Meditation
Meditation is a practice where we use a technique, such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state of consciousness.
There are many ways to practice meditation; you can use a mantra or chanting, focus on your breathing, visualization and guided imagery, slow and mindful movement, listen to a babbling brook, read poetry or any sacred passage and contemplate it.
“The purpose of meditation is to attain… grace. Once this grace has been attained in a measure, it takes over our experience and lives our life, performs those things which are given us to do, and makes the crooked places straight. We no longer live by bread alone, but by this inner grace.”
Meditation allows us to witness the constant stream of thought in our minds, and in the quiet we hear the voice of deep guidance, that still, small voice that guides us toward a larger and happier way of living!
Affirmation
An affirmation is a simple, positive statement in the present tense which leads the mind to accept what it wishes to believe.
Most of our behavior is run by our subconscious minds. The patterns of thought that run our behavior remain hidden deep in our psyches, often operating without our even knowing it. When something is going on in our lives that we don’t want this is evidence of a thinking pattern that we might want to change.
Practice saying and repeating affirmations to change our beliefs to more positive, productive ones, which leads our mind to that state of consciousness where it accepts that which we state as true. We experience what we want by affirming it. Repeat an affirmation until it stops feeling like a falsehood and starts to feel true:
I am loved, I am loveable, and I am loving.
I receive my good daily as I go along the pathway of Life.
Divine Intelligence working through me, always knows just what I
need and always supplies it when I need it.
The way is made clear before me; I do not falter nor fall.
I shall go forth into the new day confident and happy.
I cannot be fooled nor misled; I am guided by truth alone.
My affairs are managed by love, and directed by wisdom.
No mistakes can be made and none ever have been made.
The life within me blesses all sentient beings.
I am surrounded with an atmosphere of peace, poise and power.
The Spirit within me lives forever.
The voice of truth speaks to me and through me.
Visioning
Visioning is the practice of revealing the spiritual reality of any situation. It is the practice of seeking inner guidance.
The 7 Spiritual Laws of Visioning – Rai Jordan, RScP
The Law of Potentiality corresponds with “Centering Yourself.” In the present moment we are aligned with an infinite field of potential from which all creation flows. We come from it; we are one with it; so, of course, we can tune into it.
The Law of Receptivity corresponds with “Activate the Wisdom of Your Heart.” We can only receive what we are open to receive. Many of us are comfortable with giving, but manifesting a vision requires a willingness to receive, to be open and receptive to what wants to be created.
The Law of Sacred Callings corresponds to “Ask and Listen.” Everything we need to know about the calling of your life is already within us. Visioning allows us to see ourselves the way we really are and activate it into becoming.
The Law of Becoming corresponds to the question: “What must I become?” We cannot have anything that we are not willing to become in consciousness. Visioning goes beyond just being a mental equivalent, into a vibrational equivalent, a being equivalent.
The Law of Letting Go corresponds to “What must I release?” Good will not flow into our lives until we release what’s standing in the way of our vision’s emergence, i.e., thoughts, habits and ideas.
The Law of Gestation corresponds to “commit, give thanks, and release the vision.” Everything takes time to become. Diamonds originate as coal. Plants emerge from seeds. Everything has a gestation process and we can’t rush the gestation of the vision. We simply allow it.
The Law of Inspired Action corresponds to “activating the vision with prayer.” We each have an internal guidance system that can inspire our actions, if we take time to listen. The sense of action will come. Don’t rush to do anything, just to be doing something! Allow the vision to unfold in its own time.
Affirmative Prayer
Spiritual Mind Treatment is the single most important Science of Mind practice. It is a form of affirmative prayer. It is an act, art, and science.
It is an act, being the conscious activity of thought. It is an art in that there must be feeling, appreciation, and realization. It is a science, in that it produces verifiable results through the application of impersonal, consistent spiritual law.
We teach and practice a five-step affirmative prayer called Spiritual Mind Treatment, which is the recognition of Universal Spirit that is at the center of everything, and a realization that Law is creatively set in motion through conscious thought that provides an avenue for change. A new way of thinking and believing.
Step one: Recognition – acknowledge the Source of All, Spirit, God, the Presence, a Higher Power, the Infinite Supply of Life.
Step two: Unification – knowing that all situations, people, including myself
are, and always have been, one with the Source of Life.
Step three: Realization – establishes the feeling of already having a life that is whole, perfect and complete.
Step four: Thanksgiving – blessing and giving of feeling of thanks for what has been received, the food, the people, the endeavors, etc.
Step five: Release – mentally let go, no longer concerned about the situation and free to act as though the demonstration is already complete.
