Interview with Reverend Josie, Center for Spiritual Living

 

Interview with Reverend Josie

Center for Spiritual Living

St. George, Utah

 

Interview takes place in Josie’s office at the Center

December 17, 2015

 

Matt:       Reverend Josie of the Center for Spiritual Living, St. George, Utah.

Reverend Josie:  Reverend Josie De Los Santos.

M:    Please tell me your biography and how did you end up in St. George, Utah, at the Center for Spiritual Living?

RJ:   I was born in San Antonio, Texas.  I’m Mexican-American from a family, a migrant family I might add, of 6 girls and 2 boys.  My family travelled from San Antonio and worked the fields from San Antonio all the way to Wisconsin.

I’m the youngest of that family.  When I was starting school, kindergarten, I had heat sores on my hands because I had been in the cold and then the heat, I had these little blisters on my hands.  My first day of school and they sent me home with a note.  They didn’t say anything to me.  I was one of these little children that walked around with a tablet and pencil.  In fact, I called myself “Maria Lapiz,” which is Mary Pencil.  I would talk to the workers on the roof, and I would say, “Ask me my name!  Ask me my name!” in Spanish.  “My name is Maria Lapiz.”  I was so anxious to go to school.  And then to have that happen was devastating.  I didn’t understand it as a child.

My mother said, “It’s okay.  Stay home.  We’re traveling to Wisconsin and when we get to Wisconsin you can go to school there and we’ll see if you like it.”

And I was the youngest, spoiled.  It worked out for me.  Wisconsin is where I went to school, where I started school and did my elementary, junior high, high school, did my undergraduate, and then eventually did my Masters in San Diego.

M:    What part of Wisconsin were you living in?

RJ:   We moved into Kenosha.  My father died when I was 15.  He went into the hospital when I was three and he died when I was 15.  My mother moved us to Racine with another family.  Another interesting story.  They were a family of all boys and we were a family of all girls.  Three weeks later my mother said, “This is not working.  We have to move.”  So we moved.

      Like I said, I got all my education in Wisconsin.  I did part of my work at UW-M and part of my work at Alverno College.  I started at Alverno because they had a weekend college.  For me. ..

M:    Where is that?

RJ:   In Milwaukee.  I lived in Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee.  I lived in Madison.  I worked in Madison.

M:    I lived in Chicago for awhile.  Northwestern University.

RJ:   When I finished, in 1984, when I finished my undergraduate in Milwaukee I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face I was so excited.

M:    What was your degree in?

RJ:   Business Management and Communications, cuz I had a double major.

      I said, “I’m moving out of Wisconsin” cuz I’d been there all my life.  I didn’t know any other place.  I began to take vacations to different areas to see where did I want to move to.  It turned out to be San Diego.

M:    I grew up in San Diego.  Chula Vista/Bonita.

RJ:   I know that area very well.  My husband is from that area.  He was raised there.  He went to school there whereas I didn’t.  I went to school in Wisconsin.  We met.  That was something we had in common.

      I was looking for a Masters program.  I wanted to do an MBA and I thought, “How am I going to use that?”  I started. . .I’ve always been spiritual.  I come from a Catholic family.  My parents set a very good example of, “You can’t do anything.  You absolutely have to go.”  It was mandatory that we went to church on Sunday morning.  And the same with taking us to confession on Saturday evenings, and so forth.

      I didn’t have my parents and my sisters had all gotten married.  So I moved by myself to San Diego and began working.  Eventually someone at work invited me to go to a Center for Spiritual Living which is located in Encinitas.  It’s very big.  I was one of about 60 practitioners.

      What you do is you study.  You take classes, which appealed to me.  You take a class to learn.  If anybody wanted to tell me something I’d be, like, “Why don’t you give me something in writing.  I’d like to evaluate it myself and see if that’s something I would like.”

M:    Where did you go to college in San Diego?

RJ:   It was Ernest Holmes Institute.  The Center for Spiritual Living.  They have . . .

