Spiritual Living Podcast Archive

A belief is what we choose to be like. For example, we can accept that evil exists in the world, but we choose not to believe in it. We choose to live a life by intention, aligning ourselves to the Divine Flow of life. We trust our inner guidance. We welcome the challenges. We are all here, and we are meant to succeed.

To answer the call of our own lives is so important. We may live in our intellect but are reminded to live in our intuition as well. Perfectionism prevents us from playing in the discovery of our own passions. It holds us back. But mercy is about having a kindness and forgiveness of self and others, to set ourselves free and to allow us to move forward. We need to remember to play. All of our gifts are interrelated. We already have within us what we need. If we listen and then take action to move forward, that's all we need to do.

April's theme is "Harmony with Oneself", and this week's talk is about the discovery of one's passions. We don't choose our wildest dream---it chooses us. Our dreams point us towards our natural environment. And when we're not using our deeper gifts, we find ways to distract ourselves. We long to connect with our potentiality, with the vibrancy that's seeking expression. Living from our calling, we become fully alive. Regardless of the obstacles in our lives, what do we long to be about right now?

In celebrating the emergence of the Cosmic Christ, Dr. Patrick examines the principle of Order to Chaos. The idea of the chaordic (chaos and order) is that under all the discord and chaos is an emerging order. This is what Jesus modelled for us: "It's not what you do to me---It's how I respond to it." Jesus went out into the desert for a long time to re-tool his own consciousness. He was "mind fasting". This is embracing the mind in a way that it cannot control us. It is working with the mind so that eventually we decide what our mindset is.

Thought, emotion, and action must be unified in purpose and intent. There must be no conflict between them, or we will find ourselves in a position where one will negate the good in the others. We must intellectually accept the truth of our affirmations of good, we must emotionally embody and feel them, live them right now, and our every act must demonstrate that we know that they are actualities. It makes no difference if they are on the spiritual level at the present moment---they have to be there first in order to ever be any place else. -- Ernest Holmes on "Avoid Civil War" Everything starts with thought. Revisiting familiar thoughts and feelings creates a loop that we spin in. Our memories make up our internal environment. When we think from our past memories, we can only think from our past experiences. What we've memorized becomes our future experience, and so our environment ends up controlling our minds. We are creators of the loop, but we can practice the art of being greater than our environment, body, and time. Greatness is holding fast to a dream without regard to the environment. We change our brains when we start to think differently. When we are single-minded, the brain doesn't know the difference between the internal and the external.

Joe Dispenza gives four simple practices: simplify, break it down, work in short bursts, and slow it down. The quantum field that is us unfolds according to the following principles: Energy responds to mindful attention. We are energetically connected to everything in the quantum field---present, future, and past. It is important to be congruent with heart and mind. The quantum field should be full of surprise and awe. And finally, our participation with the quantum field should be full of thanks. We break the habit of being ourselves and create new habits. We communicate to the quantum field through our thoughts and feelings. It gets affected through our feelings and clear, direct intentions. It responds not to what we want but to who we are being. Can we give thanks and feel the elevated emotions associated with a desired event before it happens?

In this week's talk, Dr. Patrick focuses on Zen Buddhist practices from the books The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner and Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza. The four "S" words are: Simplify, Small, Short, and Slow. Dr. Joe outlines the ideas that make up our personal realities: Thoughts, choices, behaviours, experiences, emotions, and then the same thoughts. This is a cycle that creates our personality and ultimately our personal reality. These are the things that fire and wire up in our brain. It's all based on choice---our chosen behaviours and what we choose to dwell upon. Dr. Joe's recipe for a new personal reality is meditation, intention, sponsoring thoughts, creating a plan, recording our successes, and queuing our life.

I live to be the message that I long to see. I long to be the way that I am looking for. I need to shine the Light that I long to see. -- Rev. Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith In Latin, the word community means the coming together in the performance of services. In other words, community is a call to action. We are called to be in relationship with metaphor and mystery. We are called to become members of the beloved community to shift and change the world. And how do we change the world? Through love. Love is the ultimate conqueror. Love is not an emotion. Love is a living, organically-powerful energy that holds together the fabric of the created world. Love is what we are. And the world is looking for love masters, and each one of us has the potential to be a love master.

