The Unity Way of Life
It has been said, “Unity is not so much a religion as it is a way of living and being.” This speaks to Unity’s desire to offer practical, spiritual wisdom and truth that can be easily applied to common, everyday experiences of living. Engagement with the concepts of universal wisdom and truth ushers in a shift of personal awareness allowing us the opportunity to see ourselves not so much as human beings desiring to be spiritual but rather as spiritual beings who happen to be having a human experience.
While it is common for the various Christian faith traditions to emphasize the inferior, sometimes sinful nature of humankind, Unity does not. It chooses to acknowledge and celebrate the presence of God’s spirit in each and every person, without exception. This means that at the elemental level of your essence, you are a “sacred being” rather than a “miserable sinner.”
Unity, as a member of the New Thought Christian Movement which developed in the mid-1800’s, looks to the life of Jesus as an expression of what it is to be a highly evolved spiritual being. As such, he then becomes the example, not the exception of what it is to be human. By his own living example, he demonstrates and leads the way for us to follow in the discovery and unfoldment of our own spiritual or “christed” nature. In essence then, you are “God’s beloved” as much as Jesus Christ ever was!
Unity does not seek to proclaim: “You are God!” Rather it sees that as a human being you have a sacred and holy core at the center of your being. As it says in Luke, “The kingdom of God is within you.” Your life then becomes a journey of remembering and re-discovering this fundamental Truth about who you are.
Knowing about and accepting the truth of this sacred center of being does not, however, mean we are expressing and experiencing our “perfection” all of the time. Certainly, we make and continue to create mistakes…that is, we are still in a process of the spiritual evolution of our consciousness. We mess up, sometimes badly. This erroneous behavior naturally results from our absent minded and sometimes willful denial of our True nature…or to put it differently, we err on the side of being human, not spiritual.
Having been given by God the gift and the right of “free will,” we have the choice of being conscious or unconscious about what we are doing and how we are living. The quality of our lives is up to us. When we behave badly, more often than not, we pay the consequences. In this way we can see how we are not punished “for “ our sins, but rather “by” them. In Unity, evil does not come from a demonic force called the Devil…it shows up due to our own denial and disregard of our spiritual nature. We don’t need a Devil to lead us astray, we’re doing quite nicely on our own!
Our God, then, is not sitting on a distant throne watching and judging us from afar. God’s role in our lives is to lovingly and unconditionally guide, lead, nudge…and sometimes even shove, us in the direction of our highest and best good. God is the source of all that is Good…all that is right…all that is True, and as it says in the Gospels, “It is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.” God is the great source of unlimited, persistent giving.
There is nothing we could ever do to cause God to cease desiring for us a life of goodness, happiness and fulfillment. We can, however, “short-circuit” this divine desire by living in denial of the Truth we already know, thereby making a conscious choice to live in separation from God’s supportive presence.
We enthusiastically invite you to come along and experience the joy of living together in “Unity!”
Life is God’s great gift to us, and what we do with it, how we live it and express it is our gift back to God. Unity seeks to assist anyone, without exception, in the pursuit and experience of being increasingly more aligned and attuned to God’s mind and heart.