SPIRITUAL RESOLUTION

By Beth Outtrim

I feel that Dyer’s book for October, The Power of Intention, was a mere introduction to this book, There’s a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem, by the same author.  I hope I don’t discourage anyone by saying that this book, for me at least, was a much more difficult read.  Not that Dr. Dyer is confusing – quite the contrary.  He is very clear with a lot of information to consider.  Nor is it a large book but that’s not really the way to measure content.  It is much like January’s book, The Places That Scare You (which took me until September to finish) – you read for a bit and then it’s time to put it down, perhaps do you own investigation into a concept that Dr. Dyer (or Pema Chöndrön) has proposed and see if it “fits” in your life.  That is not to say that you will agree or disagree in all or in part of the selection Dr. Dyer presents.  It also makes a great book to hang onto over the holidays with family coming and going – you can read a bit when you need a break and then let it percolate for an hour, a day, a week. Maybe we should discuss this one in March!   Dr. Dyer not only explains that the problems we face are our own reflection, he also offers ways to deal with this constructively.  One of which, I had practiced years ago; his CD of “Meditations for Manifestation”- the Japa Meditation.  He mentions the speaking to one’s body to heal very much in the same manner as Myrtle and Charles Fillmore.  He presents the theories and easy diagnostic methodology to determine which things in life are beneficial to you and those that are not espoused by David R. Hawkins, MD.  Dr. Hawkins has researched and documented evidence that the body knows and responds to any stimuli within nanoseconds.  Just as quickly it then signals its response which can be tested with kinesiology.  Dr. Dyer puts these and many other methods down in black and white for you to judge for you.   “Mindfulness is a form of mental activity that trains the mind to become aware of awareness itself and to pay attention to one’s own intention,” is how Bernie Siegel, MD defines the practice that Dr. Dyer recommends we use to avoid “problems” and/or to alleviate the suffering we cause ourselves when we allow problems to surface in our lives.  It is Dr. Dyer’s treatise that problems manifest when we allow ourselves the illusion of separation from Source and our energies become slower and lower in vibrational frequencies.   To allow whatever method we choose to work, to “do its magic” for us, we must keep ourselves mindful.  For when we allow ourselves to slip into lower energy fields we are opening ourselves up to potential problems.  Whether battling a health or a legal issue, this is no time to lose one’s focus by allowing one to slide into the “lower energies”, as Dr. Dyer calls it or the “dark side of the force” according to Luke Skywalker.   When we meditate we must be aware of when our minds wander from the nothingness into thinking and gently correct it, bringing it back to one’s focus.  Dr. Dyer proposes that we be mindful at all times.  To be aware of when we slide into judgments and gently correct, into thoughts of limitations and lovingly correct, into thoughts of lack to redirect to thoughts of abundance, into the future to worry, bring it back to the knowing that God is with us, or into the past in regret, guilt, or shame - correct to knowing we are loved, just as we are.  These are low-energy thoughts are killers, spiritually, and will quite literally kill our bodies if not attended to and redirected.     Happy reading and Happy Holidays!

GRATITUDE

By Beth Outtrim

 

I am grateful for the introduction to Louise Hay for all the marvelous new (to me) authors she introduced via this month’s book, Gratitude: A Way of Life.  This anthology of different authors and their viewpoints on gratitude gave me the exposure to many authors that I had not read.  It was like having assorted chocolate creams; each one a little different and all with the same sweet message.

 

Gratitude is the basis to making everything else work.  The first rule to getting what you want is to be grateful for what you already have.  The trick to that – we must be grateful for all of it; the flu bugs and the flowers, the tears and the laughter, the humility and the triumph.  Every bit of it is for us.  Being grateful for the lessons in our lives is a bit more difficult to envision and to practice than being grateful for the gifts, the blessings. 

 

First, that’s a fine distinction.  When a situation that appears as an obstacle first comes into our lives, it may seem to us to be a lesson that we have to “get through”.  Only later in retrospect, do we see that as a blessing.  These authors are suggesting that everything is something for which to be grateful from the very start. 

 

Even if all we are grateful for is the awareness that what we have been focusing on is contrary to our stated goals.  This in itself can be a wonderful gift.  To quote from Louise Hay's prayer of gratitude, “I am grateful for all my past experience, for I know that they were part of my soul’s growth."

