The great treasure of life

View this email in your browser Dear Friends, Serenity's annual drawing is now closed. I would like to thank all who entered. The response was very encouraging. Winners of the drawing will be notified soon. This week's quote is from spiritual awareness class CL 78, which was published in Volume 9 of The Living Light Dialogue. "Man himself is his own best friend. And man himself is his own worst enemy. For it is man's personal thoughts and personal acts that lift him to heavenly heights or take him in the opposite direction. There's nothing outside that can ever affect our life, unless you have something inside that is setting that law into motion. For all experience in all of life is ever within us. Remember, my good friends, whatever it is in life you want, whatever it is in life you don't want, it's within your hands, for it's within your head. It's never out there. It is a delusion of the mind that dictates to us that it's outside. That is not where it exists. It's inside our self. All our health and all our wealth and all our happiness is inside. That's the great treasure that, in truth, is ours. If you have difficulty in finding that great treasure of life, then you may be rest assured you have some denial. And it is that denial that is your destiny that's keeping you from finding your true wealth. Everything you could possibly desire you already have. Because your physical senses do not yet experience it, simply reveals that you have not yet truly accepted it. We understand in this Living Light Philosophy that acceptance is the will of God. It is the divine will. For there is nothing in all of the universes that is denied by the intelligent Energy. When we permit our minds to deny, we rise as a judge, superior to the God that sustains us. And it is those denials in our consciousness that keep us from experiencing the health, wealth, and happiness that already exists within us. So I assure you, my friends, if you are having those experiences and your life is not complete and fulfilled, pause each day for a few moments, look honestly within, permit your judgments and denials to rise up in your consciousness that you may work with them through the great power of forgiveness. For to forgive is to give forth and that that you give forth is then in the hands of a great and higher law. There is no reason for anyone to be without their share of the goodness of life. And the goodness of life is everywhere present. I sincerely hope that it may be in keeping with your soul's evolution to make that daily effort to accept the possibility of something greater. For if you will truly do that and you will flood your consciousness daily with that demonstrable truth, you will soon in life experience that something greater, that something better than you already have." To counterbalance the many denials that we often entertain in thought the philosophy encourages us to flood our consciousness with positive affirmations. One such affirmation is "I accept the possibility of experiencing something better in my life." It is important not to dictate what that something better is. But acceptance is very important because the moment we say "I accept the possibility" of anything, we open our minds to the Power and the Intelligence that can manifest that goodness in our lives. Those who are new to Serenity, you will find recent quotes on Serenity's Facebook Fanpage and that is also where you can join students of the Living Light from around the world to ask questions and share your understanding. I hope you will join the conversation.  If you have any topics you would like addressed in these weekly emails, please feel free to email your request. To ensure that you consistently receive Serenity's weekly emails, be sure to add Serenity's email address to your contacts and your white list. This will help ensure that the emails are not treated as spam. Additional information on these teachings is available on Serenity's website: http://www.livinglight.org Sincerely yours, Russell Fitzgerald Vice President Copyright © 2020 Serenity Association, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: Serenity Association PO Box 4187 San Rafael, CA 94913-4187 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Drawing and Beginning the Inward Journey

View this email in your browser Dear Friends, Serenity's annual drawing is open for the month of February. It will close soon, on February 29, but there is still time to join. For more information on that, please see below. This week's quote is from spiritual awareness class CC 56, which was published in Volume 3 of The Living Light Dialogue. "Man starts on the inward journey to know himself by understanding his own motives, his own motivation. And so it is, in all our getting, we seek to get understanding. So, my friends, we start on the inward journey to understand our own motivation, to understand our feelings, to understand why we feel happy and joyous over one experience and we feel sad and depressed over another experience. We must first seek to understand why we have those types of feelings. And when we seek to understand them, you see, my friends, we must step outside of