My dear friends...

Mourning is a wonderful thing. At least, for me it is, and I hope that it is for you. I experience that mourning brings out my humanity and places me deeply in touch with it. It connects me, thus, to my divinity, because when I am deeply, deeply in touch with my humanity, and with all that it means to be fully human, I find that I feel deeply in touch with my divinity as well.

To be fully human feels to me to be the same as being...

My dear friends...

Nothing is evil lest thinking make it so.

Shakespeare wrote that, and the world has been proving it again and again.

A while back, there was a big brouhaha over something that Pope Benedict XVI said. Some people perceived his remarks as an insult to Islam, and thus, as damaging. The Pope's comments were damaging...but not because they were an insult to Islam. His words were, in fact, historically accurate. They were damaging for another reason altogether.

For...

My dear friends...

There is much talk these days about enlightenment , and the path to Self-Awareness. I am sure that this is why all the data on this subject have been racing around my mind for many months prior to writing the present material.

Now for many of the past several weeks here in the Bulletin  I have been talking about "enlargement" as the Second Major Step on the Path to Self-Awareness, and I would like to explain that by "enlargement" I mean an expanding sense of Self,...

My dear friends...

We have been talking on and off here about the Path to Self-Awareness, and most recently about the Second Step on that path: Enlargement. This week I would like to take a look at how we may go about achieving Enlargement. One way, at least.  

I see a three-part approach here. First, cause another to have the experience. Second, step into the experience yourself fully, even if only for a moment. Third, savor the experience in memory, where all miracles reside.

May...

My dear friends...

"Wanting" something is not a good thing to do, because it produces the experience of "not having" what you choose.

Let me explain.

Your every thought, word and deed is creative. Now, if you have a thought of "wanting" something, you will produce that thought in your experience. That is, you will see that very thought made manifest in your reality.

Therefore, if you think "I want" something, that is the experience you will have: the experience of wanting it!

On the other...

My dear friends...

There is a tendency to dismiss the experience of Self-Awareness if it is not both immediate and eternal.   In actual practice it is most often neither.  

One rarely finds one's way to Self-Awareness with the first step on the journey (this is not impossible, mind you, but it is rare), and one rarely remains in this place the first time one arrives there.   One wants to , but one rarely does.   So much is calling us back.   So much is pulling us,...

My dear friends...

Nearly every Holy Scripture of nearly every one of the world's exclusivist organized religions contains passages that describe a God of anger, of judgment, and of retribution.

Do you remember what happened to the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf? Were not 3,000 of them slaughtered by the Levites at God's command?   Did God not instruct you in Exodus   32:27 to "take every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp,...

My dear friends...

There will come a time in your movement through the process of Enlargement when the scale of stop/start, stop/start will be tipped.   You will begin to do more "starting" than "stopping."   This is a natural part of the process and at some point along the way nearly all of the stopping will stop.  

Your stopping stops when you finally become okay with all the previous stopping - and with whatever stopping is happening in the present.   It is your ...

My dear friends...

The world has an interesting mind-set about this business of talking with God. Most people believe that not only are conversations with God possible, but they have occurred. In fact, most religions are based on this assumption. What people cannot seem to agree on is when God stopped talking.

If God has never stopped talking, that complicates things, because most religions are based on God's direct revelations to a specific person or group. Those people and groups have no...

My dear friends...

While sentient Beings sense an impatience during the process of enlargement, it is not beneficial to allow that impatience to be translated into a lack of contentment.   The two are not the same, but one can, and often does, lead to another.

Enlargement that grows out of discontentment only enlarges the discontentment.   Expansion can only expand what is , it cannot expand what is not.   If you are not contented, you cannot expand your way to more...