Hello you prosperous beings I would like to help you on the Avenue of Abundance. If you decide to join then you will get these posts directly to your email. How handy is that? Take WISDOM  with you wherever you go! Sometimes we lose our way so reviewing any blog post that speaks to you hopefully will help get you focused and back on the path.

June 11, 2023

April 30,2023

“Love is the lodestone of life, the great and supreme Reality. Love is the highest gift of heaven, the greatest good on earth, and the treasure of all our search. It is the end and aim of everything. We cannot doubt that God is Love, because love renews and reinvigorates while hate kills. People who love animals and understand them are not afraid of them, for love transmits some subtle essence of life to everything it touches, awakening within all things an equal awareness and response. This is true also of human relationships. Love is the greatest healing power there is and no one feels whole without it. But love is something that need not be confined to only a few persons; that love that we have for the few can be extended to more without losing the love of the few. And what a wonderful experience and realization it would be if we learned to love everyone as we love the few! Right now our vision is hardly great enough to include this larger good. But when love becomes more complete it will take in a larger territory and we will experience a greater degree of livingness. Today my love goes out to all people and to all things. There is no fear in this love for perfect love casts out all fear. There is no doubt in this love for faith penetrates all doubt and reveals a unity at the center of everything that embraces all things. This love flowing through me harmonizes everything in my experience, brings joy and gladness to everything, brings a sense of security and well-being to everyone. I realize that the love flowing through, in, and around me and all things is one vast all-enveloping essence and force forever emanating from the living God. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.—JOHN 15: 9”

— 365 Science of Mind: A Year of Daily Wisdom from Ernest Holmes by Ernest Holmes

April 2, 2023

March 12, 2023

“For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.—PSALM 91: 11 Deep within the consciousness of each of us there is a center of peace and security where trouble and accidents do not occur, where truth and love reign supreme, where good is the only power. It is to this center that we go in the silence of our own minds to commune daily with the Spirit that is both around us and within us. Truly this is the Most High within, always immediately responsive to us. In our meditation we seek to make this Presence more real to us and more personal. And as we do, an inward sense of calm comes over the mind, a feeling of security and safety that every human being needs. I know that all the Power there is and all the Presence there is, is Love, the Spirit Almighty. I know that Love protects me and that I am guided and guarded into the pathways of peace, of joy, and of security. I know that this is true of all people. This is what I believe about everyone. This is what exists for the whole world. This is my prayer of acceptance today and every day. I feel myself safe in the keeping of the Divine Love. I feel the soft enveloping Presence of the living Spirit. I know there is no confusion or doubt in the Mind of God, and God’s Mind is the only mind there is. This Mind is my mind now, directing everything I do, guarding every movement I make. For all Thy ways are ways of blessedness, and all Thy paths are peace. I trust. I live and move and have my being in that which is completely perfect and wholly joyous.”

— 365 Science of Mind: A Year of Daily Wisdom from Ernest Holmes by Ernest Holmes

November 13, 2022

“Thanksgiving O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom . . . . Hallowed be thy name.—ISAIAH 25: 1 The attitudes of praise and thanksgiving are salutary. They not only lighten the consciousness, lifting it out of sadness and depression, they elevate consciousness to a point of acceptance. Praise and thanksgiving are really attitudes of recognition. They are affirmations of the Divine Presence, the Divine abundance, and the Divine givingness. It is only when we live affirmatively that we are happy. It is only when we recognize that the universe is built on affirmation that we can become happy. Today, through praise and thanksgiving, I recognize the Divine Presence in everything. In the midst of darkness I will sing a song to the dawn, for I know that the Eternal Light dissipates all darkness. Today I will recognize the beautiful and the perfect in everything. I will call it forth with praise and thanksgiving, blessing the spiritual Reality back of all things. Gratitude is one of the chief graces of human existence and is crowned in heaven with a consciousness of unity.—THE SCIENCE OF MIND, P. 497”

November 1, 2022

“NOVEMBER GRATITUDE An attitude of gratitude is most salutary, and bespeaks the realization that we are now in heaven.—ERNEST HOLMES There is something in this attitude of thanksgiving that carries us beyond the field of doubt into one of perfect faith and acceptance, receptivity . . . realization.—ERNEST HOLMES I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God, the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts.—RALPH WALDO EMERSON All of creation is a song of praise to God.—HILDEGARDOF BINGEN If the only prayer you say in your entire life is “Thank You,” that would suffice.—MEISTER ECKHART”

