Center for Spiritual Living Midtown

The Good Old Golden Rule - Rev. Paul Gonyea

Some of us assume that whatever we want for ourselves is good for us, and whatever is good for us must be good for everyone else, too. That doesn’t take into consideration the fact that what we want is not always the best for us, so it may not be good for others, either. It may even be a good idea for us to examine those things we think we want in life and see if they really are something that would be appropriate to impose on others. We may find that we’re selling ourselves short, and not seeking or expecting anything near to what we might be able to acquire or achieve. If that’s the case, then we may not only be short-changing ourselves; we may be short-changing the people around us, too.

Getting Through The Dark Ages - Rev Paul Gonyea

If we are looking for reasons to stay trapped in a situation that's not helping us live life to the fullest, we can always find all the reasons we need. But we have to understand that finding reasons for a problem only prolongs the problem. We can never find a way out of a negative or unhealthy situation if we spend all our time and energy looking for reasons to justify it. When things aren't working in our life, there's a tendency to keep our consciousness focused on limitation-producing conditions, not because those conditions need to be limiting, but because we allow them to limit us. We accept them as cold, hard facts. That's what the world tells us is normal, rational thinking; but the world is wrong.

A World Made For Love - Rev Paul Gonyea

We need to change the way we think about love. In fact, until we’re able to change the way we understand both love and life (and the two DO go hand-in-hand; nobody ever needs to be living a life without love) — until we begin to accept that both life and love are exquisitely designed by a Perfect Loving Intelligence to expand and enrich our experience of living, we may very well find ourselves wandering without direction (emotionally, if not physically), feeling unhappy and unloved and helpless to change it, when we should be feeling just the opposite. This is true about every kind of love, but it is especially true about romantic love

 

What Goes Around, Comes Around - Rev. Angela Harmon

If you haven't seen the movie 'Hidden Figures,' I highly recommend it. Not to give the story away, it's based on a true story about three African American women who contributed their talents to the NASA space program and the quest to reach outer space...even taking us the moon. So how about you? As a child, did you shoot for the moon and dream big?  And today, do you dwell on past regrets, or live in the past? Are your life lessons learned or repeated again and again? The Law says that unlearned lessons are repeated as a friendly reminder of living in a world of cause and effect. What we put out comes back to us. So, what are you putting out? Are you reliving your past over and over?  Allow spiritually principled-living to (re)script your story, carving out new paths and defining life in a greater way. Live life fully as you design and it comes around divine.

BASICS 4: LIVING LIFE IN A GREATER WAY - Rev Paul Gonyea

It is a Basic Truth that our life only gets better when we do; that is, when we make a conscious and deliberate decision to change our mind about what we allow ourselves to accomplish or to experience, and we begin to believe that we can have something better. That’s one ability we have that no one can ever take away from us; the ability to change our present thoughts and beliefs. We can use that ability or not, but it’s always there. If we believe in it and use it intelligently, it will work beautifully for us as we direct it. But if we don’t believe in it, or if we don’t use it intelligently, it still works, only it works through the law of averages, because we aren’t giving it any direction.

BASICS 3: "WHAT GOD REALLY DOES" - Rev Paul Gonyea

The only difference between spiritual laws and the laws of physics is that we think only physical laws are real. But metaphysics and quantum physics are showing us that the laws of the invisible universe, the mental and spiritual universe, are just as real as the laws we use in the visible world. They're all here for our benefit. And they will always do what they are designed to do for anyone who uses them intelligently. We don't have to earn them. We don't have to beg for them to work. They aren't being hidden. History has shown that all we have to do is to pay attention to the world around us, until we figure out what wonderful things we can do by using any of the laws of Life to create an even better life

BASICS 2: THIS THING CALLED YOU - Rev Paul Gonyea

This idea that all the great teachers talked about, that we are all outlets for the creative energy of the Universe, that we are all openings for the power of Spirit to make good things happen in the world, is a transformational idea. It brings immediate change. When the Master Teacher Jesus supposedly said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” what I believe he really said was, “I am showing you the way. I am telling you the Truth. This is the way to live your Life.” He was telling us that finding a better way to live isn’t about praying for God to show up and fix things; it’s about recognizing that God is already here, and that we are its vehicle

BASICS 1: THIS THING WE CALL GOD - Rev Paul Gonyea

If the Truth is going to set us free, we have to be free to learn what the Truth is. We have to feel free to question everything, including the power or the process that created us out of itself. And as our spiritual understanding increases - as we learn more and more about what God is and what it looks like as it appears in the physical world - we can then use that knowledge to make better and better use of all those Universal Laws and Truths that have been given to us as part of our spiritual birthright.

Christmas Presence - Rev Paul Gonyea

If we combine the God image and the Santa image, we see that what we are is actually God giving the endless gift of God to Itself, not just at Christmas, but every day of the year. That's why the image we've created of this jolly old man in a beard, running around giving gifts to every child in the world, is so appealing. First, because it's a much greater idea than the one we see happening most of the time; and second, because we know, on some level - at the deepest, most profound, most loving and spiritual level - that it's completely possible. Not only is it possible; it's the way we should all be living.

Following False Gods - Rev Paul Gonyea

Using its most basic definition, a god is any idea, or any belief — any person, place or thing — that we believe has power beyond our own. It becomes a problem for us when we also believe that this power has a will or a purpose that is not in tune with our greater good; that is, if we allow our ‘god’ to make decisions for us that don’t help us grow, or if we allow it to limit what we can or can’t do. So if we (consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or by default) give up our power to choose HOW we want to create our own life because we believe that someone or something outside of us has a different idea for us, or has power over us, and there’s nothing we can do about it, then we are following a false god.