s view on this topic from his novel, “Space:”

"Stanley Mott, striving to attain some sense of what the universe was, sat perfectly still on the bank of the Tennessee River, south of Huntsville, Alabama. Keeping arms and legs motionless, he endeavored to move not even his eyes, for he wished to experience the sensation of a body at complete rest, and at last he achieved this. He was as still as a human being could be; indeed, he might as well be dead except for the inescapable functioning of autonomic systems like breathing and heart beating.

"'I am motionless,' he said to himself at last, and he kept this posture for ten minutes, thinking of nothing. Then his brain insisted, recalling data he had memorized at Cal Tech:

"'But at this moment I'm sitting on a piece of Earth at 34 degrees 30 minutes North, which means I'm spinning west to east at a rate of about 860 miles an hour. At the equator, because of the larger bulge, 1,040. At the same time, my Earth is moving through its orbit around the Sun at 66,661 miles an hour, and my Sun is carrying itself and its planets toward the star Vega at something like 31,000 miles an hour.

"'Our Sun and Vega move around the Galaxy at the blinding speed of 700,000 miles per hour, and the Galaxy itself rotates at 559,350 miles an hour.

"'And that's not all. Our Galaxy moves in relation to all other galaxies as they rush through the universe at a speed of better than 1,000,000 miles an hour.

"'So when I sit here absolutely still I'm moving in six wildly different directions at an accumulated speed of ..... maybe two and a half million miles an hour. So I can never be motionless. I'm traveling always at speeds which are incomprehensible. And it's all happening in real time.'

"He considered these demonstrable facts for some moments, then concluded:

"'And perhaps the universe itself is hurtling toward some undefined destination at a speed which could hardly be stated, perhaps to clear our space for a better universe which will supplant us, while we rush off to some new adventure.'

"When he rose and felt his limbs moving only inches, he thought: 'What a trivial journey we make. Inches under our own power, two and a half million miles with the universe. But ours is the journey that counts. Our slow inching along to understanding and control.' When he headed back to his car, he calculated that he was walking at a rate of perhaps 2.3 miles an hour, hardly worth noting in comparison to the speeds he had been dealing with: 'And yet, for millions of years of our existence, that's about the best we could do. It got us where we are, and that's not trivial.'"

If you need a beginning point in your search for the truth principles in life, a good place to start is with Jesus’ admonition that the greatest commandment is to love the lord your god with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your mind, and with al your soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. He doesn’t qualify that by saying to do it only on certain occasions. When someone does you wrong, you love them. That’s hard to do. So is creating the universe. But you can do either one.

It is practicing the principles of love, joy, peace, understanding, sharing, compassion, and all of the other positives that contribute to the growth of all, that we, ourselves, grow and becomes the manifestation of what we were created to be.

- posted by Charles DeTurk @ 12:00 AM

 
"ACTIVITY OF GOD"

Today I want to talk about something that is not an easy issue to deal with because people have differing opinions about its significance and its importance. And that is the activity of God. Today I want to see if we can determine just what the activity of God is in regards to current situations in which we might find ourselves.

A major difference in outlook and viewpoint between what we term as eastern religion and western religion has to do with the activity of God. In a nutshell, eastern thought leans more toward internalizing the activity of God while western thought promotes externalizing the activity. But before we get into the internal/external quandary, let’s talk about the activity of God itself. What is it and what are the channels of its expression?

I’ve told most of you before that in the Last Whole Earth Catalog there was a brief little blurb called “Three Laws of the Universe.” Those three laws were listed as: 2) Everything is connected to everything, 2) Everything is going somewhere, and 3) There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TANSTAAFL). The second law, “Everything is going somewhere,” is speaking to the fact of the activity of God.

In this reality in which we live, there is no stasis, no lack of activity. Some might say, “Well, what about rocks?” But, of course, we know that since everything in the physical universe is made up of atoms, and every atom in the universe is a hotbed of activity, and then even rocks vibrate with constant activity. So, even though our senses might not be fine tuned sufficiently to perceive the activity that is going on all around us, nevertheless our intellectual cognizance lets us know that activity is the norm.

