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“Like
an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its
vital unity. Hate  destroys
a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe
the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true
with the false and the false with the true.” -
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nothing
is more essential to a successful and prosperous life than to eliminate
all negativity from our minds. It is a "changeless
Truth" and an "absolute reality" that what we think and
feel about others is a reflection of our very own consciousness, and
becomes our experience. This is why the Master Mind Jesus stated
that we are to "love
one another" ...
for our thoughts are the seeds we plant in the eternal Law of Sowing and
Reaping.
So many of our judgments based on false ideas
and limited concepts, give life to negativity in our minds. Our
race, our nationality, our culture, and our languages, do not separate
us ... it is our ideas about these things that separate us. All
these things are visible in the physical ... but they are invisible in
the spiritual. There is only One Life, and this Life is God.
And we are created in Its image and likeness ... each and every one of
us ... no matter what our race, our nationality, our culture, or our
language. We are spirit and we are life, of the One Spirit and the
One Life. This is the Truth of our Being. And something, I
believe we are here to learn. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
understood this and acknowledged it as the Truth; "we
have flown the air like birds and swum the seas like fishes, but have
yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers."
He further explained, "all
men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."
In the Science of Mind, we know this is so. There is no place
where the Spirit is not Present, and we are all a part of this Presence.
"We
must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as
fools," Dr.
King stated. And we must learn to live together in our minds,
first. Our thoughts of separation are just as lethal as our words
or actions. "Segregation
is the adultery of an illicit intercourse between injustice and
immorality,"
Dr. King so wisely cautioned us. As we know that Omnipresent
Spirit is not in fragments, we know that Life cannot be separated by the
man-made labels that our culture has defined. In the past we
foolishly separated ourselves by race, all the while we were sharing the
air that we breathe with all people ... and we were not even aware of
the unity that this fact implied ... let alone, that our spirit was
connected to all spirits according to the Divine Plan of our Creator.
There is only one way in which we can "segregate" the air that
we breathe ... and that is not to breathe ... and we know what the
consequences of this will be. We must realize within our
consciousness that we are One ... One with God and One with each other.
"Love
illuminates Life"
... this single statement can eliminate negativity in our consciousness.
Personalize it: "Love
illuminates my life, now,"
and feel the power of it and the Truth of it. As we affirm this
statement Love will begin to move us, in mind, to a greater feeling of
confidence and self-assurance, and our thoughts will be more in
alignment with Love. Dr. King understood the Truth of this and
there was always an almost mystical awareness to his words. "I
believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final
word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger
than evil triumphant,"
stated Dr. King.
Dr. King's influence was broad. He
influenced people like Senator Bobby Kennedy and President Lyndon
Johnson and he influenced people that even he would not have imagined he
influenced. His call for "brotherly love" and an end to
segregation, influenced a 10-year-old boy on a farm in Paris, Missouri
who had never met him ... and that boy was me. I identified with
the words of Dr. King although at the time, I was surrounded by people
who were resistant to the ideas that he brought forth. And now,
here we are in 2008, with a woman, a black man, and a Mormon, running
for President of this great country ... and still the collective
consciousness wants to "label" their efforts based on gender,
race, and religion. But, this does not have to be the way it is
for us, for we know that the labels are just labels ... and we can
dismiss the labels in our mind ... "Love
illuminates my life, now" ...
and It will guide us in all that we do, including casting our votes.
"Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the
difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream
deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this
nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: - 'We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'
- Martin Luther King Jr., Speech at Civil Rights March on
Washington, August 28, 1963
AND
SO IT IS!
Keep
the faith!
Rev.
Dr. Henry Lee Bates
Visit Rev. Bates BLOG: Living
the Science of Mind
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