Love That Beckons, Love That Remains

As many of you may already have heard through the ethers of connectivity, I have resigned as minister of Unity Center of Davis and accepted the senior minister role at Unity of Santa Barbara.

This decision is both sweet and bitter. The sweetness is the opportunity to raise the bar of my spiritual leadership in a well-established and dynamic spiritual community that seems poised to grow, quantitatively and qualitatively.  I believe it has all the right stuff in place to allow me to maximize my gifts as speaker, teacher, and inspirational presence with the staffing and resources that will fully support me in this role.  In other words I’ll be free of the other tasks that are not my gifts and afforded the staff support and compensation so I can follow my true calling with fewer distractions.

The bitter is of course in leaving you, such amazing loving, positive, faith filled community of seekers of truth who have rolled up your sleeves, opened hearts and hands and purses to co-create and sustain the wonderful experiment of Unity in Davis, CA for over 6 years.  I have such deep love and appreciation for each of you, knowing whatever effort I undertook was bolstered by those of you who on a strictly volunteer basis, mustered the love and joy for service;  and stepped up, again and again to keep the community alive and well. To have witnessed this miracle of birth, and growth and determination to thrive even in adverse conditions has been to witness the enormous power of love.

My love for this work, the irrepressible call to spiritual study and leadership has been equally awe inspiring, driving me to follow its often irrational course, with costs and consequences to my security and family stability. So often it has felt right to my soul and folly to my mind and I submitted to the former, and paid the price of the impracticality.

This time the call feels like a remarkably balanced opportunity that satisfies my heart and my head; a seemingly rare and precious pearl of a chance to follow a “heavenly” call with earthly support.  Every part of me knows this is the right decision. And still, the “rightness” of this decision does not mean there is not sorrow. I will grieve our separation. Humanly it tears at my heart to leave. Yet I know it’s my time to move on, and so I trust that Grace, a love even greater than what we have for each other, will replace the angst of our separation in its right time.

It was love that brought us together; a love for the ideal of sharing these powerful teachings in an inclusive, empowering community. It was love that saw us through when it looked like we lacked the resources to continue. It was love that motivated you and I to dig deeper into our willingness and capacity to offer whatever was necessary to maintain and sustain this community. That’s a powerful and beautiful testimony to the power of love and it gives me great hope that what love has done here, love will do here, going forward.

I only take the memory of that love story with me. The love that conceived, believed and achieved this community remains here embedded in your hearts and is activated, as it has been, by your will.

My hope and prayer is that you will stay close to each other and remember that the true Teacher is the Spirit within you, The Holy Comforter, that remains as always as close as your next moment of remembrance. I also leave you with the love of my life, Rev. Denese, who will be a wonderful reminder and loving presence during this time of envisioning your future as a spiritual community and calling forth your next spiritual leader.

And to those of you who have read this column and not been a part of our physical spiritual community I bid you farewell with this final writing. I’m glad to know that despite having never met each other you have found value in this sharing.

To all of you, who have found value in these articles or in our community, I say thank you and bless you. May love continue to guide our journeys and leave us better for what it has asked of us and what it has given us.

Love, always
Rev. Larry

Peace, A Core Value for a Core Issue

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn't make any sense. - from The Essential Rumi

Every Sunday at Unity Center of Davis, we conclude our service by standing together and singing the Peace Song. The first and last lines proclaim, "let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me." There is a variation of this refrain, that our ego sings many more times during the week that goes like this: Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with: her, him, that situation, this dilemma, this preference, that shift, this resolution, that outcome, and on and on it goes.

Our false self that sings this refrain is not connected to the whole of life, and clamors to reclaim the fragments of happiness that seem to be in the world of outer conditions and other people. When I am identified with my false self, I feel separated, and frustrated, and it is easy to blame my inner turmoil on what someone or something is "doing to me." It may take two to tango, or reach accord, but it takes just one to find peace inside oneself.

