Sacred Disruption - Reimagine Everything!, by Dr. Petra Weldes

Disruption has become the norm!

The pandemic has certainly disrupted us, for good and for ill. Devices and technology continue to disrupt our homes and the way we do business, for good and for ill. The internet, social media, and AI have disrupted us for good and for ill. The polarization of our politics and the divisiveness in our government have disrupted us. The turmoil over the civil right of African Americans, immigrants, women, and transgender people have disrupted our ignorance, while the spiraling issues of climate change have disrupted our complacency.



Making It Sacred and Worthwhile

How shall we deal with all this disruption – with angst, anger, apathy or with our spiritual principles and human values? What if we decided to engage with these disruptions as something sacred? Even going so far as to invite sacred disruptions to take us on unexpected healing and growing journeys. Making disruptions sacred is realizing that “the way it’s always been” isn’t and can’t continue to be the same as it always has been. So, how do we reimagine our lives, individually and collectively? How do we reimagine life in such a way that challenges the norms while answering the call of our soul for courageous action, and authentic connection?



Step #1 – Embrace Change as a growth opportunity

We begin by allowing, even inviting, disruption to become sacred. This means embracing change and uncertainty with powerful and positive intentions and actions. The first step is to seek the good that has emerged amid any disruption. This does not deny or avoid the pain nor the challenges we or others have faced. But it does focus us on the fact the something greater is always present and there is a way to learn, grow, and move through disruption to a powerful awakening. Deciding to make a particular disruption sacred means that we take it to the altar of our awareness and invite it to reveal something meaningful and profound. Listening rather than analyzing, feeling rather than forcing, and sensing rather than projecting are all sacred skills our souls develop as we engage in this process.



Step #2 – Make Friends with Ambiguity and Uncertainty

The next step is to invite sacred disruption. This means to court the new, make friends with the unknown, and expect change. Ambiguity and uncertainty become our guides as we decide to invite the wildest parts of our soul and our deepest intuition to lead. We deliberately try new ways of being and doing that are more congruent and aligned with our values, spirituality, and ideals (no matter how uncomfortable). This is way beyond improving ourselves; it calls for sacred and profound acts of authenticity and deeply taking responsibility.



Step #3 – Make it a Creative Act

Sacred disruption becomes a creative act when the destruction has made way for something truly new. Newness begins with reimaging life, not from the normal way it’s been, but from a soulful, connected, profoundly directive decision to make a difference. Reimagining everything begins with values that we espouse but aren’t actualizing, and the hopes we are afraid to believe are possible to achieve. What if they are? What if these are the impulses and desires of your truest essence? Reimagine life, is not trying to create a utopia, but rather, it is day-by-day, moment-by-moment mindfully making a life the contributes, restores balance and justice, reveals creativity and connection, and is utterly in alignment with the highest vibrations of your truest self.



Step #4 – Engage Your Imagination

The creative faculty of imagination is what breaks the bonds of habitual patterns and behaviors. Imagination is the ability to see and sense something in the mind’s eye that is not actually present yet. Every one of us has this ability. Usually it feeds our anxiety, doubt, and fear as we imagine catastrophic outcomes or our inadequacy for creating change. Just remember, our imagination is just as good at imagining outrageously amazing outcomes and our courageous contributions to change. Begin today, imagine a world that works for everyone, even when we have no idea how it will come about. Imagine our planet healthy, people prospering, divides discussed civilly, and an economy in service to humanity and our future. Now all the disruptions have truly been made sacred.

About | Dr. Petra Weldes

For more than 30 years, Dr. Petra Weldes has brought a dynamic, genuine, and engaging style of ministry to congregations around the country. Leading CSLDallas since 1998, she has created a thriving spiritual community, empowering and transforming lives. She serves as Co-Spiritual Director along with her wife, Rev. Karen Fry. A compelling and gifted speaker and teacher, Dr. Petra's purpose is to transform lives and her mission is to grow people, communities, and ideas.

She has served in many capacities at the Centers for Spiritual Living and in local and national interfaith programs and received her honorary Doctor of Divinity from the Holmes Institute in 2004.

​A highly regarded and deeply admired teacher, Dr. Petra engages students with her interactive style. This provides a safe, sacred environment for personal growth and exploration. Her deep wisdom, wealth of knowledge, as well as humility and humor, guide students into journeys of awakening to their unique expression and creative, joyful potential.

An elegant, powerful speaker, her ability to translate seemingly complex and confusing life issues into concise and clear messages invites the audience into deeper levels of understanding of their being and engagement in the world by igniting the change within.

​In the nonprofit, religious, and business communities, Dr. Petra has coached countless leaders to a more conscious, powerful, and courageous presence in their work. She develops potential and connects leaders to ideas that expand consciousness.

Dr. Petra has co-authored three books: Joyous Freedom, Joyous Living, and Joyous Abundance Journals with Rev. Soren Christian, as well as numerous articles and thought papers.

Oneness and Otherness by Dr Petra Weldes

Rather than starting with Spirit, let’s start with science. Quantum field theory implies an underlying oneness that is basically waves of potential which then particularize into the space time continuum as discreet bits of individual subatomic quarks and electrons, etc. The dual nature of the smallest particles no longer talks about a wave or a particle, but now calls it a “waveparticle.” Rather than two things, a wave and a particle, we may more properly talk about two ways the physical universe shows up – as a unified field of waves or as individually separated particles. And some of the underlying notions of order and “spooky” entanglement are described in language recognizable to those of us on a spiritual path. Scientists are unable to describe the moment the “waveparticle” shifts its form and are uncertain of the impetus for it to do so in a non-experimental state.