M:    But you were looking to go to a Masters Program.  That’s not what you were looking for, or was it?

RJ:   No.  I started to go to the Center in Encinitas and I entered the classes and when I had done the practitioner work I had to decide whether I wanted to become a minister and at the time I didn’t.  So I did about 10 or 12 years in Encinitas as a practioner.  What you do as a practitioner is you serve the Center.  I taught classes there, I was President of the Board, I was very active.

M:    How many members does that Center have?

RJ:   About 400, 500.  Big.  Between 400-600, I think.

M:    I guess my question was that I thought you said the reason you moved to San Diego in the first place was to do a Masters?

RJ:   No.

M:    You moved there because it seemed like a nice place to go.

RJ:   Yeah.  I had lived too long in Wisonsin.

M:    Were you still a practicing Catholic at that point?

RJ:   No.  Moving to San Diego made me look at it differently.  I knew that after my parents had died that I would not follow the Catholic Church.  I was already referring to God as Spirit.  I was seeing a bigger picture.  It was a feeling that I wanted.  I knew that a feeling or experience belonged to that God that I was searching for.  When I went to the Center there in Encinitas, I said, “Oh, I’m home.  This is what I want to study.”

      I’m just a school type person.  I like to learn.  I didn’t decide to do a Masters until after I had gotten married, I had met my husband.  That was in . . .I finished in 2012, so I started in about 2009/2008.

M:    And the Masters program is Ernest Holmes.

RJ:   It’s an accredited program.  You have to do the work.  It’s just like any other university.

M:    That’s in San Diego?

RJ:   They have schools, institutes, in different areas, like Northwest, and then they have one in Southwest, in San Diego, they have one in Northern California.  They have one in Denver, I think.  They are all over the U.S.  It’s wonderful.  I loved it.

M:    So you were living in San Diego, working.

RJ:   Yes.  I was working, I was in international business.  Initially, I worked for QUALCOMM when they first went to Mexico with their cell phones.  I was one of the sales people that would travel that area.  I had a friend that did strategic planning, she had her own business.  She was my buddy.  She moved me.  The work that I did was contracts, government contracts.  Project management.

M:    So before you found the Center you weren’t going to any kind of organized religion?

RJ:   No.  When I first got to San Diego. . .I think I’ve always been a spiritual person.  I did look around.  I must have gone to 7 Catholic Churches and I thought, “This is not me, anymore.  I need to find something that speaks to me.”  That was the Center.  I continued to work.

M:    Your friend invited you. . .

RJ:   Yea.  Somebody at work invited me.  A couple that had met each other at work and they were attending this particular center.  I was very curious when I arrived about how different it was from the Catholic Church.  I asked a lot of questions, “What’s the book that I read?  How do I get myself familiar with?”  The minister was very good at calling me by my first name, so he had already pointed me out as a potential leader for the Center.  I was already being asked.  The first thing that I did was a chili cook-off.  I had never done anything with a microphone and here I was organizing.  It was his birthday and they were giving him a gift, so I had to take the microphone.  I think I was President of the Board at the time.  I think I was President of the Board before I was a member of the Center, actually.  I was being pushed to do all of these things.  And I’m a very “yes” person, cuz I think that’s Spirit, I think it’s something pushing you to be more than you think you are.  Don’t play little.  I would say “yes” and then I’d go, “What am I doing?”  Here I am in the middle of this chili cook-off and I don’t know anything about chili.

      “Oh, you’ll have people to help you.”

      It was successful and good.

M:    How many times did you attend before you started volunteering to help them out?

RJ:   I signed-up for the first Foundations Class, they have a Foundations Class that speaks to the ten spiritual laws.  What it is, it’s a philosophy, it’s a way of life.  I had this written and I thought, “Maybe. . .”  [She now reads for a small page of notes she’s written {you have a copy of these notes in your Documents notebook}].  We describe Science of Mind as a philosophy of life that integrates spiritual truth with science and philosophy.  It teaches you how to live your life.  It’s a foundation class, it’s a wonderful class.  Which is behind me as well.  [she points to a poster on the wall].  This is the spiritual mind treatment.  This is the symbol for spirit.  You’re subconscious.  And then the result is what you create.  This describe pretty much the. . .This down here is the levels of consciousness.

