The Consciousness of Doris

We hear a lot about consciousness in the Science of Mind The dictionary says it is being aware of myself as a thinking, feeling being. So I wonder...do I have a prosperity consciousness, a consciousness of health? What is it exactly, so I would know when I have it?

A few years ago I took an acting class at a community college. One thing our teacher said was, "We need to think of our essence up there. We need to increase our volume, our energy, and to let the life force flow through us." Sounds like the beginning of a Religious Science treatment.

There is more work involved in acting than I realized...learn lines, block actions, identify the intention behind every movement, and write a road map or score, outlining the character's objectives, obstacles, inner images, and stream of consciousness. In order to really act, I must go beyond being an actor playing a part. I must become the character, at least while on stage.

With a partner, I presented a scene from the romantic comedy, SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR. George and Doris, both married with three children each, meet and have a one-night stand in 1951. I play Doris, and my partner plays George. Although feeling guilty, we connect and continue to meet each year...same time, same place, over a 24-year period.

In our scene, we are meeting in 1975 for the 24th time. George reveals that his wife, Helen, has passed away. He learned from a family friend that Helen knew of his relationship with me for over 10 years. George attempts to persuade me to marry him, but I prefer the status quo.

Feedback from the teacher was generally good; however, she felt that we were actors playing the parts of Doris and George. We hadn't yet become Doris and George. So we redid part of the scene, where I was arranging some flowers while George was deliberating how to make his proposal of marriage.

We were to think as the characters, rather than think about what we were doing I began to think as Doris. "I'm so happy to be here today. I've looked forward to seeing George all this year. I love the scent of these flowers They feel so good against my skin. I feel so good today. I love George."

I looked back at George, and caught his eye. He was smiling at me. In that instant, I felt like Doris. I became Doris. I had the consciousness of Doris. There was a huge difference in our performances. As we became Doris and George, we manifested believable characters onstage.

So how does this relate to Religious Science? "What we believe about a thing affects what it becomes to us, according to the law of consciousness," says Eric Butterworth. As I believed that I was Doris, experienced the happiness of Doris and the love of Doris for George, I felt alive and authentic...even though I was acting.

I also realized that putting into practice what I learn in Science of Mind doesn't flow without the consciousness of belief. Having that brief moment as the consciousness of Doris, I sense how to develop the consciousness of health, prosperity, creative expression, loving relationships, and more. I sense how to develop a consciousness of my connection to the Universal Life Force, and to allow that spiritual energy to flow through me, as me.

And so it is

Buddha Comes to Dinner

One perk of retirement that I truly enjoy is the time to read, plus my ability to borrow up to 30 books at a time from our local public library.

My reading has been focused in my current passions...photography and health. The latter includes diets, nutritional supplements, fitness, physical ailments, anti-aging, etc. I'm particularly interested in senior fitness as I'm leading the Dynamos, a health and fitness group at our Spiritual Center, and I look for interesting bits of information to share with the group at our regular Healthy Potlucks.

There is a lot of conflicting information information, a lot of "miracles" to be found in such things as magnesium, rhodiola, apple cider vinegar, fasting, soil organisms, bioidentical hormones, and satisfying our bodies' need for water. Everyone seems to want to loses weight, so there are many, many diet programs: low carb, high protein, low fat, you name it.

So it was very pleasant to come across a book by Hale Sofia Schatz, IF THE BUDDHA CAME TO DINNER. She discusses bringing Buddha consciousness, or spiritual consciousness, to nourishing ourselves.

With our fast paced lives, we often eat processed and fast foods on the run. Many of us don't think beyond the taste and convenience of food, losing the connection between what we eat, why we feed ourselves, and how we feel.

Schatz says that the simple, daily act of eating can become a profound catalyst for spiritual growth and a renewed sense of vitality and purpose in life.

She asks: As spiritual beings, how do we feed ourselves to nourish our body heart, mind and spirit with the care and awareness we deserve, in ways that encourage our spiritual growth. Imagine the Buddha is coming to dinner...we wouldn't serve hamburgers and French fries. We'd prepare a fresh, tasty, wholesome meal exquisitely in our own kitchen.

She calls for "transformational nourishment"...to transform our habitual, constricting patterns and behaviors into nourishing practices that encourage growth and development, that turn food and eating into a daily practice for becoming physically, emotionally and spiritually aware.

