Sunday, August 18, 2019

What is miracle thinking?



Chapter eighteen
What is miracle thinking?

Nothing comes to your mind but by the filter of your mindset. By virtue of what it admits or denies, it is the engine of the self-fulfilling prophecy, for good or for ill. But it, like the future, is also malleable. While many external factors work to mold and shape your mindset, you do get a vote in the matter. You can question the underlying assumptions. You can test the theses. You are not required to accept any of the default settings. You are always free to reject one belief and replace it with another. And when you reinforce that new belief, your outlook and your behavior will change. Your perception really is your reality, and if you don’t like what you see, you can change the underlying reality and your perception with it. To this end, the mindset can be thought of as one’s “disposition to possibility.” And its effect, like the self-fulfilling prophecy, is circular.

Jain, Naveen. Moonshots : Creating a World of Abundance (pp. 175-176). John August Media, LLC. 

What you think you see is what you get. Be careful what you wish for or fear because you will draw those things to yourself.

We can’t control the circumstances that occur to us in our lives but we can control our interpretation or the meaning we make of them. Are they good or bad, a blessing or a curse? Often times we don’t know what to make of them until sometime later.

If a person is asked, “What makes you tick?” most people not only respond with confusion and perplexity, they don’t even have a way of thinking about how to answer the question. Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living and not many people, unfortunately, live examined lives. If they did, the world wouldn’t be in the mess it was in and people wouldn’t suffer to the extent they do.

Most people don’t question their mindset until their pain and suffering reach a point at which they say to themselves, “I can’t take any more. There must be a better way.” When it dawns on the person who has hit bottom that there has to be a better way to think about things and behave in their lives, then they begin a search for that better way. It is this dawning and the initiation of the search that Jain is suggesting leads to entrepreneurial thinking and a “moonshot” or as it is called in A Course In Miracles, a “miracle.” 

The “miracle” is not a physical manipulation of the natural world to create a supernatural phenomenon. That is magic. A “miracle” is when the light bulb goes on in one’s mind and engenders a whole new way of thinking, a whole new mindset.

When have you had the “ah ha!” moment when the light bulb went off in your mind and your mindset was forever changed?


Public theology - Trump and the evangelicals


From The Washington Post on 08/14/19, "In God's Country" by Elizabeth Bruenig.

Exit polls show that Trump carried 85 percent of evangelical voters here (Texas) in 2016, a touch higher than the national white evangelical average of 81 percent. That in itself wasn’t surprising: For decades, evangelicals have been a reliable Republican constituency.

.....

Theories about Trump’s connection with evangelical voters have long been dubiously elegant. The simplest, and perhaps most comfortable for Trump’s bewildered and furious opposition, is that evangelicals are and always were hypocrites, demanding moral rectitude from their enemies that they don’t expect from their friends. Others held that evangelicals must simply be ignorant, taken in by a campaign narrative that attempted to depict Trump as privately devoted to Christ, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Some argued that evangelicals just wanted an invincible champion to fight the culture wars, even if he didn’t share their vision of the good life. And then there was the transactional theory: Their votes were just about the Supreme Court.

There was probably some truth to every suggestion, with all the usual caveats about different individuals having different priorities, and all due distinctions made between the committedly vs. casually religious. But as 2020 approaches and evangelicals again find themselves evaluating against traditional, moderate Democrats such as Joe Biden and the ever-present possibility of just staying home, I wanted to ask evangelicals how they’re feeling about their alliance with the president and what their expectations are going into 2020.

Editor's note:

It appears that Evangelicals have sold their souls to the devil for the transactional benefit of a authortarian willingness by Trump to protect their values. Christians did the same thing in Nazi Germany with Hitler and became complicit in the hollocaust.

What evangelicals and Trump have in common is a shared belief in their victimization by the liberal values of others who want to deprive them of Christmas with "Happy Holidays."

Evangelicals while they claim to love Jesus and His message of loving one's enemies, they admire Trump's pugilistic and vengeful attack on those who he perceives as not paying homage to his superior ego.

Trump is very egotistical and narcissitic and attacks anyone and anything that does not agree with his estimation of himself. Evangelicals operate from this same mindset and in that commonality they have found each other and have become mutually supportive. Evangelicals fervently believe that they are saved and everyone else is going to hell who has not accepted their belief and become "born again."

