 Hi, today's episode of We Are Only One is brought to you by usgoalkoins.com, 1-800-HOT-COIN, and Mese Grill, M-E-Z-E, Grill.com, and MtGox.com. Hi, welcome to We Are Only One. We're going to be exploring new thought and ancient wisdom. Are they soulmates? And I'm very honored to have as my guest Reverend Dr. Jane Galloway, the spiritual director of Sacred Center in New York here. Welcome to you. Thank you. It's wonderful to be here with you today. Well, I know you've had a very varied career as counselor and educator and an actress and now you have a master's and a doctorate. I do. And I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about your journey. Well, let's see. I was raised in a family of artists and so it was kind of a pre-ordained idea that I was going to be somehow involved in the arts. And I remember when I was age 12 telling my mother I wanted to be a social worker and she looked at me with horror and said, what is that? So I think that I was waiting for the day when I could really do the kind of work with people that I wanted to do. That was on my heart from the time I was very young. However, I did, yes, become a professional actress. I was, I start on Broadway and TV and film and starting to pilot right over here at the Ed Sullivan Theater a number of years ago. So, you know, I did that career for many years. I was really pulled into a deeper level of vocational commitment to service, although I taught preschool and worked with children and did a lot of community service work all through the years. But I was called into a vocational focus on something deeper, which turned out to be ministry. I thought it was going to be psychology, but you know, we're led along as we go on our path. So when my friends in New York in the theater began to get sick from something we didn't understand then, we called it the gay cancer, we called it, we didn't know what happened, but people were dropping dead right and left and it was really a death sentence then if you were diagnosed with AIDS or HIV. I don't even think it had a name yet at that point, quite frankly. But I was really a wash-in loss and grief and was watching the world not respond too much to this, but I had many many friends who were in disarray and terrible fear about their own diagnosis, and it became, it was interesting, I was doing television by then sitcoms, and that was a world in which, you know, you didn't talk about anything like HIV or AIDS, for God knows. So the disconnect between what I was doing professionally, because that kind of becomes a whole life, you know. And and and what was going on in the world and in my life became too great. That disconnect just was too great. And so I began to go within and to really study and be pulled forward into what has become my new vocational focus. And by vocation, of course, I mean much more than a career. It's really a calling and and one in which I can utilize all of the the new thought teaching and the and all of the acting and arts teaching, of course, comes in very handy. I mean, it's it's all part of it. So I kind of see it all as an evolution forward. And yes, I have a master's in doctorate from Claremont Graduate University, too. So that's been great because it's helped me to understand the common thread in many world religions. And I think I didn't have any idea of the specificity, of course, of the belief systems and how culturally based they are until I really began to study at a deeper level. So so when I began to understand that connectedness, even though I was initially ordained and I'm a rather rather traditional Christian, well sort of traditional Christian denomination, I really was very tuned in to this universality. And so have of course moved into teaching that through ancient wisdom, new thought, combining the two. I say, well, sort of traditional about the ordination process, because the ordination is extremely traditional. It's the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The only part about that ordination that wasn't traditional was that I was European American and 99.9% of the people who are ordained in the AME Church are African Americans. So that was a completely wonderful experience, but it was also a very non-traditional call. And I think prepared me in many ways for looking at the world from different perspectives, really looking at the world from different centrisms, if you will, you know, being being able to be afrocentric in my perspective. When, you know, I choose to, as opposed to Eurocentric, which largely is what our cultural view is, is Eurocentric. And so anyway, so that's kind of a synopsis of how that big journey happened. And now I'm at Sacred Center New York, which is a new thought spiritual community in New York. And, you know, we teach the wisdom path there as taught through the modality of new thought. And new thought is really an interpretive lens, of course. And we'll talk more about that maybe. But anyway, so it's fun to be back in New York. I lived in New York for many, many, many years. Never thought I would leave was taken out to California by my previous career and kind of like the palm trees. And I have a banana tree in my yard there that actually