 

Secondly, we grow through our challenges and our acceptance of and gratitude for those challenges.  As Dr. Bernie Siegel says, “We all have our problems.  The key is to learn how to live with them and even how to use them.”  Some of the most difficult people I’ve worked with are the people that helped me to raise and then live up to my own standards of excellence.  In The Power of Intention that we read last month the section entitled Making Your Intentions Your Reality, Wayne Dyer has Step 10: As always, remain in a state of eternal gratitude.  "Even be grateful for those whose presence may have caused you pain and suffering.”

 

Lastly, these authors remind us to be grateful for all of the things that we tend to take for granted.  The abilities to hear, see, touch, smell, taste, breathe, laugh, love, cry – all the everyday things that we never think about – they’re all gifts given worthy of gratitude.

The Power of Intention

The Power of Intention By Beth Outtrim

The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way by Wayne Dyer is a great follow on to last month’s book, Nonviolent Communication; A Language of Life, by Marshall B. Rosenberg.  Dr. Rosenberg teaches us how to speak gently and non-violently to ourselves and others.  Dr. Dyer takes us further into intention; what is our intention in our every thought, word and deed and how can we direct those to achieve what we want to have in our life?   I, like so many others apparently, since Dr. Dyer addresses it specifically, have tried affirmations for years as though it was an exercise of the will.  As Dr. Dyer writes, “Willing yourself to be happy, successful, wealthy, number one, famous, the top salesperson, or the richest person in your community are ideas born of the ego and its obsessive self-absorption…You may achieve the physical goal of your individual intention.  However, your imagination, that inner place where you do all of your living, won’t allow you to feel peaceful.”  He goes on to say that, “I don’t complete a book because I have a strong will to do so.  That would mean that I believe that it’s me, the body named Wayne Dyer, that’s doing all of this, whereas my imagination has no physical boundaries…my imagination is my very own ‘chip off the old block’ of intention.”   Esther and Jerry Hicks talk about the same thing in The Vortex.  They offer a twelve-step solution; a clock-wise manner of getting yourself to a place of full belief in the affirmation of your choice.  You answer a series of questions with affirmations starting from the smallest that you can fully believe, “I believe that my boss really wants the best for his company”, for example, and then step-by-step to a full blown affirmation that has the best intention for all parties.  Working with this has been very beneficial to me in several different venues – our new domicile is a result of performing one of these exercises.      It is also a great lead-in to the upcoming visioning session at our Unity Center home.  It will help us to prepare our words of intent for what we would like to see our church become.   We intend having so many people in our sanctuary on Sundays that we need to buy more chairs.  We intend to have our Children’s Church staffed with Unity-trained teachers in a well-developed program to cater to more age groups.  We intend to have a full-time Unity minister to support the needs of our Unity Community.  Phrasing our intentions in this manner beckons the universe to assist us achieve our intentions whatever those might be.

COMPASSIONATE COMMUNICATION

By Beth Outtrim

 

This month’s book, Nonviolent Communication; A Language of Life, by Marshall B. Rosenberg reminds of one of the books we read last year, The Places That Scare You, by Pema Chöndrön.  Not from the content so much as from the perspective that there is so much in the book to work with, to grow from, that to try and encapsulate or distill it into a paragraph or a twenty-minute talk is nearly impossible. 

 

I went to the website, www.cnvc.org, for help.  Under the section for trainings I came across the following quote about becoming a Certified Nonviolent Communicator that helped me sum up what I wanted to say:

 

“CNVC brings a unique perspective to trainers who want to become CNVC Certified Trainers… The Certification Team members who support trainer candidates on their journey toward certification are called "assessors." They create a partnership with a candidate -- what we call a “power with” process, rather than domination or “power over.” This paradigm shift allows assessors to carry out their roles in a spirit of shared respect and shared power…”

 

Dr. Rosenberg’s point is so well represented in that paragraph.  It immediately changed this whole piece.  He writes about all kinds of situations where we do violence to others and ourselves, not in ways we normally consider as violence but by shutting them down, coming across to them like we’re better than they are – power over. 

 

Here’s a simple example:  A business associate was explaining what was going on in his life.  Instead of empathizing, per Dr. Rosenberg’s recommendation, I immediately told him what I thought he should do!  The result is not too surprising once you’ve read Nonviolent Communication.  The business associate quickly brought the conversation to a close and I left feeling uneasy, dissatisfied with my actions.

 

This is a great example from two different standpoints; not only did I show by business associate my “power over” him by coming off as the “know-it-all” and telling him what he should do, I then turned around and did the same thing to myself.  “Boy, you really screwed that one up.  You should have asked him more questions.  What makes you think you’re so smart?” 

