Hello my fellow spiritual travelers.
This is a quick note to update you on some changes that are a comin’.
I have been working on an appointment calendar. When you click the Pay Now Buttons on my Services page you will be taken to PayPal. On this page you can opt to use your credit or debit card or pay with your PayPal account. If you do not have a PayPal account, no worries, it is free to set up. It is not required, however.
You will receive an email confirming the payment with a link to set your appointment or appointments for coaching/counseling. The cancellation policy is clearly outlined. You will be able to schedule appointments ahead of time but no sooner than within 24 hours. Please be sure to write down the appointment.
I have also been working out what information I require from you prior to our appointments. I have come to realize this will depend on the nature of our time together. Since I am not a therapist or licensed psychologist as yet, I will not be conducting therapy with you. However, this does not mean that the situation you find yourself coping with is not important. I will do what I am able in teaching coping skills, for instance.
I am excited with the changes I am making and hope to make the most of electronic means to streamline the process of making and paying for appointments with me.
If you have questions about any of my services or find yourself unsure about the benefits I am available for a free 30 minute consultation by instant messenger or phone. Schedule an appointment today.
Peace be with you.
I have added a Google Notice for the keyword “spirituality” to keep an eye on the various topics concerning this word. In the course of checking out the alerts I get once a week there is one title that showed more than any other: Spirituality versus Religion.
There is no versus, comparing spirituality to religion is like comparing apples to oranges. It cannot be done with any sense of realism or normalcy, even a definition escapes the comparison.
Got your thinking caps on or did you just think: This is crap. Maybe it is. But my job is not to tell you what is and what isn’t. I would never dream of interfering with your free will and freedom of choice.
However, I do dare bring a few things to mind so that you may be better informed and consider your current belief in regards to these two concepts. Because concepts they are.
Spirituality is an ideal, a sense of, a feeling, a way of being during meditation, it is beyond the physical realm. A state of being. Spiritual is a state of mind, spirituality is the way of living or being. It is not tangible, there are no rules, or ideals to master. Being a spiritual being is beyond the physical senses, physical plain, unseen with the human eye.
Now religion on the other hand is a collective, a culture, a society. Religion is a set of rules, laws, and common belief system that its members choose to believe and follow. The commonality is set with a governing class. The rules are designed to give the followers, members a guide to live by. Fear is the ruling staff in most religions. Do this not that or be punished, with punishment being a strong sensation of pain and anguish. Corporal punishment is meted out by a God who is jealous, designing, and controlling. Well in most religious writings.
Here is the question: How can you say spirituality versus religion? I do not see it, there is no competition between the two and no comparison.
You can have religion without spirituality and spirituality without religion. Can you have religion with spirituality and spirituality with religion? Yes. Of course you can.
Religion is the set of rules, spirituality is the set of being. Why not join them. When Jesus walked this earth he did so to teach the concept of love, not hate and war. His message was born of the spiritual concepts to move beyond the physical and reside in the realm of spirit.
So where you in your spiritual life? Do you assign spirituality to a set of rules to follow? Or are you like me, live in the state of spirituality more often than not? How do you know spirituality exists?
I would be interested in hearing your opinions, ideas, and join in the discussion.
Peace be with you.
There are few resources in this world, written in English, that I have not reviewed, read, experimented with, tried on for size, and either kept portions, all or none of them. I have been reading self-help books for over 20 years now, from alcoholism and addiction to co-dependency and domestic violence 12-step concepts. There is not one I can say that has had all the resources and answers I required. The amount of money I have spent is not calculable because I do not wish to consider how much I have tossed into my library, then donated to someone else. Not the point of this post anyway.
My point is that visualization is touted as the way to attract your heart’s desire. See yourself as you wish to be, see yourself living the life you want. Another step to include as the secret to the “Law of Attraction,” add feeling to your visualization. Be in the moment with your desires. Feel what it would be like to achieve your goals. Can you do this?
How can you know what it would feel like to achieve your goals? What would it feel like to not look at your bank account and wonder how you are going to pay this month’s bills or where your next meal will come from? I do not have a clue. Do you?
I have continued to “fake it till I make it.” I Continued to pretend that I might know what it feels like to be worry, fear, anxiety, and depression free. The problem is I have not a reference point, no memory of having ever lived in this manner. When I have it to spend, I spend it. I do not know what it would feel like to save my money, budget it so that each time I look, it “feels” like I have plenty. Rather, it feels like never enough. How to make a penny pay for a meal or ten, I know what it this feels like. How to ask for time to pay the rent and the bills, stress over a conversation with debt collectors, this I know how it feels. I have lived a life of poverty, never enough, always wanting for more, actually learning how not to want for anything.
