The Sacred Act of Social Engagement

Social Engagement from our spiritual values and principles allows us to engage with the world around us without attachment to form, resistance to different ideas, or the need to fix other people. Actually, we apply all the same tools in this sacred work that we do in the healing of our own consciousness and the manifestation of our own good. Now we simply recognize that as we turn our attention to what Ernest Holmes calls the “consciousness of the human race” we speak, act, and move toward the out-picturing of Spiritual Truths rather than fear, false beliefs, limitation, or discord.

Sacred Service is the cornerstone of Social Engagement In Action. Sacred Service is one of the 5 primary spiritual practices we seek to embody here at CSLDallas. Sacred Service is a spiritual practice that helps us move beyond the confines of our own life and allows us to be about something bigger than just our own happiness. The only clear injunction against anything in the Science of Mind is to “harm no one” but we also learn that we can’t want love, peace, joy, and abundance for ourselves without actually realizing that this is the birthright of every person. While we learn that our good doesn’t take away from anyone else, we also learn that focusing only on our own good isn’t enough. Holmes states, “The Divine Plan is one of Freedom. The inherent nature of man is ever seeking to express itself in terms of freedom, because freedom is the birthright of every living soul.” We actually need to want the same freedoms that we want for ourselves for everyone, for us to truly embody the unlimited nature of these Divine qualities.

Sacred Service is a “relational” practice because it moves us into right relationship with our work, people around us, the environment, and all beings everywhere. As a practice, it aligns us with how we want to show up in the world from the essence of who we are. Sacred Service reminds us that not only are we, individually, each an incarnation of Divine Love and Light, so is everyone else. Being in Sacred Service makes our service to others a sacred gift to the Divine in them from the Divine in us.

Social Engagement from this perspective becomes a sacred act. It is the realization that if we want this good for everyone, we must act for that good. Ernest Holmes reminds us, “Spirit can do for us only what It can do through us. Unless we are able to provide the consciousness, It cannot make the gift. The Power behind all things is without limit, but in working for us It must work through us.” Sacred Service helps us embody the consciousness of a world that works for everyone. We must embody our vision and ideals, be the love and light in the world, and then allow this impulsion to move us into action – this way love moves through us into the world.

Holmes reminds us, “It is quite a burden lifted when we realize that we do not have to move the world – it is going to move anyway. This realization does not lessen our duty or our social obligation. It clarifies it. It enables us to do joyously, and free from morbidity, that which we should do in the social state.”

Dr Petra

Book of the Month

The Conscious Activist

An extraordinary and rousing manifesto from award-winning author James O’Dea, The Conscious Activist is both a compelling narrative and a deep reflection on the demands of mystical realization and effective activism. Throughout the book, O’Dea poses that an integration of the two has the power to permanently transform the social order and to wake up humanity from its course of rapid self-destruction. Divided into two parts, Part I offers parallel narratives of author James O’Dea’s training and spiritual development as both a mystic and an activist. The mystic, he explains, must move past petty ego concerns in order to experience oneness with each other and our divine source. The activist, on the other hand, explores the role of passion and conscience in activating social change. In Part II, O’Dea pursues this fascinating concept of a meeting ground between the two worlds, where spirituality and action unite to spark an accelerated transition towards our greater goal: a more evolved civilization. He asks us all to become conscious activists – to learn, collectively, how to move beyond our rigid conformity to beliefs of the past and its archaic structures of power and control.