New Year

2025 – IT’S TIME TO AWAKEN AND ENGAGE

/ JimLockard / Leave a comment

For my final post of 2024, I turn for inspiration to Pema Chödrön, whose works have inspired me for many years.

“Times are difficult globally; awakening is no longer a luxury or an ideal. It’s becoming critical. We don’t need to add more depression, more discouragement, or more anger to what’s already here. It’s becoming essential that we learn how to relate sanely with difficult times. The earth seems to be beseeching us to connect with joy and discover our innermost essence. This is the best way that we can benefit others.”
~ Pema Chödrön

When Things Fall Apart

As the new year dawns, many of us find ourselves feeling anxiety about what is to come. This concern or fear extends across many aspects of our lives, from personal issues with health, finances, or relationships outward into local, regional, national, and global concerns relating to the climate crisis, wars, political turmoil, economics, healthcare, racism, sexism, and so on.

A part of me wants to think, “after all the praying and rituals done for peace and wellbeing, how did we get into this mess?” The metaphysical answer to that question is that the collective consciousness of those involved at any level of conditions co-creates experience. Then, I want to ask myself, “is the collective consciousness of humanity so filled with fear that it produced so much suffering despite all the praying?”

And then I realized: the prayers, the Spiritual Mind Treatments (not the same as regular prayer – LINK), the rituals, and the actions were generated in a consciousness of fear, at least to some degree. We are taught to look at the outcome to determine the dominant consciousness, whether of the individual or the group. So many are caught up in a speeding up of thought driven by a combination of our own tendency toward anxiety and the technical revolution of devices and new media which feed that anxiety.

“Not causing harm requires staying awake. Part of being awake is slowing down enough to notice what we say and do. The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.”
~ Pema Chödrön

When Things Fall Apart

It is important to develop a consciousness of Oneness with the Divine within as a starting point or a foundation for the beliefs in our subconscious. This expands our capacity to see what we fear and simultaneously know that we can deal with it. It gives us the ability to love and to be calm in the face of apparent chaos and danger. And it gives us the ability to hold ourselves and others in compassion, even when they are against us.

Religious fear is loud; spiritual truth is quiet. What the founders of the branches of the New Thought family tree had in common was a realization of the power of mind to transform and heal plus an intention to help people develop spiritual truth in their lives. That process requires high levels of intention, determined and extended spiritual practices, and a growing realization of one’s own inner power.

“When we’re putting up the barriers and the sense of ‘me’ as separate from ‘you’ gets stronger, right there in the midst of difficulty and pain, the whole thing could turn around simply by not erecting barriers; simply by staying open to the difficulty, to the feelings that you’re going through; simply by not talking to ourselves about what’s happening. That is a revolutionary step. Becoming intimate with pain is the key to changing at the core of our being—staying open to everything we experience, letting the sharpness of difficult times pierce us to the heart, letting these times open us, humble us, and make us wiser and more brave. Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.”
~ Pema Chödrön

Practicing Peace in Times of War

Being with the inevitable pains of life until they have taught us what we needed to learn is a hallmark of spiritual evolution. Too often our spiritual practices reflect a desire to have a life free of pain and problems, as if that were even possible. In fact, it isn’t even desirable. Our fear-based ego tries to defend us by amplifying what is frightening while at the same time constricting our access to deeper intuitive wisdom; at least until we train it differently.

We develop the capacity for spiritual realization by embracing all of life, even the painful parts. This does not mean that we enjoy pain or fear, but if these were eliminated from our lives, we would cease developing. Our deeply held and cherished beliefs are often false and will not be charmed out of our consciousness. When we teach that healing can come without discomfort and/or pain we are being inconsistent with both what we know about human psychology and what the founders actually taught. Without challenges, we do not grow. Learning and growth require change, and change is always uncomfortable or worse. However, we have within us the capacities to withstand and transform more than we think we can.

“If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That’s the true practice of peace.”
~ Pema Chödron

Practicing Peace in Times of War

Echoing Gandhi’s prescription to be the peace you want to see in the world, here Chödron cautions that it is courage which will soften our hearts and allow us to stay the course. In other words, there must be peace in our own hearts before we can see it in the outer world. The transformation of humanity begins within each individual.

Resist the urge to demonize others. Become strong enough to see through the eyes of compassion, which means the real truth: that Oneness is the nature of things and separation is an illusion. With that strength, refuse to be baited into a lesser version of yourself or to be knocked off balance by the behaviors of others. Remember that all harmful behavior arises from fear.

Stay with love. Stay with power. Stay with Compassion. Practice the principles every day. Engage with life from this basis and you will be a positive influence.

“So, the next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where the courage comes in. Usually, we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.”
~ Pema Chödrön

When Things Fall Apart

I wish you a very CONSCIOUS AND FULFILLING NEW YEAR!

Thank you for reading this blog. If you have not subscribed, feel free to do so – there is no charge. Please share with others who may be interested.

Copyright 2024 – Jim Lockard

PREPARING FOR THE CHALLENGES AHEAD

/ JimLockard / 6 Comments

“If you’re lucky, at some point in your life you’ll come to a complete dead end. Or to put it another way: if you’re lucky you’ll come to a crossroads and see that the path to the left leads to hell, that the path to the right leads to hell, that the road straight ahead leads to hell and that if you try to turn around you’ll end up in complete and utter hell. Every way leads you to hell and there’s no way out, nothing left for you to do. Nothing can possibly satisfy you anymore. Then, if you’re ready, you’ll start to discover inside yourself what you always longed for but were never able to find.”
~ Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom

You may not have heard or seen the quote above in your New Thought spiritual community or in any New Thought books. But maybe if you had, your life would be on a sounder trajectory, with less fear and confusion. This post is about coming to terms with the challenges of 2024 and finding within ourselves the strengths, realizations, and grace to survive and thrive in these times.

