Welcome to Earth: Journey of a Lifetime

By Rev. Marla Sanderson

It’s a popular saying in New Thought that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. When I think about it that way, it makes me wonder how much more there is to life than what I can see and hear with my senses.

New Thought teaches that we are perfect, eternal beings on the spiritual level, and I have developed a personal belief that we come here to Earth by choice for something to do. Eternity is a long, long time, and the idea that we could be content sitting on a cloud strumming a harp just doesn’t “do it” for my curious mind.

Think about it. How would you choose to spend all eternity? I mean ALL ETERNITY! Hard to come up with one final answer, isn’t it?

Well let me throw in another New Thought idea here, and that is that there is only One Life—and that is the Life of Spirit (a/k/a God, Source, Creator). So that makes us all expressions or extensions of that Life of Spirit.

Now, do you think that Spirit, Creator of All-There-Is-Or-Ever-Was is going to sit around for eternity “being spiritual” or playing a harp? Or do you think this Creator is more likely to go forth into infinite varieties of expression, continually expanding and creating more and different?

Did you ever notice that we spend a lot of time thinking about and planning where to go and what to do? I think that’s Spirit’s natural tendency within us to reach out into those aforementioned varieties of expression. And given eternal life, free will, and an entire universe to play in, can one single life on Earth be all there is?

Earth is a great playground. It’s beautiful and it’s constantly and opulently pouring out Life in various forms.

Here, we get to express our creative tendencies in a variety of ways.

We have material forms we can use to create other material forms, and we spend our lives here turning one thing into another. Trees into houses, furniture, bread boxes. Rocks into dams and bridges, minerals and fibers into an unfathomable number of end products.

Not to mention what we’ve managed to do with food. We are no longer restricted to a diet of what we can pick off a tree or fish from a stream or kill with a rock. We have learned to create fancy delights and recipe books and electric stoves.

To me, this is God’s Earth In Expression, displaying the creativity of the people who come here, evolving just as it should. Do I need to live in fear? Can I call it all good? I can.

Sure, there are those who do live in fear. They fight and kill each other and worry about the future. They will make a hell out of any heaven. But that’s not my way of life and nobody has to choose that. Clearly, we will live out our time here in whatever way we choose.

I think of life on Earth like a trip to Disney World—a great adventure.

And after a few days at Disney, I’m ready to lay this body down and rest. At the end of our time here, we lay our old bodies down and return to our Spiritual essence ‘til we think of something else to do.

Rev. Marla Sanderson has been a student of spiritual practice for more than 35 years. She began as Assistant Director of The Next Step, a psychic and spiritual community in a New Mexico ghost town. She’s been a workshop leader, teacher, practitioner, and minister of Living Love, and the Science of Mind. She recently founded the New Thought Center for Creative Living, a virtual “church” that offers inspiration anytime, anywhere. The site showcases many powerful Science of Mind and New Thought speakers and writers, and intends to expand these teachings to the world. Check it out at www.newthoughtctr.org.

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