MY GURU, JUAN WILLIAMS

If anyone had asked me what I thought about Juan Williams at Fox News before this week, I would have said, “He’s naively, optimistically, sincerely dedicated to the principles the Democrats say they believe in and has been dedicated to the Democratic party because they claimed those were their principles.” I would have said he was also an affable man. I liked him, but to me, naivete seemed his paramount quality.

Juan Williams’ downfall on October 20, 2010 may go down in history as the day Americans reclaimed their freedom to say how they feel. It was the day that National Public Radio gave him his walking papers after ten or more years of employment with them. I’m sure that NPR didn’t think that firing Juan would result in people from all walks of life in America protesting NPR’s actions and defending Juan vociferously.

What did he do?

On Bill O’Reilly’s show, responding to Bill’s problems after saying on “The View” that Muslims killed us on 9/11, Juan stated that, if he gets on a plane and he sees “folks in Muslim garb” and he thinks they think of themselves as first and foremost Muslims, he feels fear. Later in the show, Juan stated that he doesn’t advocate discriminating against Muslims. Bill O’Reilly actually said he was frankly sick and tired of all the political correctness and in the future he intended to state his true feelings despite it. I believe that Bill O’Reilly, as a result of their on- air talk that day, is about to be given the green light to do just that.

On Tuesday, the day following Juan’s unintended rashness, a Muslim man approached Juan in O’Hare Airport and expressed his thanks for Juan’s statement about his feelings on O’Reilly’s show. This man has children who are also afraid because they are Muslims and their father is afraid for them. He feels that now there is hope for open discussion about everyone’s feelings concerning this subject.

The NPR fired Juan two days later, Wednesday, October 20, because of stating his feelings, and added insult to injury by stating on air that if it bothered him, perhaps he should talk to his psychiatrist or his publicist or whatever. He has not had a direct apology for that statement from the powers that be at NPR. Many believe that’s the least they could do.

By the way, the 1.8 million dollars that Mr. George Soros has contributed to NPR recently is being pointed to as just too much of a coincidence. The implication is that Mr. Soros, who is using his billions to change American drug laws in favor of legalization, and to influence our political redistricting, and WHO HATES FOX NEWS!—would seem to have forced NPR to fire Juan, thus hoping it would make people afraid to appear on Fox.

I’m giving thanks today for Juan Williams’ belief in the legitimacy of “feelings.” After the dust settled, he made this statement about the words he had said that had caused his separation from NPR, “There is nothing wrong with expressing one’s feelings.” Amen to that! When I heard about this debacle, I suddenly wondered if Juan may always have had a life purpose unknown even to himself—to save us all from the crippling of our emotions that began when we all started marching to the drum of PC—political correctness. I’m with Juan Williams and believe that when we tell people they must be silent about an assault on their feelings, especially one that makes them afraid, we enslave them as surely as if we put chains on their wrists.

People who want to kill others to bring them into line are people we should all fear. People who decree we should all be quiet about our fears in response to such people are also people we should fear. Enforcement of our silence makes us all prisoners—prisoners of fear. Juan has made it possible for all of us to break our chains and speak out publicly. It will be good after all the years following 9/11 to live again in the fresh air of a world like that. I say in a “world” because this awareness of one’s own feelings and freedom to express them also needs to spread, not just through America, but it needs to spread through the whole world because we are held hostage the world over by this stifling worldwide blanket of silence.

Juan Williams may turn out to be the man President Obama has seemed to many of us to want to be known as, the man who leads the world to greater freedom. Curiously enough, if that happens, it will be because Juan, unlike the President, is a man who can speak his feelings—even about Islamic terror.

So, we can start talking with each other freely now that the subject is out in the open because of Juan Williams who was merely verbally supporting Bill O’Reilly about Bill’s gaffe on “The View” and just said what he “felt”—imagine that! I just may organize a group this year to push for October 20th becoming Juan Williams Day—the day we could once again say what we really feel!!

THAT’S THE SPIRIT!

THE PILL CAN’T FREE YOUR MIND, ONLY YOU CAN

Pat Chalfant

“The pill” taught me that we have to be ready for liberation. After “the pill” got here and had been on the market a while, it was clear to me that we needed to take another look at our situation in regard to the problems surrounding unprotected sexual intercourse.

