Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Thoughts as Blueprints -- Sermon from Unity Center of Peace, Chapel Hill, Jan 23 2011

Blueprints February 23 2010


Intention – the art of choosing -- stating what we want

And living in that truth.

A life’s built like a house –

Envisioned first, drawn, and measured,

Seen and felt before it’s there,

Its little details subject of delight.

Day by day we co-create with God.

We feel what’s right,

Learning to accept God’s guidance –

Then, as the plan is made, the magic happens:

The life we’ve drawn and dreamed appears

In happiness and love.

The vision happens first -- the blueprint.

We don’t control the when or how, or know the obstacles --

But the story’s end fulfills the plan; the blueprint comes to life.



Reflection

Over my life, I’ve owned a whole series of houses -- fixer-uppers all. Seduced by the possibilities of odd houses, I seem destined always to live in “remodeling” mode – a disposition reflected not only in my houses, but also in the succeeding chapters of my life. I’ve become familiar with the origin and uses of blueprints as I’ve moved from one abode to the next – a cute forest cottage, a tumble-down log cabin, a stained and sagging hundred year old four bedroom on a hill, an odd set of Siamese twin houses – 1940s cottage joined to 1980s warehouse , a rambling, sagging suburban ranch, and most recently, an abused rental tract house with traces of loft. When I’ve left each house, it has been repaired, refurbished, rearranged, reconfigured, and redesigned. In each case, when I had first seen the house, I could picture in my mind’s eye what it would take to express its essence most beautifully. I was not the architect who drew up the blueprints, with their measurements and specs. I was the dreamer, who provided the vision. The blueprint then allowed those with the necessary building skills to turn my dream into physical reality.

Over time as a student of Unity, I’ve gradually learned that as a spark of God, I am meant to co-create my life with God. I’ve learned that my imagination is God’s gift not only to me but to all creation. I’ve begun to accept and observe that to the extent that I accept and live all the good that I can imagine, I bring that good alive in the world: I embody God’s qualities and manifest them, so that I and others may praise and love God’s goodness and beauty.

Affirmations are the vehicle through which this miracle occurs. Affirmations are my verbal pictures of the best that I can imagine at a given moment. Their scope expands as my capacity to imagine God’s good keeps expanding. Affirmations are my stories of how life is – statements of truth matching my present awareness. They become the blueprints for my life. They clarify where it is my gift to go, what it is my gift to do in this world.



I have known about affirmations for decades. However, I learned about them and their power in much greater depth after taking the “Keys to the Kingdom” class which was offered at Unity Center of Peace two years ago and then again this past year. This class has been life-altering for me and for the others who have belonged to the “Keys Group,” studying the class materials biweekly. After a few months, all of us in the group began to realize that these skills were spectactularly life-altering. We started to see group members succeed in changing careers, building income, finding jobs, finding relationships, moving beyond physical pain, experiencing vastly improved lives. Members of the group became happier, more fulfilled, more confident – in fact radiant.
As I look back on my own experience with learning the “Keys to the Kingdom,” I marvel at how the class and the skill practice changed my life. Every time I’ve consciously affirmed how I want things to be and held to that idea, I have come across unexpected opportunities to move in the direction I wished to go.

I never knew how or when these opportunities would present. The process doesn’t necessarily resemble the instant gratification portrayed in the story of Aladdin and the genie in the lamp! But learning to see the beauty and perfection of our lives as God has envisioned them, and to accept the joy that results is pretty magical.

A little over two years ago, I thought my life was basically over – at least the enjoyable parts. My partner Ellen had died in November of 2008, and I was in deep mourning. I was in physical and emotional pain, impoverished, and alone. Two months after Ellen’s death, I turned 70. I thought to myself “Now I’m too old for a relationship, too old to start over, too old – just TOO OLD. That was when Bruce offered the “Keys to the Kingdom” class here at UCP, and, knowing I needed to find things to do and ways to connect with people, I signed up and came, faithfully

The challenges I wanted to address were the relentless back pain that had me wearing an uncomfortable and restrictive back brace most of the time, my deep loneliness after the death of my partner, and the fact that I’d lost over 75% of my income and a significant portion of my savings after my partner’s death coupled with the onset of the recession.

In preparing this talk, I went back and looked at my workbook from the class two years ago, and found that I had written these 3 major affirmations:

First: “I am God’s child, Laughing, running, jumping easily, unburdened by the weight of years. I am whole and happy, wrapped in love, transformed by light.”

