Sermon for May 24, 2009
Comm-Unity On the Hill,* Washington, D.C.
Rev. Robbins S. Hopkins, Ed.D.

Editor’s Note:

I recently began attending a Sunday service at a Unity Church in Washington, D.C.  I found this group after several people independently recommended this spiritual group to me.  I am very happy with this group’s inclusiveness, openness and  joyful singing.  This post is an excerpt of the sermon I offered when asked to speak one Sunday.  To see the full sermon, click either on the title Intentional Partnering with God on the navigation bar at the top of this page or click on the link at the bottom of this page.  If you are looking for a place of worship, do consider coming one Sunday to visit.  Specifics about the congregation are offered at the end of the full sermon.

Opening Prayer

Spirit of the Living God, we open to the Presence of Love within us and among us, as we gather here today.  Our thanks for the blessings of our lives and for this time of worship and reflection together.  And So It Is.  Amen.

Sermon

I am so happy to be here with you, today.  I have been earnestly looking for a spiritual congregation for three years where I might worship and share my talents.  I fortunately have had a lot of sign posts and help along the way.  At the Sacred Circles Conference in February of this year at the National Cathedral, four different people told me of this congregation.  In fact, the workshop for that conference which I gave was held in this very room.

After those four different conversations, I imagined a loud voice saying rather pointedly to me, “Robbins, are you getting this?  This is the place you have been looking for.” I just laughed.  I rarely get messages which are that emphatic and pointed.  It would have been most unwise for me to ignore that.  So, I have been happily coming here since the end of February.

I am also so pleased to have been asked to speak with you.  I am a minister of spiritual healing.  Among other things, this may be the very first place in years perhaps ever, really, that I could say this out loud, from the pulpit and not wonder if a significant number from the congregation might actually get up and leave.  This is the absolute truth.

As a minister of spiritual healing, I work with unseen energies. I work with energies in our mind, in our hearts, in our bodies, in our relationships, in our spirit, and in our Universe.  Unseen energy includes feelings like fear, anger, love or appreciation. Unseen energy also includes the energy of my passed mother, my relationship with my brothers, a client’s depression, loss or cancer,  the energy of Ascended Masters like Jesus and Buddha, the nature spirits, energy of our ancestors and the presence of the Angelic Host, to name a few.

Editor’s Note:  Click here to see full sermon. http://www.robbinshopkins.com/intentional-partnering-with-god/ or click on the title Intentional Partnering with God on the navigation bar at the top of the page, for the full text.

 

• October 16, 2011, Authentic Prayer and Global Healing
• January 24, 2010, CommUnity On the Hill Congregation, Part 1
• January 24, 2010, CommUnity On the Hill Congregation, Part 2
• May 24, 2009, CommUnity On the Hill Congregation

Sermon for January 24, 2010
CommUnity On the Hill Congregation, Washington, D.C.*
Rev. Robbins S. Hopkins, Ed.D.

Part 1

I am an ordinary mystic.  This means I spend loads of time in Silence and in communication with all forms of Divine Presence and I also live in society.   From the outside I usually look pretty normal in the clothes I wear and the company I keep.  I have a home in the suburbs.  I have been happily married 37 years and have two sons in their 20s.   I have gradually come to embrace my ordinary nature and my mystical nature publicly though the knowing has been inside a long time.

I realized one day that I was beginning to really feel that God and I were One.   I felt it deeply and uncompromisingly in meditation.   From those feeling I began to see all other distinctions about who I was, what I was doing, why I was here, and what I was facing, begin to melt away.  Therefore, the seeming contradictions I had silently harbored of the mystic and the mother, or the mystic and the wife or the next door neighbor were really not contradictions, but merely different views of the whole that is me.

What I mean by God and I are One is this.   The Love, Passion, Power, Knowing and Light of God is the same Light of which I am made.  There is no difference except in my seeing this as indeed true.   I now feel this knowing has been true all my life and perhaps all my other lives as well.   And it is true for everyone in body regardless of what is going on in our lives.   We simply have to release the deep fears we have and call in Spirit to be with our Deepest Companion and Friend, The Beloved.

