Since God Is No Respecter of Persons

Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:"
Acts 10:34

I spent a lot of time during my spiritual life trying to get a fuller understanding about what this passage meant, for I felt that there was something deep and profound which might help explain to me why so many good, religious people may have so many trying experiences, especially when there are so many Bible promises to the contrary. This question also applied to the society that these good, religious people were a part of, including families, businesses, and even governments and nations. Then it began to dawn on me, just what this passage meant:

Since God is no respecter of persons, that would include all that the "persons" make up, which would include families, businesses, organizations, nations, churches, and, yes, even religions. No, if the individual wants the Grace of God to operate in their human affairs, it is up to them to invite God in to run things; and it is the further responsibility of the individual to let go of any human fears, judgments and condemnations of others that would stand in the way of the Grace of God from flowing. Even if we are not humanly in a place where we can do what is required to "get our human selves out of the way," we can turn such matters over to God, and let God do the forgiving through us. To put it simply, we Allow God in by sacrificing our negative traits and characteristics on the Alter of Spirit, and God does the rest in proportion to how much we are able to do this.

One of my favorite Bible passages when dealing with difficulties has been the 91st Psalm:
"He that dwells in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."

We are told here that the secret is to dwell in the secret place of the Most High, which is the key. When we start doing this our lives will change for the better, as will the lives of those with whom we come in contact, without our attempting to change them in any way. When enough people take up this practice, the transformation will expand to include not only our immediate circle of family and friends, but our organizations, businesses, governments, churches, religions, environment, and, ultimately, the rest of the world. But this cannot be done by our human efforts; there have been many Utopian attempts to make this a better world, and, unfortunately, all of them have failed, and some of them quite miserably.

Why We Need to Allow Spirit

When I am allowing Spirit, I am not giving power to the god of this world. "Not by might, not buy power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." I must continue to remember, "Not that, not that, not that," when confronted by pictures of the imagination that would deny the presence, power and perfection of Spirit. I do not believe in the laws of matter or the absence of Good, I believe in the Spirit, which transcends, transforms or removes all undesirable appearances..

"I can make it where I'm living happily ever after." Abraham-Hicks

Dealing With Fear

When you fear any person, place, thing or condition, you have given something other than God power over you, and that will effect your life in an undesirable way until you change your belief about the false cause of your Good.

"If you feel the shakiness of fear, you can say, 'There is nothing to fear, I am clinging to the loving God.' You can say, 'I will not doubt the Good. I believe in the loving God.' You can say, 'I do not believe in appearances. I believe in God here present in loving kindness.' ...you will find it most comforting in the world to say, 'I do not believe in the power of a whole army of evil conditions. I believe God is bringing us all through safely.'" 

Emma Curtis Hopkins, Scientific Christian Mental Practice p.209 (Written in late 1800's)

Hard Choices We Have to Make

Our hard choice: To run around helter skelter, like a bull in a china shop, or to move around inside the Zone, where we are in harmony with our surroundings, feeling love and joy in our activities. Which path do we wish, the low road, or the High road? What would your day be like if you loved every minute of it and saw the Highest and Best in everyone that you interacted with? The low road to happiness is based on fear, and  has led us virtually into all of the problems we are facing today, personally as well as with family, friends, nationally and internationally. The High Road is based on Love, and is the way that will get us out of our self defeating creations, and bring us into the wondrous world that we have been promised by the saints, sages, masters and revelators of all ages and religions.


"Most (people) rarely align with their true power, because it seems illogical to them that there is power in relaxation, in letting go, or in love or joy or bliss. Most people do not understand that their true power lies in releasing resistance—which is the only obstacle to their true power. Most people do not expect their path to great abundance to be one of ease and of joy. They have been taught that struggle and hardship and sacrifice are requirements that must be met before the reward of great abundance can be realized. Most do not understand that the very struggle they deliberately involve themselves in, in their quest for success and advantage, actually works against them. There are so many things that you have been taught to believe that are counter to the powerful Laws of the Universe that it is difficult for you to think your way out. And that is the reason that we present this path of much less resistance. We want you to breathe rather than try, to relax rather than offer effort, to smile rather than struggle, to be rather than do. For your true power is experienced only from inside the Vortex."
Abraham, by Jerry and Esther Hicks

“The highest level of creativity consists in being, not doing. When the being is intense enough, when the words are spoken enough, when the thoughts are thought enough, the doing will automatically follow.”
Marianne Williamson

You Already Have What It Takes

You already have what it takes to transcend any problem that you may be facing, no matter what it may be. Keep reaching within to that perfect part of you that will give you the needed strength, wisdom and attitude that will transform your experience into the glory of triumph over all so-called difficulties.


