Eric Butterworth Unity Podcast #60
“How to Recession-Proof Your Life—2—Security In a Changing World” is the second of four lessons given by Eric Butterworth loosely based on Spiritual Economics. This talk is very applicable to today’s time. In fact, he writes “In the past six months, we’ve seen changes that few of us would’ve believed we would see in our lifetime.” Little did Erick know what we know today. I highly recommend that you sit quiet and give Eric your full attention for these 32 minutes.
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The word recession is a word that’s heard often today. It is given as a warning of a sharp downturn in the economy. The terrible threat of job layoffs and interest, and high interest rates, and slow down of business, and the lack of confidence in the market. And spiraling effects, it hazen the lives of all of us. You hear these economists talking together in business meetings and talk shows, the aging condition ... discussion of the condition of the economy, forecasting a crippling recession. They talk about bear markets and economic slowdowns. Here’s the kind of economic malaise over which we have no control. It just happens, they say.
I’m going to talk about this a little bit, not to get too involved in the business aspects of it. Using the word recession or as a metaphor for any kind of financial difficulties that you may experience. Right now, the code word as metaphor is a recession. Other times it may be a depression. It may be an economic slow down and just be certain preventative problems you’re having yourself. Then, we try to center our attention on ... We do this in many areas of our study. You don’t have to permit people in conditions out there to decide for you how you’re going to think and feel and act. You can say no in the forecast of a bear market. You don’t have to follow the experts.
If you’re going to let yourself be moved by the influence of the negative tones of the marketplace, you’ll have a definite effect on your live. It’s possible to become impervious to these things. No matter what happens in the market outside, it’s possible to sustain yourself in perfect prosperity you need for yourself. That’s why I said prosperity is in you. You may have to take a while to recondition yourself to this thought but for so long, we thought of our prosperity, or material wellbeing is very dependent upon what happens out there, when the salaries we get in our jobs, the returns of our returns on our investments, and how much money we’re paying, the cost of living, how much the price of oil, and all these things that’s going on in the world out there.
It’s so important that we turn ourselves into a new perception. We see that prosperity is in us and no one can impede its affirmation in our life but you. You can make yourself recession proof, impervious to changing conditions in the economic world. These things may happen around you, but you need to let them happen in your mind. If it has no mental base within you, it may not exist for you at all.
Last week, we discussed the dilemma of substance and light. The paradox of only present substance on the one hand and the widespread experience of lack on the other. We concurred that substance is a spiritual essence, the living energy out of which everything is made. What we call lack is a limiting attitude causing a frustration of the inner flow. You need to change this negative state of mind. The truth is you can never be less than the rich expression of the universe. You may be broke, you need never be poor. And one thing to call to mind if you’re being harassed by an intrusion of recession thoughts, the only way I consider ways to achieve security in a changing world.
In the past six months, we’ve seen changes that few of us would’ve believed we would see in our lifetime. Many of these remarkable changes all in the course of evolution of mankind on this planet. I include the crisis in the Middle East, where foreboding as the implications of this seem right now, the time will come that I believe we will look back upon this situation in the Middle East as a turning point, in the development of United Nations that is sort of built to act in concert to solve the problems that crop up here and there around the globe. And we will learn this great lesson from this experience now, however it comes out.
The philosopher Heraclitus based his entire system on the idea that all is flux. Nothing endures but change, as it has always been. In the garden of Eden, Adam probably turned to Eve and said, “My dear, you know we’re living in a period of rapid and accelerating change.” It is that of us that becomes panic stricken at the very thought of change in certain aspects of life. It was as if the world were coming to an end. It is inevitable that life is changing impervious. We tend to lock ourselves into ruts, routines and rituals. And they would be highly revealing to know how many decisions, perhaps the inability to make decisions, are influenced by a deep inner feeling of insecurity.
You know attention to such things as insurance of various kinds, investing in stocks and bonds, contributing to the nest egg savings programs, retirement annuities, lest we attempt to create a life that is impervious to economic changes. Is it possible to achieve a completely secure life? Most folks try for a while to do this. It’s a possibility to become insurance poor for instance, because the person who is trying to cover all of the possibilities of difficulty in his life. You never have a problem.