Many years ago l thought “the pill” was going to solve most of the problems of mankind. At last, women could take a pill and prevent pregnancy. In the worst case scenario, they might have to do it in secret but why, after all, did anyone else need to know? Now they would be in charge of their bodies and their lives.

I hadn’t thought it through really, as I later found out. I hadn’t thought about the chains of religio-societal restraints. I had only thought of women in the ideal sense, women as mothers who want better lives for their children, women who should own their bodies and make all their own decisions about them, but I had underestimated the power of their fears.

When the pill came on the scene, America and the world took just about as much notice of this truly liberating substance as it did of Margaret Sanger’s introduction of the condom to the United States in the early 1900s. In her day, there were huge populations of underprivileged women all over the world still so dominated by fear (whether you call it men, poverty, churches, or governments or all the above, it’s still fear) that many of them felt they could not use contraceptives to save themselves. In large segments of the world population today the same situation still exists.

Margaret Sanger was the famous American worker for women’s rights who brought birth control to the United States. Her intense struggle before she managed to put the spotlight of attention on the problem and make it acceptable for women to have protection against pregnancy makes powerful reading.

Recently, Glenn Beck on Fox News has revealed her apparently extreme racial prejudices. But, aside from that, she was first and foremost a trained nurse who came from a huge family of children herself and knew the problems inherent in really large families.

As an adult nurse she was truly saddened by the tragedy she saw in home visits to women suffering from self-inflicted abortions and other pregnancy-related tragedies, like exhaustion from too many pregnancies, too close together. There was, also, the subsequent chaos and poverty that mothers and fathers with too many babies to tend and too many mouths to feed were often overwhelmed by.

She was a nurse in the early 1900s who saw, when she made home health visits to American women who were poor, how terribly they suffered because of almost annual pregnancies and the physical exhaustion that having babies too close together can cause. In many places today in our world, such conditions still prevail.

The truth is, however, that women who still are at the mercy of “the system” are there because for one reason or another they believe they must continue to be there. At bottom, it’s a mind thing.

I’m not saying that the forces of societal and possibly spousal disapproval, as well, are not powerful forces against providing universal access to either the pill or condoms. I’m saying that for either a man or a woman to break away from tyranny of any kind requires a change of mind, a different outlook on things.

We have all seen major examples of girls who, even with the pill so readily obtainable today, have produced unplanned babies. Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin’s daughter, is a notable example. She now speaks out through the media to other young girls, urging them to heed her advice and realize how unprepared for the responsibility of a small child a teenage mother typically will be.

Freedom truly resides in the mind; but even when we know it does, how do we free ourselves? How can Bristol Palin help free young women who feel their boyfriends/husbands don’t want to have protected sex–or that their church, society, parents or friends for whatever reasons will disapprove of their using protection?

For some people it can come through classes in self-esteem, or through a religious practice, such as prayer or meditation. For others it may be through psychology or hypnotherapy or neurolinguistic programming. It may be any or all of these and more. But somehow most of us, it’s clear, need preparation for this or any other unaccustomed independence.

A psychologist I know has a dramatic logo on her literature: two hands reaching upward, fetters falling from the wrists, “Breakthrough to the Unconscious” is the message beneath–suggesting our physical freedom can only come through discovering what’s hidden in the hidden recesses of body, mind and spirit.

That’s the discovery I made after the pill was born, and long, long after Margaret Sanger made contraception acceptable. If you plan to free yourself of any fetters any time soon, by all means, go ahead, do it! Do it for yourself or do it for whoever or whatever you will. But first “be prepared.”

The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts really had something with that slogan of theirs! Be prepared for unexpected resistance, not just from others, but even in many cases from within yourself.

I don’t know why I didn’t take into consideration that there would be opposition, back when the pill first made it’s appearance on the world scene, but now I see it clearly and feel foolish about not seeing it then.

Pills, of themselves, just can’t do it–there also has to be freedom within oneself and freedom really is an inside job. First, free the mind, then take the pill!

That’s the spirit!

ME AND THE GURU

ME AND THE GURU AND TINY TIM

When I make a special effort to do something I think will be really impressive, whether it’s writing, drawing, music, fancy food, whatever it might be, I often end up really deflated if, in the end, I think the outcome is mediocre at best.

