Upcoming Events!
"SUNDAY MORNING MEDITATION"
Sunday, 8:00 a.m.
Sunday, 8:00 a.m. - Children
(ages 6-14)
"EARLY MORNING MEDITATION"
Monday thru Friday, 5:30 a.m.
St. Francis Cabin
"INFINITE WAY CLASS"
Monday, 8:30 a.m.
"CHANT & MEDITATION"
Monday, 6:45 p.m.
"BAND PRACTICE"
Wednesday, 5:30 p.m.
"THURSDAY NIGHT GROUP"
Thursday, 6:30 p.m.
Please Note Additional COF Happenings:
"CHANT & MEDITATION"
JULY 14 CANCELLED
“a CENTER OF FREEDOM”
VACATION
*August 19 – September 6
“SEVA DAY”
*Saturday, August 23
“10 YEAR
RE-DEDICATION SUNDAY"
Sunday, September 7 – 9:00 a.m.
“COF FALL RETREAT"
Friday-Sunday – October 24, 25, 26
“COF WINTER RETREAT"
Angel’s Camp
Friday - Sunday
March 6-8, 2009
Inspirations / Impartations
Be inspired by The Word that imparts ItSelf from within...
LOVE IS THE ANSWER
Abide in The Word and let the Word abide in you.
WHO AM I?
I am Impeccable with My Word
Thy Will
The Eternal Now
SIT DOWN!
The Season of The Heart
LOVE IS
THE ANSWER!!
If this Truth Is actually True, WHAT IS THE LOVE that answers any problem… that Is The Solution to every circumstance, The Healer of all dis-ease and conflict?
WHAT IS LOVE? Well, there have been many great Beings that have exhibited and taught the Lesson of Love by their thoughts, words and actions…their SILENCE. This Love that Is The Answer, The Way and The Absolute Truth Is our very own Nature. This Love Is A Presence...A Perfection…A Light…A Purity…A Life Force that Knows The Way and Is The Way…It Is always A Presence of comfort, understanding, service, generosity, forgiveness, compassion, availability…"selflessness"…A Presence that knows that Its Strength and Perseverance dissolves any and everything not of ItSelf…
This Love that Is The Answer pours ItSelf forth without any calculation or manipulation of the externals…IT LIVES TO GIVE of ItSelf as a river that simply flows to Its Source. This Love Is like That! This Love Is A Nowness. There is no similarity between yesterday and tomorrow with This Love. It can never be captured or entombed…It Is a Freedom…A Kingdom or Reality that cannot be compared to anything based on human reasoning. It Is a Breadth of The Divine ItSelf that wherever It Is acknowledged It becomes evident and tangible. Wherever It Is received It leaves Its MARK of PERFECTION!
Love Is The Answer to all of our relationships for This Love works at Its Highest when allowed to enter into the hearts of those who have been brought together to receive and give of It. This Great Love does Its most beautiful work in those who know that unity not diversity is Its Presence for It shows the "likenesses rather than the differences".
Love Is Our Very Own Self expressing, pouring, sharing. It is in and through the Activity of Giving forth that It discovers that It IS and always has been……GOD!
Abide in The Word and let the Word abide in you.
Most of us recognize the above from the messages of Jesus The Christ...We give this to all of us today as a Truth-Reminder that The Word of God is continually uttering Its Voice in the depths of our consciousness. If we will take the time to pause often during the given hours of the day to LISTEN for these Inspirations and Impartations, we will find our lives truly being governed and prompted by a Higher Power...A Presence that Is All-Loving, Ever-Strengthening...Abundant and Limitless in all ways.
This Truth-Reminder will be an on-going sharing here at a Center of Freedom.
This is one of many and you will find them in the Center bookstore.
As we gather together in The Silence of our Being may we always know that "MY LIGHT NEVER DIMS"...no matter the appearances that may confront us on any given day...personally or globally...we can hold to The Truth that GOD IS LOVE and that The Power of Love is our True Freedom.
May The Peace of God abound in us all now and forevermore...
WHO AM I?
Have you spent anytime with the above question? Have you ever truly or deeply wondered about aspects of yourself that are beyond thoughts, feelings and flesh? If you haven't NOW would be a very good time to take in the question seriously? "But, why should I do that?" you might ask. Well, the Greatest, most Noblest of Teachers (then and now) are constantly encouraging us to go to The Within and contemplate the "I". They tell us that until we are able to receive an experience or true answer to the above question we cannot live True or to Be True to Our Self.
And, without BEing True to Our Self we canNOT know the True Joy of Living or come close to really BEing FREE. Life is a constant unfolding from one stage of development or consciousness to the next. As we grow or drop the skin of one era we find that a whole new level of vista or experience enters into our lives.