has bananas on it. So I lived there for a lot of years and it's fun to be back. And Sacred Center is a wonderful community too. Yes, well, I've had the good fortune of experiencing it. And it's great energy and a great consciousness for myself. I know we've spoken before about how new thought and ancient wisdom resonate so well together. Yes, yeah. And I just came back from Santa Fe and New Mexico, where there are a lot of Pueblos and there's a lot of ancient wisdom. And the Pueblo people, you know, have lived on their same land for 1,000 years. Amazing. And, you know, they have held that rich culture and tradition. And on feast days, they allow the public to come and experience the dances, which is their prayer. Exactly. One of the prayer ceremonies and it's so beautiful. So I feel very enriched. I was there last month. So I feel very enriched by that experience. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about where you see the interconnections of new thought and ancient wisdom, what most moves you as a spiritual director and how you would incorporate some of that in your ministry. Sure. I found new thought many years ago through Eric Butterworth, attending Eric Butterworth in New York, who really transcended his own tradition. He was a unity teacher, but like great teachers of all traditions. He really transcended even that culture. But he, this brilliant man, was teaching new thought principles under the rubric of unity at Avery Fisher Hall on Sundays. And so I attended Eric's lectures for 10 years. And I was very, very regular in that. He totally transformed my thinking. I mean, he did. The principles did. He was the one teaching it. And as I said, it was a very fraught time in New York because many, many people were getting sick from AIDS. And so it was interesting because as I began to go through the grieving process of trying to deal with the illness of my friends, what I discovered in the teachings of new thought was that I said it at the time. I said, there's no base note in that chord. I need to go someplace where you can really grieve, where you can go through what the mystics have called the via negativa. Sometimes it's not all treat, treat, treat, positive, happy, hippie-hoppy, you know, everything's great. Life happens to us. And there is a need in the human psyche and human heart for being able to go fully into that via negativa in order to come out the other side because that's how then the via transformativa happens. In other words, transformation happens, not through saying, I don't want to, you know, everything, something's great about what's going on here. Well, if you're a person who's in the middle of a storm like that, maybe it doesn't feel so great. I mean, ultimately, yes, everything's all as well and God is good. And but but in those moments at in those days, and this was in the late 80s, new thought, at least as I experienced it, did not provide this any kind of depth path on which one could go in order to process the kind of devastating circumstances that were going on in my life. So I began to search for that. And when I was in California, I really went to several new thought churches discovered the same thing. And then I was led to the AME Church and to a wonderful depth teacher who again transcended his culture. So he was ordained through the AME Church, but was really a teacher of great wisdom. Dr. Cecil Murray, who was the pastor of First AME Church. So I ended up finding my way to the Black Church tradition, which is a depth path. I mean, it got an entire community of displaced Africans through the horrific chattel slavery in this country. And so it is present hidden in plain sight within many more mainstream denominations, which are predominantly African Americans. So I discovered that path. Really, I went there initially to hear the music, which is great. And and also to find a teacher, I was really looking for a depth teacher. And Reverend Murray really was that teacher. So I found that depth path and ended up going through this entire ordination process in the AME Church. There are other things about the traditional Christianity of the AME Church that, I mean, didn't didn't really suit my worldview, my spiritual worldview as fully as I needed. Whatever path I would eventually be on to to suit. But but it was a fantastic, incredible. I mean, amazing learning process. So I was ordained in the AME Church and then I ended up actually leaving the AME Church over a couple of reasons. The main one was that the AME Church developed terribly discriminatory policies against LGBT persons having full inclusion within the church, which in my mind was completely against the tradition of their founding, which was around having been excluded from the White Methodist Church. But it really wasn't. That's where being a person of another ethnicity really does figure into a situation like a non-traditional ordination like that. Because I really felt that even though I did speak to the issue, it really was not my issue to raise within that community. You know, there are times when it's just not appropriate if one is being respectful of another rich cultural tradition. So I kept looking and I had always watched