I believe that where accomplishments are concerned, what we should work to achieve is the feeling that just the effort we’ve made is enough, although I haven’t convinced myself of that yet.

Sometimes I draw the things I see around me. In the end, if I think I haven’t captured the image I’m viewing as accurately as I’d like to, it makes me feel downhearted.

Later, when I look through the book of sketches I have, If I can suspend using the lens of self-criticism that I all too often see the parts of my life through, I just may think I have actually done it as I should have.

When I’m seeing things clearly, not through a distorted life lens, I can even look at the things I have drawn in the past and I can see that there were always parts of what I drew that were good or pretty or strong. I can see that I also may have reached beyond what I was able to do in the past, so that comparatively I did a pretty good job.

It’s the viewpoint from which we see our efforts to accomplish things that can make all the difference. There is no point at all in being frustrated and self critical, in feeling unequal to the task just because we may not immediately see the value in our efforts.

When we really get inspired, we may be able to see that all our efforts build to one goal and realize that if we continue the effort, we will reach that goal. It is the goal of “perceived success.” By perceived success I mean, what my own perception of success may be at any given moment. I have to keep reminding myself of this over and over again. I tend to obsess over my perceived failure just as much as I do over my perceived success.

Edgar Cayce* pointed out that we should never give up on any goal we devoutly want to achieve. He commented that all too often the people who are about to achieve their heart’s desires stop just short of that.

He gives the example of a young man who had submitted his work again and again to publishers and had long waited for a letter saying that his writing had been accepted. His mother opened a letter one day addressed to him containing the news that he was to be published, but he had taken his own life just days before. Sometimes people literally give up within inches of the goal.

The uncle of a friend of mine who was a door to door salesman told her again and again through the years that if you have something to sell or something to request from people, you must just keep going. Ask one person after another, because no matter how many no’s you hear, someone will eventually say yes to you.

Another interpretation of this is that when we desire something we don’t think it’s possible to have, we wouldn’t desire it if there wasn’t the very thing we wanted already waiting for us in spirit. I may have said this before, but let me say again that I’m certain that what we reach out for is always reaching for us, too.

Many years ago I encountered an example of this in New York City. This is the story:

A few years ago, an absolutely hysterical singer/ukulele player became famous on the show “Laugh-In” and his name was Tiny Tim. I had actually seen him perform in Greenwich Village in New York City a year or two previous to that.

The night I first saw him, I didn’t know what to think or say about his act except that it was an act that I believed we would never see the likes of again! I couldn’t even be sure whether he was serious or not, or what his purpose was. I could have sworn that night that this “act” had no future.

When we saw him on the tv screen the night that he was introduced on the show “Laugh-In,” I couldn’t believe I was seeing that same slender person with the shaky voice, the ukulele in a brown paper bag, and all the rest of the unlikely-looking things he presented with on stage, but I fell apart with laughter. So did the whole U.S. He had made it—he was now a television star and for years I pondered that.

He had to have doubted himself along the way I still believe. People had laughed at him nervously in the Greenwich Village bar. He had been appearing in a tacky little talent show that night I had seen his act, in a bar that gave new meaning to the word “sleaze,” but he had seemed to me to be determined about his talent, just somewhat misguided.

Transported to the sound stage of a wacky, screamingly funny television show, suddenly he fit in perfectly. He actually shone like the star that he at that moment became. I have from time to time told people that I became a believer in the idea that anyone can achieve anything he really wants to as I watched Tiny Tim that night.

Never give up! Your success will always lie just ahead of you only until you go the distance it takes to reach it. It’s real, because, as Religious Science** tells us, if there is a goal you desire, that means your desire already exists and is actually the opposite end of your request. Hang in there and you will succeed, I guarantee it—so does Tiny Tim.

Congratulations on your heart’s desire, because it desires nothing other than to be yours.

Sincerely,

ME AND THE GURU

GURU’S FAVORITE BOOK:
*If you don’t know about Edgar Cayce, the Sleeping Prophet, read the book “The Sleeping Prophet” by Jess Stearn. Cayce was the best documented, so-called psychic who ever existed. He was an old-fashioned, Bible-reading Christian who found he had the ability to go to sleep and speak in trance and produce healing remedies for the sick who flocked to him by letter from all over the world.