We are in the midst of a rapidly expanding atmosphere of fear, disinformation, climate emergency, political chaos, and massive shifts in what it means to be human. This atmosphere is speeding up due to factors such as social media, artificial intelligence, and, more importantly, a willingness by some to use these tools unethically to further their own agendas. This is not a time to withdraw nor is it a time to pretend that we are less powerful than we really are. It is a time to awaken the spiritual warrior within.

Eric Butterworth, the great Unity teacher, said that the only sin in New Thought is the “frustration of potential.” We frustrate the infinite potential within us by developing a consciousness which blocks or inhibits the expression of our potential. In other words, we “sin” when we get in our own way, or when we fail to bring our potential into actualization.

“Everything is inside you now, rooted deep into your being. And with the entire universe inside of you, where in reality it always has been, you can sense for the first time how much power you hold in the palm of your hand. For the whole world — whatever you experience or perceive — is just buds on the tree that you are.”
~ Peter Kingsley

We sin, or miss the mark, when we refuse to acknowledge the challenges, the pain, the loss, the confusion of life. Ernest Holmes and the other founders tell us to turn away from the negative to a deeper reality, but they do not say to pretend that the negative does not exist. To deny the negative side of life is to deny a significant portion of our reality and fertile ground for redemption (spiritual awakening) – we grow from our discomforts when we understand them correctly. What we are to deny is an attachment to or an identification with the negative side of life.

I like to think of New Thought teachings as a combination of working with the law and courting the Beloved. I first heard this idea in a talk given by Rev. Dr. Mark Viera. By working with the law, I mean developing a clarity about the Law of Mind and its uses; learning to use the law to master living in our world of duality. This is an important path and one which is essentially solitary – we may join in community to learn and grow, but our journey is our own.

By courting the Beloved, I mean the exploration of the mystical side of life. Our mystical identity is fluid, paradoxical, unbound, shared by all yet experienced uniquely. Our mystical nature is the key to our true identity. The highest value of working with the law is that we get our external lives in order to such a degree that we have time and energy to focus on exploring the mystical self.

“This is an essential experience of any mystical realization. You die to your flesh and are born into your spirit. You identify yourself with the consciousness and life of which your body is but the vehicle. You die to the vehicle and become identified in your consciousness with that of which the vehicle is but the carrier.”
~ Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

2024 promises to bring us challenges which are not new but have been growing in effect due to insufficient political and social will to resolve them. We are too easily distracted by issues, which may be of some concern, but do not rise to the level of the greater challenges present. Social media, for one example, seems to shrink our attention span to a significant degree. We spend valuable days and even weeks focusing on relative trivia, or worse, we may be in denial about the larger challenges altogether. Be wary of the power of media and social media to influence you toward an addictive pattern of resentment and outrage.

We see our politicians deny what is factually true and the media refuse to challenge many of those falsehoods. Or we are distracted by the “outrage of the moment” and lose sight of where our focus needs to be. Our egoic minds seek to relieve us of the stress of focusing on the bigger challenges, but our soul wants nothing less.

What is needed is each of us to realize our inner power to a greater degree and then act in unison to effect change for the good in our communities, our states or provinces, and our nations. We must show up at every opportunity to be heard and to effect positive change. What we need is a greater realization of the love that we are in the context that James Baldwin expresses here:

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in a personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace —not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
~ James Baldwin

We cannot be spiritual change agents if we turn away from the difficult topics and the fear associated with them. We are not more spiritual if we do not watch or read the news, what we are is less likely to creatively respond to the world’s pain.

The opening quotation by Peter Kingsley speaks to this. When Ernest Holmes wrote that the world has learned enough through suffering, he did not mean that we should avoid the pains of life. How could we? What he meant was that we had to transmute that suffering into grace by transforming our consciousness of reality. To do that we must move through the suffering, through the pain, through the boredom, through the grief, through the fear, toward a realization of the grace of knowing that we are enough. We have to make the meaning fit our potential realized and the challenges at hand.

“The world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful…and decide what you want and need and must do. It’s a tough, unimaginably lonely and complicated way to be in the world. But that’s the deal: you have to live; you can’t live by slogans, dead ideas, clichés, or national flags. Finding an identity is easy. It’s the easy way out.”
~ Zadie Smith

Ultimately, I am not my family, my nation, my gender, my religion, or anything other than being a Precious Cosmic Self, individuated from Oneness to express as me in this reality. In the mystical reality, all identity falls away; in dualistic reality, identity plays a role. Those identities can be helpful in our working with the law lives, but they are not the ultimate reality of who and what we are.

2024 will demand much of each of us, not to the same degree perhaps, but aspects of our potential will be called forth as never before. If we withdraw and hide, we not only put ourselves in greater jeopardy, but we fail to bring the actualization of our inner potential forward to assist humanity. We deny our power and genius to the world.

It is time to wake up, wise up, and stand up for what is important and valuable in life.

“All nature is waiting for us to become conscious because there’s a particular quality of consciousness that only humans can provide. Nature needs that consciousness; cries out for it. And the process of deciphering Nature’s need, then discovering how to respond to it, is what’s called learning to become human.”
~ Peter Kingsley

As always, your comments are appreciated. Please share this post with others who may be interested.