It is possible that I may have done this ordinary mystic thing before.  It feels much better now that both the ordinary me and mystical me have found each other.  Before this time, I had lots and lots of indications that major parts of my life were out of balance.  I had chronic, deeply serious back pain for 18 years.   I spent a lot of time defending myself whether I was leading a workshop or managing a dorm of 55 adolescent girls.   I spent a great deal of time, it seems to me now, getting angry at even the tiniest challenge to my right to be fully independent, competent and powerful as a woman.   I more than once laid into my brothers or my dad, men of the deep South, if they even hinted that I was “just a girl”.

I did not suffer fools gladly.  In fact, I embraced confrontation on a regular basis.  But all this was very wearing.  It was not fun and it was certainly not in balance.  So, there was a warrior spirit alive and well within me long before there was a peaceful spirit revealed.  Perhaps that had to be, so that I could even find a mystical path.  For the signs to introspection are not easily seen, nor culturally supported, nor readily embraced by most humans in body.  However, for whatever reason, I was pulled into a greater and greater balance in part, a great part, by my eldest son.

Our first child, a son, came as the happiest, smiling person one could imagine.  We even called him smiley face, a lot.

When he was 10 he had what was considered routine surgery for a benign cyst in his jaw discovered during the process of getting braces.  That began our odyssey into the world of medicine, fear, pain, loss, trauma and anguish.   When he came out of the surgery, he was a completely different person energetically.   He had lost his smile and many other aspects of his personality.   He was unable to study, focus, go to school, go to sleep or interact with anyone at all, in the way he had before.  He had so loved his lego creations and had spent hours creating happily by himself.   After the surgery, he would sit and simply not be able to create anything.  He was glum and withdrawn.

The surgeon declared the surgery a full success.  We knew differently however.   We were the ones sitting with him as he cried and raged 2-4 hours every day for months and months, and months.   We were the ones sitting with him until 2 or 3 in the morning when he might or might not fall asleep.

The first year, we saw 27 doctors and psychologists trying to get help. I stopped my work to take care of him.   I had to.  He was out of school for months and had all types of strange new behaviors.   He would suddenly freeze and stare as if blinded like a deer caught in the headlights.   He would fall down and shake or sometimes he would simply withdraw and not be able to converse.

We went and went, searching for medical help and the going wore us all out.  After 12 months our son came to my husband and me one night to us and said he could not go to any more doctors, they were not helping him.  I cried myself to sleep that night with the deep fear that we would never find someone to help us if he would not go anymore to doctors.  We had been having great toughs of war for the past 3 months about going to doctors at that time.

In a great state of fear, I thought the only thing left for us was to really, really pray together, out loud and ask God to help us.  We had done all we could possibly do ourselves and it was not working.  Amazingly, my husband and I had not actually sat down together and prayed about this with God in the past year since it had all begun.   We did pray together, out loud and things began to change almost immediately. At the time, we really did not know what had actually happened to our son.  He had had the surgery and then had to take his braces off and he had to go to eye therapy after the surgery but we had no sense of the source of the imbalances for him.

After our evening of praying together, however, we were led just a surely as if God took us by the hand out of the dark times into the Light.

Our son took 2 years to appear mostly healed to us with some remaining remnants of those times still showing up for the next 12 years or so. This experience catapulted me completely and wholly into spiritual healing.  Our experience dramatically affected our entire household in the most profound and unexpected ways.  We each know Spirit in individual and specific ways because of what we all went through together.

Come forward with me 16 years and here is what I have learned spiritually.

Spiritual health is THE basis of all health, happiness and well being.   Spiritual health and physical health are one and the same though we do not live our lives this way, for the most part.   We still think of healing and health as a physical phenomenon.   We still act as if the recurring pain we have originates in the body.   We and most of the medical profession look at health strictly through the lens of the body.

