High Wattage Belief

".....Prayer works even if the recipient of your prayer lives in Tucson and you live in Omaha. God lives everywhere, full power, all the time. God lives in the hearts and minds of every individual whether he or she recognizes it or not.

Here’s a very short sketch of how prayer works in our lives. Spirit is the Creative Energy of the Universe. Spirit created us in It’s image and likeness. We are separate and unique, but we are spiritual creatures and we are connected to God through our consciousness. (Consciousness contains all our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings in this moment.)

Our consciousness is constantly sending messages to Spirit and Spirit responds. God (or Spirit) is Love working through Law in our lives. When we pray, we are speaking directly to God with the purpose of setting Spiritual Law into motion to create new circumstances.

The person praying envisions, believes and accepts the desired outcome. The person we are praying for must accept the goal of the prayer in order to have it work. That is a part of why we never pray for others unless it is requested. When we ask for prayers from others we are depending on, or borrowing their conviction and clarity. Of course, the best thing is for the person requesting prayer to also have conviction but that’s not always at an optimum level.

The reason prayers from unknown people worked for me was that when I requested the prayers, I was already envisioning, believing and accepting the healing at some level. The prayers of others were powerful because they were clear and focused. I needed your prayers because I was, more or less, stuck in the experience of “not well”.

 .......Remember that you do not have to understand how prayer works, you only have to pray and expect it to work...."

Excerpted from a newsletter by Dr. Jane Claypool 

Judging Love

When we think about love, the word “judgment” may not enter our minds. But too often judgment builds a wall that separates us from love. I am not talking about just romantic love, but agape, universal love, including self love.

When you judge you miss the experience of being present to the love that is right before you. Judgment requires comparison and measurement. How can you possibly be present to love when your mind is distracted by what should be, could be, once was, or might have been?

In the New Testament as part of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asks, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

It is this plank—our misinformed beliefs that have separated us from Christ consciousness--that cause us to judge. We judge if we have the need to be right and believe we are more than others. We judge if we believe we are less and we make others our heroes, not understanding that we are One and equally capable of expressing God.

We can only love one another fully when we are equal and not judging ourselves to be powerless or victims.

Matthew 7 asks: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?”

We are told to take the plank out of our own eye first, and then we will see clearly to remove the speck from our brother’s eye. This is enlightenment and through grace we have this ability to heal ourselves by looking at our own selves, not with judgment by the ego but with the true self, which always includes love and understanding.

--Patrice Gaines for Unity of Charlotte