The healing medicine of joy

A friend introduced me to Unity, “a positive, practical, progressive approach to Christianity… [that] honors the universal truths in all religions and respects each individual's right to choose a spiritual path. I was really interested about their interpretations of “God”, “Jesus”, “The Bible”, etc. and luckily, there are some lessons from the Unity Center of Light available in audio online.

Today I listened to the lesson “Reclaiming Christmas: JOY – Part 4” and below are some interesting ideas from it…

The importance of inner work and being with your Self
This reminded me of another post I recently wrote on my blog Pandemonium Today. Reverend Milledge “Butch” Mosby quotes from Gandhi’s book, The Way to God:

“The spiritual path is one on which you are seeking to train that part of your being that does live by faith to engage that part of your being that does not.”

This engaging, also interpreted as healing is seen as our life’s journey (and healing our soul as being a journey not a destination for, the closer we get to what we seek, the more we realise just how much else there is to find). And this journey is an inner one, helping us to know ourselves and therefore to know God. Our own inner process being the only way to know that God is real.

So what happens when you do not do this inner work?
If we do not do this inner work, we may not know that that which we seek has already been given to us. It is knowing that takes us beyond hope, which is susceptible to fear and doubt, and into faith. Indeed we will be fearful because we forgot who we are. When we are frightened and troubled, it’s something inside us that is frightening and troubling us. Even though we may identify outer conditions as the source of this fear.

Mosby gives a great analogy using the current blockbuster film, Avatar. He recounts the scene when the protagonist first visits the forest and is attacked by its creatures. The native Na’vi girl saves him and she brushes away his thanks, angry that his ignorance forced her to kill the creatures. The point is that, if he was in tune with his surroundings, his surroundings would have been in tune with him. The creatures would not have attacked him the same way that they do not attack her. The moral of Mosby’s story was this: “learning to live the spiritual life is learning to live consciously”. When you live consciously, you realise that the negative things that happen to you are actually opportunities to heal the negative things inside you and transcend them. You realise that every person in your life is a study partner providing you with an opportunity to practise your spiritual perspective. When you attack another, you are denying yourself for, any attack is an attack on truth is an attack on God.

Back to joy
The ultimate destination, and the vehicle towards it (and following the essence of this lesson: the place from where we started), is joy. Knowing ourselves is knowing God and knowing God brings us inner joy.

Joy is the “happiness of God expressed through His perfect idea – man”.
– Unity founder, Charles Filmore