While we’re talking about rocks and atoms, I want to share with you a more in-depth view of the physical universe that further demonstrates activity to be the norm. Einstein in his famous relativity equation said E = mc2. That equation means, of course, that energy equals mass expanding omnidirectionally at the speed of light. Now what does that really mean? It means that everything is made up of energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Matter is merely energy expressing temporarily in interference patterns. And if those interference patterns were to be disrupted, what appears to be solid matter would return to its natural energy state in all directions simultaneously at the speed of light. That obviously would be very explosive and that’s why Einstein gets the credit for being the father of the atom bomb.

An interesting aside on Einstein and his relativity discovery concerns my friend, Buckminster Fuller. In 1938 Bucky’s first book, “Nine Chains To The Moon,” was finally published. In that book is a chapter entitled, “E = mc2 = Mrs. Murphy’s Horsepower.” When the publisher read it, they called Bucky in and told him that they couldn’t print it. The reason was that there were only so many people in the world who were qualified to speak on Einstein’s theory. In fact, at that time, a list existed of all of those people, and Bucky’s name was not on the list. Therefore, they could not print that chapter.

Well, Bucky’s response was to suggest that they ask Dr. Einstein what he thought about the chapter. What a lot a gall, thought the publisher. But the publisher gave it a try, and, sure enough, was able to get the text to Einstein, who read it. Dr. Einstein then asked to speak to Bucky. Now, at this time, Bucky’s probably 40 years old. So he goes to meet the great Einstein; just the two of them alone in a room together. And Einstein says, “I’m intrigued by your book, young man. I never had any idea that there were any practical applications for my formula.” Needless to say, the publishers included the chapter in Bucky’s book.

Anyway, at its core, every thing appears to be energy. And, I’m sure you’ll agree, it would be silly to think about energy as being anything other than active. But let’s delve just a bit deeper, because some of us might think of energy in terms of expending itself. In other words, that there’s only so much of it, and it, by its very nature, is running down, running out, using itself up. But that’s not the nature of energy at all. That’s merely the appearance of the results of energy in action. In reality, we must return to Einstein’s theory: energy can neither be created nor destroyed. In other words, there is a finite amount of it. And yet, it’s potential is infinite. Therefore energy is both finite and infinite, simultaneously.

At the infinite level of energy we have entered into what Chopra calls the field of all possibilities. But that’s not the end of our examination of energy, because current thinking in quantum physics says that in order for the laws of physics as we now understand them to exist, then all possibilities must also exist. In other words, Deepak’s field of all possibilities isn’t just potentially possible; it is possible because it already exists, past, present, and future, simultaneously. All possibilities. All energy configurations, interference patterns, so-called physical matter that could be, exist at different levels of awareness, at different levels of consciousness. Talk about activity. Talk about omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. We have to expand our ability to comprehend to its limits just to get an inkling of what we’re talking about.

This is the activity of God. Total. Complete. Infinite. Beyond our comprehension. And the small portion of that totality in which we consciously exist, our little reality here, is determined by our constant stream of choices. All possible outcomes await us. It is through our choice of thought and action that we discover the future that awaits each of us.

So now we return to our quandary of external/internal action. In 1965, I saw the motion picture, “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” at the Midland Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. I was there with dozens of other Y.O.U.ers, members of the Kansas City and Unity Village Youth of Unity groups. Part way into the movie I knew that I would have to come back to see it again by myself so that I could express the emotions that parts of the movie pulled from me. I remember the resurrection scene. What incredible, overwhelming joy and expanded awareness. Then there was the scene at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry when he was standing in the shadows of a Jerusalem street looking out upon the destitution of the people. Such incredible compassion.

But there was one scene that made me want to shout, “Yes!” And that was when he drove the moneychangers from the temple. Enough of this blasphemy. The time for action is at hand. This isn’t just a Jesus of pretty words, but one who stand up for what he believes, who backs up those words with actions.

“And Jesus entered into the temple of God, and drove out all who were buying and selling in the temple, and he overturned the trays of the moneychangers and the stands of those who sold doves. And he said to them, ‘It is written, “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a bandits’ cave.”’” -- Matthew 21:12-13.

I mean, fine, it’s okay to turn the other cheek, but there are also times that it’s okay to overturn the tables of those who prostitute the truth. I mean, isn’t this a difficulty we all face in our lives. Someone does something that affects us in an uncomfortable or a negative way and we have to decide how to respond. Do we respond with non-resistance or with defensive action or with offensive action?