Affirmation: No matter what my mind may be telling me, I already have the power, strength, wisdom and attitude to transform whatever problem I may be facing into the next expression of Divine Grace and Glory.

Doing What You Want to Do

"You are grown up now! You can do anything you want to do. Whenever you do what pleases you, wonderful things occur. It is a way of being nurturing to yourself, and as you do so, you find more fun in your world. You are allowed to have more fun. The more fun you have, the more other people love you."
Louise L. Hay

Giving Thanks For The Opportunity

"I give thanks for every opportunity to demonstrate the power of Divine Intelligence to work through me. Anytime I am presented with a challenge, I know that it is an opportunity from God, my employer; and I quiet my intellect, turn within, and wait for positive words to fill my mind."

Louise L. Hay

Life's Mysteries

Some things will always remain a mystery at this level of consciousness, and it is right that they should. So do not try to solve all the mysteries. Give the universe a chance. It will unfold itself in due course. Enjoy the experience of becoming.
Neale Donald Walsch

Alan Cohen's Post on Handling Negativity

This is Alan Cohen's excellent post on dealing with our own and other's negativity. It is worth reading and pondering. My favorite book of his is, "Why Your Life Sucks," which is available at Amazon.

The Strongest Currency

Native American folklore tells of a brave who came to the tribe’s medicine man and told him, “Two wolves are continually fighting in my head. One of them is kind, beautiful, and sane. The other is ugly, vicious, and crazy. Which one will win?”

The elder replied, “The sane one will win.”

“Why is that?” asked the brave.

“Because that is the one you will feed,” answered the medicine man.

Attention is the strongest currency at your disposal. Whatever you invest your attention in, you will get more of. Many people take diligent care about how they invest their money. Few people take such diligent care about how they invest their attention. Money attention begets more money, while happiness attention begets more happiness.

A college behavioral psychology class did an experiment that proved this principle. The professor had a habit of pacing back and forth in front of the classroom while he lectured. When the professor stood on the left side of the classroom, the students paid attention to him, took notes, asked questions, and laughed at his jokes. When the professor stood on the right side of the classroom, the students looked away, did not engage with the lesson, and ignored the teacher. It was not long before the professor was teaching strictly from the left side of the classroom.

When someone tries to insult or belittle you, they are standing on the right side of the classroom, and that is the time to withdraw your attention and energy from them. When they engage with you in a kind and meaningful way, that’s the time to empower them. You are sending them the message, “If you care to speak to me intelligently and respectfully, I will be happy to interact with you. Otherwise I will not respond. I do not engage with people who abuse me.” You might speak these words or you might simply let the principle quietly be your guide. If you are true to it, you will get results.

For a day, week, or lifetime, practice giving your attention to that which you wish to increase, and withdraw your attention from that which you wish to decrease. It will be the wisest investment you make.
Alan Cohen

Changing the World

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank

Our prayers can, and will, transform the world we live in if we but believe that they will. Pray and meditate on some key spiritual statements from your favorite source and ask God for the Truth about them. Here are a few that you may ponder, but those statements that stand out to you are the best to use:

The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.

The Government is on God's shoulders.

God is my Life, God is my Mind, God is my Being, God is my Body.

There is infinite Power and Wisdom within me to completely transform my world.

Update

Our attitude about life shapes the world we live in. This is stated in one way or another in virtually every religion on earth.

A Selfish Reason for Forgiveness

"When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to
that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger
than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link
and get free."
Catherine Ponder

What Really Matters

At the end of your life you will know that nothing you have done will matter - only who you have been while you have done it. Have you been happy? Have you been caring, and compassionate, and considerate of others? You will see that it is who you have been, not what you have done, that matters to your soul.
Neale Donald Walsch

Believe in Yourself

Believe in Yourself

You exist that Divine feeling, fire, imagination, and creativity may be expressed through you. The Spirit comes to you with a new and fresh creativity. You need not ask what others have done or how they have done it. Be yourself and express life as you find it. Never imitate. Trust the self. Find the self in God and God in the self.

There is a pattern of perfection at the center of your being which has never been touched by disease or misfortune. Your intellect senses this through intuition; your imagination feels it by divine right; your inward consciousness knows it through faith. What you are trying to do is awaken your whole being to spiritual awareness.

From "This Thing Called You" by Ernest Holmes,

Why the Rich Get Richer (Where's Mine?)

If we are not at peace with the wealth, accomplishments and positions in life of others, we have cut ourselves off from our own Good.
By rejoicing in the Good of others, we place ourselves into a state of Allowing Good to come into our own lives, often in seeming miraculous ways.
One of the quickest ways to block, hinder or remove the good in your own life is to become jealous, resentful or disdainful of the good of others, no matter how it was attained.
One of the quickest ways to increase our good is to bless and admire the good of others.