When we are nourished, we know who we are. We know how we feel, we understand our priorities, and we have a clearer understanding of our deep purpose in life. We act in ways that honor our truest self; we move through life with graceful strength; we feed our bodies, hearts, minds and spirits as one integrated being.

She asks us to become aware of WHO we are feeding with the choices we make...our petulant inner child, our rebellious adolescent, or our feelings of sadness, depression or inadequacy.

We need to shift our food consumption to more vital essence, life-affirming foods such as organic, seasonal vegetables and fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, and non-GMO soy products. She also recommends antibiotic-free meat and dairy products, high quality oils such as flax, and purified drinking water.

Her recommendations are consistent with a number of other authors, with the additional acknowledgment that we are spiritual beings seeking to nourish the shining life force that already exists within us. And to eat as though the Buddha is sitting down to dinner with us each day.

Ernest Holmes agrees when he says: The whole being needs to be fed...bread and meat for the body, knowledge and wisdom for the soul, and atmosphere and consciousness for the Spirit.

Food must be a spiritual idea. We cannot expect to overeat or to eat the wrong things and have them agree with us. There is an intelligence within us to guide us into a proper diet. Whatever our individual physical system needs to make our food intake harmonious, Intelligence will guide us to.

We can declare: My food agrees with me and I agree with it. I understand that food is a spiritual idea of Substance and I am now in complete agreement with this idea. My digestion works in perfect harmony with all that I take into my body. My food is spiritual and harmonious with my system. I move forward with physical energy, mental clarity, creativity and focus.

And so it is,

I Attract a Loving Relationship

This is a Spiritual Mind Treatment, or affirmative prayer, for attracting a loving and committed relationship.

There is one Creative Intelligence that is everywhere present. It is the Creator that creates all. It creates me, flows through me, supports me and expresses as me. I am Creative Intelligence in action.

I have within me all the confidence, charisma, compassion and understanding to draw to myself a deep, satisfying and loving relationship with a loving, committed mate. I radiate the qualities that I desire in another person. I know that somewhere there is someone who needs and wants a loving relationship with me. I connect with a committed relationship that is mutually beneficial, mutually fulfilling and mutually loving. We are intuitively in harmony; we love and enjoy each other just as we are. I am loved and loving, and know with certainty that I attract the right and perfect mate to share my journey through life. Spirit moves beneath the surface to bring us together.

I gratefully receive and give thanks for this perfect relationship, and more. I release my word into the Universe, knowing it is already so.

And so it is.

Personal Legend

This Creative Thought was presented at our Center's Sunday service in October 2008.

Tonight our Spiritual Book Club is discussing THE ALCHEMIST, a book by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. The story is about an Andalusian shepherd boy who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert to fulfill his destiny, his Personal Legend, his personal calling...to claim the life of his dreams. The story could be a metaphor for our own journey to find and live our personal vision, purpose, mission.

So I thought as I was reading this...what's MY Personal Legend? Do I have a path, as the book says, charted by the mysterious magnet of destiny but obscured by distraction? I couldn't think of anything.

A speaker at a recent Wednesday Night service talked about declaring and manifesting our dreams. Someone in the audience stated her dream as winning the lottery, specifically $100 million dollars, by a certain date.

Hmmm! I thought. I can't imagine that! But I can't imagine anything right now. I felt dreamless. No Personal Legend, no personal calling, no vision, purpose, mission was coming to mind. A big blank.

Maybe this was a reflection of the grief process, I thought. My husband of 43 years is gone now...over five months ago. I'm still sitting in what I call "the silence of the great unstructured emptiness," not certain which way to go, which structure to create.

At one time I had a passion for photography; I thought I might start a business. I had one wall in my living room covered with 13x19-inch borderless prints.

One day I took them all down. Why was that? I had enjoyed making them; we enjoyed looking at them. But now Larry was gone. He had been my biggest fan! The mutual sharing was gone, and the photos lost their appeal.

I enjoy visiting my children and grandchildren. Recently I visited my son in Washington, D.. and had a lovely time. A former college roommate, an artist, came to stay with us for awhile and we toured the major art galleries.

We contacted another roommate from our college days...50 years ago! We looked at our graying hair and expanded girth and wondered aloud: "What happened?" But it was delightful. I have a new grandchild, Athena, who I'm going to visit soon. I'm certain that will be delightful, also.

