Climatologists have now confirmed that the unchecked combustion of fossil fuels is raising the temperature of the Earth to potentially catastrophic levels. Disposal beneath the land or sea of radioactive nuclear waste, which requires many centuries to become non-toxic, is increasing. And hydroelectric power, while cleaner, requires the building of bigger dams to meet current needs, with possibly grave environmental impact.
Is there some type of energy without harmful side effects? Indeed there is.
"Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit bringing us into newness of life and recognizing no mortal or material power as able to destroy. Let us rejoice that we are subject to the divine 'powers that be' " (emphasis added). So said Mary Baker Eddy in her book Science and Health (p. 249).
Metaphysical Science teaches that Spirit is omnipresent, infinite Good, the only substance. It is experienced as individual Self-Awareness and as Spirit's infinite creativity. There could be no human concept of energy without the invisible divine energy of Spirit being always present.
"Spirit is the Life-Force or Principle of existence. We feel the energy of Spirit and rise into newness of Life because Spirit is what we are. We are self-conscious because consciousness or Mind is our Life. Spirit is visible and tangible in organic thought-forms identifying Mind as 'the source and condition of all existence,' " writes Margaret Laird in We Are the World We Walk Through (p. xx).
"The divine energy of Spirit" is infinitely powerful, but few in human history have grasped what that means. It is now time to do so.
Spirit is the substance of all that is visible and tangible, the only substance. So Spirit must be Self-energizing since there is nothing outside it. It also must be Self-maintaining and Self-nourishing because Self-existing.
In infinite Spirit, there is no otherness, no two-ness. Its Oneness is indeed purity, perpetually uncontaminated since nothing is "without [outside it] that entering can defile" (Mark 7:15). Spirit is always Good, though it may look otherwise, if the realm of the seen, heard and felt is thought to be other than the evidence of Spirit's presence.
Can an individual witness the unadulterated Oneness and purity of Spirit in the very place where something is humanly perceived as fragile, broken, ugly, lost or polluted? Yes, whenever the focus is on the divine idea always present. It is not what we are thinking about Soul or Mind, nor what Mind is thinking about us or its environment. What Soul is sensing as Itself in action is all that is ever going on.
The environment is actually Spirit being Spirit--an infinitude of conscious, individualized and universalized tangible ideas, showing Spirit's wholeness, perfection, beauty, grandeur, variety, integrity, peace, freshness and vital unceasing activity.
What if the current view of Spirit energizing itself seems to be food or fuel derived from a limited, far-off source, subject to fluctuations in quantity or quality and capable of causing dangerous side effects? What if the view of the infinitude of Man includes countless separate bodies, requiring energy-consuming apparatus to experience activity? Since these are not the fact of Reality, Love is making humanity very uncomfortable as it holds on to such outdated beliefs, and we are paying dearly to "consume energy" and "move ourselves" anywhere.
The effortless nature of real energy is well stated in the book Awareness and Tranquility (p. 154). William Samuel wrote:
The "life cycle?"as perceived by the world is an energy-consuming activity, alternating between periods of work and periods of revitalizing rest, until finally the old machine appears to wear out, rust, decay and dissolve in death.
Among mankind's many myths is the entrenched belief that action must consume energy. Though this appears to be the case, enlightenment reveals it is not an inviolate rule. Man is constantly being confounded by those who appear at every scene to do most of the work, who ?run without being weary? [Isa. 40: 31] and possess an inexhaustible supply of energy. Let me tell you their secret.
They have discovered that there is no struggle involved in consciously being the Identity one is. Many have come to see that ?Being is effortless? as Laotse [the 4th Century B.C. Chinese Taoist philosopher], among others, has written.
?Being? is Isness?God. Its activity is inescapable awareness, the only activity going on. (This is why Awareness is total, alone and all to each of us, why we live alone as Awareness, why we have never seen a sight nor heard a sound but our own. Isn't this so?)
Awareness is the sum total of all the activity that is ever going on. For this reason, activity is effortless, no matter what it appears to be, and could not possibly be the cause of fatigue. The consciousness of this fact, acted upon as the only reality, appears as work done without effort!
Meanwhile, attachment to the erroneous ?efforting? view of energy takes on an increasingly negative look?as gridlocked highways, soaring fuel prices, accumulating greenhouse gases?that seems to jeopardize the stability, not just of climate but of life itself.
We are told it will require a colossal effort to fix the problem and clean up the atmosphere! But the problem is not with the environment. The problem is one of perception. ?Our false views of life hide eternal harmony, and produce the ills of which we complain? (S&H, p. 62). Love is making us very uncomfortable in trying to live as something other than the Awareness of Spirit's omnipotence, or omni-energy.
