How's your Meditation practice?

How's your Meditation practice? Daily? Hourly? Not at all? We can assist you in finding the meditation practice that suits your temperament and lifestyle. Experiencing blocks or difficulty? Just getting started? We can assist you in getting started.

Meditation: A Way of Life
Center for Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa, Ca, USA
On 3 Thursdays, May 23, May 30, and June 6, 2013
7:00pm - 9:00pm at the Center for Spiritual Living Santa Rosa

This Meditation Workshop will assist you in finding the meditation method that fits your individual lifestyle and temperament, and will support you in establishing a meditation practice as a way of life. Overcoming obstacles and difficulties in establishing a regular practice will be addressed.

Ernest Holmes on Emma Curtis Hopkins: "What she did was almost like a wind, or a breeze."

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Holmes on Mysticism 7-9-1957

I knew Emma Curtis Hopkins. I did take her course. Anyone who would say he "studied with" Emma Curtis Hopkins would be misstating the fact. No one ever "studied with" her that I know of. You went and she talked for an hour and you left and you went again and this happened 12 times and that was it. I know I bought the course at that time and was more familiar with the then than now but it wasn't the ideas but the consciousness she imparted that you did get. It was a very definite Impartation in what she did from what she said. At times it you might be familiar with what is called a "psychic breeze", like something alive and animated.

Emma Curtis Hopkins when I studied with her about 1922 was nearly 80 years old I believe. She was a very stately old dame. She wore a long dress and I never saw her without a hat. They say she was never without one, why I don't know. I went to the door and was announced, a beautiful place, a hotel apartment in the old Iroquois Hotel in New York.

I entered and she made a stiff little bow, with her head and motioned me to a chair and she sat down and began to talk. It was about 10 minutes before I said to myself, "this is the first lesson", which it was and she talked for an hour, and when she got through, she got up and made a little bow and walked out. The first four times I went, I didn't know whether she knew who I was, of course I was much younger then and it bothered me a little. This was 35 years ago.

2-Now about the fourth or fifth time the old gal loosened up and I used to stay after that and have long conversations with her. She turned out to be very witty and cheerful and sweet and lovable. She was telling me one time about a fellow named Burrnell who was a student of hers. She had a convention in Chicago and he came in and he was an absolutist he came in screening, "I am God." She said," there, there, Edwin, it's all right for you to play you are God but don't be so noisy about it." She was a very sweet character.

Now it is what you felt and not what she said. She showed me the only instance of mysticism that I know about that enables us to tie the mystical concept with the way we use the principal.

I presume that may have been because she was in the early days associated with Mrs. Eddy and was the editor of her first publication but left because of the Star-Chamber performances, so she told me. She was a very profound student of the spiritual classics of the ancients, this is all real.

How I Became the Whole in the Donut

Imagine a giant donut shape with the “whole” in the center of the donut filled with “me”, a vast beingness occupying the center of a circumference of energy. This vision came to me while sitting in meditation during a church service on a Sunday morning. I wasn’t in this container, I was the actual center of this container, peaceful, calm, and centered. Suddenly, this donut-shaped container around me began filling up with thoughts and feelings that had no reference to my immediate experience. This led me to the conclusion that these thoughts and feelings were not exactly my own, or had originated within me. I had entered the building that morning at peace, calm, centered and clear of any residual thoughts or feelings from the past. These thoughts and feelings from my environment felt foreign as if they didn’t quite fit with my internal experience of who I was or what I was doing.
I felt myself being drawn into these mixed feelings and thoughts; a swirling and twirling sensation that confused me; I became disoriented. I experienced a wide variety of emotions: first, anxiety, then sorrow, next frustration, some passing anger, a deep resentment, humiliation, and then again confusion. I had been floating peacefully in calm waters when the waters began to churn; I began to sink into the surrounding mix of fluid thoughts and emotion. A still small Presence within guided my attention back to the center of that donut-shaped container, back to that still place of grace I had known just moments before. Internally I shifted to the center, looked around with the inner eye and watched, with detachment, all of the feelings and thoughts that did not “belong” to me swirling all around in the donut space around me. I felt and knew a clarity, a deep understanding of the confusion I often experience in other situations as being this phenomenon of being the center of a container that held all that is around and within my environment.
Ernest Holmes, a new thought spiritual leader from the early 1900s says:
Telepathy is the act of reading subjective thought, or of receiving conscious thought without audible words being spoken. But there must be a mental tuning in, so to speak, just as there must be in radio. We are surrounded by all sorts of vibrations, and if we wish to catch any of them distinctly, we must tune in; but there is a great deal of interference, and we do not always get the messages clearly. We often get the wrong ones, and sometimes many of the vibrations come together and seem to be nothing but a lot of noises, without any particular reason for being. It is only when the instrument is properly adjusted to some individual vibration that a clear message may be received. (Science of Mind, Pg 240)
There is much more to be said about the phenomenon of telepathy. In some ways this is how my thoughts and your thoughts become our thoughts. We enter the kingdom and are One, individuated, yet One in the container that is One container.

Soul-Strung Voices Singing Only of Life & Delight

From Emma Curtis Hopkins:
CHRISTMAS LESSON: SHEPHERDS AND THE STAR/Luke 2:8-20

Why did the shepherds catch the gleams of a light that was not sunlight or moonlight or fire light? Because they were setting themselves free from the world-wide idea that some kind of material light must shine or they would be in darkness.