The Second Coming is an awakening to our own state of Christ Consciousness. We become the place where it happens, or not. "Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one of us is in the eyes of the Divine. If only they could truly see themselves as they truly are. If only then could they see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed, and I suppose that the big problem is we would all fall down and worship each other." -- Thomas Merton

The invisible embrace of beauty: Love changes the way we see ourselves and others. We feel beautiful when we are loved. And to invoke an awareness of beauty in another is to give them a precious gift that they will never lose. When we say to someone, "You are beautiful", it is more than a statement or platitude. It is a recognition and invocation of the dignity, the grandeur, and the grace of their spirit. -- John O'Donohue

Once we become aware of the patterns that we have formed, we can revisit them and make new choices. As we surrender more and more deeply to the transformative process through our spiritual practices, we realize that we cannot expect the outer conditions of our lives to change while we remain inwardly the same.

The foremost challenge for leaders today is to maintain the clarity to stand confidently in the abundant universe of possibility, no matter how fierce the competition, no matter how stark the necessity to go for the short-term goal, no matter how fearful people are, and no matter how urgently the wolf may appear to howl at the door. It is to have the courage and persistence to distinguish the downward spiral from the radiant realm of possibility in the face of any challenge. -- Benjamin Zander There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. Conditions don't matter, only the language we use to describe our circumstances. Often, organizations and individuals get caught in the downward spiral of survival at all costs. But every time we open our mouths is a choice to leadership. A vision is a powerful framework to take the operation of an organization of any size from the downward spiral into the arena of possibility. A vision articulates a possibility, fulfills a desire fundamental to humankind, makes no reference to morality or ethics, is stated as a picture, contains no specifics of time, place, audience, or product, is free-standing, is a long line of possibilities radiating outward, invites infinite expression, development, and proliferation, and speaking a vision transforms the speaker.

In life, should we stay or go? Inner turmoil. Forces within us. Asking us to do something different. There's a challenge that we face in this supposed "real life". These are the control measures that we allow to become a part of our daily expression. But are we truly creators of our own experience? We bring to our lives ourselves, our own personal reflection of what we believe to be true. We get to design how we react to that. We are all individual expressions of an Infinite Creator. The One manifests Itself through all Its creation and is not absorbed by Its creation. -- Ernest Holmes The studying and pursuit of Truth never ends. But it must begin.

A conductor allows each member of the orchestra to become powerful. Are we leading in our lives? What is ours to do? Transformation happens when we shift our view of the world, when we see that what we have been doing is hiding, taking ourselves away, not participating, not engaging, not taking risks, and sitting in the back row of our lives. When we are triggered, what is the belief that is underlying this feeling we are experiencing? What are the thoughts that are taking us away from the present moment? Often, there is a constant chatter in our mind. Our hope is to refrain from harmful speech and actions, including speech directed to ourselves. According to Pema Chodron, we can live beautifully with uncertainty and change. What will we call our year? What is our word?

According to Benjamin and Rosamund Zander, "enrollment is about giving yourself as a possibility to others and being ready to catch their spark. It's about playing together as partners in a field of light..." Too often we hide and "take ourselves away" from life. We hide out in the back row of our life. "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap that you have something to lose. You are already naked; there is no reason not to follow your heart." -- Steve Jobs Wherever authentic love is present, healing takes place. Affirm that: I am generative/creative. I am giving. I am producing new life. I am creating new ideas. I make a contribution. I enjoy grace and wholeness, passion, and compassion. We have a choice. Will we live in survival mode or in possibility mode?

Today's talk is about living our lives in the art of possibility instead of living in survival mode. Others may show us how they did this, and may even suggest how we can proceed, but there is a path that every person must walk alone. Yet not alone, because forevermore there is a Spirit that beckons, a Presence that feels out towards us as we feel out towards It. Yet, in the discovery of the self, to the self, and by the self, there is no delaying, no use waiting for something to come along or someone who can do this for us, for no such person exists. It's all invented. In our perceptions and the scripts we run in our minds, we are all making up stuff all the time. What assumptions are we making about life? Are we living in problems that are not our problems? What things are holding us back? The universe of possibilities is generative, creative, giving, generous, producing new life, creating new ideas, contributing, and it involves joy, grace, awe, wholeness, passion, and compassion.