M:    It sounds like we’re starting to get into the basics of what the Center for Spiritual Living is.

RJ:   Yea.  From San Diego and the Center I started to grow.  I didn’t make my decision to go to the school of ministry until I was here.  I felt that, “What am I doing here?”  I could look out my window and it was amazing.  It was beautiful here.  And the reason that I told myself was, “I’m here because I’m supposed to have all of this quiet,” which I didn’t have in San Diego.  In San Diego, the counseling and even my spirituality was noisy and busy and full of people.  To come here it was all quiet.

M:    Why did you move here?

RJ:   I met my husband. . .

M:    In San Diego.

RJ:   Yes.  I met my husband.  We bought a . . .we made, like, 5 decisions at one time.  I retired.  He retired.  We looked to move.  We didn’t move here because this was a wonderful place, we moved because we wanted to . . . Since I graduated in 1986.  I graduated in ’84, and in ’86 I moved to San Diego.  Since that, until 2004 was when we moved here.  I had done a lot there and it was time to move, to have a new place, a new life, and everything else.  When I arrived here there was nothing.  There’s only the Mormon Church and I’m going. . .

M:    What year did you move here?

RJ:   2004.  So in 2004 I was already helping a lady who had written a book, accompanied by classes she taught on the book.  I’d been working with her.  We’d translated that from English to Spanish.  I went to be a Practitioner in Las Vegas.  I started to get calls from different people in the area that wanted to do the classes for that book.  That book is here. [she pulls the book from her shelf]  Her name is Diane Harmon.  It’s a book on abundance.  I started to work with her.  I became a Practitioner at one of the Centers in Las Vegas.  In 2008 I started a study group here.  We met at the Meadows Nursing Home.  That group was 20 people.  They kind of grew with me.

      So the steps in becoming an official Center are to have a study group, especially here where there’s nothing.  So I had a study group and then I moved into a teaching chapter.  They wanted a building, they wanted a place where they could meet on Sundays.  That became the teaching chapter.  That was 2008 to about 2010.  In 2010 the teaching chapter was about 2 ½ years before we became an official Center.

      Again, teaching classes, teaching this class.  This became a certified class with the Center.

      So my reasons. . .I’ve written my reasons for how to change my life.  Teaching.  I want to give it to others.

M:    With all these different steps, it sounds like there is a bit of a hierarchy or bureaucracy involved with the Centers for Spiritual Living.

RJ:   There are ministers.  And we do have a main office.  Ernest Holmes is not a guru.  He’s not somebody who . . .he was a genius.  He was an amazing man who was so brilliant that he could synthesize everything that he learned.  This is the late 1800s and early 1900s.  He didn’t want a church.  He said, “What am I going to talk about?  They want me to come and talk on Sunday.  What am I going to talk about?”  Well, they talked about each other and what they were doing.  Some of the early folks, like Mary Curtis Hopkins, Mary Baker Eddy who was Christian Science, and the other New Thought group here is Unity, the Fillmores.  Myrtle Fillmore and her husband.  They were talking to each other.  They were trying to figure out, is it true that you can change your thinking, change your life?  How can we make that?  People were coming.  In Los Angeles, that was the first Center, 3 or 400 people would gather in different places, and he said, “I don’t want this to be a church.  This is just a teaching.  These are things that I’ve gathered.”  He could pick up things so easy that he could go teach it to somebody, teaching something new, he could synthesize it and put it into perspective with everything else that was happening.

      We just say he wrote books and . . .

M:    He wrote Science of Mind.  Do you have a copy?

RJ:   Yea.  [she goes to her bookshelf and grabs a copy]

M:    It has its own shelf.

RJ:   We get these and then we sell them to the students that take their foundations class.  They’re bought used and we charge, like, $10 for them.

