My wife and I are charter members of Spiritual Cinema Circle and have spent many hours enjoying the group's offerings of insightful, uplifting, inspirational and positive films over the past several years.

As a membership recruitment tool, they are now offering a free 16-minute video that is a fine example of the content of many of their short subjects. You can view the short here and, incidentally, also sign up for a free trial membership at the same time. But you don't have to ask for the free trial to wstch the short, which is highly recommended.

One of the newsletters I get is from the Association for Global New Thought, a group of churches who are part of the modern metaphysical spiritual movement. Unity, Religious Science and other such churches belong to the association.

Following is a letter from a well-known Italian peace and interfaith worker-activist about the election of Barack Obama to be our next President. Perhaps it helps explain a little bit of why I am so completely taken with the concept of having this man as our leader for the next four or eight years. It's been a long time since an American President evoked this kind of overseas response.

As I was mentioning to you earlier, about the enthusiasm for President elect Obama being great everywhere. We keep on seeing wonderful images of people throughout the planet celebrating this victory. I do not recall ever having happened before! We see people in Russia as well as in all capitals cities of Europe, in different parts of Africa and Asia, in South America, everywhere, even in China, just happy, as if relieved and hopeful for a better future. It is as if a wave of confidence and new hope has reached at the same time all corners of the world!

I was able to follow live, together with millions of Italians, until 5 A.M. the long night which led us to the great news: that President Obama made it, and in an incredible way! I could follow three TV national channels as well as BBC and CNN simultaneously and every now and then we were connected with people watching the same program live in different places of the five continents. Amazing!!

By noon today we could hear in TV and read in the papers the wonderful messages sent to President Obama by all the world leaders, including our President Napolitano, Pope Benedict XVI, our Premier, our head of the Senate, our head of the Parliament, all top political Leaders. And the same from the Leaders of most nations . Our TV news programs lasted more than one hour, instead of the usual 15 or 20 minutes; special talk shows are going on in sequence, almost nonstop, in every TV channel throughout Europe.

I can assure you that something like this never happened before!

This shows the great impact that President Obama's victory has on the entire planet.

What impressed everybody, also, is the new spirit of involvement, of interest, of personal participation of so many millions and millions of American Citizens, so many young ones, who revealed an authentic image of the vitality, the true spirit of Democracy, which is one of the best characteristic of the United States of America!

It was touching to see the painstaking work of millions of volunteers who truly gave all their best energies to guarantee that all this could happen!

We are proud of being not only spectator, but "actors" of an important historical moment! We shall not stop short here, just rejoicing of an important, historical event. We shall keep working hard for that "new world" we all dream of, knowing that, united, "WE CAN"!!

I was wiping tears from my eyes as I read this. It just feels good.

I just posted a new entry on my spiritual blog over at Gaia.com about my recent transformational healing experience and how it moved me from being a metaphysician to being a mystic.

Despite the sometimes exaggerated and often inaccurate claims of some people teaching the connection between intention and manifestation, there is a Universal Law at work in such processes. One of the writers best known for documenting and supporting this type of research is Britain's Lynn McTaggart, whose major work, The Field, has been a major international best-seller.

McTaggart has been conducting some large-scale intention experiments over the Internet with mixed but interesting results. I've participated in some of them.

On Sept. 14, she is calling togeether a world peace intention experiment that I intend to join. I'd like it if you would both join it and let me know that you are doing so. If you're a registered user here, you can add a note to this post in the form of a comment and let me know of your intent. If you're not a member, consider becoming one so we can engage in dialog about this and other issues of mutual interest.

On my spiritual blog, I just posted an observation about the critical role of forgiveness on my spiritual path. I just finished teaching a five-week course on A Course in Miracles and world peace and was reminded as I concluded it that forgiveness, in the sense the Course means that word, is crucial to finding the inner peace that must precede world peace.

I just posted a note on my spiritual blog on Gaia.com about the connections and differences between success and significance. This is important stuff for my life. Maybe you'll find it helpful or useful as well.

Mary Robinson Reynolds is a fount of creative excellence and spiritual wisdom. I read everything I get from her and nearly always find it uplifting, valuable and insightful.

The other day, she sent a newsletter with a link to this movie about the blue-ribbon "Who I Am Makes A Difference" movement. If you've never seen this movie or heard of this cause, I recommend it highly. If you know about it, reminding yourself of its origins and value never grows old.

Check it out. Then send a link to someone in your life who makes a difference.

This video clip of an August 2007 comment by Newt Gingrich is filled with the word "fear" and its variants. Believing as I do that fear is the opposite of love, I found his comments revealing but perhaps not quite in the way he intended.

I am as disturbed by the atmosphere of fear being created by many of our national leaders, including Gingrich, as a way of keeping the people at large from seeing the larger truth: that war is not an answer but a mind-set, that terrorism is not an enemy but a tactic used by many different groups for many centuries and that you cannot, therefore win a battle against terrorism any more than you can win a war on crime or drugs or disease.

This is all old-way thinking and it has gotten us where we are. The way to peace and freedom and success is not down the road labeled "war". Einstein said no problem can be solved with the same mind-set that created it. We've got to find some new ways of thinking and reacting to this or we will destroy ourselves as a race.

I believe the current Administration is doing what it sincerely believes is the right thing to do to address the threat it sees as it understands that threat. I hold no ill will against them for it. But it is absolutely clear, at least to me, that their approach is not only not working, it cannot work. It will not work. And in the process of trying so hard to make it work, they've ripped some things in our national fabric, perhaps beyond repair.

According to press reports today, Saudi Arabian King Abdullah has proposed a sort of world religion summit among the three largest monotheistic faith groups, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It was reportedly the first time any Arab national leader had made such a call.

This is tremendous news in the circles in which I travel and hang out. I am heavily involved in interfaith activities on the Monterey Peninsula and a long-time advocate of tolerant and appreciate coexistence among the world's religions. Virtually all of the violence in the world since the end of World War II can be traced back to some religious intolerance, even though that attitude often manifests in disagreement over what appear to be political and cultural concerns.

"There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions," famed theologian Hans Kung has said. I think he's absolutely right. Because of this among many other things, I welcome King Abdullah's invitation to dialog with open mind, open heart and joy.

I just posted a brief commentary on the book The Universe Story by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry on my spiritual blog at Gaia.com. You might find it interesting if you're into cosmology, history or Big Picture stuff of any kind.