Today's talk is inspired by a line written by poet Mary Oliver: "Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one, wild and precious life." Our life is ours to live and to do with as we choose. How are we in service to our life, with grace and beauty and love and inspiration? We can't give what we don't have. We can't take anyone where we haven't gone. The path is working with ourselves with what is happening here and now. The secret of all great masters is the precision and openness and intelligence of the present moment.

Renew thyself completely each day, do it again and again and forever again. We are not waiting on God---God is waiting on us. Meditation is a way of being, of living, of listening, of walking along the path of life, of being at peace with the way things are. The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer is an absolute example of surrender and living in close proximity to the Unseen Force for Good. Are we better off making up an alternative reality in our mind and then fighting with reality to make it our own way, or are we better off letting go of what we want and serving the same forces of reality that manage to create the entire perfection of the universe around us? In other words, do we want to swim upstream or swim downstream? With the faith of letting go and pointing ourselves downstream, we learn that life knows what it's doing. As Ernest Holmes said, we should fast from the idea of lack and feast on the idea of plenty. It is ours to choose. Happify video: An animated beginner's guide to meditation.

In the age of communication, everyone has a religion. That is to say, we all put our attention and devotion into something. The biblical story of wandering in the wilderness is a metaphor for the place where words and language do not exist. When we go into the wilderness, we do find God. The path of seeking means we've given up our allegiance to blind faith. It's yours and mine to discover our own path. Henry David Thoreau said that to affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. A willingness to embrace what comes up and what lies at the core of our experience is the basis of all meditation. In our meditation practice, we need to keep it simple. Practice non-doing. Understand that nothing needs to happen for this moment to be complete. Practice patience, letting go, trust, and generosity. Are we contributing to the suffering of others or even our own suffering?

As consciousness grows, it will manifest in enlarged opportunities and a greater field of action. Let us feel that we are surrounded by all this power, that it is there when we speak and never doubt that what we say will spring into being. We should speak right out into Mind all that we desire and believe that it will be done unto us. Let us see ourselves as being in the position that we desire mentally, dwell upon it, and then speak with perfect assurance that it is done. Then forget it and trust in the Law. Remember that we cannot hope to get results unless we keep but the one idea and do not mix thoughts in our mind. All is ours, but we must take it. Life is a mirror and reflects back to the thinker what he or she thinks into it. We must be a light unto ourselves. Mindfulness has everything to do with waking up and living in harmony with one's self and with the world. Mindfulness provides a simple but powerful route for getting ourselves unstuck, back in touch with our own wisdom and vitality. It is a way of taking charge of the direction and quality of our lives. We need to pause long enough in our experience to let the present moment sink in. It is simple but not easy. It is about stopping. "Don't just do something, sit there."

Life is a mirror that reflects back to the thinker what he thinks into it. -- Ernest Holmes Our true beliefs are mirrored in our most intimate relationships. In life, we experience the mirror of the reflections of the moment; the mirror of what we judge in the moment; the mirror of what we have lost, given away, or had taken from us; the mirror of the dark night of the soul; and the mirror of our greatest acts of compassion. When we gain the insight in the moment, we can heal it in the moment. Our mastery of life signals that we're ready to experience the healing of our greatest fear. We must have compassion for who we are and who we've become. The kindness that we give ourselves is key.

The Universe is talking to us. What does the language of the Infinite look like? The Divine Matrix serves as the mirror in our world of relationships that we create in our beliefs. The everyday world is said to be the reflection of a deeper reality carved into the fabric of the universe, a reality that we simply can't see from our place within it. The Divine Matrix is reflecting in our lives whatever we think, feel, emote, and believe in our hearts and minds. We are aware that a subtle shift in the way we see ourselves is all that is needed for that change to be mirrored in our health, careers, and relationships. Our opportunity is to ask what our next good knowing is. At the end of the day, what do we stand for? What gives meaning to our lives? Love. What do we love? The key is surrender and trust, to be grounded in our own being.

In our connection, nothing is local. There is no private good. Our blessings are everyone's blessings. Our sorrow and pain are shared as well. We can send love out across the ocean. We can send love out to others. Prayer is effective at a distance. The emphasis is on the practitioner doing their own interior work creating the qualities of consciousness that the client they are working with is desiring to experience. This works because we are all connected in the hologram of life. All that we can be for one another is the One Presence.

