Finding the balance in this means finding the balance in myself. Finding the way to recognise my own feelings of anger, resentment, revenge, fear, etc., yet not identifying with them: not stuck in them and then acting them out. It is honouring my humanity yet knowing my divinity.
 
This means holding the space for feelings that are very uncomfortable, which normally we do everything we can to avoid. It is true – they are not of my true nature. However, it is only when I recognise them and gently hold the space for them, that I can find my way through to breathe through them. My personal experience is that when we bring all that we are not (everything that comes from the separated self-identity) to the Light and rest here, (God and our divinity) all that we truly are, shines through. This is me, as Kimerie, making space for God to be God through me.  As I rest in this beautiful energy, I find I can release the feelings and experience a profound transformation and healing.
 
This is a work in progress. It is a daily practice – one of continually remembering The Golden Key, as Emmett Fox wrote – bring my awareness back to God: God as all-good without opposite. God as love, wisdom, right action, true power that enables us all to know our equality and oneness in the Mind of God.
 
What is mine to do? It is to allow the transformative power of God to work through me so my own inner fear, anger or grief can be transformed, thereby enabling others to do the same. Adding positively to our collective consciousness.
 
Sometimes it is holding the prayer energy of peace in all people, with divine wisdom guiding our world leaders as we all seek to find our way through the violence and grief. This is the feminine principle of Divine Mind expressing through us, the receptive aspect of being, as Charles Fillmore explained. Sometimes it is to take action, the masculine aspect of being which is dynamic and energetic. Give our time, energy or money to help in a practical way. In each moment, as we centre into God-Presence, we will know what to do and how to do it.
 
My prayer, for our world and myself, is to find the pure energy of God in the midst of every person, situation and event unfolding: To know strength, courage, love and wisdom to help me face and release my own inner demons, so I can be fully present to those who are struggling in any way.
 
My faith is that we can, together, face our inner fears and doubt and find release. We can stand for peace and right action, when done with compassion and understanding. Right where we are, we stand in our truth. Bless you for all you are doing and being, in your world.

Kimerie Mapletoft 
Director of Silent Unity UK

How are you with dealing with your mistakes? I must admit that laughing about mine, of which there are also many, is not something I find easy to do. There is still an aspect of me, the inner child, which needs to be liked or loved by everyone, because this part of me has not connected with the Love within. My little girl thinks she must be perfect and has failed when she isn’t. Phew! This is hard work and not a lot of fun. In fact, disappointment, to say the least, is the result.
 
I am learning through all this to be more kind to myself. We all make mistakes; it is part of being human. However, I have also been thinking more recently, that my spiritual journey is not about making myself a better or perfect human being, because of feeling unloved or unworthy. My ego thinking cannot do this anyway. I am not a problem to be fixed and nor are you.
 
For me, my spiritual journey is about reconnecting with my spiritual Self that is pure, loving, wise, free and radiant. Letting this beautiful energy shine though me. For it is this energy, the Pure, wholesome love and life of God that changes me, heals the wounds of the inner child and sets me free. Now my human and spiritual qualities can merge. This begins with acts of loving kindness and acceptance.
 
Through personal experience, I have discovered that I cannot force change when I think I am not good enough. I just get more of the same - not feeling good enough. My experience is that it is not my effort, my thinking, which changes me. It is God energy through me, through us, the Christ within, which does the work. Right now, for me, life is less about trying to be perfect and more about accepting and laughing more at my mistakes, apologising when I have hurt another and tuning into God within, thus letting my inner light shine.
 
Like Dawn French, can we laugh at our mistakes? Can we know our mistakes do not define us? We are not just human beings. We are spiritual beings, having human experiences, which are here to wake us up to the beautiful, radiant beings we are in the mind of God. 

Rev Kimerie Mapletoft
Director of Silent Unity and Daily Word UK

"​...Our hearts infold all those impacted and we respond with love and peace.  So let's take a moment to hold that energy together.  To bless our world and our leaders in the knowing of
Wisdom, Unity and Peace.  And to know that a way can be found so that all people live in
harmony..."

​I live the truth I know – putting our principles into practice
 
Unity’s five principle invite us to:

• Know that God is Absolute good, without opposite and everywhere present
• Human beings are also spiritual beings. Our very essence is of God and so we, too, are inherently good
• Human beings create their experiences by the activity of their thinking (conscious and sub-conscious thoughts and feelings that dictate our response to events happening around and to us)
• Prayer and meditation heighten our connection with God-Mind to bring forth everything good (for everyone everywhere)
• Knowing and understanding these principles is not enough – we must live the truth we know

 
One or more of these principles is always covered when we share any Unity discussion, study class, meeting or talk, as each one is core to our teaching and practice.
 
For me personally, I relate so much with Jesus’ statement, ‘I and the father are one’ (John 10:30). To live life remembering this as my truth as well, invites me to let go of personal burdens or needs; invites me to rest, abide, in God-experience. This sets me free.
 
However, I also know that if I am to engage with this as a truth statement, I must live my life in response to this. This is quite a claim and to be honest, quite a feat.
 
To know my oneness with God is also to know your oneness with God. If we live in oneness with God and each other, there can be no opposition, no blame, no judgement; no form of attack. How can there by when we know we are one? I would only be hurting myself.
 
This is truly a daily practice – I am a work in progress!
 
For I recognise that the daily practice of living these principles calls me to let go of my human responses and connect with the spiritual Self that knows only oneness.
 
Therefore, my daily practice has become one of letting go – of blame, resentment, condemnation, criticism when things do not go the way I want. Even when I witness the tragedy of war, with so many innocent people hurt or killed.
 
