Rev. Ed Townley is a Bible scholar, the senior minister at Unity of Greater Hartford, host of The Bible Alive on Unity Online Radio, and writes the Unity Blog Interpret This! The following feature (titled “So I've Been Thinking ...”) originally appeared on his personal ministry website, Spirit Expressing.

Charles Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity movement, is reported to have said that if he and Myrtle Fillmore, his wife and co-founder, hadn't settled on “Unity” as the name for their work, his second choice would have been to call it “Change.” I think every new day, every new stage, in our spiritual process makes clear how accurate—if intimidating!—that second name would have been.
 
I've been thinking recently that, if I had to come up with an alternate name, it would be Context. Not exactly a sizzling attention-getter, I know. But it's a word that describes a quality—both spiritual and practical—that is urgently needed in the world today.
 
It's not that change isn't still important. It is more important than ever. Change is definitely upon us, in absolutely every aspect of this human experience. It's been unfolding for years, of course; but until now it's been fairly easy to ignore, or at least minimize, its insistent drumbeat.
 
During my years in Dallas I lived beneath a flight path. I thought it would be a major distraction, but it's amazing how easy it became not to even hear the sound of aircraft flying in and out. After just a few days it was simply an unnoticed part of the background noise of life. The call to change has been like that in our lives, I think. It's definitely been there, but after a while we no longer really notice it. Now, however, it's as if the planes are landing, not on distant runways, but on the street in front of us—and taxiing up to the window where we sit.
 
Change can no longer be ignored, or assimilated into the familiar rhythms of life. The need for change is landing in front of us wherever we go, and it demands our attention in the moment.
 
It's all good. It's also noisy, disruptive, confusing and scary as hell. Literally. So the question becomes, what do we need in order to deal with all this …um … good that is suddenly intruding into our lives? I don't think we need more information about change; the days of studying it and/or trying to either prevent it altogether or control its pace are behind us. What we most need now is context.  

We need to approach the change that is suddenly before us in the context of the universal spiritual principles that define and describe who we are and what we're here to accomplish. Without that context, the change we're experiencing feels like sheer insanity.

And, conversely, we need to approach our spiritual principles in the context of what's happening to us, and through us, and around us. Without that context spiritual understanding becomes abstract and theoretical—pretty and reassuring, maybe, but of no practical use.
 
The idea of context may itself seem abstract, but I don't think it is. It's not about separating ourselves from the process of change so we can describe it from a safe distance. It's really about aggressively claiming the point of contact where change impacts our lives, and our lives impact the process of change.
 
And it does, indeed, work in both directions. Our understanding of spiritual principle helps us relate to the “realities” of a changing world. And, at the same time, those “realities” help us to more fully embrace our spiritual principles.
 
We can wear ourselves out trying to heal or dissolve every disruption caused by the flow of change in the world today. We may accomplish something here or there, but we will deplete our energies and fairly quickly burn ourselves out. Or we can be a point of context at which the dramas of the day meet eternal spiritual principle, and we can easily recognize the choices that will move us through the process more efficiently. We still take action, we still do what we can to help, but from a larger context and a deeper awareness.
 
Context doesn't deny the problems that are appearing in our world, or in our lives.  Neither does it minimize the challenge they represent. But it also doesn't lose sight of the spiritual truth that is greater than any problem, stronger than any challenge.
 
For some 20 years I have been following a few simple principles developed by The Institute of HeartMath, an internationally recognized nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to helping people reduce stress, self-regulate emotions, and build energy and resilience for healthy, happy lives. I have come to realize that “the power of the heart” is not just a metaphysical concept. It's a very tangible reality. By simply and deliberately shifting our inner focus from the anxiety, fear and high drama that I so easily find in my mind to the quiet, calm and infinitely powerful energy available in my heart, I am able to observe my mind's busy dramas from a deeper, richer context.

Those anxious fears and concerns in my mind are not to be repressed or denied as I deal with change in my life, or in the world. They're important—they're a part of this human experience we're here to transform. But we need to observe them from a different perspective, to see them in a different context. That context lives within us, and we can access it easily and instantly whenever we choose. That “inner journey” we take as we shift our focus from head to heart is short and, with practice, simple. It's also the most important Hero's Journey of them all.

 

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Read Rev. Ed Townley's Unity Blog Interpret This!