I guess I have always liked the movie scene of Jesus’ cleansing the temple because it was such a human thing to do. And that’s important, to remember that Jesus was human, that it was okay for him to be human. That fortifies his charge that “the things that I do, you shall do also, and greater things than these shall you do.” --John 14:12 Much of the organized church has tried to portray a Jesus who was special, separate and apart, the “only begotten” Son of God. The truth is, that Jesus was another person, like any of us, who went that extra step to recognizing his own ultimate divinity, declaring the divinity in us all, and then becoming an example by rising in consciousness to allow that divinity to express through him. The Christ, the true self, the field of all possibilities.

So, what is the correct form for action? How can we be the kind of channels for God’s activity that we ought to be? Which is the right path, the path of forceful action or the path of nonresistant action or the path of apathetic non-action? The answer to that question is infinite. Everyone must choose his or her own path. All paths are right because all paths exist and all existence is of God. So, if we meditate our way through a situation, or if we kick tail, or if we do both, or if we do none of the above, it is all the activity of God. It is all merely choices that determine our particular path. But no one path is better than another. The only better path is the path that we choose.

That may be hard for some of us to accept, that it is all the activity of God. Even the bad, the evil, the distasteful, the Hitler. To give a broader perspective on that point, I’d like to close by sharing a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, entitled “The Star.” This is from Dr. Clarke’s collection of short stories entitled, “The Nine Billion Names Of God,” and is the 25th and final story in that volume. This story was written fifty years ago in October 1954 in London. “The Star.”

“It is three thousand light-years to the Vatican. Once, I believed that space could have no power over faith, just as I believed that the heavens declared the glory of God’s handiwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. I stare at a crucifix that hangs on the cabin wall above the Mark VI Computer, and for the first time in my life I wonder if it is no more than an empty symbol.

“I have told no one yet, but the truth cannot be concealed. The facts are there for all to read, recorded on the countless miles of magnetic tape and the thousands of photographs we are carrying back to earth. Other scientists can interpret them as easily as I can, and I am not one who would condone that tampering with the truth which often gave my order a bad name in the olden days.

“The crew were already sufficiently depressed: I wonder how they will take this ultimate irony. Few of them have any religious faith, yet they will not relish using this final weapon in their campaign against me---that private, good-natured, but fundamentally serious war which lasted all the way from Earth. It amused them to have a Jesuit as chief astrophysicist: Dr. Chandler, for instance, could never get over it. (Why are medical men such notorious atheists?) Sometimes he would meet me on the observation deck, where the lights are always low so that the stars shine with undiminished glory. He would come up to me in the gloom and stand staring out of the great oval port, while the heavens crawled slowly around us as the ship turned end over end with the residual spin we had never bothered to correct.

“‘Well, Father,’ he would say at last, ‘it goes on forever and forever, and perhaps Something made it. But how you can believe that Something has a special interest in us and our miserable little world---that just beats me.’ Then the argument would start, while the stars and nebulae would swing around us in silent, endless arcs beyond the flawlessly clear plastic of the observation port.

“It was, I think, the apparent incongruity of my position that caused most amusement to the crew. In vain I would point to my three papers in the Astrophysical Journal, my five in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. I would remind them that my order has long been famous for its scientific works. We may be few now, but ever since the eighteenth century we have made contributions to astronomy and geophysics out of all proportion to our numbers. Will my report on the Phoenix Nebula end our thousand years of history? It will end, I fear, much more than that.

“I do not know who gave the nebula its name, which seems to me a very bad one. If it contains a prophecy, it is one that cannot be verified for several billion years. Even the word “nebula” is misleading; this is a far smaller object than those stupendous clouds of mist---the stuff of unborn stars---that are scattered throughout the length of the Milky Way. On the cosmic scale, indeed, the Phoenix Nebula is a tiny thing---a tenuous shell of gas surrounding a single star.

“Or what is left of a star…

“The Rubens engraving of Loyola seems to mock me as it hangs there above the spectrophotometer tracings. What would you, Father, have made of this knowledge that has come into my keeping, so far from the little world that was all the Universe you knew? Would your faith have risen to the challenge, as mine has failed to do?