Is it possible to have a life that is completely free from insecurity? It depends on what we think security is. We think of security in terms of protecting barriers and continuous provision for food, clothing, shelter, heat, light and medical care. And it may be that there’s only one person can be said to have had complete security, a life term convict in the penitentiary. He’s completely cared for. He has nothing to worry about. He has real security. His life is really recession free. Look at the price he had to pay for it.
So it is relatively said, when you look into security, it’s important that we are secure, not so much with things, we got our conditions, but secure in our awareness in who we are and telling us it’s the right flow. Two basic drives within every person, human and divine. Human, we seek to settle down, to be safe, to build fences, to be financially and physically secure. Hippi said that if we’ve not risen above the lure, the human agnation to be safe at all costs, we should be living in caves, if we need the human race to be living at all.
In the early days of life on earth, Homo sapiens we’re surrounded by great beasts, with superb built in defenses, tusks, hides, claws, wings, shells, tremendous root strength. The human creature, seemingly so inadequate, so helpless, survived. Yet his defenses were in his creative ability and the intuitive flow within him in his spiritual dimension.
If the human species had always tried to simply be safe at all costs, there would have been no Moses, leaving the country of Egypt to lead these people through a vast wilderness into their promised land. There would have been no Columbus, leaving uncharted seas to discover a new world. If you think only of being safe, you stifled the urges of personal growth and achievement. Today in our study of truth, we work with the idea that we’re spiritual beings having residence in a spiritual world, governance sustained by spiritual law. And basic to this universe is an omnipresent prosperity producing substance, the creative intention to flow forth into our lives with abundance. It could be said and should be that God loves a prosperous person.
Jesus said it’s his father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. When you work to secure prosperity, it may surprise you when we say you would be giving pleasure to God. Unfortunately, this beautiful teaching is often grossly materialized. And courses and lectures on such subjects as how to become a millionaire. It clearly is geared to the acquisitive instinct. What the writers and teachers who talk liberty of the million conscious tend to conveniently overlook is is that the linear models they use to a person, sees their great influence not because of a desire to find security and make money, but because they were entrepreneurs, risk takers, adventures all.
And beyond the barriers of achieve .. of recessive limitations, somebody said it could be one of these models. The best way to be safe is never to be secure. I love the thoughts of Ralph Edwards, who did some pioneering work up in the Yukon, the survival ability of a person in extreme conditions. Someone I was talking to him about this. You’re telling how you went up there with nothing to prove a man could survive. He said, “All I had was a lot of sheer necessity.”
It’s an indication that security comes sometimes from having nothing, learning the drive to achieve. How better it is for a person who rises out of a very difficult experience to achieve security than a person who is born into a comfortable position who doesn’t have to strive at all. There’s no security. That’s why he knows that he has the ability to rise above whatever happens around him. One of the places in life where there’s likely to be at least a subconscious sense of insecurity than your job. You say, “But I’m not insecure in my job. I feel very happy about it.” There is this unconscious subtle sense, if you’ve taken a job, it’s possible to lose a job.
Because jobs are part of the changing world around us. We’ve been in a job on our lives and it’s pretty secure. But the world I live in is a world where changes change it up. The human experience changes constantly. So, you find your mind experiencing anxiety and stress, when you hear about such things as the possibility of mass layoffs. You need to reconsider recession proofing your life. If you’ve learned to affirm for yourself, and if “The God is the source of my supply, and I’ve lost my job as a channel through which it flows.”
One place where there’s an evidence of rapid and accelerating change in the workplaces of America. Whole industries are disappearing. New industries are developing. These changes present challenges for the worker. And you may note that your work is a job that did not exist possibly in the present form a decade ago. There’s a constant change in the market place. Few persons can any longer learn a set of skills and expect to stick with them all their life. Even trades like printing and electronics has shifted so drastically that a skilled craftsmen is continuing to learn new ways. Job loss in the smokestack industries is unfortunate. That is the classic example of the challenge of change in our times.
Thousands of people, men and women, have worked at all the employment lines in one job, developing and perfecting a single skill. And suddenly they’re laid off, they’re now facing a prospect that the job will never return. They might be too young and financially insecure to retire, or facing a societal attitude that they’re too old to get another job, unless they’re fortunate enough to have other skills which they rarely have. They’re faced with an Hobbsean choice, going back to school to learn new skills and going on welfare. How can you plan for this kind of a future? Important thing, make yourself recession proof. You got always control what happens to you, but you can control what happens in you, your reactions, your moods, your expectations. Because light is consciousness. You can all do your work without changing your job.
