The Plum Line of Experience

Always seek to set aside the valuations of the world that seem wrong and try to judge them only by those valuations that seem right to you. Do not seek the praise and notice of the world. Be one of those who, though sometimes scoffed at, have a serenity and peace of mind that the scoffers never know. Be one of that band who feel the Divine Principle in the universe, though He be often rejected because He cannot be seen.

Twenty-Four

Hours A Day

A Hazelden Publication

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     It has been my experience that the so-called “scoffers” are often right when true believers are so very destructively wrong about the practice of faith. I don’t really have that much going on with faith as I do experience. With the exception of a very personal and powerful touch from the helping hand of the Heart of Compassion, the experimental results of physicists, neuro-chemists, biologists and so on, are not at all contrary to my beliefs. My faith is not endangered by the advances of science because it follows much of the same processes of the laboratory. In many ways my experience is validated in a way that lifts my faith rather than undermines it. If I look at the world around me with a detached open-mindedness it is easier to discern where others are right. Whatsoever is kind; whatsoever is necessary; whatsoever is true; this is the plum line far more reliable than whether or not someone believes as I do.

    Now, I might say this about political wrangling between “the left” and “the right”: I look for healing over division. Hardly ever, in most arguments, is the “other side” completely wrong. It seems to me to be that in politics there are true believers… advocates of a cause… that are far more likely to promote “witch burnings” than any auto de fe of the inquisition. Again: Whatsoever is kind; whatsoever is necessary; whatsoever is true; become the plum line trumping blind faith.

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