What Keeps Us On The Ground

What Keeps Us on the Ground

A reflection for CSL Nashville, October 2026

In the turbulent world we live in, it can feel as if our souls have forgotten how to fly.

Ernest Holmes was insistent in The Science of Mind that this teaching was never meant to lift us out of life, but to lift life itself. The indwelling Spirit, the Source, the All that is all: these are not exits. They are elevations. We rise through the world, not away from it.

So, if flight isn't escape, what is it?

Flight is what happens when identity stops being negotiated by circumstance. It is the moment we return to our inner knowing and remember that our true nature was never grounded at all. We simply forgot we had wings. Meister Eckhart spoke of our soul as untouched, already one with Source. The soul doesn't need to earn its lift. It only needs our human self to stop believing that gravity is the end of the story.

What keeps us grounded?

Fear disguised as caution. Fear is very convincing. It urges us to stay quiet and play small. It warns us that the heights we dream of have never been tested, and that it is safer to stay put than to venture out. Comfort zones are comfortable, but they also hold us in place. John A. Shedd wrote, "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." We are built for flight. Our souls long to soar.

Old identities we have outgrown. We carry them anyway. When we outgrow an identity but never release it, it clings to us and grows heavier with time: the persona that got us through a hard childhood, a difficult marriage, a season of survival. These identities were not lies. They were wings suited to a different sky. We are ready for something new; something more.

The myth of separation. Like a tune we can't get out of our heads, it keeps us on the ground, wishing for the sky. Habitual thoughts of lack and limitation undercut our faith and optimism, clip our wings, and blind us to the expansive horizon. We pray for change, and yet our fear of change paralyzes us.

Practicing Lift

Flight, like most spiritual realities, is less an event than a practice. Here are a few ways to begin:

• Notice the weight before you try to fly. You cannot release what you refuse to name. Ask honestly: What am I carrying today that is not actually mine to carry?

• Let go before you're certain what's next. Every bird trusts the air before it can see where the air will take it. Certainty is a ground-bound demand. Flight requires a different kind of trust, the one Eckhart called Gelassenheit: releasement, letting-be.

• Rise in relationship, not in isolation. Check who you are lifting as you rise. If your ascent leaves love behind, it isn't yet spiritual flight. It's just personal advantage wearing wings.

• Return to earth on purpose. Birds don't stay aloft forever. They come back down to nest, to feed, to tend the ground that made the flight possible in the first place. Our task is not to escape embodiment, but to bring the view from above back into how we live, and to share it.

The Invitation

The question is not can we fly, because we already can. The question for our spiritual practice is: What are we clinging to that keeps us from lifting off? Name it. Not to shame it, but to see it clearly enough to finally set it down.

The sky was never the hard part. It is learning what we no longer need to carry.

Blog: Are you seeking healing?

When Rev. Ras Smith of Mile Hi Church became seriously ill, he was understandably afraid. He received a very serious diagnosis, and there was a real possibility that he might not survive.

He immediately turned toward spiritual practice. At one point, he realized something profound: he could feel afraid—even panicked—and at the same time know that Spirit was within him, moving through him, and ushering forth his highest good.

That realization changed his attitude.

And, according to Ras, attitude made the difference.

During his long series of treatments, he got to know many of the nurses caring for him. He began asking them what they observed about the people who made it through their illnesses and those who did not. Again and again, they told him that one of the greatest differences they saw was attitude. The people who remained engaged with life and found ways to stay hopeful seemed to navigate their illness differently from those who became overwhelmed by hopelessness.

The mind-body connection was once just an idea. Then it became a theory. Today, we recognize that our mental and emotional states can have a profound impact on our physical well-being.

But this is not about pretending everything is okay.

It is not about denying fear, pain, grief, or uncertainty. And it is certainly not about blaming ourselves when our bodies become ill.

Like Ras, we can feel what we feel—and simultaneously connect with a deeper knowing that Spirit is active within us, even in these circumstances. Spirit is present through the fear and trepidation, through the diagnosis and the treatment, through the illness and whatever comes next.