and listened to Reverend Michael Beckwith at Agape International Spiritual Center. And I watched him as he progressed. When I first went to Agape, Michael was really, I mean, he was in a real straight suit and he had kind of a weird mustache and he was a totally different person than he is today. Not a totally different person, just he presented very differently. So I began to listen to what he was bringing. Now he brought the richness of the Black Church tradition to new thought, but also he has great personal experience of transformational processes he's undergone personally. But also very active interest in indigenous wisdom as you raised through the Pueblo, through the indigenous people worldwide. And he has a global focus. He really does. I mean, he's really a global kind of guy. So I began to kind of study there while I was still in the AME church and I had already been called to pastor by this time. So I was pastoring a church and that was a whole other process. But I said to Michael at one point, I said, you brought the base note into new thought. And so I would say he doesn't strictly see himself as a new thought teacher either. And so it's interesting, he told me in a conversation I had with him once that he found himself having these spiritual revelations and was drawn to religious science because he said, that's the closest to what I'm understanding to be truth. So he was not confined by the understanding of religious science either or any new thought denomination and really moved Agape into a much more independent focus. So I began to study at Agape as I was also pastoring a much more traditional church, which was very transcultural. And it was an evolutionary process. And what I began to see was that the kinds of linkages between the wisdom path of many traditions and the new thought modality was very, very strong. Meaning, the new thought path began with experiential healing through a guy named Phineas Parker's Quimby. What a name. But he was a guy in Maine, a clockmaker really, who began to understand that through working with Mesmer, you know, you've heard of being mesmerized, well, this was that he was able to understand a hands-on healing process. Hypnosis was first called mesmerizing and they went on tours kind of, you know, like, you know, at your prom, when everybody, you know, does crazy things. Well, they were going on tours exhibiting to people in New England especially. This idea of working with the subconscious, of working with this deeper realm of wisdom that we possess, which is what Carl Jung called, you know, connectedness to the collective unconscious. So all of these things kind of come together in the wisdom teaching of new thought. Then, of course, one of his students, one of Quimby's students was Mary Baker Eddy, who really began to pull in religious science and then one of her students was Ernest Holmes or Emma Curtis Hopkins. She was a whole lineage. But the new thought teachings were really trying to pull an experiential thread from what honestly was more traditional Christianity. It really has its origins in Christianity. Now, the interesting thing is Jesus was a metaphysical genius, teacher, avatar. He said, you know, the kingdom of God is within. If you do these things, I do. He doesn't say if you spout some doctrine that Constantine figured out and, you know, he says, if you do these things, I do greater things than these will you do? Meaning it's an empowerment doctrine, not doctrine even, a teaching. Yes. So the combination of new thought, new thought teaches you how to pull out the power from all of these teachings, which are so similar. And they have to do in a very redacted way all of them with do unto others as you would have others do unto you. And the kingdom of God is within. Very simple teachings based on love, based on the fact that we are one at a deep level. So new thought as a modality, and I use that word with purpose, because I think that the wisdom path is something which is one which we all have access to. The modality of meditation, prayer, affirmative prayer, affirming, resonating with the all that is, with that deeper reality which always exists, then begins to show that that begins to manifest in our lives. And so it's a modality, it's a form, it's a way of looking at these ideas. And in essence, it's also a commentary. You know, there are commentaries on biblical texts, commentaries on the Quran, commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. This means people saying, okay, here's what I think this means. So you look for a good scholar to tell you what it means. And many of the new thought teachings are really helping to break down the metaphysics of cortex. And in denominations, and they are now like unity, it's called metaphysical Christianity. So they really deal with Christianity. Agape and the movement that sprung out around really I think the genesis of Reverend Michael Beckwith, because he kind of came up with this way of putting those ideas together, ancient wisdom and new thought. Those groups deal more with what is the essence of those wisdom teachings, and then how do you use new thought to make it effective, to really put the mojo into it so that