Copyright 2024 – Jim Lockard

2022 – WHAT WILL YOU MAKE OF IT?

/ JimLockard / 5 Comments

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”

~ Rumi

The time at the end of a calendar year and the beginning of a new year is critical in developing a sense of intentionality for our engagement with that new year. Now is a time to feel into the possibilities ahead and to set intentions for ourselves to develop the inner qualities we want to express and experience. To do this successfully, we must take an active approach or we will be overwhelmed by a combination of our own limited current consciousness and our response to the outer world’s events.

Our inner self-image or being state is what determines our experience of life. It is only when we increase the quality of love and empowerment of our being state that we truly develop to a new stage of being. We can temporarily change for the better, however unless that change becomes integrated into our being state, it will dissipate rather quickly.

There are many challenges facing us at every level of our being today – globally, nationally, locally, personally. The need to increase our deep sense of spiritual connection and power is important. Only by setting clear intentions and doing daily practices to integrate the realization of those intentions will be learn to master the increasing challenges we face.

By setting intentions I mean deciding who I am in regard to issues in my life. An intention is not to get a new car, or to have the money for the car; those are goals. The related intention is to be the person who naturally gets what I need when I need it. Notice the difference? Goals are important, but intentions are essential if goals are to be met consistently. And another effect of doing deep intentional work is that you will need to set fewer goals. When you realize in your being state who you are, you will naturally manifest at that level according to your needs and desires of the moment.

“Being negative is easy. There will always be a downside to everything good, a hurdle to everything desirable, a con to every pro. The real courage is in finding the good in what you have, the opportunities in every hurdle, the pros in every con.”

~ Carolyn Hax

The year 2021 brought many challenges, and I am sure that you have been affected in many ways. From the climate crisis to the pandemic to political upheaval, global challenges are calling us to significant personal and collective change. For many, there has been personal illness, loss of loved ones, financial challenges, and more. These are difficult enough when the global issues are less pressing but are amplified in times like this. Who we are in relation to these challenges is the critical factor in how we experience them. It is more and more important to develop a positive being state.

“If we insist on waiting for the world to change before we will be happy, we will have a long wait. When happiness is conditioned on the choices of others, it is out of our hands. Rather than a reactive process, true happiness is an inside-out process beginning in the heart and spiraling outward. When true happiness is present, the world does change. Inner joy is the cause, happiness the reaction.”

~ Jim Lockard

What can heal humanity is the inner awakening of enough of us so as to create being states which support the good and remove the fear. The conditions which impact our lives are calling forth new strengths, intentions, and commitments to healing and personal growth. Now, as 2021 becomes 2022, is a good time to recommit to building our being states – personally and in our families and communities – to new levels of realization.

Who do you want to be in 2022?

Who will you be in 2022?

This classic quote from Marianne Williamson is a good way to close this post:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

~ Marianne Williamson

As always, your comments are welcomed.

Copyright 2021 – Jim Lockard

NOTE: I have not posted here in a while because I have been focusing on a book project. The title is BEING THE BELOVED COMMUNITY: Spiritual Leadership to Master Change. I am now in the final editing process, and I expect that the book will be ready to release in late January. I will keep you posted on the progress here.

AS THE NEW YEAR CYCLE EMERGES: BURY THE PAST, BIRTH WHAT IS NEXT

/ JimLockard / Leave a comment

“The cemeteries of history are filled with the graves of the dead gods… Astarte, Baal, Isis, Horus, Osiris, Jupiter, Thor. It is time to bury at least one other god, the god of vengeance and anger, a theological policeman whose beat is the universe, a heavenly trigger man, a celestial hit man who has a contract out on some earthly humans.

“There is a far greater archaeology than digging for lost cities. It is an archaeology of the mind, aimed at uncovering the foundations of the authentic city of the soul, covered with all the debris of conventional and antiquated religious systems. We must dig through, layer by layer, until once again each of us can experience in our own lives the fresh new spirit that speaks again ‘let there be light… and there was light…’”

~ William Edelen

All the wishes for a Happy New Year extended at the end of 2019 didn’t work very well for too many people. The unprecedented mix of the COVID19 Pandemic, toxic politics, climate change, and economic hardship combined with the trials and tribulations of everyday life have made 2020 a year many will want to forget. As we enter 2021, the mix continues into the new year with us, so we clearly have some unfinished business.

In our New Thought teachings, we learn that external conditions are the effects of the working of our minds – as within, so without. As we move beyond a basic understanding of this concept, we see that this is not really a linear process. I don’t get a cold because I was thinking about getting a cold; I get a cold because my thought patterns were cause to a weakening of my immune system, and the cold virus penetrated those weakened defenses. My thought patterns were likely about something completely different, but the accompanying anxiety or depression had its effect on my physical body.

“We are living in a Star Wars civilization with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions and Godlike technology.”

~ E. O. Wilson, Biologist

I have no doubt that the issues that we face collectively have arisen through some creative process in which we are intimately involved. That said, each of us is having an individualized experience of these larger issues. The basis for that experience is our emotional system, called the limbic system, in our being – we were feeling creatures before we were thinking creatures, and emotions are key to our experience.

