Choice

September 4, 2016 – Outrageous Gratitude

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09/04/16 Rev. David McArthur
“Outrageous Gratitude”

On awakening this morning, did you tell yourself, “I’m glad you woke up this morning!”? We take it for granted. At night you go somewhere else, experiencing and learning. Each morning you come back to the 3rd dimension. You are one with the infinite power of the universe that creates and sustains this universe and who knows what else.

Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come. He told them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed…the kingdom of God is within you.” It is a state of awareness of the presence of the divine within. Our beautiful capacity to be able to know this expands as we are more aware. Science has proven that this changes the body. We are then able to perceive a new consciousness through appreciation. It’s measurable, verifiable. Our capacity to see beauty expands. It’s a greater experience of seeing the presence of the divine. It lifts us. It literally raises the flow of spiritual energy in us. We become more sensitive, attuned to the guidance and wisdom with in us. So say I am grateful!

Most of us have been grateful after the beauty has been revealed. But there’s another place to have gratitude—before we see the goodness. That’s not just gratitude, it’s outrageous gratitude! I got to see this. Today we have with us Anastacia Jayet, who wrote the book “Shattered into Being”. She and I have a connection. We both were students at the University of New Mexico. We each had a happy family with a new baby. And we both lost our spouse suddenly and violently. Her life became a state of helplessness. Slowly she began to return. She says in her book, “I am being shown the way, a place of light, through gratitude.” Outrageous. So when your story is too heavy, I am grateful, and awaken to a greater awareness.

Richard Weinman was a man whose wife had Alzheimer’s. When she passed he was assessing the changes in his life, when a cement truck hit him head-on. He awoke three months later in a hospital bed. His body was held together with screws. He’d be bound to a wheel chair. And when he was placed in a care facility, every moment every day was regimented. He began to use a powerful thing. “I could weep over what I couldn’t do, or I could be grateful for what I could do. I was a writer and a professor. I could write again.” He wrote with a stick on a computer keyboard. He wrote a blog about his life. It became a book which is now given to caregivers in many states. He was invited to the White House to be on the council on aging. He didn’t decide to do that when he was in his hospital room where he couldn’t type, where he was in pain, controlled by others. There he only chose to be grateful. Outrageous.

You are a spiritual being and you made the choice to wake up this morning and come here, to show up because you have purpose. If you are in an experience, you have purpose and you have amazing power to choose to feel grateful. Bring that magnificent wisdom of your spiritual self to create the Kingdom, the state of consciousness where you are aware of that goodness, that love, and that purpose, by making a choice. I am grateful! I am grateful! I am grateful! –grateful for that amazing love there every moment, responding.

And for the amazing state of consciousness of your love and gratitude, I am grateful!

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September 4, 2016 – Outrageous Gratitude

by


09/04/16 Rev. David McArthur
“Outrageous Gratitude”
 
On awakening this morning, did you tell yourself, “I’m glad you woke up this morning!”? We take it for granted. At night you go somewhere else, experiencing and learning. Each morning you come back to the 3rd dimension. You are one with the infinite power of the universe that creates and sustains this universe and who knows what else.

Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come. He told them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed…the kingdom of God is within you.” It is a state of awareness of the presence of the divine within. Our beautiful capacity to be able to know this expands as we are more aware. Science has proven that this changes the body. We are then able to perceive a new consciousness through appreciation. It’s measurable, verifiable. Our capacity to see beauty expands. It’s a greater experience of seeing the presence of the divine. It lifts us. It literally raises the flow of spiritual energy in us. We become more sensitive, attuned to the guidance and wisdom with in us. So say I am grateful!