GURU’S FAVORITE WEB SITE:

http://www.rsintl.org/

**Religious Science is the religion founded by Ernest Holmes that created a system of healing that uses the power of the mind.

THAT’S THE SPIRIT!

THAT’S THE SPIRIT!.

Computers and Fire-Breathing Dragons

FROM THE GURU’S DESK

ME AND THE GURU

By Pat Chalfant

Gurus come in distinctly different shapes and sizes and types. They may be mystical-funky-looking men like The Guru and teach “Cosmic Consciousness 101” or they may be smart-looking Armenian ladies who teach computer subjects. I was tutored a few years ago in L.A. by the Armenian-lady-type and learned a lesson The Guru might have taught: the only thing that stands in the way of learning anything (but especially computers) is fear.

To people who have either seldom or never used computers and are out of work, computer programs can seem as scary as fire-breathing dragons. There is funding available, as I learned at that time for those having a difficult time getting re-employed. Often the people who take advantage of this funding are long-term unemployed and those who, for one reason or another–disabilities, age, lack of currently marketable skills, or because their companies have moved out-of-state or out of the country–just haven’t been able to find a job. I had occasion to watch an expert computer teacher working with people in this kind of class when I went to computer school and added computer graphics to my desktop skills at that time.

My particular guru was an Armenian woman who grew up in Lebanon. She told her students over and over again that fear would keep them from learning—she told them that until many, she said, were tired of hearing it. Nevertheless, she still continued to remind them day after day, “You must not be afraid. You can only succeed if you eliminate fear.”

Often, she said, students would joke that they had been afraid of things all their lives; it was too late for them to stop being afraid now. She told them there was no reason for them to be afraid and that they would get over their fears in her class. They did. And a surprising number of them apparently accepted jobs that required the newly learned computer skills they had acquired with her help.

Araxie Jabrayan, my graphics teacher, was raised by a mother who was a village healer (doctors were nearly non-existent in Lebanon) and who “knew” things before they happened. As she grew up, Araxie watched her mother counsel and help many neighbors and family members to heal and live happier, healthier lives. She is doing the same thing that her mother did but in her own very modern, computerized way.

It’s great to find spirituality being applied to contemporary technology, too. This teacher, taking a cue from her mother’s world of traditional healing arts often will encourage students to pray for God’s help. And often they tell her later that they did pray and it did help. The Guru would like this lady and the two of them might even find they have a mutual admiration society going.

Bravo, Araxie! Way to go—your students will be eternally grateful. Teaching people not to be afraid is giving them a skill that is universally applicable. Bravo, Guru, too! Because, for sure, when you meet a dragon or any other scary thing in meditation, you must learn to balance on the head of the emotional pin and show no fear.

By checking with your community college system, you may be able to locate a one-stop job shop where you can get training in whatever hardware and/or software you think you may need so you can be re-employed.

I was out of work and learned I was eligible for JTPA funds. I hadn’t been unemployed for long, but I qualified. When I did the program it was available through what are called one-stop offices where you were coached in interview and job-hunting techniques if you qualified, then you picked the type of training you wanted, and chose a JTPA-approved school. Funds were allotted by the Federal government for the training and you started school. If you were on unemployment when you began classes, then your unemployment benefits were usually extended until your training was completed.

Can’t vouch for these things being exactly the same now, but I did look this up on the Internet and found the program still listed:

CareerOneStop is:
Your pathway to career success.
Tools to help job seekers, students, businesses, and career professionals
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor

The computer school I attended when I was in the JTPA program, which I learned about through OneStop helped me get a job interview, as well. I actually got the first job I interviewed for and worked at it for ten years, only leaving it at the end of last year, 2009.

If you’re looking for work, I wish you as much luck as I had and more. I was only working at the end of the ten years three days out of each week, but that was by choice because I was doing my spiritual work the other four days a week by then. It was truly a blessing in more ways than one. Good luck–seriously!