“You gaze into the distance, Father, but I have traveled a distance beyond any that you could have imagined when you founded our order a thousand years ago. No other survey ship has been so far from Earth: we are at the very frontiers of the explored Universe. We set out to reach the Phoenix Nebula, we succeeded, and we are homeward bound with our burden of knowledge. I wish I could lift that burden from my shoulders, but I call to you in vain across the centuries and the light-years that lie between us.

“On the book you are holding the words are plain to read. AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM, the message runs, but it is a message I can no longer believe. Would you still believe it, if you could see what we have found?

“We knew, of course, what the Phoenix Nebula was. Every year, in our Galaxy alone, more than a hundred stars explode, blazing for a few hours or days with thousands of times their normal brilliance before they sink back into death and obscurity. Such are the ordinary novae---the commonplace disasters of the Universe. I have recorded the spectrograms and light curves of dozens since I started working at the Lunar Observatory.

“But three or four times in every thousand years occurs something beside which even a nova pales into total insignificance.

“When a star becomes a supernova, it may for a little while outshine all the massed suns of the Galaxy. The Chinese astronomers watched this happen in A.D. 1054, not knowing what it was they saw. Five centuries later, in 1572, a supernova blazed in Cassiopeia so brilliantly that it was visible in the daylight sky. There have been three more in the thousand years that have passed since then.

“Our mission was to visit the remnants of such a catastrophe, to reconstruct the events that led up to it, and, if possible, to learn its cause. We came slowly in through the concentric shells of gas that had been blasted out six thousand years before, yet were expanding still. They were immensely hot, radiating even now with a fierce violet light, but were far too tenuous to do us any damage. When the star had exploded, its outer layers had been driven upward with such speed that they had escaped completely from its gravitational field. Now they formed a hollow shell large enough to engulf a thousand solar systems, and at its center burned the tiny, fantastic object which the star had now become---a White Dwarf, smaller than the Earth, yet weighing a million times as much.

“The glowing gas shells were all around us, banishing the normal night of interstellar space. We were flying into the center of the cosmic bomb that had detonated millennia ago and whose incandescent fragments were still hurtling apart. The immense scale of the explosion, and the fact that the debris already covered a volume of space many billions of miles across, robbed the scene of any visible movement. It would take decades before the unaided eye could detect any motion in these tortured wisps and eddies of gas, yet the sense of turbulent expansion was overwhelming.

“We had checked our primary drive hours before, and were drifting slowly toward the fierce little star ahead. Once it had been a sun like our own, but it had squandered in a few hours the energy that should have kept it shining for a million years. Now it was a shrunken miser, hoarding its resources as if trying to make amends for its prodigal youth.

“No one seriously expected to find planets. If there had been any before the explosion, they would have been boiled into puffs of vapor, and their substance lost in the greater wreckage of the star itself. But we made the automatic search, as we always do when approaching an unknown sun, and presently we found a single small world circling the star at an immense distance. It must have been the Pluto of this vanished Solar System, orbiting on the frontiers of the night. Too far from the central sun ever to have known life, its remoteness had saved it from the fate of all its lost companions.

“The passing fires had seared its rocks and burned away the mantle of frozen gas that must have covered it in the days before the disaster. We landed, and we found the Vault.

“Its builders had made sure that we should. The monolithic marker that stood above the entrance was now a fused stump, but even the first long-range photographs told us that here was the work of intelligence. A little later we detected the continent-wide pattern of radioactivity that had been buried in the rock. Even if the pylon above the Vault had been destroyed, this would have remained, an immovable and all but eternal beacon calling to the stars. Our ship fell toward this gigantic bull’s-eye like an arrow into its target.

“The pylon must have been a mile high when it was built, but now it looked like a candle that had melted down into a puddle of wax. It took us a week to drill through the fused rock, since we did not have the proper tools for a task like this. We were astronomers, not archaeologists, but we could improvise. Our original purpose was forgotten: this lonely monument, reared with such labor at the greatest possible distance from the doomed sun, could have only one meaning. A civilization that knew it was about to die had made its last bid for immortality.

“It will take us generations to examine all the treasures that were placed in the Vault. They had plenty of time to prepare, for their sun must have given its first warnings many years before its final detonation. Everything that they wished to preserve, all the fruits of their genius, they brought here to this distant world in the days before the end, hoping that some other race would find it and that they would not be utterly forgotten. Would we have done as well, or would we have been too lost in our own misery to give thought to a future we could never see or share?