it will work in your life. It gives you tools. Is that, I hope that's great. That's a lot. Thank you. Really going so many places with that. I have several new thought minister friends, you know, and I was asking them prior to this, what did they think about the two? And several of them said, new thought is ancient wisdom cloaked in modern language and modern customs, which I thought was interesting. Someone else said they were exactly the same. You know, everybody, but that there's a very strong interrelationship and my own experience, I'm sure you're going to refute it, a little spin on it. For me, the greatest freedom, new thought offers such a freedom for the individual to have the direct relationship with God, which I think the ancient wisdom practices also emphasize as opposed to the doctrine getting in the way and that the church is the people, it's not the legal structure of things. It is more the consciousness, which I feel very strongly. Jesus said that. So that's not new. That's really not new. So to me, I have a hard time differentiating the two if you'd like to share more. I would say basically I think new thought is a secondary text. In other words, it's an interpretive lens through which you can look at ancient wisdom. I don't see it as ancient wisdom. I see it as a new modality, a new way of understanding the ancient teachings because the word ancient means ancient. And so new thought is a 20th century religious movement, which is based on the teachings of, as I said, Quimby and these folks, but also the transcendentalists, which are this group Emerson, Thoreau, people who were hanging out up around Cambridge Mass and Walden Pond and really talking about what is the essence of this spiritual experience. And so it was a revelatory path for them to pull the deeper teachings, the deeper teachings out of traditional Christianity, honestly, and the experiential. So I see new thought almost as a commentary on the deeper teachings as opposed to revealing deeper teachings in and of itself. That's my experience of it. Well, I'm very much interested in the blend of the healing aspect of it. I know several, you were speaking about Mesmer and one of the co-founders of Unity, Myrtle Fillmore, how to healing and how it is kind of very empowering to each person to realize, as you were saying, Jesus, these things and more, you can do too. That's quite a legacy if we will embrace that. Absolutely, absolutely. And to really look at the fact that, I mean, I think that one's idea about what God or this power that is God or that power of allness could care less what we call it. So I mean, we get all hung up on these names, but the allness that is. But your idea of God, you know, if you come through a very doctrinaire or traditional kind of ecclesiastical background frequently in order to control large groups of people, you were told that God, you were pointed to some of these mythological texts in the First Testament of the Bible, which said, you know, God's going to, you know, make an earthquake come. That's an awful thing come and do you in. It's a wrathful God and understanding which then controls people. Okay, here's, you know, give me some money and I'll make sure that God doesn't do it. Confess your sins and I'll go talk behind the curtain to that God. So new thought in its purest form does not do that. The interesting thing, though, I will say is that fundamentalism seems to creep up in every path that emerges. Even the 12 step path now has a group called the Pacific group and the Atlantic group and they're very, they're very fundamentalist and also in new thought. There are people absolutely who are, you know, it's not okay in certain new thought circles to show up at a new thought church if you're going through what I was going through when my friends were dying of AIDS. If you're going through a time where you're not manifesting manifesting, I'm prosperous, fantastic when suddenly you lose your house to foreclosure or something, some sudden death happens in your life. A lot of people end up not showing up to a new thought environment because you're supposed to be up and everything's wonderful all the time. Everything doesn't feel wonderful all the time. So there's really a difference. I mean, yes, you can manifest by aligning yourself with the higher consciousnesses will for you, which is always for your prospering, for your good. And that goes back to, okay, what's your definition of God? Do you believe, really believe that that power wants only good for you? That's the question I think people need to ask themselves. And yet then new thought, yes, is a wonderful modality. There are many very traditional and fundamentalist people simplifying the concepts. I think you can't be reductionist about these teachings. You can't reduce them to magic bullets or to magic tricks. And a lot of people looked at the law of attraction, which is really a law of physics. After the movie The Secret became very widespread, people thought, you know, that guy sat, what, he's sitting in a chair and pretend like he was clicking something that was going to create a red Ferrari, I think. And so people came into these teachings. I was studying at Agape