Second: “I rejoice in my sense of divine prosperity. I am financially secure and my rewards from participating in the flow of abundance increase constantly.”

Third: “I am held, like a beloved child, in a warm, secure family. I am surrounded by love. I am not alone, but perfectly supported.”



These statements became the blueprint for my life. Today, two years later, I marvel at the ways in which these assertions– which, at the time, seemed incredibly unrealistic -- pure fiction – fairy tales – have become my life story.

The back pain is gone; I’m once again carrying out, without pain, the physical chores and tasks involved in daily life. I could never have predicted or foreseen how this came about. God’s blueprint determined that. After I had tried all kinds of therapies – chiropractic, physical therapy, acupuncture, energy healing, reiki, tai chi, yoga… one day the answer I needed arrived -- in my Spam folder, of all places!

It was an email from someone I did not know. He was not trying to sell anything. He simply said that he had found two exercises that had relieved him of the terrible back pain he had suffered for years. He described the exercises, which were extremely simple and fast – 2 minutes total. He asked for nothing in return. I figured I had nothing to lose, and tried the exercises.

Literally within two days, after I’d done them twice, the pain I’d had for over a year was about 80% better. I learned, through these exercises, something none of the therapists with whom I’d pleaded for help had told me – the potential role of cramped tendons on the front of the body in causing chronic back pain.

This story seems too good to be true, and ludicrous besides. Who gets a wonderful answer to a serious life problem in their Spam folder??? Was it a chance occurrence? Possibly. Certainly, though, my affirmation and belief that the answer would appear alerted me to the advisability of at least trying out what this gentleman had to say. When I had written the affirmation, I had no way to know what to expect – how the answer would come. But I knew it would, and it did.





The solutions to my financial predicament have appeared in equally surprising ways. The house I had shared with Ellen was huge – 3300 square feet. It also had a large mortgage that was costing me over $2000 a month – now much more than I could afford. It had lots of maintenance expenses, with 3 aging furnaces, water heaters, and air conditioners, and 41 large, loose, uninsulated windows. What to do?

In January 2010, amid the worst housing market in decades, I received in a psychic reading one very loud, clear, shouted message: SELL THE HOUSE!!! I was also told that my “right house” was awaiting me –it was described as the “blue cottage with all the flowers.” It was a very strange message.

Then, however, the federal stimulus for home sales was announced, and it seemed possible that within that three month window, if I could get the house onto the market, it might actually sell, due to the excitement generated by the stimulus.

I went to work, feverishly, getting rid of stuff, to prepare to move out A friend told me to talk with her realtor, who proposed an excellent marketing plan for my house.

Amazingly, a blue cottage that I liked a lot, though it was a real fixer-upper, came on the market at an extremely competitive price, and I was the fortunate winner of an immediate bidding war. A week after the blue cottage appeared on the market, I held the contract. If I could sell my existing house, I would be able to purchase the new one with no mortgage.

I got my large house on the market in March, before the end of the stimulus. The day it was listed, 3 bidders appeared, offering me the asking price and more, and my house was under contract within 3 days. When closing day for the new house came, I was able to pay cash for it with the proceeds of the house I had sold two weeks before.

Then, amazingly, by April, it turned out that the new house – whose yard had been brown and barren in early March when I bought it -- had been owned by a gardener who had planted dozens of flowering bushes, and it became, literally, the “blue cottage with all the flowers.”

I was intensely grateful for this dramatic solution to my cash flow crunch. I believe that the series of apparent coincidences that led to selling my old house and purchasing the new one represented a beautiful example of the way in which well formed affirmations can become amazing blueprints for changing the story of our lives.

The third area my affirmations had addressed was finding a solution to my deep loneliness. I was blessed to have my daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons living here. They were wonderful in their loving support for me after Ellen died. However, I really missed having a partner, and I felt very lonely. I found a new and wonderful partner – Nancy, whom many of you know -- through a set of dramatic coincidences that make me think that my affirmations were at work here, too.

Feeling very isolated and sad, one night I went “cruising” through online dating sites, asking myself if there could possibly be any likely partners out there for an “old lady” like me. In fact, amazingly, on one of the sites, I found someone whose description of herself was more than a 90% match for the description I’d posted of who I would love to find. She was close to my age, and she lived right here – almost too good to be true. I fired off an email message, full of hope, and waited for a reply. And waited. And waited. I wrote again, and waited some more.