ourselves to get inside of ourselves. And the reason that we must step outside of ourselves to get inside of ourselves is because there are eighty-one levels of consciousness. And while the soul is expressing on one of those eighty-one levels, we can't see the other eighty. Do you understand? So a person, seeking to understand themselves, they strive to become objective. And they look at themselves over here and they say, "Now that's most interesting. I get my feelings hurt almost seven days a week. Sometimes I feel very joyous and very happy. Now, why do I feel this way? And why do I feel that way?" And the first thing that the mind starts going through is, "Well, with certain people I'm very happy. I have a rapport with them"—don't you see? "Now with other people, I don't have a rapport. They're so sharp. They don't have any understanding." Well, that's the first step. Then, the person says to themselves, "Now I want to work on myself concerning the individual that doesn't have any understanding of me. Because the individual that I have experience with that doesn't have any understanding of my feelings is revealing to me that I am not emanating understanding to that individual. And that individual is a mirror that's reflecting back to me a lack of understanding." Consequently, my friends, you see, we want to work on the things that are distasteful in our life. You see, my friends, the things that are tasteful and satisfactory, that's a waste of energy to work on those. You see, irritation wakes the soul. It is satisfaction that lets it sleep. So, you see, we want to work on the situations in our life where our feelings are hurt, where it's difficult for us to express the soul faculty of tolerance, where especially in areas where we don't get our own way—and those are the areas, my good students, that we want to work on. Because, you see, we want to work on those struggles, you see. They will reveal to us levels of consciousness that we haven't, before, been consciously aware of." Serenity's Annual Drawing The annual drawing to commemorate the birth and the passing on of the founder of Serenity, Mr. Richard Goodwin, is open. The prizes for the drawing are 5 copies of Volume 1 of The Living Light Dialogue. That is, there will be 5 winners and each winner will be mailed a copy of Volume 1. The drawing is open through the month of February and closes on February 29, 2020. All are welcomed to enter---just respond to any of the weekly emails saying that you would like to enter. In order to be fair, only one entry per email address will be allowed. In the first week of March, the winners will be drawn. The winners will be notified by email and asked to provide a mailing address so that their copy of Volume 1 can be mailed. If a winner does not provide a mailing address in a timely manner, a new name will be drawn. If the winner of the drawing already has Volume 1, then he or she may choose any other published volume. The winners may also choose to receive a PDF of their volume. As soon as all copies have been mailed to the winners, their names and countries of residence will be announced in this weekly email. This drawing is being sponsored by a number of friends of Serenity in order to make these beautiful teachings more available to those who are seeking. And I think this is a beautiful way to honor and commemorate Mr. Goodwin.   Later in CC 56, Mr. Goodwin went on to say, "What I mean by the statement, 'Take the inward journey' is the journey through the mind to find our own soul." Those who are new to Serenity, you will find recent quotes on Serenity's Facebook Fanpage and that is also where you can join students of the Living Light from around the world to ask questions and share your understanding. I hope you will join the conversation.  If you have any topics you would like addressed in these weekly emails, please feel free to email your request. To ensure that you consistently receive Serenity's weekly emails, be sure to add Serenity's email address to your contacts and your white list. This will help ensure that the emails are not treated as spam. Additional information on these teachings is available on Serenity's website: http://www.livinglight.org Sincerely yours, Russell Fitzgerald Vice President Copyright © 2020 Serenity Association, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: Serenity Association PO Box 4187 San Rafael, CA 94913-4187 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Drawing and Intro to Levels of Consciousness