You can all do your work without changing your job, and where you can meet in a calm assurance of security, even in the face of the job layoff. You make a commitment to take charge of your life. You may take two courses of action available to you, perceive security against adversity, taking personal charge of your career, launching out perhaps in business for yourself, investing your time, talents and money in the great adventure of faith. You hear me? An entrepreneur, in other words. Because few persons have the confidence and courage to take this course, complaining it may be unwise to do so. But the other alternative, one that should be the obvious course of action for the student of truth, become what I call an intrepreneur. Intreprenuer is I-N, intrepreneur. You rein with your present employer.
You don’t have to go out to some other job. Change your environment, change your thoughts about it. Change your goals, your values, your priorities, achieving a new kind of independence, a vital form of fulfillment in your pursuit of your excellent life of excellence. Intrepreneurship calls first of all for a change in value directed ... to inner directed values, innovative and enterprising ways. You can discover new ways to make your job offer other more creative challenges. You develop a new sense of “worthship” and probably a new vital worth having. A security is less entangled with whoever your employer. Your success and your prosperity are firmly tied to the creative flow within. And by the principle of seek first the King and all these things shall be added, you’re probably becoming a more vital and valued asset to your employer too.
The intrepreneur is sensitive to changing times and responsive to obvious needs to make corresponding interchanges. For the work of the future is likely to require a great deal of flexibility, not just one set of skills acquired early, essentially good for life, rather than an evolving body of knowledge. New opportunity’s calling for greatly modified skills. Lifelong learning is no longer a desirable luxury. It’s a vital necessity.
Achieving security in a changing world would seem to suggest a need for insurance. This is not as perplexing to the student of truth. Replace the emphasis on divine protection, stepping out on the promises. It seems to be kind of backsliding to take our policies for life insurance, fire insurance, economic existence.
Salesmen will outline all the cataclysmic things that could happen to you. Of course, for which he’d like to insure you. And where you can choose between the very practical matter of financial protection and of trusting the divine process. The intent is damage to come only only in your own mind, your consciousness and the ever presence of the divine flow. Maybe in the insurance conscious culture, it may be wise to have at least minimum coverage in the major areas of life. That’s because we tend to observe from the race conscious as by osmosis, many thought patterns posed by insurance people. It’s the better part of wisdom to start out on an automobile trip with four good tires and a spare tire, so you can relax and enjoy the journey. But the spare tire is not a symbol of fair, not an evidence of wisdom and good planning.
Some of the cases seems he was talking about divine protection and singing .. he says yes that some persons may need insurance. There’s a great difference between wanting to believe and really believing. Often we say, “I believe. I have faith that things will work out for me. I have faith that God will take care of me no matter what happens.”
You see, there’s a great difference between wanting to believe and really believing. We’ll talk about this a little bit more next Sunday. You hear the call to honesty of the man who asked Jesus for help. He said, “I believe, how’d that I’m an unbeliever.” I’ll drop in a person refuses to pay to the unbelief, it’s hidden underneath. Willfully it follows, accept it is, of course, his independence, accepting responsibility for his affairs ... never accepting the full responsibility for his parish, and without a real conscience of the divine protection. He needs his help hear and his support rather than just a saying. It’s a kind of irresponsible behavior. In practical matters, it’s why you should listen to your consciousness, not just to your ideals. How many person may ask, “Should I have the operation prescribed by my doctor? Should I trust in God to heal me?”
It’s a puzzling question to which I offer a short answer. God doesn’t heal. God is life. Consciousness heals as it accepts the flow of life. You have a deep seated fear about your condition. It’s not likely that you’ll be able to accept spiritually healing the flow of life in you. Like in the conscience of one that’s with the ever-present activity have God, you might be well advised to call your doctor’s guidance. Again, listen to your consciousness. Let no one decide for you whether or not to have an operation. It’s your life and your state of mind, not somebody else’s.
