Conditional or unconditional love: that is the question.

Nothing and everything cannot coexist. To believe in one is to deny the other. Fear is really nothing and love is everything. Whenever light enters darkness, the darkness is abolished. What you believe is true for you. In this sense the separation has occurred, and to deny it is merely to use denial inappropriately. However, to concentrate on error is only a further error. The initial corrective procedure is to recognize temporarily that there is a problem, but only as an indication that immediate correction is needed. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay. T-2.VII.5: 1-9

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition. 

There is Unconditional love and conditional love. Which is true, good, and beautiful and which is false, bad, and ugly? The question is which do you want? It only takes a moment to decide. Once the decision is made we begin to think and act on it.

Unconditional love is what the Course calls the “Atonement.” Conditional love is what gives rise to fear.

In Alcoholics Anonymous it is suggested, in step eleven, that we improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power through prayer and meditation, and we can add Unconditional Love.

Our Universalist roots were formed in the idea of Unconditional love in contrast to the Calvinistic belief in eternal damnation. The first principle of Unitarian Universalism asks us to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. In other words, the first principle suggests that we engage in Unconditional love because it was from this that we were extended by our Transcendent Source.

Today, it is suggested that we consider  how we want to lead our lives: with Unconditional love or conditional love, with the Atonement or the separation?

Having anxiety attacks makes me anxious.

It has already been said that you believe you cannot control fear because you yourself made it, and your belief in it seems to render it out of your control. Yet any attempt to resolve the error through attempting the mastery of fear is useless. In fact, it asserts the power of fear by the very assumption that it need be mastered. The true resolution rests entirely on mastery through love. In the interim, however, the sense of conflict is inevitable, since you have placed yourself in a position where you believe in the power of what does not exist. T-2.VII.4:1-5

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition. 

When an anxiety attack makes you even more anxious, what do you do? Some turn to medication. Some to alcohol and cannabis. Some withdraw and isolate. Some to psychotherapy. The wise ones turn to prayer.

In Alcoholics Anonymous it is suggested in, step three, that we make a decision to turn our willfulness over to our Higher Power. It is suggested that we let go and let God.

In Unitarian Universalism, we join together to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual development. This encouragement might well include prayer, mediation, and mindfulness.

Today, it is suggested that we take responsibility for our own anxieties and learn how to calm ourselves by aligning ourselves with the will of God rather than our own willfulness. The Serenity prayer can help.

Cause and Effect

Actually, “Cause” is a term properly belonging to God, and His “Effect” is His Son. This entails a set of Cause and Effect relationships totally different from those you introduce into miscreation. The fundamental conflict in this world, then, is between creation and miscreation. All fear is implicit in the second, and all love in the first. The conflict is therefore one between love and fear. T-2.VII.3:11-15

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition. 

The word “God” is sometimes defined as “first cause.” God is the Ground Of Being, the Force, the Transcendent Source from which we are an extension if we choose to become aware of it. Unfortunately, we have chosen not to be aware of this and  because of our willfulness we think we have created ourselves which the Course calls “miscreation.” It is our thinking which is mistaken due to our lack of awareness, recognition, acknowledgement, and acceptance of Unconditional Love from our Cause.. 

When we miscreate we are fearful for unconsciously we know we are wrong. We have denied Unconditional Love so we can miscreate our egos.

In Alcoholics Anonymous it is suggested, in step eleven, that we improve our conscious contact with God. AA invites us to acknowledge and accept Unconditional Love instead of clinging to our egos.

In Unitarian Universalism, our Universalist heritage is faith in the unconditional love of God. It is this faith which is the antidote to fear.

Today, we are invited to consider the Cause, God, and the Effect, our Oneness with God, as the foundation of Creation. This awareness is experienced as great peace and joy. The opposite, our egos, is a miscreation which generates fear. Which do we want? Which will we choose?

Miracle-minded thinking reduces fear.

You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. I know it does not exist, but you do not. If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough. You may feel that at this point it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. You are not used to miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way. All miracle workers need that kind of training.T-2.VII.1: 1-10

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition. 

