CSLDallas responds to the Violence to Disrupt the Democratic Process in our Nation’s Capital and around the Country
January 7, 2021
By Rev Dr Petra Weldes, Co-Spiritual Director
We are outraged and heartbroken by the deaths and watching Trump and Nazi flags enter the Capitol Building yesterday in an attempt to intimidate and silence the representatives of the people. We are especially outraged that this treasonous insurrection was instigated and fueled by a lame-duck President and supported by political and religious leaders and ordinary people who turned a blind-eye to the growing implications of increasingly divisive, hate-filled, and ego-centric rhetoric. This has, once again, played out on the national stage and revealed a festering bigotry and fear in the psyche of our nation.
CSLDallas and Science of Mind stand for a philosophy, spirituality, and way of life grounded in the principles of Love and Law. Love, which recognizes our Oneness and celebrates our diversity. Law, which is the power of Creation that is forever at work, manifesting inner consciousness in outer form. This is true whether we are talking about an individual life, or the life of a nation. Therefore, we recognize that our spiritual and social lives rest on taking personal responsibility for the effects of our beliefs, and the way those beliefs become words and actions.
We begin with a Cosmic and Universal NO! We refute, repudiate, and in every way deny that there is any spiritual validity to any belief, consciousness, ideology or person who sows hatred, believes power and money are our primary values, and who operates counter to our highest ideals and aspirations by inflaming division and sanctioning force, seeking to overthrow the will and consciousness of the soul of our nation. Today we do not succumb to fear, anger, hatred or violence yet we are willing to call out and say NO to that which is not in alignment with any spirituality or world faith, nor the vision of our democracy.
Evolution is the process, the way, the time, and the experience that transpires as Thought – or Intelligence, or Idea, or Contemplation – passes from abstract Being into concrete expression. Consequently, evolution is an effect of intelligence and not the cause of it! – Ernest Holmes
Today we stand with and for those who take responsibility to create a democracy and a nation that continually aspires to live our highest ideals. Recognizing that we have fallen short in so many ways and for so many people, we continue to celebrate every advance that takes us closer to truly living these ideals. We see in the march of time that we have expanded and grown our attempt to live the highest aspirations of our nation. Our nation’s soul has expanded and grown beyond a fear-based, narrowly defined identity which seeks power, money and prestige over creating a civil society in which fulfilled individual lives meaningfully contribute and thrive. This has been palpably demonstrated this past year in comparing the hundreds of thousands who marched all summer all over the country, and the world, for the lives and equity for our black brothers and sisters compared to the paltry tens of hundreds who have marched for personal power, fear, hatred and white supremacy, under Trump and Nazi flags.
The Infinite Mind, then imparts Itself to the finite, through the act of incarnation. The progress of the human race is a result of that process whereby Intelligence passes, by successive degrees of incarnation, through evolution, into the human mind…Evolution is the awakening of the soul to a recognition of its unity with the Whole….The aim of evolution is to produce a [people], who as the point of [their] objective thought may completely manifest the whole idea of life, may bring Unity to the point of particularization, finding nothing in the Law to oppose It. – Ernest Holmes
Today we resolve to use the powerful rhetoric of spirituality, inclusion, progressive economics, justice, equity, and environmental sustainability to show our passionate Love and our use of the Law to further our nation from our deepest spiritual understanding. Today we unabashedly use our spiritual power to lift consciousness to a higher vibration and a deeper resonance with Love, Power, Peace, and Abundance for all. Today we work to hold accountable those who have used position and power to inflame, divide, and sought to undermine our democracy and the moral compass of a spiritually informed and inclusive, civil society.
Today we see that the vestiges of a frightened worldview have, once again, been exposed. This is not the soul of our spirituality nor the soul of our nation. We stand with and for those who, while passionately disagreeing on form and function, come together to seek the middle way, the third way, which respects differences and seeks a way through that honors all our needs while serving the highest of our aspirations and ideals. We may never fully live up to them, just as we may not yet walk on water, but this does not mean we should not keep working together towards those high ideals.
It is vision that pulls when we no longer need to be pushed by pain. Let this be the LAST time our nation is pushed by the pain of racism, fear mongering, hunger for power, and the blindness of economic greed. Let the vision of our faith, our spirituality, and our nation pull us forward, together.
Evolution is a principle, which, though invisible, finds manifestation in every form of life. It is the logical and necessary outcome of Universal Intelligence or Spirit. But evolution is an effect of intelligence and not its cause; it follows involution. Involution is the idea while evolution is the unfoldment of the idea. Involution precedes evolution with mechanical precision propelled by an immutable law — the Law of Cause and Effect. – Ernest Holmes
Democracy: government by the people; rule of the majority[1]
Civil Society: understood as the “third sector” of society, distinct from government and business. The telos or end of civil society, thus defined, was eudaimonia, often translated as human flourishing or common well-being.[2]
CSL Global Vision: A world that works for everyone and a life that works for each of us.[3]
CSL Vision: Awakening Humanity to its Spiritual Magnificence[4]
CSLDallas Purpose: Radically Inclusive, Spiritually Progressive, Transforming Lives[5]
[1] Merriam-Webster.com
[2] Wikipedia.com
[3] Centers for Spiritual Living
[4] Centers for Spiritual Living
[5] a Dallas-based Center for Spiritual Living