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Prayer
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We come into the Holy Instant of now, this powerful present moment. We remember the truth of ourselves as spiritual beings, free beyond the bounds of bodies. We remember Oneness with God/Source/Creator and all of Creation. We affirm our power to release all things that limit or bind us. We gently and willingly release misperceptions, grudges, attachments to past events, and fully open to the allness of life. We claim the release in collective consciousness of behaviors, ideas and systems that damage the Earth. Knowing that release is a cleansing part of Divine flow and Order we say thank you, amen, and so it is!
"I am a powerful spiritual being whose divine inheritance is freedom and so I lovingly release all baggage, limiting beliefs and old wounds and open fully to life, love, and joy."
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Charles Fillmore
Sometimes in order to move forward, or help another move forward, we have to let go. Sometimes we gain most when we cut our losses. Release/Elimination/Renunciation is a profoundly powerful spiritual practice. Just like a snake must slough off old binding skin in order to grow, we have to shed beliefs, habits, perceptions that no longer serve in order to expand, flex and flow.
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When we clear space on the altar of our minds, we make room for new insights and truths to enter. Releasing the perception that we’re “only human”, or bound by bodies, opens us to meeting our true identities as spiritual beings. Ella Pomeroy in her book, Powers of the Soul, writes, "In the mind of God, Elimination is an idea of emergence from bonds." In our Unity way, a basic emphasis is that release/elimination is directly connected to what is next ready to emerge spiritually.
There’s an “is-ness” that knows what it’s doing. Let’s start there! Unity might say that there’s one presence and one power!
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Now, this “is-ness” isn’t an old man who sits on a fluffy cloud in a remote corner of an eternally expanding universe, watching your every move and jotting notes into some leather binder. Such an image is preceded by similar and not-so-similar images spanning many tens of thousands of years past – each a reflection of an era, each a reflection of a culture, even a reflection of a need.
Circumstances of oppression gave rise to gods of justice. Circumstances of need gave rise to gods of supply. Circumstances of conflict gave rise to gods of might, and so forth.
This is to be expected. According to some, human beings have hardwired tendencies to project self upon our greater worlds. This is why human beings tend to perceive human faces in trees. Human beings tend to associate human moods with weather. Human beings tend to infer human desires in animals.
And yes, human beings tend to assign human attributes to “is-ness.” And so the experience that trees are peaking through your windows, that the weather is punishing the homosexuals, that the dog is sad about global warming and that the legs of a moody superhuman are dangling from the clouds speak far more to the nature of humanity than to the nature of God. That god seemed to change throughout the Judeo-Christian library doesn’t tell the story of a changing God, you see. It tells the story of a changing people.
There is an “is-ness” and it knows what it’s doing. And this isn’t some new idea. It’s been expressed by ancients and contemporaries alike. It was Deepak Chopra who said it this way, “Underlying the infinite diversity of life is the unity of one all-pervasive spirit.
There is no separation between you and this field of energy.” Eckert Tolle, that “Jesus realized his oneness with God and what he attempted to do was show all of us how to realize our own oneness with God also.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, that, “There is a soul at the [center] of nature and over the will of every man.” Unity, that God is the source and creator of all, and that we are spiritual beings, created in God’s image.
If there is an “is-ness” and it knows what it’s doing, then we arrive at an operative question: how might we be frustrating the divine activity that would work through us? Individually speaking, chronic negativity is a good place to consider. How about low expectations? How about unchecked fear? Have you ever considered that your endless answers might actually be preventing you from seeing the solution that’s already before you? Emerson called these endless answers our “bloated nothingness.”
"The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.”
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Meister Eckhart
Collectively speaking, what if we start with greed? The world is awash in human addiction to too-muchness. More money, more toys, more status, more trinkets, more security, more attention, more pleasure. This addiction to too-muchness is wreaking havoc on nature and our fellow species. Unity Cofounder Charles Fillmore wrote and spoke of this frequently, “Those who hold the thought of accumulation are inviting trouble and even disaster.
God does not clothe the lilies in a moment and then leave them to the mercy of lack. We can rest assured that He will much more clothe us and keep us clothed from day to day according to our need. When we doubt this, we shut off the stream of divine supply.” And in a later writing, “If you would help the world, and incidentally yourself, begin to deny selfishness and greed and affirm, ‘I am open to the splendor of the kingdom of God within.’”
If there is an “is-ness” and it knows what it’s doing, then how might we be frustrating the divine activity that would work through us?
Common thinking would have us – including those of us in New Thought traditions - believe that every need is to be met with acquisition: another book, another guru, another class, another workshop. It’s uncommon to consider release as the path to freedom. The world celebrates addition. Sometimes, it’s a subtraction that we need.
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I have found this to be true in my life. Sometimes, it’s been the overdue release of something (a pattern, a belief, a paradigm, a behavior) that has allowed life to “clothe this lily” with its splendor. In matters of ecology, this applies. We can do better! What must we renounce in our commitments to becoming healthier contributors to the family of life?
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Renunciation: the art of removing what frustrates perfect Life being Itself through me.
"We shall serve for the joy of serving, prosperity shall flow to us and through us in unending streams of plenty. ”
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Charles Fillmore