Our bodies are the encasing of our consciousness, of our knowing of All That Is.   Every nerve, fiber, cell and pathway daily reflects our sense of peace as well as our sense of anxiety. Our bodies are no more than the outer casing for our consciousness.   We either exude joy, peace and delight or we exude burden, stress and regret and everything in-between.  The choice is ours.   We are our thoughts, our feelings, our traumas, our fear and our hopes all rolled into one bundle, we know as the body.

Part 2

These experiences I have shared were my family’s path to greater consciousness. Here are some of our personal spiritual learnings. Perhaps they will connect to a kindred knowing within you as well.

• Our son learned without a doubt that he had to ask for help for himself. We could ask all we wanted but at 12 years of age, he had to ask, for himself, to be well. He did ask and this was granted as fast as he could absorb the teachings.
• I learned that I had carried tons and tons of responsibility and given half a chance anytime, I would do everything myself. This was most exhausting and I had to learn that asking for help for me was an act of self-love.
• My husband learned that the darkness does exist within us and we have to command it out to be in peace.
• Our youngest child learned that he could love, love, love and never say a word and that his brother could feel it. What an amazing learning at 5 years of age.

Our youngest son used to know when his brother was agitated. He would come into his room and lay on top of him just like a cat.

He would wait a few minutes until he calmed down then he would jump up and run off to play, never having said a word. The first time I saw this, I was totally speechless and brought to tears realizing that at 5 years of age, this little fellow could give his brother something we could not, unconditional love. It was mind altering to see. All our words and efforts just faded into the background with the unconditional love of this child for his brother.

We all learned that in calling in the Divine Light, there was a Presence far greater and more powerful than any of us had ever imagined. Only our thoughts, fears and traumas could appear to bound and limit the Presence in our lives. Once we released those, even we could experience God’s Light and Grace as everywhere present, all powerful and all knowing.

There is more to the story of the healing experience for our son. He did receive wonderful medical help and happily now is completely healed and fully functioning in life. When our son was 12, two years after his initial surgery and trauma, we were able to work with an extraordinary medical trauma recovery physician in West Virginia. We were led to work with this doctor through a chance article sent by our sister-in-law, then living in Nepal. She thought the article sounded like the experiences our son had had. This was a one in a million hit, as they say and was the key to our finding the perfect specialist to work with our son. The doctor we found used hypnotherapy, video, role play and art with our son and helped him and us piece together what had happened having never worked with children before in his life. This is our knowing now of what most probably transpired for our son.

During our son’s surgery, he thought he died because he was not given enough pain killer, for what they actually found when they got into the gum. The surgery went longer than was initially planned. Our son was in horrific pain during the surgery but was paralyzed and could tell no one that.

Energetically, our son’s soul energy literally left his body, because he thought he was dead.  After the surgery, the anesthesia made him forget the experiences during the surgery, so then he also began to feel he was insane.

For two years, our son darted between wanting to simply die and have his experience end and attacking everyone and everything because of his explosive outrage at what had happened to him.  When we found this trauma recovery specialist, we were still very much uncertain that our son could fully recover.

My husband and I worked with the doctor in the room during hypnotherapy, role playing and debriefing so that our son would trust what was happening. The doctor wanted to reunite the frozen parts of our son’s energy with our current son’s energy before the trauma.  From ten to twelve years of age our son had not grown one inch nor gained any weight. He was frozen in time by the trauma of feeling he had died.  After three days of therapy to reunite these parts of himself, using video, art and role play, our son crawled up into his dad’s lap with a huge smile on his face.  He was back!

We knew we had witnessed a life changing miracle of God and man working together. This continues to inform my practice and strengthen my life as it does the lives of my husband and boys.  May these lessons of love and miracle, asking and trusting, extend to all of you and your loved ones as well .

God is so deeply present, closer than the breath we breathe and ready to be our guide in the most challenging of times for each and every one of us. Take all your fears, sadness, regret and heartbreak to God.  Release that which is weighing heavily upon your heart.   God is Great and we are One with that Greatness.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

*Comm-Unity on the Hill is a Unity Congregation which meets at 10th and G Street, NW, Washington, D.C.  Services are weekly on Sundays at 1 P.M.  They can be reached at cothdc@verizon.net or 703-379-4450. All are welcome.

