Center for Spiritual Living Midtown

Power is not a dirty word nor is it something to be avoided or feared. Power is what fuels our lives, gets us out of bed in the morning, and enables us to live on purpose. Power is a quality of Life and therefore present in everything. Our awareness of the power all around us and our consciousness participation in it, is the source of our true freedom.

What does love to have to do with our lives? Everything! Love is not a commodity to be acquired. It is a power to be used to direct our lives and create the good that we see for ourselves. Its recognition moves us beyond the apparent victim-perpetrator duality into a broader recognition of the goodness of our lives and of all life. It is the essence of our experience of God

Life is a great gift and everything else flows from there. If Life were all we are given it would be enough of a gift to keep us in awe and gratitude forever. However, it comes with powers, benefits, and modes of operation that can support us in creating our grandest dreams. You can make something of Life. What something? You choose!

As the center embarks on new beginnings we celebrate the retirement of Rev. Paul Gonyea one of the two founding members of CLSMidotwn. We wish him much success in all of his future endeavors. We know we will see you around the center after you have time to transiton. We love a you Paul! The center also has the pleasure of welcoming
Rev. Dr. Robert Deen as our new senior minister who carries forth wisdom of the Kennedy Schultz lineage and brings a extended breadth of knowledge from CSL, and more the eminates from his diverse spiritual background. We WELCOME you Rev. Bob!

Every enlightened teacher tells us there’s a natural rhythm to the process of creation. Just like a heartbeat, it changes when the demands made upon it change, but it’s still a natural rhythm that keeps things flowing smoothly. When we use it consciously, it starts with desire, which is an inner drive for something greater. Then it moves to awareness, where our mind starts to pay attention not only to what is, but to what could be. Then we begin to see ways in which those things we desire could actually happen. And finally we take action by moving forward, then stepping back. We do it by working, then resting. We do it by focusing, then meditating. There has to be a rhythm to our efforts, or we’ll exhaust ourselves, or we’ll get fixated on one single way of accomplishing our desire.

In these New Thought teachings, I think too many of us get caught up in thinking we can just visualize the end result and have it show up, without our having to do any work in the interim. If that’s what we’re thinking, then that means we don’t understand how the universe works. Because mental and spiritual work is not a shortcut around the creative process. It just looks like a shortcut to us because we’re so used to obsessing on our past, complaining about the present, and worrying about all the possible disasters that might befall us in the future, before we finally get around to doing what we need to do. It’s a wonder we get anything productive done, and a lot of people don’t.

The Truth of Life doesn’t really change, but our relationship to it does. When we were children, our parents taught us certain limited Truths to protect us. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t stay out after dark. Then, as we got older, we got a new set of Truths. It’s a tough world out there. Life is a struggle. People are out to cheat you. As we became more and more involved in society, we started collecting even more Truths from all sorts of different directions: Our friends. Our schools. Our religious institutions. What we didn’t realize was, first of all, that these Truths were not really THE truth — they were just the beliefs of the people who gave them to us. And second, they had nothing to do with the Truth of our being — they had nothing to do with the Divine Truth already within us that was ready to set us free.

Our relationship with Power… what we believe about it…our experiences with it… our real and imagined use of it… determines most of our decisions about how we live our lives. Our values are based on it, our moment to moment choices follow its lead. Join us as we explore these core choices that determine so much of how we live.

Scientists are finding out more and more how resentment affects us. People who tend to blame other people for their problems experience a much greater incidence of serious illness. People who do not get along with others tend to die at a significantly earlier age. People who are constantly angry about a wide variety of things, especially if they keep that anger locked inside, not only have a much greater risk of cancer and heart disease, their recovery rate is also very poor, unless they also make a radical change at the mental, emotional and spiritual level. That’s where the real damage occurs. Because it’s the mind and spirit that create and sustain the body. That’s where the healing ultimately has to come from.

When something happens in my experience, or someone does something that I don’t like, and I ask the universe, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ I have to accept that this experience still fits into my life somewhere, somehow, because (1), It happened, and (2), I was there! It may not seem to fit where I am at the time, but it will definitely fit where my life is going, as a lesson or a tool that can help me in the future. I can plan on it. And if something appears to be missing in my life, and I really do need it (like money, or a relationship, or a better job), I can be sure that it’s around me someplace; I just haven’t figured out yet what it looks like. The good news is, all I have to do is relax and keep on putting things together, and it will show up when it needs to show up.