October 30, 2022

October 16, 2022

October 9, 2022

September 4, 2022

August 28, 2022

August 21, 2022

August 14, 2022

July 24, 2022

“So long as we have not cultivated the strength to die with courage and love in our hearts, we cannot hope to develop the ahimsa (nonviolence) of the strong.” M.K. Gandhi Gandhi’s struggle, and Dr. King’s struggle, of nonviolence was much more dramatic and dangerous than most of ours, so this language is also stronger than most of us would use. But the message is clear: if there is anything which we fear so deeply that we would lose our courage and abandon love in the moment, we have not yet embodied nonviolence in our hearts. In everyday terms, this means that nothing said to us, no action taken against us or another, should be able to drive us from nonviolence. The founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy said, “Stand porter at the door of thoughts”. Every thought is a choice.Once on the path of nonviolence, every interaction, every relationship, no matter how difficult, becomes an opportunity to be aware of the thoughts we allow ourselves to think. Often we hear people say that they can’t help reacting with anger when others attack them. Yet, in the split second between the perceived attack and our response, a whole thought process occurs. That process has been described like this: we are attacked, we judge what has occurred based on past experiences, a feeling arises based on that judgment, we react. It may only take a second (actuall about 0.6 seconds), but that process always occurs when we are reacting to someone’s attack upon us. Then we can choose love or fear and anger in response. Being aware of this process and watching for it in every interaction is one way to cultivate the strength we need to hold to love no matter what. Responding to the love within us instead of reacting to the world outside us is the path of nonviolence. Affirmative Practice Today, I will meditate on this question, “Are there any circumstances under which I would surrender my commitment to nonviolence?” Today, I will watch for opportunities to choose nonviolence over violence. Today I will choose cultivate the strength to love. This is the path to nonviolence.

Let peace begin with you.

July 3, 2022

“As long as the secret of the soul is not known, all practices are useless. Thy life has passed away uselessly, like rains out of season.” M.K. Gandhi Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of Gandhi’s heroes, said, “No man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded by the law of his being….” Each of us has a soul secret, a hidden truth of our nature waiting for us to awaken to it. It’s buried beneath a lifetime of mistaken beliefs, negative experiences and limited thinking about who and what we think we are. Until we come to truly know our inner nature, our soul secret, any practice, including nonviolence, will fail to produce the results we are looking for. Many of us have seen in the lives of others or in our own lives experiences that looked like and felt like they were natural, and yet fell far short of what was intended or desired. Then we discovered that, in the end, they were forced. These experiences, even when they do reflect some pale version of our soul secret, will always fall short of what we are born to do unless we uncover, discover and recover from the beliefs, memories and thoughts of a lifetime. When we have done the deep work of recovering from the violence done to our psyche by our past, then the secret of our soul can be revealed. When that secret of our true nature is revealed, the work of nonviolence comes easily, without frustration, anger, resentment or anger. In that consciousness, the work is easy and success assured. Affirmative Practice Today, I will meditate on the universe’s highest vision for my life. Today, I will ask, “What’s really going on here? Does my life truly reflect the “secret of my soul?” In everything I do today, I will listen for the negative voice of my old beliefs. When I hear it, I will ask, “What is it I need to recover from here?” This is the path of nonviolence.

Let peace begin with you.

June 19, 2022

“Nonviolence is a matter of the heart. It does not come to us through any intellectual feat.” M.K. Gandhi With the work of Gandhi and King and Cesar Chavez and the Occupy movement of today, many think nonviolence is a political position or a tool for political action. It is and it isn’t. nonviolence is a way of life that embraces a change of heart, a change of beliefs and actions about all our relationships. Many who have been a part of movements where nonviolence training is routine. But training alone isn’t enough. In fact, if nonviolence does not come from a deep heart place, no amount of training and intellectual understanding can ever produce nonviolence. Many of us have discovered, as we did the work of self-growth, that interpersonal strategies for communications and building relationships were useless as long as they remained “in our heads”. Only when we have embodied them and moved them that “terrible eighteen inches” from our heads to our hearts can they have any value. These strategies, of whatever kind, are techniques in one-to-one nonviolence. Like them, nonviolent strategies for group action can only work when they come from the heart. Our job, then, is to embody love and nonviolence as the only tools necessary to the heart, whatever tools the intellect may embody. Affirmative Practice Today, I will meditate on bringing nonviolence from my head into my heart, opening myself to feeling love and nonviolence, not as an idea, but an embodied reality. In all my interactions today, I will check first with my heart, before responding from my head. This is the path of nonviolence.

Let peace begin with you.