We may think of objectivity as exemplifying maturity, but that is not so. We are not and can never be objective beings. Our subjectivity is a deeper aspect of who we are. Maturity is, therefore, not a matter of becoming more objective, but of becoming emotionally mature or intelligent. Anaïs Nin says it very well:

“I opposed subjective to objective, imagination to realism. I thought that having gone so deeply into my own feelings and dramas I could never again reach objectivity and knowledge of others. But now I know that any experience carried out deeply to its ultimate leads you beyond yourself into a larger relation to the experience of others. If you intensify and complete your subjective emotions, visions, you see their relation to others’ emotions. It is not a question of choosing between them, one at the cost of another, but a matter of completion, of inclusion, an encompassing, unifying, and integrating which makes maturity.”

~ Anaïs Nin

When we enter a new cycle of life with unfinished business from the previous cycle, we are inhibited in our growth and success. The end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 is an artificial moment in time, but it is a cyclical moment which we recognize emotionally. Dragging our unfinished business into the new year is never a good idea, and this year it may be more important than in other years for so many of us.

In such cases, we are called to change our minds at depth. This means going beyond the language of thought to the deeper feelings of having one foot in physical reality and one in divinity. The analytical aspects of our minds resist significant change. Our deeper aspects know that change is both inevitable and positive – as long as we are guiding it with a mature wisdom. Radical changes are needed for humanity to continue to live on this planet, and, perhaps to explore others in the future. Radical change means just that – the death of what no longer serves and the birth of what is ready to emerge. The signs that new emergence is ready are everywhere – but we cling to our current habits and lifestyles as though they can support us forever. The cannot, as COVID is showing us in no uncertain terms.

“Mircea Eliade states that it was probably the image of eternal birth and death of the moon that helped to crystallize earliest human intuitions about the alternation of life and death and suggested later on the myth of the periodic creation and destruction of the world.”

~ Demetra George

Creation requires destruction. Evolution is the vehicle of large-scale creation in our universe. Evolution means that something does not exist, and then it does. This radical newness can only occur when what came before is destroyed or radically reconfigured. Life exists because the necessary heavy elements to make it, which did not exist before, were formed in the explosions and collisions of stars and planets. To become an adult, the child has to die – clinging to childhood or to adolescence hampers the functioning of the adult and denies one the full expression of potential. We often fight this evolutionary emergence – and we can see today with the proliferation of conspiracy theories and the acceptance by some of only that information which conforms to their version of reality. This is living in fear and in such people, the soul is crying out for wisdom.

Mature wisdom allows us to direct this process of creation and destruction using our thoughts as the director and our emotions as the “engine” of change.

“You heal by bringing more mindfulness into the emotions that you feel.”

~ Lalah Delia

This new year and the years which follow are filled with challenges, many of them due to our own human behaviors. Like it or not, the work is ours to do, since we are the ones who are present in this transitional moment. Whether this moment leads to positive transformation or to rapidly worsening conditions is up to us, individually and collectively. We are thrust into a hero’s journey of great importance to humanity, if not to the universe as a whole. Our challenge is to see past our own blind spots and to realize the possibilities and not to dwell on those who do not.

How are you going to BE in 2021?

“Our blind spot, from a person or people point of view, keeps us from seeing that we do indeed have greatly enhanced direct access to the deeper sources of creativity and commitment, both as individuals and as communities. It is one of our most hopeful sources of confidence because we can access a deeper presence, power, and purpose from within.” 

~ C. Otto Scharmer, Theory U

Copyright 2020 – Jim Lockard

IS IT TIME TO TAKE A PERSONAL RETREAT TO VISION A NEW YEAR?

/ JimLockard / 2 Comments

“Nothing ages so quickly as yesterday’s vision of the future.” 

~ Richard Corliss

I like to make it a practice to vision and spend some time in solitude during the last half of December each year. This year, I find that I am in a place of needing to do that very much and will largely unplug for 3 weeks from “business” stuff like committees, advisory boards, and the like. I will spend time with my wife and Zoom with family and friends, dabble on social media in a reduced way. I want to spend some quality time discerning what is up for me in 2021.

I find that coming to terms with 2020 is a difficult but essential task before moving on. Of course, the major issues of 2020 will carry forward – at a minimum, the global climate crisis, the COVID19 pandemic, economic inequality, and the strained political atmosphere will not cease to exist at midnight on December 31st. Nor will racism, sexism, religious intolerance, and so on. But this is the world we live in, and it is not subject to dates on the calendar.

“In an age of acceleration nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow; in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention; and in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.”

~ Pico Iyer

One of the fortunate things about the way 2020 has unfolded it that, thanks to quarantine policies, solitude is easier to manage for many than in the normal year. Another fortunate thing is all the opportunities for learning about myself and my psychological and spiritual development that the year has brought. I am tugged from within to make some changes, and that is what I will explore during my personal retreat.

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The goal is not to separate from humanity, from community. The goal is to realize my best self and live it in more aspects of my life. I want to engage more fully and compassionately. I want to be more present, more connected, more of a contributor for good. I want to savor the best of life and find the inner resolve to stand in the face of the worst of it.

Each day I will spend time in meditation and contemplation. Perhaps I will journal as well. I plan to walk in nature and listen to beautiful music, explore art and culture. Along with my private students during this time, I will re-read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and revisit some of the work of Carl Jung. All of this will be with a question in mind – What is next for me?

“Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one. It is the cure for frazzled state so common to modern women.”

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I will vision what I want to BE in 2021, and how that will FEEL. What is ready to be born anew?

“. . . schism in the soul, schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements. Only birth can conquer death – the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there must be – if we are to experience long survival – a continuous ‘recurrence of birth’ (palingensia) to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death.”