** Send comments to robbins@robbinshopkins.com

Sermon for May 24, 2010
Comm-Unity On the Hill,* Washington, D.C.
Rev. Robbins S. Hopkins, Ed.D.

Opening Prayer

Spirit of the Living God, we open to the Presence of Love within us and among us, as we gather here today. Our thanks for the blessings of our lives and for this time of worship and reflection together. And So It Is. Amen.

Sermon

I am so happy to be here with you, today. I have been earnestly looking for a spiritual congregation for three years where I might worship and share my talents. I fortunately have had a lot of sign posts and help along the way. At the Sacred Circles Conference in February of this year at the National Cathedral, four different people told me of this congregation. In fact, the workshop for that conference which I gave was held in this very room.

After those four different conversations, I imagined a loud voice saying rather pointedly to me, “Robbins, are you getting this? This is the place you have been looking for.” I just laughed. I rarely get messages which are that emphatic and pointed. It would have been most unwise for me to ignore that. So, I have been happily coming here since the end of February.

I am also so pleased to have been asked to speak with you. I am a minister of spiritual healing. Among other things, this may be the very first place in years perhaps ever, really, that I could say this out loud, from the pulpit and not wonder if a significant number from the congregation might actually get up and leave. This is the absolute truth.

As a minister of spiritual healing, I work with unseen energies. I work with energies in our mind, in our hearts, in our bodies, in our relationships, in our spirit, and in our Universe. Unseen energy includes feelings like fear, anger, love or appreciation. Unseen energy also includes the energy of my passed mother, my relationship with my brothers, a client’s depression, loss or cancer, the energy of Ascended Masters like Jesus and Buddha, the nature spirits, energy of our ancestors and the presence of the Angelic Host, to name a few.

All these unseen energies and our relationship to them manifest in many ways in our daily life and in our bodies. Some energies like fear, anger, blame, criticism, and shame separate us from feeling connected with All That Is, with God. Other unseen energies help us to love more by their example, like a good relationship with our father or close friend.

Still other unseen energies from the Divine Realm, like Angels, Ascended Masters and Divine Cosmic Light Beings, teach us about God, help us meditate, and even save us from danger, at times. I work in the realm of unseen energies.

The experience we just had in meditation is one way to access unseen energies.** There are many others, such as walking in nature, gardening, swimming, sitting in silent meditation, creating, appreciating others, praying, and singing. We spend a great deal of time with unseen energy. I’d like to speak with you about intentionally becoming more conscious of unseen energy which is separating us from God, from our own True Selves, from our own Beloved I AM Energy.

God is All Knowing, All Powerful and Everywhere Present. These attributes are not a maybe or a possibility. These are Truths of the Universe. Imagine, if we were able to fully embrace these Truths without doubt, unworthiness energy, or the energy of fear. What lives we would have!!!

Even more astounding is that there is really, really only One Power, One Source, One All That Is. And, we are completely and wholly a part of that One Power, One Source. However, when we come into body on Earth, we can play out any scenario we want to while here with all the ensuing consequences of those choices. We can isolate ourselves by our thoughts and feelings from Divine Oneness or we can fully embrace anything that feels like God and Divine Light. Or we can choose more in-between options. The choice is ours.

The challenge for many of us is that we may have had very little training in consciously embracing the Light in our daily lives. How do we partner with All That Is? How do we embrace our own True Selves in the face of all the fears, we have and all the responsibilities and relationships we have in a given lifetime? That is the question. What works? What will enable us to make progress, to increasingly see the Light in all aspects of our lives and to co-create with God enabling us to seek a greater Consciousness, a state of peacefulness and take charge of what we are saying, doing, thinking and feeling?

Today’s meditation was a step in that direction.** All things seen and unseen are made of energy. All things eternal are of God. God is. God is constant. God never changes. Therefore, energies such as anger, fear, rage, jealousy, self-judgment, greed, resentment, punishment, etc. are not of God. They are unseen energies we give our power and attention to, by our own choice. In other words, they are humanly made, nurtured, grown, fed and watered because we make the choice to cultivate these energies.