Continuing the exploration of this month's book, The Divine Matrix by Gregg Braden, Dr. Patrick covers keys 5 through 10: The act of focusing our consciousness is an act of creation. We all have the power to create all the changes that we choose. There is an infinite number of possibilities---we only see the ones we focus on. A new reality is not enough. Feeling is the prayer. Feeling is the language that speaks to the Divine Matrix. The feelings that create must be without ego or judgement. Intention trumps intensity every time.

Gregg Braden's book The Divine Matrix is a profound study of energy, thought, physics, and Mind. The physicist considered by many to be the father of quantum theory, Max Planck, once said, "All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force. We must assume behind this force exists a conscious mind, an intelligent mind, and the mind is the matrix of all matter." The more intelligently we can live our lives, the more grace-filled and wonder-filled our lives will be. Greg Braden reminds us that "the question is less about whether or not we are passive observers and more about how we can intentionally create."

Self is the true refuge of self. Understanding this, we can choose to strengthen our courage, our loving-kindness, and compassion, evoking them in ourselves through reflection, meditation, attention, and repeated training. We can also choose to abandon pride, resentment, fear, and contraction when they arise. -- Buddha Staying humble is so important. Stand still, and stop the sun. Read something inspirational, write a gratitude letter, speak with emotion, imagine experiencing your good, expect leads and follow direction, celebrate successes and demonstrations, and end each day with gratitude and forgiveness. Give up control. Choose words wisely. Face fears fearlessly. Dig ditches to receive leads. Cast the burden. Experience what you want. Don't force anything. Trust. If we want to awaken all of humanity, then let us awaken all of ourselves. If we want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then let us eliminate all that is dark and negative in ourselves. Truly, the greatest gift we have to give is that of our own self-transformation. -- Buddha

Our internal "GPS" guidance system is how we feel. If we are feeling good, we're on course with respect to what we want. So when we're feeling bad, our one job is to change our thoughts so we are congruent, so we feel good, so we perform better. To change our negative subconscious programs, we have to think a better thought. If we try too hard, we're resisting. So the journey is about letting go, accepting, and being in the FLOW (Feeling Love Operate Within). Give IT away. IT represents our Infinite Truth. What is the infinite truth within us? What is the truth within us that needs to come out and be shared with others? What are our Ideal Things, the money, the health, the relationships that we want?

From the book The Path to Wealth by May McCarthy, Dr. Patrick talks about the Seven Spiritual Steps for Financial Abundance: (1) Read something inspirational, (2) write a gratitude letter, (3) speak with emotion, (4) imagine experiencing your good, (5) expect leads and follow direction, (6) celebrate successes and demonstrations, and (7) end each day with gratitude and forgiveness. He outlines the steps as a daily practice that sets the tone for our day, making us alert and receptive for the good that is ours to claim. Our mental acceptance should be filled with conviction, warmth, colour, and imagination. The creative power responds to feeling more quickly than any other mental attitude. Therefore, we should try to feel the reality of what we're doing when we give an affirmative prayer. And this reality is felt as we become more and more convinced that Spirit responds to us.

Rev. Tammie Banting shares the story of listening to the voice of Spirit in her own life, and how this voice makes itself known in all of our lives. She challenges us to consider a longing that we may have in our lives, showing up as a little voice that's trying to get our attention about some aspect of our lives, something that we haven't listened to yet. What is this voice inside of us? What is its source? Why does it persist in small and in large ways? How does it serve us? And why does it terrify us at times? Which voice is the voice of God? And how do we connect more fully with it? It is the voice of the Divine within us. Spirit's longing for us is that we meet our full potentiality as a personalized expression of God, where God's fullest expression of Itself is realized through the fullest expression of us. All the gifts, our passions, the creativity, the talents, our ideas, our ingenuity, all of what we bring to this earthly plane is longing to be expressed. It is the way that the Universe which is always in motion stays in motion. It is the voice of Divine discontent. It is calling us to do and be more, to fully experience our birthright in a way that is unique to us. What is Spirit's voice within us calling us to?

This week, Stacey Berger inspires us to look at how we are planting the seeds of our dreams. Often, we can hold onto a dream so tightly that we choke it. Instead, we should hold onto our dreams with an open hand. Sometimes, when we plant a seed, we start digging it up prematurely. We don't give it a chance to grow. So having more patience and faith in the unfolding of our dreams is needed. Other times, we allow fear to overtake us. So how do we go from fear to love? Everything is energy. That means emotions are energy too, and emotions need to move. They want to be expressed. Instead of getting distracted and being mesmerized by what is not happening, we should shift our focus to what is happening. Acknowledging the work of Spirit and what is already unfolding is key to seeing our dreams fulfilled.