In Silent Unity, our prayers and hearts go out to everyone impacted by the conflict between Israel and Gaza and indeed any conflict. At the same time, my response has to be – how can I bring peace into the world instead of conflict? The answer must be, by living peace, being peace and responding as peace: living the truth I know.
 
This is why I write, living the truth is perhaps the hardest thing to do. Yet as we make this our practice, it does get easier, I promise. We start to live in a new way that brings blessings of peace, life and love, which can only be good for everyone.

Love – Yes, it is our true spiritual nature, but I would also say to express Love in our human experience, we need to balance it with divine wisdom, guidance, and discernment. Love without wisdom and discernment (right judgement) can be like a ship without a sail. It may flounder in the doldrums without the breeze of “wisdom” to push it along. Then, when right judgement is added, the ship will be pushed along in the right direction …. For me, this is God in action working in and through us. How blessed we are.
 
Love can be interpreted in many different ways.
An impermanent love is when we relate love to things that give us instant pleasure and perhaps say; “Oh, I loved that film, or I love chocolate, or I love that author, etc.” All worldly things are impermanent and changing. We can and often do, change our minds about them.
 
Then we have romantic love, which can be very consuming and passionate for a while, but will over time either disappear or change. We may decide that the fire has gone out. Alternatively, we don’t really like or have anything in common with that person anymore and we move on. Or, it can turn into something deeper, and the relationship becomes one of companionship and comfort maybe; still love, but more permanent.
 
And, coming up another level – unconditional love, which is love that endures and is permanent. The obvious example being the love of a parent for their children. The children may go off the rails, or even do bad things, but I would say that in our hearts we still, and will, always love them, whether they are small children or fully grown large adult children!
 
Finally, I come to the constant, eternal and enduring Love with a capital L, which is God, Spirit, Life, All that is, and many other names, or even no name. It is the core of our beingness, the animating loving energy, the Presence, the Peace, that surpasses all understanding. This to me is who and what we are: Pure Love.
 
I can’t talk or begin to understand the limitlessness of God, Life, because I’m not clever enough and I haven’t got the words, but at the core of my being I just know, that God is Good, and in my quiet times I feel my oneness in God….
 
Yes, we express from our human nature. However, we can also express from our indwelling Truth, which is Love. For we are one in God, God is Love, and we are made for goodness. This is our Truth. We cannot be separate from our truth, however much our humanity likes to think otherwise.
 
These are my thoughts up to now, but I do acknowledge that as my spiritual understanding unfolds they may be different, next week, next month, next year or even tomorrow!
Thank you.
 
Carran Stephens
Leader, Unity Birmingham

However, the experience of Grace exists as well. Eric Butterworth, in his book, Celebrate Yourself, writes, “Grace is simply an explanation of a wonderful facet of the activity of God in you. It is not something to work for, to develop. It simply is.”

​For me, Grace is Divine Love in action. There is more love here for us all than we can ever know. We do not need to work to deserve it – Love is our birth right for it is our essence; our True Self. I believe we are here to be the expression of Love, using wisdom, to bless all of life, including ourselves.
 
Eric Butterworth writes that ‘God’s desire to express completely through you and as you is so great that you never completely reap the harvest of error and you always reap more good than you sow.’ I believe this is to enable us to know ourselves as Love, the image and likeness of God. For me, this was a huge part of Jesus’ message. He moved from Mosaic Law to using this law of love and grace to do what was right and good, instead of what the law dictated. The parable of The Good Samaritan in Luke 10 is a perfect example of this.
 
When we live this way, as Jesus taught us to do, we move beyond being simply Children of God, living only through the law of cause and effect, to the knowing that we are the hands and feet of God: Divine Love is lived and shared through us. Love is the first and last cause. Ours is to simply abide in Pure Presence and let this love flow out to all, through our thoughts, words and actions.
 
How do you experience the activity of Divine grace in your life?
 
Rev. Kimerie Mapletoft
Director, Silent Unity and Daily Word UK

The Unity movement has certainly travelled many steps, far and wide, branching out to hundreds of different places all around the world. From its first affiliate Silent Unity prayer ministry in England in 1946, building to the first Unity World conference in Birmingham, UK, in 1995 which was attended by 700 people from 38 countries, Unity’s message continues to expand. We can see that Charles and Myrtle’s first steps in America soon grew exponentially to the worldwide organisation Unity is today. At present Silent Unity is available in English, French, German, and Spanish, and has affiliates in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, United Kingdom, Germany, Ghana, Guyana, Jamaica, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, and Trinidad.

​Myrtle Fillmore’s discovery of spiritual growth and healing in the late 19th C. came from a lecture within the New Thought movement, which led her to affirmative prayer. She discovered, read and wrote about Christian Science and practical Christianity. Her healing experiences were so profound, that along with her husband Charles, they founded Unity and in 1897 Myrtle wrote the article “How I found health” in the Unity magazine. An article still reprinted today. I love the way she writes.
 
 “I told the life in my liver that it was not torpid or inert, but full of vigor and energy. I told the life in my stomach that it was not weak or inefficient, but energetic, strong, and intelligent. I told the life in my abdomen that it was no longer infested with ignorant ideas of disease, put there by myself and by doctors, but that it was all alive with the sweet, pure, wholesome energy of God.”
 
Listen to the article here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=perTZng1ubc
Read the whole article here:
https://www.unityuk.org/uploads/1/3/6/7/136768850/how_i_found_health.pdf
 
Today, as we go about our business in the world, let us remind ourselves of what great things can come from the smallest steps. Let us be mindful of the goals we wish to reach, and of the energy we wish to create. Let us invoke the power of imagination. Let us be brave enough to take the first step out in to the unknown, ready to live our dreams, ready to be receptive to the beauty and wonder of this awesome, magical, sacred world. 
 
Stefanie Bridges
Unity administrator