June 5, 2022

“Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable” M.K. Gandhi Since Gandhi made this statement in 1927, science has discovered forces unimaginable at that time. Yet Gandhi’s words are as true today as they were when he spoke them. True nonviolence is an act of love. It is the willingness to face the violence and hatred of another in love. nonviolent love… that sounds redundant, and in a way it is. There can be no true nonviolence without a deep love, not only for yourself and those you represent, but for those you oppose. Likewise, there can never be love when violence of thought, word or deed is present. Love is always an act of humility. It is literally impossible to face those who are violent toward you with pridefulness, arrogance or superiority and still be nonviolent, for there is no love in that attitude or behavior, only ego. When we are in our egos, we are always judging others against our standards. Judging others always comes with moral violence and superiority, never love. Love with humility always demands that we see differences with others as “opinions”, not as right or wrong or as “truths” vs. “untruths”. This important distinction makes all the difference in the world to the one practicing nonviolence. The only right or wrong is whether we express our differences with nonviolence or violence. Love with humility also demands that the one practicing nonviolence see those who use violence against others as deeply wounded themselves and needing the healing only nonviolence can bring. Affirmative Practice Today I will meditate on how love can be a more important force in my life. Today, I will approach each interaction with love and the humility to know that there is no right or wrong, only opinions expressed violently or nonviolently. This is the path of nonviolence.

Let peace begin with you.

May 15, 2022

“My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.” M.K. Gandhi As we move from considering our place in the universe to considering “our place” within our own consciousness, Gandhi tells us to remember that ALL that we are is a blessing. Our path of nonviolence in the world must include accepting that our imperfections and failures are as much a blessing as our gifts and successes. Feeling guilt and shame about our imperfections and failures, lying about them or disguising them are violence committed against ourselves. In these behaviors, the message we are sending ourselves is “you aren’t worthy! If people knew who you really are….” Were we to do this to another, we would recognize the violence in it, but when directed to ourselves, we often miss the self-inflicted injury we cause. Instead, let us focus on how each of our imperfections and failures can be gifts to the world. Learning nonviolence toward ourselves, seeing all of our gifts and imperfections, all of our successes and failures as blessings is the work of nonviolence. Affirmative Practice Today, I will meditate on my imperfections and failures, seeing how each of them have blessed me as a step along the path to who I am today. Today I observe how they can be used as gifts to myself and to others. This is the path to nonviolence.

Let peace begin with you.

April 24, 2022

“To me God is truth and love. God is ethics and morality; God is fearlessness. God is the source of light and life, and yet He is above and beyond all these.” M.K. Gandhi Many of us describe ourselves as “spiritual, but not religious”. What we’re really saying is that we do not accept the idea of a God that exists as a “Super Being”, in the sense of “the Old White Man with white hair and beard on the Throne of Gold” or whatever our idea of “Not God” is. Each of us is entitled to our own soul metaphor, even the metaphor of “Not God” because none of us can ever know God except through ourselves. Gandhiji is stating the Truth of the Divine, whatever soul metaphor you may apply to it. Those of us who reject the idea of God, but honor, respect and practice the highest ethical and moral qualities are worshiping the Divine in our way. All of the highest qualities, the “soul” qualities, that we possess are the Divine. And yet, even within us, God is above and beyond all those soul qualities. Our very life essence is Spirit expressing itself in a unique way through each of us. Many of us, however “Spiritual but not religious” we may be, still feel a connection with all life, and a unity in all life. We feel that connection all life is the Divine expressing. Nonviolence is the outward expression of our conscious unity with Spirit, however we understand it. Violence is the separation that comes when we forget who we are. Affirmative Practice Today, my day will begin and end with consciously remembering that I am one with everyone and everything. Today I will see and bless Spirit expressing in all Life. Today, I will see and honor the Divine even in those with whom I most disagree. That is the path of nonviolence.