Real and lasting contentment, the peace that Jesus referred to as beyond human understanding, is not an effect of getting what we want in life, nor a negotiated agreement, nor the laying down of arms. A Course in Miracles says, Nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. Ultimately, peace is the recognition of a deep sense of well-being in which this moment is acceptable just as it is, unconditionally.

Peace is more than the absence of conflict; it is the presence of a reality beyond the duality of your way or my way. Rumi referred to this as a place beyond right or wrong, and a place where we could meet each other.

The conflicts, which disturb our peace, are always some version of unskillful attempts to get our needs met. Conscious evolution can lead us to find satisfaction without harming. When we drop below the surface mind that thrashes and lashes out we can see more clearly what is really true. This is spiritual insight that first takes us inward, opens our eyes to seeing in a new way, and brings us back to the world with a more holistic, compassionate perspective.

The field beyond right and wrong is the unified field of our essential oneness, the great web in which we are inseparable from all of life. Once glimpsed, the ramifications of lashing out, or polluting, or blaming in order to redress some inner dissatisfaction, are seen more plainly as self-defeating and most certainly counter to any peaceful intention.

While we are evolving toward this enlightened perspective, we need constant reminders of the way to peace. I know of no better technique to correct my perception than calling upon Spirit to help me see rightly. Even when judgments are railing in my head and I am at war with everything and everyone one, there is the voice of Truth, that sees through the appearances and remains undisturbed. This voice can lead me beyond the field of right and wrong, to the still waters of peace. If nothing else we can sing the familiar refrain whenever we need to remember the way to peace, Let there be peace, and let it begin with me.

Monotheism and the Illuision of Separation

They said to Him: Shall we then, being children,
enter the Kingdom? Jesus said to them:
When you make the two one, and
when you make the inner as the outer
and the outer as the inner and the above
as the below, and when
you make the male and the female into a single one,
then shall you enter the Kingdom.
- Gospel of St. Thomas Saying 22

In Unity, and in the mystical heart of all major religions, Oneness emerges as a supreme foundational tenet. The notion that we are not isolated creatures but inseparable and at one with a universal spirit is at the core of many faiths.   How ironic that a belief in oneness is a common denominator across the battleground of religious beliefs that are often comprised of bitterly embedded camps of righteousness, which go to war over their individuated differences.  While Oneness reigns as a supreme ideal,  our everyday behavior suggests that separation is the prevailing perception and practice.

Across the faith traditions of the majority of the world's population prevails an idea that ultimate reality is a union of opposites. Even in the Garden of Eden story, the problem of Adam and Eve (the fall) is sparked by a decision to partake in the knowledge of good and evil - a choice that brings the suffering of duality over the perfect Oneness and Goodness that preceded it.

At the personal level, you and I make this choice in every moment; choices that separate us from Supreme Reality, and the oneness that is within us and all around us. Such choices do not cause an actual separation of course, since it is impossible to be apart from our Essence, yet these choices create the experience of separation.  That's quite enough for us to create a world of opposites, of lack, limitation, right and wrong, you and me, them and us, have and have not; all the ingredients that have us clamoring and dueling over our share of the good.  It could be said that a dualist must become a duelist. While this illusion is being played out through a separate sense of self, in truth we remain in union with an all providing Source that supplies our every need.

So how do we find our way back to this Unity consciousness, which is the cherished destination of all spiritual paths? One way is to deconstruct the false self that we've created; a self that we define and identify through bits and pieces of our personal reality.

When we answer the question, who am I, our initial instinctive responses reflect our beliefs about who we think we are.  We identify with our body, our careers, our desires, our emotions, and our thoughts.  We readily attach our "I am" to superficial descriptors, such as Caucasian man, Asian woman, plumber, teacher, sad, glad, curious, anxious, wealthy, or wounded. These become our identities. They define us, and close off our awareness to the self that has no boundaries, no defining edges, no separate sense of itself.

