Photo: Ricardo Maruri
The following is an adaptation of a talk delivered on Father's Day, June 15, 2025, at Unity Lincoln.
I encountered this quote on social media from the spiritual teacher Adyashanti: "Thoughts are just moving through consciousness. They have no power. Nothing has reality until you reach it, grab it, and somehow impregnate it with the power of belief."
That quote reminded me of Phineas Quimby, who laid the foundation for the New Thought movement. He said, "The fact is, there is nothing of us but belief. It is the whole capital and stock in trade of man. It is all that can be changed, and embraces everything man has made or ever will make."
I have never watched the television show "The Bachelor." But as I understand it, each season begins with one man and 25 to 30 women who, in theory, want to be his girlfriend or wife. (I suspect they're really just trying to get their foot in the door of the entertainment industry, but what do I know?). There's a process in which the bachelor becomes more selective each episode until the season finale, where he selects one woman.
Our thoughts are like contestants on The Bachelor, vying for your attention. You could be watching a game on TV and the thought comes up, "I can do a better job than that referee!" but you quickly move on from that thought because you don't really believe it, and becoming a referee is the last thing you want to do with your life. You're the Bachelor saying goodbye to that contestant, that passing thought.
But as you continue watching the game, a commercial comes on that is related to the industry you work in, and you start thinking about work. You recall an awkward conversation and start thinking that a new co-worker doesn't like you. You begin to worry about your next encounter with him.
Does the new co-worker really dislike you? No. In fact, he doesn't think about you at all. He was curt with you because he was lost in his own head, thinking about something else, but didn't intend to come across as cold or stand-offish.
And, the next time you do see him, everything is friendly and fine. But in the meantime, your stomach was tied up in knots, full of worry and dread. Perhaps thinking about your relationship with this coworker affected your eating and sleeping habits. You, the Bachelor, chose this thought, this contestant. You decided to pay attention to the idea that somebody doesn't like you, and imagined the ramifications. And it made you feel sick.
But you were vulnerable to this thought only because you believed you could be unlikable, that maybe there was something wrong with you. Your sense of self-worth depends on what other people think about you. So even when you find out that everything is fine with this co-worker and you feel relieved, you're still vulnerable to the same feelings coming up with another person, or multiple people, in the future. And your body will, again, feel the stress.
Even if things tend to turn out better than you expect, your low expectations, your fears, your beliefs about yourself, diminish your health and happiness.
Florence Scovel Shinn wrote in The Game of Life and How to Play It:
"[Fear] is man's only enemy—fear of lack, fear of failure, fear of sickness, fear of loss and a feeling of insecurity on some plane [such as relationships]. Jesus Christ said: 'Why are ye fearful, oh ye of little faith?' (Mat. 8:26.) So we can see we must substitute faith for fear, for fear is only inverted faith; it is faith in evil instead of good."
Florence also quotes Maurice Maeterlinck, who wrote that "Man is God afraid."
To the extent that you have fears and beliefs in evil, you feel powerless. When you are powerless, you lack self-respect. When you lack self-respect, you fail to honor yourself, and as a result, you may fall into unhealthy habits.
When you're in that state, your parents are going to start worrying about you. Why don't you honor your Mother and Father by honoring yourself?
The Fifth Commandment of the Ten Commandments is appropriate to talk about on Father's Day. In Exodus chapter 20, verse 12, God says: "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you."
The mainstream understanding of the Ten Commandments is that they were written on two tablets, five on the first tablet and five on the second tablet, even though the first five commandments contain 146 words and the second five commandments contain 26 words.
It's also been assumed that the first five commandments are about the relationship between you and God, and the second five are about ethics in relationships: thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, steal, etc.
If this is true, then the fifth commandment about honoring your Father and Mother has a spiritual meaning rather than a literal meaning, that a spiritual father and spiritual mother in the Godhead are being addressed.
But I don't think we need to split the Commandments in half, into five "God" commandments and five "ethical" commandments. They were divided in half because we are thinking of the two tablets. However, Rabbi Professor David Golinkin has written that it is more likely that all ten commandments were written on one tablet, with a copy on the other tablet. That is how treaties, covenants, and contracts work. Both parties to the covenant keep a copy. God keeps a copy, and the people have a copy. In this case, however, both were stored in the Ark of the Covenant, because there was no place else to put God's copy. There's probably a symbolic meaning to it as well, God and the person dwelling in the same place.
So we don't need a division between the "God" commands and the "ethical" commands, and force the Fifth Commandment into one or the other. I think the commandment refers to both your divine mother and father, and also your earthly parents.
