Eric Butterworth Speaks: Essays on Abundant Living #77
Delivered by Eric Butterworth on September 14, 1975
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The starting point in all spiritual realization is an understanding of the ONE which we call God. But how easily we lapse into a duality that implies two...while dealing intellectually with the ONE. It has been said, “God is a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” Seems impossible! Yet, if the center is everywhere, it must be where I am. Could this be the meaning of omnipresence? A point of life and light, present everywhere, as the person. Startling though it may seem, I am the center of God. Every point in this sphere is God, is a bubbling forth of the infinite flow of life.
The whole Universe is concentrated at the point where you are. You are the Universe expressing as you. It stands behind you with its full resources. Isn’t this what Jesus meant when he said, “The Kingdom of God is within you ... It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”
Proving that there is nothing new in New Thought, the following is from Lao-Tzu in ancient China in the 6th century B.C.: “The human spirit has its source in the divine fountain which must be permitted to flow freely through man. Anyone who flows as life flows has solved the enigma of human existence and needs no other power. Anything is evil that blocks the flow of creative action, and everything is healthy that flows with the Universe.”
This insight reverses the whole psychology of human experience. For we have been taught that we are born into life as empty creatures who go out into life to be filled. It is as if we are given little begging bowls that we hold out everywhere—to our parents for love, to our teacher for learning, to our church for religious values, to the market-place for our security and supply. And... life is always the sum total of what we have gleaned from the world outside.
However, in the concept of the flow ... we come into the world as an unfoldment of the Universal flow. We are living souls to be discovered and released. Life, love, substance, and creativity ... all that we can ever need ... are within us in that Kingdom that it is the Father’s good pleasure to give to us.
Metaphysics emphasizes how great the mind is. And with good reason. But in another sense we should realize that our mind is simply an instrument. The affluence of heaven and earth will stream into and through the mind if we can get our bloated nothingness, as Emerson refers to it, out of the way.
The free flow of ideas and creativity is your inheritance. You can dip into the flow at any time. As fast as you can snap your fingers the answer can come in the form of the completed plan and the means for its fulfillment. Whenever you feel the pressure of time in something that requires a creative idea ... just snap your fingers lightheartedly as a symbolic reminder that in one instant the answer may come forth.
There is a flow of harmony and love and light and life and substance everywhere. You are that flow ... whether you are aware of it or not, whether you are frustrating it or not. This is what “omnipresence” is. You do not leave the Presence of God or the flow of life when you are negative or resistant. You leave the consciousness of the Presence. You are always in the flow ... and it is always in you. You may not know how or why you lose the consciousness of the flow, but of one thing you can be sure—if you are not experiencing health, if there are problems in your work, or if you are being pushed around, you are out of the consciousness of the flow. Thus, the need in healing or prosperity, or inharmony, etc., is to get back into the awareness of the creative flow. It is not something you have to turn on. The flow is constant. Your prayer is not to generate the flow, but to acknowledge it, and thus to get your thoughts synchronized with it.
The “flow” concept gives new meaning to prayer. It is not what you say to God, nor is it putting affirmations into your mind. And there is no need for intensity or will; no need to repeat words of Truth over and over. Actually, an affirmation or treatment should be spoken “like a feather on the breeze.” For it is really our consent, our way of saying “Yes” to the flow. You are a dynamic center in the creative flow, which is God. You have a built-in capacity for health and success. You can be more, do more, have more in life because you are inexorably linked to the transcendent flow of life.
Take a few minutes before you arise in the morning to get yourself synchronized in consciousness with the flow of life. Affirm something like this: “I am in the flow of life, and I move easily with the flow. I am radiantly and enthusiastically alive. I am free from tension, stress and strain, and I go forward in the flow unhurried and unworried.” Also, affirm that you are in the flow of love—keeping you in right relations with people; in the flow of substance—keeping you in prosperity and success, etc.
When you are consciously in the flow, you know that things and experiences do not come into your life to stay—they “come to pass.” Life is not ended with some mistake or failure. Face the experience courageously. Meet it on your terms. And, in the flow of life, all that is limiting or dark will pass away.
Take a loose hold on things and persons and experiences. If you have had a miserable day, it has come to pass. It gave you a challenge to reach for a higher level of consciousness. No need to rehearse the problems and feel sorry for yourself. It has come to pass. Even if it was the best day you have ever had, you can’t hold on to it. The sale is made, the book is written, the ball game won. But tomorrow you still need the vision to meet a new day. There will be other sales to make, other books to write, other games to play. Happiness is not in savoring things, but in knowing that you are in the flow of life. For you know that, in the flow, there will be a continuity of good for you.
In the flow of life, you are on the winning side, you are in the stream of wholeness, you are in harmony with people and conditions. You walk confidently in the light.
A good affirmation for meditation is this slightly paraphrased statement of Plotinus:
“Let your mind and heart release all that disturbs you.
Let your body be still,
and all the frettings of your body, and all that surrounds it—
let the earth and sea and air be still, and heaven itself;
and then think of spirit
as streaming, pouring, rushing, and shining
into you, through you, and out from you in all directions while you sit quiet.”
© 1975, by Eric Butterworth