When we can begin to release these labels, we begin to dissolve the distinctions that wall off our connection with the allness of life.  Here's a process:  Recite these phrases in a contemplative fashion, realizing the significance of these insights as you say them:

I have a body, but I am not my body
I have desires, but I am not my desires
I have emotions, but I am not my emotions
I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts.

The very act of noticing these aspects of yourself puts you in touch with a self that can observe characteristics that you've formerly believed comprised your whole identity.  What can be seen and felt cannot be the true seer.  As you witness these aspects of yourself, you are less likely to identify and define yourself by them. This awareness moves us closer to unity consciousness, which as St. Paul noted, is living, moving and having our very being in Divine Presence.

Gratitude, An Enlightened Perspective

You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue. Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your Heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in You, oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer.

You may not recognize the author of these words, and I would dare say that few of us would be able to come close to guessing the circumstances under which the writer found herself overflowing with praise and gratitude to her Creator.

You might guess that these worshipful exclamations might have flowed from an open, praise-filled heart of one who had reached a state of deep gratefulness for a life overflowing with profound blessings.  Not so. These are the words of Etty Hillesum.

Etty was a 27-year-old Jewish woman living in Amsterdam in 1941. At a time when the Nazi takeover was rousing terror among Dutch Jews, Etty Hillesum underwent an amazing inner transformation in the direction of freedom and joy. By April of 1942 Jews were forced to wear the Star of David, and the wholesale deportation began later that spring. Finally in August 1942 she was consigned with her family to an internment camp, from which Jews were deported to Auschwitz on a weekly basis. Etty stayed in the camp until September 1943. In the midst of the squalor, the confinement, the fear, she praised God for life, for beauty, for the secure refuge of her soul. Amazingly, her prayers in these last days of her life in the prison camp were lavish expressions of gratitude.

Etty's spirit continued to burn brightly even to the very end. She stepped onto the deportation train "talking gaily, smiling, a kind word for everyone she met on the way, full of sparkling humor, perhaps just a touch of sadness," as the chronicler of her last day in the camp describes. Later, some farmers along the train route discovered a postcard she had thrown out of the train. "We have left the camp singing," it said. Etty Hillesum died in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943 ((from Judith Smith's book review of An Interrupted Life-The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-43 translated by J.G. Gaarlandt)

How many of us can muster an attitude of gratitude in the midst of life's great challenges? When faced with great difficulty, seeing the good and giving thanks is a high bar for our consciousness to achieve. Why is this so?  The answer is embedded in Etty's response to her life situation.  Her faith was not derailed by adversity but driven deeper within her, where blessings and grace, presence and comfort were found overflowing. She refused to deny the existence of the Divine or even entertain the slightest diminution of good in the worst of human conditions. The Apostle Paul said "in all things, give thanks." Notice he didn't say "for" all things give thanks, but "in" all things be grateful.  This is the master's way of dealing with life; to remain resolute in awareness of Divine presence, and never let what happens in the world betray our faith.

Omnipresence is a lovely, lofty word to describe the absolute assurance that God is never absent anywhere in our wonderful and dangerous world. However, to bear witness to that promise and feel it at a soul level when a train of difficulty comes for us, takes enormous vision; an enlightened perspective.  I've tasted those sweet moments a few rare times in my life and know it is possible to stand in the storm and be glad and grateful even before the trouble has passed. Ultimately we can only get there if we trust that difficulty and challenge are not against us, rather seen as allies on the path that strip us of falsehoods only to reveal our bare naked, eternal, true selves.

As Henri Nouwen has written, gratitude is a discipline, "because it challenges me to face the painful moments and gradually to discover in them the pruning hands of God purifying my heart for deeper love, stronger hope, and broader faith.... "

Freedom: A God Given Choice

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. - Jesus

When we think of freedom as citizens of a democracy our thought goes to those hard won rights that launched this independent nation.  We enjoy many human freedoms that for so many people around the globe are only frustrated impulses for self-determination. Here we are free to live where we want, move about without restriction, free to vote in open elections, free to speak our mind and decide on issues and leaders that affect our lives. Freedom of choice rules in the marketplace, where there is such a smorgasbord of choices that selecting a tube of toothpaste can be a dizzying exercise of free will.  This is cause for recognition, grounds for profound appreciation, and most definitely calls for the annual, if not more frequent, pause to celebrate the life and liberty we enjoy in this country.

