The Revolution is in your Mind

 This talk was given at Unity Lincoln on July 2, 2023.

Good morning!

When Reverend Evan asked me if I could give the talk on July 2, he suggested it could be about Independence Day or the History of New Thought class that I facilitate. Well, in my mind, I had wanted my next talk to be about the Ten Commandments and aliens. So we'll see if I can bring them all together.

Now, if you're new to Unity, you might think, "Oh, cool, Unity is into aliens!" Or you might think, "Oh, no, Unity is into aliens." So I should clarify that Unity is NOT into aliens. I am, kind of, but not Unity. Anyway, let's begin.

In a couple of days, on this fourth of July, Americans will once again celebrate Independence Day. It's a time for music, food, games, and fun.

And one of the reasons I'm proud to celebrate being an American, that is, to feel fortunate to have been born here and to live in this country, is a culture founded on freedom of religion and freedom of expression. 

And it's more than just the self-evident truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence or the legal freedoms in the Bill of Rights. It's also freedom from tradition, from old social arrangements, it's in the freedom to try new things. 

An example is found in the History of New Thought Class that meets here every Sunday at 9 am and also on Zoom, we learned that Ralph Waldo Emerson left his position as a minister in the Unitarian Church when he decided he did not agree with the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

He was NOT put on trial for heresy, because there was no state church with the power to do that. He was NOT burned at the stake. Nobody had power over him. He could think, speak, and write as he pleased. As Eric Butterworth said, the same people who didn't want Emerson preaching on Sunday morning would go hear him lecture on Monday evening. Emerson helped inspire future generations who formed the New Thought movement which includes Unity. 

THIS is the culture of freedom I am blessed to live in.

Now, we didn't discuss Emerson's view of the Lord's Supper in the class, but I did read his essay on it. Emerson wrote:

"... [T]that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul. The whole world was full of idols and ordinances. The Jewish was a religion of forms. The Pagan was a religion of forms; it was all body — it had no life — and the Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men that they must serve him with the heart; that only that life was religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke, and forms were shadows." End quote.

To Emerson, the Lord's Supper had become another ordinance, echoing a religion of form.

The books of the Old Testament, also known as the Torah, are the foundation of the Jewish faith. And yes, they mention ordinances and sacrifices quite a bit.

But as with any book, the Bible has as many meanings as there are readers of it. And the way the Bible makes the most sense to me is metaphorical. God, through various names, is the highest version of myself, or the higher mind, and Bible stories are about what happens when you listen to that higher mind, and what happes when you don't. When you walk by faith and not by sight.

I believe this is the meaning, the revolutionary meaning of Exodus 2 verse 3:

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other gods before (or besides) me.

You might recognize this as the first of the Ten Commandments.

I urge you to think of this First Commandment in light of 1 John 4: verse 16: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

God is love. The highest version of ourselves is pure love. Love brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Love brings you out of the slavery known as addiction, love brings you out of the slavery of anxiety. Love brings you out of the slavery of bitterness and guilt. 

Love sets you free. Love lifts you up. To love yourself is to say "I am worthy" and when you love yourself you sense the unity, the oneness of all creation. 

God is love, God is within us.  God is not an external force. God is NOT "out there." 

Again in our History of New Thought class (low voice: Sunday mornings at 9 am in the library and on Zoom), we've also discussed the English thinker Thomas Troward.

Troward said,  "Do not deny physical reality but the power that we imagine it to have." Might I say, imagining that the forces in physical reality have power over us is idolatry. Having "no gods besides me" means making decisions based on love and nothing else. No ordinances, no sacrifices.

Troward also said, "When we wake up to our oneness with the unity of all things, we no longer look to external channels for health, prosperity, guidance, assurance or anything."

Might I say that to wake up to the oneness and unity of all things is to wake up to love.

Troward also said, "We must understand our relationship to the power we are using. We must not expect it to do for us what it can only do through us."

Love is a power that does its work through us.

I am constantly tempted to make idols out of money, relationships, my health, career, and politics. "If only I had this." "If only that happened." I often forget the universal oneness of God, humanity, and all creation. Too often I judge by appearances and make decisions out of fear of what could go wrong in a future that does not yet exist.

But here's the problem with judging by appearances: It doesn't work!  Judging our conditions by what Mary Baker Eddy called the mortal mind, or sense perception, is to ignore the resources of the infinite mind of the loving God.

God's Universe is much bigger than my perceptions. And by "universe," I don't just mean the billions of galaxies that are in three-dimensional space. I mean the infinite universe of the mind in all its dimensions. Don't judge by what you see, but from what Love sees, and do what Love calls for.