The journey of the soul is the experience of the mystery of life. What is it that cracks us open? That allows us to have a soulful experience? Do we know where we are going? What our purpose might ultimately be? It is our task as a human being to find out. We can only find it by becoming deeply connected to our own soul.

We begin the study of Panache Desai's book Discovering Your Soul Signature. The first seven areas of discovery are fear, sadness, anger, guilt, shame, self-judgement, and patterns. Although we may not want to look at some of those, understanding them leads to our growth. What is our soul? Our soul is the I AM. Our soul can inform our thoughts, but if we never let it do that, we are building our life on our egoic nature, with no foundation. We can take any hurtful experience from our past and use it as fuel for our transformational work, and we must do that or our affirmations will just be covering over our troubles and using our teaching as a spiritual bypass. As we start to grow, sometimes things get worse because our old self is not quick to give up. Fear, sadness, anger, and other negative patterns can pop up; our continued spiritual practice gets us through this stage. Our Soul is part of the mystery of life. Brené Brown says it beautifully when she suggests we tell our children, "you know sweetheart, you are trip-wired for heartbreak, sorrow, sadness, disappointment, but you are so equipped to handle it."

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. -- John Keats That which we dwell upon, we bring into our experience more and more. We may have complaints; emptiness; meaninglessness; vague depression; disillusionment about marriage, family, and relationships; a loss of values; a yearning for personal fulfillment; and a hunger for spirituality. In that, we reflect a loss of the soul and what the soul craves. We cannot solve our emotional problems until we grasp the mystery that is honouring the Divine and the Departed (our ancestors). The Divine and the Departed is part of the basic care that, as human beings, we have to bring to life. Soul-work is not adjusting to the norms of society but, rather, the goal is a richly elaborate life connected to society and nature, woven into the culture of family, nature, and the globe.

We experience extraordinary results in our lives when we focus on one thing. What's the one thing we can do, such that by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary? Gary Keller, the author of The One Thing, says, "People do not decide their futures. They decide their habits and their habits decide their futures." Our purpose informs our priorities and our priorities inform our productivity. Successful people are highly productive, in harmony with their priorities and purpose. We each have unique gifts and talents---but are we going to share them? If we don't think we're enough, we probably won't. That's why we have community to help us embrace and love the parts of us that we think are broken. Link to the YouTube video Dr. Patrick showed.

Buddha said, "Non-attachment is the philosophy of my life." The only way to end suffering is through non-attachment. The only way to be truly free is through non-attachment to any kind of results in the outer world. Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If in our heart we still cling to anything---anger, anxiety, or possessions---we cannot be free. -- Thich Nhat Hanh Our degree of non-attachment is proportionate to our ability to focus on what we want through our intention. When we are non-attached, we recognize that we're perfect, whole, and complete in the here and now with everything that we have. Only when we need nothing do we have the power to create everything that we want, easily and effortlessly.

Genius awaits us, but we must be aware of six productivity lies that can derail us. First, equality is a lie. The things that are the most important don't often scream the loudest. Multitasking is ineffective. Also, success is a short race. We work most effectively by using a sprint fuelled by discipline just long enough for a habit to kick in. Willpower is not an unlimited resource. We should do what matters most first, each day. A balanced life is a myth. A successful life is about purpose, meaning, and significance. Magic happens at the extremes. Replace balance with counter-balance. Finally, going big is not bad. Big is about who you and I can become. Big is essential to the extraordinary. Act bold, take a chance, push the envelope, and don't fear failure. We are at the centre of It. We can do nothing to enhance Its efficiency. In other words, we simply need to get out of the way of Spirit acting in our lives. -- Dr. Thomas Troward

If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. Sometimes we can do the same with spiritual practices---we try to take on too much. Go small---we should ignore all the things we could do and do what we should do. Big success comes when we do a few things really well. What's the one thing for us? What are we passionate about? It's about taking what we have been offered uniquely and giving it to the world.

