Universe Notes- 5 Tips

On Sunday our Foundations class hosted a workshop to teach and model Affirmative Prayer. I am reminded of these 5 tips that I note about the Universe. I offer them as both explanation and inspiration on how It works and how to use It.
Tip #1. We live in a creative Universe-
Galaxies are being created. The Universe continues to expand. This means that whenever you feel faced with a challenge, remember there is a way to move through it and expand into a new idea. Any situation that feels too much is ready for a new perspective; a new thought.
Tip #2. Picture the experience of what you desire.
Stay out of 'I gotta do ____' thinking. Stay out of the 'what' and focus on the experience you want to create. For example "I want to experience more harmony in my life". When you focus on the experience you remain open to all of the different ways that harmony can appear. You are relieved of having to know every step right now. That will come as you continue to focus on experiencing what you desire.
Tip #3. Affirm support-
The Universe wants us to experience greater good in our living. How do I know that? Look at the ways people and groups innovate. From where they are today (the present) they find new ways and alternatives to have the new invention (tomorrow). That is the process of creation. There resources from the Universe are always present; they are never hidden. Our work is to release any block or old idea of 'no options' or 'can't do this' and open our minds to the new idea. That's the way creativity works.
Tip #4. Transform a Challenge-
Nature is our model. When you look at nature, observe that things change- just look at every plant, insect, animal and tree. No one expected the caterpillar to change its form into a butterfly. It changed and shifted form. Any situation that might feel lack can be opened up, new options revealed and situations become transformed. It all begins with how you think and what perspective you walk with.
Tip #5. "Listen, Listen, Listen to my heart's song"- Achieving mental clarity and knowing what is right for you comes from the silence. Many access silence through meditation and to listening to the heart, the metaphorical source of the 'inner voice'. The lyrics "Listen, Listen, Listen..." of Yogananda remind me of that. They are put to music by Robert Gass and Wings of Song and can be found on ITunes or Amazon on the 'Songs of Healing" album.

Think about it. Each of these tips is worthy of more description and discussion. I'll come back to that another time.

Words Fall Short

This morning's poetic greeting from Panhala is "What's in the Temple" by Tom Barrett.

I enjoyed the whole poem and particularly these sections-

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...The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable...
The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.

I am reminded when teaching classes this fall that we are always describing the invisible and the mystery and postulating our belief how it works. This section reminds me of describing the 'unsayable'

Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.

Although there is no recipe for hearing this whisper it does happen. When you listen, the attention moves from the brain to a larger knowing, which some would say comes from the heart. I think the heart is a word that just means, 'from within' It is amazing because this inner voice comes with loudness and clarity. 'Love touches you'

If I say the word God, people run away.
They've been frightened--sat on 'till the spirit cried "uncle."
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can't name.
They know he's out there looking for them, and they want to be found,
But there is all this stuff in the way.

I love this section- People come from all different backgrounds of religious and spiritual training. In order to move ahead to a deeper understanding of the mystical each person must come to peace with where they have come from- what they learned first and then 'all this stuff' falls away.
Words we have learned in the past can be accompanied with strict interpretations- e.g. faith, heaven, hell. I have learned to speak using language inclusive of Divine qualities- infinite, joy, trust, support, peace, kindness. The choice of words helps to bridge old history and old beliefs into being present today to the Divine ideas.

I can't talk about God and make any sense,
And I can't not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.

This is my favorite. From Emerson's 'The Transcendentalists' we walk as idealists and materialists at the same time. And the weather, the sun, clouds, wind and rain help us bridge that which can be challenging to articulate.

How Big Is Infinite?

Ok, if you believe that there is a creative idea, a force, and it can be represented as human but is also more than human, i.e. a non-personalized spiritual form then let's call that form Universe. As a name 'Universe' fits well because it represents the vastness we can not see and do not fully understand, yet we know it is there. It provides great mysteries for thought as we think about its bigness, its size and our relation to it.

Well represented graphically, this 2:34 video begins to describe our size on Earth compared to other planetary and galaxy objects...the infinite nature of the Universe.

Apollo 11 and the Pale Blue Dot

I watched the Apollo 11 lunar landing from a campground on the shore of Lake Wallenpaupack. We were vacationing (building the house) in Hawley, PA that summer and in the evening went to the lake. No cable back then and only weak fuzzy signals from the Scranton VHF TV station. So on this 40th anniversary of the landing I have enjoyed reading, listening and watching the interviews and the expressions of the travelers, the Earth team that supported them and the population of observers.

And in that search I found the Carl Sagan segment called, 'the pale blue dot' based on photos taken by the Voyager I unmanned spacecraft in 1990 while 3,781,782,502.403 miles from Earth. I like the way it shows the relative size of our Earth to other celestial bodies. It gives a scale to compare our position and our history on this pale dot. And in that comparison I experience the vastness of the infinite universe.