If we want to have a closer relationship with All That Is, the Great Oneness, God, we have to release that which in our minds is separating us from the Divine Presence. We are never really separate from All That Is but we THINK we are if we are feeling angry, depressed, guilty, afraid of failure or estranged from loved ones. All these low vibrating energies which we carry around on our back from ages past is what separates us from Divine Peace, Light, Balance and Wholeness. The less fear we carry, the more connection is possible with All That Is, God, the GREAT Oneness.

We literally can expand our consciousness by letting go of unseen feelings and thoughts in our energy field which are not of GOD. In my practice, I used to measure every client’s level of consciousness before they released a negative emotion and then recalibrate those levels after each clearing. After doing this, hundreds of times, I realized that every single time we called forth Divine Presence to consume some negative thought or feeling, the person’s consciousness went up. This is because consciousness is the degree to which we know God. When we release that which is not of God from our field, we create more space to know God fully. After a few years, I stopped taking consciousness calibrations because they were always higher after releasing negative energies.

We are like boats which travel through the water collecting barnacles. The older we are, the more barnacles we have had time to collect in our journeys. What happens to old boats which have never had their barnacles cleaned off? They can’t float. They are too weighed down with the extra weight. The same is true for us. If we don’t clean off the energy barnacles from our lives, we are too weighed down to float as well. We are more likely to moor ourselves in some quiet harbor and spend the rest of our days, nursing our barnacles and feeling separated from God, to boot.

Jesus said to enter the kingdom of God we need to become as a young child. Young children don’t have any accumulated barnacles. They stay focused in the present. They do not worry about tomorrow as today is fully captivating for them. They are delighted in the present which is full of possibilities and wonder.

When was the last time you felt that the present was full of possibilities and wonder? It is hard to feel that way if we are dragging around our painstakingly collected set of barnacles. We have all those old relationships which we never cleared up, old feelings or resentment and failure, or pain from loss and perhaps betrayal, and on and on. Any thoughts, feelings, actions or emotions that are not of love, separate us from being able to more fully enter into God consciousness. It is as if we have to clear off the barnacles and lighten our load to be able to sail into a higher lock. Weighed down, we simply can’t enter that higher lock, the boat is too heavy.

Intentional partnering with God is what I am speaking about here. We are already co-creators and partners but we may not know this. For intentional partnering with God to actually manifest in our daily lives, we have to claim this partnership, affirm it, seek it, attend to it and do our part in the partnership.

We are each individual manifestations of God, made in the same image as God, with complete free will, even coming here already with the promise of “joint-heirs to the throne”. However, if we choose to give our power to that which is passing, to humanly created energies which will pass away with this life, we will not be light enough, to reach the higher lock where more and more of that Presence can be revealed, shared and reveled in.

What does intentional partnering with God look like for us??

• Be still and know that I AM God.
• Identify negative feelings, thoughts, motivations, memories, actions and experiences in your energy field, frequently.
• Cleanse your energetic being daily of negative energies with love and positive regard for self. (Command them out, with love.)
• Declare frequently, I am not these negative thoughts, feelings and actions which I have manifest. I AM of the Light.
• Ask for forgiveness where needed and grant forgiveness to those who have treated us badly.
• Give thanks for the blessings given to all of us, regardless of our specific day.

If we desire an intentional partnership with God, we have to clean up our act as humans. We won’t have a viable partnership if we show up once every other year when life has hit some rough spot. Every time we take a step to clean up our act, we expand in consciousness and in our knowing of God. It makes for good relations. It is the fulfillment of the Word. It is the hope of the future and the manifestation of the promise. It is the key to the kingdom. And so it is. I thank you.

*Comm-Unity on the Hill meets at 10th and G Street NW in Washington, DC.  Services are weekly on Sundays at 1 PM.  We can be reached at cothdc@verizon.net or 703-379-4450. All are welcome.