then, it was really interesting to see the people who showed up and they got very irritated when they realized after the third class, this was not a class to teach about how you click on something and make a red Ferrari show up. It's always about inner work. It's always about going on our inner path. It's always about clearing out anything that is not of that connectedness to Hashem or this higher power Kabbalah, by the way, is another depth path. And so whatever path you choose, Yogananda, wonderful Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, said, pick a path, any path, and go deeper. Because the point is that if you keep, you know, really hopping around, you may have heard of church hoppers, but also there are tradition hoppers. I'm Buddhist now. Now I'm a, you know, Sufi. I'm twirling. I'm chanting. I'm doing whatever. Well, the point is those are all fantastic practices. All of them designed to take you deeper. And when you go deeper, what are you confronted with? You. Wherever you go, there you are. And so then you get to that deeper place and staying on that path, then that deeper breakthrough is possible. Matthew Fox, the Dominican priest who was kicked out of being a priest because he talked about original blessing rather than original sin, has written a book whose title I love and the premise of the book. He says, One River, Many Wells. So if you see, so if you want to talk about ancient wisdom, ancient wisdom is the river. One river. One river. We are one. The truth is one. The truth of the capital T is one truth. So one river, then the wells are various ways of getting there. So how do you get there? You get there through Buddhism or Shinto or through Hindu practice or through Judaism, through Sufi practice. You get there, then suddenly halfway down the well, there you are. And so people's, unless you're learning that, okay, this is really a process, which is one of deepening and letting go. A lot of people freak out at the, at the points where you're really about to have your breakthrough. So I would say the essence of the path really, the wisdom path is not about how much more, what you can do to get. And that's some of the focus of a lot of new thought teaching. I think it's very problematic. It's about, that's great for an early stage in spiritual development because you suddenly realize, I'm not powerless. I really can create a new reality in my experience. How do I magnetize that? It becomes extremely heady and wonderful. And then just as you're thinking that's working for you, something happens. That something happening is where you can have your big breakthrough and get to the deeper question. And the deeper question really ends up being a totally different thing. What do I need to let go of in order for me to be truly free? That's like switching the horses, but it's not. Because the first one shows you, okay, I am one with this larger force, and now I have, have, have, manifest, manifest. I don't know if it's working for me. Now what do I let go of for me to be free and then to be really one with this power? So I would say that I see, that's a long answer to a short question, I see new thought as tapping in to how to access the teachings of ancient wisdom. I wouldn't say I see it as ancient wisdom. I see it as, as a new take. I mean, just, it's not ancient. It was developed in the 20th century, so. Thank you. You're welcome. I haven't thought about this at all. Obviously, this is, it's a journey. It's a journey I've been on for a while and I feel very enriched by it, you know, and keep going deeper and deeper, and I know that one of the criticism sometimes, which you briefly touched upon, there's such an emphasis on prosperity and acquiring where instead of focusing on the consciousness that it starts, it's a prosperity consciousness and then taking it once we are one with the idea that we are one, that we take it out into the world. And service, exactly. Towards what end, that's the big question too. Yeah, I'm thinking of the Pueblo as you raised that. There's such a beautiful tradition of the beauty way, the beauty way and really walking the beauty way and gratitude as opposed to acquiring, which is a totally other thing, for me, I want, I want, I want. Gratitude and putting the corn pollen out to recognize just oneness with the all that is. It's a continual process of showing gratitude and the gratitude is its own magnetizing force. Then, once you begin to receive both tangible and less tangible benefits from being more in sync with this higher wisdom, then how do I share that? How do I share that? How do I make this blessing something which I share, what we discover is going back to the getting thing, the more you share, the more you get, but you can't give to get. And that's where the paradox comes in. A lot of people misunderstand the teaching and think you're giving to get, right? I love there was a Pfeiffer cartoon years ago. Do you know the Pfeiffer in the Village Voice? Love him. Yeah, and he did a, I love, every spring he would have his dancer, his modern dancer doing, this is my dance to spring. This particular year, she was doing one, a meditation on the idea of I want. And it was, I love it. I