Somehow, though, I was not seeing my Personal Legend emerging. I felt rudderless.

Listening to Eckhart Tolle recently on a DVD brought new perspective. He talked about evolving our consciousness beyond our Ego, beyond our obsession with form, and focusing instead on the present moment, the here and now.

He asked, "Who would you be without your story?" Really, who WOULD I be without my story? I'm so attached to my story; it's so much a part of me.

But as he spoke, I had a vision of my "story" collapsing, like photographs fluttering down and settling within the pages of my Life Story book. I actually have such a book. I created it over four years ago...71 pages of photos and text outlining my "Life and Times." It was one of the first books I created using an online publishing program.

In this vision, I am standing ALONE in the darkness without my story, which is safely stsored away in the book. I seem to be on a plain that stretches in all directions. And I am at peace, simply BEING. I make peace with the present moment...the field on which the game of life happens. I am one with Life...in the Now. I simply allow life to live through me, to see what happens, and not futz about some future Personal Legend or vision, purpose, mission. I simply allow it to emerge, in its own way, in its own time.

It's not WHAT we do, but HOW we do it that determines whether we are fulfilling our destiny according to Eckhart Tolle. Transcend the ego-based state of consciousness and awaken to consciousness of alignment with creative principle of the Universe.

As Ernest Holmes says, "Meditating on the Perfect Life is a royal road to freedom and happiness. Let us daily say, 'Perfect God within me, Perfect Life within me, which is God, come forth into expression through me as that which I am; lead me ever into the paths of perfection and cause me to see only the Good.'"

And so it is.

Elysian Fields

I presented this Creative Thought as part of our Center's Sunday service in June 2008.

I was last scheduled to preside on May 4, which turned out to be the day of my husband Larry's Memorial Service. He has made his transition, and I have become a widow after 43 years of marriage.

Larry was journalist, a professor and a writer. I recently came upon an unfinished novel from his youth, called "In Adam's Fall."

He wrote of a 21-year-old man wandering the country with "an intensity, a rage, a life-lust, a God-hunger so powerful, so driving, so maddening, that the youth had been hurled, storming, eyes wide, fingers aching, heart-pounding, down the Atlantic to Savannah, across 80 to the Mississippi, up the waters to St. Paul where he headed West, into the sun-cracked dirt and rain-whelped wheat, to float down into the desert, to pass through the desert, to California, the State of Gold, where he swam into the Pacific, spit salt water into the skies, and turned around going North..."

"His was the odyssey of the God-seeker. He scoured the land, its people but never remained long enough to know what he had uncovered. To Know, to know, that is, to love."

His character, Martin, probably autobiographical, was intensely searching to find God, and was disappointed.

This writing was interesting because Larry, while religious in his youth...even to the point of studying with an orthodox Jewish Lubavitcher sect in Montreal...did not expect an afterlife, or some experience of consciousness after death.

I remember him saying he could live in a world without answers; or he could not fathom a God who would permit the Holocaust. He had no fear of death; had no incompletions concerning his life here on Earth, and was totally ready to go. In fact, he stopped taking his meds on his own, after a lengthy illness, when he decided he'd had enough.

The children came immediately when I called. Larry was alert enough to recognize them when they came, even little grandson Samuel, and then became unresponsive for two days.

We three were with him when he passed. I had never experienced someone dying before. As he took his last breath, his eyes popped open and he had this look--of amazement and surprise. I believe he saw the Other Side. He saw something he didn't expect. My son David, the mathematician, said it was perhaps a neuromuscular response, but later admitted: "I've been an atheist, but now I'm an agnostic!"

The children stayed awhile and then I was alone. After taking David to the Flyaway, I came home to the silence. And I grieved. Deeply. My grief surprised me. As I sat in Larry's chair and sobbed, suddenly an image of him flashed across my consciousness.

And he looked absolutely delighted. He was young, vital, no beard, a blue shirt, and he was exuding happiness. No wonder! I was left with all the minutiae of "maintenance mode." But what a wonderful image to replace the one of him wasted in his bed. What a wonderful gift to come back to tell me he was O.K.

I was telling this to a friend back East, and said: "Do I sound wacky?" And she said: "Yes!" To my friends in California, however, I'm not wacky at all. I'm glad I live here.

