Unity of Vermont

The Power of Prayer by Rev. Lane Williams

      Prayer is the cornerstone of the Unity movement and an important part of our spiritual community here in Vermont. Prayer is a powerful tool for me – one that I have used since I was a child. My grandmother, we called her Nana, was a healer. She was a prayer practitioner, a follower of Joel Goldstein, a New Thought author and teacher. I can remember the phone ringing in the middle of the night when I visited her. She would listen to the voice on the other end and speak soft loving words, hang up and then move to her meditation corner. When I asked her what she did, she replied, “I see them as they are – whole, healed, and perfect.”

     Charles and Cora Fillmore said in Teach Us to Pray that “…prayer is more than asking God for help in this physical world; it is in its highest sense the opening up in our soul of an innate spiritual umbilical cord that connects us with the Holy Mother, from whom we can receive a perpetual flow of life…Prayer is man’s steady effort to know God…God-Mind, composed of radiant ideas, vibrant life, glorious new inspiration, is ours to use… When we awaken even a very slight consciousness of this co-operative spirit, we become co-creators with God, and we find we can adjust to any condition that comes into our life.”

     The most powerful way of praying I’ve found is based solely in feeling, on the silent language of human emotion. It includes gratitude, thanksgiving, and appreciation as if the prayers had already been answered. I pray the feeling with: touch, taste, smell, sight, sound. I know, with all my senses; I’m assured, it is done; it is accomplished and here present. Finally I give thanks for being part of the creative process.

     This quality of gratitude and appreciation releases the life-affirming chemistry of powerful hormones and strengthens our immune system. In effect this is raising and strengthening our vibrations – we are uplifted in spirit, and this impacts the world around us. Our vibrations emanate beyond our bodies, impacting the energy field surrounding us. We uplift the spirit of the world around us and manifest healing, prosperity, and well-being in our lives.

     Many times people don’t experience answered prayer. They pray and pray for something and no help comes. When we pray asking, praying for something to happen, we are giving power to something we don’t have. Prayers for healing empower the sickness. Prayers for prosperity empower the lack. Continuing to ask for these things only gives more power to the things that we would like to change.

     Often the spiritual breakthroughs on our path come when we are at the depths of our frustration, when we feel alone, forsaken – those dark nights of the soul. We’ve tried everything we know, and we don’t know what to do to bring relief and turn it around. Then we may say to God, “If you want me to learn all this stuff, then you’re going to have to show me because I’m tired of trying to do it all myself!” Then an opening occurs. We open ourselves to a higher power, a greater understanding – we turn it over to God and we listen.

     The Mind of God can offer a higher solution to any problem that you cannot solve alone with your human mind. This Mind is wholeness and perfection. As you dwell in that Mind of God, you immerse yourself in this higher energy. You are saturated with the peace of God, the wholeness, the perfection, the oneness of Spirit. This is the source my Nana knew so well and tapped into – so can we. And so it is and so it is.  Amen.

The Nature of Reality by Rev. Lane Williams

            Let us ponder what is real, what is true and what is an illusion. Just for fun, let’s imagine that ego created life as we know it – physical existence, separateness, diversity, senses, emotions, thoughts, and all that we identify ourselves as being, all that we see all around us. In this scenario from Oneness came what we think is REAL, the experience of time and space, of past, present and future. From the allness, from the oneness was created separateness.

            This physical life we live can be imagined as a game where we have each chosen a piece to play the game with. We take on the identity of a victim one time around, and the next time a rescuer; maybe the scholar in one game and in another someone intellectually challenged, perhaps the terrorist in one game and a soldier in another. But whatever part we choose to play, it is only a game and there really are no separate players. There is only One Being, one Mind, and even only one ego. Any perception differently is an illusion. It’s a slight of hand, all done with smoke & mirrors. That is why spiritual teachers are always saying, there is no one out there. That which you see in another is a reflection of who you are.

            The object of the game from the ego’s perspective is to win, to overcome all those who it perceives are keeping your good from you, to be right at all costs. The opportunity from our spiritual perspective is return HOME – to forgive and experience oneness, to experience the bliss of perfect love, unending peace and your own divinity.

            Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas, “I am the light that shines over all things. I am everywhere. From me all came forth, and to me all return…Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there…” Remember in interpreting this scripture that I Am is the name of that point of God in each of us as was told Moses at the Burning Bush. The I Am is in each and every one of us.

            Jesus says this, “…the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty.” In the Allness underlying all physical-ness, there is just Being-ness, total and absolute no-thing, Just Being without beginning and without end. When we don’t know this we live in lack and limitation, impoverished by our ignorance. This experience was created and we think it is real. But as the true powerful Beings we are, we can awaken to this illusion and live from the Truth of our Oneness.

            We are magnificent and powerful Gods and Goddesses moving as if in a dream, thinking we are victims and paupers tossed about by events and circumstances we have no control over, and at the effect of a cruel and unfriendly universe. But Dear Ones, this is but a dream. The opportunity at any moment is to awaken from it and see the Truth of Who and What we are.

            Remember the movie, The Wizard of Oz? In it Dorothy is hit on the head by her bedroom window as a tornado hits her house and she falls on her bed unconscious – the whole Technicolor part of the movie is the dream she dreamed while the storm raged around her. Remember how she finds friends in the scarecrow, tin man & lion and battles her enemies – the bad witch and the winged monkeys – and the whole time is trying to go home?

            That is like our lives too, isn’t it? We are all trying to get HOME to that place of peace, where all is well, where we are loved, accepted and blessed. But friends HOME is here at hand – we don’t even need to click the heels of our ruby slippers to return to it. We can awaken to the dream we think is real and see that it is a dream. Isn’t that the best?

Yes, it is and thank you, God!