Celebrating 25 Years of Ministry:

Living as a Peace Center

In October, Rev. Dr. Kenn Gordon celebrates 25 years as a Religious Science minister. Gordon, CSL’s spiritual leader, reflects on his journey in the October 2018 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine.

He discovered Religious Science in 1986 while working as a farmer in California. From there, he started a spiritual community in Canada, in his hometown, in 1993. And that led him to where he is today, spending half of each year traveling the globe, sharing his vision of a world that works for everyone.

“When I do my spiritual practice,” Gordon says, “I remind myself of one of my core beliefs. I look at the stars, the galaxy and the universe, and it’s infinite — inside me as well as outside. All limitation is really created by an inability to be able to see beyond what’s in front of you.”

He believes what’s next for the consciousness movement “is the zeitgeist shift from the standard ‘There’s a power in the Universe greater than I am, and I can use it,’ to ‘I can use it, and it can use me,’” he says.

With two years left to serve as CSL spiritual leader, Gordon says his vision is to create a collective movement 101 million strong — sufficient to change the consciousness of the planet.

“Politicians won’t change this world,” he says. “They have constituents, and they have an agenda. NGOs and focused care groups are blessed, but their job is specialized. The only way to transform the world is through people of faith, and we have to start working together in order to get it changed.”

— For more about Gordon’s journey over the past 25 years and his vision for the future, see the cover story in the October 2018 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine.

A Road Map to Consciousness

In the October 2018 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine, author Dennis Merritt Jones shares 10 rules — or practices — that provide what he calls a “sequential road map to navigate the territory of your current consciousness with an intention to understand, challenge and change whatever beliefs currently stand between you and God’s bounty.”

Those rules are:

1. Be one with life.
2. Be aware you live in an expanding universe.
3. Be accountable for your consciousness.
4. Be focused.
5. Be in the flow.
6. Be passionate.
7. Be blessed.
8. Be of service.
9. Be courageous.
10. Be a catalyst for good.

 “When practiced in your daily life,” Jones writes, “These 10 rules will help you realize, as Holmes infers, there is more than enough to go around.”

Examining Religion in America:

What Unites, What Divides

While common sense dictates that people worship differently based on their faith groups or traditions, a report released in August from Pew Research Center groups people by their beliefs on a spectrum of topics rather than on their religious affiliations. The upshot of the report is a fresh take on what religious Americans have in common.

The report classifies Americans into seven categories: Sunday Stalwarts, God-and-Country Believers, Solidly Secular, Diversely Devout, Relaxed Religious, Spiritually Awake, Religion Resisters and Solidly Secular. Obviously, the classifications range from the the most to the least religious.

The report says that nine in 10 Americans fall into the highly religious or somewhat religious groups. In looking for similarities and differences, the survey asked respondents if a person can be moral without believing in God. This was a question that showed stark differences between the highly religious and the nonreligious groups.

Interestingly, the survey found that New Age beliefs are common, even among those who are highly religious in traditional faiths. A third of those categorized as Sunday Stalwarts also believe in psychics. They also believe spiritual energy can be located in physical objects like mountains, trees and crystals. A smaller number believe in reincarnation and astrology.

Nearly all of those classified as Spiritually Awake and Religion Resisters believe physical objects hold spiritual energy.

Rather than using the information to further divide us by our differences, this report can be a starting point for finding common ground in uncommon ways. View the entire report at http://www.pewforum.org/2018/08/29/the-religious-typology/.

How to Talk to God: A Meditation

— Dr. Ernest Holmes

…[T]here is a key to right living, a golden key to happiness, and understanding that key is prayer. Prayer is our direct line of communion with God. Through prayer we clear our minds of doubt and fear.

So let us join in our prayer for today: “God’s ever-present supply is flowing through me and around me.”

Let us join in affirming God’s bounty, here and now. Let us shut out everything, all distractions of the moment and listen confidently, peacefully, quietly. …

Say to yourself quietly, simply and with complete confidence: “I know that God, the living and Divine Spirit, is right where I am. I know that there is a loving presence around me.

“I know that I live and move and have my being in the Spirit of life. It is my desire that only that which is good, peaceful, loving and life-giving shall flow through me.

“Therefore I bless everything I do, everyone I meet, every situation in which I find myself, and I know that God blesses everything I do and everyone I meet and every situation I find myself in. I believe that all my needs are met by Divine Love and that I am guided by Divine Intelligence to know and to do whatever is good.”

—Excerpted from “This Thing Called Life” radio program, Sunday, October 9, 1949. The full article is available at SoMArchives.org.