What is the solution to learning how to visualize? My thoughts are to go to the type of homes you desire, walk around in them, hang out, take pictures of your self in the home. You can do this by attending open houses in the neighborhoods that meet your desires. Take a friend or your mate and a camera. You do not have to be anything more than a lookie loo. If asked you can tell them this is a homework assignment, you are building your vision board.
What about a check with loads of zeros? Got PhotoShop? Or another similar program? Make one… Fill in the entire check, make it look real. The print it out and frame it..
The car of your dreams? Go to the car lot and ask for a test drive to get a feel of driving your dream car. Get a picture of you in the car. Tell them it is a homework assignment. Sociology or psychology class. Be creative. Cannot take a test drive, sit in the car, close your eyes, let your senses fill you in, notice how you feel, remember it.
Vision boards are great for those who can imagine. But for those of us who have not reference, create it. Go visit those places or similar ones, get a feel, pretend it is yours. What does it feel like? Take plenty of pics with you in the frame. This is your reference.
Journal the feelings that come up for you, notice your body’s sensations, what draws your attention? Yeah, first get over the fear of doing these exercises. I feel the fear of rejection just writing about it. But I can tell you that once you do it, you will remember what it felt like to own it.
Give it a try. You won’t get arrested and no one is going to condemn you. If you are told to leave, then tell them thank you for assisting you with your assignment and find someone else to help. Smile and wish that person a great sale. Do not indulge in anger or shame… These are no longer necessary. Besides, if you allow this to hang out, it will be a permanent house guest. I do not know about you, but me? Sick and tired of being sick and tired. I like experiencing the great feelings and of ownership.
My next goal? To own a newer RV. Guess what I get to do? Yep, go visit a few RV dealerships, ask for pics of me in them, put them out for me to see. Remember how it feels to own one. Yep, watch for pics of me in the driver’s seat and laying out on the couch or the bed. Who knows. Not the kitchen, sorry, not so much domestic any more. 
Maybe I can hire a housekeeper, cook or a housewife? Who knows…
I send you my blessings and best wishes. May today be the prosperous, fun, loving day you hoped for. Peace be with you.
I enjoy this book, especially the Teacher’s Manual where the description and requirements are explained for God’s teachers. It also reminds me of those qualities I have that are special to each of us.
I am a firm believer that what we require to live a life of joy, happiness, and empowerment we own. These gifts are an innate part of who we are as humans in spiritual form.
This morning’s reading Chapter 5: How is Healing Accomplished? pg 17 of the manual.
The first paragraph discusses that one must first perceive the purpose of illness. Illness has a reason for existence, not a lesson to learn, but a way of escaping life. Yet to think that one would consciously choose to be ill, especially life threatening illness, is absurd. I am not saying we consciously choose illness. Nor would anyone ever wish to opt for suffering of any sort. We do not make these choices in the usual manner of making decisions.
However, we do choose illness. All illness is a choice. Aw, you are not happy about reading this, I can hear you now saying bulls…t. Well, let me explain. Just as A Teacher’s Manual goes on to say that we can gain health and heal our illness when we take responsibility for our choices, even the unconscious choices. Here is what I mean…
When I was a child I discovered that illness got me out of chores, going to school and kept me from being molested. So over time I learned how to become ill without consciously choosing it. The daily life filled with opportunities to contract an illness, become fatigued, even the food choices lent me a way to be ill in some form. Even now I consciously choose to eat food that is going to make me tired, worn out and sluggish. But I only do this once in awhile. It is also a form of punishing myself, feeding the chaos I grew up with. Familiar territory, but another topic for discussion later.
To gain health and healing one must first look to the source of dis-ease, illness, fatigue, and know it is curable. All illness is curable. Again it is in the choices we make, this time consciously choosing health. It is in all we do, one step at a time and gradually changing the order of illness.
You have permission to be who you are at this moment. Permission is granted to never change, slowly change, eat junk, eat healthy, have a temper tantrum, scream, or laugh and play. You own this permission, it is your God given right. Goddess did not create junk, she birthed you, a beautiful jewel that is shining every moment. Each breath brings you healing.
The secret to healing? Own your benefits to illness. Then change the reasons, be honest. First with self, then with others.
Bless you.
WOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO….. I cleaned my blog out of the hacked links, as if I would use those anyways.
Learned a great deal about making my blogs secure against attacks.
The tools I have included can be located under security plug ins at the WordPress.org site.
A few things to take note of were the version of WP is readable in the readme.html, so deleted it. There are several files that should be read only by you, so changing those to 400 should help a great deal.
