More than just a catch phrase and beyond the theme of the August issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine, “a world that works for everyone” harkens back to 2001, when United Church of Religious Science first embraced the concept and phrase. As Rev. Dr. John Waterhouse explains in the magazine, “The idea resonated so strongly within the Science of Mind movement that is became the vision statement for Centers for Spiritual Living a decade later.”

Dr. Waterhouse explores three visionaries from whom we can each learn about how to create such a world:

• Dean Kamen, a prolific inventor who is revolutionizing accessibility to clean water with his Slingshot water purification system.
• Peter Diamandis, founder of XPRIZE Foundation, which sponsors competitions aimed at bringing emerging and exponential technologies into systems that transport human skills and expertise to the parts of the world where they are most needed.
• Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a nonprofit educational organization that provides free, online, high-quality education to anyone, anywhere.

Dr. Waterhouse acknowledges that these are but three of the myriad people worldwide working on the most pressing needs of humanity. But he believes we can learn from these visionaries. “As we move from 3 billion to 5 billion internet users over the next few years,” he says, “we are on the verge of manifesting a paradigm shift of global proportion. Introducing these billions of new minds and vast new resources into a unified global network changes everything.”

On the dawn of this revolutionary change, Dr. Waterhouse points out that “our role as students of Science of Mind is to stay vigilant in knowing that we live in a world that is working better and better every day.” As we accept these challenges and bring solutions to bear, he says, “We will also be in a place where we can collectively embrace higher levels of connection, self-esteem and self-actualization by taking responsibility for our own lives through the power of Mind.”

— The August 2018 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine explores creating a world that works for everyone, including Dr. Waterhouse’s examination of how we make our goal a reality.

Practice Radical Self-Responsibility

“If we want to create a better world, we need to always show up with the greatest wisdom, integrity, care and authenticity we can muster. The New World will be created by billions of small acts of courage.”

With that those words, Craig Hamilton introduced his Integral Enlightenment course. Hamilton is the founder of Integral Enlightenment and its teaching arm, the Academy for Evolutionaries. The Academy’s two main programs are a 12-week online meditation course, “The Practice of Direct Awakening,” and its nine-week counterpart, “Integral Enlightenment: Awakening to an Evolutionary Relationship to Life.”

 “What I mean by ‘integral enlightenment’ or an ‘evolutionary relationship to life’ is grounded in the discovery that this life is not our own to do with as we please,” he explains. “We are called to live a life that is fundamentally about aligning with, surrendering to, coming into full partnership with and, ultimately, becoming identical with this sacred impulse of evolution that is on a mission to go somewhere.”

His evolutionary practices include health risk-taking for a greater good, deeper listening and consistently identifying our own growth edges and then moving through and beyond them. The practices also involve radical self-responsibility — that is, not being a victim, always taking responsibility for evolving every situation and choosing to align with the fundamental yes at the heart of the cosmos.

 “Part of what I would hope to inspire others with is a more free-flowing, experimental relationship to their own spiritual path and practice,” Hamilton says. “You want to have reverence for the wisdom of the spiritual traditions, and you also want to be evolutionary practitioners, which means you’ve got to be playful and exploring.

 “We’re all part of this evolutionary dance together.”

— More information about Hamilton’s work appears in an article written by Barbara Doren Drew and Walter Drew in the August 2018 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine. Or visit www.IntegralEnlightenment.com.

World Peace Is Not an Illusion

— Dr. Ernest Holmes

So we want peace on Earth? Then let us pray for peace in our own hearts, let us affirm peace in our own minds. Let us live as though peace were the mandate of God because it is. Together let us affirm it and let us encourage others to, no matter what the opposition appears to be, for it is a fundamental reality of God. “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”

Let us face the future without fear but let us all also face it intelligently as men and women who are not afraid of anything. There is nothing in the universe to be afraid of. Some things could be avoided. Let us realize if the world is healed of war and brought into peace it won’t have been because guns were bigger and better or more of them. We need them until it does heal itself, but that will come to pass only because somewhere along the line the balance of the scales of eternal truth shall fall on the side of peace.

Let us, you and me, pray for peace and let us make our hearts fit to accept it when it comes. Let us make our intellect and our soul and our will and our feeling ready to receive it and embrace it even before it comes. Let us in the stillness of our own soul go back to that ineffable Presence which is Peace and proclaim It even in the midst of confusion, that Peace which is the Power at the heart of God. And so it is. Amen.

— Excerpted from one of Dr. Ernest Holmes’ unpublished works, “World Peace Is Not an Illusion,” from July 1955. This was found recently in the Science of Mind Archives and Library Foundation and published at www.ScienceofMind.com.

Anchored by the Gift of Love

— Dr. Ernest Holmes

One of the greatest needs of the human being is to be loved. We would not have this need if love were not the greatest thing in the world. Without love we cannot live. But mostly we pick out only a few people upon whom to lavish our love. If we loved everybody more, should we love a few less? It is something we have to learn. …

We should, then, take such love as we have in our hearts today and freely give it to everyone we meet. If it seems rejected by some, we should not be hurt, driven back into our prison, but remain liberated. If we do this, we shall find a reaction in our physical bodies nothing less than miraculous, for love can restore circulation, heal the heart as well as the mind, and give speed to hands and feet as well as to thought.

Love will find the solution to every problem, will answer every question. It is the lodestone of life, the center of reality, the heart of the universe, and it will ultimately win and vanquish every foe.

Love begets tolerance, and tolerance begets understanding, which is being able to put oneself in the other person’s place and see why he acts as he acts, why he does what he does. Thus love can create a better world in which to live. It is the one Power which can and must bring peace to a changing world.

— Excerpted from “Creative Living,” a compilation of 20 Holmes essays.