Man is conscious identity, not an entity separate from the allness of Life. One's viewpoint determines whether one sees a world of separate, finite entities or the one, infinite conscious identity.
From the viewpoint of wholeness, what is happening to our environment is not bad, even though it appears so if viewed as separate from the Being that is All. Truth is constantly demanding clearer views, as Reality identifying Itself. What we are always seeing, however dimly, is an idea materializing that has always been present, and that more nearly approximates the truth of being as old concepts of good are given up. It is actually old concepts of good, rather than Good itself, that are seemingly being destroyed. If we let go of our attachments to the way good looked a decade ago or last year or yesterday, newness of life evolving becomes painless, without fear as its accompaniment.
Consider the computer and the cell phone. Such apparent changes in communication and information technology mirror omniscience to a degree not before seen in human history, so that now only small, wireless devices are needed to keep us in contact with others and to place vast quantities of information at our fingertips instantly.
The next step in the evolution of consciousness is that even the things we thought were more visibly ?physical? are indeed just mental manifestations of Spirit in action, too. All awareness, whether seen now as omniscient communication, or still to be seen as omnipresent transportation, is never a personal achievement but Mind being aware of a wonderful aspect of Itself. Just a simple acknowledgement of that fact does wonders for the environment.
In her 1969 Ft. Lauderdale seminar, Mrs. Laird reminded us ?that we are making our environment?that we are our environment.? She emphasized throughout the seminar that all existence is Spirit and that energy and substance are interchangeable. She predicted that ?the use of this know-how will enable a human being to disappear here and re-appear there with no limitation of space and time. It will also prove that the power moving the object from here to there is in and as the object itself, be it person, place or thing. There isn't any power outside that is moving the object.?
She read from of her pamphlet The Personal Concept the passage (p. 8 or 13, depending on which edition you look at): ?In the realm of physical science the equation [E=mc2] has evolved for the transformation of matter into energy, in other words for the release of the nucleus. The use of this equation demonstrates that matter and energy are interchangeable terms for the one Life substance. Today this equation is irreversible, life can be destroyed but it can not be reproduced. The discovery that this equation is reversible will take all the sting out of the atom bomb and make death an obsolete term. The spiritual energy seen as the destruction of life [including the environment] is the energy ceaselessly reproducing life. The one thing that limits the human race today is the lack of knowing how to transform energy into matter. When the ?know-how' evolves as it surely will, it will prove the mental nature of being.?
Wouldn't the transforming of energy into matter end global warming, famine and environmental problems? Limitless energy and substance are available anywhere, because Spirit is omnipresent.
So how do we begin to see energy changed into matter? By acknowledging, with no personal sense of thinking, that right here and right now the energy of Spirit is the substance of all that is or seems to be, even if that looks like forms ?called? matter.
As we acknowledge the tangibility and visibility of the infinite Unseen, forever safe in the Unconscious, this infinite power manifests itself visibly and tangibly as the so-called physical and finite. And we recognize that the lumps of stuff commonly supposed to be separate from Spirit are actually the very evidence of Spirit's presence.
We are being called upon to see the energy of Spirit everywhere, no matter what the look. In British Columbia where I live, our winters over the past few decades have become so warm that the pine beetle, which until recently was killed by the extremely low temperatures, has in the past few years devoured millions of acres of forest, devastating major portions of the province. It is predicted that B.C. will soon have a California type of climate, affecting numerous species. Canada's arctic is losing its ice and starting to become amazingly different.
But to the degree that change is recognized as infinite Mind unfolding Itself, the seeming negative effects will shift to language revealing the energy of Spirit bringing us?and therefore the world we walk through?into newness of life. To paraphrase Mrs. Eddy (S&H, p. 316), ?Christ??the divinity of humanity right here and now as each individual consciousness??presents the indestructible environment, which Spirit creates, constitutes and governs.?
In her 2006 La Jolla seminar, Betty Albee reminded students of Metaphysical Science that for something to be causative?in our environment, or any other aspect of living?it must include all four of the following, not just one of them. Genuine Cause must be ?invisible, (unseen); indivisible (singular); infinite (immeasurable/inexhaustible); and eternal (forever).?
As primal Cause, Spirit is evidencing Itself as man and an endless universe of ideas held in perfect balance. In the words of Mrs. Eddy (S&H, p. 505), ?The divine Mind, not matter, creates all identities and they are forms of Mind, the ideas of Spirit apparent only as Mind, never as mindless matter? (emphasis added).