I forgot to delete the install files. So for newbies please remember to go back in and delete these.
I am grateful to those who have helped me out in cleaning up and blocking IP addresses. Because my hosting company has a Latest Visitor Log I was able to track back over three days and make note of the “problem” IPs and have them blocked.
I host with GVO Hosting. The fees are extremely good. Especially when I look at the response I get from the tech teams, the help and they do stick with it until it is resolved. Not one of the techs has ever treated me as if I was a moron, stupid or should not be doing this. Rather they willingly answer my questions, direct me to more resources when needed and help me fix the wrongs, even when they are my mistakes. That is why I will never go anywhere else unless I am forced to, oh, please do not make me. With GVO you get 24/7 tech support through email, conference, and chat. Free software is ready for you to install and update automatically, no download then upload. Besides hosting your business or personal site, you are an affiliate earning revenues from each person you refer. I have not done a great deal with GVO as a business so my earnings pay my hosting fees nearly every month.
I am so glad that my blogs were hacked. It gave me an opportunity to learn and to grow. Plus I got to fix some of my previous mistakes that would have remained had I not had to go back over every post. Grateful right now I did not have more posts than I do. Whew.
Thank you for the visit. If I can help from my experience let me know. I will not publicly list the plug ins that are keeping me secure right now or the files I had to add and change. That would just be plain silly and asking to get hacked again.
Now I get to go through all the hacked posts, clean them up and re-post them.
Got any suggestions for better security? Will use them on both blogs.
Off to check into it after cleaning up the mess. Bless you hackers. Bless you for helping me to bring my site to notice.
Changing the name of the site. The new name is A Spiritual Paradigm. Sat on the title for over a month now, keeps ringing in my ear. Looked up the word that sang the loudest and decided that yes, this fits so much better.
Welcome to A Spiritual Paradigm.
More great deals, ideas, teaching to come.
Check back, book mark and follow me.
I send you blessings this day, may you find what you seek and flourish.
If you have not been introduced to Emotional Tapping Techniques yet, this is your invitation to check it out now. Tapping is a way to rid yourself of the hidden messages, more importantly it is an instant tool to cope with the shocks life introduces to our day. I use a brief round of tapping when I get stuck or feel overwhelmed with a task. I find an instant release of stuckness and finish my project quicker than I imagined. The information flows once the plugs are removed.
This site has several scripts that will lead you to learning how to change those messages, cope with emotions, make changes in your life that are rooted deep into your core.
Please take a moment and read about the 10 simple steps as listed here:
I would like to suggest subscribing to the email to stay informed of programs and new information.
Note: This is not a monetized post.
Family Violence Prevention Fund.
Here is another resource for support and education about how to free yourself and others from abuse.
School, home or work you deserve to be safe.
For more resources see the Emergency & Recovery Resource page.
These resources are not just for women, men and teens can find the support and help they need as well.
Do not be too proud to seek out assistance. Or too fearful to get out of a harmful situation.
This is your life. You have rights. Own them.
Bless You.
Note: This is a guest post in it’s original form by my friend Father Dave of Dulwich Hill, Australia. I am grateful to Father Dave for his continued support of my spiritual pilgrimage.
A Sermon on Romans 13:8-10
I’ve decided to speak this morning on one of the most unnerving and threatening pieces of Scripture I’ve ever come across – threatening and unnerving at least for professional clerics like myself (people who get paid to teach the Bible). The passage is from Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, chapter 13:
“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Ugh! It makes me shudder! What gall, to suggest that it could all be so simple – to suggest that the entire ethics of the Scriptures can be reduced down to a simple command to love, and that the one who has loved has fulfilled the law.
Surely it can’t be that simple, for if it were that simple, you wouldn’t need to employ me – with all my University degrees and prestigious title and library full of books – to teach you the Scriptures! Not if it’s all that simple! If that’s all there is to it, I reckon you can work the rest out for ourselves!
I mean, it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if you’re employing a professional to teach you the Scriptures, the implication is that this book requires professional training before you can really come to terms with it. These must be highly obscure books with mysterious hidden messages.
And of course professorial figures like me come at a price! We have to be compensated for all those years of training and hard study, but surely that’s a small price to pay if it means you now have someone to guide you through these ancient books in all their Byzantine complexity, and can so discern the inscrutable will of God.
But not if it’s all this simple; not if there’s just one simple commandment – “love one another” – and the rest is just application. Maybe it’s time I started looking for something to do with my hands?
“The one who loves another has fulfilled the law”, says St Paul. And maybe we could write this off as one of St Paul’s more manic moments, except that I think Paul got this teaching from Jesus, didn’t he?