had it on my refrigerator for years till it literally disintegrated, but she was saying I want, I want, I want, I want, you know, all these things. And then there was a frame where she was just frozen and this voice comes down from heaven and says, you got! And all this stuff is crashing down. It's a car, it's this handsome guy, it's all this fabulous stuff. And she stands there in this modern dance pose looking at it for one frame. She's just staring at all this stuff. And then in this teeny tiny little voice she says, I don't like it. So, I mean, I think that a lot of times really we don't know what our highest and best is. I mean, not to say that we're out of touch, but I think that we live in such a consumer world. We think things or a certain person, a certain kind of something is going to fix something for us. And when we really have the courage to go deeper and say, thy will not mine. What is thy will? And then say, who am I talking to? Thy will? Well, who is that? Then that's a deep question. Who's talking? Thoughts without a thinker. That's a Buddhist idea. What is it that I'm saying? What is the will of this benevolent again back to what's your idea about who God is or what God is or what this force is? Because you really have to grapple with it. Because if you come from an abusive family system or a punitive, fundamentalist, religious background, you don't want to turn your will in your life over to that God or that parent and a lot of people confuse parents with God. Because actually that nomenclature that is used in the Bible a lot. Jesus says, I and my father are one. He's really saying, of course, that I and this higher consciousness are one. That anthropomorphizing makes it feel easier. We like to talk about people. We get people. You know, the Greek mythology. Talking about Apollo and Zeus they all had personalities and Isis and you know, you kind of Greek God you know, you kind of get these ideas of a more personal relationship to that, to that. But it really, I think a lot of it so much of it goes back to, okay, what do I truly really, really believe about the nature of this higher power and then if I say I want to get in sync with that will for me, it may take you. It will take you to many places you don't expect to find yourself. People have, you know, accrued, acquired huge riches on the physical plane through these kinds of teachings and found themselves not satisfied. It's not about the things they acquired acquiring is great but it's the consciousness as you say behind it. Because if we're not deepening the consciousness as we're doing it, the result is a result. Right. We had on the show David Friedman who wrote the Thought Exchange and he talked about something very interesting which was that sometimes and you were mentioning going into the unconscious and the subconscious that we have our own blocks that we're not aware of that prevent us from that connection with the one by different messages even from childhood of course. And a lot of traditional paths also stress that we are not worthy and getting rid of that and making our way through to the deeper that is sometimes a more complicated path and just saying it is one thing but really feeling it and owning it. Yeah, there's an old phrase that says I wouldn't want a religion I couldn't feel and I think when you put the body anguish of feeling behind any affirmation any kind of really you know any prayer then watch out you know I love this song Use Me by Ricky Byers Beck with Use Me. I stand for you and I always tell people watch it when you if you really sing that with feeling watch out you will be used you will be used and then you get on your path then you have to say yikes am I ready to be used because exactly what you're referring to is what always comes up it always comes up we all have those things and Bruce Lipton Dr. Bruce Lipton talks about in his biology of belief most of these unconscious beliefs are formed and encoded at the deep cellular level by age six and they're not accessible except by getting into some kind of altered state through prayer through meditation to really get the ideas of change deeper into that so you can do all the affirmations you want but if you don't get down there to however we call it the wonderful thing that excites me so much now is that we're recognizing through quantum physics and ancient teachings and modalities and traditions like new thought that this teaching is really teaching us all the same thing and the Jungian teaching the collective unconscious isn't it fantastic that he got on to that oh I love him and taught us this through the psychological and really the deep mythological and spiritual too so the more that we're realizing all of these things are interconnected I love the graciousness of native persons who have allowed us to discover quantum physics because they've known about this for millennia really they've understood these teachings you know this from being in the in the southwest and understanding the depth understanding of the medicine people really understanding the concepts of physics these are ancient concepts yes yes we were blessed to start the show off with the wind eagle and rainbow hawk yes