~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, page 16

(a quote that might be good to forward to President-Elect Biden)

While the degree of schism may be greater in 2020 for many than in other years, the solution is the same – the birth of new thoughts, the emergence of creative expressions of good, love, truth, and beauty. These things can bring us to the realization of a greater expression of life for ourselves, and, when expanded beyond to our communities, for a collection realization. It is clear to me what my agenda is – to make myself available to this new birth without attachment to what it must look like.

I know that the year will bring opportunity, joy, and sorrow. It will bring challenges and frustration as well. I want to BE strong within and without so that I can bring compassion for myself and others to every situation. I want to listen to the small voice within to discern what it is that is calling to me. I want to be available to the transformation that calls to me from within – to be a lived expression of a New Thought Evolutionary.

“Step far enough into the world’s injustices, cruelty and stark brutality, and they will hammer away at your idealism. They will even shatter your dreams of being an effective agent of change. However, if your vision is rooted in your heart, when the heartbreak comes you will feel pain, loss and deep deprivation, but it will not be the end of the story. It will be the beginning of a sacred transformation.”

~ James O’Dea

Have a blessed Holiday Season and New Year. I am so grateful that you have chosen to share this journey with me.

Copyright 2020 – Jim Lockard

2020: IS IN YOUR HANDS

/ JimLockard / 13 Comments

Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director?
I want to see him.

~ Søren Kierkegaard, “Repetition: An Essay in Experimental Psychology”

Many of us can relate to the quote above from Søren Kierkegaard, the great philosopher. Today, as we enter 2020, a new year and a new decade, I thought it might do some good to spend some time with Kierkegaard. His wisdom is both accessible and honest. Those are things and I wish to carry forth into the new decade – clarity and honesty, along with the deepest compassion that I can manage. Compassion is a tough one – for to be compassionate is to invite pain and suffering; it is to identify with everyone as yourself, it is oneness personified. That’s a hard thing to do with any kind of consistency.

2020 IS IN YOUR HANDS

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the moment we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in this world?

~ Søren Kierkegaard

This quote set me to wondering. Could the same thing be said if we substituted any New Thought text for the Bible in this quote? Are we in New Thought scheming swindlers in the way Kierkegaard describes Christians?

Of course we are.

If we weren’t, we would only need to read the texts once or twice and take but a class or two, as the principles of New Thought, like the principles of Christianity, are very simple. But decades into my New Thought studies, I still need more because I tend to weasel out of the clear dictates set forth about how to think and feel my way to a consciousness of love. I tend to scheme and fudge in my practices and in how I view other people. You, dear reader, can answer the question for yourself.

“Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.”

~ Søren Kierkegaard

Here, Kierkegaard hits the New Thought nail on the head. Regardless of how we would like things to work, there are certain universal laws which cannot be disobeyed, meaning that they work according to how we use them – but they always work. Our experience is largely the result of the thoughts we think and the feelings we attach to those thoughts. We are also subject to larger forces – the collective consciousness of humanity and its subsets (family, community) – but we cannot escape this essential truth. My individual thoughts may not determine where and to whom I am born, nor do they determine the outcome of national elections, but they do determine my experiences within those fields of influence, absolutely.

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

~ Søren Kierkegaard

The human capacity to be misled is all to large. We all have believed and do believe things which are not true. We prove this regularly by underestimating ourselves and others, by purchasing products we do not really want or need, and by being swayed by others who have a vested interest in getting us to believe certain things. Much of this is due to unconscious processes over which we have no immediate control. Some is due to our conditioning which we tend to follow automatically.

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

~ Søren Kierkegaard

The year 2020 seems set to be another year of great suffering, natural disasters, political corruption, economic inequality, and ideological battles. I must accept this if I am to increase my dominion over my own thoughts and feelings. In the past, I have tried, on my own, in consciousness; and with others in consciousness to shift these larger patterns to no apparent avail. In the process of thinking that I could affect the larger patterns of society via my consciousness, I found myself despairing and losing my often too fragile grip on my own optimism and positive intentions for my life.

It is important for me to view this apparent detachment as acceptance rather than as resignation. I accept that human development is where it is, while also feeling sad that this produces so much suffering. I also accept that there is growth happening in ways both seen and unseen. And I focus my own intentions for my development toward growth which is not dependent on how others are doing or behaving. When I have accepted myself deeply and lovingly, I can develop a greater capacity for compassion. Compassion is seeing others as one with myself.

“Resignation is a shrinking, a turning away from life. Acceptance is an expansion, an opening that helps us find the courage to be who we are and do what we can.”

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer

For the new year, my spiritual practices will expand and deepen, as I seek new emergence of the vast potential within myself. I seek to craft an attitude of acceptance of both human nature as it as evolved so far and of my own limitless capacity to express love. I shall engage in the affairs of the world as the best possible version of myself in that moment; I shall arrive spiritually prepared to engage from a compassionate heart. I shall seek to manifest the intention set forth in this final quote from Joel Goldsmith for my relationships with all of my fellow beings:

“Let us never accept a human being into our consciousness who needs healing, employing, or enriching because if we do, we are his enemy instead of his friend. If there is any man, woman, or child we believe to be sick, sinning or dying, let us do no praying until we have made peace with that brother. The peace we must make with that brother is to ask forgiveness for making the mistake of sitting in judgment on any individual because everyone is God in expression. All is God manifested. God alone constitutes this universe; God constitutes the life, the mind, and the Soul of every individual.”

