I began a self-portrait (8 3/4″ X 12″ pencil sketch on paper) not fully decided on where it was to go – in what environment I would place myself. I initially planned on placing myself in a magnificent palatial setting hoping it would favorably influence my future situation. Then I read the beautiful words the book, The Betty Book (first published in 1937), beneath the sketch which guided the outcome.
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“A beautiful form, a grand rhythm, abandoning oneself to one collective thought – the beauty of the physical world. Everything from the tiniest flowers, the frost crystals, the world under the microscope, the stars, galaxies – all the physical universe.”
“The manifestation of overpowering love and intelligence – I gather them all in my own one great rush of worship. Once done so, Iie still, quietly recharged with vitality, strength and eagerness to take my part victorious with humility, conscious of the immensity of the scheme. When the renewed life flows back into me, my great effort is to retain it, to contain it all in all, for the force of the renewed life must be converted into world activity.”
Cheers! a 24″ X 24″ oil on canvas by Leslie M. Taylor
Constructive Prayer Seeking Spiritual Contact and Permeation
Here is a guide for prayer also quoted from The Betty Book.
“Introduction: Impetus is being started all about us at every split second of the day. It is part of the automatic function of life, just as is spiritual contact. Without one there can be not movement, no action in the world at all: without the other their can be no continued good thing. Our impetus is generally haphazard. If it is to be conscious and intelligent, we must know our lack and govern ourselves accordingly.”
Constructive Prayer:
– The first step: An assembling and offering up of your best self in all constructive prayer for union with the “Over-strength.”
– The second step: To plumb the depths and know your self: your spiritual lacks which comes gradually, not all at once. Approached with human warmth of desire amounts in the long run to the great life-long companionship. Approach divine companionship in prayer as reaching for a warm friendship, only with greater expectation.”
“As an angel with head up, thrown back and facing the unknown.”
Here Comes the Light a 24″ by 24″ oil on canvas by Leslie M. Taylor. I couldn’t possibly not include this here!
“Weak prayer does not fulfill because it just calls down, instead of rising to meet. Spiritual companionship amounts to very little unless something arises in you to enlarge your capacity to receive it and blend with it. Prayer is the projection of your spiritual being heart and soul. It is the conscious assembling of your highest self and you lay bare you own soul. This is the compulsion to face your naked soul., to reconstruct and harmonize – to recognize and acquire the “wholeness” necessary to spiritual harmony.”
“Then a tremendous attracting power is set in motion assembling the whole of oneself – the great workshop of the soul. Yet, one must plumb the depths before visualizing ones spiritual lacks before baing permitted to go on the the heights. Be aware of these lacks springs the impetus for the necessary understanding which guides our destiny.”
The book is titled The Betty Book : Excursions into the world of other-consciousness made by Betty (Elizabeth Grant) White between 1919 and 1936 (pub. 1937) by her husband Stewart Edward Wright (1873 – 1946). Amazon describes it thus, “The Betty Book chronicles the development of the author’s wife as one of the best mediums of the 20th century. It describes how she first discovered her talent, how she developed it, and what her research came to mean. It also introduces the reader to the “Invisibles” – a group of people living on the inner planes who guided Betty and helped her understand the nature of life without a physical body.”
Who to believe?
There are so many individuals online and TV now that claim to have access in any number of ways to non-physical higher consciousness: channeling spiritual beings, receiving “downloads” from higher beings including aliens, receiving guidance from guardian angels and communications from deceased loved ones. I don’t deny their legitimacy, although I am not convinced of the legitimacy of all the recent ones that I am aware of. Yet I do feel these types of communications are quite possible, and convinced of the legitimacy of some (William James’ extensively studied medium Leonora Piper for example) and this book chronicling Betty White’s mediumship seems legitimate as well.
Here is an excellent in-depth review of the the Betty Book by author and attorney Michael Tymm: How the Invisibles Trained Betty White. I found it well worth reading prior to seeking out and reading the whole of the book.
https://whitecrowbooks.com/2026/02/how-the-invisibles-trained-betty-white/
A photograph of Betty and Stewart White from Michael Tymm’s article.
On Amazon the book costs $100 (price increases daily as I write). On Internet Archive a digital copy can be accessed for free along with many other books, videos, movies, music, etc. You do need to create an account.
Internet Archive The Betty Book by Stewart Edward White: https://archive.org/details/bettybookexcursi0000whit
If you are interested in learning more about the medium Leonora Piper (1859 – 1950) here is a very good brief biography of her life and her remarkable mediumship abilities:
A photograph of the famous medium Leonora Piper
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A grave and widespread misunderstanding – suffering is necessary for learning. Suffering is NOT necessary for learning. LOVE is necessary for learning.
A curious thing: I’ve posted a very limited comment expressing the views below in the comments sections in some videos where the claim is made that suffering is necessary for learning, and there are many. It always gets deleted whereas some very derogatory comments remain!
What David Brooks, a former NY Times political journalist, columnist and now a spiritually enlightened speaker in numerous talks and online videos states about listening to another from the heart is quite important true and we can’t be reminded of enough [link to video below]. But, where he and so many others are wrong is the claim that suffering is necessary for learning. Although, if suffering or having suffered, then to learn from it is the best of outcomes including learning that one does not desire nor needs suffering to progress in life. It is no secret that people who’ve suffered terrible abuses, particularly when young, are often dysfunctional in life and that dysfunction spreads to others – beloved family members even and often for generations thereafter.
An exception may be the near death experiencers. Yet many, certainly not all, claim they were spared their suffering during the accident or surgery, observing it from outside their bodies, and that they did not suffer during their brief experience in eternity. And, most importantly, they report that the eternal realm is real, not this world, and what matters above all things is love.