The last two months have demanded spasms of competency, as I deal with matters of the estate, interspersed with spasms of grief. I've had to come to grips with losing half of myself, as my social worker, Bonnie, puts it. I've had to go from 0 to 60 to learn to do things I never did before.

I realize I was truly taken care of, pampered...Larry did the nitty gritty stuff of life, while I was flitting about on my spiritual ministry, or doing creative expression through photography.

Now I make lengthy lists...the car insurance, the home insurance, the home taxes, dealing with his pension fund, social security, the health insurer, finding an attorney, learning about IRAs, getting the car registered and smog checked, getting my own cell phone minutes. Can you imagine? I didn't even get my own cell phone minutes.

I'm convinced there is an Other Side, another dimension beyond this one. I didn't always think so. But in addition to the writings of Ernest Holmes, I explored the work of Robert Munroe and his out-of-body experiences, and books like THE GOD CODE, and quite a few others.

It's not so far-fetched to believe, as Ernest Holmes says, "There is more to us than we realize. Man is an eternal destiny, a forever-expanding principle of conscious intelligence...the ocean in the drop of water, the sun in its rays. Man, the real man, is birthless, deathless, changeless; and God, as man, in man IS man! The highest God and the innermost God is One and the same God."

As Larry wrote in his early novel, "For no man, not even intense 21-year-old God-seekers, can find the superhuman in the human, can they? The Elysian Fields aren't to be found on a map of the United States, are they?

Not likely, I say, but I feel that Larry found his Elysian Fields. And that brings me comfort.

And so it is.

Change

What is change? According to the dictionary, it means to make or become different; it implies making either an essential difference often amounting to a loss of original identity or a substitution of one thing for another.

One day last summer, I encountered three instances where people made radical changes.

I have a family friend who had lost his wife of 50 plus years, and I called him periodically to see how he was doing. I had lost my own husband/life partner of 43 years the previous year, so I knew how challenging that can be. The first time I called, he was truly devastated and expressed how lonely he was; he asked me if I was coming to the East Coast--he'd meet me anywhere. He'd love to have me visit.

A short time later I made a second call; he seemed to have a support system developing around him, but he was still lonely. The third time he informed me he had initiated a relationship. WE would be delighted to have me visit, he said.

Wow! That was fast. None of this, "don't make any radical changes for a year" stuff, which was the advice I had received from the hospice social worker and others. He was lonely. BAM! Decision. And I made this momentary judgmental generalization: Men! Freaking Cowards! Can't handle a little loneliness?

But I immediately thought better of it. Why should he be lonely? He knew this woman; he and his wife had provided help and support during her husband's illness and death, and then she was a support during the illness and death of his own wife.

So they had history. And, what the heck! He's 80! Time left...make it count

After digesting that news, I watched a Netflix movie, THE RED GUITAR, about a young woman who, in the course of one day, experiences three things: she learns she has inoperable throat cancer and two months, at the outside, to live; she's being ousted from her job; and her boyfriend is dumping her.

While she's contemplating suicide in her bathtub with a razor blade, which falls to the floor, she sees an ad for short-term rental of a loft in an elegant building.

She investigates and leases this very spacious, totally empty loft with a fabulous view; she has a phone installed, and commences to use her credit cards to order whatever she needs or wants...furniture, decorations, clothing, food. Instead of her usual vegetarian food, she orders pizza.

She sees no one except the pizza delivery girl and the delivery man for her many purchases. Before long she develops relationships with each of them, and then both of them together. This is totally new for her. For awhile, they have a menage a trois.

Most importantly, she remembers her childhood dream of having a red acoustic guitar, which she purchases...along with a bank of huge speakers and some DVDs to teach herself to play guitar.

Time passes, and one day she realizes that two months are up, she has to leave the apartment, she can still talk and she doesn't seem sick. She goes back to the doctor, who is astonished and says: "The cancer's gone. What did you do? What did you change? Your diet? Exercise? What?"

"Everything," she said. "I changed everything."

Her rental period was up; she had to leave the apartment. She sells off the stuff she had purchased, leaves the loft with only her guitar, and goes to the park. She finds a small speaker, and begins to play. Three young musicians come by and hear her. The final scene of the movie...you guessed it: she's playing with a rock bank in a club and having a fabulous time.

Now, that movie was fiction. It so happens that later that day I was to meet some friends to see another movie...THE HANGOVER, about three guys who go to Vegas for a bachelor party with their friend Doug, who's about to be married.