“If only they had had a little more time! They could travel freely enough between the planets of their own sun, but they had not yet learned to cross the interstellar gulfs, and the nearest Solar System was a hundred light-years away. Yet even had they possessed the secret of the Transfinite Drive, no more than a few millions could have been saved. Perhaps it was better thus.

“Even if they had not been so disturbingly human as their sculpture shows, we could not have helped admiring them and grieving for they fate. They left thousands of visual records and the machines for projecting them, together with elaborate pictorial instructions from which it will not be difficult to learn their written language. We have examined many of these records, and brought to life for the first time in six thousand years the warmth and beauty of a civilization that in many ways must have been superior to our own. Perhaps they only showed us the best, and one can hardly blame them. But their worlds were very lovely, and their cities were built with a grace that matches anything of man’s. We have watched them at work and play, and listened to their musical speech sounding across the centuries. One scene is still before my eyes---a group of children on a beach of strange blue sand, playing in the waves as children play on Earth. Curious whip-like trees line the shore, and some very large animal is wading in the shallows yet attracting no attention at all.

“And sinking into the sea, still warm and friendly and life-giving, is the sun that will soon turn traitor and obliterate all this innocent happiness.

“Perhaps if we had not been so far from home and so vulnerable to loneliness, we should not have been so deeply moved. Many of us had seen the ruins of ancient civilizations on other worlds, but they had never affected us so profoundly. This tragedy was unique. It is one thing for a race to fail and die, as nations and cultures have done on Earth. But to be destroyed so completely in the full flower of its achievement, leaving no survivors---how could that be reconciled with the mercy of God?

“My colleagues have asked me that, and I have given what answers I can. Perhaps you could have done better, Father Loyola, but I have found nothing in the Exercitia Spiritualia that helps me here. They were not an evil people: I do not know what gods they worshiped, if indeed they worshiped any. But I have looked back at them across the centuries, and have watched while the loveliness they used their last strength to preserve was brought forth again into the light of their shrunken sun. They could have taught us much: why were they destroyed?

“I know the answers that my colleagues will give when they get back to Earth. They will say that the Universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a hundred suns explode every year in our Galaxy, at this very moment some race is dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for there is no God.

“Yet, of course, what we have seen proves nothing of the sort. Anyone who argues thus is being swayed by emotion, not logic. God has no need to justify His actions to man. He who built the Universe can destroy it when He chooses. It is arrogance---it is perilously near blasphemy---for us to say what He may or may not do.

“We could not tell, before we reached the nebula, how long ago the explosion took place. Now, from the astronomical evidence and the record in the rocks of that one surviving planet, I have been able to date it very exactly. I know in what year the light of this colossal conflagration reached our Earth. I know how brilliantly the supernova whose corpse now dwindles behind our speeding ship once shone in terrestrial skies. I know how it must have blazed low in the east before sunrise, like a beacon in that oriental dawn.

“There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?”

The activity of God, though often beyond our comprehension in its meaning, is a given that should inspire us always to greater expression. It is what we do in expressing the activity of God during our brief appearance upon this level of experience that adds our names to the posterity of God in expression. May you renew your commitment to a greater expression of your being through the activity of God and rejoice in the beauty that it bring to your life.

- posted by Charles DeTurk @ 12:00 AM

 
"CHURCH OF SIN, BLAME, AND SHAME"

To begin today I’d like to share with you the Lord’s Prayer as spoken in Jesus’ tongue of ancient Aramaic.

Awoon dwashmaya
Nith kadashe schmakh
Teh they mulkootha
Neh way say wee a nakh
Aikana dwashmaya op bar ah
How-lan lahma
Dsoon kanan yow-mana
Wash woklan hau bain
Aikana dap h’nan shwakan l hiya wayne
Wla ta'lan l'neeseeyona ella pasan min beesha
Mitol delahe mulkootha
Oo hailah otesh boktha
La alim almein amen

In the early years of Jesus’ ministry, following his death, his teachings were passed on by word of mouth from those who were his followers to those who wanted to hear more about him or who had never even known of his existence. Eventually, the work of the followers of Jesus evolved into the structural institution that we generally refer to as the Christian religion. It is largely through the work of the “churches” of this religious institution that the basic teachings of Jesus have been passed on, generation to generation.