~ Joel Goldsmith

Have a blessed New Year. I am grateful for you.

 

Copyright 2019 – Jim Lockard

 

NOTE: I will be speaking at the Center for Spiritual Living Simi Valley on January 5th; at the Global Truth Center in Westlake Village on January 12th; and at the Center for Spiritual Living Salt Lake City on January 26th. I believe that all are live streamed – check the appropriate websites or Facebook pages for more information.

If you attend any of these, introduce yourself as a reader of this blog – it will be nice to meet you!

THOUGHTS FOR A NEW YEAR – SEEKING WHOLENESS

/ JimLockard / 3 Comments

“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.” 

~ William James

Dali-2 - Egg

“This is the moment when we either turn up the light within ourselves or move further into the darkness. Stop giving energy, time, and power to negativity. Counteract it with goodness. Notice where there is a need, then do whatever you can to help.”

~ Oprah Winfrey

Whether you call it wholeness, authenticity, or oneness, what we seek is the deep and profound connection with our souls. This is the essence of spirituality – the bringing forth of the best of ourselves, our Divine Natures.

Entering a new year is a wonderful opportunity to make the kinds of changes in your life which will lead to a deeper level of beingness. You can, of course, do this any time, but the symbolic opportunity of a new year is particularly apt. The theme is seeking – what we seek and what seeks us. Spiritual wisdom teaches us that this is an inside-out process; change begins within and seeks expression and the changed person now notices different things in the outer world. It is like putting on glasses which enable you to see more clearly. The external world has not changed, but one’s ability to perceive it more clearly changes how one relates.

The work of changing our perception is done by using our conscious mind to change belief patterns in our subconscious mind. The best way to do this is through regular, daily spiritual practices, the repetition of which generates new beliefs by altering the information stored in the brain. New neural pathways are opened over time, and our perception becomes clearer. As William Blake wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear . . . as it is, infinite.” Our spiritual practices and the guiding of our daily thoughts to be more loving and wise help us to cleanse those doors of perception.

“Carl Jung saw that the human psyche strives always toward wholeness, strives to become more conscious. The unconscious mind seeks to move its contents up to the level of consciousness, where they can be actualized and assimilated into more complete conscious personality.”

~ Robert A. Johnson

Poster - authentic-self-soul-made-visible2

What is unconscious is not available to us directly, but is active in our creative process, which is a blend of conscious and unconscious elements – thoughts, beliefs, emotions, etc. By working to bring more to the conscious level, we gain greater dominion over our experience. The process of bringing the unconscious to conscious awareness can be difficult and painful – much of what is unconscious is repressed aspects of ourselves, called shadow, which we deemed unacceptable at some point in our lives. When we do not do this work, we remain at the mercy of our repressed selves, which seek healing by bringing us into challenges calling for healthy expression of those repressed aspects. This cycle of projection and denial continues until we interrupt it and re-integrate those aspects consciously.

The seeking we must do is beyond the superficial, beyond just positive thinking, meditating, and contemplating. While all of those are essential, they are not sufficient to do the deep work of healing shadow. I do not believe that this deep work can be done alone, the ego is so resistant to revealing what has been repressed. We need to work with someone who has done their own deep work, a therapist perhaps, who will lovingly hold our feet to the fires of radical self-honesty. Anything less is insufficient.

This is a hero’s journey in itself, requiring a departure from the apparent safety of our denial (which is a false sense of security), and into the depths of our being. It requires that we acknowledge, own, love, and finally, integrate what we have repressed into a healthy self-concept.

heros-journey-project-details-1-638

“The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know. The hero journey is a symbol that binds, in the original sense of the word, two distant ideas, the spiritual quest of the ancients with the modern search for identity, always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story that we find.” 

~ Phil Cousineau

The good news is that we are supported in this work by our soul – the deepest and truest part of who we are. The soul seeks to experience the fullness of life and refuses to sit quietly by as we ignore its urgings. It does not care about propriety or the opinions and rules of others – it wants what it wants. It wants love and expression – it wants to experience the infinite.

“Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being. Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.”

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

To the degree that you choose to do deep work in 2019, you will need to accept that such work is not easy and that it will affect every area of your life. Beginning with an appraisal of your regular spiritual practices – are they sufficient, are they deep enough, are they delivering what you want from them?

If you want to do such an assessment, I am providing access to a document I use with my private students: Click to download Self Assessment Authentic Self Handout 2018. You can download it and complete it, then use it to guide you toward developing a more meaningful and relevant set of spiritual practices.

“Job Description for Spiritual Seeker: Full time position available for person who strives to be mindful and aware of the deeper context of life. Must be intellectually curious, open-minded, and willing to change. Reverence for creation, personal humility, and a strong commitment to social justice will be necessary. Study, prayer, dialogue and meditative practice are expectations. Cross cultural experience important. Compassion and kindness are requirements. Starting date: now. Salary: zero. Benefits: unlimited. Apply in person to the Maker of Everything.”

~ Bishop Steven Charleston

End of Year

As always, your comments are appreciated.

And many thanks to the nearly 12,000 visitors to this blog during 2018. I am very grateful that you found value here.

Copyright 2019 – Jim Lockard

 

BE ENCOURAGED. IT’S CONSCIOUSNESS – ALL OF IT.

/ JimLockard / 6 Comments

“Consciousness is a singular, the plural of which is unknown.”

