A month ago, we had a speaker, Fred Brancato, who wrote the book, “Mystery and Manifestation: Reflections on Life Experience Beyond Ideology, Theology, and Belief Systems.” who spoke about having a transcendent experience and some ways he believes one can achieve it. (See
revairin.wordpress.com/2023/03/27/god-incidences-and-divine-timing/ Meditation is the overarching key to creating it. A meditation practice builds that relationship with the Universe, or Love, or God, or what ever your name is for the one power and one presence. We all know that Jesus spent a lot of time in meditation and prayer.
Recently I listened to a talk by Eric Butterworth, who is a well-known Unity Minister. It is called The Easter Perspective in April of 1979, found here: https://www.truthunity.net/ebup/the-easter-perspective . Some of the ideas I will share here are from his talk. It amazed me that the same problems that he referred to in the world such as energy use, oil and Saudi Arabia, fires, etc. are still ongoing today.
The main question that he asks is how is celebrating Easter helpful for our challenges today in the world and in our personal lives. Mankind has been on a quest learning about himself from the search for the Holy Grail to now. Jesus was no different when he came into the world. He was a man on a quest who went through the temptations in the desert and always worked to rise above his challenges.
How was Jesus able to do that? As mentioned earlier, he had a meditation and prayer life that help him develop a relationship with God. He may have had other daily practices. A foundational one was pausing, lifting his eyes, and seeing beyond the appearance or problem, which was transcending the situation and seeing it from a higher perspective, naturally listening to God’s guidance in that moment.
Jesus told us that we have the same abilities that he had. Everyone can develop a relationship with God, listening for him in meditation and prayer without going to a priest and asking them to intercede for you. Jesus demonstrated that it was possible to have transcendent (God) experiences. Rev Eric Butterworth calls being in the tomb with our challenges such as accidents or firing from a job, “Tomb of Limitations” *. Many of us may work very hard to set things right and we are blocked with questions that we can’t answer.
“The need is not to set things right but to see it right and get it” * on a higher level of consciousness. We don’t need to know the how or why it happened, which is the natural path we take, “trying to know all the ins and outs of it.” * We want to see it rightly.
Butterworth pointed out that if you notice in the New Testament wherever Jesus performed a healing or multiplying the loaves and fishes, that he lifted his eyes up. He was seeing things from a higher perspective or consciousness and calling on God of course, having a transcendent view of things.
The Transcendent practice that rolls the stone away from the tomb of limitation can happen in this way. We are confronted with a problem that may have felt like a crucifixion (not all of them do). We pause and go within, lift our eyes, seeing from a higher perspective, affirming the new view that we are seeing with the eyes of God.
“Fundamentally, Jesus demonstrated for you and for me and for all persons who have eyes to see and ears to hear, that if we lift our eyes and look out the right window, we can see allness in illness, we can see all sufficiency in insufficiency, we can see full potentialities even in limitations, and we find the key to overcoming and the key to a victorious, transcendent life. This is what it’s all about.” *
This can be an everyday practice to become a Master of it like Jesus.
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Albert Einstein
Rev Airin
*Direct Quotes from Rev Butterworth’s talk
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