The conundrum of duality

Humans have been grappling with this situation for millennia. How does something come from nothing or how does many things come from one thing? In the east, Taoism describes “the One beget the two, which begets the three, which begets the 10,000 things” (verse 42). In the west, presocratic philosophers began the argument between atoms and ideas which continues to this day. In psychology the basic duality gets formed through individual identity vs the group, by it family or tribe. The individuation of self from the other, mother, is the first step in maturation. Yet this self is embedded in, and required to conform to, the oneness of the group and culture. Self and other quickly turns into us and them. Our western Judeo-Christian culture takes this duality one step further by canonizing the tribal duality of “us and them” into a religious proscription. If a Hebrew was enticed by any of the fertility rites or the ideas brought by conquering empires, they were told those things were not for ‘us’, the chosen people. The other was not only different but now Divinely ordained as sinister, or at the very least, unclean and unworthy of participation. Oneness became the oneness of us and the otherness of them, as described by God, no less.

The revelation of paradox

With our spirituality we confront the troublesome question of whether we can deeply acknowledge our diversity without affirming separation? From our stand for social justice we wonder how we can affirm our oneness without denying our human identities and the wounds associated with them? Science of Mind inevitably resolves all these signification difficulties into paradox. Seeking the nature of the One, Infinite Reality gives rise to the exploration of Absolute and Relative, the relationship between Being and Doing, the reality of living as both human and Divine. These are all ways of describing the inherent tension between the One Universal, Infinite, Reality which is the ground of all Being and the multiplicity of forms made possible by the inherent duality of the space/time continuum.

This is actually only a problem when this is held as an either/or duality. This pits the two sides against each other, and one side needs to turn out to be better or more right than the other. What makes something a paradox, however, is that it is a “both/and” rather than “either/or”. Making friends with the paradox moves us beyond the right and wrong mindset, into a much richer, more inclusive viewpoint.

Diversity is Infinite Variety

Oneness and diversity is at the heart of Being and Becoming, which the Science of Mind calls the Creative Process. The Science of Mind recognizes that the essential nature of Life is ONE, it is the same Life living throughout all creation and it is the same Consciousness which is the impulse and Intelligence behind creation. Creation, with its infinite variety of form and expression, is filled with so many uniquely diverse types and groups and individuals as to be completely uncountable. Clearly there is a need for this variety. Let’s begin with mind-blowing idea that every snowflake (or blade of grass or leaf) is unique, yet all have the same qualities & properties – every snowflake is frozen H2O. Then look at flowers and trees, birds and animals. Why so many types? The diversity of flowers, for instance, from peony to iris to rose, is a celebration of the infinite number of ways and forms needed to express the One, Infinite Life as “flower”. Just a quick look at nature and the richness of any ecosystem will provide evidence that this diversity is not only appreciated, but it is necessary to the well-being of the whole.

The Inclusion of the Other

It is no secret, however, that diversity is challenging. Going back through the Christians to our Hebrew forebears, otherness may be altogether too be enticing! Yet in relationships, don’t we want our partners, ultimately, to be just like us? This polarity around otherness may keep us clinging to the security and peace of Oneness.

But we are definitely not all the same. Neither as individuals nor as types or groups of people. Nature (individual uniqueness) plus Nuture (family/culture/religion/environmental impact) make each of us totally unique. Emerson reminds us to “insist on yourself” and that “imitation is suicide.”

We are all just a little unique, for each wears a different face but behind each is the One Presence – God. Unity does not mean uniformity. Unity means that everything draws its strength, it power, and its ability to live from One Source. Holmes, 365 Science of Mind

Yet we long for belonging, to fit in and be part of the whole. Additionally our spirituality and intuition pull us toward an embodied experience of Oneness. Once again, the tension is resolved in paradox. As much as we must be ourselves, we must see and support others to be themselves, for they are the One made manifest in infinite variety. To love our neighbor as ourself is to want for the other just exactly what we want – to be authentically and fully ourselves. And since we recognize our need for belonging causes us to be drawn to those who are like us, to identify with others we recognize as kin, that too we would want others to joyfully find in their own lives. Belonging, acceptance, and to be seen and recognized as part of the something larger than just ourselves.

Celebrating Diversity and Including the Other honors all the unique forms of expression and is fundamentally grounded in the realization of Oneness. Celebrating Oneness recognizes our interconnection, beneath any apparent separation. Arguing about which is more important takes us back to either/or. Both are equally important. When we keep both/and as our framework, we can fully engage on both sides of the paradox at the same time.

Centers for Spiritual Living believes that spiritual maturity has no need to create conflict or to say one side is better than another. We recognize that the inclusion of the other is the only way to actually embody and reveal our inherent Oneness. Just as the variety of flowers makes a single garden more beautiful and healthier, so diversity and inclusion makes our Oneness richer and more fulfilling. Oneness and Otherness are simply two sides of the same Reality. Including both is the living out the ultimate paradox.

About the Author, Dr. Petra Weldes

Serving as Spiritual Director of CSLDallas since 1998, Rev Dr Petra Weldes is a powerful, gifted speaker and teacher whose visionary role has created a dynamic spiritual community in Dallas, empowering and transforming lives. In her over 30 years of ministry, her purpose is transformation and her mission is to grow people, communities, and ideas.

A highly regarded, deeply admired teacher, Dr Petra engages students with her interactive style providing a safe, sacred environment for personal growth and exploration. Her deep wisdom, wealth of knowledge, humility as well as humor, guides students into journeys of awakening to their unique expression and creative and joyful potential. An elegant, powerful speaker, her ability to translate seemingly complex and confusing life issues into concise and clear messages invites the audience into deeper levels of understanding of their being and engagement in the world by igniting the change within.