That's all good. However, if that's as far as we go, are we truly free? I would suggest that we are not truly free no matter how many civil liberties we enjoy, unless we free our minds and our hearts as well.

We may have the right to "pursue happiness" but a right does not guarantee that we'll experience happiness. We can set up the foundations for a free society and guidelines to protect its liberties, yet no law or external mandate can liberate the mind and heart that is imprisoned by fear, locked in guilt, shackled by shame, or buried in resentment.   Such freedom is wrought only through the inner work of each individual citizen who chooses to take up their individual cause for personal liberty.

In every moment, of every day, we come up against the headwinds of circumstances that threaten to derail our sense of well-being. If the set point for our well-being is aligned with our preferences for life, then we will find ourselves shackled by unhappiness most of the time. As Jesus and Buddha both noted, our human journey will be riddled with trials and sorrows, along with joys, and that there is an overcoming power within us that can remain free from suffering through all that arises.

We relinquish our inner freedom, and suffer, when we see ourselves only in partial truth, as mere mortals, at the mercy of circumstances and other people's opinion.  This identity crisis underlies the pain I feel in this world of appearances. But there is a greater truth about you and me.  Jesus said you are the light of the world; that heaven resides within you, and St. Paul said you live and move and have your very being in God. The Buddha said our true nature transcends suffering, and that well-being is possible regardless of circumstances.

Let these perennial teachings remind you that there is a path to true freedom. It is a spiritual path that turns our attention from the outer conditions that might restrain us, and illuminates the inner chambers of the heart and mind that are spacious, compassionate and bear all things with equanimity. May we also remember that democracy was (and is) a work in progress that was not fully formed by a declaration of independence but by the trials and errors along a path toward full realization. May we see our journey to freedom with equal understanding and patience with the process. This is the nature of spiritual growth, the ongoing and progressive realization of our true spiritual nature, that yields an ever-widening view of the you/me that God created us to be.

In the faith that frees,

Rev. Larry

Beholding the Greater Good

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

What was your initial reaction when you read the above line? Read it again, and take note. Do you agree with that extraordinarily bold and positive assessment of life? If so, you are among the rare and fortunate among us who take a sanguine view of life.

For the rest of us, who may tend to see the glass as half empty, and default to noticing what's missing in our experience, we can take comfort in the knowledge that we come by it naturally. That is, our psyches are wired for a negative bias, meaning we are more likely to pay attention and retain memories of those situations that are harmful or disturbing than the positive and uplifting circumstances.  Brain science explains this phenomenon is a basic instinctual survival response. Stemming back to our earliest history on this planet, when our environment was more hostile, and the threat of attack was a realistic daily concern, it was essential that we be on the lookout for what could harm us.  Compared to noticing and storing the memories of the good and pleasant situations, our penchant for survival dictated that we be vigilant in awareness of the "bad" stuff that could hurt us. Psychologist and author, Rick Hanson, PhD says it this way, "We are Velcro for the negative, and Teflon for the positive."

Does that mean that we are doomed to negativity? Not at all. It's just an explanation of our human tendency. Thankfully, we are more than a body/mind! We are children of the Divine, and if children, then heirs to all that is Spirit.  Our spiritual nature is more essentially who we are than the mortal limitations, and dualistic perspectives of our human self. It is in this milieu of knowing ourselves and beholding life that we can find an essential goodness, a wholeness and peace that surpasses ordinary human perception and understanding.

