"You Must Be Present to Win"

"You can't make joy or well-being happen, but you can create the conditions in which those states more naturally arise."  - James Baraz from Awakening Joy We are into our second week of a 7 week Journey of Awakening in which we are focusing on ways to bring greater joy and well-being into our lives. Last week we said that intention is an effective catalyst to activate more joy in our lives - noting that expectation and being on the lookout for what we want can be generative of the hoped-for experience.  How simple, yet how effective! This week's practice is equally simple - though not as easy perhaps.  This week we are seeking to become more present, more mindful as we go through our days. It's about awareness - the practice of keeping the lens of conscious awareness open as we go through our daily experiences so that we might enlarge our capacity to "be" with life, as witness, rather than as judge. Our normal, and oh so mortal, way of dealing with life is to grasp and cling to the pleasant experiences and shun, resist or deny the unpleasant stuff.  How human of us! The problem with this modus operandi is that it by its insistence that life be a certain way we severely narrow our capacity for enjoying life. We confine the possibility of well-being to some moment in the future when our ducks of desire finally fall in line with our preferences.  Have you noticed what a moving target this ideal moment is? And even if we get the pot of gold and the rainbow on the same day, our frustration will soon return when we try to hold onto it, which of course we can't.  The pleasant situation passes. When facing difficult situations we reverse the reaction and deny, resist and try to push it away. We make stories about what the challenge means about us and the awful ramifications for our future. Of course as we are running these dire commentaries in our heads, we have closed off our capacity to simply be with the situation and allow space for life to breathe  and reveal its transformational potential.   The practice of mindfulness can relieve this suffering and open us to well being. As author James Baraz puts it: We learn to enjoy pleasant experiences without holding onto them when they pass (which they will) and we are able to remain present with unpleasant experiences without fearing they will always be this way (which they won't). The natural joy, that you and are capable of experiencing, is not conditional except to the extent that we make our sense of well-being dependent on externals. Life situations do not define us or change our essence.  Being mindful can help us differentiate our experience from our identity. Through mindfulness, you can notice your feelings, rather than being your feelings.    You can notice sadness rather than being sad. You are not your experiences; you are the one who has experiences. In this space of awareness, that restores your capacity to observe life, there is space for being, even well-being.

Awakening Joy

"For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair."   - Ann Morrow Lindberg A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But, a few days later, he came back to return the stone to the wise woman. "I've been thinking," he said. "I know how valuable this stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. "Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me this stone." Deep happiness and well-being can seem a most elusive grail of the human journey.  We know about the fleeting happiness that comes and goes according to external circumstances that rise to meet and eventually betray expectations. This is happiness on the world's terms and it is good as long as it lasts but it always demands something to shift or change that is often outside our control.  Such happiness is frustrating, and to the uninitiated seeker acts like a carrot suspended in front of the horse that keeps one pursuing it but never reaching satisfaction. Real joy is deeper than happiness from external circumstances. Like the peace "that passes human understanding," the well of joy within us is not circumstance dependent but part and parcel to our essential spiritual nature. We come to know this deep well being by our own experience of joy "for no reason" or we're persuaded by the many accounts of those who have realized authentic joy and well being in the midst of great difficulty. Joy is our birthright. Yet, just as we use only a fraction of our mental capacity, we have greater capacity for joy than we express. This is good news because the well-being we seek is already at hand. Of course it also places responsibility with us for realizing more of it in our lives. How do we cultivate greater joy in our lives through all of life's changes and challenges?  This is the subject of our fall series, Awakening Joy, based upon the book of the same name by James Baraz. Over the next 7 weeks we will explore behaviors and attitudes we can cultivate that can bring us greater well-being into our lives. I've been through the book, and worked with the insights and practices and can tell you this is an eminently practical Journey of Awakening that can produce real and lasting positive effects for anyone. Join us this Sunday as we begin with the first topic, Inclining The Mind Toward Joy. It is fitting to begin our journey with the destination and a heading that matches. We'll begin by leaning into joy as an intention, and see how it makes a difference. You may be amazed, as I was with how even this slight attitudinal shift can make your day brighter.

