What You Identify With Can Make You or Break You
March 28, 2010
Today I just desire to talk about one thing that is on my mind.
It is a quote from Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, according to the Bible.
Here it is: Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth… (Proverbs 5:15-18)
This is what these words mean to me: Drink water from your own cistern means stay within your own mind, heart and body. The cistern is the body, the container along with your mind and heart. I add to that a comment that answers come from within and not outside of us.
That line of thinking is supported by the verse — Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?
When we start to look for answers outside of ourselves we get scattered. Have you ever noticed that? I have. Even late into my life when someone stood beside me when I was writing a test I would feel so self conscious and afraid. What was that about? It said I was looking for someone from the outside to judge my work. I no longer had any confidence in my self. I had been conditioned to believe someone out there had the answer and was the judge of my work.
I no longer enjoyed what came up from my cistern, my well, my inspiration and was letting others determine my thought.
My thought became split between what came up in me and what I thought others thought. My thinking was no longer mine. It became like streams of water in the streets. It was fragmented because my thoughts were now conditioned by people outside of me. I either feared them or was in awe of them.
It’s as if my cistern became cracked and the water was running all over. My thought process got all mixed up.
I guess I lost confidence in my self.
Here comes the reminder in this verse. “Let them be for yourself alone and not for the strangers with you”
In other words let your thoughts, feelings and impressions be your own. Enjoy them and trust them and surely do not let the stranger determine for you what they mean.
After all they are your thoughts.
Somewhere in the process of growing up we learn to distrust our own thought and we bear the consequences. We feel like broken cistern. Like vessels who’s streams are running everywhere in the streets.
We have the privilege and the ability to come back, as the verse says: Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth.
That means the person you are is like a vessel. Your mind is under your control, inside that vessel. Enjoy it. This is the wife of your youth. This is you. The you you are born to be. Isn’t that is wonderful? The wife of you youth is the you, you appeared as in this world.
These verses tell us to remember who we are and to learn to trust again the ideas, thoughts and inspirations that come from within. God is not out there, after all. God is truly within and so we have a basis upon which to trust our own thinking.
In brief the words from Proverbs are telling us to “stop living from outside of ourselves.” “IDENTIFY WITH YOUR SELF–YOUR CISTERN, YOUR VESSEL.”
“Break the identification with the answers coming from outside”. “Trust your SELF.” “Stop wasting your energy by trying to please someone else.”
“Come back to your Self and Trust It”
After all == it’s all we’ve got isn’t it? What you identified with – the outside (streams) or the inside (cistern) governs your life subconsciously and you wonder why your life is as it is.
The above reading has given you a clue.
This is how I see it.
How do you see it?
Peace
Norm
“Now” Is The Only Time
March 27, 2010
Think about it. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is yet to come. Now is the Present. It is the present in the sense of being the gift. Now is the Gift. This moment is the Gift. What happens in This moment is the building block for the ‘next’ moment.
We need to release the pass by refusing to go over it again and again, especially if it is a negative experience. We can however use past positive experiences and the feelings associated with them to remember and in that way raise our energy in the present moment. This good energy can then transfer into the next moment.
We need to let go the future in terms of worry about what might happen especially if it is connected to a bad past experience. But here again if the thought of something good coming up makes us feel excited and energized then we can also use that positive energy to build into the ‘present’ moment. In this way the past and the future play into the ‘present’. But it is this moment that is the building block for the next moment.
What is happening ‘now’? Respond by correcting the feeling and the thought if it is negative and discouraging and affirm it and encourage it if it is positive and constructive.
In Thomas Trowards ‘The Principle of Guidance’ he states: “GUIDANCE ranks as the first principle in the order or completeness of a perfect whole and it gives value to all our other powers by placing them in their due relation to one another.”
So the now is where we need to give guidance to the next step in our life. If we are sad and depressed we need to ‘guide’ our mind to remember happier times and moments so as to ‘guide’ the vibration we are sending out that will draw to us the coming circumstances in our lives.
Now we need to remind ourselves that we are on track. It’s like being on the highway. Our goal might be New York so we need from time to time to remember that that city is where we want to go and to remember from where we have have come and confirm that indeed we are still on the right highway to get us to our destination. In this illustration its easier in that the highway is clearly helping us stay on course but the principle is the same. In fact with a moment of inattentiveness we may have missed a turn and may find ourselves on the wrong road.