~ Erwin Schrödinger

So, as far as I understand it, here is how it works:

Whenever I enter something – a pattern of thought, a room, a situation, a relationship, an agreement, a voyage, anything – I bring my consciousness of the moment. That consciousness determines my experience of what I am entering; it determines my behaviors, helps to co-create whatever it is I am entering before I enter it, and what it will change into while I am there and after I leave. It also determines whether and how I am changed in the process.

Beautiful Prayer Flags

The same consciousness is also in everyone and everything associated with what I enter, and through each individual involved, the Universal Consciousness interacts with itself. So, I am a bit player, albeit an important one, in a much larger theater which is unfolding. Universal Consciousness, knowing itself and discovering itself as it changes, is really all that is happening in this universe. My role (and yours) is to consciously and unconsciously direct that consciousness from potential into actuality by individualizing it within our unique identities. I do this individually in my own life and collectively in my sphere of influence as I live. Quantum physics tells me my sphere of influence (and yours) touches every particle in the universe and beyond to any other universes which may exist.

“As Jung argues in ‘Answer to Job,’ human self-reflective awareness might be seen as the medium through which God becomes conscious – with the human ego serving as the divine organ of self-reflective consciousness.”

~ Keiron le Grice

Beautiful Nautilus

I like to get back to basics in December as I prepare myself mentally and emotionally for a New Year. I like to think about the metaphysical creative process and how it works by means of me to create my own life experience and to influence the experience of others. This thinking helps me to see the value in a regular spiritual practice to bring my psychological process into focus toward positive experiences, outcomes, and contributions. Of course, you can do this work at any time of the year, and I recommend that you do it continuously.

Now, I know that thinking is only the beginning, not the end of what I need to do. I must think in the most constructive way possible, but also be doing deeper work to reveal the limited and destructive aspects buried within my unconscious, for they will continually show up in ways that negatively affect me. This means shadow work, delving into my discomfort to bring light to it and to reintegrate what I have rejected about myself earlier in life into a healthy adult self-concept. For I realize today that my self-concept directs the consciousness expressing as me in whatever I enter into.

Often, my repressed energies deal with my own body, my sexuality, my identity. We are taught to separate our connection to sensuality and put it out of our socially approved range of experiences. We compartmentalize, and the repressed energies continue to express through the “back channels” of our psyche.

“Don´t condemn sensuality. It has been condemned by the whole world, and because of their condemnation, the energy that can flower in sensuality moves into perversions, jealousy, anger, hatred — a kind of life which is dry, with no juice. Sensuousness is one of the greatest blessings to humanity. It is your sensitivity, it is your consciousness. Consciousness filtering through the body is what sensuousness is.”

~ Osho

Beautiful Baby 5 - feet.jpg

My expression of life is limited to the degree that my primal energies have been caged rather than harnessed; they have been imprisoned rather than disciplined. When this is so, they rebel in their desire to be a part of the expression of a healthy being and emerge as destructive behaviors, guilt, and shame. Deep inner work and daily spiritual practices are the path to returning these inner energies to a healthy state of expression.

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline. . .. That is real freedom. That is being educated and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

~ David Foster Wallace

Spiritual Mind Treatment, or affirmative prayer, is a form of affirmation and visualization to train my mind in ways leading to the constructive expression of the complete array of primal energies within me. For all of these energies are creative and are essential in living a fulfilled human life. I cannot contribute the fullness of my potential to others unless I am realizing that fullness in my own life experience.

We are, of course, aided in this process by a universe which unerringly cooperates to meet our need for positive development. This is so because, as I noted earlier, all consciousness, including my individualized consciousness is part of the same thing. Our experience of our own different inner manifestations of consciousness and the mingling with the expressions of others is Universal Consciousness knowing and interacting with itself. Because this is so, we are continually in a place of opportunity to realize what we need to do to move toward an enlightened way of being – meaning a consciousness which is individualized as a high self-concept. Natasha Dern puts it beautifully in this quote:

“So, what is enlightenment? How about coming down from that mountain and putting your unity consciousness to the test amidst mortgage payments and credit card debt, divorce lawyers and aging parents, nasty bosses and health problems, wars and poverty? Such conditions, as the alchemist knows, burns away the dross to reveal who we are not. Yes, in the midst of the madness we awaken, grow comfortable with our dualistic nature and develop mystical stamina so that we can handle our sobriety. Illusions are like drugs and enlightenment is like rehab.”

~ Natasha Dern

Caterpillar - Image of Butterfly

As individuals, being aspects of a larger expression of Universal Consciousness, we seek both unification and healing so as to return to a sense of Oneness with our true nature – our God Nature. We are assisted by the unfolding an expressing universe and have everything we need to make our life journey one that leads us toward greater and greater fulfillment. Our struggles are part of this process – it is all the unfolding of consciousness. There is nothing else happening. I cannot think of a more encouraging way of seeing our lives.

“We are ever renewed by the passage of the Divine light through our consciousness.”

~ Ernest Holmes

HAVE A WONDERFUL 2019 –

MAY YOUR LIFE BE FULFILLED.

 

As always, your comments are appreciated. Please share this post with those you think might find it of value.

Copyright 2018 – Jim Lockard

 

A NEW YEAR’S REVOLUTION – SOME THOUGHTS AS 2017 ENDS

/ JimLockard / 1 Comment

“It’s the end of 2017. Time to start making a New Year’s Revolution.”