However, there is another church, a new church, a new religious movement that is alive and well and thriving in this new century and it is having an enormous impact upon each of us. It has millions of followers today. It's presence is felt all over the world. And yet you won't find any statistics about this new religion anywhere that they talk about the subject. Which brings to mind an interesting website that gives very thorough backgrounds about almost every religion that you can imagine, and then some. It is located at the Religious Movement Page. http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/welcome/welcome.htm

This is a University of Virginia site and you'll find over 1,000 pages of information on the world's religions. I'm particularly pleased with this site because it has a policy against labeling any belief system as a cult. If you visit this site and spend some time looking around, I think you'll realize how powerful the Internet is at making information available to anybody anywhere. But, you won't find the new religion that I am talking about today listed at the UVA site.

The roots of this new religion are generally Judeo-Christian and they lean towards an orthodox bent. I say this because a good deal of their teaching revolves around sin, blame, shame, and punishment. The religion has garnered a lot of influence with political leaders at all levels of government, all the way up to the top posts, not only in the United States, but also in many other parts of the world. They also wield a good bit of influence with corporate leaders. A major part of their goal appears to be to infiltrate information systems significantly enough that they will be able to recruit enough new followers to give them a power and influence that rivals that of any other institution in the world.

The sin-blame-shame-punishment game has long been a part of many of the world's religions. Perhaps that is due to the fact that it is a very effective tool for controlling others, and it probably originally was developed by the ego to protect itself by focusing attention for responsibility outside of itself.

I'm not certain that the ego itself would equate this process with a supreme being. Magic, perhaps, would be better suited to its perspective. But an organized association with a supreme being probably develops as a society evolves out of the interaction of people with one another and the ego game then is incorporated as a part of the social fabric. It is at that point that the magic becomes more identifiable in anthropomorphic terms. We endeavor to create concepts and images for our mutual shared knowledge of that which we know so little about.

If you haven't already guessed by now, this new religion of which I speak is commonly referred to by the general term, "media." It has long been my observation that the media, and particularly the news aspect of that institution, has developed its own particular set of moral beliefs, principles, and perspectives that increasingly influence the way in which information is presented to the rest of the public. Because we are so inundated with an overwhelming amount of information, much of it couched in a particular mindset, we ultimately, many of us, become unwitting followers of the agenda of those packaging the information.

What I find fascinating is that many of those who are so quick to condemn the "media" for its "slanted presentations," fail to see that often that very same media is promoting the same moralistic view, often even in the same terminology, as those who are condemning it. It's just that it's not always pointed or slanted in their direction of choice. Anyway, I wanted to talk about this today because I believe that the "media church" is having effects which are not always to our benefit, and unless you were already aware of the religious and moralistic overtones that have created the overall presentation of this electronic houseguest, you may wish to take note of what is happening.

Throughout my life I have often had people come up to me and say, “Oh, you're so lucky to have grown up in Unity. I only wish that I could have been as fortunate.” Although I know and appreciate what they are saying to me, the fact of the matter is that growing up with any particular belief system is not a panacea. It is no guarantee about what your life is going to be like. This used to be very clear to me when I looked at my fellow “PK's.” A “PK,” if you didn't already know it, is a “Preacher's Kid.” And they can be notoriously weird. I'm certain that there are people who think of myself in exactly that terminology. Very weird. I know, because I have actually been told that to my face. It's taken my whole life to become openly proud of my “weirdness,” recognizing it as my own special uniqueness.

Anyway, just because one grows up within a family with a particular set of beliefs doesn't necessarily mean that those beliefs are going to become one's own. That's because family is not all there is to life. There's also school and friends and church and the neighbors and society in general. And electronically, the options just continue to expand the informational inputs of influence. First there was radio and telephones, then television and expanded travel horizons, then records and tapes, and CD's, and videotapes, and DVD's, and cable, and satellites, and the Internet, and wireless communications. And every one of these means of communication adds its own particular spin to the type of information that makes up our world of reality.

