Access Your Power

“The best advice I have ever been given was to not believe everything I think, and that feelings aren’t facts.” With this introduction, Timber Hawkeye delves into how we can shift our thoughts to access the power of our minds.

Among other suggestions, Hawkeye posits that we are not what has happened in our lives to this point. We are not what we have done in the past. “We are who we choose to become — today,” he says. “The past is in your head. The future is in your hands. How, then, do we regain control of the wheel?

“Mindfulness.”

Hawkeye describes mindfulness as the gap between impulse and action. “The larger the gap,” he says, “the more mindful our response, while the shorter the pause, the more impulsive our reaction. Emotional reactivity, it turns out, is what pulls our lives away from where we ultimately want to be: blissful and at peace with the world, both within and around us.”

He adds, “When I felt like life wasn’t worth living because the world is filled with too much hatred, anger, violence and greed, I only had to change one thing to make life worth living again: my perspective.”

— Read more of Hawkeye’s thoughts on accessing your power in the September 2018 issue of Guide for Spiritual Living: Science of Mind magazine.

On Friday, September 21, people around the world will celebrate International Day of Peace, established to commemorate and strengthen the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples. Since 1981, when the United Nations established Peace Day, September 21 has become a shared date for all humanity to commit to peace above all differences and to contribute to building a culture of peace.

Rev. Dr. Ron Fox, senior minister at CSL Space Coast, offers his thoughts on praying for peace at https://scienceofmind.com/thoughts-on-peace/. He says, “We gather this day to pray for peace in our day. In this moment, we recognize we are all one, blessed in our diversity, honoring our differences.

“We may speak different languages,” Dr. Fox says, “pray in our own way to the God of our choosing, wear skins of different colors and express our love in ways that differ. Yet beneath all these differences, there remains an ever-present truth: We are all children of a loving God.”

How will you recognize International Day of Peace 2018?

— For more on Peace Day, visit internationaldayofpeace.org. To read Dr. Fox’s full prayer for peace, visit https://scienceofmind.com/thoughts-on-peace/.

World Peace Is Not an Illusion

—by Ernest Holmes

So we want peace on Earth? Then let us pray for peace in our own hearts, let us affirm peace in our own minds. Let us live as though peace were the mandate of God because it is.

Together let us affirm it and let us encourage others to, no matter what the opposition appears to be, for it is a fundamental reality of God. “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”

Let us face the future without fear but let us all also face it intelligently as men and women who are not afraid of anything. There is nothing in the universe to be afraid of….

Let us realize if the world is healed of war and brought into peace it won’t have been because guns were bigger and better or more of them. We need them until it does heal itself, but that will come to pass only because somewhere along the line the balance of the scales of eternal truth shall fall on the side of peace.

Let us, you and me, pray for peace and let us make our hearts fit to accept it when it comes. Let us make our intellect and our soul and our will and our feeling ready to receive it and embrace it even before it comes.

Let us in the stillness of our own soul go back to that ineffable Presence which is Peace and proclaim It even in the midst of confusion, that Peace which is the Power at the heart of God. And so it is. Amen.

In Memoriam

John McCain: Maverick of the U.S. Senate

August 29, 1936 - August 25, 2018

Daniel Webster said, “A sense of duty pursues us ever.” Without reservation, U.S. Senator John McCain never lost his sense of duty to his country and his constituents. Long considered the maverick of the U.S. Senate, McCain embodied an all-too-rare devotion to service spanning from his years in the U.S. Navy to the House of Representatives to the Senate chambers.

Born into a Naval family, McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He deployed to Vietnam in 1967, where his plane was shot down just months later. He became perhaps the most famous prisoner of war located in Hoa Lo prison — the so-called Hanoi Hilton — until his release, along with 107 other prisoners of war, in March 1973.

After 22 years, he retired from the Navy in 1981, after which he served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, where he served until his death. He was the Republican candidate for the presidency in 2008, losing to Barack Obama.

During the 2008 presidential primary, McCain talked freely about his life of service. “I learned long ago,” he said that January, “that serving only oneself is a petty and unsatisfying ambition. But serve a cause greater than self-interest and you will know a happiness far more sublime than the fleeting pleasure of fame and fortune. For me that greater cause has always been my country, which I have served imperfectly for many years, but have loved without any reservation every day of my life.”

In his speech to the Republican National Convention on September 4, 2008, McCain explained his devotion to his country: “I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.”

While McCain takes his place in U.S. history as a candidate for president, he surely takes his place in the broader world for his devotion to service and his unapologetic dedication to courage.

In his book “Why Courage Matters,” he wrote: “We’re all afraid of something. Some have more fears than others. The one we must all guard against is the fear of ourselves. Don’t let the sensation of fear convince you that you’re too weak to have courage. Fear is the opportunity for courage, not proof of cowardice. No one is born a coward. We were meant to love. And we were meant to have courage for it. So be brave. The rest is easy.”

McCain believed courage was the defining principle of life, that from which all others spring. “Despite the urge to avert your eyes from suffering,” he said, “the only way to really appreciate the nobility of courage is to familiarize yourself with its costs so that you will come to understand how rare a thing it really is.”

He added, “Our sense of honor must cross the divide between vanity and righteousness by insisting on the universality of our principles.

“It is love that makes us willing to sacrifice,” he said, “love that gives us courage.”