A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson #230 - Now will I seek and find the peace of God.

 Lesson #230

Now will I seek and find the peace of God.

If you ask most people what they want out of life they will answer “happiness.” And if you ask them what will make them happy, they pause, and then 75% will say more money. That’s the kind of society we have created for ourselves. After probing further, people will become aware that what they want is peace, contentment, serenity. So, the observation can be made  that most Americans don’t even know what they are looking for.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, it is suggested in the eleventh step that we seek this peace by improving our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation. Today, in the 2020s we call this “mindfulness.”

In Unitarian Universalism, we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Okay, where should we look? Where should we search? Today, in Lesson 230, we get a hint. The hint of where to look is the peace of God, and that is within our internal mind and heart, and not without in the false promises of the world of the ego.

Today, it is suggested that we begin and end our day, and several times in between, pausing and settling inward, stepping back and letting God lead the way. As we calm down and relax, we feel the peace of God well up in our consciousness.

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson #229 - Love, which created me, is what I am.

 

Lesson #229

Love, which created me, is what I am.

People are like onions with layer upon layer upon layer of circles of privacy until we get to the core, the heart of our existence. And when we descend into our being what do we find? Not what we are fearing but a brilliant diamond of perfect love. This is our essential nature.

In Alcoholic Anonymous, it is suggested in step eleven, that we improve our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation. We eschew the idols of the world promising to make us happy and seek peace and joy elsewhere. What we learn is that the idols of the world have been blocking our awareness of Love, the true Source of our happiness, which is our essential nature and birthright.

In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and happiness. And where should we search for that truth and happiness? Not in the external world of the ego for it is not to be found there. It is within in the awareness of our essential nature.

Today, it is suggested that we begin and end the day, and hourly in between, with reminding ourselves that Love, which created me, is what I am. May that peace that awareness brings be with you.

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson #228 - God has condemned me not. No more do I.

 Lesson #228

God has condemned me not. No more do I.

We live in deep seated shame even if we don’t recognize it. That shame is generated by a fear that we are defective in some way, that deep down we will be found inadequate. So we struggle our whole lives to be worthy, to be good enough to warrant love. And in today’s lesson, we are told this deep seated fear of unworthiness is nonsense. We are as God created us, part of the Divine, and how could God condemn part of God’s Self?

It is suggested in Alcoholics Anonymous, in step eleven, that we improve our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation. Nothing could be finer than to be aware of our Oneness with the Ground of our Being.

In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the encouragement to spiritual growth which involves the growing awareness of our existence as extensions of our Transcendent Source. Alleluia!

Today it is suggested that we begin and end the day, and several times in between, by reminding ourselves that our Creator has not condemned us and so we are okay at our core. There is nothing to fear and we are the extension of God’s Love.

A Course In Miracles Workbook #227 - This is my holy instant of release.

 

Lesson #227

This is my holy instant of release.

It is funny how we make things up thinking that our willfulness can gain us anything real separated from our Source. Once we see this behavior for what it is it seems absurd, insane.

It is suggested by Alcoholics Anonymous, in the third step, that we turn our willfulness over to the Will of God. We come to realize what a mess we have made of things and that the illusory world we create for ourselves thinking it will make us happy has not only come to naught but to pain and suffering. We begin to think that there has to be a better way and there is.

In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We encourage each other to find a better way and eventually we will. The outcome is inevitable but the time it takes is discretionary.

Today, it is suggested that we begin and end the day, and hourly in between,to reflect on the fact that this can be my holy instant of release.

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson #226 - My home awaits me. I will hasten there.

 Lesson #226

My home awaits me. I will hasten there.

Now that we know we have a choice between the world of the ego and the world of Spirit, what are we waiting for? The things of the ego always eventually disappoint. The world of Love is eternal and forever.

In Alcoholic Anonymous, it is suggested, in step three, that we turn our willfulness over to the will of God. We have dragged our feet thinking we can still do it ourselves using our own illusionary will power. And how has that worked for us?

In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and where is that search going to take us? Ultimately, it will not be to the things of the ego but to the things of the Spirit. So why do we ramble? Why do we take side trips? Why do we get distracted and go down blind alleys looking for fool’s gold? Maybe, it's time to take seriously the knowledge that Love awaits us and we should hasten there.

Today, it suggested that we begin and end the day. and many times in between, reminding ourselves that Love awaits us and that we should quit dawdling with temptations and go there.

A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson #225 - God is my Father, and His son loves Him.

 Lesson #225

God is my Father, and His Son loves Him.

I, we, are all part of God, the Transcendent Source. We each have the Divine Spark with us. It is that part of ourselves that we can love unconditionally.

In Alcoholic Anonymous, it is suggested, in step eleven, that we improve our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation. Better than any chemicals we could ever ingest.

In Unitarian Universalism, we covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person which flows from the Transcendent Source into them and into us and we all our One. So when we love the Transcendent Source of all being we create heaven on earth as Jesus told us we could. God is what we call the Transcendent Source and we love It.

Today, it is suggested that we take some time at the beginning and end of the day and at least hourly in between and savor the moments when we experience the love for our Transcendent Sources and Its love for us.

Religion in the public square - Are UUs the yeast in the dough?

 

Is American Society stuck at an ethnocentric stage of evolutionary development?

In today’s world, every child is born at very early “archaic” or “magic” and egocentric stages, which dominate ages 1 to 3; transitions to magic-mythic for around ages 4 to 7; ethnocentric mythic proper, with several substages, emerges for roughly ages 6 to 11; then the next major stage, the “rational,” as we will see, emerges in today’s world generally with adolescence; and there are yet higher stages to come, as we’ll also see. However, the central point here is that adults can remain “stuck” or “fixated” at any of those earlier stages or substages. Indeed, research by Robert Kegan, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, shows that 3 out of 5—or 60 percent—of Americans remain at ethnocentric or lower stages. If you think this ethnocentric stage—with its tendencies toward racism, sexism/patriarchy, misogyny, mega-tribal dominance, oppression, and fundamentalist religion—sounds a bit like hardcore far-Right Republicans, and that it starts to push into recognized Trump territory, you’d be right.

Wilber, Ken. Trump and a Post-Truth World (p. 18). Shambhala. Kindle Edition. 

Another observation might be that Unitarian Universalists tend to be at higher levels of development and so are out of sync with the majority of society in the United States. Most UUs would be at least at the worldcentric stage moving to Integral. 

The principles of Unitarian Universalism which we covenant together to affirm and promote are beyond the ethnocentric stage of consciousness.

What does this observation mean for our church? For the world?

Currently, Americans are stuck at the ethnocentric stage of development as Wilber points out and UUs are the yeast fermenting in the dough and will cause it to rise maybe only to be punched down again, but not to worry for the dough will rise again.