 

Dr. Rosenberg explains that our language evolved from people who were educated which, in past times, were the people who ruled.  Therefore, our language is framed around “should”, “have to”, ‘must”, etc. - not only to others but to ourselves.  It hurts others, it hurts us, and it perpetuates violence.  The challenge is not solely to change what we do and what we say but to change how we think and what we tell ourselves.

FORGIVENESS

The premise of The Little Soul and the Sun, by Neale Donald Walsch is that, prior to entering into this lifetime, we negotiated and agreed with other angels, or souls, that we would participate in each other’s lives.  We agreed to provide the conditions that are necessary for you to respond in the God-like attribute you have chosen to bring into the world.  In return, you will provide that same service to us.  In that manner, we ensure that we have the opportunity to display God’s love, forgiveness, kindness, etc. to others during our lifetimes.  Using film terminology, we have agreed to play “the heavy” for someone else at one point, just as they have agreed to do that for us or someone else has.

 

We have chosen, as angels, each of us, to come into this life to help each other heal.  We would not be able to provide that service for each other if we all behaved as angels.  However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we display the trait that we came here to provide either. 

 

Driving in the Los Angeles area serves us well.  Are we able to remember when we’re cut off in traffic, that the angel in the other vehicle is giving us an opportunity?  We are far more likely to remark, “He did that on purpose!  She deliberately cut in from of me and then slowed down!”, than we are to remember that these “angels” are here to fulfill their end of the contract and to allow us to learn to forgive.

 

Or that homeless person that we must walk past on our way to work each morning – he smells so bad and we would prefer that he sit on someone else’s street or, better yet, take a bath, get a job, or something - other than remind us of his presence.  Do we remember that he agreed to help us learn to love unconditionally, not just our family members which, God knows, is hard enough some days, but each and every other living being?

 

In the book God is quoted as saying, “I have sent you nothing but angels.”  Unfortunately the reality is that those angels don’t look like angels to us.  They don’t even look or act like we believe that humans should, much less angels!  It would be so much easier to love them all if they talked like us, looked like us, had the same values, the same sense of responsibility. 

 

Conversely, to reneg, or to interfere by "saving" someone from their lessons, you deny them their unique place in God's plan for the evolution of manking.  As a parent, it is tempting to try and "save" your children fromhurt and pain. When our children hurt, we hurt--we attempt to make the hurt go away by distracting them from it or by providing them with something fun to :make up for it".  The truth is, if we succeed, we break the contract that they have made with that other angel thereby denying them the chance to fulfill the contract they made, to potentially learn the lesson to which they agreed, and to attain grace.

 

 

 Beth Outtrim

EMBRACING PEACE

When we hear “Embracing Conflict, Creating Peace”, the subtitle of the Book-of-the-Month for July we tend to think of external conflict, external forces, and peace amongst peoples, amongst countries.  Perhaps that’s just our natural instinct – to think that the things that we deal with to grow and to evolve are outside of ourselves – sometimes the impetus is external.  Most times though the stimulus is external, the impetus, the desire, is internal.

I spent part of the weekend in the company of a couple with a small child.  At one point, the conversation between the two parents went something like this, “Do you want to change her or should I?”  It occurred to me that that is how we view our life most of the time – someone or something outside of ourselves is creating the change for us.  And, like children, we either allow this change to happen peacefully or we fight it, wiggling and resisting with all of our futile strength to make it stop.  Also like children, if we embrace the change, allow it to occur without resistance, we are more comfortable during the change, the change is over more quickly, and we are once again feeling warm and loved.

As the author of The I of the Storm; Embracing Conflict, Creating Peace, Gary Simmons, says, “It is important to remember, however, that conflict does not come to us, it comes from us.  It arises from within as an effect of two competing intentions: a compelling desire to feel safe, okay, and valued, and the drive to fulfill the soul’s purpose.”   It is our very soul that cries out for change – taking us away from our comfort zone to grow and evolve into the purpose we have come here to fulfill. 

Yet, even knowing this, it is easy to get distracted and resist when the conflict arrives!  We create peace in the world around us by having peace in ourselves.  We create peace in ourselves by keeping our focus on our intention; to fulfill our soul’s purpose.  We do this by embracing the conflict within us and allowing the unease to pass through without any resistance. 