      He was such a genius that his ideas are incredible.

M:    This was 1930-something?

RJ:   Yea.  Early-1900s, right.

M:    So there was a community of people in the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries who were, what, disgruntled with Christianity?

RJ:   Ernest Holmes was born in Maine into a family of 7 or 9 boys.  He was just curious.  Like you, “I want to read.”  And like me.  I want to know this, I want to know what is it?  What do I believe?  So that’s what we do.  When I speak up there it’s not, I’m not telling them, “Follow this or follow whatever.  But here’s what I’ve learned and here’s what’s for me and what can work for you if you want to change your life.”

      So the first three chapters of that book are the basics, three or four chapters.  What is it?  How is it used?  This is what we teach starting in January which, you know, now it’s gotten basic for me.  It’s like, I’d like to teach something and grow myself.

      And then you’re pretty much independent when you have a Center.  You’re not obligated.  For example, when I first started here in St. George, I knew that these people come from the Mormon Church and that’s the teaching that they know and I don’t want to judge that in any way.  I just want to share what I know.  I still believe that because I’m new to this area that I should go to them not to get to know this philosophy or this teaching but that they should get to know me.  So I’m doing their activities so they can get to know me.  Because they’re the majority and it’s okay.  That’s what I believe.  For me to move into the community it would have to be that way.  That’s what I think.

M:    So you went the Ernest Holmes. . .

RJ:   Institute.  It’s a 3 to 5 year program, accredited.

M:    And you come out with what?

RJ:   A Masters degree.  This one [pointing to a diploma on the wall], “School of Consciousness Studies, In recognition of the successful completion of the requisite course of study as accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council hereby confers upon the degree of Masters of Consciousness Studies with all the honors, rights, and privileges thereto.”  And this one [pointing to another] is provisional because I will be ordained in February.

M:    I remember you speaking about that.  Do you have to take more classes to become ordained?

RJ:   No.  You have to be a Senior Minister at a Center, you know, you’re in charge.  You go before a panel or Senior Ministers who have been in the movement forever.  They decide if you’re ready.

M:    Where will this happen?

RJ:   This will happen at the convention in February in Salt Lake.

M:    Is it always in Salt Lake City or does it move around?

RJ:   No, it’s all over the country.

M:    Is it a pretty big convention?

RJ:   Yes.  All the ministers attend, all the practitioners attend.  There’s hundreds of folks.  It’s a big deal.  It’s pretty exciting.  I love it.

M:    Would you call this a religion?

RJ:   No.

M:    Tell me why you said “no.”

RJ:   Okay.  I have had somebody in our movement say that we’re modern Christians, but we say that we’re a philosophy or a way of life, because what we teach, and I said a philosophy and way of life that integrates spiritual truths with science and philosophy.  The philosophers, you’ve had some of those classes, I’m sure, in some of your studies, as we have.  We study all the religions to become ministers.  They wanted to know the same things.  Who am I?  Why am I here?  How do I fit into the scheme of . . . The metaphysical part of it.  That’s who we are.  We don’t use the Bible per se to say “This is what God wrote or preached or believed.”  But we use the Bible as a metaphor.  If we say that Jesus was an avatar, we use Him as an example of who we would like to be.  It’s used that way when we speak, when I speak on Sundays.

M:    I imagine you use others, too.

RJ:   Yes. But we try to interpret it in a way that we know it, what we think of it, as metaphors.  Like this is the month of light, I’m using the energy to talk the whole month.  This is who you are.  And you can hear them when they’re speaking and ask questions or when they attend here that sometimes they don’t know the very basics.  That’s what we try to repeat and say, “Let’s get you knowing that you’re much bigger as a human being, who you are and how you can relate this life that you’re living and change it.”  Because maybe they’re coming here for whatever reason.

M:    There are some things that look like religion, obviously.  For one thing I found you, on Saturdays there’s a thing in the Spectrum, “Religious Services” that has a bunch of different. . .You must have advertised there.  I found you in the religious section of the paper.  You meet on Sundays, which is a Christian thing to do.  Is there a necessary thing for Sunday?