The power of the mind is its power of intention, of its freedom to choose. You can spark a revolution in your life by choosing love. Not some of the time, but all the time. Put love first and have no other god besides love.

I have an example of this revolutionary power of love. This is where we get to the aliens. 

In May, Rice University in Houston hosted its second annual Archives of the Impossible conference. It's a safe space for scholars across disciplines to give presentations about UFOs (now called UAPs), sigil magick, consciousness, near-death experiences, and other topics related to the paranormal. I was able to watch some of the presentations live on Zoom.

One was given by Scarlett Heinbuch, PhD. When she was four years old she observed her own body drowning in her apartment complex's community pool. She was looking down from above and felt an indescribable love that goes beyond any description or definition. She wanted to stay where she was. But in witnessing her mother's efforts to revive her lifeless body, Scarlett had compassion on her desperate mother and decided to return to her body.

But the little girl brought something back with her: intuitive powers. At first, she thought everyone had these powers to spot illness in others, recognize bad relationships, and even know when people died. And it made for a difficult childhood. When you're a ten-year-old girl in the early 1970s and your classmates call you a witch, all you want is to fit in.

Well, life unfolded and decades later Scarlett was a graduate student and single mother with two sons with disabilities . She had, however, retained her intuitive gifts and had learned Reiki and other energy healing techniques.

Scarlett heard about a complete stranger, a friend of some of her friends, who was at death's door. His name is David. Although she barely had enough money for gas, she offered to go pray with his mother in the hospital room. Although David was in a coma, she asked him for permission to try to help him. She felt a puff of air in the room and decided that was the green light. She looked for a place to touch the patient's body without disturbing the life-support tubes and wires attached to him. When she did, she felt waves of compassion. She knew they were in a sacred space and sensed that he was hovering over his body the way that she had hovered over her own when she had nearly died. She also felt his own feelings and emotions and felt even greater compassion for him.

When she felt it was time to go she said if he wanted to stick around in this life that she would come back. As she was going to take her hand away, she couldn't. Her hand was fused to his. So that was a sign to her that she should come back.

Three days later, David was still in a coma. Scarlett took his hand again and said an affirmative prayer, "the highest and best, most sacred and holy, in this dimension and any other, under the creative hand of God." After she said it, she wondered why she said, "in this dimension and any other" because she had never said that before.

But the next thing she knew, she was in a place of indescribable love, of millions of particles of light. And David was there too, and her heart was completely open. She realized she knew this man, had always known this man, and was always going to love him. Then she came back to her body, and David was still showing no signs of recovery. So she decided that she had to accept they would never be together in this lifetime.

A few days later she was in bed, and all of a sudden she felt herself hovering in David's hospital room. She saw four beings at his bedside. They were very tall, they were colored blue, with very sharp features but otherwise in human form. Scarlett perceived they were a medical team and saw them put these holographic kidneys inside David's body. Then one of these "doctors" looked up and nodded at her. Then she was back in her own bed and wondered if she had been dreaming.

But then the next day she went back to the hospital and David's kidneys, which had been destroyed beyond the capacity to regenerate, had begun regenerating. They went up to 100% recovery. The doctors called David "Miracle Boy."

When David woke up, he had been in a coma for more than four weeks. He told Scarlett he knew everything about her except her name, and that he was going to marry her. Six months later, they were married.

David's recovery is officially a "medical miracle," meaning that medical professionals researched his case and concluded there was no medical explanation for how his kidneys healed so perfectly.

But what do we say about these "aliens," these blue beings that Scarlett saw with David? No one knows what they were. Scarlett doesn't know, but recalls that in her prayer she said, "in this dimension or any other." 

We do know that it was out of love for her mother that Scarlett chose to return to life on earth when she was four years old. And we know that it was her compassion, her love, of a complete stranger named David that seemed to persuade David himself to return to earth when he could have easily transitioned to that next stage. 

Whether or not these aliens, these blue beings, were "real" in the sense of flesh-and-blood creatures, in that hospital room, they were the image of God. They were love in action.

Love restored David's kidneys when by all appearances he was going to die soon. JUDGE NOT BY APPEARANCES.

There are unseen dimensions in this universe and those dimensions might be occupying the same space we are in.. They are the diminsions where love does its work and miracles happen.

In every moment, you have the opportunity to choose to love yourself, love others, and love all creation. You don't have to put other gods like prudence, or fairness, or security, or revenge, or honor, or money, or fame before love or beside love. You don't need any other God besides Love.

When you choose love the way Scarlett chose to visit a stranger in the hospital, you will bless others and you will be blessed beyond anyone's imagination.

Thank you.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe) and JL Cells (subscribe) and thanks you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for your writing, editing, and research needs: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.