Finally, after a couple of months, I sort of gave up and figured she wasn’t interested in me. Then, an amazing thing happened. I received an email from that person – Nancy. She was writing from a different online dating site – one I hadn’t remembered signing up for. She wrote about how my profile matched to an amazing extent what she was looking for. She didn’t mention the emails I’d written to her.

I wrote back, and suggested that we should meet at a coffee place to find out in person who we were writing to. It turned out that she had never received my emails – When I wrote, she was no longer visiting the site where I’d seen her photo and profile. Independently and spontaneously, in different places, we’d each selected the other. Was there chemistry? Oh, yes! That was over a year ago. My new house is across the street from her house (yes the “blue cottage with all the flowers” described in the psychic reading turned out to be the house directly across from hers).

We’re planning to be married in Durham on May 21 of this year. My affirmation about being held and perfectly supported has manifested beautifully.

There are a lot of unusual coincidences appearing here – enough so that the story perhaps might seem unbelievable, if it hadn’t really happened.

Let’s go back to the idea of lives, like houses, manifesting as reality in response to the blueprints stated for them. My belief is that when I state clearly the vision that arises in my imagination, I give God raw material out of which to create that reality. In acknowledging hope and belief no matter what is happening, I freely give God permission to co-create with me the beautiful manifestations for which I was created. I have free will. God, having given me this right, would not force me to do what I do not choose. Only with my permission can God catapult me into the love and joy for which he made me. My affirming statements say to God – “Yes! Bring it on! I freely accept the gift of abundance and happiness. “ With each new affirmation, I create my new story about who I am and how I live.

We all define our lives by the stories we tell. We perceive them as fact, not fiction. But what’s the difference? Do we portray fact, or does our portrayal create fact? What’s fact, and what’s not?

I remember a long time ago, as a writing professor, teaching classes in memoir creation. Over and over, we were faced with the necessity of writing detailed verbal pictures. How did we really know exactly what the players in each scene had thought, said, remembered? We didn’t! We had to make it all up as best we could. In contrast, when we were intending to write fiction, we had to write based on what we had experienced, or it would be abstract and boring. Fiction with no basis in fact is empty. Only stories that have the ring of truth really grab us.

Every story is both fiction and fact. In accordance with the laws of the universe, whatever story we tell becomes our facts. They determine our blueprint. Reality follows imagination. Imagination defines reality.

We can change the stories we tell – we can change them multiple times, and reality follows, unerringly – just as when we’re steering a car,we tend to steer in the direction in which we’re looking. Each story is a dream, a way of seeing, an act of steering.

My situation two years ago was a story – my story, my view of what was real. I was old. I was impoverished. I was disabled. I was alone in the world. I felt miserable, scared, and fragile.

Then in the “Keys to the Kingdom” class, I learned to change my view, to tell a different story. Instead of feeling miserable, I said: “I am whole and happy, financially secure, surrounded by love.” That became my new story, my new reality. My actions changed with my story. Instead of feeling miserable, I recognized and acted on opportunities to eradicate the dissonance in my life between fact and fiction, between desire and reality.

A few months after I turned 70, it occurred to me that nothing had actually changed except a number – and why should a number dictate anything? So I even gave up feeling old.

Before we end, I invite you to join me as a storyteller. On the card you received when you came into the service, write one sentence. Pick one aspect of your life, and tell it as you want it to be, in all its fictional glory,. Start with the word “I…” Talk in the present. You’re creating your vision now, as you take a minute to write:

(Pause)

Now, I want you to share your story sentence with someone you don’t know well. Tell your story sentence as you wrote it, and listen to theirs.

(Pause)

Did you feel the joy, the energy, the delight that happens when we accept God’s best blessings – the ones he gives us in the form of dreams and desires so that we know how to change our stories.

When I first learned about affirmations, I was told to write them down and post them somewhere – like the bathroom mirror – where I’d see and remember them often. You could bring home your new blueprint card and do that. You might even want to write more one-sentences stories for yourself.

Each time you see them, you will have a chance to live your blueprint. Say it, , live it, feel it, rejoice in it, and thank God for giving it to you -- Your dream, your story, your blueprint, your life.

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