The main thing about all of this is:
until we begin to "sense" a Greater Aspect of our True Nature we cannot fulfill ourselves. Most humans are so conditioned and "run" by their belief systems that they "see through a glass darkly" and suffer and suffer due to faulty vision. As we begin to awaken to our True Nature which is Divine, we realize that LIFE is standing on a few RULES or LAWS that do NOT change. As we begin to receive these "rules of the road" our journey begins to lighten up and we become "straightened out and flyin' right."
We must realize our belief systems are built on sand and not on rock. They are an accumulation of "lies" that have been in the collective unconscious of the planet and have been passed down from generation to generation. If we truly want to experience The Truth and BE FREE we MUST become open and receptive to the "game rules" and start today to PRACTICE the Real Solutions to all of the questions and discover that this ride we are on is a wonder...an adventure. There are 4 Agreements to this "gig". Live them and Life will be a Great Ride!
I am Impeccable with My Word
As a Spiritual Center that is dedicated to Truth we are recognizing more fully The Power of The Word... The Word that Is being entertained in our own consciousness and, especially, that which is released through our speech... THE SPOKEN WORD!!
Jesus made a remarkable statement one day in regards to the negative things that beset a man. He said: "It is not so much what a man puts in his mouth that deviles him, but rather what is coming out of his mouth is of great import." In other words, He was clarifying for the crowds the Life Principle that whatever a man places his faith in and then declares it aloud, IT WILL COME INTO FORM... it will be his experience..."As a man thinketh in his heart, so it is." This is not a new message for any of us. And, yet, do we take this seriously? Do we actually believe that This Law Is Law? Well, how do all scientists come to Truth in their experiments? Don't they "put IT to the test"? We, too, must put these principles to the test. Don't take my word or anybody else's for what is True or false... find out for yourself what is real/unreal.
Do you remember the program called TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES? I loved that show when I was growing up. There was only one that was telling the Truth and the others were lieing but very good at pretending to be real. Through a series of questions and answers each person on the panel would decide who was speaking the Truth...
So, that's the same for us. What Is The Truth? is the constant query of spiritual seekers. Any true spiritual teacher will simply instruct us to turn within and find out for ourselves. They will give us a clue as to how to find THE TRUTH, but they cannot do it for us. We must seek by "diving deeper" all the time that we might uncover the "seeming" secrets of successful living... Through THE WORD we bring forth the TRUTH that we have uncovered and discover that Life Is Good... GOD!
Thy Will
THY WILL!
How often have we heard or uttered the above.....
THY WILL......
O God, I want only Thy Will, not mine, to be done!! Do we actually know what it is that we are asking for? Do we have any idea as to what His Will might be in this moment?
What a powerful meditation it is...
THY WILL...
We all remember hearing and reading the story when Jesus was apparently alone at His darkest moment in the Garden. He knew the outcome of the remainder of his human time on earth and, it is said, that in his humanhood, for a second, the ego was trying to make deals with The Divine.
"O Lord, let this cup be taken from me!!" How often we have said that in some form or other. Lord, I want Thy Will, BUT........ BUT.....
That proverbial BUT is the moment of standing alone in the human HOPING that the human's will might be the Will of The One..... BUT, we know that is not how our story goes....or the story of Jesus. Rather, in his case He YIELDED in great humility knowing that only in trusting in The One would The Highest BE Done for all. So, what about us? Where are we standing today in regards to this question of: Do we know what it is we are asking for when we declare that it is His Will that we are desiring? Is His Will our will?
We are coming to realize as we continue to study, meditate and contemplate these Truths that The Will of The One is never something human...... it is always Divine. And, it simply IS the Law and the Principle of Love under which the universe exists.
Emmet Fox puts it so easily and gently for us to take in. He, as the mystic that he was, declares simply that:
The Will of God is Perfect Harmony. And, that the way for us to measure if we are living according to His Will is to see if Perfect Harmony is the outcome or fruit of our thinking...our living.
Jesus gave an excellent baramoter for knowing the seed that was underlying this fruit... He simply said to look at the fruit and you will see the seed that it originates from. Likewise, we can know if we are "IN HIS WILL" by the observation as to whether or not PERFECT HARMONY is the reality of our lives...... Is our life flourishing with this harmony and love, peace, joy and abundance, goodness and wholeness, sharing and caring? Yes? No?
The Eternal Now
What a contemplation the above is: Eternally Now!
Happy Eternal NOW!!
Since we all have agreed that a New Year is upon us I felt I was to remind us that a new year is not as it sounds. In fact, it doesn't really exisT at all. But, humans constantly need help in discovering what IS really happening so we agree that something NEW would be better than what we are experiencing RIGHT NOW. The "ending" of each year climaxes with the celebration of the Christ Presence that has come once again. It has come to remind us what Life is really all about. And, since we have received His Message we then can leap once again into a Life that has been transformed by the Love of God having broken through and into our hearts so that The NEW, The Positive, Hope, Vision, Grace, Life Abundant...GROWTH may express evermore fully and freely. When we think about it we recognize that Life is full of seasons. And "season" means change,the leaving of the old which opens the way to expansion ...the Ever-New breaking through revealing more of Life in better and higher ways. Life is an amazing opportunity to understand the seasons of the Soul that is Indwelling each and every particle of life. It thrives where change is allowed without resistance for its whole purpose is to express the unlimitedness of its own true nature which is PERFECTION.