Wasn’t it Jesus who, when asked what the most important commandments were, didn’t just say that loving God and neighbour were the most important commandments. He went further to say, “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 20:40). In other words, not only is the law of love central to the Scriptures, but it is at the basis of every other law and command we find in Scriptures, and indeed none of these other laws or commandments can be understood except as applications of this law of love!
I suspect that this is one of the key reasons Jesus upset his religious peers so much. I think they feared that he was going to put them out of a job.
Now I don’t pretend to have any deep knowledge of the way Rabbi’s worked then or now, but my understanding is that the basic job of a Rabbi was (and is) to give rulings from God’s law that apply to the different situations of life.
You come to a Rabbi and you can ask him anything from, ‘Is it permitted for me to kill someone who has broken into my house?’ to ‘Is it permitted for me to mix milk into my gravy?’ and the Rabbi’s job is to tell you, ‘It is permitted’ or ‘It is not permitted’ based on his unravelling the multiple stands of the Torah. And it’s a tough job, because the Mosaic law is long and complex.
And professional clerics in Islam have a similarly difficult job, as I understand it, for when you read the Koran you’ll find that it too is a complex web of rules and regulations that require some expertise to work through.
But not so for the Christian, according to St Paul, and according to Jesus. All the law and the prophets – the totality of the exhortations of the Scriptures – go back to one simple command to love, and “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” So if you’re in a situation where you are not sure what you should be doing, all you need to ask is, ‘what does love dictate?’ and you have discerned the will of God! It’s that simple!
Now I want to take a moment to reflect on just how radical a formula that is, and, frankly, just how irreligious that is, as a basis for a system of ethics. For it seems to me that the traditional religious basis for determining whether or not something is the will of God is not on the basis of whether or not it is loving, but on the basis of whether or not “it is written”.
I’m sure some of you remember that scene from Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ where Brian and his mother turn up to a stoning, where they are going to stone some poor fellow for taking the Lord’s name in vain. And Brian asks, “why can’t we take the Lord’s name in vain, mum?” and she says, “because it is written. That’s why.” And that would indeed seem to be a fairly obvious way of working out God’s will – if indeed we believe that this is God’s book – that all we need to do is to determine whether it is written in the book or not.
Why do we have to circumcise all our male children? Because it is written. That’s why!
Why aren’t we allowed to work on the Sabbath? Because it is written.
And if you look around the church today you’ll find all sorts of people telling us what we can and can’t do on the basis of ‘it is written’.
I was talking this week with a woman who founded a wonderful Christian fellowship group in this area, and she had been running that group successfully for some years until she was told that because she was a woman she wasn’t allowed to play a leadership role in her fellowship. Why not? Because it is written. That’s why not!
I remember some years back the argument that did so much damage to the Ministers Fraternal in this area (ie. the gathering of the priests and pastors from the various denominations that are represented in this area).
The issue was over a gay church that had been started not far from here and the question was, ‘should we invite them to join the fraternal?’ Up to that point we had only one requirement for admission – that the would-be member church should agree with the three fundamental historic creeds of the church, and as far as we knew this group did accept all of these ancient creeds, so we had no reason not to invite them to join. But the suggestion was put forward that a second requirement should be added for those who would become members of the fraternal:
1. You have to agree with the three basic creeds of the church and
2. You are not gay!
And why should we introduce this second requirement? Because it is written.
Now it’s not really my goal today to discuss the role of women in the church or whether we should embrace gay congregations, but what I do want to suggest is that using ‘it is written’ as the sole and sufficient basis for making decisions about what is the will of God was something, it seems to me, that New Testament Christianity very deliberately abandoned!
We see this in repeatedly in Jesus’ conflicts with His religious peers over his seemingly lax attitude to the Sabbath laws.
You are not supposed to work on the Sabbath, as we all know. Why not? Because it is written that you don’t, that’s why not! And indeed it is written right in to the ten commandments. It’s number four
But Jesus never seemed to get too worked up about the Sabbath. He eats, he heals and he does any number of things that his religious peers consider to be work, and when they challenge him, what does he say? He doesn’t say, “Oh, actually I think you misread what was written.” He says, “C’mon guys! The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath!”
And it’s an extraordinary statement, as it shows how Jesus refused to simply take the commandment at face value, but instead looked behind what was written to grasp the principle behind it, which was one of love.