And the same holds true in the matter of insurance. Certainly, God will protect. Actually, God is a protecting force which is ever present. You live and move and have your being under the shadow of the Almighty. You can never be outside of the presence of God. You learn to take on a protective mantle. No untoward circumstances can occur around you or to you. However, if you’re not sending in this consciousness, or at least unable .. as long as you sustain it, maybe you’d better take along a spare tire. Unless this implies a minimum kind of insurance. Yet, let no one decide for you. Listen to your consciousness, always leading courageously.
Essentially, improving your life might suggest some form of disciplined saving, saving up the nest egg burden and difficult circumstances that may occur. So, let me ask, isn’t the practice saving negative? Why should I save if I am a child of God, appointed by the universe, like a lily of the field? Once again, the motivation is the key. You save for a rainy day, but undoubtedly rain buckets and often. Why do you feel you want to save? All nature saves. Saving is a mature practice. The physical body is a self conserving process. You have the Great Lakes of the world to conserve water and to sustain the earth’s flow all year round. Saving is natural and orderly.
Although, it is important to get a higher consciousness, a higher vision, save for opportunities and for emergencies. You may continue to do what you’ve been doing, but a new attitude is necessary. If you’re saving with the thought of providing a nest egg, it will tide you over something, if something should happen. You’re engaging in emergency consciousness. You may actually be creating an environment in which those things can happen. But save by all means.
It may enable you to avail yourself of positive opportunities which may from time to time unfold. Save for opportunities, not for emergencies. There’s a point of understand this, you can’t get a prosperity consciousness on the stock market. You can’t achieve true security through insurance. You don’t get rich by just by saving your money. But if you work diligently to establish yourself in the consciencness and the divine flow of substance, actually get the feeling that you live in the boundless sea of affluence, and by standing in support of influence of this consciousness, your assets mature to grow through investment. Your failures may be cared for through the insurance. And your savings may create a vehicle for prosperity. But think first the kingdom.
Think first to get the awareness of the allness of substance. Out of that awareness, you’ll feel secure. This feeling may give rise to you ideas and the guidance supposed to invest your money inside an insurance savings and all these things you’ll be getting from within. In my book, Unity of All Life, I tell the story of a man who was cleaning up his work at his desk on a Friday evening. And there was an envelope that had not been opened. It had been left ever by someone during the day and he hadn’t seen it. She he opened the letter. And he read to his dismay, it was a notice of termination with his job. The entire department was being eliminated, his position along with it.
He found himself thinking, “After all the years I’ve given to this company to have this kind of treatment.” He stood with resentment and a sense of injustice, fear, anxiety. Where was he going to go? What was he going to do? His life was over. His whole life, he did his job. He had nothing else, no other opportunities for work. He sat at his desk long past the planned departure time, slumped in his chair in utter despair and defeat. Some have said that the greatest shock the system sustained is the unfortunate retirement.
So he thought through all the terrible things that had happened to him. Sure, he would have to sell his house. It had changed his whole lifestyle. He’s not prepared financially for retirement and yet he was at an age normally considered too old to get another job. The specter of destitution at length hovered over his horizon. Even more severe was the shock of the feeling that that he was no longer needed, useless, through, washed up.
He noticed a spider on the desk. And then he brushed it off. Suddenly, he sat watching in amazement. This tiny creature automatically spun a strand to bear his weight and streamed gracefully to the floor. He had to wonder why if this tiny creature could draw forth from within itself to reserve a substance to need in emergency, why could I not do as much?
For many hours he sat deep in troubled thoughts that turned gradually to creative meditation. Finally, the conviction came that the source of his supply, his security, not in his job, not in the money he’d saved, not in his possessions, his investments. His security was in his oneness with the allness of infinite mind. He might have well be taken from the payroll. But no one could cut him off from the creative flow of the infinite universe.
The man had been artistic by nature. Being forced to do office work had always irked him. He’d been earning his living by the sweat of his brow. In his spare time, he’d done a little writing, which occasionally he found publication. I think he longed for the opportunity to write for a living. Now he realizes that opportunity. A whole new frame of mind took possession of him. He blessed his retirement, thanked God for the new door that was open for him, left the office of with a buoyancy and confidence that even surprised himself.
It was reported this man went on to great success. He was a writer. Real life has made him a great success with an infinite number of levels in between. True greatness depends more on inner overcoming than on our achievements. I can report that our man did accomplish some great things with himself. He developed within himself great mastery. He deep feeling of security. And he did enough good writing to earn a few checks each month. That’s more than doubled his half pay retirement income. The security within himself.