While our essential and spiritual nature readily offers us a view of the good, the true and the beautiful, it remains latent and under the radar of our awareness unless we consciously intend to see it.  This is the consequence and criterion of free will. Much like the electricity that runs through the walls of your home, the light does not flood the room until you flip the switch. In parallel fashion, we must incline our minds toward the sacred view of life, which floods our world with the qualities of love, compassion, kindness and gratitude.  As much as we think we must get what we want to feel good, it is our intention that brings the enlightened perspective.  As poet Hafiz noted,

Ask the Friend for love, Ask Him again. For I have heard that whatever one's heart prays for the most, that's what one gets.

So frequently, our desire for life to be a certain way is only the visible tip of a much deeper need. If we are willing to probe, we may discover the true need that then can become the focus of our prayer, our intention. For example, you may want somebody in your life to behave differently. You could pray for that outcome, hold out for that to happen. (Good luck and I hope you are eternally patient.) Alternatively, you could ask yourself, what do I really want?  Such deep inquiry might lead you through several layers to a core need, which might be that you want a loving connection with that person. Now you are in God's domain of influence. Now you are answering the call "according to God's purpose." Intending for a loving connection will bring you back to your deepest nature, where love can be actualized in your experience.  Here you are shown how to restore the love that is your true yearning. This is the practice of the masters, which can reveal the presence of Good in every situation, for the deepest inquiry will always lead us back to our deepest self, where, in the company of Divine Presence we can behold the good, the true and the beautiful. May it be so for you.

Peace and blessings
Rev. Larry

Emergence: A Welcome Change

When you learn to shift your identity from that of the egoic “local self” to the magnificence of your “non-local” Essential Self and then beyond to your Universal Self, the highest frequency of your being, you become fully available to BE the change and become an activation point and catalyst for conscious evolution.- Barbara Marx Hubbard

Like many ambitious men, I spent a good deal of my life trying to achieve my way to success, acquire my way to happiness. I achieved and I acquired but the success was ephemeral and the acquisitions ultimately could not satisfy my deepest hunger.  The American dream morphed into an endless season of discontent. I hit bottom. This was great news to my higher self, the part of me that was waiting patiently in the wings for me to call off the fruitless search, turn the ship around and head home.

I did make that about face a score of years ago and began a search for inner success, an honest appraisal of what mattered most to me in life, and I got in touch with a deeper purpose. In my case, the inward journey lead me to the spiritual path of Unity, and a career in ministry.  It's important for me to emphasize that ministry is only one of a myriad of forms that authentic self-expression can take.  It happens to be mine and it's just another form. 

Form, no matter how much importance you might ascribe to it is still just form. It’s merely an external accessory to who we are, and not of our essence. It has no life of its own.  No meaning. No purpose. No value. A job describes what I do, not what I am.  We can forget that and many of us do lose ourselves in our careers. We also lose ourselves in the roles we assume in life, our socioeconomic conditions, how others see us, etc.  Soon our entire self-concept is invested in a stock that has no intrinsic value. It's only a matter of time before it comes crashing down. Who we thought we were is laid waste, and eventually laid to rest.  It can be the worst and best of times.

To continue the journey home, to deepen understanding of our truest nature we must be willing to abandon form in favor of content.  This can be difficult, painful, and counterintuitive, yet the exfoliation of the false self is the only way to uncover our true essence.  Jesus understood the process, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:24)

Once the false form dies, the real work begins, but it is fulfilling work. You're not “workin' for the man” anymore - you're working for the soul. It's the hardest job you'll ever love. The way the world measures you may have less, but the heart overflows. You are simultaneously humbled and exalted, at once motivated and surrendered. It's the paradox that Jesus described. You have lost your life, and found new life.

Forms are still interesting and even attractive, but not compelling or defining. The only thing that matters is the feeling that something Great and true and real is coursing through your veins, running your life. You come to agree with the Taoist, Only in being lived by the Tao can you be truly yourself.

This is emergence that you can truly welcome. This is the change that transforms you at depth and brings healing and wholeness that surpasses any form the world can offer.