ME AND THE GURU

September 16, 2010

ME AND THE GURU

By Pat Chalfant

A sign on his desk in The Guru’s office: “When the chela is ready, the meaning of The Guru’s textbook will be clear! (Translation: The Guru says no refunds on his textbook!)

Hang out with “New Age” people long enough and you’ll hear a lot of talk about books. Books are the life blood of the “New Age” movement. Isn’t it time to call it something else, though?—how can it be new when it’s been around for 50 years ? One psychic bookstore in Calabasas, CA calls itself the Old Age Metaphysical Country store! That’s more like it!

Anyway, I leaped into the New Age by reading Jess Stearn’s book Door to the Future when it first appeared in bookstores. I saw him interviewed on tv about that book and I dutifully schlepped down to Hollywood Blvd and bought it like an obedient viewer should. It was the first book I ever bought because of television advertising and the first time I ever heard about Edgar Cayce and the A.R.E.

That was the beginning. of my “book thing.” I bought New Age books galore through the years. It was expensive because libraries didn’t stock that kind of book then at all!

Anyway, New Age people both buy and talk incessantly about books. They are likely to buy a book and not read it (two-fisted readers may even buy two at a time that they don’t read) until a much later date. Then when they read the book(s) months later they can be heard to claim the message was exactly what they needed to hear at that time. It seems there is a perfect kind of timing in the New Age world that brings the right people together with the right books at just the right time. Obviously, the Guru agrees (wink, wink).

GURU’S FAVORITE BOOKS: “Testimony of Light” by Helen Greaves. At one time, highly recommended by the brothers at Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles. The author transcribed a description of life after death brought through to her via automatic writing from an Anglican nun who had been on the committee investigating psychic phenomena for the Anglican Church when she was living. Lots of past life teachings in this. The introduction quotes the Catholic document that purportedly removed reincarnation from the Bible.

GURU’S FAVORITE SITE: www.edgarcayce.org/are/egroups.aspx —This is the Edgar Cayce site that lets you sign up for A.R.E.’s online Edgar Cayce classes taught by great teachers (such as Lynne Sparrow–best past life recall I ever experienced was in her past life seminar in L.A. in the 1990s and Raye Mathis (astrologer), with whom I took a memorable Cayce course years ago in Life Mission work by distance learning) @ egroups@edgarcayce.org).

ME & THE GURU

By Pat Chalfant

LEVITATIN’ RHYTHM

Ever since I moved to Beaverton (actually, Aloha), Oregon, I have been happily cooking in the kitchen again for the first time in 20 years because we have this incredible kitchen in the new house my daughter, Aimee, is buying and sharing with her father, Jay, and me.

The kitchen reminds me of the kitchen my then mother-in-law had. That was when I did the most cooking in my entire life, when families only ate out at the most once a week. It was when my two older children, Beth and Chris Ullman, were little and growing up.

Right after I moved to Oregon, I wrote an email to all my Hollywood friends, ones I had worked with and ones had I taught, in my Spirit Lights classes, etc., and I told them that since I was now working in the kitchen again, I wondered what the possibilities were that I’d have a “Brother Lawrence” experience.

If you don’t know, Brother Lawrence was a 16th century monk who had formerly been a soldier. Not that I have been a soldier, although transcribing can at times be something of a fight and that’s what I had done for ten years in the job I had at Gene Bruno’s office until October last year when I quit to come here.

However, it’s the monastic period when Brother Lawrence had worked in the monastery’s kitchen after his post-war life, that I’m driving at. While he worked there, he compiled a book of letters and diary entries that has became quite famous and can be downloaded for free now.

I told my class about it hoping to motivate them to read this classic. The thing is that he started levitating around his kitchen in the monastery, or at least I’ve always pictured his levitation that way-probably because it delighted me to picture him rising above the pots and pans, which I personally think would be the ideal way to deal with all pots and pans, especially dirty ones.

As I told Hollywood friends, anyway, I wondered if I might just begin levitating if I tried to “practice the presence of God” in my kitchen, the way Brother Lawrence had done all those years ago. His book is called “Practicing the Presence of God.” There actually was a minister in a Spiritualist church in downtown Los Angeles who was rumored a few years ago to sometimes levitate.

Some of the people from the Spiritualist Church where I read then for people, lectured and played music, went down hoping to see it. They of course pretended to be interested only in attending the church’s service.