** This sermon was preceded by a guided meditation for the congregation.

** Send comments to robbins@robbinshopkins.com

Every single person regardless of his or her circumstances surrounding death is exactly where he or she needs to be. Even those who leave us through cruel or tragic circumstances,  I have come to understand, are exactly on the path they need to be upon.  Sri Sathya Sai Baba,  an avatar and mystic from India said, regarding the death of young girl, ” Oh yes, wonderful child.  Her karma was all finished, why hold her back?”   In other words, some of us need to only come here a short while to accomplish our purpose.  Why would we want a young child to remain here if he or she could be with God and Divine Energy in the great beyond?   Love is eternal, that can never die.  Our links with these early departed children, partners or spouses are as strong as ever whether they are in body or not.  This type of love is eternal, it cannot die.

There is also spiritual evidence that those who are taken from life as a result of violence, where they were innocent victims,  often play critical roles in taking enormous amounts of dark, negative energies with them to be transformed by the Light.  These energies are humanly created and when an innocent person is killed tragically, they can through their innocence, take darkness right out of this dimension for purification.  I have had the privilege of working with a person where this was her role as she was leaving this life.

We have a very small lens on what really happens beyond the here and now. If you don’t spend time in Silence, your mind is likely to be the part of you that tries to make sense out of death.  The mind cannot do that effectively.  The heart needs instruction in the energies surrounding death for us to know ourselves what is what.  The next best thing, perhaps is listening to someone you trust who is spending time with Divine Knowing.  The ways of death have been with us since time began.  I take a cue from the Bible which has 365 “fear not” passages throughout the books, one for every day. Death is one of those states of becoming and being which we are not to fear.

If you feel you are nearing death or know someone who is ,  endeavor as much as possible to stay in the present.  Resist the temptation to look at the past or worry about the future. Rejoice in the love around you, trust that all will be provided for you and for all those who will miss you or your loved one.  There is only the present and therefore, call forth the Divine Knowing about death for yourself or your loved one.  This helps with the fear which we as humans tend to hold onto as we face changes in our life circumstances.  You might say, “ I call forth Divine Knowing about death and dying” for myself , or for the person you love who is passing.

Death is a part of life, it is simply a different state. We, of course, still have to go through our own adjustment time to the loss of a loved one.  When my father died, I knew he was  safe and free.  He had lived a long life and had not been sick when he passed on.  However, I still felt his loss and remember thinking at the time, I would have liked to wear black so as not to have to appear “normal”  while I was in mourning.  My mourning time was characterized by feeling that the colors, the food, the music,  and all the emotions around me were slightly muted, not exactly normal.  One day after a few months, that mourning time lifted and I felt my own energy take up its place within me, once again.  Whatever our response to death is, we need to give ourselves time and space to grieve, to remember, to honor and to let it go.

Joel Goldsmith, a twentieth century American mystic and spiritual teacher, speaks of death this way.  He says that as long as we see ourselves separated from the One Power, the One Source, we fear death.  He suggests that we awake every morning affirming that there is One Power, One Source, One Wholeness, One Divine Oneness and claim that we are wholly part of that One Power.  There is no other power, of any kind.  However to get our minds to grasp this, we must practice such affirmations, frequently because we are all so deeply affected by the mass energy which fears death.  Joel says, “…death itself is not a power, … death cannot separate you from the life of God, the soul of God, the consciousness of God.  …. Take the fear of death out of disease and disease would have no sting; it would have no power whatsoever. ” (The Art of Spiritual Living, 1976)

If reading this pricks unpleasantness, pain, strong rejection energy or anything upsetting at all, take it as a sign that more work is needed. It is likely that more release of blocked energy around issues of death, people who have died, or  those who are dying, or for yourself is still needed.  These steps may be helpful to you in your exploration.

• Enter into Silence with All That Is with the intention to lighten your energy around issues of death.

• Ask what you need to release.   Listen to the stillness.  That may be enough.

• If more is needed,  search your feelings about a specific situation or aspect of dying as a place to begin.

• Name the emotion or emotions you are feeling.

• Ask yourself what is the fear behind these feelings I am carrying??