So even though I might have grown up in Unity, I also grew up in a society where most folks didn't have a clue what religious beliefs my family held to be sacred. Yet the beliefs of others had a subtle impact upon my life, both directly and indirectly. I became overly aware of this fact in my early 20's when, in a moment of great distress, I fell to my knees, placed my hands together in a prayerful pose, looked up to the sky and begged God to help me. Then I looked at what I was doing and I was shocked. I actually said, aloud, “What am I doing?” Even more important, however, was, “why am I doing this?” I'm sure that orthodox believers would claim that God made me do it because it was the “correct thing to do.” But I quickly realized that I was doing it because this is the response to despair to which I had been exposed in the greater physical world in which I lived. It was a pure case of monkey see, monkey do. And it has taken years for me to disconnect from the automatic responses that had been conditioned into me by the orthodox world in which we live.

We know today, even if it can't be statistically proven, that children exposed to violent environments and experiences will be more prone to violence throughout their lives. Yet we also know that sublimating natural tendencies of reaction within ourselves that might express in violent ways will only create a future potential for explosive release of those tendencies. One of the reasons that life is sometimes so difficult is that it is so unpredictable. Of course, one of the reasons that life is so exciting and so fulfilling is because it is so unpredictable. But we're living in a time now when the volume of influential input has increased exponentially. And I perceive a very subtle, potentially negative, influence in what I have termed here as the “church of the media.”

What concerns me first is the fact that “winner take all” competition is becoming sanctified. The problem with the necessity of having “a” winner is that “many” losers are the natural antithetical outcome. The “prime time” game shows and the “reality” shows are on the cutting edge of this conditioning scenario. The other day, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film, “The Running Man” was on television, and it didn’t look nearly so much like science fiction as it did when it was first released 14 years ago in 1987. In the effort to garner greater “market share,” the limits are being pushed out further and further. This is also obvious in sports. And, of course, the depiction of violence becomes an integral part of this scenario.

Recently on NPR I heard a “man on the street” commenting on the economy by saying “Greed is alive and well, and so long as America has a free market it will continue to grow.” The fiction from the movie, “Wall Street,” that “greed is good,” has become an acceptable given. I won’t venture into the impact this thinking has had upon our economy. I’ll leave that subject and its details to my alter ego, MajorDomo. But an economy based upon “winner take all” is destined to experience a radical upset.

These are all subjects with which many people are very emotionally involved. But they’re not my greatest concern. It is the more subtle aspects of the electronic reality that have an even deeper and longer range impact. And these have developed from roots that go deeply into orthodox religious thought.

Whenever a newsworthy event occurs, the focus of attention is very swiftly redirected to determining who is responsible, who is to blame. The full attention of the media machine then proceeds to dissect the thoughts, feelings, and actions of all those involved. Never mind “how” they feel, we want to know “what” they feel. “Share it with us. Pretend that the camera is your therapist, your preacher, your rabbi, your iman, your priest. Confess now before the electronic congregation. Admit your shame for that which was done and for that which was not done. We understand your pain. Share it with us.”

“Who is responsible for this atrocity? Aren’t you ashamed? Your punishment is to seek forgiveness from the congregation by exposing yourself for our voyeuristic pleasure. Confess. Admit that you’re not worthy and we may then forgive you. But first we must hear you admit your inferiority.”

Now, some of you may think that I’m a bit over the top here. "This dude is obviously whacked out." But watch and listen for yourself with a discerning eye and ear.

It all became very clear to me when John Kennedy, Jr. died. I’m going to name names here because what I saw was broadcast worldwide. Charles Gibson, on ABC's "Good Morning, America," was interviewing Rev. Billy Graham regarding the tragic wreck of the Kennedy plane. And Charlie asked Rev. Graham if the fact that something like this could happen didn’t, in fact, cause him to question his own beliefs. And Billy responded that it is in times like these that we must cling to our faith.

But that wasn’t good enough for Charlie. He repeatedly hammered away at Billy, apparently trying to get him to do what? Trying to get him to admit that this event had caused him to turn his back upon his beliefs? But Dr. Graham, just as repeatedly reiterated over and over the overwhelming importance of faith in times of extreme distress. It became very obvious that Dr. Graham was steadfast in his faith, despite the unrelenting Gibson onslaughts.

And I asked myself, what are they trying to get this man to do? This is Billy Graham, a man who has personally touched the lives of millions of people all over the world in ways that have brought the strength of faith into their lives when they had nothing else upon which to rely. Whether one agrees with all of the specifics of Dr. Graham’s message, the fact of the matter is that he has been one of the greatest positive influences in the world in the past century. Yet, here, the media was attempting to get him to renounce his beliefs.