RJ:   No.  That’s what our audience wanted.  I cater to my audience.  What they want.  They want a place to meet.  They want to gather.

M:    And they’re used to Sundays.

RJ:   And they’re used to Sundays.

M:    But there’s nothing sacred about Sundays?

RJ:   We say that whenever you gather, like I say on Sunday mornings, wherever they’re gathered on Sunday mornings it’s to remember who you are, that you’re recognizing Spirit.

M:    We all sit in the chairs.  But that could be like a classroom, too, not necessarily a sermon.

RJ:   It is a classroom, yeah.

M:    Do you consider what you do to be sermons?

RJ:   I don’t call them sermons, I call them messages, a message on Sunday morning.  Something you take away with you.  And if I say I’m not an inspirational speaker, not a motivational speaker, but inspirational, cuz I bring you, hopefully, something new that you haven’t heard and that you want, that my audience wants.

      I would like to have live music, most of our Centers have live music.  We had a gal that wanted to, she’s studying, taking the classes online, cuz we have all our classes online.  I also had an Affiliate Minister, she’s over at the hospital creating a program there, I guess her area is growing.  She was here.  She’s a New Thought Minister like I am.  I was supporting her.  She has a Focus Ministry, which is. . .She’s a Minister but the Focus Ministry. . . a Practitioner can have a Focus Ministry.  All you’re doing is developing your own interest in something and you’re growing it and you have people that are coming to it or you have some kind of a study group.

M:    So the “focus” means you have, what?

RJ:   A certain area.  Hers would be nature.  She calls herself “New Thought Nature Ministries.”  She takes people up in the mountains and does, you know, the nature thing with them.  We were supporting her here.  She’s been here only a couple years, she’s going, maybe, on her second year.  She had an office here and just recently decided, “I need to focus differently than your audience here.”  She’d like to focus all the ministers throughout the U.S. so that they could come here and do retreats and whatever she has planned.

      We also had a young adult ministry which is called Launching Pad.  Launching Pad meets, they’re young adults 19 through, I’m not sure, 35 I think, I don’t know if they go that high, 30 maybe, I don’t know what the limit is.  They continue to meet on two Fridays out of the month.

M:    Here?

RJ:   Yes.  The person who was in charge of it, the leader, just left to Berkley.  He had an office here as well.  He spoke once a month.  They both spoke once a month.  It would free me.  But now both of them have left.

      Elijah, who was in charge of the young adults went back to Berkley.  He’s accepted a paying position, full-time position, to supervise or facilitate the Launching Pad there.  He was a ministerial student.

M:    So the young adult ministries are always called “Launching Pad” if they’re affiliated with the Centers?

RJ:   Yes.  It’s a group of young adults.  The group that meets here continues to meet without that leader.  I was introduced to who’s taking that job over and she’s a minister that’s coming in from Las Vegas to do it.  She’ll be meeting with the young adults here.

M:    But you are the Senior Minister?

RJ:   Yes.

M:    Administratively, you’re in charge.

RJ:   Yea.  I’m the founding minister here.  They wouldn’t be housed anywhere. . .They’re asking to be housed here.  I’m probably the only Center for Spiritual Living that’s housing the Launching Pad.

M:    How do you pay for your space here?  You’re not paying for it with the donations you get from members.

RJ:   No.  We have various groups that come in and meet.  We have somebody occupying an office.  We’re making another office available.  They pay us on a monthly basis.  Everybody pays for use of the space when they come in.  We have a course in miracles that meets on Monday nights.  We teach classes.  We’re teaching a prosperity class on Tuesday nights right now.  We have the drumming circle that meets once a month; there’s about 25-30 people that come.  They just met last, what’s today?  Last night.

M:    So the drumming circle takes donations?