• Call the Sacred Flame from within yourself  ( a form of Divine Presence)  to release the blocked spiritual energy manifesting as the fear or fears you have identified.

• Give thanks.

You may wonder if this process works or why it works?  It works because the fears we hold about death have no power as Joel Goldsmith and many other mystics have asserted.  If we release them, they are gone.  They have no life other than the life we are giving them in our own energy field and mind.  We can affect that by rooting them out.   These fears are all of our own creation and therefore, we can command them out so that we will be lighter and more peaceful.  This work is the intentional expansion of consciousness, coming to a greater and greater awareness of the One Power, the One Source of All That Is.

Peace to all who may be nearing death,  who are accompanying one who is dying or mourning one who has passed.  May the Infinite Presence of the Great I AM, be known to you in the most perfect of ways as you walk with death.  May you know the One Power which is always with us, always constant, all knowing and all powerful.  Peace to you in all states of your being.  Receive now the Blessings of the Light.

Death is simply another state of being. It is one we know little about.  We therefore tend to focus on the fears and experiences surrounding death and mix that up with the state of death itself.  Many of us have unhealed sadness and grief about losses in our past.  We may also have fear about our own passing or the passing of a dear loved one.  Death is part of every single person’s life.  Traditionally, in Western societies, we fear death.  That shared mass perception about death comes from unexamined fears we hold and from the habit of giving power to death, from our minds.

There is only One Power, One Source, One God. Death has no power of its own apart from Divine Grace and Presence.  Death is a transition to another calling for our soul’s continued growth, however painful that loss may be for those of us remaining in this life.  However, if we give death power from our minds, it is as if there is indeed something to fear.

For those of us carrying imbalances with death and dying, take a look at those.  Releasing the blocked energy causing these imbalances can bring us more peace.  Ignoring the issues we have with death only allows those feelings to remain in our energy field, festering away.  We may not be aware of how those unexamined feelings are affecting us but without a doubt, they are dragging on our energy.   It may feel scary and unpleasant to dip into death especially on a sunny, blue sky day but that is exactly what I would recommend.

A Universal Truth for all beings regardless of our beliefs is that we are eternal. I suspected this for a long time before I knew this to be true.  In working with individuals passing over from life to spirit form, the energy of the person is fully present on the other side.  There is no body as we know it but their personal energy remains in tact.  I have not traveled with others beyond transition time as they first pass over but I figure if they are present during transition time, that is good enough for me.  I know their being continues on to where they are supposed to be because some of them have left in a blaze of Light.  Also, individual  stays in transition state are usually short,  a week or less.  As they pass on,  I imagine other forms of  “body” are assumed.

In working with those who have taken their own lives, it is clear that when they are in transition state, the same issues they were trying to escape from here, are still with them.  Such issues reside in our psyche or spiritual energy which remains in tact so the taking of our own body does not release us from the issues we carry in our souls.  However, we get all the chances we need. We have all the time we need.  We will be given opportunity after opportunity to learn to love ourselves and to respond to the challenging circumstances in which we find ourselves.  Some persons have been here, in body, many, many times and have worked through such challenges and difficulties.  Other souls are newer and have a number of issues to resolve in the physical plane.

This is a spiritual truth for all of us.  We take our spiritual knowing with us when we pass over. We do not magically get cleanly wiped slates as we exit life.  We take our relationship with All That Is into the next dimension of our being and continue right where we left off.  Therefore, it is highly useful to do deep clearing work on this side because all the issues we release here which are not of the Light, will not convey with us.  Actually, we will never have to deal with them again for ourselves,  in this dimension.   As we come into  Right Relationship with death or any other issue here, we will remain in that Right Relationship for all time. ( to be continued)

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There is One Power, One Source, One Divine Presence.   This Oneness  is All Powerful, All Knowing and Everywhere Present.  What would our lives be like if we really, deeply knew this to be true?  What would we let go of , what would we welcome into our lives and what would we rejoice in knowing?