Beth Outtrim

When It's Time For A Change

A MESSAGE FROM REV. NICOLE

"When you're finished changing, you're finished." ~Benjamin Franklin

Most people have been raised to expect stability and certainty in life. It’s easy to believe that there will come time when everything gets good and stays that way. However, if we truly make ourselves receptive to the Divine plan for our lives, rather than steamrolling ahead with ego-based plans, we find that the path to our destiny is filled with necessary changes. Though we might try to resist, we ultimately come to embrace change as the ultimate catalyst for our spiritual growth and personal transformation. At this time, I have an opportunity to make a change that would allow me to move toward the fulfillment of my calling to establish a learning center for exceptional children with learning differences. As many of you know, I have spent the last two years building a similar program at a charter school in the Pasadena Unified School District. God has blessed it with a strong reputation that has quickly expanded enrollment. For more than a year, I searched for a location to house an independent learning center where I could also develop spiritual support programs for parents. Last month, I was offered an opportunity to house my vision at The Church of Truth in Pasadena, where I received my ministerial ordination. While I am extremely excited about the possibilities, I have had to face the realization that as a wife, mother of three young children, a minister and an educator, it is not humanly possible to give the best of myself in all of these roles. In an attempt to consolidate my professional and personal commitments, I recently made a difficult decision to resign from my role as Spiritual Leader at the Unity Burbank Center for Spiritual Awareness. The past three years at Unity Burbank have been an absolute blessing. I have enjoyed being a part of the stabilization and evolution of our ministry. You have been so supportive of my growth as a minister; for this I will be forever grateful. Because of you, I now embrace my life calling as a minister and spiritual teacher and look forward to serving the spiritual needs of the children and families that God has trusted to my care. Although my resignation ushers in a season of change for Unity Burbank, I feel certain that Spirit has a plan for this ministry that will take it even further than any of us can presently imagine.  As I depart from the center to build my learning program, please know that I have full confidence in the ability of our board of directors to identify a new spiritual leader for the church. Our team of speakers (Rev. Jenenne Macklin, David Brown and Jimmy Burns) remains committed to leading worship services each week. I trust that God will continue to deliver a blessed and inspired word through each of them. Since my new program, Innerlight Children’s Collaborative, will open for business in August, my last Sunday at Unity Burbank will be July 3, 2011. Please plan to worship with us that day. A farewell luncheon will be held in the fellowship hall immediately after service. I plan to personally address each one of our members and visitors that day to let you know the ways in which you have touched my life. Thank you for your support and vote of confidence over the past three years. I pray and affirm that God will continue to bless and expand this ministry in the coming years. Rev. Nicole

A Message From Rev. Nicole

A MESSAGE FROM REV. NICOLE

"The Ark of Peace is entered two by two." --A Course in Miracles

In the month of May we will explore how our relationships  with others offer us the greatest opportunity to have a direct  experience of God and enter the kingdom of heaven. In May's book of the month, The Vortex by Esther and Jerry Hicks,  we are invited to view our  relationships not as obstacles to experiencing peace or joy, but to  instead see our relationships as the playing field of God's love.   I am sure many of us have experienced  moments in our spiritual life when we want to sell everything we own  and go to a solitary place to meditate and find peace. While it's  always easy to have peace while we are alone and turning within, the true mark of spiritual development  is not shown to us until we enter into relationship and are able to demonstrate that peace  in  the midst of an argument or in dealing day to day with others. We can  say we know peace, compassion, forgiveness - all of the virtues that  Christ called us to demonstrate-but we don't really own them until we can consistently  demonstrate these virtues in relationship.   What better time than during the month of May to demonstrate our  forgiveness, compassion, kindness  and love than with our mothers on  Mother’s Day. Our mothers offered us our first experience of human  relationship through their unconditional love. Their patience and  compassion reflected for us the love of God and set the foundation for  future relationships in our lives. Some people might say, "Well, my relationship with my mother was not a positive one. That's why I  am unable to have a good relationship with anyone else!"  Another way  to experience that is to understand that a challenging relationship  with our mother offers a soul growth experience.   In The Vortex, the idea is that when we look at a person that we are  in relationship with and focus on seeing the best in them, the more of  the best of them we'll see. Likewise, the more attention we put on  what is annoying or upsets us about the person, the more we will draw  that out in them. The goal is to stay aware of the presence of God in the other - the more we can see God even in the hurt and the upset, the more we can call out God in that person.   In our relationships with our Mothers, we sometimes project our negative experiences on her character. We insist that, "She did this wrong!" or, "She didn't love me enough! or “She didn't let me follow my dreams!" As long as we hold this perspective, we can never get to the place with our mother where we see what  God sees about her. We often hold a one dimensional view of our mothers.  But when we open ourselves up to seeing as God sees, we allow room to  have experiences with our mothers that we never thought possible. We  come to know whole aspects of our mothers that we never knew existed.   Please join us this month as we enter "The Vortex" of relationships. The challenge for the month is to see the one we are in relationship with as God sees them - perfect, whole and complete - and to experience the kingdom of heaven through our interactions with them. This month, let us hold fast to the idea that we don't enter heaven alone, we go two by two.     Rev. Nicole

