Enough Room for Everyone
with Rev. John Riley

Watch previous services on our YouTube channel at
https://www.youtube.com/@UnityPaloAltoSpiritualCenter

I Am Enough. There Is Enough. | Overcoming Judgment and Selfishness

When Fear Speaks… Listen, Part 4 | Rev. John Riley | Unity Palo Alto | October 11, 2026

I Am Enough. There Is Enough.

Let’s start with an affirmation, shall we? I’m gonna say an affirmation and invite you to affirm it after me. I am enough. Together: I am enough. There is enough. There is enough. How does that feel?

Good. It feels good? It feels a little scary? It feels a little bit, well, maybe you’re not quite sure about it yet? Let’s try it again. I am enough. I am enough. There is enough. There is enough. Now feel that energy that, that comes when you start to express that a little more fully, a little more confidently.

Can you feel a little difference there? Yeah. Imagine if you walked into a room with that energy. Imagine if you walked into a situation or a conversation believing that this was true, believing I am enough and there is enough. Imagine you can bring your ideas without needing to be the best idea in the room.

Imagine that you can enjoy someone else’s gift and share your own, that you can listen fully because your worth isn’t being decided by the conversation. Can you get that sense within you? I am enough, and there is enough. You see, that belief changes us. That belief changes how we experience ourselves, how we experience our interactions, and how we lead in the world, how we move through this world.

It invites us to look at things in a different perspective. It invites a shared opportunity, and in the appearance it invites us to appreciate someone else’s contribution without giving away our own sense of self spiritual power or giving away our own sense of self. I am enough. There is enough.

That belief there is enough gives us room to notice the good that is already here, the good that is present in our life, and the things that we can do with that good. It gives us our potential and our opportunity. We can give, we can give thoughtfully.

We can receive gracefully and gratefully. and I’m talking about really receiving gratefully, not like, “Oh, yeah, no problem. Yeah. No, it’s no big deal. Yeah, don’t worry about it.” But really receiving and giving thoughtfully and receiving gratefully, really putting that energy into that experience of life.

And it creates an opening within us that we can participate in life with an open heart. Marianne Williamson in her book A Return to Love said this: “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” As I let my light shine, I’m allowing you, giving you the permission to shine your light. Isn’t that a beautiful idea?

So imagine what becomes possible when we all enter the room that way, with an open heart, shining our light, allowing that possibility to expand and express in the world. This week’s messengers in the book When Fear Speaks, Listen in our Fall Enrichment Program, are judgment and selfishness.

What Judgment and Selfishness Reveal

Now, I tell you, those two go together like peas in a pod, those are so connected in our life. And it’s such a great opportunity for us to look behind the surface of judgment and selfishness to see what is the belief that’s really driving those experiences. What message do those ideas, those thoughts, those emotions have for us?

They can help us recognize when fear is pulling us away from the starting point of I am enough and there is enough. It’s a great opportunity for us to notice that underneath them, we might hear the belief, “I’m not enough, and there won’t be enough for me.” Now, we’re not gonna affirm that part.

That’s just the belief that is running underneath the surface. But it gives us the opportunity to notice that belief, to notice it and then to work with it.

Now, judgment can arrive before we even notice it. maybe we’re looking at how someone else raises their kids or how someone else might be spending their money or how someone else expresses an opinion, and we have a reaction to that.

When there’s something out there that just doesn’t fit with us for some reason, it’s triggering something within us. Now, sometime that reaction comes from something that we’ve carried along for many, many years.

It could be the way we were raised, the schooling that we had, the condition or the culture that we grew up in. We have a way of thinking life needs to be like this. And if it’s not like that, then it’s not right.

Sometimes another person’s choices stir up the uncertainty within us, the uncertainty about our own choices, and that leads us to become judgmental or leads us to become selfish.

Someone might seem more accomplished than us, and suddenly we’re looking for reasons to give reasons so that their success doesn’t really count Sometimes that’s what shows up in us, and it can show up in a flash. So when it shows up, here’s the thing to shift in our mind.

Looking Beneath Our Judgments

It’s what’s showing up is an opportunity for us. It’s an opportunity when we notice and become aware of that visitor judgment or that visitor selfishness, we can become aware and say, “Ah, here’s an opportunity for me to become more interested in what’s happening within me. What’s being lit up within me?

What within me feels threatened?” It’s a great opportunity for me to look behind that thing that’s there so I can see what belief is driving this. Am I looking at this person with clarity? Am I trying to reassure myself about my own life? Dennis Merritt Jones reminds us that judgment and our ideas of superiority and inferiority, they’re descendants.