We typically  move through our lives giving our power to all sort of things which are not the One Power.  We give our power to worries, to fears, to the argument between our brothers, to what should have happened last month, to what may happen next week, to the demands of our job and perhaps even to the voice in our heads to “go ahead and buy it, you deserve it”.   This has the effect of diluting the full presence of the One Power in our life.

It is our choice as to how we spend our time and what we put our attention upon even though at times we see ourselves as sacrificial beings to others.  We have free will to give our attention and concern to anything we choose to, anytime we choose to do so.

As long as we choose to give our power to material things,  problems, making money, pleasing others at the expense of ourselves,  we have a “dim” and somewhat disconnected view of the Power of the Divine Presence.  Focusing our power, energy and attention completely on the outside world dulls us to the intensity and magnificence of All That Is.  What we have focused on and attended to,  grows and grows. 

What does giving our power to the material world look like?

Joe lives in Vienna, VA. He is an insurance executive with two children.  He goes into work 6 days a week though Saturdays are not required.  He has Sundays off and spends times with his kids and wife that day when  possible.

In talking with him about his life he said,  my life is pretty routinized. I put on my suit every day, drive to my parking spot and then begin going through all the tasks for the day.  Sometimes I look up and 3 hours have simply passed me by.  I am never bored as there is always more to do.  I miss seeing the kids more, though.  They are often headed for bed by the time I get home and eat.  I know that Kate is doing a great job with them.  I am simply not around much, not as much as I would like to be, anyway.

DO YOU HAVE ANY HOBBIES? No, not really.  I’d love to have the energy for something like that.  I am usually beat when I get home though.  I  try to catch a ball game on TV or perhaps watch a show.

I sometimes try to get some things done around the house on Saturday afternoon if I can get away from the office a bit early.  Seems like my life is just passing on by while I give it all I’ve got.

ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE  AT THE MOMENT? Not really, that is pretty rare.  The insurance business has really clear mandates about serving people and making money while doing that.  So, that is what I work with every day.

Joe came in saying he was tired all the time and had very low energy especially on Sundays.

In contrast to this scenario, Dan works in an advertising company in McLean, Va. He is the strategic adviser in the financial section of the company.  He works 5 days a week and sometimes has work deadlines over certain weekends.  He is married and has three kids.

In talking about his life, he said,  I made a decision a few years ago to be in my kid’s lives.  I try to get to their games and special presentations at school.   If there is an issue about this at work,  I take leave.  Usually nowadays there is no issue with my taking the time to see their activities.  I did not want to be absent while they grew up without me.

DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER ACTIVITIES OR HOBBIES? I  play basketball one evening a week and serve on the board of a hospital near our neighborhood.  I love to garden and most times I can wrangle one of the kids into playing with me in the dirt.  I also love to cook but we have had to make some adjustments so the kids can eat early enough.  I cook on the weekends now mostly.

ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE AT THE MOMENT? Yes. We have recently found a super young woman from Italy to live with us and help with the housework and the children after school so Terry can pursue her passion in therapeutic dance.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR LIFE NOW? Well, it is like one endless  surprise.  Every day is different.  I try not to get too concerned by any one thing that comes up.  Things usually work out though sometimes in really crazy ways.

Dan came in to discuss meditation and how it might help him be more present and centered.

Which life description most closely fits how you see your life at present? When we make choices for the expansion of love of self and others,  we attract experiences and energy in the world which reflect these choices we have made, including the actual jobs we are currently doing.  If we are making choices while attending to the One Power, love and balance manifest.   If we are making choices which leave us feeling down, depressed and exhausted, we are not making choices for Love in our lives or the lives of others.  This does not mean that we don’t love ourselves or our families.  It does mean that we GIVE OUR POWER, time and attention to problems,  concerns and demands in the outside world rather than to issues of the heart.

If you are feeling stuck,  you might ask, what am I letting run me? What am I doing which separates me from things which bring me joy, balance and connectedness?

Invite the  One Power, One Source, into your life. Ask and you will receive even if you don’t know how any changes might be possible.  Simply call in this One Power out loud into your daily life and watch what happens. Then write in the comment box and let us all hear about it!!

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