Miracles happen. Spontaneous remissions happen. Unexpected turnarounds happen. Sometimes the body responds in ways that seem to defy explanation. There is still so much mystery in healing.

And yet, there is something we can participate in.

It has something to do with belief. But belief itself can feel almost involuntary. And don't we all want something we can control?

It is difficult to believe that we can simply control disease through our thoughts. Imagine sitting in the doctor's office immediately after receiving devastating news and calmly declaring, "This situation has no power over me. I am whole, perfect, and complete. Wholeness is expressing through every cell of my body right now."

We may have the capacity to reach that place. But for most of us, the journey begins somewhere else.

It begins with fear.

Then perhaps resignation: This is my new reality.

And eventually, if we are willing, we may discover something deeper: This experience is not the whole of who I am.

If we are true students of the Science of Mind, we can take a more spiritual and, in its own way, scientific approach. We step beyond the immediate evidence of the physical world and enter sacred space.

We do this through ritual—our prayer time, our meditation, communion with nature, contemplative practice, or any other intentional time we set aside to release the practical, earthbound thoughts of the moment and enter the field of infinite possibility.

Whatever ritual we use—and I use the word ritual here simply as another name for spiritual practice—there is no power inherent in the ritual itself.

The ritual points us toward the sacred.

And what is sacred is that place within us where we encounter pure, unconditional Love. I call it Trust, with a capital T.

The ritual gives us a way to release our fixation on our physical experience, even for a few minutes, and turn our attention toward a deeper knowing.

Somewhere beyond the pain, the medications, the medical jargon, and the uncertainty, there is something within us that illness cannot touch.

Our light.

Our wholeness.

Our soul.

Healing, in the deepest spiritual sense, is the process of allowing that ever-present wholeness to become more fully known and expressed in our human experience.

It is not beseeching Spirit to make us whole.

It is remembering that, at the deepest level of our being, we already are.

We have always been. And, we always will be. Whole. Complete. One with the Divine.

Sometimes we simply forget.

We forget that we are more than this moment. More than this diagnosis. More than this body. We forget that we are eternal beings experiencing one moment in the great expanse of eternity.

And we forget that whatever we are going through, we are not going through it alone.

The Divine Intelligence back of everything is with us through all of it. Sometimes the most powerful prayer is not a demand for a particular outcome. Sometimes it is simply:

"Let me rest here for a while, as sweet Spirit ushers forth more good in ways expected and unexpected."

Especially the unexpected.

We can participate in our healing. We can commune with Spirit and discover a power greater than any illness or condition. We can open ourselves to possibilities we cannot yet see.

And sometimes, healing looks like the body changing. Sometimes it looks like strength returning. Sometimes it looks like acceptance, peace, courage, or a new way of living.

Whatever form it takes, we can remember this:

There is a wholeness within us that illness cannot destroy.

Healing begins when we remember it.

And so it is.

Anger

Some people say anger isn't spiritual. I see it differently. Being human is a profoundly spiritual experience, and anger is part of being human.

You could just as easily say that being a tree is a spiritual experience, or an eagle soaring overhead is a spiritual experience. The difference is that human beings have self-awareness. We possess the remarkable capacity to witness our own thoughts, question our reactions, and most importantly, choose our response.

Ernest Holmes reminds us of this gift when he writes, "We cannot live a choiceless life. Every day, every moment, every second, there is choice. We have the right to choose what we wish to experience." SOM 143

Anger may ignite within us, but we still have a choice about what we do with it. We can let it become resentment, blame, retaliation—or we can allow it to become clarity, courage, and compassionate action.

This is the work of a mature spiritual life. Science of Mind teaches that our thoughts are creative and that our experience reflects the consciousness we cultivate. While others may trigger our anger, we are ultimately responsible for what we create from it. The question is never simply, "Who made me angry?" The deeper question is, "What is this anger inviting me to see, heal, or change?"

Anger itself is neither good nor bad. It is energy. It is information. When held in the light of awareness, it can become a sacred force that awakens us to deeper authenticity, wiser choices, and a greater expression of love.

Rev. John W. Adams

Senior Minister | CSLN