They said they didn’t see anyone levitate. Apparently he was a closet levitator. I was glad I hadn’t gone.

Anyway, today, I told Jay, who has a wonderful sense of the ridiculous, that I had told people right after we came here to live that I was thinking “Brother Lawrence” now that I’m in the kitchen again. I knew he knew who I meant when he commented by singing and altering the name of an old pop song, “Fascinating’ Rhythm,” to “Levitating’ Rhythm,” and he made me laugh.

I, of course, was really joking about the whole levitation thing-pretty much. However, one friend, Beth Helms, told me she had reread that email I’d sent out to everybody and thought how really different my slant is on many of the really mundane things in life-like working in kitchens.

Before I started to write this blog this afternoon, I got incredible ideas as I slumped watching tv in my little red recliner that matches Aimee’s all-new family room ensemble, and if you like red, is a wonderful deep, cherry red! One idea after another came to mind and I heard myself composing column after column in my head so this may be fun.

I’m typing out these thoughts right this very minute as fast as I can type. Have to try to hear Chris Wallace’s interviews today at three, so I’ve told myself I’ll finish this by then.

Hope Beth Helms is right and my point of view is weird enough to appeal to at least some readers out there. I intend to cover everything from how to do a reading (as I do now, along with teaching mediumship) to reviewing operas like one that my daughter Aimee was in awhile ago in which she was a dead woman who, while she was allowed out of hell for a short while by Cupid (don’t even try to comprehend that-it’s opera), she pointlessly held a gun on the man she had killed decades before.

Now since in real life she is the daughter of a mother who speaks to dead people, that seemed most appropriate. Appropriate because we who know
about dead people returning to earth to visit, know they will likely return in the same frame of mind or same overall condition in which they had left the earth.

So I’ll write to you about stuff like that and like Brother Lawrence and even politics, especially when it can be funny or significant in some way.

See you back here again, I hope, if you haven’t been completely grossed out by this attempt to put levity into levitating and maybe even to put spirit back into spirituality as well.

Somehow now, I think of the laughing Buddha and I think if we are constantly, happily laughing, we can’t be anything but content-there’s just no room for anything else!

So, okay, how about it, God? It’s not that I want to bother you with insignificant matters, but I do think it could be fun levitating in my beautiful kitchen above the pots and pans–you know, Brother Lawrence and all that????

On the other hand, at my age, I might not be able to get my feet solidly back on the ground when I came down again. That could be a problem. I suppose in that case I could just blog about it?! I assure you that if the levitating thing happened, you’d hear about that and maybe I wouldn’t really care if I ever came down again.

Of course, I don’t know what The Guru would think about that–we always share each other’s paths. He joined me when I was researching a psychic column and articles I wrote in the National Insider 35 years ago.

Some of the material was so far out that I started doodling and letting my mind drift to get away from the weirdness of it all for a few minutes at a time and he just started showing up then on my note pad…It would probably be okay with him though, because the funny thing is, he always pretty much likes whatever I do.

ME AND THE GURU

By Pat Chalfant

ABOVE IT ALL–GRACE!

I remember when I was studying Emerson while I was trying to become an English teacher, I wrote something in an essay about the fact that we might not know where our paths might take us or even where they had already really taken us, but if we could rise high enough and look down on the path, then we could know, of course. The essay was actually about Emerson’s philosophy of Transcendentalism, of course.

Every now and then I get to a point where I need a little elevation so I can see where I’ve been and which general direction I now seem to be going. To that purpose, I took an online class in May through the Edgar Cayce’s ARE EGroups program of Internet study that was based on a book by Lynn Sparrow and has to do with transcending karma and opening up to Grace.

I just a few minutes ago ran into the words I may have been looking for without knowing it, ever since I signed up for the class. They were in the “goodbye” note written by Lynn Sparrow when the class was over and they were not actually her words, but Michael Murphy’s who had written a book she was reading currently as part of her daily spiritual practice each morning and were in: “Grace as a mark of Evolutionary Transcendence” from his book “The Future of The Body.”

It flashed into my mind immediately that Spiritualism doesn’t seem to have a place in it for things like Grace. Then immediately I thought about the mystery of the Spiritualist services I’ve attended over a 40-year period. Spiritualism was the genesis of the modern spirit communication movement.