Doug disappears, they can't remember what happened the previous night, and they're trying to find him. At one point, they hear banging from the trunk of their car, and thinking they've found Doug...they pop the trunk!

Who should pop out but...my former internist from my HMO. I kid you not. Stark naked and full frontal nudity. I was a bit shocked to see my former doctor, an Asian gentleman. He does some martial arts sparring, jumps on one of the guys and then runs off. And I thought, Wow! This guy is fearless!

I knew my doctor had left medicine for the comedy circuit, and I had seen him previously play a doctor in the film, KNOCKED UP. Now he had moved up to playing a comical yet dangerous gangster, and his name was prominent in the credits. His movie career is flourishing.

This was a lot for me to ponder in the course of a day...three messages about change. I felt inspired. I'm going to make some changes, I tell myself. Stop waffling.

What was it that Ernest Holmes said about change? Change your thinking, change your life! Each of us today is the result of the use we make of the Law, either consciously or unconsciously. What we are now experiencing is the result of where we focus our attention and thoughts. We can change our thinking...and impress our thoughts upon the ever-present Thinking Stuff of the Universe from which all things come.

So my friend back East, the fictional girl with her guitar dreams, and the HMO doctor...followed their hearts, took the actions they needed to take...and are living the dream. It CAN be done. And so it is.

Margaret Fuller Monologue

In an Emerson class I took recently at our Center, each student took the part of a Transcendentalist for a fun and entertaining round table discussion. I took the part of Margaret Fuller and used this monologue as a base for my role.

Good evening. I'm Margaret Fuller, born in 1810. My full name is really Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli. If you're wondering about the name Ossoli, there is some controversy over whether I was really married to Giovanni Ossoli. I assure you we were, secretly, in Italy after I had been sent to Europe by Horace Greely as the first female correspondent of THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE in 1846. By 1847 I had based myself in Rome.

Do you know that I was considered the best-read person in New England, male or female, and was the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College? Hmmp! Not a student, mind you. Women simply didn't have equal rights with men, although our minds were no doubt equally sharp, if not sharper. It fell upon me to defend, through the nobility of my knowledge and language, the rights of women as independent and rational beings.

But I digress. In Italy, I allied myself with the patriot Giuseppe Mazzini...he was leading a revolution for Italian unification, and Mazzini impressed me with his holiness and mission. Those were heady times.

Although I had never had much success with men up until this time, and I was in my late thirties, I met the most marvelous and romantic Marquese Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, who was in his late twenties. We fell in love, and had a beautiful son, Angelo Eugene in 1848.

Unfortunately, the Roman Republic was defeated, and in 1850, we decided to take refuge in the United States. Tragically, that is where my story ends, as the captain of the merchant freighter, the USS Elizabeth, expired from smallpox and the junior officer who took over didn't have the experience to handle the hurricane we encountered just off the U.S. coast on July 19.

Shipwrecked. My family perished. Our bodies never found. My manuscript describing the dramatic social and political developments in Rome lost. And I was only 40 years old.

I was amused to learn that when the news of my death reached Boston, one of Boston's eminent men remarked: "it is just as well so."

He was no doubt thinking of the agitation I might cause by my brilliant conversations and lightning pen about the high spirit of liberty and Italian heroism. The times were growing dark in America. The Slave Power was drawing its lines closer about the citadel of freedom.

The movement I had encouraged--including prison reform, the emancipation of slaves, and women's rights...was fading. The period of poetic aspiration and joy that I had labored in -- ended. Had I survived, as its priestess I would have found a deserted shrine.

So what can I say about my life, looking back?

I was well educated by my father and private schools and worked as a teacher, writer and editor. I became well acquainted with the Transcendentalists and was known for my brilliant conversations. I understand Emerson himself was first put off by what he considered by plainness (!) and disconcerting nearsightedness, but he acknowledged that I was intellectually a most rewarding personality showing nobility of mind and a capacity for being extremely entertaining.

I can assure you that Giovanni did NOT find me plain.

I was a journalist, critic, women's rights activist and first editor of the Transcendental publication, THE DIAL. I was the first full-time female book reviewer in journalism. My book, WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, is considered the first major feminist work in the United States. I inspired such advocates for women's rights as Susan B. Anthony.

But enough about me. You live in an exciting time. Much of my goal to emancipate women from their traditional intellectual subservience to men and to enjoy access to higher education has been accomplished.