We are simply The Presence of Perfection awaiting the moment to finally unfold and reveal The Magnificence of Its Self... tangibly and visibly.
All right...so what is the Eternal Now about in regards to this? As we live fully IN THE NOW we become an open portal or doorway for this expansion that is seeking to come into form. In other words, we create the space for the seasons of The Soul to unfold perfectly... to thrive and bring forth what is eternally ordained to be brought into expression...he Goodness that Is God ItSelf.
We are partners in this Living Process of Revelation...revealing The Divine Nature of all beings by living open, receptive, flexible, surrendered, faithfilled... choosing to LOVE by pouring this Light of Love into every NOW.
The Eternal Now.
SIT DOWN!
"Sit Down and get the feeling of The Presence of God, and watch how It goes before you to make the crooked places straight."
What a wonderful reminder for all of us....to stop and sit down and inhale the very moment that we find ourselves in.... to sit back and lean deep within to a Presence that is truly closer than our very own breath...
This journey that we are all on has some very definite principles that when followed the results are nothing but absolute success. The principle of pausing often during the day to experience or "feel" Something other than our senses and our reasoning or thinking mind is paramount to entering into the Kingdom of God or what is referred to as Peace and Light.
The lives that we call our own are really The One Life that is moving in and through all of creation. ThiLife is a constant reality. It is an invisible Something that is impersonal and a perfection that flows into visibility wherever there is an opening. As we become still often during the day and SIT DOWN, so to speak, and REST from the human view and activity of mind we soon discover this Life that we have been owning as our own, to do with what we so please, is actually the Presence of The One we call God and many other names. When we SIT DOWN to listen for Its Presence It touches us in ways that transform our moment and our mind and body so that we are experiencing being an instrument for this Life. We find ourselves as a beholder of an Intelligence and a Love that we could never truly experience on our own while living through the finite human means. Today let us attempt one more time to SIT DOWN and listen for "the feel" of The One That IS....
The Season of The Heart
Here we find ourselves once again at a time of year where the leaves on the trees have just about completed their annual dying off process. Simultaneously, they are preparing for a New Birth just around the corner.
Isn't this a rather amazing happening that is going on throughout the planet...perhaps the entire Universe? We are a magnificent BEing of zillions of different expressions of beauty, goodness, and uniqueness beyond our human imaginings. And, we are all responding to the same rhythm...the rhythm of breath, the rhythm of growth, "The rhythm of the Heart".
Naturally, we're not speaking of the physical heart. We are referring to a pulsing, a vibrating, a Living Energy that is "calling the shots" in this universe in spite of how we see or perceive things to be.
There IS a Something in the Heart of Life which means in the heart of mankind that is driving this planet in a particular direction. Throughout the world there is this movement going on that ultimately leads to celebration...to a recognition of Something Great that has revealed and is continually revealing ItSelf through the HEART of man. We, as humans, often call This, Love or God.
It was through the Heart of Christ Jesus and some others that the world began to wake up out of its slumber to The Fact that Life Is of The Spirit and Eternal...that Life is a Wonder, a Gift that is meant to be received and then shared with Life ItSelf.
The "birth of Jesus" was the Principle of Life giving birth, magnified through the tender body of a baby. The story of Jesus is the perfect example of how the Heart of Life expresses....how It comes forth to grow, unfold and expand...to give forth, mature to perfection and then seemingly shed or sacrifice the outer form in order to be born again into higher and higher states of Eternal Perfection. We are celebrating just that Principle right now during this time of year. We sing songs and light candles. We give gifts and share the Heart of Love with so many because we are being stimulated by the Great Heart of Life ItSelf that knows only to share the Highest and Best of ItSelf.
Christmas can be an extraordinary time during the year when we focus on what is actually going on...paying attention to the beautiful Spirit of Life whereby we are more interested in what we can give or pour into Life then what we think we need to receive.
Everything in this life is a symbol of something far greater than the obvious. Just the term Christmas might have a higher meaning....Christ in our midst or Christ in the masses simply tells us that in the midst of Life...in us...is a baby seed of Greatness ready to be birthed & placed in the cradel of our Heart. The baby is truly God-arriving crying out to be recognized, to be given away, to be expressed. As it comes forth, we discover the Comforter, the Mighty Presence, the Beauty and Love of Life within all beings arriving to be presented as... God I AM.


