Our Dip Stick by Rev. Christine Emmerling, D.D. 8/23/2026

Today’s talk is on Our Dip Stick. Our automobiles, at least the ones powered by gasoline, all come with a dip stick under the hood. The dip stick is used to check the oil, to see if the oil is low. If there isn’t enough oil, then we burn out the engine, it blows up so to speak, and the car no longer runs. If you add too much oil, then it floods the engine, burns components, and the car won’t run. Therefore, the dip stick is a pretty important tool to maintaining an automobile in good operation.

Now you may be thinking what does that have to do with me? We will now think of our self as having a dip stick. It is that part of us that checks to see how well we are operating.

Just like a car’s engine our body needs to run at a certain temperature. For example, a thermometer can be our dip stick to measure the body’s temperature. An average body temperature for a person is 98.6. We’re all familiar with what happens when it runs too high, we get hot and sweaty and is a sign that we’re fighting off an infection or virus of some kind. When our body temperature dips down too low, it means the body isn’t able to fight a virus or infection. Too high or too low, either way shows the body is out of balance.

Like measuring our temperature, we can use our internal dip stick to measure our feelings and emotions. And this is the focus of today’s talk. As a child we may have been told it was wrong, or even bad, to express our emotions and feelings. These emotions could have been joyous as we’re running around the house yelling. Or many times they were feelings of anger and sadness with emotional bursts screaming, hitting, throwing things and crying. But either way we may have been told not to feel or act that way. To put our feelings aside and get over it. In other words, we were told to suppress our feelings and emotions.

What kind of message did that give to our dip stick? Our barometer for right and wrong, and trusting our inner guide or intuition? Besides stuffing our emotions, the message is that it is not ok to feel and express what is naturally within us. And what happens to those suppressed emotions? They eventually come out, and usually in the most inappropriate way and inconvenient time. Someone says or does something, and it triggers some old past memory that has very little to do with what’s happening in the present, and all of sudden the volcano inside us explodes. It's healthy to find out what the original painful experience was about so that it can be brought into the light, be released and transformed.

Dr. Phineas Quimby 1802-1866, considered father of New Thought, helped thousands of people to heal through his method. His technique was first to be in a receptive state of consciousness, bring a past disturbing event to the patient’s awareness, it could be seen for what it was, then the pain attached to the memory was released and the body would heal itself.

His process was based on a person’s reaction to a disturbing or painful experience, and these thoughts as energy, are stuck in the body. Overtime this stuck energy begins to fester and left long enough physical symptoms would be created in the body. He wasn’t dealing with a disease; it was a memory that became stuck energy that only needed to be recognized and released.

When we think about the word “disease” and what it really means, being at dis-ease or not at ease. Today doctors have found that degenerative diseases are from inflammation of the body.

Divine Science founder Malinda Cramer offers a method to transform negative attitudes and feelings through healing affirmations, by lifting to their Truth complement in Spirit. I’ll say one then repeat it for you to say it with me.

God has not given me fault-finding; I cannot have it.

God has given me Love, I cannot lose it. (repeat)

God has not given me anxiety, I cannot have it.

God has given me Peace, I cannot lose it. (repeat)

God has not given me weakness, I cannot have it.

God has given me Strength, I cannot lose it. (repeat)

God has not given me confusion, I cannot have it.

God has given me Wisdom, I cannot lose it. (repeat)

And, from 2 Timothy 1:7, “God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love.” (repeat)

Another kind of dip stick is based on the ancient Hermetic teachings. Again, we use a thermometer, this time with degrees of love. For example, at the bottom end of the thermometer is hate and the top is unconditional love. As we move up from hate we go to rage, anger, dislike, indifference, like, appreciation, love, compassion and unconditional love. We are always somewhere in that range of feeling lesser or greater degrees of love.

Think of each degree of the love thermometer as having its own vibration and frequency of light and sound. When we’re vibrating at the range of hate we are vibrating at a very low frequency, while unconditional love is vibrating at a very high frequency. This frequency then is what we are emanating into our world. And to remember what we send out into our world comes back to us; some call it the mirror or boomerang effect. Most people are swinging back and forth from love to anger. With this being their experience of life.

Besides the thermometer of love, the Hermetic teachings use a pendulum along with the thermometer. This pendulum swings horizontally across the thermometer, and at the position the swing crosses at is where we are experiencing our life. Now the pendulum rises, lowers and rises back and repeats. As we raise our frequency of vibration, raising our consciousness, then the pendulum’s swing moves higher up the love scale, and when we lower our vibration the pendulum’s swing moves lower on the love scale. Most people swing back and forth experience emotional highs and lows.

When in the high frequency of unconditional love, then we rise above the effects of the pendulum dipping into the lower degrees of dislike. Our pendulum swing is such that there are no longer any dips below love. As such, we rise above the painful experiences related to karma and live in grace.

We can actually tone or tune ourselves from one degree to the next. That is the power of sound and music. Uplifting, life affirming music can shift a person feeling sad to an overall sense of well-being and balance, and to even higher states of consciousness.

Some of the music the youth are listening to today is focused on anger and hate, which has the same power to shift the moods and feelings with an overall sense of anger, fear, anxiety to even aggressive behavior. We do have a choice; we can consciously choose which tune we wish to be playing. This is also true of our unconscious mind chatter which has the same power to lower our vibrational frequency. While positive self-talk can raise our vibrational frequency.

Think about our activities throughout the day, and how they are serving. Are they raising or lowering your vibration? Do we feel calm or anxious. If our work is stressful, then take mini breaks to breathe deeply, have positive affirmative statements posted nearby as reminders, or take a moment to feel gratitude.

Our dip stick is the key to our intuitive nature - our inner guidance for self-healing. Fear of any kind contracts our body and shuts down our intuition. Fear also shuts down our ability to think clearly. In fear, our mind tends to wrap in circles on the same thing over and over like a stuck record. While being at the higher vibration of our dip stick opens us to healing, the Universal Mind of infinite knowledge, and higher spiritual dimensions of our being where the Truth is realized and brought into manifest form.

The following is an exercise in checking our dip stick or love thermometer: Imagine our dip stick running down from the top of our head which is at unconditional love, to our lower abdomen which is at hate.

Now take a moment to check within and ask, “How am I feeling this very moment?”

Next check to where the pendulum swing is dipping. If below unconditional love, to raise the vibration take in a deep breath and forcefully blow out right through the stomach area. Now breathe in slowly and exhale slowly right through the stomach area. Deep breathing always raises our vibration, as does singing, chanting, toning, affirmations, affirmative prayer, silent meditation, and gratitude.

Let us aim to be at the upper half and above on our love thermometer of like, appreciation, love, compassion, unconditional love. First think about how we love ourselves, this is where it all starts and then we share that love. As within so without. It all begins within by fine tuning our love vibration. To remember that our true nature is love. We were created out of love, out of God’s love.

The following is a good reminder of what love is and is not from Corinthians 13:4-7: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” So, it is.