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Trust What Is Emerging

Myrtle Fillmore and the Beginning of Change

Myrtle Fillmore has always been considered the heart and the mother of Unity. And what’s interesting is that, though she didn’t speak from the pulpit, though she didn’t give talks, she ministered to thousands through letters, through correspondence, ministering and providing her wisdom and her experience for others to follow.

And some of those letters were captured in two books. One of them called The Healing Letters of Myrtle Fillmore, the other one called How to Let God Help You. I think both of those are in the bookstore. And when I first read those letters, I thought, “Okay, I’m ready to feel the heart, the love.” And while there was that component in there,

Mrs. Fillmore was all business.

At one point, she wrote, “You do not have a problem except the one in your own mind, and you put it there.” And I’m like, “Yes, Mrs. Fillmore.” She spoke and wrote in plain language, and really didn’t sugarcoat it.

Here’s one thing that she wrote that I thought was really interesting:

“It surely is not wisdom and good judgment to keep at a thing year after year that brings no appreciable returns and that does not cause the soul to grow and expand and radiate through the body as ever-renewing health and youth.

Sometimes we get into a rut and need a change of work, but first we must change our own viewpoint.”

A healthy change in our life, any healthy change, begins first in the mind.

Riding the Wave and Cultivating Change

This is the last of a three-part series on change. And two weeks ago, I had my first talk entitled Ride the Wave of Change.

This is the idea that when that rogue wave of change hits you, you know that wave. When that rogue wave just appears out of the blue and hits you, you have a choice. You either need to learn how to ride it or get pummeled by it, get dragged underwater and out to sea. Anybody experience that?

When that rogue wave comes, it’s time for us to learn how do I ride it? How do I get in that energy and flow with it so that I can maintain my own sense of self, strength, and dignity?

The second week I talked about cultivating change, a different kind of change, a change that we intentionally move into. Most change does not happen moment by moment.

Most change happens one intention, one step, and one day at a time, and it may take time before we actually see the results. And you get to choose what you plant, you get to choose what you water, and how you fertilize it. Are you fertilizing it with healthy ideas and thoughts, or are you fertilizing it with anger, resentments, and fears, and in reaction to something?

Reaction says to us something out there needs to change, someone out there needs to change. But cultivating change, cultivation says, “What is ready to grow within me?”

Trusting What Is Emerging

Today, we’re talking about trusting that growth, trusting what is emerging within you. For in this moment, in this very moment, there is invisible growth within you, whether you realize it or not.

For in this moment, God is. That energy is always drawing you up, as much as we fight it. Within you right now, roots are forming. Within you right now, the formation is building. And within you right now, life is organizing itself.

Unfortunately, we don’t always trust that because we can’t see it.

We go back on old patterns. We get triggered, and we go back to what’s familiar because it’s visible, and we are comfortable in our discomfort. We plant seeds, and then we walk away. Then we plant another seed, and we walk away, and we don’t tend to any of them.

We get distracted. We distract ourselves with another problem, with another situation, with another person, another something to be fixed. We’re taking that stimulus, and simply reacting to it rather than cultivating within yourself in the moment a sense of groundedness and security, developing your own sense of spiritual strength.

We don’t have the patience to cultivate what cannot be seen yet. We plant something, but it takes time for it to grow. It takes time for it to germinate within us and for those roots to grow, and for our consciousness to change.

And remember, you only have one problem in your life, and it’s in your own mind, and you put it there.

So to change that, we need to give it time. We need to learn to use the power of faith to be able to trust what is emerging even though we can’t see it.

Life has its own intelligence, its own timing, its own unfolding process. We’re so often second-guessing life, aren’t we? We’re so often having an idea or a situation and, “Oh, this is the right way, but wait, there’s this over here.”

So we second-guess ourselves all the time, and our impatience defocuses us and creates that blurry view of life. Our impatience defocuses our intention.

And do you really believe that intention in the first place, or is it just another cat poster? Anybody love cat posters?

My video feed is filled with cats.

And you know, sometimes life is difficult, and that’s just the nature of it. Sometimes things don’t grow the way you want them to grow. Sometimes we think they’re gonna grow in a certain way, and they grow out sideways, and we walk away from it. We complain about it.

Sometimes we think our intelligence about how things should work is greater than divine intelligence. I’m not gonna ask you to raise your hand if you identify that one. That’s just the human condition. We think our individual intelligence is greater than the divine intelligence that is moving, living, and having its being within us.

Present Suffering and Future Hope

This is reflected in his letter to the Gentiles in Rome. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans, chapter eight:

“I consider that suffering of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”

This is in a section that’s often called Present Suffering and Future Hope.

And at the time, what Paul is saying is that, “Yes, you are experiencing some things in life. That happens.”

But then we compare that something with this divine intelligence. and say, “Well, okay, God’s not here. Where’s God? God isn’t present.”

God’s in, moving through, and as you. Source, Substance, Spirit is already the energy that’s moving through you, healing and harmonizing you, and yet we don’t see it and we don’t experience it.

Paul goes on to talk about the idea of hope because that’s what people could understand. Hope when things get difficult and that Spirit is always there, always flowing, always moving through you to help you move through it. Whatever the it is in your life.

And then he gets to a point when he says:

“We all know that things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to its purpose.”

All things work together for good. Even when we don’t see it, even when it seems things are going off the rail, if we trust in that inner guidance, in that inner strength, in that inner energy, you will move in the right direction.

For those who love God, and this is the idea that I’d like to bring into our universal language for those who have that awareness that you are love, that you are that love of God already expressing.