Think of your divine Father as in your consciousness. This is your "Father who is in heaven" that Jesus continually talked about. This heaven is your imagination. Think of your Mother as Spirit, which breathes life into what you have imagined. This mother, this spirit, you can call "Mother Nature." Think of Mother Nature as, essentially, everything you see and everything you feel, including your own body, and your mental operating system, everything in what are called the unconscious and subconscious mind.
This spirit, your divine mother, does your driving for you while you are thinking of other things, but brings to your conscious attention anything that merits your attention, such as joggers and cyclists, or erratic driving of the car in front of you.
If I were asked the order of the letters of the keyboard, I would need to think about it and slowly recite them. I couldn't just rattle off "q w e r t y, etc." However, the spirit, my divine mother, knows it so well that it could type out the alphabet in no time.
This mother spirit will feel what your "father in heaven" imagines. You will feel it in your body, and then it will manifest in some form.
If you imagine the worst-case scenario, your "divine mother," or Spirit, will allow those emotions of worry and doubt to manifest in you. Suppose you imagine the accomplishment of your goal, believing it shall be done. In that case, the spirit will create a feeling of joyful expectation as you progress toward your goal, and communicate to you through instinct, intuition, and inspiration - through divine guidance - to help you achieve your goal. Other people will feel your confident vibes and will want to assist you.
The 20th-century Christian Science teacher Vivian May Williams wrote, "The principle of mathematics and the numerals are inseparable—one without the other cannot be demonstrable." Likewise, the divine father and divine mother are inseparable; the imagination and the manifestation are inseparable.
The imaginings of my Father in heaven manifest themselves in my Mother's world, but those manifestations return to the Father as more thoughts. It is up to you to select which thoughts to pay attention to, to impregnate with your beliefs.
The work of the "Father in heaven" is invisible. There is an analogy to human parentage. Children may know that their mother is pregnant, and that a baby brother or sister is going to come out of her. They may also be aware of a continued physical connection between the mother and the baby sibling in the form of breastfeeding. They don't have any logical way of knowing precisely what the father's role is unless they're told.
In the same way, almost everything we see is the product of somebody's heavenly father, of somebody's imagination. Even if you go out into the country, especially in this part of Nebraska, you're not really in "nature," you're in the middle of human creations. The fields are cultivated, the trees you see were probably planted, and some building or road is nearby. Some people imagined this area to be a place for plowing, planting, and construction, but we don't know who they were. We just see the manifestations of their imagination.
So, how do you honor this divine Father and divine Mother within yourself? It depends on what your beliefs are, which, as Phineas Quimby said above, are all that you are. Your beliefs determine your fears and your faith, as Florence Scovel Shinn said. You can impregnate your thoughts with fear, with pessimism; you can imagine disaster. Does it mean the catastrophe will always manifest itself? Probably not, but you won't be feeling good.
You can, instead, imagine the best outcome, impregnating the thought with the joy of success. Will everything always turn out exactly as you had hoped? Perhaps not, but you would have enjoyed the journey and taken pride in what you accomplished. Honor your divine father and mother by believing in yourself, believing that divine power will work for your highest good if you let it. You are the Bachelor selecting the most beautiful thought.
Now also think of the fifth commandment as honoring your human parents. When they were raising you, and I know not everyone had both parents around, whoever was raising you wanted you to have food, shelter, and security. But they also wanted you to grow in happiness, which means growing in self-confidence, growing in self-worth, and expanding your horizons by replacing beliefs that make you fearful with faith in your own power.
And when you're an adult, your parents don't want to worry about you. They want you to know how to take care of yourself and tackle any problem or crisis that may emerge. So the best way to honor your Mom and Dad is not to give them that worry. Honor yourself, exude self-confidence, and the self-respect you deserve, and draw healthy, positive people into your life.
Believe in the good; believe in God.
If fears, if a sense of powerlessness is holding you back, I suggest taking one small step at a time to abandon these negative beliefs and grow in confidence. That's what the "Father in heaven" is waiting for: for you to imagine your best life, and your parents want that for you, too.
As above, so below, as within, so without. Choose faith over fear. Honor your Father in Heaven, your imagination, by believing that you deserve the best. And when you do so, you will honor your parents as well.
Happy Father's Day!
Subscription prices to JL Cells are the lowest that Substack allows: $5 per month or $30 per year (a 50% discount). If you enjoy the content, please consider a paid subscription, support me using PayPal with an amount of your choice, or contact me if you prefer an alternative method. At this point, I cannot promise that a paid subscription will provide bonus material, but it will help keep this going. Thank you!
James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe) and JL Cells (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You can contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work at jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.