Why? All Good comes from God. When we attack Good anywhere else in the world, we are attacking our own connection with God, thereby increasing that which is not-Good in our own lives.

There is no peace in righteous indignation, jealousy or vindictiveness.
If we are not at peace, we are not in harmony with the Highest and Best outcomes for our life experiences, because we have blocked the free flow of Spirit in our lives, and then blamed people, places, things or conditions for what is going on around us. Even if a person has all of the wealth and power in the world, if he has not peace, he has opened up the door for the unwanted, for it is that important, that we be at peace, so that the Spirit and things of Spirit can flow into our lives.

The Root of Humanity's Dysfunction

We cannot harm or mistreat another person unless we first see them as being inferior to us or deserving to be discriminated against or punished for their actions. When we sit in judgment of others we are opening the door for their unfair treatment. This is especially true in the areas of our differences in race, religion, politics, and social-economic status.

"I believe that the idea that God is a being who can be damaged or offended by God’s creations, and who feels a need to punish human beings for not doing what God demands, is at the root and at the heart of humanity’s so-often dysfunctional dealings with each other."
Neale Donald Walsch

Getting What We Want in Life

The world conspires to give you what you don't want, so, the secret is not to desire nothing, as many spiritual adepts do, but to joyfully, enthusiastically praise and give thanks for what you do want, which creates room in your life for your Good to come into your experience.

Finding Balance in Our Lives

We have different degrees of happiness and different kinds of suffering. Material objects give rise to physical happiness, while spiritual development gives rise to mental happiness. Since we experience both physical and mental happiness, we need both material and spiritual development. This is why, for our own good and that of society we need to balance material progress with inner development. Dalai Lama

Changing Our Devils Into Angels

This world may present pictures of inharmony which are contrary to my standards of good, but when this happens it is my right and my duty to transform the way that I am reacting to them so that I will not be seeing myself as a victim of my circumstances. I recently answered a lady who had a "deep hurt from two years ago" that she had difficulty getting past. She also wanted to know if you could hurt and forgive at the same time.
My answer to her second question was "No, you haven't fully forgiven yourself, or another, until the pain has been transformed into a much higher emotion than what you are experiencing. This is possible, but it will take work on the part of anyone who has yet to forgive. I then shared my own thoughts about how to deal with the hurt so that it wouldn't run her life:

I found that by allowing the energy of the pain to be there, and then changing my self-dialogue from "I hurt," to "Forgive them, they know not what they do," or "I live in a loving, supporting, joyous Universe" (or something similar), has worked wonders for me. If I make a positive affirmation out of the negative, it tends to diffuse the negative energy. I once used this method to forgive someone and it only took about 5 minutes to do, where before, it had been eating at me for months. I had to have the same intensity of my new attitude that I had when I first accepted it, the lie about myself and/or others, as what was really true in the whole situation.

"If we are seeing less than God, we are seeing incorrectly."
Joel S. Goldsmith, 1892-1964, a Christian Mystic and Healer that had a worldwide ministry and wrote over 30 books.

Update:

The hardest part of forgiveness, or anything else that is uncomfortable, is taking that first step. Once that first step is taken it will get easier to do.

Update II

I just ran across this article on forgiveness which coincides with much of my post:
Forgiveness Brings Healing Like Nothing Else

The Temple Within You

Imagine a temple inside your mind, a haven from the chaos of the world. Visit often.
Marianne Williamson

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day,where you don't know what was in the newspaper that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.
Joseph Campbell

Though you may travel the world to find the beautiful, you must have it within you or you will find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

We change the world not by what we say or do, but as a consequence of what we have become.
David R. Hawkins

The Positive Results From Meditation

It looks like more of the leading edge scientists are discovering the positive effects of deep prayer and meditation:

Science of Mind magazine, June 2011
From the Science & Spirituality column by neuroscientists Waldman & Newberg, "Taming the Impatient Brain"

What happens in the brain when we learn patience? We stimulate the insula and striatum. For those of us who do spiritual practice, this is an exciting discovery: Meditation and deep prayer build patience because they stimulate the same reward circuits in the brain. At that moment, we feel satisfied. We don't NEED to have more of anything--food, money, affection--because we're getting it from the states of peacefulness and positive feelings being generated within the brain. Brainscan studies of meditators also show increased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, an area that regulates impulsive decision making.

From the Science & Spirituality column by neuroscientists Waldman & Newberg, "Taming the Impatient Brain,"