And all we need to do is simply tune into it, and that’s what Paul is talking about. Tune into that energy of spirit that’s already within you. Tune into that love and then express it as kindness and compassion, as wisdom and understanding, as decisions, as strength.

That divine intelligence is already within you.

So trust that. Trust Spirit, Source, the Allness of life, love, and wisdom that is ever flowing through you.

Kintsugi: Filling the Cracks With Gold

There is a Japanese art form called Kintsugi and it’s the process of taking a bowl that has been broken and repairing it with gold in the seams. And what comes out of that is simply a very beautiful experience of life.

And the purpose here is not to hide the cracks but to honor the cracks. Not to hide the things in our life, our cracks in our life, the things that kinda crack us up.

I didn’t mean that.

The things that move us or shake us in either positive or negative ways, however we wanna judge it. Those things that come apart in life because those breaks are part of the beauty of life.

Many of us spend our lives focusing on the cracks instead of healing. Many of us are so used to the cracks and then tell stories about our cracks instead of mending.

And then we want to hide the cracks or hide the cup so no one can see them and stuff them down within us instead of addressing them and using our spiritual practices to heal ourselves and to move forward and create something beautiful.

We focus on the cracks of failure, of grief, of transitions, of mistakes, heartbreaks, aging, loss, all of the hidden cracks in our lives, and the places where those things happen within us.

But what if those cracks were simply an opening?

What if those cracks were an opening in our consciousness to expand itself? An opening where light and wisdom and compassion and strength begin to emerge.

Now, if you’re experiencing one of those cracks in your life, you can look for where is the strength and wisdom and compassion emerging? Where is the light emerging? How can I look at this from a different perspective so that—

And then how can I mend it and heal it with a beautiful, beautiful inlay of gold?

Healing is not returning to the person you were before. Healing is allowing something new to emerge from within you.

And emergence has its own timing.

It is in relationship to how quickly we are willing to let go of it in our mind, how quickly we are willing to heal our consciousness and our thoughts. And the longer that takes, the longer the healing will take.

Emergence has its own timing, and it’s in relation to your own inner resistance to what is.

So when we’re starting to struggle and fight with what is, that slows us down, and that keeps us focused on the cracks rather than the healing process.

You’re not failing because life looks different than you thought. Something new may be emerging that could exist in a completely new way, in a completely beautiful way.

Healing the cracks takes time, and it takes focus. We have to stop focusing on the cracks and start focusing on the good.

We have to stop focusing on suffering with every wound, but rather, how can I move through this with more ease and grace? How can I draw upon that inner strength, that Spirit, that energy that’s flowing? How can I stop trying to return to the old version of myself, and rather embrace and honor what I am becoming?

Fill in my cracks with gold. Honor the path. Honor what’s happening through me. Tend to what is emerging. Even if it feels incomplete.

You have within you all of the strength that you need to move through this experience, and every experience creates something new within you.

And if you use that idea and take that idea into your heart, then change becomes something different.

Cultivating What Is Emerging

If we’re focusing on what we’re cultivating, even in the face of the unseen—

We just planted the seed, nothing’s growing.

Any gardeners out there who garden from seeds? How long does it take to grow?

Forever.

Forever.

It’s worse than watching a pot of water waiting for it to boil. It takes longer than that, and our growth takes longer than that.

If we fertilize it with love and compassion, with kindness for self, for others, for situation. If we fertilize it and water it diligently every day, if we take care of it and pull the weeds, we will learn to allow that which is within us to emerge, allow Spirit to do its work within us so that we can move and live and have our being in Spirit.

We can be in that energy of love and compassion and bring that to the things that we do in life.

Honor the places that have shaped me. I honor the things where those cracks are because that was an opportunity for me to grow.

We often talk about teachers, right? Master teachers in life.

Well, there’s also the master teacher that helps you crack open your own pot. Anybody have those?

We blame them, but the reality is it’s my mindset that’s cracking open. It’s that crystallized thinking that I’ve been holding onto for years, that error thought that has had its grip on me, that has held me in this fixed state.

And when I start to let go of that grip, sometimes there are cracks, sometimes there are shards, sometimes there are things that it’s a crystallized thinking that’s breaking open.

And when it breaks open, it’s just simply a recognition of, “Oh, here’s a new crack, and I get to fill it with gold. What do I wanna fill it with?

Do I wanna sit there and watch the water leak out, or do I wanna fill it with something beautiful so that I can emerge as something new, creative, constructive, beautiful.

Because you are beautiful.

That divine that is within you is that divine beauty, always seeking expression. That divine wisdom, always guiding.

And you are here to express it.

Be that living expression of the image of God, which in Unity we call the Christ. You may call it your higher self, your divine nature, that spark of divinity, your noble self, that part of you that is in alignment with the Allness of life, love, and wisdom.

Closing Affirmation

I’m gonna read our affirmation and then invite you to affirm it with me. And as you read it and as you affirm it, feel the Presence within you. Feel that energy flow, the energy of Spirit, the healing, harmonizing, prospering energy of Spirit.

Centered in the presence within me, with faith, love, and courage, I honor the places that shaped me and trust the beauty still emerging within me.

Would you affirm that with me?

Together,

Centered in the presence within me, with faith, love, and courage, I honor the places that have shaped me and trust the beauty still emerging within me.

And so it is.

Honor what you’re becoming. Fill in your own cracks with gold. Tend to what is emerging, even if it feels incomplete.

Let’s take that idea into our time of meditation and affirmative prayer.