The role of the “now” is to connect us to the past and keep us focused to the future but it is all done in ‘this moment’. How important is this moment? In the language of St. Paul; “Now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation.” Now is the gift we are given so as to be consciously aware that we are on the right track. The Now’s first principle is to enable us to exercise the principle of guidance and to ask for guidance and to follow that guidance so as to arrive at our desired goal. I am actively engaged in the crafting of my future by the choices I make in this moment.
Is this worth considering? Is this worth being aware of? How precious is this moment?
Peace
Norm
Why Do I See My Self As Separate?
August 9, 2009
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Today, the thought that is coming to me is about being One with Spirit.
I think that I tend to see Spirit as one thing and myself as another. As I read and reread the essays of Thomas Troward I am getting the message that this is not clear thinking.
Each person needs to realize that his or her ‘individuality’ is not something ‘separate’ from Spirit.
It’s more about clarifying one’s awareness. Spirit and my spirit are One, like a drop of water is one with the ocean.
Or, the way I’m thinking about it is through the image of a spring of water.
It’s all the same water. The spring is an ‘opening’ in the earth. My ‘individuality’ is an opening in the earth.
The water is One. The spring does not see itself as separate from other springs. It is the same water appearing in separate locations.
I don’t know why it is that I have a consciousness. Water simply is. It bubbles up from the great underground stream from which it comes. I’m not sure ‘it’ has consciousness.
But, I am conscious and I can create a separation through that consciousness.
But what is coming to me today is that this is a wrong way of thinking.
I need to clarify my awareness. My consciousness is one with the Christ Consciousness. I simply need to let my self become aware that this is so.
Confusion and muddiness only hide the truth that it is all only still the same water, the same consciousness.
I have the power to focus of the swirling sediment in the water or to remember that I am water anyway.
So, I think that today I am letting my mind settle. I am choosing to remember that I am water. I am Consciousness. And I can ‘rest’ in that truth and let my self bubble up and flow.
I release the tendency to want to see my self as separate. I am one with Christ Consciousness. I wonder how that feels? I choose to let this truth restore itself to my awareness today. I am bubbly, clear, limpid alive and life giving.
I am liveliness, just as the clear limpid water of a spring is lively and enlivening. Now that feels like great food for my soul. I’m reminded: “taste and see that the Lord is Good.”
This message is brought to you by one who is tasting Goodness in this moment. I am liveliness bubbling along.
Blessings and peace.
Norm
The Caterpillar and The Ego
August 3, 2009
Yesterday afternoon I watched a butterfly being born.
The cocoon, which had been getting clearer over the 19 day gestation period split open and in no time a beautiful 
fresh, soft, limp new Monarch butterfly hung upside down under the hollyhock lead it was born. I hung there, upside down for about an hour. It would release a brown liquid several times over that period. It moved its tentacles around and made mine steps away from the old shell of the cocoon.
After an hour it moved its wings for the first time, opening the beautiful orange colored span wide for a few seconds. It rested a bit and did it again. then it gradually move around the leaf, upside down. After twenty minutes of that it reached the ‘edge’ of the life and went right around once. It paused and made a move and gradually from being upside down it was now right side up on the leaf.
It rested again. After a few more minutes it walked all over the top of the leaf exploring the contours of it. It would open its brightly colored wings several times and then all of a sudden it let go and flew it’s first flight to about 15 feet away. It landed on the ground near a car tire and it grabbed on the rubber tire and crawled up the side. It rested again and after a time it flew again. This time making its way to the side of a large maple tree trunk about 30 feet further away.
There it rested again preparing for its next flight. What an amazing process to witness.
This wonderful drama of watching the birth of a butterfly reminded me of our own journey as human beings.
We are born and we crawl around for a while. I suppose our crawling stage can be much longer than that first year of childhood. In a way we crawl around learning about the world in which we were born and how to get around in it.
We collect information and create, as it were, the caterpillar view of life.
That stage of life can be satisfying but there comes a time when we want more. We might ask questions like; what is life all about? What is the meaning of life on earth and pain and sorrow mingled with joy and aspiration?
The dis-ease can grow to be intense and the caterpillar phase comes to an end as the ‘ego’ gets woven into a kind of cocoon.
Like the caterpillar it must let go all of its learning, its beliefs and structures. The caterpillar turns into a gelatin like substance. I suppose that’s like the ego loosing it’s structure. It has to let go of what it thought it was to become what it is intended to be.
In the cocoon it looses the memory and the form of its old self. It lets go of its old structures. It surrenders, as it were to a higher power.
