January 28, 2024

Today, as January, with its initial burst of the New Year, is drawing to a close, we can slowly slip back into cultural cross-currents that bury our positive possibilities in the highlights of negative news, conflict and blame. One way to move pass such tension is to ignore it for a while to re-focus on what is personally uplifting for you. While we don't magically erase, or completely withdraw from the human struggle around us, we can restore a sense of balance to life. That balance provides stability; stability is a platform where we are grounded enough to take leaps into the Creative, the Unknown, even the over-arching experience of Allness. In other words, there is a process at work here--a collective agreement of a "New Year", full of celebration and excitement, followed by waves of struggle with ourselves and each other, with situations, belief systems, and exploitation of the opening that a new year brings. We are prone to winter withdrawal. We can retreat to hopelessness, or back to our previous patterns of routine, or we can retreat to nurture ourselves and our close circle, restoring balance as a more stable platform.

Last November, I posted a link for the short poem "It's Yours" by Larry Morris. Here it is in Facebook format:

"What is coming to you

Is already in you

Awaiting its moment."

It's a perfect description of the spiritual path with all it's twists and turns and moments of awakening. Awakening, although we call paradoxically call it "new", is not new. It has always been with you, in you, is you.

Yesterday, I vowed I would go for a walk. The short, very busy days of December and January had taken away my walks. Now it was warm and sunny. I couldn't slip away from my computer until almost 3 p.m., but finally I went outside. I headed for my favorite route, not far, along a treelined street and up to another--a quaint, winding side street bordered by giant, aged, twisting oak trees and cobble stone walls. There are blooming bushes--red, orange, yellow petals that float on the air. I had barely turned the corner when I felt the rush of nature's kind energy enfolding me. The tree limbs arch across the street and form a canopy with their partner trees on the other side, further pulling all things into their care. Incredibly tall, lustrous pine trees with a magnificent mountain behind them, greet you as you round the corner. "THIS is what I needed," echoed inside me. I had thought I needed to stretch these stiff legs of a digital lifestyle, but this was not about physical exercise. This was my New Year moment. May today bring yours. If not, remember it is already in you. Your moment will come. (Susan Nettleton)

For poetry: https://allpoetry.com/.../14326744-Longing-is-like-the...

https://wordsfortheyear.com/.../invitation-by-mary-oliver/

https://allpoetry.com/poem/8498543-Change-by-Kathleen-Raine

For Jack Correu's post on the New Year: https://hillsidesource.com/little-shack-begins-the-new-year

January 21, 2024

Today's post is an excerpt--the beginning and ending points--from this morning's Zoom talk:

This morning I'm speaking on "If Only". Here we navigate the border between fantasy (if only it were true or another imagined way), frustration (if only it this had not happened, or if only it wasn't like this), and manifestation (actual expression). The idea of this talk erupted after meditation, as I reflected on a powerful sense of consciousness and the goodness of life and wondered if this goodness of life, and our capacity to be conscious of that good, is chicken or egg. Does the goodness of life seize my awareness, or does my affirmation of good as a conscious choice, when I choose to believe life is good, and refocus my attention on the good, does that activity actually shape reality, so that life reflects and bends to that Goodness? I raise the question this new year, 2024, in the form of our 'If Only' responses to life events-- our options of conflict and dissatisfaction, or accepting life as it is, or re-shaping life...

The real value of' 'If Only' is found in the shift to 'What If'? But the paradox is that if we are always asking "What If?, we miss the deep contentment of what IS. With 'What If' though, we take our block, our discontent and turn it to possibilities. I say possibilities, plural, because part of the problem with 'If Only', is that we often mean 'only if'. In other words, we get stuck on one solution to our discontent. Yet, discontent drives us to creativity and change. Creativity that takes us beyond discontent has more that one possibility; its movement is multi-directional. There's a simple technique you can try: sit down and generate 10 possible 'What If's', instead of the one 'If Only'! Chances are they will range from re-do's of the past, to current practicality that may seem unlikely, to a few wild cards, seemingly fantasy. You can leave one as the possibility you don't yet see, but assume is there. This list makes room, openings for movement. When your head or feelings echo 'If Only'...pull out the 'What If' list. Besides stimulating creativity and opening alternatives, there is research to suggest unwanted thoughts, in this case thoughts of a painful 'if only', are triggered by the brain's association with common words that can spark an endless loop of negative thoughts. As a personal experiment, you have your positive possibility list to cultivate as a 'What If' to divert the 'If Only' thinking.

Not all creativity arises from discontent. A contented mind, theoretically is Taoist: life is movement itself, nothing remains static no matter how it feels; the Taoist mind moves with Life in contentment. Is that always possible? Perhaps we learn to be Content with our discontent and in that sense, move forward. St. Paul wrote, "I have learned whatsoever state I am in, there in to be content." This may well include the state of discontent. Otto Rank wrote that love of life was the essential thing for creativity, the love that pushes the desire to enhance life. Can you see your discontent in the context of a love of life and the push to enhance? Or as modern science offers, the potential to understand, to solve, and improve? This is God--the act of a creative intelligence, acting on and through human intelligence, life acting on life. joyously bringing the new into form--the Good, the Beautiful, the True. Yes, the Goodness of Life seizes my awareness, pressing on me possibilities, and I consciously choose to accept life as good, by attending to the good, to positive possibilities and activity--mental, emotional, physical--activity shapes reality. Life extends, enhances, reflects and bends to its own Goodness as you and I. And so it is. (Susan Nettleton)

Poetry from this morning: https://www.poemist.com/ray.../if-only-we-had-taller-been

https://onbeing.org/poetry/go-to-the-limits-of-your-longing/

https://poets.org/poem/elegy-joy-excerpt

January 19, 2024

Hillside will hold a Zoom Service, Sunday, January 21, 2024

with Dr. Susan Nettleton

Topic: If Only..