wonderful wisdom teachers yes and the simplicity and the profound depth of what they shared and you wonder why do we get how did we get away from that and disconnected you know good question and yeah what is it Maya illusion the Hindus talk about I mean how do we get away from it it was ever thus it's in all the texts you know I love the idea of the monkey mind we love shiny things on my way up here today I saw a store next door with all these shiny things in the window and I was you know jewelry made out of glass but fabulous and I was being there and I said boy you don't need diamonds to have your mind distracted by something somebody said a phrase long ago which I thought was great she said I realized I was clutching on to rhinestones when God had diamonds in store for me and it's a great yeah but it's all shiny so you say how do we get there I think that it's just part of the nature of humankind we go for shiny objects and then we want more of them hahahaha it's true yeah I like shiny objects I do too hahahaha we can enjoy it all yeah it's just where you know how you get that deeper thing going hahahaha yes well we are one that's right we are one I think might be time to take a short break and thank our sponsors for allowing us to be here so first of all I'd like to thank usgoldcoins.com 1-800-HOT-COIN our trusted advisor for investments in rare gold and silver coins Andy Gosman takes the mystery out of buying silver and gold by holding your hand that's 1-800-HOT-COIN and our next sponsor we'd like to thank is Mese Grill where authentic Mediterranean food meets modern flavor they're now serving breakfast and they're located on 8th avenue at 55th street just a couple of blocks south of Columbus circle and Mt. Gox an online exchange service for bitcoins and there's been a lot of excitement at the network about bitcoins and Mt. Gox is now taking euros and pounds and the Australian dollar and soon the Canadian dollar so if you want to know more about that check out mybitcoin.com as well as our bitcoins show every day at 2pm for the latest news hosted by Bruce Wagner so thank you all without you we wouldn't be here absolutely and I guess without balance balance going inside and feeling our connection to the oneness and then once we feel strong in that taking it out to the community and helping and I'd like to hear if you have any thoughts on what you might be doing with sacred center and taking into the community the service I know children is a key focus I think what we're trying to do right now is to just give some opportunities for sacred service to the community so that people get kind of in the habit of what a blessing it is for them to get engaged so yes children are a big focus for me and I have an arts non-profit in California which serves underserved kids but here what we're about to do is we're cooperating with the association for global new thoughts program of season of humane service for the month of well we're going to really focus on it for the month of August but on July 31st we're going to have two tables in the back of sacred center so come and join with one of these groups one is going to be really focusing on sustainability and humane ways of eating and one of our members is going to there it's going to be gathering a group together to talk about meatless Mondays and to teach about this and there's a whole movement I guess there are a lot of restaurants in New York City steak houses that have meatless Monday menus let's try to say that fast so one of the tables is going to be focused on that and really with the sustainability focus and the other one is going to be the west side campaign against hunger which is actually housed at St. Andrew and St. Paul where we meet on Sundays as well and this is a fantastic program which feeds so many people in New York City who need groceries who need the basics they have a diversity of programs but the biggest one is their food pantry and it's set up like a regular store their fresh fruits and vegetables, canned goods everything and it's a wonderful program so we're having a table for west side campaign against hunger and also a table for this meatless Mondays idea we're asking the members of sacred center to go back and figure out hopefully people will want to get engaged with one of those for the month of August and become a volunteer and learn what it feels like to do in a group it's fun, it's fun to do it as a group and so then they're going to come back to do sacred service so then they're going to come back the first week in September and tell us tell the congregation about that my hope would be that certainly some longer term of members of our community would come out of that process and I love it that the season for the association for global new thoughts slash season for humane service synced up perfectly with the theme of this month at sacred center which is use me is use me so it all goes together so I would say that in the short term that's what we're looking at we're really looking at kind of invigorating the community by creating conscious participation in what do we do next and what do you do next once you've achieved this aha moment through new thought and I'll tell