We can all become visionaries. Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope. -- Victoria Safford We choose our life experience. With our access to history, and possessing knowledge of our history in almost every field, with our vast library of scientific knowledge and understanding, we have a great foundation to launch from, where we can consciously decide what kind of world to create. We are the "co" with the Creator. We are co-creators with the Divine. If I am to know God directly, I must become completely God, and God I, so that this God and this I become One. God is at home... It is we who have gone out for a walk. -- Meister Eckhart It is not enough for us to be compassionate. We have to act. -- The Dalai Lama

We are all addicted to something, and that something is our own pattern of thinking. We all start out with a construct, a container, that we are given as we grow up. As we mature, we deconstruct our beliefs and then reconstruct them. We suffer to get well; powerlessness is where we start. We come to Spirit by doing it wrong. This is how we are cracked open, and how we break free from our ego. With our ego in charge, we would rather be ruined than changed. We need critical self thinking---without it, our lives become idolatrous. We start to worship ourselves and our traditions, our habits. We need a container to hold the bigger idea; we need to feel good enough about ourselves so we can let go of ourselves. Only surrender can change us.

It's so important to activate joy. Most people confuse joy with pleasure---pleasure is temporary, but joy is a state of being. This week's talk features the story of the Prodigal Son, a tale of leaving the state of well-being, of moving out of the state of wholeness. From it, we learn that Spirit is always with us, and everything that Spirit has is ours. We can shift from meritocracy to grace, which is inclusive, merciful, and non-punitive. Ultimately, we learn that we can't get there---we can only be there. Life's meaning is to humbly and proudly return what we've been given.

This week's talk draws wisdom from a deep, enlightening interview between comedian Pete Holmes and Fr. Richard Rohr. In understanding sacred texts, literalism is the lowest form of understanding, whereas faith activates the space within us where there is something holy and sacred, the kinesthetic experience of the Divine. Faith involves total conviction. We commit and start to cultivate the seeds of faith we have planted. Empowered thought thickens into form. Over time, with practice and nurturing, what we empower becomes our experience. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. And when we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves but allow passage to its beams." The path to mature understanding follows the three stages of Construction, Destruction, and Reconstruction. Reconstruction is the Third Eye, the new perspective, the new way of seeing, the middle way. When we're entrenched in our way of being, we can never move into the third way of seeing. The path to transcendence only occurs through great love or great suffering. The rational mind cannot comprehend suffering. Nor can it understand the experience of love. What if we accept what is happening in our lives as if we had chosen it?

Faith requires uncertainty. It requires an intimate, powerful communion with the Divine where doubt is at the heart of the matter. There is a difference between faith and certainty; there is a difference between faith and fanaticism. Faith requires us to live in the Mystery. It takes great wisdom, love, compassion, and deep caring to stand in the unknown possibility.

Our Divine right and natural state of being is Freedom and Joy. When we are living in freedom and joy, we are more in alignment with our true nature. Are we ever lonely? Lonely people have a real difficulty with self-disclosure, communication, and are poor listeners. Yet within all beings, there is a seed of perfection, and compassion is required to activate that seed, which is inherent in our hearts and minds. We must show up completely curious, recognizing the Divinity and One Life in everyone we meet. We must show up completely present and vulnerable. This is intimacy. How do we activate intimacy? Through touch, in sharing our innermost self with another, through connecting with another, through connecting with Nature. Love wants to be expressed, wherever and however it shows up. We need only courageously expand our concept of intimacy to include all other forms that surround us. Although we can practice with one, we can understand that we are intimately connected to everyone. If what we seek in life is happiness, and intimacy is an important ingredient of a happier life, then it clearly makes sense to conduct our lives on the basis of a model of intimacy that includes as many forms of connection with others as possible.