Most of us have been grateful after the beauty has been revealed. But there’s another place to have gratitude—before we see the goodness. That’s not just gratitude, it’s outrageous gratitude! I got to see this. Today we have with us Anastacia Jayet, who wrote the book “Shattered into Being”. She and I have a connection. We both were students at the University of New Mexico. We each had a happy family with a new baby. And we both lost our spouse suddenly and violently. Her life became a state of helplessness. Slowly she began to return. She says in her book, “I am being shown the way, a place of light, through gratitude.” Outrageous. So when your story is too heavy, I am grateful, and awaken to a greater awareness.

Richard Weinman was a man whose wife had Alzheimer’s. When she passed he was assessing the changes in his life, when a cement truck hit him head-on. He awoke three months later in a hospital bed. His body was held together with screws. He’d be bound to a wheel chair. And when he was placed in a care facility, every moment every day was regimented. He began to use a powerful thing. “I could weep over what I couldn’t do, or I could be grateful for what I could do. I was a writer and a professor. I could write again.” He wrote with a stick on a computer keyboard. He wrote a blog about his life. It became a book which is now given to caregivers in many states. He was invited to the White House to be on the council on aging. He didn’t decide to do that when he was in his hospital room where he couldn’t type, where he was in pain, controlled by others. There he only chose to be grateful. Outrageous.

You are a spiritual being and you made the choice to wake up this morning and come here, to show up because you have purpose. If you are in an experience, you have purpose and you have amazing power to choose to feel grateful. Bring that magnificent wisdom of your spiritual self to create the Kingdom, the state of consciousness where you are aware of that goodness, that love, and that purpose, by making a choice. I am grateful! I am grateful! I am grateful! –grateful for that amazing love there every moment, responding.

And for the amazing state of consciousness of your love and gratitude, I am grateful!

April 20, 2014 – Becoming The Butterfly

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4/20/14 Rev. David McArthur
Becoming The Butterfly

“I was a pathetic wreck at every level.” Mike’s once successful career was in shambles, so too his relationships. He was despondent. He asked what many of us have asked, “Why me?” But he went further and also asked, “Who is this person I am meant to be?” He was aware he didn’t look anything like what he began to see. So he asked, “How can I be of service to You?” And he was grateful for the qualities that he now desired in his heart. Since, as minister to a large Unity church in Sacramento, he has become an inspiration for thousands. The shift to live according to what he asked for in his heart is what Easter is all about.

Zhuang Zhou, Taoist philosopher, 4th century B. C., in a dream, flew freely about as a beautiful butterfly. The dream was as real as his life as Zhuang Zhou, and he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Both states are our reality. The butterfly is a symbol of the spiritual self. The freedom of flight, the joy, the magnificence is our reality if we so choose. Mike had made the shift to choose the reality of a spiritual being. “I am a magnificent spiritual being!”

I was in Costa Rica sitting on a river bank captivated by the dense rainforest on the other side of the river, when flashes of a beautiful blue caught my eye. It was a blue morpho butterfly, a wonderful symbol of the free spiritual being we each truly are. In Canada, six year old David was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, and given only one or two more years. The Make a Wish Foundation granted his wish to go to Mexico to see a blue morpho butterfly. After returning home, he went into remission. At the age of 30, he watched on the set as his story was filmed.

Making that healing connection to that in us which is whole is the meaning in Easter, to see the Christ Self within. We have the capacity to see that within ourselves. We each have made that connection one time or another. To go there is a simple thing; it is to experience love.

By fifteen, with 15 arrests, a boy landed in solitary for two weeks. In that “tomb” he discovered his love for his mother. He mentally wrote her many letters, and from there he vowed he would never again do anything to hurt her. And in keeping that promise, he knew he could do anything. Now 33 and a pro in the NBA, Caron Butler made that choice. He made that shift to the highest within him.

Are you open to experience the highest within you? “I am open to the highest within me.” Make that connection within your heart to the love within. Mike made that connection with his spiritual self. Zhuang Zhou did too with the butterfly in his dream. Butler made it to the love in his heart for his mother. And little David made that connection to the blue morpho, the symbol of his spiritual self. You can make that connection in your heart! Bless you!