How can you determine someone's theological beliefs?
Last night, I facilitated a Unity Basics class highlighting the fundamental principles of the New Thought/Ancient Wisdom Teachings. (If you missed it, I'm teaching another on Saturday, March 11. Reserve your place here.) At the beginning of the presentation, I posed the above question.
I suggested we can determine one's theology by asking the following:
What is the nature of God?
What is the nature of humanity?
What is the relationship between the two?
There are probably no words that can fully define what God is. However, I believe one phrase comes close. That phrase is "God is Spirit." Spirit is unlimited and not confined in any way. God, or Spirit, is at every point in space and time. Therefore, God must always be right where we are. Additionally, most spiritual paths agree that God is love. These two qualities - Love and Spirit - begin to capture the essence of God.
Many of us have been trained to think that God is something or someone outside of ourselves and, if we pray correctly, God will give us things or answer our needs. However, nothing could be further from the truth. God does not answer our needs. God is the need. Or more accurately, it is the consciousness of God that we must seek whenever we want something to change in our life. When that becomes the activity of our awareness, our need is answered.
Consequently, our spiritual work is to realize our oneness with the qualities of God: peace, love, joy, power, imagination, health, wholeness and unlimited abundance. When these qualities become the activity of our awareness, that connection itself is the need answered. That realization then reveals itself on the material plane to provide what we think is missing in our life.
To catch that sense of oneness, we must wake up every day expecting good to show up in our life. We stop at midday for a few minutes of silence, in order to reaffirm our oneness with pure Spirit. And we don't go to bed until we are feeling grateful that all our needs are met - even before we see them show up in physical form. These daily practices help us realize our consciousness is one with the presence of God.
I often have conversations with people who have had a brilliant manifestation of a met need. They talk about what preceded the manifestation: their worry disappeared, they ceased trying to figure things out with the rational mind and all the doing stopped.
Somewhere in the midst of communing with the presence of God, they realized all was well. They released and let go. Then the demonstration appeared: they got job they wanted, their physical body seemed operate a little better, there was greater clarity in a relationship.
Sometimes they mistakenly think those things were the needs answered. They were not. The real need answered was that moment of clarity, insight or connection in which the power and love of God became the activity of their awareness.
That moment of God awareness was when their need was met.
There is a line in a song that I often sing to myself that says, "I used to think that I needed somebody, but all I needed was my connection with God." It's a reminder that God does not jump up and answer our needs. Rather, it is our conscious connection to the Spirit of God that makes all the difference.
Peace and Blessings,
James