RJ:   Yes.  They pay for the space.  I only charge, like, $20 for the use of the space.  If they’re collecting, then give what’s collected.  They make a decision.  My leadership really is, my board, we have a board here as well.  It is usually 5 people.  I’ve had 2 people leave recently.  We don’t elect President, Vice President. Treasurer, Secretary.  A lot of the Centers do.  I’m more structured.  We’re kind of new.  And I haven’t done membership either, cuz there is something in me that says, “I don’t know how well I want to do membership.”  It just doesn’t feel right yet.  I know that eventually it will have to be a membership of some kind.  The upkeep itself calls for people that want to. . .We call it intentional giving.  I know that it’s called tithing, and that’s what everybody is familiar with.  We’re familiar with tithing and we know the definition of it, except that we translate it into intentional giving which means that it’s a spiritual practice that you are that center of giving and receiving.  In your own heart, when you give from a place of joy and love, the divine takes care of you.  It comes to you.  I know it from experience because I’ve tithed, or I’ve given intentionally for years and years and years.  And my husband has learned it now.  When you have a partner you have to teach a partner.  He’s learned it now and he goes, “Oh my gosh!”  Because this is who. . .This is what it is.  We’re spiritual beings having human experiences.  It happens.  If you don’t understand.  . .You want to understand it because you want to live abundantly, you want to be prosperous, you want to have all the things in life.  When you do that, depending on your spiritual growth, how big of a container are you?  Are you putting just this little cup and saying, “I’m giving intentionally,” or is your container huge and give, and you’re not afraid to let that law of circulation, let it go.  My husband was a great believer of, “We have to have savings.  We have to have. . .”  That’s the mentality of a lot of people.  Now he says, “I don’t even worry about it.  It just comes.”  When you let go and let God. . .It’s surrender and trust.

M:    Where do you get your member?

RJ:   There are people that are still attending the Mormon Church and they’re attending here.  When we have special events we fill this space here of 2600 square feet.  We fill it.  These are just people that are hearing about us, that we’re here.  They just want to come when we have special events.  They’re not coming on Sundays.

M:    Like tomorrow night.

RJ:   Yea.  We have to charge.  It’s a fundraiser.  And we, I, write proposals.  I did have a gal that was very helpful to me in writing proposals but she’s also left.  You know, people move.  They grow and they want to change and they want to do other things.  Her and I did the business plan together.  We wrote proposals together.

M:    What do you mean by proposals?

RJ:   The most recent proposal we had is. . .We have a Center in Seattle that brings in $2 million a year, so they fund beginning Centers.  They funded us for one year at $2,000 a month for a full year.  That ended in June.  It shouldn’t be my job, there should be somebody on the board that could help with some of these things.  It’s difficult to get somebody from the community that would, cuz I asked my board members, “What can you contribute to the board?”  You need them.  I come from an administrative background, so I know the different areas that I need to fill, the spots that I need to fill in what areas.  I need to look at the community and see who would be interested and do they know our philosophy and how quick can they come on board so that they can learn all these things?  Our accountant was just my neighbor and she is not charging us at all to do our accounting.  She’s wonderful.  Now she’s deciding that she might want to come on the board.  Why?  Because of our conversations, not because of the teaching.  She said, “I might be interested.”  They’re getting older.  It’s their time.  People come to this teaching when it is their time.

M:    You have a few regulars.  Have they been coming for awhile?  How do you think they found you?  They’re older, right?

RJ:   I started the study group.  So some of those people have been with me since then, 2008.  They follow me.  When I initially started I would go speak, to Kanab, Mesquite, to different areas that had groups that maybe were calling themselves . . . there was a group in Mesquite, we had 60 people coming together on Sunday.  They were calling themselves Mind, Body, and Spirit and they were meeting on Wednesday nights and they wanted me to go there on Sundays.  That’s before I had a Center myself.  There is a need in Mesquite.  I would still help out if I could.

M:    There’s the Centers for Spiritual Living.  But it seems like there’s also something larger that you’re talking about.  You talk about New Thought ministers.  You talked about this group in Mesquite. . .

RJ:   Mind, Body, and Spirit.

