Mindful May

Activity at the Center

While we continue to practice social distancing, we are meeting online each Sunday on Facebook. Previous talks are available for viewing on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/csltricities. We meet every Sunday at 10:30 am. You are most welcome!

We also appreciate your continued support and are accepting tithes (offerings) by check or money order through the postal mail. Please inquire for the mailing address. Thank you for your continued generosity and support of New Thought teachings in the Tri-Cities.

The Game of Life & How to Play It

At present, we are exploring the New Thought writings of Florence Scovel Shinn in pages of The Game of Life and How to Play It. Last week, we reflected on chapter 2. Tomorrow (3 May 2020), we will look at chapter 3 after a brief review of chapters 1 and 2. This little book has a great deal of wisdom. It brings a New Thought and metaphysical interpretation of the Gospel and summarizes important spiritual principles that can help you to change your daily experience of life by changing your thinking and speaking. The popular New Thought/metaphysical author and teacher Louise Hay credited the book with inspiring and instructing her.

Join us in our study of the book by reading or listening to a chapter a week. The book is short and easy to read. You can join us by reading chapter 3.

Librivox - Free Audiobook: The Game of Life & How to Play It (Read by Amy Conger)

The Game of Life & How to Play It full etext (webpage)

The Game of Life & How to Play It full ebook (various formats)

Mindfulness Every Day

New Thought teachings remind us that we are always at choice. The current challenges we face as a human family with regard to Covid-19 and the effects we feel on our social and economic lives can be seen as both a crisis or an opportunity depending on how we choose to approach them. We can choose to allow our belief in lack and limitation to drive us to see everything through eyes of fear: To be angry at the situation, the government, and each other. But as New Thought luminary Florence Scovel Shinn reminds us in her little book The Game of Life and How to Play It, "Fear is only inverted faith: it is faith in evil instead of good."

What this means is that we are to be heartened by the notion that even our fear is a testament to the power of our belief. We can choose to invest our faith--our energies, our imagination, and our personal power--in what we deem "evil," the appearance of lack, limitation, disease, and strife. This leads us to limiting our opportunities for healing and to experience the virtues we all profess to desire in our lives. We can also choose anew: we can choose aright. We can choose to use our attention in deeply healing ways by choosing to change consciousness. We can come back to Center and affirm our connection to the healing power of the One Life. Affirm for yourself now:

I am under but One Law: This is the Law of God. I am subject but to One Power: This Power is God. I am in the midst of but One Presence: This Presence is God. I am an expression of but One Life: This is the Life of God.

And when we come back to Center in this way, we have the opportunity to invest our time, our energies, and our faith (which is our belief) in those practices that will expand our sense of well-being, our connection to ourselves and others, and our belief that we are all on an endless journey of self-discovery, growth, and healing. We can be part of the healing consciousness on the planet.

This happens when we choose to bring the light of mindfulness into every aspect of our lives. I speak often of our major spiritual tools: meditation, affirmation, and contemplation. We must grow our mindfulness if we are ever to break the cycle of negative thinking and self-limiting beliefs. We must learn to come back into this very moment and bring compassionate, objective awareness into our experience mentally, physically, and emotionally. From this space of centered awareness in the present moment, our thoughts and beliefs have power. This is where we can practice affirmation, including affirmative prayer. And we can sow new seeds, both by affirmation and contemplation of writings that inspire and free us.

For May, let our focus be on meditation and mindfulness. We have a whole month ahead of us with stay-at-home orders in place across our state and around the world. We can choose to lament what we say is a limitation on our daily lives, or we can choose to use this time as one of deep contemplation, meditation, and affirmation. Can you imagine what a whole 30 days of meditation and affirmation practiced with regularity and substantial time could do for you and for me? Let's get started.

Whether you are new to meditation or an old pro, you can choose to bring mindfulness into your daily life in many ways. Formal practice is essential to ground us in this new way of thinking and relating to daily life. Use this playlist on YouTube for a free way to get started with mindfulness exercises. To learn more about what mindfulness can do for us in our daily lives (in our relationships, our work, and hobbies, use this playlist.

Bringing mindfulness practice into your daily life can begin with awareness of your physical body sensations with the body scan meditation or yoga nidra (yogic sleep). Continue with a mindfulness-of-the-breath practice once or twice daily. Here is a wonderful introduction to mindfulness practice.

In tandem with expanding your awareness, consider bringing gentle exercise into your daily routine. Combining mindfulness and aerobic exercise can bolster well-being and keep us feeling better. A walk around the neighborhood can help us begin, and working up to 20 or 30 minutes of sustained exercise when combined with mindfulness can bring us to a new level of emotional well-being.

May you choose to bring the light of mindfulness to your month of May. I know that we can use this current experience as an opportunity to delve deeper into this experience of life.