Bruenig predicts that evangelicals will support Trump again in 2020 and see their support of him as a holy war, a jihad of sorts, against their perceived mutual enemies.

Saturday, August 17, 2019

A Course In Miracles and Unitarian Universalism - Where are you searching?




The truth behind illusions

T-30.IV.4. Reality observes the laws of God, and not the rules you set. It is His laws that guarantee your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey no laws. They seem to dance a little while, according to the rules you set for them. But then they fall and cannot rise again. They are but toys, my child, so do not grieve for them.

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. P.634

This is, of course, the laws of God and the laws of the world. We follow most often the laws of the world which are also called the laws of idols like money, sex, power, fame, status, etc. We falsely believe that it is these things we idolize which will make us happy but as it says in the quote above our believe that these things can bring us happiness falls apart and what are we left with back at the drawing board so to speak? It’s the laws of God, of course. We have ignored them and repressed them and when we have hit bottom it dawns on us that must be a better way. And then we begin our search for what is really important.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We will never find what we are looking for in the laws of the world, in the world of idols. What we are looking for is in the world of God, the Tao, the Oneness, that makes us whole as we realize the interdependent existence of which we are apart.


Ask Alexa: Why am I having a good day?

Alexa: My depression is lifting and I am starting to have a good day here and there and I'm wondering if it's the meds. or something else?

It's a couple of people with voodoo dolls canceling each other out.


Friday, August 16, 2019

Ask Alexa - What did you do?

Alexa: Why is it raining?
Because God is crying.

Alexa: Why is God crying?
Because of something you did.

To what extent are you a bottomless pit?




 Beyond all idols

If what we long for is completeness, wholeness, to become One with All, then why do we pursue idols thinking that they will complete us and make us whole? 

Is the idol we pursue romantic love, money, status, power, material things? None of these idols can complete us. We are like bottomless pits. If we get an inch we want a foot. If we get a foot we want a yard. If we get a yard we want 10 years, then 100 yards, then 1,000 yards, then a mile, then 10 miles…………...When will it ever stop?

A Course In Miracles tells us that what we seek we already have.

T-30.III.4. It never is the idol that you want. But what you think it offers you, you want indeed and have the right to ask for. Nor could it be possible it be denied. Your will to be complete is but God’s Will, and this is given you by being His. God knows not form. He cannot answer you in terms that have no meaning. And your will could not be satisfied with empty forms, made but to fill a gap that is not there. It is not this you want. Creation gives no separate person and no separate thing the power to complete the Son of God. What idol can be called upon to give the Son of God what he already has?

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. P.631

T-30.III.8. The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. They await not birth. They wait for welcome and remembering. The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. P.632

The Course tells us that God’s love is always there for us. All we need do is remember and welcome it.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This means the person doesn't have to do anything, acquire anything, achieve anything, be associated with anyone, believe anything in particular, to be saved. 

UUs believe that people are already saved. They probably just don't know it yet. They are not aware of it. They need to remember it and become aware of it. Of course, it helps if they are coached, suggested, encouraged, supported in remembering and welcoming. The new fangled idea for this is "self compassion."


Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Will you find what you have been looking for all along?

T-30.II.1. Do you not understand that to oppose the Holy Spirit is to fight yourself? He tells you but your will; He speaks for you. In His Divinity is but your own. And all He knows is but your knowledge, saved for you that you may do your will through Him. God asks you do your will. He joins with you. He did not set His Kingdom up alone. And Heaven itself but represents your will, where everything created is for you.

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. P.629

How long will I find my Self and look instead to idols for my happiness? How long can this go on?

It can go on until I come to the realization that I am powerless to control the life I think I am living in the dream. Can I give up, give in, turn it over? When I finally do this, I experience tremendous relief, tremendous liberation, tremendous freedom to just be with God, the Oneness, the All.

The peace of God is mine if I only will recognize the fundamental truth that I am okay just the way I am being One with God.

Become one with the Tao. Go with the flow. Stop resisting the Love of the Oneness.

Universalists know this. It is the basis of their faith. They believe in Universal salvation and the Unconditional Love of God. Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and this search will eventually take them to the awareness that God’s will for them is exactly what they have been looking for all along.

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