I thought of how the words spoken to us in Spiritualist services by mediums, especially when they bring evidence of life after death, seem to transcend the now and the norm but Spiritualists would insist that they happen according to the Laws of Nature. For them nothing in this universe happens except through Natural Law.

The other words that were in Lynn Sparrow’s goodbye note that were from Murphy had to do with the fact that things do rise out of nothing without warning sometimes and seemingly lift us to greater heights, going beyond evolutionary scope and creating out of apparently whole cloth the person we are now going to become.

I think that even when we are unaware of it, our lives rise up from a foundation of Grace, whether we are Buddhist, Spiritualist, Hindu, or Christian or “whatever flavor” you may prefer.

God belongs to us all and is in us all and, and even when our Creator acts miraculously, in fact, he is still always acting out of law, for Edgar Cayce’s readings said that both karma and grace were universal laws.

Now I don’t know what Spiritualists might think of this, but God is the Law, if only because He is Infinite, isn’t He? Karma is largely from the past, although it’s in the present too because we’re always whipping up a little bit for the future, whatever else we may think we’re doing at any given moment.

It’s good to know that grace is a law too, and to know that it’s something we don’t have to work to create because we can’t create it, not purposely, anyway. It
comes unbidden, seemingly. Although in the Murphy quote there were words to the effect that we could certainly follow a path that was likely to create such a “miracle” (Spiritualists don’t use that term because for them everything that happens is through Law, not by miracles). Grace is a gift we have to open ourselves up to, it is always there in abundance and we merely need to know that and start letting it in.

This makes me feel that Dr. David Hawkins (author of “Power Versus Force”) was right when he said that a loving thought is many times stronger than a negative thought so negative karma will release its grip on us when we simply know that love, which is what I think Grace is most akin to, can snatch us all from the terrible grip of karma, but only if we have evolved enough to become aware of its existence. Karma then is of course the means by which we are pulled back into God’s loving arms when we are going the wrong way, against the stream of Grace.

It seems to me that this flies in the face of the idea that many Spiritualists have that they can’t be followers of Christianity because they believe that the idea of Vicarious Atonement is central to Christianity and that each of us must atone for his own sins.

I admit I have looked first one way and then the other at the idea that karma could be overridden by Christ sacrificing his life on the Cross, because I was
brought up in Christianity. I’ve decided I will just have to conclude that Jesus’ life epitomizes the Law of Grace, that he knew that was what would save Him and all of us and I’ll just assume that Spiritualists would perhaps change their minds about the whole thing if they knew this, too.

Lest I seem too uncharacteristically serious in this space, I admit that somehow these thoughts were kind of overlaid with me singing the words to “Makin’ Whoopee” as I brushed my teeth, threw out my apple core in the kitchen and got ready to write this and go to bed.

But I could make a case for “Makin’ Whoopee” being an example of Grace, I think. All songs are examples of grace, don’t you think?—they seem to come literally from nowhere and suddenly our inner (spirit) ears can hear them. We don’t have to work to make that happen—I used to get new tunes for songs just walking through the Shubert Theatre to go on a bathroom break when I was writing a lot of songs for Religious Science church services that I sang and played for.

Which reminds me of the grace I received when I was six and heard songs no one else could hear, just as if they were being played in the car with me, only the radio wasn’t on. I hadn’t yet studied music although I
would about three years from then.

And now, after all that, with God’s perfect timing, I hear in my head (?!) these wise words of George Burns: “Say goodnight, Gracie!”

George Burns became real to me for the first time when his assistant invited a group of actors that included me to Tom Clapp’s memorial service many years ago.

Tom Clapp was a good actor and director who worked as a director for the Los Feliz Performing Arts Center in Los Feliz before it burned to the ground. Tom’s friend invited me and other actors Tom Clapp had worked with, to Tom’s memorial years ago.

Thereby, George Burns became more real to me through his assistant’s friend’s death because he was there, too. Lots of people, of courses, have become more real to me in death than in life, because I chat with them there at times. But not George Burns who hasn’t uttered a peep to me so far since his death!

…until now…

Because now I hear in my head again these wise words: “Say goodnight, Gracie!”