Faith and Reason, Partners for Life

I would like to believe that we are moving closer to reconciling the divergent views underlying the conflict between science and faith. It seems to me this is as important a goal as the age old "battle of the sexes"; to find a meeting place where the rational mind can lie peaceably with its intuitive counterpart. Both approaches: reason, with its penchant for intellectual rigor and processes, and faith, with its capacity to satisfy our deepest needs for meaning and purpose, are equally sincere seekers of ultimate truth. With this shared intention, each wanting what each other wants; the dissent is reduced to their approach to get there. My wife and I frequently disagree on how to get someplace, yet we remain married after 31 years. Many people are surprised to learn that science and religion have not always been at war. For most of history, science and faith have been intertwined in their pursuits to understand life. Roger Bacon, an early champion of empirical science, was a Franciscan monk. Nicholas of Cusa, a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, expressed both scientific and mystical observations in his writings, and was an early champion of an infinite universe. Nicholas Copernicus, who brought forth our understanding of a sun-centered cosmos, was also a cleric in the Church. These great thinkers did not need to abandon their religious faith in order to hold onto their new discoveries, rather saw the insights as harmonious expansions of their theology. Galileo, even Darwin, worked hard to reconcile their discoveries and theories with their faith. It wasn't until the 18th century with the advent of the Enlightenment period perspectives that strong sentiments arose to keep science and religion distinctly apart. It seems this divorce did not arise over irreconcilable differences but from fear of losing their grip on known reality, which blinded them from seeing what they might learn from each other. Of course this division still exists today and seems most irreconcilable in the deeply entrenched camps of strongly theistic religions and rigid empirical science. The harmony between the two methods of understanding reality comes more readily within a spiritual philosophy that doesn't see the Divine as some distant Being but more of an ever-present energy/intelligence, and with a scientific paradigm that allows subjective human experience into its evidence locker. This is history worth repeating, now more than ever, as we need the full breadth and depth of our capacities to meet humanity's physical and spiritual needs. In 1889, Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore wrote that scientific research had created a need to reinterpret scripture and that bridging science and religion would be a central purpose of the movement that was to become Unity. This bridging of the rational and intuitive is what brought me to Unity 20 years ago. It is a spiritual paradigm that feels authentic and relevant to all of life, in which my head and my heart feel right at home. This Sunday Unity Center of Davis is honored to host The Primacy of Consciousness with Peter Russell. With his Cambridge education in mathematics and theoretical physics and years of deep spiritual study he speaks eloquently on the topic of this article. In his highly acclaimed book, From Science To God, he says, "I believe that when we delve as fully into the nature of mind as we have into the nature of space, time and matter, we will find consciousness to be the long-awaited bridge between science and spirit."

Life Dramas and Happy Endings

"Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait, and wait without anxiety... All one sees is certain outcome, at a time perhaps unknown to him as yet, but not in doubt."   - A Course in Miracles One of my earliest memories of an "aha" moment took place while I was in the middle of watching some TV drama as a young child. I don't' recall the actual show now, but the lesson has stayed with me. Eyes glued to the picture tube, immersed in the drama that was unfolding, deeply fearful for the main character that was up against some dire, seemingly hopeless situation. He looked to be a goner. No way out! The fear must have been written all over my face, when my father said," Well we know he will get out of this somehow. He's the main character; the show can't go on without him." Whew! I relaxed. My fear subsided with the assurance of some pre-determined outcome; that the beloved character make it through the ordeal.  It is easy for us to get caught up in the dramas of our own lives, anxious to the point of trepidation or even depression, when we fear for the way things will turn out for ourselves or our loved ones. Despite the admonishment offered by Jesus and a host of other enlightened teachers, we do worry, we do judge by appearances. Or if we do gain peace of mind it isn't long before a new drama unfolds and we are back to hoping and praying that this happens or that does not happen. Why? Because our contentment is all about how the story ends - we are both in the world and of the world. This is the bane of human existence, the cause of most of our suffering. We can start a new job, get a new mate, pay off our debts, or any other ways to begin again, however, like the season premier of a TV series, the old stories surface again in a new form.   Our illusory (false) self, the self that looks outside itself for its happiness, with its immense security needs, will get absorbed in the next drama unless we wake up from such mindless viewing habits.  Awakening our true self can bring us fresh and enlightened perspective to this upcoming season of life. Not to say that spiritual growth will spare us from the human challenges anymore than expecting a fall television season without new dramas on the schedule. Nor, should we expect that reruns are finally behind us. Spiritual growth is a gradual expansion of context, and context, as philosopher, Ken Wilbur insists, is everything. Framing life dramas in a larger context; in a cosmic perspective, allows us to observe the rising and falling action on the screen of our awareness without losing our identity in the appearances. Your true self, the self that predates your birth into a body, enjoys conscious union with God, no matter what is happening. The real you never forgets it's just a show, and sees life as the hero's journey, in which every drama, no matter how dangerous, resolves in a happy spiritual  outcome. In this certainty of outcome, you, the beloved one, returns home, safe and sound. This Sunday we will take up this topic with the message,"Even When You're Down, the Tao is Still Up." As we look squarely at our world appearances, with economic forecasts of doom and gloom, we can keep our hearts wide open to feel into the happy ending, the ultimate good, that Spirit has scripted for everyone of us. Our UCOD choir ensemble will bless us with some special music as well. Be there for your weekly "faith lift."

