Come on by Craft Shows

Just before Easter, you can find that special gift for others or yourself at  two Springtime Craft Shows:

Saturday, March 24th, from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. at Binghamton University in New York

Sunday, March 25th, from 10 a.m.- 6 p.m. at Wayne Valley High School in New Jersey

Stop by my vendor booth and check out the books I’ve written. Good reads about relationships, mindfulness, an Easter dog, family, women progressing along with men.

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Using rather than being used while learning to walk

Our grandson is learning to walk. He lifts himself off his hands and knees by climbing the gate of their dog’s crate. The gate-door however swings freely and our grandson loses his balance and falls.

Unperturbed, he climbs back up and with joyous determination uses the gate to strengthen his balance. In other words, he no longer lets the swinging gate use or control him.

From 21^st Century Science and Health:

“We must begin however with more simple demonstrations of control and the sooner we begin the better. The final demonstration takes time for its accomplishment. When walking, we are guided by the eye. We look before our feet and if we are wise, we look beyond a single step in the line of spiritual advancement.”

“This new-born understanding that neither food nor the stomach, without the consent of human mind, can make us suffer, brings with it another lesson, that self-indulgence, gluttony, or bulimia, are sensual illusions and can’t give satisfaction. These phantasms disappear as we better understand our spiritual existence and walk the line of a balanced life.”

“Enoch’s perception was not confined to the evidence before his physical senses. Therefore, he “walked with God”[1]—he ascended—he was guided into the demonstration of life eternal.”

 

[1] Gen. 5:24; Heb. 11:5

Riding horses with gratitude for what’s real

I haven’t been on a horse in years. So, when Nichole came to visit and asked about horse riding, it took me a while to locate accommodations.

In Walton, New York, Country Meadows Equine, was the place. Very nice.

We rode twice. Two different days. Both days were radiant with vivid color and peacefulness.

Nichole had a grand time learning about horses. We walked, trotted, and cantered.

For me, it all came back. Like riding a bike, I guess.

Quoting from science & religion to God:

Being grateful is an important rule; however, being grateful for material wealth and physical health is different from being grateful for spiritual qualities sustained by Life, Truth, and Love. Gratitude for honesty, humility, and hard work, while we live the honesty, humility, and perseverance is powerful.

The prayer for grace is shown in courage, forbearance, love, and good deeds.

Thought on Soul

A horse rider said, “When I think of Soul, in terms of God, I think of when riding my horse. During those times, when I’m free of ego, fear, and self-consciousness, I’m one with my horse in harmony.

It’s as if the harmony is always existing.

Getting excited

It’s easy to get excited about certain things: new clothes, an upcoming vacation, a pay raise.

But I’m learning that “excitement” needs to be steered with divine Mind, rather than human mind, otherwise it can lead to disappointment.

The human emotion of excitement is dual. It can go in a positive direction and it can go in a negative direction.

But, we have the ability to steer excitement with divine Mind, with wisdom and integrity. Divine Mind’s influence has the power to prevent our human mind from reacting or overacting, due to excitement. It also keeps us and others from getting hurt.

We read in 21^st Century Science and Health, “Calm the excitement sometimes induced by this mental reaction, on the grounds that it is Truth’s method of restoration and purification.”

The words don’t tell us we have to get rid of excitement, or stop ourselves from being excited. There is nothing wrong with excitement as long as it stays within the realm of the divine. We have the power to calm excitement and enjoy its restorative and purifying influence.

The excitement that comes with caring from baby chicks is under God’s control. Love is gentle and thoughtful.

Balancing our discoveries

Yesterday, I learned that you can bathe and blow-dry a chicken. No kidding. The act of washing and drying chickens is performed by 4-H members at our county fair for showing.

Aside from the chicken factoid, we are constantly discovering.

Animal sciences professor, Min Du, of Washington State University, says our bodies are equipped with both good and bad types of fat and naturally work together to balance weight and metabolism.