April 18, 2022

“Man as an animal is violent but as Spirit is nonviolent. The moment he awakes to the Spirit within he cannot remain violent. Either he progresses towards ahimsa (nonviolence) or rushes to his doom.” M.K. Gandhi While the Mahatma and Dr. King lived and carried on the work from the high place of spirituality, their movements remained nonviolent. After their assassinations, anger, frustration, and pain drove major elements in both movements in the direction of violent confrontation. Negative and violent emotions only gain dominance when we have lost our spiritual awareness and connection. Whatever we face, whatever forces we oppose, we have to first awaken to Spirit and then stay awake. That awakening is a daily part of nonviolence. As Gandhiji said, grounding ourselves in Spirit, holding to a spiritual practice of Ahimsa, are the only path to success. Whenever we feel frustration, fear, anger, irritation, impatience or depression about the pace of the work we do, we are in the violent realm of “animal man”. When we are able to hold to the Truth, walk the path and do the work from a place of peace, serenity and love, we are in the spiritual realm of Ahimsa. Affirmative Practice Today, I will meditate on my motivations and emotions. Am I doing the work of nonviolence to “defeat” the forces of violence? Or am I doing the work of nonviolence to bring love and healing to those who fear, who are angry, in pain and frustrated. Today I will treat each person I meet with love. That is the path of nonviolence.

Let peace begin with you

April 17, 2022

“God alone knows the mind of a person; and the duty of a Man of God is to act as he is directed by his inner voice…. I ask nobody to follow me. Everyone should follow his own inner voice.” M.K. Gandhi For many of us, the Power of the Divine comes as a “still, small, voice”, the voice of Spirit. Yet Gandhi says the “still, small voice” is our “own, inner voice”. Is this a contradiction? No, of course not. Our own inner voice, the voice of our intuition, the voice of Love, IS the voice of the Divine speaking through us, as us. For each of us that voice is different. If you are a member of a spiritual community of any kind, you know that every person, even in your own community, believes something different from everyone else. And yet we are all right, and all wrong, for the Divine can not defined in human terms. We can never hear, nor act, perfectly, but we can endeavor to do so with authenticity and integrity. We do that when we listen to, and follow our own inner voice. The surest way to walk the path of nonviolence is to listen to our own inner voice knowing that it is THE path of nonviolence and allow all other beings to do the same. Affirmative Practice Today, I will meditate and listen for that still, small voice within me. I will follow that inner guidance and know that each person does the same. This is the path of spiritual nonviolence. Let peace begin with you.

April 10, 2022

April 3, 2022

“There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything. I feel it though I do not see it. It is this unseen Power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is unlike all that I perceive through my senses.” M.K. Gandhi We have all had moments of awe and wonder that filled us with some sense of the spiritual nature of everything. A beautiful sunset, an eagle crying out as it soared over head, the first smile of recognition from an infant… each of us has experienced that “indefinable mysterious Power”. When we begin to understand that the indefinable nature of that Power forces each of us to interpret it in our own way, through our own “soul metaphor”. The path to true nonviolence begins when we remember that this “Power… pervades everything” and be clear about our “soul metaphor” and its role in our work. Our work of nonviolence begins and ends with knowing that the person who gives nonviolence is that Power and the person who receives nonviolence is that Power and the nonviolence itself is that Power. Affirmative Practice Today I will meditate on and remember that undefinable, mysterious Power that fills all life including me and look for it in every being and situation. In finding that Power in every being and situation, I will find nonviolence.

Let peace begin with you

March 28, 2022

On April 4th, 2022, our center will be finishing up the “64 days of Nonviolence.”

I would like to share more, especially from M.K. Gandhi’s sharing. We are not at the place in our society let along our world, to experience nonviolence, yet. We are always becoming more than we really are. Practicing Nonviolence With Gandhi was created by Rev. Frank zumMallen.“Religions are different roads converging upon the same point. What difference does it make that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal.” M.K. Gandhi No religion or spiritual path can ever completely embrace all the Divine is. The Divine is Infinite. No human religion can ever be anything but “the finger pointing at the moon”. Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr says, “All religion is metaphor”. Each of us has our own “soul metaphor” or cosmology, our way of understanding the universe and our place in it. We each have a soul metaphor, whether we know it or not. Gandhi’s soul metaphor refers to the Divine as “God” and “He” and “Him”. For many of us, the word “God”, along with concepts like a male Deity, seem to create a violent dissonance within us. Dealing with our own feelings about a Male God can be a wonderful practice of nonviolence. Arun Gandhi, M.K. Gandhi’s Grandson and co-founder of the “Season”, reminds us that we should release all attachment to possessing the Truth and join his grandfather in pursuing it. Believing we possess the Truth is the path of “himsa”, violence. Believing we all, even Gandhi, pursue the Truth is the path of “Ahimsa”, Ahimsa is the Hindu/ Buddhist practice of reverence for and nonviolence toward all living beings. Affirmative Practice Today, I will meditate on and remember each being has their own “soul metaphor”. Today I will remember that every belief, even those that make me uncomfortable, are different roads taken in pursuit of the same goal,

Truth. That is the path to nonviolence.

Let peace begin with you.