Scottie Wisdom & Faith: Scotties, hosts, and other visions

I looked out the window and there was a smallish black-faced critter just peeking over the slight hill in our backyard. For just a moment it looked like a black bear cub, causing me to immediately look for the mother. Then I realized it was Ernie, one of the new Scottie pups.

It is funny what the mind can do. The cool fall weather and leaves blowing around had changed the world of bright skies and summer flowers so much that my mind went to darkness. I saw a bear cub rather than a Scottie pup.

This time of year is filled with wild traditions and emotional urges. The idea of Halloween, which today is about costumes, candy, and dress-up parties, was once a time for remembering departed relatives and church saints. It began as a time to strengthen one’s faith in God.

Many say that early Halloween traditions were influenced by Celtic harvest festivals. It can also be traced back to the 800s and All Saints Day. This was a time to put flowers on the graves of recently departed family members and to attend  church services, which venerated the saints and their good deeds. It was a time of introspection, bringing one’s mind closer to God, and doing good for others.

Somehow, during the past 150 years, we have changed the three great yearly festivals into material holidays.

Christmas for centuries was a time to remember the birth of the most important man to walk the earth, Jesus Christ. Today you only see Santa Claus in city decorations and retail store displays.

Easter for two millennia was a time to remember that Jesus, being much more than just a man, was able to fulfill a very old prophecy and rise from his grave after three days. Along with his many recorded miracles, this was the proof that he and we are much more than our bodies. We are each a unique, individualized essence of God, the intelligent, benevolent energy that is everywhere and in everything in the Universe. Some consider Easter the most important day of remembering because it reminds us that we do not really die, our spirit simply moves on to something else.

And then we come to Halloween. The teachings of Christ were all focused on love. Love is the opposite of fear. When your heart is filled with love, you do not fear or hate—which is a child of fear. Yet Halloween, once a time of loving remembrance, is now the biggest time of the year for movies and other entertainment meant mechanisms to strike fear into the hearts of children and others. Could this be contributing to our modern mood of so much fear and hate for one another?

There is an interesting concept called cognitive awareness that helps us understand how our mind shapes what we see. Our eyes and mind are bombarded with massive amounts of information. There is so much out there for us to look at, hear, and comprehend, that the mind narrows and filters its absorption of incoming data to avoid being overwhelmed.

This is why four people can see the same event, yet, later when asked to describe what happened, they will all have seen different fragments of the event.

The next thing to understand about cognitive awareness is that you determine how your mind filters the information. You may be totally unaware of your influence, but how you think about things in general influences the filtering of your information.

This means that if you live in a world filled with fear, you will see things to be afraid of everywhere you look. If you live in a world full of love, you will see love in action everywhere you look.

There is a very easy way for you to test this concept. Think about times you have been considering buying a new car. To some degree you have evaluated your choices before purchasing the car. If you paid any attention to this process, you found yourself suddenly seeing that make of automobile all over the place.

The simple reason for this is that cars were just cars before you became interested in buying a new one. Then suddenly cars were important to you and your mind began helping you see the make of car you were interested in.

If this did not happen to you before buying the car, it certainly happened to you after you bought the new car.

This mind filter is very powerful. By turning all the great old faith-based, love-centered holidays into material, secular, self-centered affairs, we have made a major change in the cognitive awareness of our entire nation. We have moved from love and kindness filters to greed and fear filters. We are training our progeny to be fear-and-hate centered.

When we move our own thinking to being love-centered, we can influence others around us. As soon as we focus on love, this great God energy, the intelligent, all- good and love-based force that builds the Universe, will rush into our lives, making us feel much better than we have before. This was the message of Jesus Christ.

Just for a moment I let the seasonal darkness show me a bear cub rather than a loving Scottie. Fortunately, my love-centered filter corrected my sight. 

And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Colossians 3:14.