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You probably have had the same
experience I have had in
meditation: sometimes feeling
that you were really in touch
with God, sometimes wondering who
moved, as the bumper sticker
asks.
One day recently I was
actually asking God for clarity
on how to effect a beneficial
meditation, and a new realization
came through! Suddenly the idea
came to me that unconditional
love is the optimum environment
for the evolution of
consciousness. Just as suddenly I
found myself thinking that
unconditional love is the
environment in the kingdom of God
that Jesus Christ taught us to
seek first and then all the
desired things of life would be
added.
By this time all I could say
(to myself of course) was
WOW!
What I had been given was the
keys to the kingdom, the best way
I had ever found for feeling a
sure sense of tuning in to God,
our Life Source! At a very deep
level I knew that to be in the
consciousness of unconditional
love is to be in contact with the
truest reality of God.
So since that wonderful
morning I have devoted hours of
contemplation to the significance
of this idea and have written
copious notes in my journal.
One way that I have looked at
the idea is that I have become
aware of a great breakthrough in
human consciousness marked by a
relatively new term:
unconditional love.
Unconditional love is God's
love as Jesus taught it, but the
term itself is not in the Bible.
In fact it seems to me that I
have been aware of the term in
only the last half of my present
incarnation. (I feel sure the
idea has been gestating for
thousands of years!)
This brings me to an important
point I would like you to think
about with me: both physical and
mental/spiritual evolution
consist of repeated efforts to
adapt to certain conditions in
order to improve life.
Breakthroughs or revolutions
occur only after many such
efforts (for example,
affirmations). When we experience
WOW, an epiphany, a revelation,
this does not necessarily equate
with a substantial change in
performance immediately. But the
change is on the way!
You and I, and every
meditator, every religious
devotee, needs to feel we are
making progress - and it is not
always apparent.
All of the sciences can mount
massive evidence that repeated
and repeated and repeated efforts
in developing ideas and theories
and breakthroughs do produce
results. We hear scientists all
the time say such things as
"within the next decade we will
have . ."
The famous British
biologist/researcher Rupert
Sheldrake is developing a theory
about the way the evolutionary
process breaks through from one
member of a species who makes a
new contribution to the entire
species.
When I first read Sheldrake, I
got excited because I related
this to our all becoming like
Jesus SOON! But Sheldrake was not
talking about SOON. He was simply
saying that anything new one
member of a species does enters
the stream of consciousness of
the entire species. There is a
lot of hope in this
discovery!
And we see all kinds of
evidence in our own lifetimes.
Think of what Mary Baker Eddy,
Charles and Myrtle Fillmore,
Ernest Holmes, and certain others
have done with the evolving ideas
they helped to establish more
firmly in human consciousness.
But they didn't invent the ideas;
they had been on the back burner
for generations!
When I was attending the U of
W in the 30's (this was the
nineteen 30's, you understand!) I
saw the Stanford basketball star
Angelo "Hank" Luisetti shoot his
famous jump shot, his invention!
Everybody shoots the jump shot
today and did within a very short
time.
Who was it that said, "The
most powerful thing in the world
is an idea whose time has come"?
The Hundredth Monkey story has
often been quoted as evidence of
Sheldrake's idea. It is the story
(just to jog your memory) of a
baby monkey on an island in the
Japanese chain who first washed
off the sand from the sweet
potatoes that grew abundantly
there. The adults had not been
doing this, but soon they all
followed the junior in the clan!
One of my very good friends,
famous herself for pioneer work
as an anthropologist in New
Guinea among the pygmies, Alison
Peters Jablonko (I was the parson
at her wedding) told me that she
had a friend who was there and
knew the story was true!
So SOON or SOONER OR LATER you
and I are going to be expressing
"the same Mind that was also in
Christ Jesus."
And this is why I continue to
be excited - encouraged - by the
breakthrough I have become aware
of. As more and more of us enter
the Kingdom of God by finding the
entrance marked UNCONDITIONAL
LOVE, we will not only become
more loving and establish a world
of love and peace. We will also
experience all of the added
things.
My theory is that being in the
consciousness of unconditional
love eliminates many or most of
the negative deterrents and
distractions that dilute our
spiritual evolution and opens the
way for us to give fuller and
fuller expression to all of our
spiritual faculties. Isn't that a
fairly accurate assumption when
you think of what Jesus
promised?
Don
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