Dr. Rev. Sue Rubin, as the first minister of this Centre, speaks about homecoming and the unfolding of a principle. Her teacher Dr. Tom Johnson gave us a powerful truth to practice: God is. I am. When saying this, as we perform the sign language sign for God, it means we affirm the Divinity that extends above our head into the heavens and through and beyond, as well as down below the ground we're standing on into the Earth, further into infinity. And when we stretch our arms out in the horizontal plane, that represents our expression of the Divine. The spiritual nature of who we are is exactly what we express through everything we think, say, feel, and do. God is, the One and Only Wholeness there is. And God and we are One. There is One Power. It is the Wholeness of Life. It is right where we are. And it is clearly demonstrating Itself through every cell and atom of our precious living temple, our body of God. God within us recognizes Itself as everything we are. The power of an idea in its universal spin wants something greater to emerge. Our mind is the centre of Divine operation. The Divine operation is always moving towards expansion and fuller expression, and the action of Divine Mind moving through us creates this expansion and fuller expression. There is something that is calling from the past, from that which was embodied as a living idea, and yet what we do now and what we proceed to do tomorrow have to be something greater. The Divine cannot replicate or duplicate what was, because what was has already been, and what shall be is born out of what is. It does this through an orderly sequence of growth. It is something new that wants to emerge out of something that was created previously, yet not limited. It needs to be something new, because the Divine cannot change Its inherent nature. It must operate in us as It does in all planes. The next best thing is this: We grow consciousness. In all our activity, we do only one thing: We grow ourselves. What comes next is determined by whether we see ourselves as a human expressing the Divine, or the Divine expressing as the human.

This week begins a series looking at the book The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama. Happiness is determined by our state of mind rather than external events. In other words, we can train ourselves in happiness. It requires practice and sincere and dedicated effort to live a happy life. Spiritually speaking, we have four capacities of awareness: sleep, dreaming, captured by the outside world, and spiritual. Spiritual practice is whatever supports us in looking within. There are also four factors of fulfillment for happiness: wealth, worldly satisfaction, spirituality, and enlightenment. If we can maintain a calm, peaceful state of mind, then we can be a very happy person. The greater the level of calmness of our mind, the greater our ability to enjoy a happy and joyful life. Here's how we can train our mind for happiness: learning what things align us, cultivating positive mental states, and eliminating negative mental states. Our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience.

Hypnotist and inspirational speaker Wayne Lee teaches us that there are three different areas in life in which it is important to give: Giving to ourselves (to make sure we don't run out of gas). Giving out our genius. Our genius is whatever our passion or purpose is! If we don't give out our genius, we are shortchanging other people. Giving our joy. All we have to do is be in a state of joy, by being fully connected to our Source. When we are open to give, life expands. GIVE stands for "Generosity In Various Expressions". We are vibrational beings, and whatever we give out, we get back. Life is magic; we live in a world of illusions, and we are creating the illusions. The only thing that is real, is living from Love. GIVE can also stand for "God in Vibrational Experience/Expression".

This Sunday talk is dedicated to the memory of Prayer Warrior Julie C. Bull. Whatever we desire already exists in the world. Others have gone before us and blazed the trail. So we don't have to reinvent the proverbial wheel---we just have to follow in the path already laid out for us. We only need focus on the trail and push through whatever self-defeating stories come up for us. It's important to figure out where we stand in relationship to what it is we long to experience. We can make a map of where we are now and where we want to be. A good map allows us to adapt to the obstacles and to keep on moving. Change is a slow accumulation of details. It's like waking up one morning and finally feeling different because we've taken back control of a small piece of our lives. Our change will be an accumulation of a whole series of decisions. The Seven-Day Stamina Workout is this: Face the day, write in a journal, exercise for 20 minutes, break routine, make eye contact, go public, and connect.

Powerful people tell the truth. So we start by facing the truth that we are not fine. Let us slow down right now. This allows us time to be present and honest with ourselves. Let us audit our lives. We do this by writing down some of the negative things that are going on in our thinking. This allows us to release the negative thoughts and the resultant negative emotions. Let us admit what we want. This gives our lives some direction. When we imagine our future, we begin to build it. And because we need other people, we go public with what we want, finding the support that we need in all that we do.

One cannot be a good student of the Science of Mind who is filled with fear and confusion. We must keep ourselves in a state of equilibrium, in a state of poise, peace, and confidence, in a state of spiritual understanding. Let us align with our powerful selves. In this, we can approach making choices as a spiritual practice. What will happen if we take the risk? What will happen to us if we don't? Positive change is choosing to take on the uncertainty of life on our own terms, with passionate curiosity and life-long learning.

The Divine Feminine is an intelligent and loving energy that contains the qualities of intuition, compassion, emotion, creativity, empathy, collaboration, spirituality, holistic thought, and right-brain thinking. This energy is a given in our experience. There are ways that our brains can betray us, such as anti-action and false limits. But awareness can allow us to push through these life blocks. We can question the thoughts that we think. Further, we have a psychological immune system, which makes us stronger and more resilient than we realize.