~ Michael Ian Black on Twitter

I keep edging toward a realization that what we need – in New Thought spiritual community and in the larger world – is not just change but transformation. Think of change as rearranging the furniture and transformation, or revolutionary change as building a new house. We need revolutionary change, because the complexities of the world have grown and continue to grow at a rate which is outpacing our ability to effectively manage them. We are losing whatever coherence we have had with the rate of cultural change, and our organizations and communities are dissipating (coming apart). If that dissipation continues without evolutionary leadership to help the new emergence of what is next, then . . .

So-What-Am-I-Supposed-to-Do-HEADER

If 2017 has taught us anything it is that our manifestation of New Thought philosophy has often been inadequate to the challenges of our times. We are losing ground in many ways. A quick answer to this might be something to the effect of “Good! The system is breaking down – it NEEDS to break down – and we will keep doing what we are doing until the new system replaces it.”

While that answer may be both quick and satisfying, it is woefully inadequate. The earth is moving beneath our feet – tectonic changes are emerging in cultural evolution and those who are not riding the crest of change are falling farther and farther behind. Those people are angry, they are speaking out – sometimes violently, and they are even more inadequately prepared for what is coming than those “crest-riders” mentioned above. 2017 has shown these things in definitive fashion.

“The manifestation of emotional and psychosomatic symptoms is the beginning of a healing process through which the organism is trying to free itself from traumatic imprints and simplify its functioning. . . . when properly understood and supported, this process can be conducive to healing, spiritual opening, personality transformation, and evolution of consciousness.”

~ Stanislav Grof, Shift Magazine, June-August 2004

One way to transform our thinking is to see the “manifestation of symptoms” as an early stage of healing. This is true in cultural terms as well. We collectively face challenges which include political corruption, mass poverty, ecological devastation, terrorism, the refugee crisis, structural racism and sexism; the root causes for all of these issues are deeply and systemically cultural. The symptoms of these challenges, and the social and economic discrimination related to them are evidence of a deep universal pattern of healing attempting to emerge. Just as we often personally react with denial when symptoms arise, our culture fights the appearance of symptoms, delaying or denying any healing which may take place. Our Shadows, both individual and collective, hold us in place, driving us to try first to “return to normal” – an impossibility, but when we are in denial we lack clarity.

Poster - Jung - Shadow

“Any serious spiritual work brings up the shadow, the rejected parts of your own psyche, which have to be faced and accepted. It’s the process of inner purification. Other spiritual paths may focus on purification through diet or yoga or good living or correcting bad habits. Our particular Sufi path has a very strong psychological element, and the purification is analogous to Jung’s ‘shadow work’ in which the rejected parts of one’s psyche come to the surface to be confronted, loved and accepted. This begins the process of transformation. As Jung said, ‘One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.’ Then he humorously added, ‘The latter process, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.’”

~ Llewellyn Vaughan Lee

There is a temptation for students of New Thought philosophies to express their fear and denial by practicing a form of magical thinking – something to the effect of “it’s all good!” The confusion here is that while it IS all good at the level of Spirit, we are the ones responsible for manifesting good at the level of our own reality. The world is not going to heal itself without a shift in consciousness, just as you are not going to heal your own issues without a shift in consciousness. And any shift of any real depth is not going to happen without some profound and rigorous psychological and emotional work. Our real challenges are not surface challenges, they call forward our deepest selves.

“There is a lack of spiritual leadership in the world right now, so we shouldn’t be concerned what the world thinks of us. We have a religious concept that will revolutionize the world and we just need to stick with it.

“Persistence will bring success, but it is a positive persistence that keeps affirming spiritual reality in spite of material effect. This means continually using ‘constructive rather than destructive conversation,’ seeing the Divine in every person and surrendering the mind in complete abandonment to the idea of success regardless of relative condition or opinion.”

~Ernest Holmes, 1933 Commentaries: Lesson Seven

Here Dr. Holmes uses persistence as a term for rigorous and continual work. It is not merely “holding a positive thought,” in fact, we are taught not to hold thoughts at all – they must flow. What we seek is a continual and persistent stream of uplifting and powerfully emotional thoughts which flow into the creative process and become our belief system. Then, we naturally act from this new belief system and our experience is transformed.

“Living a life of fulfillment that offers something of value to the world starts with radical self-knowledge, self-awareness and self-acceptance. Our task is to be who we are at the deepest level of being “

 ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer, THE DANCE

 

Beautiful Dance

We keep doing our spiritual work to elevate to the next level of development, and the next, and the next. There is no arriving, there is only the journey. The journey is either going somewhere or staying in place, and the universe does not accept staying in place, does it? The key role of spiritual community today and in the future is to be places where such deep transformational work can be done in a safe and supportive environment. What the world needs now is empowered and realized evolutionary souls to contribute to an expanding consciousness of compassion, love, and service. It needs a #NewYearsRevolution.

“The 20th century was the Age of Introspection, when self-help and therapy culture encouraged us to believe that the best way to understand who we are and how to live was to look inside ourselves. But it left us gazing at our own navels. The 21st century should become the Age of Empathy, when we discover ourselves not simply through self-reflection, but by becoming interested in the lives of others. We need empathy to create a new kind of revolution. Not an old-fashioned revolution built on new laws, institutions, or policies, but a radical revolution in human relationships.”

~ Roman Krznaric

Copyright 2017 – Jim Lockard

 

NOTE: I am honored to be a keynote speaker at BE THE VOICE FOR POSITIVE CHANGE GATHERING, an event in San Diego, California – January 19-21.

Here is a link if you are interested:

http://www.lornabright.com/gathering/

Positive Gathering Jan 2018