Gradually it is transformed. It becomes a whole new creature. From a hairy flat colored crawling thing it turn into this magnificent brightly colored luminescent flying creature. It has now beauty it did not have and a new power to fly around instead of crawl. It is at a new level of consciousness. It is empowered to experience life at a whole new level.
So it is with the ego or our old self… the self that came into being in a certain context with certain experiences and with only limited ability to process. That poor ‘ignorant’ ego had to learn to make all sorts of decisions without ‘knowledge’ as it were. It created its own world in which to survive.
One day that is not enough and it needs to learn to connect with it Source. In so doing it is given the permission now to move toward the cocoon stage. This could be called “the renewing of the mind” process.
In this phase Spirit instructs the ego. After some time ego comes to a halt – it is trapped in the cocoon. And love instructs it to let go off all its old ideas and beliefs and to trust that it is being empowered to be a whole new creature.
As Thomas Troward says: Principle is not bound by “precedent”.
The ego in its surrender of the old ideas of itself, is freed up now to connect with Principle, free from all those preceding ideas of itself. It can now experience itself at a whole new level of existence. It can now see and understand itself as totally loved, guided and governed. It can understand that it now has the power and the resources to make intelligent decisions according to this new level and that this will continue infinitely. It can now rest from all the stress of the old and expand its wings with joy into the forever spiral of delightful learning and unshakable confidence consciously aware that it is guided by love and wisdom at that it has a share in this great reality.
It knows itself as not separate but it as ‘One with Source’. It is now free to create liff from Principle cleared of precedents. It is free like the new butterfly to spread its wings and create a whole new way of being and of serving. It is free to create from it new awareness and consciousness a life in keeping with it essence.
It’s no longer a bitter caterpillar life but a bright and free flowing butterfly life.
Joy now presides as the new creation, the essential new self co-creates with Spirit a new life from a whole new perspective.
The soul set free sounds through its real beautiful colors.
Peace and Blessings
Norm.
Cause & Effect — So What?
July 31, 2009
Today I am looking at Cause and Effect.
If I throw a rock at a window it will have the ‘effect’ of breaking that window. My action will ’cause’ a broken window.
The CAUSE OF ALL CREATION AND ALL THAT IS IN IT, IS GOD.
On the other hand I am the cause of the result of my life as it is now. Am I ready to own that?
Here is a great prayer by Raymond Charles Barker from his book The Power of Decision:
“My mind is forever a part of the infinite Mind. The Infinite Mind is never disturbed. It knows no negatives. It has no fears, resentments or frustrations. Therefore in my mind now these cannot exist and do not exist. They have no cause, continuity or conclusion.”
Notice the ‘principles’ he is using. He is not looking at himself and his life situation and habits. No. Instead he focuses on the ‘source’ of all things. Instead of identifying with his pain and weakness, he chooses to identify with Source.
In the last sentence he reveals the second principle that since humans are made in the image of God it is OK to assume we have the power to cause.
Then he continues:
“The creativity of the Infinite Mind is the creativity of my mind. The clarity of the Infinite Mind is the clarity of my mind. God is in business by means of me and the business of God is always Good. Therefore, I think with ease of my accomplished goal. It is being created in my mind right now. I welcome its appearance in my experience.”
Here also we see the continued association with God and we see another principle. That is the one of ‘denying’.
His logic goes like this: If I am the cause, I am the cause of my life now, as it is.
If I want to see change, I need to change my ‘source’ thinking.
So I refuse to feed thoughts of defeatism and pain and sorrow.
I say no to that, in this moment.
In so doing I make a New Reality happen in my life, exactly as I hold the thought of my identification with God and refuse to feed the way of thinking that got me where I am. I have to choose the New Way of Thinking in this moment and as I maintain my perspective and perception of who I am in God,
I ESTABLISH THE ‘GROUND’ OF MY REALITY NOW.
I shift my life out of the way that lead me here, to the way I truly am in God.
I hold my truth at the causal level and the ‘effect’ is I am that which Iam perceiving my self to be.
I am clarifying that I am happy, healthy, rich and creative.
Refusing to feed, negativity and the wrong tendencies that I initiated and established in my ignorance, I am now making the corrective at cause level and a New Direction and Way of being is founded.
Somehow, all of this is making sense to me more and more these days.
I am finding my way out of who I ‘thought’ I was and felt ‘conditioned’ to be.
I am selecting my truth and choosing to be who I am, over against the choices I made earlier in my life.
Does this make sense to you? It sure does increasingly to me.
Peace
Norm
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