A Message from Rev. Nicole (as shared in our March newsletter)

“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”                                                 - Kahlil Gibran

           

There are rare moments in life when the spiritual fog suddenly clears, and the vision you have struggled to see for so long comes into clear focus. I was blessed to experience such clarity of vision and focus when I first read our March book of the month, Go-Givers Sell More.

Like me, many members of our congregation affirm God’s promise for prosperity in their personal business affairs. As a body, we also hold a vision of financial abundance for our spiritual center. We stop many times during our spiritual walk to wonder where our manifestation of abundance may be hiding, and how it cleverly manages to be so evasive. It is during these moments that we benefit from being reminded that God has established an orderly universe that is constantly conspiring to deliver our highest good. When it appears that our good cannot be found, it is then that we must look to realign ourselves with God’s unchanging universal laws.

 Our book of the month uses a secular approach to reiterate the well-known universal law of giving and receiving. It gently reminds us that our income and our potential in business and sales is a direct reflection of the level of spiritual impact we are making in the world. It challenges us to shift our immediate attention away from the money we wish to attract, by focusing on the number of people whose lives we can positively impact through the giving of our spiritual gifts.  Each one of us has a unique area in which we can add value to the lives of others. By giving freely of ourselves, adding value and increasing our positive impact on others, we activate the spiritual laws that govern our measure of abundance. Understanding and embracing this truth frees us from the doom and gloom financial statistics of the day and ushers us into a spiritual economy that operates in a stream of constant flow.

It is rare that I implore the congregation as a whole to read a book selection. However, I truly feel that taking the teachings of this book into meditation and prayer may offer you the same clarity of vision that I received from reading it. Spirit has shown me a new way to approach the establishment of my learning center, and I pray that you will be equally inspired in your area of business.

Please join us each Sunday this month as our four speakers share inspired teachings on the spiritual law of giving and receiving. We look forward to bearing witness to your spiritual awakening!

February Message from Rev. Nicole

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart”

                                                                                          -Psalm 3:4

During the February season of love, our spiritual family here at the Unity Burbank Center for Spiritual Awareness has taken up a month long study of the Law of Attraction. For many followers of practical spirituality and metaphysics, the first question that comes to mind when considering the Law of Attraction is: how can I use this law to get the things or the love that I desire?  This month, however, I would like to encourage you to view these teachings with fresh eyes and begin with a new set of questions:

What is your heart’s true desire? Who influenced you to want the things you desire?

No one likes to consider the fact that the thoughts they think, or the ideals they pursue, may not originate from within their own being. As a member of a global society, you are constantly exposed to other’s ideas about what you should want, what should make you happy, and how true love should look and feel for you. If, when practicing the Law of Attraction, you set your thoughts and intentions to attract things or people into your life simply based on popular opinion, you may very well find that you are not at all satisfied by what you eventually manifest. Instead, if you take the time to meditate, connecting with the Spirit of God within, you will open yourself to manifesting at a much higher vibration. In this space, you can quiet the noise of outer persuasion and become clear about the things that truly bring you joy. Perhaps your heart truly desires a 2,000 square foot dream home instead of 5,000. Perhaps your heart’s true love is someone who shares your passion for world travel, rather than someone whose wealth and status impresses your friends. Perhaps your dream job is one that offers you the most flexible work schedule. That may be more important than a large income for you. Whatever it is you seek to bring into your life through the Law of Attraction, be sure that the desire, and all the details that surround it, have originated from within your own soul. Only then will you manifest a life you will love to wake up to each day.

We welcome to join us this month as each of our four speakers present motivating and life changing teachings on the Law of Attraction. My prayer for you is that by worshipping and practicing spiritual principles with us, you will become open to receiving all that is stored up and waiting for you in the Kingdom of God.