Monday, May 16, 2011

Co-creating with God


"Out of Many, One"  - oil painting by Gwen Meyer Pentecost 

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.” 

             That quote by Arthur Rubenstein is a great start for our discussion about the third universal truth in Unity, “We are co-creators with God, creating reality through thoughts held in mind.” Arthur has something here. Haven’t you noticed that when you feel joy, your day goes better? And if you’re grumpy, sure enough, the world responds with more of the same? Your expectations seem to be self-fulfilling prophecies.           
            At first glance, you might wonder how we co-create with God. Isn’t that a tall order? Well, if “There is only One Power and One Presence in my life and in the Universe: God, Goodness, Omnipotence;” and “We are created by and our essence is of God,” as we discussed in the last column, then of course we can co-create with God! In fact, as Arthur Rubenstein pointed out above, we do it all the time.
This principle goes back to one of our co-founders, Charles Fillmore, who wrote at the turn of the last century, “Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.” It’s a universal truth. Another way of saying this is expressed in the title of Mike Dooley’s book, “Thoughts Become Things. Choose them Wisely!” Thoughts are things; they occupy space in the mental field. This isn’t a new idea, and Mike did not invent it, although he has certainly championed the cause with his appearance on “The Secret,” his inspirational books, CD’s, and so forth.
           Thoughts are things because they employ our mind – and some say the Universe - to create the conditions wherein what we think is attracted to us…good or bad! Actually, we attract ourselves to what we think…and in that sense, we create our own Universe. So what we think and how we shape our thoughts becomes very important. This is especially true when we blame others for our circumstances, when we give away that responsibility for how we show up in life.
            Negative thoughts and feelings are harmful to our consciousness.  They destroy how we look at life and how we handle the issues, large and small, that come to us. They are derived from what Gary Simmons (“The I of the Storm”) calls the shadow side of our personalities, those self-perpetuating cycles of mistrust of ourselves and others…and wind up creating exactly what we fear.
            Yes, our feelings and perceptions define the world we experience. This spiritual principle, though, goes deeper than that. It tells us that we are responsible for our lives. We are responsible partly because we are of God and we have the power – As Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do…(John 14:12).  We have the power, if we but use it.
            We are also co-creators because what happens to us isn’t a matter of the Great Puppeteer Up In The Sky working with strings or twisting dials to make us do what He wants us to. We have free will, and so we co-create with God the world we make. We are responsible for our lives.  We cannot change what other people do, say or think; we can only change our attitudes about them.
Dawn, Hawley Lake, by Gwen Meyer Pentecost
            Albert Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”  I agree: we can’t hope to hold the same outlook and solve the problems within it.            When I’m lying on the couch in a blue funk, changing those thoughts and feelings is very hard to do without going back to the first and second universal truths:  God is all powerful and all-present; and as I am of God, I have that same power and strength within me to deal with whatever issues face me. When I know without question that I have the Christ Spirit inside me, that I am a child of God, loved by God, those thoughts remind me of the strength at my core. They give me self-confidence born of my divine lineage.
            OK, these changes aren’t always easy, but they’re worth taking on. After all, I co-create my own world, and I want it to be the best it can be. So I look to my thoughts and feelings as the moving force that helps shape my life. 
            Like the previous two Unity principles, this third principle is not unique to Unity or to New Thought, but is a universal truth expressed in religion and philosophy around the world. Like them, it focuses on our relationship with God. The difference is that this truth outlines our responsibility in creating our own lives, for good or bad.
            You will decide on a matter, and it will be established for you, and light will shine on your ways. --Job 22:28


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