M:    Do they consider themselves a Centers for Spiritual Living group?

RJ:   When the movement first started, the New Thought Movement meaning Ernest Holmes, Mary [sic: Emma] Curtis Hopkins, Mary Baker Eddy, Unity here in town, there’s a Unity group that meets.

M:    And they have their roots back to that same time?

RJ:   New Thought.  New Thought Movement.  That means they’re all familiar with Science of Mind and Ernest Holmes.  These were all people who were coming together. . .

M:    They all knew each other.

RJ:   Yea.  They were all friends.  Mary Baker Eddy was very much, “I want only this to be taught and we’re calling his Religious Science.”  Emma Curtis Hopkins was a student of Mary Baker Eddy’s but Emma Curtis Hopkins had her own ideas, added ideas.  She said, “I guess I have to go over here.”  Emma Curtis Hopkins had Ernest Holmes coming to her to learn.  The first Phineas Quimby had thousands of people coming to him to be cured because of his ideas.  Like you coming to me, you would tell me that you’re not feeling well, whatever detail you wanted to give, and his idea of a prescription, because it’s called a mental equivalent, he would tell you how you should change your thinking.  And he would write it.  He would take, like, $2 for each, thousands of people, and he would say, “If it doesn’t work for you, come back and I’ll give you your money back.”  He was one of the people.  Also, Emerson influenced Ernest Holmes a lot.

M:    Ralph Waldo?

RJ:   Yes.  A lot.  The New Thought Movement. . .New Thought because of the timing, not because . . .There’s a lot of old thought in New Thought.  We go back to the Eastern philosophies, we teach the Hindu and ritual, all of that stuff is done in Centers.  You’d be surprised.  The Movement, specifically, that came out of the founder, Ernest Holmes, is called the Science of Mind.  But all these other people, because they grew up, started their own movements at the same time with some of the same, not exactly the same, but some of the same.  Even Science of Mind kind of split because they didn’t want all of the book stuff that was coming up.  The classes and the . . .Some people didn’t believe that.  They believed in a philosophy and the way of life.  But they didn’t want to be put into classrooms and that kind of thing.  The two pieces went like this.  They came back together now.  That became international. . . They called themselves International Religious Science, or something like that.  But they eventually came back.  Now one of them has got this great big Masters program, fully developed, and the other one, they did everything just studying under Senior Ministers, on-the-job training kind of thing.  Now this group has to catch up with this group so that you have the same philosophy with your teaching style.

M:    So there are a whole bunch of people out there, like yourself, calling yourselves the New Thought Movement.  But they’re not all part of the Center.

RJ:   Yea.  They’re all Centers for Spiritual Living.  Well, Centers for Spiritual Living is Science of Mind.

M:    So the Christian Scientists. . .

RJ:   They wouldn’t call themselves Centers for Spiritual Living.  But they would call themselves New Thought.

M:    Because they’re very much tied to the Scriptures and the Bible.  They call themselves Readers.  They’re actuall biological sisters and one of them will read a part out of Mary Baker Eddy’s book, and then the other one will read parts from the Gospel that are similar.

RJ:   I’ve never known the details, I’ve never attended.  But I know that they were part of the Movement.

M:    They predate Ernest Holmes.  Mary Baker Eddy’s book is, like, 1860-something.

RJ:   But they were all friends.

M:    He must’ve been kind of old when he wrote this?

RJ:   He died in 1960.  Just a genius.

      It’s very interesting.  I love the teaching.

M:    So tell me, and this is the difficult part for anyone with a Christian background, your idea of God.  You say, “God,” and then you always say, “by many names.”  You also never give It a masculine or feminine, you never say “He” or “She,” you say “It.”

RJ:   Energy.  Yes.  Because God is in, as, and through everyone and everything.

M:    Is God a Being?

RJ:   No.  God can be Love, Peace, Joy, Divine Intelligence, Source.  It’s your experience.  How do you experience God?  Science and Mind teaches the unity of life.