So I will—”Goodnight Gracie,”– followed by what Durante always said as he closed his show, “Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!.”

Love yourselves, you are vast!

ME AND THE GURU

By Pat Chalfant

“MAKE MY LIFE A PRAYER, TRANSPARENT TO GOD’S GRACE, A WINDOW THROUGH WHICH ALL MAY ONE DAY SEE GOD’S FACE.”

“Be the God you want to see in the world.” This is from an email message that’s been making the rounds that imagines what a Jon Stewart interview with Jesus would be like.

I have said, as have many others, that all we will ever be or want to be is held safely within us. That’s God!

If, during the early years of my life, there had been a town square where all the townspeople went to meet and talk every day, I might not have accomplished anything in life. I love hearing people tell their life stories. However, you can’t listen endlessly to life stores because, among all those life stories, there will inevitably be many life stories full of self pity.

Complaining and joining others in their complaining won’t do. Since, as was said before, we have all within us that we need to become all we can in life, we must go to a place that’s quiet and where we have the space to think for ourselves and to do what we wish to have done.

As it’s always said, if you want something done, do it yourself. Don’t just join the townspeople in the square to twitter about it and complain, even if you do love, as I do, hearing life stories.

Internet chat sites are exactly like my imaginary town square. They are too often populated by those who haven’t gotten it yet: that you must do it yourself if you want to “get her done.” “It” can be whatever you wish because it is all contained in the potential within us.

Don’t know why I think of my Mother but I do just now and I hear the word “beautiful” and I don’t know why I think of that. She was beautiful. But I didn’t think what I was talking about was beauty, as such.

Perhaps it’s because I was thinking this morning about the journey I took to what I do now, starting from telling my mother–who had just spent her money on a reading from Marion, Indiana’s resident fortune teller–that she had to stop giving money to people like that because they were just fakes and she was just throwing her money away.

I remember her face when I said that, looking strong and beautiful, as it always did and not at all repentant about money badly spent, but looking as if she knew something I didn’t, but would keep her peace.

That’s an interesting old saying that my mother and grandmother both used quite a lot. There is no point in upsetting oneself over opinions of others, best to keep the peace, better yet to keep one’s own peace.

If you know the value of what you are doing, it doesn’t matter what anyone else may think about it. You don’t have to check with the people online or in the town square to see if they approve. We go where we must to build our faith and hope and our futures.

Mediums, fortune tellers, psychics all provide a way to help us get through a bad patch of doubt at times, at other times they reassure us that we are on the right track, and many of us have made it through despair with their help.

The point of bringing up my mother is to say how unlikely it was, given what I thought I believed at the time I told my mother she was wasting money seeing “fortune tellers,” that many years later I would become one of those people that I thought were all fakes, and were all stealing our money.

However, I’m sure that, although she never mentioned it to me, the irony was not lost on her either when I became a medium . No one could possibly have thought that I would ever study to become a medium and then advertise myself on the Internet as one, because no one could imagine such a thing as the Internet, either. It was all unthinkable.

When I was growing up in the Midwest, no respectable young woman aspired to becoming a medium! What I wanted then was to find a way to get to sing professionally, and also to get published, both of which were not quite respectable then. I thought I wanted to simply make my living on what I loved doing, as the title of that wonderful book by Marsha Sinetar states, “Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow.”

I never was completely able to support myself on either music or writing. Although I did those things eventually, they merely added money to our budget. I never made my entire income off them.

So what is my point here? Chatting on the Internet would never have gotten me a job, for sure. You can’t chat and sing or chat and write, or chat and do much of anything else of any use I suspect. You can chat and give people your advice, for what that may be worth.

Nowadays, I give readings by telephone and in person and teach mediumship. Some clients have told me that they have relatives who tell them to forget psychics and save their money, just as I told my mother to ditch the psychics and save her money. They say that they ignore those people just as my mother ignored me!

The passage of time often gives us amazing new perspectives.

“Be the god you want to see in the world.” Set yourself apart from the perennial chatterers and in the quiet of meditation, which is what started me on a spiritual path, perhaps you’ll find inspiration that you can later share with others, as well.

That’s what we keep trying to do–Me and The Guru!