View this email in your browser Dear Friends, Serenity's annual drawing is open for the month of February. So there is still time to join. For more information on that, please see below. This week's quote is from spiritual awareness class CL 85, which was published in Volume 10 of The Living Light Dialogue. "So often in the study of this, The Living Light philosophy, a student will say that they have tried and the months have passed and perhaps even the years, but there's been no change. There's been no change in the level of consciousness from which they speak, for no effort in that level of consciousness was ever made. Now there is no question that effort was made in other levels of consciousness and when, from those levels of consciousness, they speak, they readily and willingly admit the changes that have taken place for the better in their lives. We all know from our own personal lives that we have many levels of consciousness, for one moment we find our self with certain attitudes towards life, only in the next moment to find ourselves in totally different attitudes of mind to life. These represent and express the various levels of consciousness through which our eternal soul is moving and expressing. It is a matter, then, of gaining control of one's vehicle of expression, known as the human mind, not to let it wander around in the universe in any level that it so chooses. It is a ship of which, by the very laws, you are the captain of. You certainly would not want your suit that you wear or your dress to tell you where you are going, to tell you that it's taking you here and there, whether you like it or not. No one wants to think that they are so controlled by a vehicle designed for them to use for their own eternal good, but I assure you that Life herself—our personal lives—reveal day after day, experience after experience, that that is exactly what the vehicle of our eternal soul is so often doing to us. We all have had experience in our life when we found it most difficult to still our thought, when certain feelings rose up and we lost control of our mind, that we said and did things that a moment later we sincerely wish we had not. What does that reveal? It reveals the various levels of consciousness. It reveals a lack of control. And because of this lack of control we experience regret, we experience sorrow, and we experience these many negative functions. We don't need to experience those things. It is not necessary for us to suffer to be free. By our divine birth, we already are free. We are free. It is when our minds, without control of the faculty of reason—which is an expression of our eternal soul—our minds take us into these many different things. That's when we experience what we know deep within our self is bondage." Serenity's Annual Drawing The annual drawing to commemorate the birth and the passing on of the founder of Serenity, Mr. Richard Goodwin, is open. The prizes for the drawing are 5 copies of Volume 1 of The Living Light Dialogue. That is, there will be 5 winners and each winner will be mailed a copy of Volume 1. The drawing is open through the month of February and closes on February 29, 2020. All are welcomed to enter---just respond to any of the weekly emails saying that you would like to enter. In order to be fair, only one entry per email address will be allowed. In the first week of March, the winners will be drawn. The winners will be notified by email and asked to provide a mailing address so that their copy of Volume 1 can be mailed. If a winner does not provide a mailing address in a timely manner, a new name will be drawn. If the winner of the drawing already has Volume 1, then he or she may choose any other published volume. The winners may also choose to receive a PDF of their volume. As soon as all copies have been mailed to the winners, their names and countries of residence will be announced in this weekly email. This drawing is being sponsored by a number of friends of Serenity in order to make these beautiful teachings more available to those who are seeking. And I think this is a beautiful way to honor and commemorate Mr. Goodwin.   One moment we want to go to the mountains, but in the next moment we want to go to the sea. This is another example of our many levels of consciousness. When we do not make the effort to control our minds, then, from our own lack of effort, we become controlled by the strongest pattern in our minds. And those mental patterns are often not harmonious or considerate of others or even considerate of our other levels of consciousness. And so we experience discord within and without. As we make the conscious effort to separate ourselves from our thoughts, we are no longer so controlled or disturbed by the passing panorama of our thoughts. The choice to make that effort is ever ours to make: to continue to be ruled by what has been or to experience the freedom and the goodness that we in truth are. Those who are new to Serenity, you will find recent quotes on Serenity's Facebook Fanpage and that is also where you can join students of the Living Light from around the world to ask questions and share your understanding. I hope you will join the conversation.  If you have any topics you would like addressed in these weekly emails, please feel free to email your request. To ensure that you consistently receive Serenity's weekly emails, be sure to add Serenity's email address to your contacts and your white list. This will help ensure that the emails are not treated as spam. Additional information on these teachings is available on Serenity's website: http://www.livinglight.org Sincerely yours, Russell Fitzgerald Vice President Copyright © 2020 Serenity Association, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: Serenity Association PO Box 4187 San Rafael, CA 94913-4187 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.