In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.
Isaiah 30:15
Daybreak greets us no matter where we are in the world. The weather does too. While it’s snowing in the north, the sands are warming on the beaches in the south, it’s clear and sunny out west, and it’s raining in the east. No matter where we stand and look out in any direction, there appears to be constant change.
Essential Truth does not change. When we focus on the external, we can seek numerous ways to connect with the divine; when we move inward in our consciousness, we open to the Infinite and know that there is no intermediary to the Divine. It just Is. And we are One. Nothing stands between us because there is no between, only ever-present Being. Whether we choose to acknowledge and awaken to the Presence or not, Presence just is. It is with us, Is us, whether we perceive It or not.
“Things will be better when. . . .” “If only. . , then I would. . . .” “When I get this task done, then I will be able to. . . . ” These statements are misperceptions, conditional and predicated on apparent circumstance and change. Love, Truth and Life are unconditional and changeless.
Daybreak comes, the day unfolds and it comes again. Just as it presents an opportunity for us to begin again anew each day, each moment we are free to choose to become conscious of Oneness, and look away from a mistaken interpretation of life experience. We are called to use our free will to correct misjudgment and “. . . stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wished realized in . . . results, you will control yourself harmoniously” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p. 392). Divine Science writers Malinda Cramer and Fannie Brooks James addressed this same idea and called it “mental fasting,” — “a fast of thought implies the careful choosing of every thought to which we shall give recognition. . . .”(Divine Science: Its Principle and Practice, p. 80).
When we are deeply rooted in Oneness, we truly can be with the sweeping changes that shifting winds of time may bring into our experience. Stephanie Kaza writes, “The deeper the stillness, the greater the capacity to respond to change when it comes” (The Attentive Heart: Conversations with Trees, p. 89). The apparent vicissitudes of human existence, experienced daily, illustrate that consciousness does matter.
The more we deepen in stillness, the more we deepen in our consciousness. As we do so, we steep in the Presence that allows us to be able to be with change, because we are not caught up in resisting transitory experience. Rather, we are centered in Being, through our realization of Creative Oneness. We awaken in consciousness and come home to Presence, realizing we never strayed, because we are ever One.
Rev. William Charles Freeman, Ph.D.
New Thought Vermont: Divine Science in the Green Mountains