The Jesus who dictates the Course to Helen says clearly that we all are in need of miracle-minded thinking and that this takes training. We are so conditioned and socialized to think by the ego that we have forgotten that unconditional love is our natural inheritance. Jesus’ teaching is gentle. Jesus doesn’t demand or coerce, He merely observes and suggests. It is up to us to decide whether we want to continue with our wrong-minded thinking or learn and implement right-minded thinking. The “miracle” is simply this shift in the way we think. It is a miracle because it is the opposite of the way we have been conditioned by society.

In Alcoholics Anonymous it is suggested, in step twelve, that we share this spiritual awakening facilitated by knowing that there is another way to think with others. The old way of thinking, wrong-mindedness, must be risen above and a whole new world opens to us which we come to understand was there all along.

In Unitarian Universalism, we covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This search takes us eventually from wrong-minded thinking with the ways of the ego to right-minded thinking with the way of Spirit.

Today, it is suggested that we make a decision to enter into training in miracle thinking. The promise of the Course is that miracle thinking will reduce, if not eliminate, our fear.

Jeff Bezos has enough money. Support our local book store, Lift Bridge Book Shop, in Brockport, NY

 Jeff Bezos has enough money. $169 billion is enough.

So how about supporting our local book store, Lift Bridge book shop in Brockport, NY? It is family owned by a young couple raising four kids.

Buy from Lift Bridge either in person or ordering on line and have the book shipped to you.

If you do, I'll pay your shipping. Just let me know your shipping costs and your address and I will  reimburse you in cash. 

I have no financial stake in the Lift Bridge book store. I just love it and want it to continue to be an anchor store in our small Victorian village of Brockport, NY.

To go the Lift Bridge Book Shop web site click here.

Thanks.

David Markham

It’s not what you think but how you think that makes the difference.

You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them. This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level. T-2.VI.9:10 - 14

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition. 

We are usually taught that thoughts and behavior are two different things and that thoughts have no consequence only behavior does. We conclude that thoughts are impotent because we want to escape our guilt for thinking them. 

Thoughts are not impotent. They form beliefs and beliefs matter for ourselves and for others. A Course In Miracles is a course in mind control. It teaches us how to align our thinking with the world of the spirit instead of the world of the ego. This competence is the foundation of spiritual intelligence. Spiritual intelligence develops with practice.

In Alcoholics Anonymous it is suggested, in step three, that we make a decision to align our willfulness with God’s will. In step ten it is suggested that we take a continual personal inventory and when we are wrong to promptly admit it. Nowadays, we call this mindfulness. Practicing the steps of AA helps us to become mindful.

In Unitarian Universalism we join together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This responsibility involves the focus of our minds. Where, when, and how should this search be done? Are there better ways of searching? It is not what we think that is as important as how we think. Learning how to think takes instruction and practice.

Today, it is suggested that we be aware of how we think and attune our minds with unconditional love instead of conditional love.

The opposite of love is fear.

The first corrective step in undoing the error is to know first that the conflict is an expression of fear. Say to yourself that you must somehow have chosen not to love, or the fear could not have arisen. Then the whole process of correction becomes nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as the remedy. These steps may be summarized in this way: 

• Know first that this is fear.

•  Fear arises from lack of love. 

• The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.

•  Perfect love is the Atonement.

T-2.VI.7:1-8

A Course in Miracles . Foundation for Inner Peace. Kindle Edition. 

The Course makes clear that the basic problem which humans have is fear. Fears arise in a myriad of forms and are based on the false belief that we are a body, forgetting that we are primarily a soul. As a soul born from Unconditional Love where  there is no fear. Fear in the realm of Spirit is nonexistent. So when we are afraid we have forgotten that we are loved unconditionally.

In Alcoholics Anonymous it is suggested, in step eleven, that we improve our conscious contact with God through prayer and mediation. This prayer and meditation diminishes, if not eliminates, our fears as we remember who and what we really are.

In Unitarian Universalism we covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This inherent worth and dignity arises from the unconditional love of our creator as the Universalist theology teaches us.

Today, we remember and reflect on who and what we really are, the product of unconditional love of our Transcendent Source. In this realm fear is nonexistent and has no meaning for the opposite of fear is unconditional love.