Judgment, superiority, and inferiority are all learned, and that means that we can examine them, and that means that we can look at it from a familiar perspective. “Oh, this is what this means”, and can become a starting point for our own discovery of what’s really going on within us. A starting point for our own discovery of where we want to be in the world and how we want to move through it.

So take a moment now to think about a time when you got to know someone for the first time. Maybe you had a first impression of somebody, and then over time, that first impression started to change. Perhaps it was something that you learned about what they were dealing with, about what happened in their life. Perhaps you discovered something that you admired in them.

The person maybe had more to them than you first saw, We’re discovering that they are more than the rumors that were being spread about them because we’re now looking at them through a new perspective, through a perspective with an open heart.

The Power of an Open Heart

Now open-heartedness is the key. It’s the key that gives us room for that fuller view about one individual, the fuller view about what’s happening in a group or in a situation. It allows us to see beyond the appearances, an open heart. We can listen and understand someone’s experience without needing it to match our own.

We don’t have to have that judgment and have their experience be the same as mine or their ideas be the same as mine. We can let people tell us who they are and allow what we learned to shape our perspective of them rather than relying on the rumor mill to shape our perspective. Having an open heart allows us to be present to all of that, to each other, to our relationships, and to ourself.

Judgment Versus Discernment

Dennis Merritt Jones in his book, When Fear Speaks, Listen, distinguishes between judgment and discernment. He says, “Discernment is an observation or perception of what is with no opinion or emotion attached to it. If discernment could speak, it might say, “Okay, I see (fill in the blank),” I see you. I see the situation. I see what is, “And I have no feelings about it or opinions about it. We can spiritualize discernment by opening to and relying upon the input and guidance from an internal Source, Infinite Intelligence, which is incapable of judging anyone or anything it perceives, only the oneness that it is.”

We can look at one another through that spiritual lens of oneness and realize there is no judgment in Spirit. There is no judgment in God, contrary to what we may have grown up with. This ever-present experience, this ever-present Energy, that One Presence and One Power, God the Good, Omnipotence. God is Love, and that is it. Discernment allows us to see what is through that lens without having that sense of I’m not good enough or there isn’t enough.

Discernment helps us evaluate what’s happening with greater clarity. We can separate what we know from what we’ve assumed. We can decide what response makes sense for us in that particular moment. We can recognize that something doesn’t work, and we can set a boundary. We can disagree on an idea while remaining open-hearted toward the person expressing it.

Compassion and the Freedom to Be Ourselves

And compassion brings care into this process. Being open-hearted and working with compassion. We become more interested in understanding the other person, another person’s experience than defining them and using our story about them and our narrative about them.

We become open-hearted.

We say, “I’m here. I’m available. I can listen, and I can hold you without judging you, without my own selfish intentions.” I am open-hearted. Now for me, when I say that, there’s a shift in me.

There’s a shift that really brings me back to my sense of oneness, brings me back to connection, and it’s a sense of freedom because I’m no longer hooked in my own story and narrative about you or the situation or the thing. I’m now coming from my own sense of self and my own spiritual power. And we can learn a lot about that without losing our sense of self.

We can say things like, “I hadn’t thought of that.” We can learn to have a conversation and learn within that conversation to gain a bigger understanding than we had when we first came to the conversation. I know more now than I did when I started this. Open-heartedness includes allowing ourselves to be seen.

We can share something honestly. We can admit when we don’t know. We can express a need, and we can hold a boundary, and we can bring our actual selves into the room. We can bring our sense of self into the room with an open heart. Now, last year at this time, we were reading the book Let Them.

Let Them, Let Me

Do you remember that, for those that were here? Yes. Let Them. This is a wonderful tool to use when judgment or selfishness knocks on the door.

When judgment starts knocking on the door, let them. When you are being judged, let them. Let people have their own experience rather than forcing your experience on them.

Let them bring their own gifts and make their own choices rather than their choices being your choices. Now, I’ve got kids and, the youngest one is 18 now. I am lucky if I get a word in edgewise, let alone giving them any advice. Let them. Let them make their choices. Let them learn and use and express their gifts.

Let them and then the other part of let them is let me. Let me bring my light. Let me bring my light and my sense of self and my spiritual power, and let them bring theirs. We each have a life to live. We’re each unique expressions of this life, yes? Yes. We can show up deeply for one another and respect each other and feel that freedom.

We all have that ability to be present to one another. This is the flow of seeing and being seen. It’s a both and, and it opens the door to real connection.

Selfishness and the Fear of Not Having Enough

Now, the fear of not enough can close that door quickly. It means that we’re holding tightly to what we have. That’s where the messenger of selfishness may appear.