Why did they have the songs of harmonious choirs whose soul-strung voices never had chanted of death or of mourning, but only of life and delight? Because for just a brief space they let alone the teachings of their schools and their churches concerning dying before seeing heavenly beings, and being resurrected before hearing of happiness as everywhere.
"Shepherds were watching their flocks by night, When far o'er the hills shown a beautiful light."
That which was being enacted on the Jordan hills 1900 years ago is again taking place. Those who put to one side the "passes" of the doctrines of mankind are shepherds taking good care of their thoughts. The light that shines is the science of God now being taught. It has no trace of the sunlight or moonlight of former doctrine in its mysterious shining. To those who follow where it leads there is a young realization born. This realization of the divine power and divine harmony, waiting within each soul to be the arbiter of each life, is the young Jesus Christ.
No one has yet come into the manger with offerings of all his gold and frankincense and myrrh of property, genius, reputation. They who have the light shine round are those who think they will follow up the science and see where it leads. It will lead down to the meekness and lowliness of yielding up of will, love of praise, fear of blame, eagerness to be successful, into the mysterious manger of nothingness of such traditions.
He who does this is afterward lost as a shepherd of sheep. He is the Christ. He can work miracles. He shall not be a man with the idea of limited abilities. He shall be Jesus Christ with all power. He shall not reckon his age by years, his possessions by count, his health by state of flesh. He shall realize that before the world was he was, and without end is his ownership. His health and beauty are not reckoned by conditions of flesh, but by his mastership of flesh as Spirit.
There are a great number near the manger. They are now learning to give up their eagerness for praise, their fear of blame, their struggles to be ahead of their neighbors or to be of equal importance with the rest of the sound of the voice of Spirit. The "passes" of the world's competitions do not move them. They know that success must first be of the Spirit before it has any taste.
"Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added."
"For we know that prosperity is of Thee."
It is now time for the light of Spiritual science to shine over the shepherds of the planet as it once shone over the shepherds of Judea. As Mary was not Jesus Christ but only brought Him forth, so those who brought out this doctrine from the archives of the ages where it had been hidden are not Jesus Christ because they have not shown the miracle working power of Jesus Christ, the Spiritual science of his hour.
But as Mary yielded all things to Jesus, so those who preach it are now giving it its absolute freedom with their life. They are standing back and letting it demonstrate for itself. The knowledge which they bear in their bosom that it is omnipotent truth, is as much activity as they care to exhibit.
"Mary kept all these sayings and pondered them in her heart." We will each do our protecting duty by the young science, which never had any beginning but was with man from his first breath. We will tell how true it is. We will tell its doctrines. We will praise its power. We will yield all we have, and are, to it till we are it absolutely. We shall prove that we are it only by our power of demonstrating in plain light of all mankind that there is no sin, no sickness, no death, no poverty, no feebleness, no senility, no mourning, for God is omnipresent and afflicted by none of these things.
December 25, 1892

"I'm going to leave you 'God' in my will."

White Dog

The sun shimmered upon the open waters. Pink Ladies and Kniphofia uvaria (Red Hot Pokers)infused color and scent along the coastal trail. The Pacific Ocean gleamed with the warmth of the late summer sky. Then, I met a white dog--a Maltese, white locks framing its small brown eyes. His name was Jack. He came to me, gently, softly and stepped into my lap. He nuzzled his muzzle against my bosom and rested there for a moment. I held him with my soft touch. The stillness of Spirit was present in that moment. Love came from this Friend that could only be described as an expression of a Divine Presence saying hello to me, loving me. I have a special relationship with white dogs, and black dogs. During my spiritual studies I encountered the metaphor of feeding the white dog as a way to cultivate the white light, the Light over the darkness. The white light came to me today as a Maltese. The owner of Jack plans to award me ownership in his will. As if to say "I'm going to leave you 'God' in my will." ^_^ Blessings...

If You Want to Change the World

If you want to change the world… love a woman
in all her faces, through all her seasons
and she will heal you of your schizophrenia-
your double-mindedness and half-heartedness
which keeps your Spirit and body separate-
which keeps you alone and always looking outside your Self
for something to make your life worth living.
There will always be another woman.
Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one
and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars,
trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.
Man doesn’t need any more choices.
What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine,
of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing,
of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots strong enough to hold the Earth together
while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin.

If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman. Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel. Love her through her fear of abandonment
which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.
No, she is not weak in her codependence.
If you want to change the world… love a woman
all the way through until she believes you,
until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion, her wildness have returned to her-
until she is a force of love more powerful
than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.

If you want to change the world,
lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.
Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger
and love a woman…beyond all of your striving for greatness, beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.
The holy grail stands before you
if you would only take her in your arms
and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy. What if peace is a dream which can only be re-membered through the heart of Woman?
What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine
is the key to opening Her heart?
If you want to change the world…love a woman
to the depths of your shadow,
to the highest reaches of your Being,
back to the Garden where you first met her,
to the gateway of the rainbow realm
where you walk through together as Light as One,
to the point of no return,
to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth. ~Lisa Citore

OH, FOR A TONGUE TO EXPRESS

Oh, for a tongue to express the Wonders which the Thought reveals!
Oh, for some Word to comprehend the boundless idea!
Would that some Voice were sweet enough to sound the harmony of Life.
But Within, in that vast realm of thought where the Soul meets God, the Spirit knows.
I will listen for that Voice and It will tell me of Life, of Love and Unity.
Speak to me, Spirit.

~Ernest Holmes from Meditations for Daily Living available as an ebook through Amazon and in a hard back booklet from:
Stepping Stones Metaphysical Bookstore in hard booklet (See side bar).