In closing, let me tell you this little known fact: I am the great-aunt of R. Buckminster Fuller, whose eccentric and humanistic idealism is so evocative of American Transcendentalism.

Thank you.

Applying Radical Forgiveness

I'm taking a new class--Radical Forgiveness--at our Center for Spiritual Living. At first I wasn't too interested as I thought: who do I need to forgive? I don't really feel like a victim. Then I heard it could be life changing; some of my former classmates were in the class and I missed them. So I decided to plunge in.

We're using the book, Radical Forgiveness, by Colin Tipping. There's a statement on the cover about a five-stage process to heal relationships, let go of anger and blame, and find peace in any situation.

Usually, when we think of forgiveness, we think of ourselves as victims; we've been wronged, and we blame someone for it. Perhaps out of a sense of obligation, righteousness or compassion we may forgive and forget, or forgive the person but not condone the behavior. This is traditional forgiveness operating on the human level.

Radical Forgiveness is operating in the spiritual realm, viewing us as spiritual beings having a human experience. We have come to this World of Humanity to fully experience the pain of separation from our spiritual source, and to learn and grow from our experiences here in our physical bodies.

There is a divine purpose behind everything that happens. Life events are lessons; life is the curriculum that enables us to awaken to the truth of who we are and return home. There is no right or wrong to these life events, there is no one to blame, and no judgments to make.

Pretty heady stuff, eh? I proceeded to do the Radical Forgiveness Worksheet and to see what came up for me. There are several steps in the process.

First, I identified the main situation around which I have an upset. After 43 years of marriage, my life partner/husband/love of my life transitioned about a year and a half ago, leaving me alone to manage life here on this plane of existence.

So I'm on my own, feeling lonely, vulnerable, anxious, afraid, abandoned and not taken care of. I need to acknowledge my humanness, and accept and own my feelings about this.

My discomfort signals that I want something to change. Larry is gone; I can't expect him to change Perhaps I can change my circumstances. I gave online dating a try; my initial foray was a meeting over coffee with a 74-year old named, of all names, Larry.

The night before I had a dream where my Larry appeared, younger and much buffer, and I said: "Larry, I know you died. What's it like on the Other Side?" When he didn't respond, my grown children (who were in the dream) and I decided he was a "clone."

Was my subconscious telling me I'm looking for a Larry clone? One coffee date and I realized that's not going to happen, nor should it.

Back to Radical Forgiveness. My next step is to collapse the story, to create an even bigger story with any interpretations or core beliefs driving the story, such as: I'm not enough; it's not safe to be me; I am alone; no one is there for me; people abandon me; I'm left out, and so on.

Eventually I work my way to reframing the story, to see that, for whatever reason, my mission or soul contract included having an experience like this for my highest and best good.

The desired result: I now reach a more empowered position, knowing that Larry's transition is an opportunity for me to be on my own, provide my own sense of safety and security, to have confidence in my own decisions and feel myself as a strong, competent person of power and authority. Thus I can send love and gratitude for our time together, his love and support over the years, and the perfection of the situation for both of us.

I can't say I'm there yet, but I've only had one class. I do see that we have a marvelous new tool for spiritual development here at our Center.

From Shoebox Madness to Hard Drive Madness

Recently a relative,, who at 74 was about to undergo another round of chemo, told me she has been going through her "memory box." "I don't know what to do with this stuff, these photos," she said. "Maybe I'll just toss them."

"No, don't do that." I countered "Maybe you can create a legacy book. A gift that your children and grandchildren can cherish...a way for them to learn about who you were, and who you are." I told her about the photo books, well over a dozen, that I had made.

The digital revolution in photography has made this possible...we have scanners to capture old prints and negatives, and digital cameras to capture the important and mundane moments of our more recent lives. These images can be assembled in amazing and wonderful ways...for coffee table books, DVDs set to music, calendars, personalized cards, and more.

I've been my family's personal paparazzi for many years, so I've had my own moments of "shoebox madness," where I felt compelled to take accumulated prints and organize them into photo albums. I must have at least 40 photo albums and many slide carousels.

Today, "shoebox madness" has been replaced with "hard drive madness." All those images...so easy to capture with our fabulous cameras, and download to our computers, until we have to get external hard drives or even bigger and better computers to hold them all.