Selfishness comes in, and with that selfishness comes a worry. A worry about money, a worry about opportunity, a worry about recognition. A worry about, “Am I gonna get enough attention?” Jones names greed, envy, and jealousy as descendants of selfishness.

Here’s what he has to say, ” They all come from the fear-based belief that someone else holds the good that they desire. They want (covet) more what they believe they don’t have, and the only way to get it in one form or another is from the other.”

That’s what selfishness is. It’s an idea that I don’t have enough, I’m not enough, but they are, and I need to get it from them.

When we recognize that, that gives us the opportunity to let it go. These ideas show up when someone else has good fortune, and suddenly we make their good fortune personal to us. So we have the opportunity to listen to that feeling.

We have the opportunity to ask, what does that feeling of selfishness, greed, or envy tell us about what matters most to me? When it shows up, we have the opportunity to really dive in and say, “What do I really want here? What do I want from my life? What do I want to experience in life? What is mine to do and mine to own?”

Gratitude Changes What We See

Is there a need that needs to be acknowledged or a possibility that we want to pursue? We can widen our view of this through the practice of gratitude. So when those messengers show up, slip into the idea of gratitude.

Take a moment now to notice something good in your life. Bring that good to mind, whatever that good may be. It may be a good friend, it may be your pet, it may be a situation, it may be the experience of sunlight, it may be that you’re breathing. What is it that you’re excited about? What good is going on in your life right now? Allow that good to, come into you. As you breathe in, feel that good flow into you.

Feel that appreciation and gratitude for that good, something that you appreciate that you might otherwise pass by. Let yourself enjoy knowing that it’s there. Let yourself feel that appreciation and that gratitude, because gratitude changes what we can see.

Gratitude clears our lens and allows us to see life differently, allows us to see the good, to see the opportunity, to see the potential for us in this very moment.

We begin to notice what does support us. We begin to notice what we have available and what we can work with, rather than thinking all the time we don’t have enough. We’re now focused on our good and what we can use to go forward. We may discover that we have more to offer to the world than we realize simply by bringing into mind that idea of gratitude.

Now, we can still have unmet needs. At the same time, we can recognize the good in our life. Gratitude can accompany us whenever we’re moving along this and want to address those needs. Gratitude is really the energy that helps us move through those unmet needs more easily and more gracefully.

Generosity and Consideration

And from that appreciation, generosity becomes something that we can really enjoy expressing. We might share what we know. We might offer encouragement to somebody. We might give someone our full attention and be present to them.

That’s what generosity can do. Add to that a dose of consideration. Add to that a dose of kindness.

Consideration helps us notice what might be helpful for somebody and might be welcome from somebody because sometimes what’s helpful for them isn’t always welcome. Have you noticed that? We can offer considerations within our own boundaries and with others’ boundaries.

So thoughtful generosity makes room for our needs alongside someone else’s need. Thoughtful generosity. How can I serve you in the way that’s most effective for you in this moment? How can I honor your needs and honor my needs at the same time? How can I hold my own boundaries and respect your boundaries at the same time?

Jones says this. An awakened mind knows that it is the intention behind our actions that define us.” Acts of true selflessness are initiated and guided by an open heart that has no agenda other than to share what good there is with others.

” Arising from an awareness of our oneness with the principle of abundance, the spirit of generosity, energized by the generosity of Spirit affirms that there is always more than enough to go around.” There is plenty of good to go around. We bring that good to each other, and we generously give, and we generously receive.

There Is Plenty of Good to Go Around

Think about the good that you can contribute throughout the day. Think about the good that you contribute through everyday choices. We choose our contribution to life. We let other people choose theirs. Together, these contributions can open possibilities that may not have been possible alone. When we come together from the idea “I am enough,” comparison no longer holds us. When we come together from that idea of “there is enough,” we have more room to appreciate, give, and receive. We get to enjoy life more fully and participate with good intention.

So when judgment enters the room, when judgment, superiority or inferiority joins the party, meet them with discernment and an open heart.

When selfishness, greed, jealousy and envy join the party, meet them with consideration and generosity.

Closing Affirmation and Scripture

Let’s move to our affirmation, please. I’m going to read our affirmation and invite you to affirm it. Let’s do it like a call and response like we did the other ones. I am enough. I am enough. There is enough.

There is enough. I am open-hearted. I am open-hearted. There is plenty of good to go around.

Notice Good has a capital G. You know why? Because it is synonymous with God. It is synonymous with the Allness of life. It is synonymous with Source and Substance. There is plenty of good to go around, yes? Yes. Let’s affirm that together. There is plenty of good to go around, and so it is.

In First Peter chapter four, verse 10, Peter says, “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God,” of the grace and substance of all that is.

Let us take that into our time of meditation and affirmative prayer