you something then what do you do with it but I'll tell you I really think that especially when I've experienced this in my own life and so you can only experience it you can't talk about it but when people are going through a moment of saying wait a minute do these teachings work what's happening I've lost my job I've lost contact with a feeling of connectedness with this higher power doing something for someone else and it makes a huge difference suddenly you realize wait a minute I have purpose again something shifted and so it's a teaching tool to it's going to be a teaching tool for the community and I know given the fact that sacred center is full of very imaginative creative people many people in the field are professional artists actors dancers singers therapists people in the medical field holistic healing practitioners I know that we're going to create some fantastic opportunities for service and I would encourage people to come on to on Sunday afternoon at two o'clock at St Andrew and St Paul for our service because we have a fantastic gospel choir now can you imagine I discovered through all these years of looking for how do these pieces come together a community that focuses on these kind of universal teachings with a depth perspective but also has a fabulous gospel choir and so it's a great experience and I would just invite people to come people who want to make a difference in their own lives their families lives the life of New York City and then of the world because you know arguably New York City is our global capital so we're in a place where these kind of principles have the potential of making a huge difference in really the world and isn't this what we as a global community we're on an internet program right now which could go anywhere even up in a space capsule so we really are in touch with the fact that we're a global community even though of course we've always been one we're really in touch with it now so anyway Sunday 2pm St. Andrew and St. Paul 86th and West End Avenue in Manhattan is where we have our service and for the month of it'll be July 31st so come and choose one of these two things and anyone can come to July 31st or the service you don't have to be a member it's open to all I just want to mention the website is sacredcenterny.org and there'll be information about about this that's great I'm excited about it and that's so true about when you get outside yourself if you're stuck somewhere and you focus elsewhere and help someone else you feel better immediately right exactly and I think this is one of the places where some of the more doctrinaire new thought teachings lost their way a little bit they didn't incorporate a consciousness of sacred service into the teaching although it's very much got to be a part of that circle you know it's a circle of completion you can't take it just you think about it you can't take take take in and never ecologically clean out you have to create some space so it's feng shui it's all these different ways of looking at it so I'm excited about adding that component more and more to the life and to the spiritual experience not only of the sacred center community but of New York City exciting I was thinking about the aspect of community with the ancient wisdom people lived in community there so it was an integral part whereas now we're so much more insular and interesting dichotomy we're so connected by the computer but we're much more insular you know China but by ourselves so we're bringing it together here on only one TV yeah I love the name of this me too only one TV yeah so we'd love to hear from all you people who are on the web right now if you have any feedback for us we'll be reading stuff yeah and commenting on it in future shows so any input you'd like to give us great well it was a pleasure having you here I wonder if you say a prayer for us well sure I will do something affirmative in the form of affirmative prayer in this moment thank you one of the things that we typically do often is kind of reset internal meter by breathing so if we breathe together we come into that we are one place and so then we affirm what the nature of this oneness is so we say right here and right now because the power is always in the present moment right here and right now we just give thanks for this time together for the process of understanding through conversation through relationship this piece of our understanding of our spiritual path we give thanks for the goodness of the all that is recognizing that harmony health healing wholeness oneness is our birthright and that in this moment as we turn over every care and every level at which we feel some sense of disconnectedness to this higher wisdom we become part of this all that is this universal force for good which is always breathing us living in us as us and through us and so for this time and for each person connected to this program and to this consciousness of this wonderful producing team and of Jude we give thanks we give thanks we turn over all of this gratitude and vibration into the universe recognizing that all good comes back to us a thousand fold and we say together and so it is so it is beautiful thank you