M:    What does that mean?

RJ:   Unity of life is exactly what I’m teaching in December.  That energy, that impulse that happened 14 billion years ago is in, as, and through everyone and everything.  Everything has . . .The cosmos.  That’s what happened, right?  It contains that impulse.

M:    I’m trying to get to the idea of God.  Is God something to be prayed to?  Does God think or does God think because we think?

RJ:   The god that’s within you is that place, that cosmos, that energy.  We pray differently than the Christian Church.  We pray affirmatively.  We pray that everything is already established, that 14 billion years ago, the Big Bang, and that’s how, up until now, we’re creative beings, that impulse is within us, that impulse is in our sexuality by the way, very basic.  That’s who we are.  We’re creative beings.  When people discover that place that has not manifested, that place is where they can move in consciousness because the ground of everything is consciousness.  It’s not just human beings.  Everything.  If you study quantum physics, which we do in the studies that I did, Amit Goswami, he’s one of the professors in a few of the classes that I had on quantum physics.  Every industry right now is finding out that . . . Medicine is finding out that there is consciousness, that it takes an observer and a, a giver and a receiver, that we can observe something and change it.  Quantum physics, that’s the new science.  Discovering consciousness in everything.

M:    Everything has consciousness?

RJ:   That there is that ground of being, which is consciousness.

M:    It sounds like a different kind of consciousness than “I think, therefore I am.”  I’m conscious because I know I’m here.

RJ:   Because you’re thinking of it as a human being.  But if you think of it as impulse, as a pulse, as energy.  Nothing was created without an idea.  That’s the ground of being.  Everything has a ground of being.  We pray that that already exists.  When we pray affirmatively we know that, first of all, we believe, me as a minister or me as a practitioner. . . Practioners are usually the ones that do the prayer work for the Centers. . .That It already is.  We just invite It.  It’s a law.  If I think negatively, that’s my life.  If I think positively, that’s my life.  Words have power.  Whatever you say goes out into this life that we live and it’s created whether it’s negative or positive.

M:    Do you find any trouble existing in a culture like Southern Utah that’s dominated by a specific religion?

RJ:   Not when I understand it.  Not when I know that they’re believing in something separate of themselves.  I don’t judge it.  I invite them to come to . . .We are an open, loving, inclusive community that supports thinking creatively and living a deeply spiritual life.  We invite them in and I have found that sometimes they can’t bear to be told they are wonderful and special.  That’s what we tell them, “You’re unique.”  I have had even men walk away crying, “I can’t do this.”

M:    As opposed to having a god that puts judgment. . .

RJ:   Yes.  That I need to be punished.  That was my own search when I found that I had . . . That the god that I was praying to was within me.  What a change that made in my life.  I was praying to something that couldn’t experience, I couldn’t find, I couldn’t. . .

M:    That’s dualism, right?

RJ:   Separation.

M:    And your answer to that is unity.

RJ:   Unity.  Because we’re all one.

M:    We’re all part of the same thing.

RJ:   That’s right.  Like a drop of water in an ocean.

M:    So we’re each a drop of water in an ocean.

RJ:   Umm hmm.  It’s interesting, huh?  Something to think about.

M:    That’s like some of the Christian mystics, like Father Richard Rohr, who’s very popular.  He talks of an earlier Christianity where everything is one.  He says, “Non-dualism.”

RJ:   It’s an awakening, huh?  I’m talking about the 21^st Century when I’m talking about Andrew Cohen.  Very practical.  We have no victims in Science of Mind, no victims.  You’re responsible for your own life, your own spirituality.  And you have a responsibility, like I said last Sunday.  Now God needs us to change our ways.  Look at nature now with some of the things we’ve done.  This coming Sunday I’m gonna be talking about a greater understanding of that, the idea of our culture, that we are very me oriented.  And that’s caused a problem in trying to evolve because you’re so deep into this culture and never been curious.  And I’ll be talking about the ego and what that means within us that keeps us from moving into . . . evolving.  It’s very interesting.