Du’s theory includes, irisin, a newly discovered hormone in the skeletal muscle.

Will we ever know everything about this world? No.

We are constantly discovering and I’m training myself to discover something spiritual also, along with the physical discoveries to bring balance. I don’t want to be weighed down by physical knowledge, but buoyed by spiritual knowledge.

Spiritual discoveries that I strive to experience:

• Patience is unbroken.
• We move in Mind, not body.
• By courageously doing something new and different, we can break vicious cycles.
• Though nothing physical is sacred, we can preserve the story of the sacred by experiencing it.

 

Happy memories

Valuable percpetions

Our perceptions affect our thoughts and actions.

How do we tell the difference between material perceptions and spiritual perceptions?

Then, how do we value spiritual perceptions?

I came up with a few examples:

A material perception of the weather is a “nice, sunny day.” A spiritual perception is “symbols of movement and life.”

A material perception of my cat is “shedding hair.” A spiritual perception is “radiating calm and relaxed.”

A material perception of my job is “writing newspaper articles and editing words.” A spiritual perception is “expressing honesty and insight.”

To value the spiritual perceptions, I acknowledge them first, then take the attributes of movement, life, calmness, honesty, and insight and see them when cleaning the house and cooking dinner and running errands.

My cat didn’t have nine lives

To my horror, I recently found one of our cats killed, ran over by a vehicle. I’d gone out unusually early for my daily walk, and knew instantly that the dead weight in the road ahead was our cat. I was mortified and started bawling like a calf that lost her mother and was starving and scared.

I carried the cat back to the house and buried it with tears blurring my vision. The entire rest of the day, my emotions were scattered. I broke out crying on a whiff of a memory, and there were many good memories.

It was the image of the dead cat that stuck in my brain. I tried to shake it. I begged God to take it away—when I wasn’t throwing anger God’s way—why couldn’t God keep the cat safe?

My writing projects came to a screeching halt. They required inspiration, devotion, intuition, knowledge, none of which could be found in the immensity of grief that poured into my soul.

I started cleaning out closets. Literally. I sorted through items that had been stuffed into closets over the past few years. Piles accumulated. A pile to give a way, a pile to recycle, a pile to throw away, a pile to find a better location for.

I decided to look at pictures of the cat. It was easy. I had a million pictures. I took them when the cat was cute, entertaining, compassionate, every second. The bad image started to fade.

The next morning, I heard the thought, “Cheryl, it’s time to go back to your writing, you can do it.”

My conscience was struck. That thought was exactly what my cat told me. Was this the new form of the cat? Or, had it always been the cat’s form? Because the furry form I’d typically attached to the cat was gone?

Answers to those questions didn’t matter. The feeling of all-presence rubbed itself on me and I felt at peace.

Lessons from wildlife

We had lunch with our neighbors last Sunday and learned about a PBS film, My life as a turkey.

After a local farmer left a bowl of eggs on Joe Hutto’s front porch, his life was forever changed. Hutto, possessing a broad background in the natural sciences and an interest in imprinting young animals, incubated the eggs and waited for them to hatch. As the chicks emerged from their shells, they locked eyes with an unusual but dedicated mother. One man’s remarkable experience of raising a group of wild turkey hatchlings to adulthood.

Hutto learned to make 30 different turkey noises to communicate with his brood.

He learned the turkeys have feelings.

The turkeys tried to understand their surroundings.

The turkeys were born with an innate understanding about other animals. They knew to stay away from venomous snakes.

The film reminded me of the oneness of our world. In divine Science, there is one Mind, one intelligence, and all inhabitants apparently can image this forth.

From 21st Century Science and Health: When we admit that matter (hormones, DNA, neurons, etc.), acting through the five physical senses, constitutes a person, we fail to see how physiology can distinguish between humanity and animals. Animals also have hormones, DNA, and neurons. Do some pets act more humane than people? Physiology and anatomy have a difficult time determining when people are really people.