Again, why? And then I saw it. The new church. The new electronic Jerusalem. Forget your faith in God. Have faith, instead, in us. It's very subtle, but it feels as though the object of the faith is being redirected. But that's not what I'm really concerned about.

What I've observed that causes my greatest concern is the techniques, the approach, used by this new Church of the Media. They've taken, not necessarily the best, but possibly the most effective processes of subtle psychological control used by the more recognized world religions. It all begins with planting seeds of feelings of inferiority. This is done through emphasizing constant competition. With the sense of personal inferiority in place, it is then easy to create a hierarchy of sins that those who are inferior can commit. The process then dictates that the sin, upon being revealed, should lead to personal feelings of shame. In the view of others, this shame is directed as blame. However, it looks like there's light on the horizon. For the next step in the process is to "put it all behind us." In reality, however, what happens here is that the "result" is placed in the perspective of the past while the "cause" continues onward into the future, affording the opportunity for the process to begin all over again with new sins.

Finally, we discover, if we step back far enough, that those who perpetuate the mechanics of this circular process gather power from the process. It's a false power, however, for it is a power over others, and that has a limited shelf life. But that shelf life can be long enough to severely afflict countless individuals. Watch for yourself: “who's done wrong; let's blame them, get them to feel shame; ask our forgiveness; put it behind us and move on; we love what we're doing; this feels great; who's next; who's done wrong.”

This type of thinking is long overdue for an overhaul. We might think of it as a very primitive process that we could call Adam/Eve thinking. In this type of thinking, the world/reality is perceived of as good and evil, thereby separating us from our true relationship with God, our creator. But 2,000 years ago a teacher came on the scene to help lift us from this Adam consciousness into a new consciousness of our oneness with “the Father.”

Rev. Larry Swartz of Unity of Tucson, Arizona, in his Easter message a few years ago explained what happened this way: "this is the Adam/Eve belief system that Jesus split, for during his ministry he taught of a truth that would set us free from this very limited and shortsighted vision of life. Yet, what today do we generally find emphasized? Isn't it a belief that man and woman are basically, and intrinsically, sinful, set to live in a world where everyone has a different set of circumstances and events that are apparently handed to them arbitrarily?" Larry emphasizes, "Jesus split this Adamic thinking, and forever left an indelible message of a different story, and certainly a different process."

The Church of Media is an extension of this Adamic thinking that Jesus exposed and replaced with a different paradigm. Unfortunately, the new paradigm has yet to take hold on a large scale. Rev. Swartz explains that the reason for this is understandable for "it is difficult to relate to something that transcends one's own experience and knowledge."

Here at Practical Truth Ministry we are dedicated to planting seeds of perception that will ultimately grow into the change in awareness that allows more people to ascend in consciousness to the place where they realize the unreality of the old good and evil paradigm and instead comprehend and embrace the new paradigm presented in the “indelible message” of Jesus.

You are a child of God. You are not a sinner. For those who would wish to argue this point, please, it is better for everyone if you just return to the endless circle of sin/blame/shame that you desire to justify and leave the discovery of new experiences, new relationships, new awareness, and a new sense of oneness with God to those who are ready to move into that perspective. Don't worry, sinners, your time will come when you're ready for it. In the meantime, we only ask that you keep the moaning down as you wallow in your self-imposed misery and please refrain from inflicting yourself upon others. Trying to force others to accept your beliefs is not only a part of the old dead end paradigm, but it is also a sign of spiritual immaturity.

Each day is a new beginning, a new challenge, a new opportunity. That requires daily, renewed effort. It is good to start anew from a place of silence. Each day opening up our awareness and our consciousness to the energy and the ideas and the information and the love that are everywhere waiting to coalesce into our experience is reliving the resurrection of our consciousness through our consciousness.

Beware the false prophets of the Church of the Media and return to the realization of the truth of the source of everything that we are as being within us as a field of all possibilities and being accessible right here and right now. It just takes faith and practice. It is a matter of choices.

Let's take just a second. A nice deep breath. As we release it just be aware of the peace that is always there for you. This moment is a new beginning for you and for me. Right now. Because we make the choice. And by taking even just this moment to adjust our focus, we have altered the course of the rest of our lives for the better. You have my blessings.


- posted by Charles DeTurk @ 12:01 AM