God gave us the Sabbath so that we would rest and celebrate. Six days you shall work, but you mustn’t work yourself to death. You must take regular time out for rest and recreation. God knows what us crazy workaholics are like and so specifies this time out as a commandment, but it was always for our sake. It was always an act of love on God‘s part, and if, as Jesus found, people get so obsessed about what is written that they lose sight of the purpose it was written for, then they get the whole thing back to front and end up oppressing people with a commandment that was designed to help set people free!
Jesus saw the Sabbath law as an application of the law of love. And by the time you get to St Paul’s writings, he seems to have gone one step further, becoming almost entirely dismissive of the Sabbath law (as written).
“One person esteems one day as better than another (says Paul in the very next chapter of his letter to the Romans) while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” (Romans 14:5)
It is extraordinary, I think, that Paul had the courage to more-or-less dismiss, not just any Scriptural law, but one of the ten commandments! And you can see his peers saying to him, “but Paul … it is written!” And you can understand why our Seventh Day Adventist brethren just couldn’t go all the way with St Paul on this one because … hey, it is written!
Of course Paul seemed to abandon not only the traditional observance of the Sabbath, but also most of the traditional food laws, and even that most fundamental practice that was at the heart of the religion of the historic people of God – the ritual of circumcision. And he never denied that it was written that you were supposed to do all those things, but it seems that in the context he was working in, dealing with gentiles rather than Jews, so many of those laws were just no longer applicable, as written.
Instead of taking the Scriptural commandments at face value, he looked behind those laws as written to see what purpose they were supposed to serve, and he decided that in his context those particular ancient laws were just no longer valid applications of the purpose for which they were created.
Now I do believe that once you latch on to this insight into the way the Biblical writers do their thinking, I believe it changes your whole approach to the Bible. You can never say any more. ‘Hey, I know this is the right thing to do’ or ‘I know that you are doing the wrong thing because … it is written.’ I mean, you can say that, but from a Biblical perspective, I think you’ll find that there is still another question to ask. ‘OK. It is written, but is it the most loving thing to do?’
I think of people who have proudly told me how they tried to sort out their problems with a fellow church member by following the Biblical model, as outlined in our Gospel reading today from Matthew 18, where Jesus tells us that if you have an issue with someone, first you try to sort it out one-on-one, then, if that doesn’t work, you take one or two others with you, and if that doesn’t work, you put the matter before the whole church community, etc.
And, for the most part, I find myself being strangely unimpressed with those who have rigidly followed this model, as I don’t think it is the Biblical model. It’s a Biblical model. And indeed, it looks like a very solid application of the law of love when it comes to trying to prevent a quarrel between two people from escalating into something that might destroy the community BUT there will be some circumstances where this is not the most loving way of handling a conflict, and the goal must be to be driven by the law of love, and not to be dictated to by any one particular Scriptural example.
Maybe some people will feel that this approach is not taking the Bible seriously enough. A lot of people thought that of St Paul of course. A lot of people thought that of Jesus – that he was dismissive of the law of God, but how did Jesus respond? He told his opponents, “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it!” (Matthew 5:17)
And this is what Jesus does, and He gives us a key for understanding all the laws of Scripture. They are all about love, and if we make the mistake of trying to be loyal to the Scriptures without taking into account the motivating power of love that lies behind them, we take our stand with the Scribes and the Pharisees who stayed true to what was written but had no love in their hearts.
So is there a place for us professional clerics or should I indeed be looking to do something with my hands? It’s a frightening thought of course, as the only thing I’ve ever been able to do effectively with my hands is punch people, and I’m getting a little too old for that. At any rate, you’ll have to be the arbiter of that one, but I would suggest that if there is still a role for us professional teachers of the Scriptures, our primary job must be to safeguard the simplicity of the Gospel truth, and to stop us from over-complicating everything. Maybe it takes a bit of sophistry to be able to do that? I’ll leave you to decide that.
Let me conclude though by mentioning again one of the key things I’ve learnt from Father Elias since he’s been with us, concerning what he believes to be the real division in the church. And it’s not the division between Protestants and Catholics or between Liberals and Conservatives or any of those things. It’s the distinction between Christians who aim at perfection and Christians who aim at love.
And I think we might be able to make a similar distinction between those who look to found their life on what is written and those who look to found their lives on love – love, not at the expense of what is written, but the very love that emanates through what is written in the Bible and the very love that all of the laws of Scripture stem from – the very love that was embodied for us in Jesus, the living word, our King of love.
First preached at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, September 2008
Rev. David B. Smith
(the ‘Fighting Father’)
Parish priest, community worker,
martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of three.
www.fatherdave.org
Get a free preview copy of Dave’s book, Sex, the Ring & the Eucharist when you sign up for his free newsletter at www.fatherdave.org
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