Our prayer is not a petition to a God “out there” somewhere; rather it is a way of aligning our minds with the spiritual principle of oneness, our inner divinity, higher nature, faith, gratitude, and release. This is a “spiritual technology” that can provide great relief in times of stress, increase our faith in a universe that is loving and friendly, and shift our thinking and experience.
Gratitude
Gratitude is the practice of the realization that all Good has already been provided. Gratitude is more than a resultant emotion; it is a causative energy which reveals the ever-present abundance of the universe.
Gratitude is a foundational spiritual practice. Meister Eckhart, a 14th Century Catholic mystic, wrote, “If the only prayer you ever say is ‘thank you,’ that will suffice.”
Practicing gratitude brings our emotions and thoughts into awareness of all the good we already have, all the wonderful things our lives already contain. It helps us move out of the problem into the answer. Gratitude as a state of being opens us up to the good that is always flowing to us, that waits for us to accept it.
Being grateful acknowledges the truth that science is now confirming, that we see what we expect to see. If we’re in a place of gratitude, we see more to be happy about and grateful for to help us lead happier and more purposeful lives.
One way to see how this works is that anytime you notice that you are feeling like things are not what you want them to be, stop yourself and shift to focusing on your surroundings and your life and directing your attention to what you are grateful for. Do this with a number of items, people, places… as many as it takes until you feel the shift to a more positive state within yourself.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is the active practice of compassion, the process of releasing perceived hurts, judgments or grievances, which allows us to see the Presence of Spirit in everyone.
The path of forgiveness is not an easy one. On this path, we must often walk through our pain and anger and make our way through grief and loss to find the acceptance that is the hallmark of forgiveness.
“Whatever the mistakes of yesterday may have been, today is a new creation. Turning from the errors of the past and no longer carrying with us the sorrows and mistakes of yesterday, today we may enter into a new experience.”
– Ernest Holmes (Founder of Science of Mind)
With each act of forgiveness, whether small or great, we move toward wholeness and freedom. Forgiveness is how we bring peace to ourselves and our world.
We explore the aspects of forgiving: Telling the Story, Naming the Hurt, Granting Forgiveness, and Renewing or Releasing the situation or person. We invite you to join us on this healing, transformational journey. It doesn’t matter whether you are having trouble moving forward from the wrongs that were done to you, or whether you need the courage to admit the wrongs you have done.
Forgiveness is nothing less than the way we heal the world. We heal the world by healing each and every one of our hearts. The process is simple, but it is not easy.
Sacred Service
Sacred Service is the ongoing spiritual practice of sharing our gifts and talents, by actively participating from our hearts in our spiritual community and the greater community.
Where and how do we provide sacred service in the world? The one who is attracted to the Humane Society display at the shopping mall, is the one who loves animals. She or he is living a path of honoring all species of life and expressing love in this particular way. He or she who loves to cook for others, organize the food drive at holiday time, give gift certificates to restaurants, is one who naturally nurtures, the one who loves providing this way of feeding and restoring others. One who loves the arts and gives money to support them, is one who is naturally creative in their own heart and is on a path of celebrating Divine creativity in all life.
Thus, our instincts for generosity, for service and for giving, are one more opportunity for self-reflection and to catch a better glimpse of our own life purpose. The answer is always within. By listening to our own heart about such matters, following our own instincts, giving where we are inclined to love, we find our own role on the planet expanding.
We discover our own tenderness for children expanded by donating to the children’s hospital. We find our own deep compassion for the elderly evolving by volunteer work at a local nursing home. We uncover loves of ideas by helping in the local library.
These are not hobbies, or just random opportunities, they are manifestations of our Divine nature. They are expressions of our purpose for being.
Giving and Receiving
Of all the aspects of life, it can seem the most difficult to integrate ideas of money and spirituality. Giving and receiving is the practice of conscious participation in the circulation of universal good in all of its forms.
The spiritual practice of Sacred Giving begins with the recognition that it is part of our nature to not only receive, but to give. It is the measure (attitude) in which we do a thing that establishes the nature of the returning action. Ask…, from where am I giving and receiving? What is my measure, my attitude in which I give, in which I receive?
Give and it shall be given unto you in good measure pressed down, and shaken together, and running over… for with the same measure that Ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
Luke 6:38
It’s not only what you give or do that matters, it’s how you do it. The manner in which you give a gift, for example, has everything to do with the resulting activity generated by the giving. Start with an amount that you can truly and joyfully give, no more or less.
Giving and receiving is the principle of prosperity for without giving there can be no receiving and without receiving there can be no giving. Giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin, they are happening simultaneously.
Because we only reap what we have sown, whatever it is we want to reap, then this is what we need to give and do. One small seed when planted and nurtured will produce an abundance of flowers or vegetables, plus more seeds to plant for future harvest. The same seed if hidden, will dry up and wither away. No one can cheat the process and get something for nothing.