The word secure comes from two Latin words, sur meaning without, cure meaning care. Without care. Freedom from anxiety. Victor Hugo articulates this very special sense in this lovely covenant. He says, “Be like the bird, who pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her and yet sings, knowing she hath wing.”
Maybe surrounded by grim fore warnings of job layoffs and of inflation, and of recession, go ahead and remind yourself that your security is not in the boughs too slight, but in your wings of taith. Enter a relationship with a divine process that flows from within. In a changing world, you may not be able to keep difficulties from happening around you. You can’t control the stock market or what happens to the dollar. Occasionally, figuratively speaking, you might be in water over your head. But if you can swim, deep water is no longer that bad. What is swimming but fun if you’re not afraid of the water?
There’s an old hymn that many of us know well. It says, “Everywhere, change and decay I see. Whoever changest not, abide with me.” We have a very important realization in getting this recession proofing consciousness. That there is always there within us that is changeless. Changes happen no matter how things change, no matter how the world honors, you know that people say I do, what you read in the papers, what happens in our job, in the marketplace, or what happens around the world, you can see change and decay everywhere. That’s the human aspects of life. In the divine level of life is a changeless-ness within us, the spirit within.
Your Christ self, your God self, you’re changeless. It’s because of this changeless-ness with the Christ side of you that you’re able to rise above all the limitations of human life. This is what Jesus was trying to prove in his life. “Follow me,” he said. “Follow me and follow the changeless eternal awareness of divine law.” You can never be defeated. You never be discouraged. You can never be overcome. I want you know that within you is changeless-ness of the spirit.
Security is not a found in things. You’re secure because ... not because of your investments, your security and your jobs and your possessions. Security, you may experience in only one way, by identifying yourself as a channel of the flow of infinite Mind, ideas when they go according to the kingdom.
You’re a little chunk of the growing flow of divine substance out of which we wrote in Christ and are good. Many may be depleted, jobs going to be lost. Things may wear out. You’re lost or stolen. But ideas endure and recreate. When you have the great idea in mind that you are an individualized expression of universal flow, there’s a Christ side of you or God side of you that is complete and perfect. And then Thoreau says, “You may live with a license of a higher order of beings.”
I’d like invite you to join me for moment of quiet. I want you to use your imaging faculty. I want you to see yourself living and alive in dynamic universe, surrounded by beauty, creativity and all good. This is the life that is yours in potential. Feel yourself sitting before a mountain lake, surrounded by an atmosphere of beauty, high peaks, tall trees, grasses in the field around you. There’s cool sparkling water in the lake before you.
I want you to look down into the lake. First of all, you see the reflections of the mountains and the trees in the distance. Beautiful sight. You look further over in ... lean over further into the water. See the image of yourself. In this image, you see yourself as one with the universe of stability and order. Let’s just say to this energy seen in the water, is that which reflects the God process within you. You see this person as being prospered, successful, in all human ways.
You see beyond this self and the reflection in the water. Imagine all your life around you, your work, your relationships, the world in which you live. See it not as it may not be, but as you believe it can be. See peace among people, among nations. See prosperity and security in the lives of all persons, including yourself. See love and fellowship. See the constant flow of good. This is the world, the transcendence, as the cosmic division reveals to you. And believe that this, the image that you see in the water of yourself and the world around you, is the reality.
It’s the real world, it’s the real relationships, it’s the the real situation, it’s the real self view. You look long at this vision and impress upon your consciousness. The great things of life that came in it for you. It’s why Jesus of Bethlehem said, “The Kingdom of God” and that was observation. The kingdom of God is within you.
This vision that you see in the water now is the reality within you. It will be a vision, a pattern, a plan, specifications for the future, always within you. Give thanks if you can sustain this image over the days and weeks to come, I think especially you have to do this.
It’s what keeps you in a constant freedom from all the outward conditions of change in the world. To keep you aware of your security within God. Thank God. Give thanks that you have the ability, expanding and developing within you, to be completely recession free. Totally uninfluenced by the world of change. And all the world change and decay actually without ... right, change does not abide with me. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, so be it.