Centering our Intention, Staying the Course

"...we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence."  - Joseph Campbell  Last Thursday UCOD set up a labyrinth at the Vets Center as our sacred offering to Unity's World Day of Prayer. It had been some time since I walked a labyrinth and I was struck by its power as metaphor to illuminate my inward spiritual journey. As I stood at the opening, I contemplated my intention for the walk, asking for the revelation I was seeking in making this journey of many steps. Quite simply, I got the message to seek "my center" - that place of inner balance and equanimity that had recently eluded me. We have been going through a household move in which our outer world has been boxed up and shifted to a new and unfamiliar spaces, leaving me feeling unsettled and off center. So my objective was to find within me that feeling of home in which all was settled and undisturbed. As I began to walk slowly and mindfully, I could feel my body and mind settle into a calmer rhythm. Each mindful step brought focused and purposeful attention to the present moment. I silently uttered the words, I am moving toward my center and I am on my way to peace. I felt so blessed and grateful to return to this state of well-being from which I had felt estranged in recent weeks. Equally impressive was the simplicity of the practice that brought me such a blessed shift in consciousness. Two simple practices combined to manifest this profound change in my mind and heart: Intention and Attention. As long as I kept my intention clearly in my mind and held my attention in the present moment I continually moved ever deeper into a peaceful centering experience. Of course, I did not maintain this focused discipline throughout the walk to the labyrinth center. My human tendency to allow my mind to wander into a variety of other thoughts, visiting past and future happenings, got the better of me several times along the way. In those moments, I could feel myself contracting a bit, moving into body awareness, feeling more vulnerable and off center. Yet, despite my mind wanderings, I managed to keep my feet moving accurately within the marked path ahead of me. I realized that this is the grace of our attempts to carry out our spiritual intentions on earth. It wasn't necessary for me to perfect my attention in order to keep moving in the direction of goal - the centering experience, as long as I held my intention - even in the "back of my mind." This is revelatory to our walk through life. Our focus is not going to be perfect, our attention will be here, and then there, and back to here again. It will waver but we can always bring it back to this present moment, and become mindful of our intention again. Yet even if our attention strays we can make progress as we hold our intention for the larger context of our life journey. For me, my deepest intention in life is to awaken to the truth of who I really am - my truest spiritual identity. Every day I think about that intention at least once. It's the backdrop, the context, the grand milieu of my days and nights. So in the course of a given day, my attention ranges between keen present moment focus, to veritable somnambulism, yet intention is always there like the labyrinth path beneath my feet, guiding my steps, bringing me back to the course that leads me home. Lets know this together, because, we can get so down on ourselves when we feel our spiritual efforts are lacking in discipline and we're inclined to count our missteps. Let's keep it simple and cease condemning our progress and realize how the path is self correcting. Get clear on your intention each day, pay attention to your steps as mindfully as you can. And if you fall asleep to the moment, forgive yourself, and realize that the center of your intention is constantly beckoning and drawing you to itself. Unerringly, God is calling us home. Let that be our intention to remember. The path home is the life before us. Our next step awaits our attention.

Always in the Middle

No one is where he is by accident and chance plays no part in God's plan.                                    - A Course In Miracles  Several Sundays ago I shared a message on developing a sense of trust in life and offered the viewpoint that we are always in the "middle - never at the end." A number of you mentioned that this perspective had been profoundly helpful to your sense of hope and faith in life. Of course, there are apparent endings in life such as when employment or a relationship or any other time bound circumstance comes to an end. When we see these endings as "terminal conditions" we can fall into grief and hopelessness and that's very human and understandable. However, wisdom can reveal a different perspective that can lift us from despair when we are facing change and loss. In life, unlike a stage play, one scene leads to another, indefinitely, until we are no longer on this world stage. One situation ends, gives rise to a new situation, which will end soon enough, followed by yet another scene. Each scene yields the potential for life to become something new, rife with possibility, challenge, losses and gains, sorrows and joys...and on it goes. When we behold our life in the context of life's ongoing nature, we are always in the middle - never at the end. Knowing the story is yet unfinished, how can we judge it good or bad, right or wrong, favorable or unfavorable. The following story, that has been told and retold in many traditions, illustrates how judging life is always premature: Once upon a time there lived a poor farmer who lived alone with his one son. They were poor and lived a hard life. One day their only horse ran away. Their fellow villagers lamented saying, "What will you do now? That was your only horse. How will you farm your land? You are so unlucky." To this the poor farmer said, "We'll see." A few days later the farmer's horse came back bringing with it a wild horse. And the villagers said, "Now you have two horses to work your land. You're so lucky!" And the farmer said, "We'll see." The next day the farmer's son was taming the wild horse when he was thrown from her back and broke his leg. And the villagers said, "Now who will help you work your land? That is your only son. How unlucky." And the farmer said, "We'll see." A few days later the army came through town. They were there to draft all the able-bodied young men to fight in a distant war for their emperor. All the young men of the village, except for the poor farmer's injured boy, were taken away. The villagers watched as their children were taken away. They looked at the poor farmer and his boy and said, "You're so lucky." And the farmer said, "We'll see." Our way shower, Jesus, who was a master of life, cautioned against "judging by appearances." Knowing as he did that there is only one beneficent power and presence undergirding all of life, it is always too soon to abandon hope and never too early to expect a grace filled blessing to emerge from any situation. There is always more Life to come, more good to be revealed, more of the sacred eternal to displace our sense of loss. This is how we pray in Unity, acknowledging the apparent limitation, but then lifting our awareness to the ever present infinite presence of life and love that is endless. This is the good news story of your life, and mine that never ends. Get in the middle of that idea and hope springs mightily.