Going Further Together

By DR. PETRA WELDES

This article appeared in the October 2021 issue of Science of Mind magazine

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

—African Proverb

Do you ever wonder if it really matters what you do, how much you care, or how much consciousness and positive expectation you give to your hope for our future? Maybe you’ve heard people say that CSL’s Global Vision or the dream of “a world that works for everyone” is too utopian or Pollyanna-ish or political or simply too hard to imagine. Maybe, sometimes, you wonder if our spiritual work is just something we do to make ourselves feel better, when the distance between the vision and reality seems increasingly further apart. Sometimes I do, too.

When I found Science of Mind and New Thought, I was definitely one of those people who cried in the back of the sanctuary for the first six months. Finally, I had some hope for my life. I learned that I belonged and that I could make a difference in my own life. Of course, it still took me years of growth and application to clean up my act and manifest a life that aligned with who I came here to be. And all those years, I had help and support. There is no way I could have overcome the trauma of my past, released four addictions and created a career in empowering others if others hadn’t also empowered me. Truthfully, if they hadn’t stuck with me through thick and thin, through crazy times and hard moments, through loss and grief and moments of profound joy, I would not be where I am today. And I learned that all along the way, they weren’t just supporting me, I was also helping them. Every step I took forward, somehow, we all took together. My awareness reminded others of what they knew. Holding my hand with compassion or kicking my behind with spiritual truth deepened them, too. Along the way I discovered that empowering and teaching others deepened me beyond my wildest expectations. Ernest Holmes wrote, “Compassion and caring are the ties that bind us together in mutual understanding and in the unified attempt to uncover the Divinity in each other. Compassion is the most gentle of all human virtues, for it is the outpouring of the Divine givingness through all.” I’m not sure compassion is always gentle, but it’s always truthful and kind. It’s the willingness to see and believe and want the very best for another, exactly as you want it for yourself. I believe this is the truest way to practice loving your neighbor as yourself — as if you were the same self, as if we were all the One, manifesting in the multiplicity and diversity of each unique and precious individual human life. What if we truly are individualized expressions of the Thing Itself?

If nature and life are one, if God is one — and we know God must be one, for the Universe cannot be divided against itself — then all is tied together into an indivisible unity. ... There is One Spirit incarnated in everyone, an immortal Presence forever expanding everything, causing everything to grow. What a difference it would make in our human relations if we tried to sense the meaning of this Divine incarnation in all people and adjust our viewpoint to the truth that all are bound together in the unity of God. –Ernest Holmes

CREATE OVERWHELMING GOOD

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. —Desmond Tutu

In 1986, at the height of the Cold War, John Randolph Price invited spiritual people worldwide to come together on December 31 at noon Greenwich Mean Time. In Seattle, this translated into 4 a.m. on December 31. Our New Thought communities worked to bring thousands of people into the Seattle Stadium for two hours to consciously focus on world peace.

We created a powerful program with the belief that if enough people around the world came together at the same time, praying and meditating on world peace, a shift in consciousness would result. Meanwhile, my mother was involved with a Christian group called Friendship Force. Their mission was to invite Russian and American Christian women to spend 10 days in each other’s homes, to build a bridge by discovering what they had in common. This bridge could only be one of consciousness, since it included no intention for the women to take action. My mother and this group believed that if women and families could find common ground in their homes, pray together and see each other as fellow human beings, somehow this work would affect the political and power structures on both sides. Taking part was particularly important to my mom because my family immigrated to America from Germany after World War II left the country decimated. I will never forget my mother’s tears of joy when the Berlin Wall came down, literally torn apart by people on both sides. “Never in my lifetime would I have believed I would see this,” she said. Yet for three years she had traveled to Russia, lived with large families in tiny apartments, and shared meals, prayers, hopes and fears, while also hosting them in Dallas, to see and feel America for themselves.

FIND OUR WAY, TOGETHER

Together we can face any challenges as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky. —Sonia Gandhi

For 25 years, the United Nations has had human rights at the forefront of all of its work to prevent and manage conflict and to advance peace and security. In February 2020, the UN published a report entitled, “Going Further Together: The Contribution of Human Rights Components to the Implementation of Mandates of United Nations Field Missions.” This report documents that human rights are a significant component to preventing abuses in times of crises and promoting international peace, security, public participation and civic space, along with preventing and resolving violent conflict. So we see that acknowledging and treating others as we would want to be treated ourselves — everyone belonging, everyone part of the one human family — is a cornerstone to moving toward that world we seek to bring into manifestation. Here we have documented evidence that when we bring everyone together, as one, so much more is accomplished. Maybe our vision really isn’t as utopian as it sounds. What we know in Science of Mind is that intention and commitment are the forerunners of action. When our consciousness is lifted by the truth of our oneness, we not only act for the good of others, but we join our consciousness together with all those who are committed to the same. Every time we lift our hearts and minds and voices together, we create a shift in consciousness, which in turns moves us toward a new reality. Consciousness and action joined together are truly powerful. When this is exponentially multiplied by all of us working as one, we do, in fact, go further together. ​

FURTHER PRACTICE

Contemplate the following quotes in your morning meditation. How can you apply this inspiration to making a difference?

A single arrow is easily broken, but not 10 in a bundle. —Japanese proverb A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. —Yoko Ono We, the people, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense. —Barack Obama But if we can bind ourselves together reverently, in love and compassion, in mutual tolerance and understanding, under the cohesive powers of the universal law of good and the beneficence of a divine and universal presence, then shall we be able to use the liberty without license, to untangle unity from uniformity and to lead the world down the pathway of a new enlightenment. —Ernest Holmes ​