Date: January 21, 2024

Time: 11:00 AM Mountain Time, 10:00 AM Pacific Time

If you are not on our email list for Zoom service and would like to attend, please email us at Hillsideew@aol.com or through the contact page on our website: Hillsidesource.com or message us on Facebook with your email address.

January 14, 2024

Today I want to share with you a very short affirmation that I learned from a prayer by Rev. Dr. Johnny Coleman (1920-2014). She was a powerful New Thought Minister who founded a mega church in Chicago, Christ Universal Temple, as well as the Universal Foundation for Better Living. I heard her speak several times, including her personal story of healing from an incurable illness that spiraled into a crisis of faith, led her to the teachings of Unity, and her own calling to ministry. She spoke boldly of the racism that she encountered in her early studies of New Thought, but that pushed her to find her truth and gave her the freedom to create a phenomenal environment of faith and confidence, granting her not only healing, but the title of "the First Lady of New Thought". The affirmation? "I am sheltered from that which is false."

Over the last few years, there has been amble social research on escalating confusion in America about what is true and what is false, and what is simply unknown. This confusion, sometimes referred to as 'erosion of truth', began prior to the Pandemic, but obviously escalated in a time of uncertainty and isolation. Yet disinformation and outright lies continue to promote division, feed hate, and obscure reason. With this in the background, our focus today is our individual spiritual practice, our personal path and understanding which defines our relationship to God, as we navigate January, 2024. I add to that my belief that God includes all creation (including all people). Affirming, praying for shelter from the false, is one way to find peace without feeding further conflict and ill-will.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. Within the national recognition of his struggles, his achievements and sacrifice--his truth--is another powerful opportunity to deepen your spirituality in 2024. Over the last few years, as I contemplated the divisions and struggles, the world's current military wars and our violent cultural wars, I have thought, "Where is our Gandhi, where is our Martin Luther King?" These were human beings who had their own personal struggles, but over time they grew to manifest deep spiritual understanding. They accepted their role, leading a painful, resolute--yet loving--path to social change, with two over-seeing commitments: non-violence and love. If you have yet to read Martin Luther King, Jr., his life story and writings are another powerful way to begin 2024. (Susan Nettleton)

"Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

And from his speech, "Where Do We Go From Here?" (1967)

"And so I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence...Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that...I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems...He who hates does not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality."

For poetry: https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/.../LightofYour/index.html

https://sufism.org/origins/rumi/jewels/rumi-a-prayer-2 https://www.saltproject.org/.../martin-luther-king-jr-by...

January 11, 2024

Announcement to all!

Hillside will hold a Zoom Service, Sunday, January 21, 2024 with Dr. Susan Nettleton

Topic: "If Only..."

Date: January 21, 2024

Time: 11:00 AM Mountain Time, 10:00 AM Pacific Time

If you are not on our email list for Zoom service and would like to attend, please email us at Hillsideew@aol.com or through the contact page on our website: Hillsidesource.com or message us on Facebook with your email address.

January 7, 2024

"The world is a spinning die, and everything turns and changes: man is turned into angel and angel into man, and the head into the foot and the foot into the head. Thus all things turn and spin and change, this into that,, and that into this, the topmost to the undermost, and the undermost to the topmost. For at the root all is one, and salvation inheres in the change and return of things."...Martin Buber.*

Today, one week into 2024, rather than considering specific goals and New Year resolutions, I am reflecting on a more general sense of direction in the New Year. With the stunning quote above, Martin Buber integrates insight from his study of ancient Taoism with his reflections on the mystic teachings of Hasidic Judaism (18th century to present): The world is a dynamo sustained by alteration.

Buber extends this idea to a spiritual process, quoting the Bible (Genesis 12-1): "Now God said to Abraham, 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee.'" Buber interprets God's command "get you out of your country" as metaphor, actually meaning the "dimness you have inflicted on yourself" and similarly, the layers of birthplace, home and kin refer to the "dimness inflicted" on us by family, by mother and father--those who shaped us from birth. He concludes the spiritual message is, "Only then (when we have left that dimness behind) will you be able to go to the land that I will show you."

Metaphysically, this is a reference to spiritual consciousness; we grow out of our "dimness" with the light of new understanding, through a willingness to move beyond what we have known and experienced, to a deeper understanding. Here leaving home, moving, changing, is not about a 'Promised Land', or a physical place. It is a movement in consciousness. It is both individual and collective. Each generation moves our world through change led by collective consciousness. We as individuals, move through our lives in stages of change that reflect both our natural physical processes over time, and our shifts in consciousness. Those shifts in consciousness may be collective (arising from and sustained by our generation) and/or they may be singular, arising from our individual nature, yet contributing to the whole blossoming of life.

In any given time period, change is inevitable. But, change includes modulating forces, moving in a variety of directions, along with the "drag" forces that pull backward, not forward (forces of return) or seemingly frozen. Yet, there is a wholeness, as the world continues to unfold. One glimpse of our personal spiritual participation in this dynamo, can nourish and direct us throughout this year. Sometimes we see it clearly, directly; sometimes subtly, and at other times, it is imperceptible. In what direction is the movement of life pulling you? What alterations call? Are you summoned to the front lines of change, or are you a hidden gem that heals and supports? The possibilities are endless; even now, your way is moving. (Susan Nettleton)

*quotes are from Buber's book Ten Rungs: Hasidic Sayings, "The Rung of the Way", pg. 69-70.

For poetry: https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/.../ANewWorld/index.html

https://www.poetseers.org/.../chuang-tzu-poems/create/

https://www.habitsforwellbeing.com/.../I-will-not-die-an...