Yet we consider that for a child, for example, to put his hand on a hot oven burner he finds it hurts and is not likely to do it again. However, I don’t recall having to do that in order not to burn myself on the stove nor any other number of daily bad choices to avoid harming or totally destroying myself. Rather, I suspect that, along with parental guidance, I instinctively knew like we instinctively know that it is not a good thing to inflict suffering on others. Otherwise no child on Earth would live long. As well, there are the out of the ordinary interventions such as precognitive dreams or or savings from non physical beings (sometimes referred to guardian angels or spirit guides) that insure our continued survival in this world for as long as is necessary – necessary to choose love instead of fear. For example by not excitedly reveling in all the imagined horrible causes of fear and death. Like eagerly focusing our attention on the frightful daily news reports first thing in the morning.
If all that is in truth are God’s creations and God is infinite and eternal then so are we – one and all. This is the meaning behind the words “son of God,” or in reference to the whole of humanity, wholly and eternally united as one in and with God, “Son of God.” To think that God can be weakened, harmed, let alone annihilated is flat out stupid. For God is all that is and thus powerful beyond human comprehension and by no means goes about harming, weakening or destroying Himself. So why do we prefer to pretend that a son of God can be destroyed when all of and the power of creation is, in truth, within one and all and forever so? Miracles demonstrate this fact.
What is true is eternally true. What was true yesterday but not today was never true. And what is eternal cannot be destroyed. The belief that the Son of God, despite the incorrect perception of being individually separated from God can be harmed or destroyed, the cause of all suffering, makes no sense in reality, only in dreams –nightmares no less. Yet the belief that God’s Son is destructible is widespread throughout the world as is the belief in guilt. The Son of God, like the Father, is eternal and therefore no harm can be inflicted on God’s Son and therefore no one is guilty of inflicting harm on His Son. There is no real sick, mutilated or dead and decaying body, no real evidence of a crime committed, only imagined and projected nightmares.
For if one is believed to have been harmed or destroyed by another, thus harmed by themselves (yet few acknowledge this fact which is always the case given that the Son of God is one, wholly and eternally united in God) then there must be justification in declaring guilt and reacting accordingly by inflicting suffering on the guilty party in retaliation or to teach them a lesson for their past actions even though there is no past in eternity. This is not to deny that, given this temporal material state we find ourselves in, there are people that should not be allowed to freely effect harm and roam about in society.
Yet in eternity, the only reality, which goes in all directions always, there is no past suffering from which one learns from when planning for the future, which also does not exist. There are no separate times in eternity: no past, present and future. There is only truth, all knowing, the son of God being eternally and wholly unified with God – Love in other words. True Love (which is the only kind), wholly unified thus truly knowing, are one and the same. To choose love instead of fear is the only value in a perceived, not real, world of suffering.
Thus the future, like the past, neither of which exist in reality, is planned based on fear, thus guilt – the avoidance of the truth of who and where we are and not awakening from the nightmare to Heaven on Earth or the Kingdom of God, as it is sometimes referred to. Love is necessary for knowing that which is eternal and therefore everywhere always and forever true.
In this unreal, imagined world suffering and loss are not only revered as necessary for learning, but the subject of nearly all entertainments. How many song lyrics, fiction and nonfiction, particularly history books, movies and news media sources are not filled with stressful, horrific and heartbreaking circumstances? Excluding purely instrumental music, nearly none. And given these literary, visual and auditory testimonies in entertainment, and as well in courtrooms, politics and warfare theaters, the virtuous victim’s or protagonist’s heroic victory, often at the expense of innumerable tragic failures and unbearable losses, the future is planned based on the belief that suffering is necessary for learning, or even better, a victory! A victory of the ego! To righteously condemn is yet another ego self-satisfaction. Forgiveness of one’s wrongful belief that they are but a limited ego, a separated self, is a necessary step along the path to the truth – to choose instead of hell, Heaven on Earth. The world was saved at the moment of its perfect creation in and by that which eternally Is.
Healing
“The notion of paying for the past in the future, the past thus becomes the determiner of the future making them continuous without an intervening present. The ego regards the present only as a brief transition to the future in which it brings the past to the future by interpreting the present in past terms. Now has no meaning to the ego. The present only reminds it of past hurts and reacts to the present as if it were the past.”
“Healing cannot be accomplished in the past. It must be accomplished in the present to release the future. This interpretation ties the future to the present, and extends the present rather than the past.”
The Two Emotions
“The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned themselves. They do not wish to die, yet they will not let condemnation go. And so they separate into their private worlds where everything is disordered, and where what is within appears to be without [outward]. Therefore, the reality of their brothers they can not recognize.”
“You have but two emotions, yet, in your private world you act to each of them as though it were the other. For love cannot abide in a world apart where, when it comes, it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred as your brother, you are not seeing him. Everything draws near unto what he loves, and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love and draw away from it. Yet fear attracts you and you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with figures of fear you have invited into it, and all the love your brothers offer you, you do not see.”
Love Attracts Love
The quotes in Healing and The Two Emotions above are from A Course In Miracles: Chapter 13 The Function of Time and The Guiltless World [in Text pages 246 and 248]. The rest of my essay is inspired by ACIM. Do give this remarkable book a chance if you haven’t already. Far better reading than starting the day with the daily news media reports. Link to The Foundation of Inner Peace which provides the entire book for free: https://acim.org/
The Story of Heaven on Earth a 30″ X 30″ oil on canvas painting by Leslie M. Taylor
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As referred to above: How to Truly See Others – David Brooks:
by Leslie Taylor, Boise, Idaho – February 2026
I can be contacted at: leslietaylorpaintings@gmail.com