And then what? How do we enjoy them? Yes, there is the world wide web and various sites for sharing, digital picture frames, key chains and all sorts of gadgets.

But my absolute favorite is the photo book or coffee table book. I discovered the web site, MyPublisher.com, through a newspaper article a few years ago. I downloaded the program and embarked on making my first photo book...about who else? Myself. "Elizabeth -- Her Life and Times."

What I liked was the simple way I could capture my life story, using photos and text, and then make copies...in various sizes, for other people. No more worry about grabbing the photo albums on the way out of the house in an emergency...like an earthquake. Each child has a copy.

In my book, I'm able to encapsulate my early life, my grade school and high school photos, my graduation from college, old boy friends, my stint with the Foreign Service, my marriage, my huge babies (11 lb. 15 oz. and ll lb. 4 oz.) who are now tall and healthy adults, and my journey through life: 43 years of marriage, back to school in midlife, starting a career as I turned 50, having a health challenge, studying for the ministry, and more. I also created a DVD with music, but frankly, I find I'm much more likely to take out one of my books than look at a DVD.

The books come in different sizes...from small paperback to classic hardcover to jumbo size. I've tried all of them. The classic hardcover in fabric or leather works best for me.

My family were my first subjects. Since I created my husband's book several years before he transitioned in 2008, I had a beautiful legacy book, as well as a DVD and large collage available for his Memorial Service.

My son enjoyed his book and DVD, which he has shown to friends as well as to various young women, and he reports they made an impact. So...one never knows who may enjoy these photo creations.

After noticing how much my grandson enjoyed looking at different photo books I had given his family, I completed my daughter's life story in two beautiful leather-bound volumes. This holiday season, I created a life story book for her husband, which he loves to share with his two young children (who have photo books dedicated to their exploits by Grandmama).

So if you wish to unleash your creative juices, to activate your artistic expression with vision, love and today's technology, a photo book is great project. It says: I see your loving essence; I am a witness to your life; you are important and unique; you are an expression of the divine in action. And so it is.

Life is a Gift

My life here on this plane of consciousness is a gift. As a Religious Scientist, I understand there is one Power, a Power for Good, in the Universe--and I can use it. My charge is to use that knowledge and that Power to create my best life, to be the best person that I can be. If I assume that the One Power is expressing through everything and everyone, including me, and that I carry a Divine Spark within me...then that is awesome knowledge. As an individualized expression of the One, I allow the Power of the One to work FOR me by flowing THROUGH me. This is the law, the creative process in action...and I must believe in it for it to work for me.

Thus I make my declarations on a daily basis through Spiritual Mind Treatment. I work to control my thought processes and bring them in harmony with the Divine Order. As I declare that I enjoy and experience all the good that life has to offer me, the One finds expression through me. I work to get my "bloated nothingness" out of the way of the divine circuits, so that I manifest all good in my life...health, wealth, creative expression and loving relationships. I gratefully receive and give thanks for all this good and release my word in all its Power into the Universe, knowing it is already so. And so it is.

I Expect the Best

This affirmative prayer treatment is inspired by the works of Thomas Troward.

There is one Universal Intelligence, one self-forming primordial substance indwelling everything and everyone. It dwells within all that is; it dwells within me. I know that this atomic intelligence responds to my individual intelligence, and to my thought-power to produce the health, prosperity, abundance and fulfillment in life that I envision. I know that this Intelligence permeates all, expresses through me and individualizes as me. I allow the Intelligence within me to respond and manifest that which I desire.

I know that my thoughts and words have power, and determine my objective experience. I plant seeds which infallibly germinate into external fruition, thus creating spiritual prototypes to attract the best that life has to offer..health, vitality, courage, harmony, happiness, wealth, loving relationships and more. Any suggestions that I impress upon the Universal subjective mind are manifested in form. I declare that I am radiantly healthy, and know that the unquenchable energy of attraction steadily increases in power and definiteness of purpose, bringing all parts of my body, mind and spirit into right and perfect alignment with the Universal Source. From the vortex of cosmic energy I attract all good into my experience: prosperity and abundance in all areas of my life, loving relationships, creative expression at work and play and more I trust the law of growth, and expect the highest and best to demonstrate in my life and the lives of my loved ones.

I gratefully receive andd give thanks for this unfolding of right and perfect action, for all this good that flows into my life, and more.

I release my word into the Universal Intelligence, knowing it is already so. And so it is.