Summary: During my struggles at college I attended Dr. Erwin Seale’s Church of the Truth with mom and dad when I returned home on breaks.  Dr. Seale’s sermons and writings made sense to me, and provided spiritual beliefs that guide me to this day.  He taught that God pervades the Universe and everything living in it; that we are all one with God; that God brings us continuous unconditional love; that God can direct and guide us in the path of righteousness and to a life of goodness and mercy;  that how we use our minds, what we believe and how that guides our thinking determines how open we are to receive God’s guidance from minute to minute.

Mom and dad had moved closer to New York City after I left for college, and were attending Dr. Seal’s Church of the Truth in Avery Fischer Hall in Lincoln Center.  I joined them in Sunday services when I was home on holidays and breaks, and found Dr. Seale’s messages very believable.  He planted these seeds in my mind, seeds that have now grown into major foundations of my beliefs (quotations are from Dr. Seale’s writings):

• Each of us has, as a birthright, a spiritual self, a divinity, within us.  “. . . each of us is two things, a spiritual being of dignity and power and a conditioned self  made by the world’s impressions.”
• This spiritual self, this Christ within us, may be deeply buried by our conditioning and beliefs.  “The birth of Christ is the emergence of the Other Self you have always had but was submerged by false opinions and misguided beliefs.”
• “Jesus was the name of a person: Christ was in Him and Christ is in all persons.  When the Christ is known and welcomed, then person and God are one, as in Jesus Christ.”
• “We are also one with all the animals and creatures of any sort.”
• Consciousness is Universal, the seat of unconditional love, wisdom, goodness, and mercy, and we connect with it through our minds.  “Mind is spiritual matter.”
• “If it is true that as a man thinks so is he, then thinking is the most consequential activity of a human being.”