United Prayers Across America
A National Prayer Project to Awaken the Sleeping Giant

Conference Call #30

Living in Love

Greg Coates

July 10, 2006

It is an honor to be here tonight, and I'm very grateful to have this opportunity. I want to tell you just a little bit about my history to share how the great power of God's love has so transformed my life.

I'm 46 years old, and when I was fourteen, I began a twenty- plus-year- path of drug and alcohol abuse. Ten years ago, in my 37th year, I became clean and sober. This happened through the power of God's grace and a lot of hard work and prayer. God helped me to have an inner knowing, without which I wouldn’t be here today.

I had a dear friend at my church who always invited me to spiritual workshops and meetings and never gave up on me, even through the times when I was pretty reclusive. Two years ago, she asked me to come to meet a certain gentleman, Philip Burley, and I said I would. When I met Philip, I immediately felt a connection, and our friendship has been so great.

As we read the prayer tonight asking for the droplets of love to come, I invite everyone to really take this to heart. Each individual is a droplet of love. As we go through our day, we come into contact with many people, visually, verbally, or even energetically. In the energetic or vibrational sense, we come into contact with thousands of people, directly or indirectly. So, for me, it's important that I do my best to be in my heart and to be loving and compassionate, even by just allowing someone else in on the road or by giving a smile, a hug, or just an energetic projection of kindness. I can tell you verbally that I love you, or with just a look. I can project love energetically from my heart to yours. I think that's important to do every day, especially when we're being constantly bombarded with negative information on the television and from many different sources.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to be alive at this time in our world history and in our nation's history. I've been doing a lot of study and work with the power of positive thought, the law of attraction. There is a wonderful film out called The Secret. And various people share their stories in this movie. I think you can find the official website for the film at www.thesecret.tv, and I strongly urge you to take a look at it. It has some great information about how we think and teaches that what we think is what we create.

There are a couple of quotes I want to share with you. Winston Churchill’s words are very powerful for me: You create your own universe as you go along. Dr. Martin Luther King, one of my all time heroes, said this: Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase; just take the first step. Another quote that I love is by Buddha: All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

It's powerful and empowering that what I focus on can become my reality. I've been working with this for several weeks now, and I will give you one small example. I work as a personal assistant, and I’m in charge of selling a boat slip at a marina on behalf of the person I work for. I had been dealing with three different people, two of whom were on a waiting list, and I said to myself, "Okay, I’m going to create this: One of these three people will meet my asking price and purchase the boat slip." The first man I had spoken to told me that he was going to buy the slip, but he left a message on my cell phone saying, "You know, I found another slip, and I'm going to back out of the sale." The next message on my cell phone that day was from a young lady who said, "Hi, this is Michelle. I've decided to meet your asking price for the boat slip. If it's still available, I'd like to buy it." This confirmed for me the power of positive intent and positive thought. My focused intent manifested so quickly.

What I think and what I believe, I can achieve. It’s not just the thought, but feelings matter as well. I asked myself, what would it feel like if I were successful in selling this boat slip for my boss? How would I feel? I closed my eyes and envisioned it, and it came to be. I've been working with this a lot.

I'm about to change careers and locations by moving to Palm Springs. I have been visualizing a new job, and I just received a new job offer today. This is another testimony to the power of positive thinking. I hope all of this makes sense to you.

I also strongly urge you to read Philip’s books, A Legacy of Love and To Master Self is to Master Life. Those two books changed my life, and they continue to change my life. They are like living, breathing organisms, because each time I read from them, I get something different. I like to go through books and highlight my favorite passages. I’m now up to a fourth highlighting color in Philip's Legacy of Love! Before reading it, I close my eyes and send my intentions to receive something new, and I do.

The message in both books is that we're created out of love. We are love incarnate. Philip mentions in one of the books that love is the true religion, and that’s what I believe and try to follow. I'm an interfaith minister, and I don’t have a dogmatic belief, but love is my religion. Of course, I love God; and I love Jesus and many other master teachers. But love is the foundation of everything that I do. It's first and foremost in my life. That's my first responsibility: to love you and to love myself. Everything else is secondary.

I really appreciate the opportunity to talk and to share with you. To be honest, I was quite nervous, even though we are a small group; so I closed my eyes earlier to set my intention, visualizing that everybody is together in the room that I'm in, so I do feel close to everyone here. When I hear people come on the call from New York, Arizona, and Colorado, I think it's such a wonderful testament to our resolve to make a change on our planet, in our country, and in the world—within ourselves first. I honor each one of you for your commitment to this prayer and for everything that you do and everything that you are. I’m blessed and honored to be a part of this group.

Greg Coates is a native Californian who resides in Sacramento. Greg plans to move to Palm Springs where he hopes to open a Spiritual Center for people to learn to become more aware of their connection to God and to all things. Palm Springs is in the Cochella Valley, and Greg recently learned that the native term for Cochella means "The Palm of God."

Greg is an interfaith minister with the Center for Spiritual Healing in Tiburon, California. He has participated in ongoing studies with Rev. Gwenievere Maria at the Center. He has also served as a chaplain at the Spiritual Life Center in Sacramento and has attended and hosted many classes and workshops on spiritual topics. A dear friend introduced him to Philip Burley two years ago, and he and Philip have become great friends since that time. Greg says, "My spiritual life and awareness have grown more deeply than in all the years of study and practice because of the love, friendship, and guidance of my friend, brother, and teacher, Philip Burley. The world is a better place because of Philip’s genuine love and care for his fellows and his planet and because of all the hard work he does for both."