You Can Get Back on Track from Wrong Turns in Life | Rev. John Riley

Have you ever felt like you’ve made a wrong turn? Maybe you were driving in your car and thinking about something and realizing that you just missed your exit on the freeway. Maybe you made a wrong turn in a relationship when you said something that you really didn’t mean to say, or perhaps you overreacted to something. Perhaps you are just feeling like life is taking you in a direction that you are not ready for yet or it’s not the direction you want to go in. Well, today I am going to be talking about how to get back on track when life takes us in the wrong direction.

Don’t Look Where You Don’t Want to Go

When I was a kid, when I was young, I had my first car ever. It was a 1963 Volkswagen Bug, Beetle. We called it a Bug. This was a car that my dad bought brand new in 1963 and passed it down through the generations and, me being the youngest of four, I got it last. I remember it was a bright oxidized yellow color on the outside. You know, that old paint that starts to come off. On the inside it was a nice cherry red because it was all red at one point and, of course, it had the lime green shag carpet. That was my addition. I remember this because when I was about ten, I remember, I was about that age and one of my older brothers had the Bug. That is when it just turned bright red on the outside to yellow. At the time I’m sure it was shiny bright yellow on the outside, for reasons unknown.

One of my brothers — the reason I remember this is one of my brothers, he was taking hang gliding lessons at the same time. I think I was probably around nine or ten years old and I remember it vividly because I loved the idea of hang gliding. I loved the idea of soaring in the air and just being able to see the world around you and just feeling that peace that I imagine an eagle feels when the eagle is soaring. You are just up there, just enjoying the scenery.

During that, what I remember is, one of the things that they told him was don’t look where you don’t want to go. That is one of the key tips for hang gliding. I think that’s because as a beginner when you are hang gliding, when you look somewhere you tend to move your whole body, move your whole body, and when you are shifting your weight that is how you steer a hang glider. You shift back it slows down, you shift forward it goes forward. You shift left and right. By shifting your weight, you are steering the hang glider.

When he was taking his lessons — and this was down in southern California and I think he was along the beach somewhere but I’m not quite sure — but what I remember him saying was one of his first times when they were ready to I think take their first lift, get their first liftoff, they weren’t going very high, it was along the ground and so they were maybe ten, fifteen feet off the ground. And he gets up there and he is soaring around and then all of a sudden, he catches out of the side of his eye in the parking lot that newly painted bright yellow Bug and he says “Oh, there’s my Bug”. Zzzzzz boom!

Well okay, it probably didn’t sound like that and there was no fuel to explode but he crashed because he saw his Bug and he shifted his weight and immediately the hang glider went down. So, it’s very vivid to me at that point — it’s like after that I think he got hurt. He hurt his shoulder. He may have banged up his head a little bit. At that point he decided, “I’ve decided that my career as a hang glider is complete”. For me, as a nine- or ten-year-old kid, it changed my view on hang gliding too. It’s like, Oh gosh, that looks pretty dangerous. Maybe I will find another way to get that sensation of gliding, of hanging, of being one with everything”. But what a great metaphor for life. Don’t look where you don’t want to go.

So, it’s the beginning of the year and of course we have our New Year’s resolutions perhaps. We have our goals and our dreams and our aspirations. Perhaps it’s just an intention that we are setting for the day. Then we set that intention and go off and yet our focus is somewhere else even though we set the intention to be poised and confident and powerful and to be the expression that we are or to accomplish that goal or to ace that test or to ace that interview. Whatever it is that you are going to do, we get into there and all of a sudden our focus is turned, is taken away by something else. We turn our focus, our attention, and all of our energy is going in a different direction. How can we go positively forward towards our dreams, our goals effectively if we are looking out the rear-view mirror, if we are looking behind us, if we are moving in a different direction?

Distractions in Life

Now the cause of this can be many things. There’s a lot of distractions in life. It could be simply that you are getting a little anxious or you are a little nervous or there is some fear involved in it, in whatever you are trying to accomplish. In your daily life, there might be some distractions, some of those people who are creating those uncomfortable conversations perhaps, that are dragging our attention in one way or the other. There we go, screaming down in that direction, forgetting about our intention, forgetting about everything that we came here to do or become. It’s just in the moment that is what it is. Maybe we are just getting distracted by life. There is a lot going on right now, if you are looking at the news, if you are looking at your to-do list, if you are trying to figure out how you are going to navigate this current situation here in January.

It may be like, “Here is my intention. My intention is to be poised and confident and – squirrel !!” And then we’re off in that direction. There is just a lot going on, there is a lot going on in our life. So how do we stay focused? How do we stay poised and centered in grace and balanced so that we can glide, so that we can soar in our daily life and we can see the majesty of what is beneath us, see the beauty of the world around us and to be in it?

There is a wonderful saying — actually I want to talk about one of the stories or one of the ways this applies to us because here we are, live streaming only. Our Sunday services are paused and this last week the Board has gone through a number of gyrations, or contemplations or discernments trying to decide what the right thing to do was. We had a beautiful White Stone Service last Sunday. I hope you have your white stone with you and you have your word to keep that close to you to remind you of who you come here to be, even amongst the distractions.

So, this was a big distraction. There was lots of conversation, healthy conversation around statistics, what we think is happening, what isn’t happening. And each day we shifted our flight path. Each day there was a little gust of wind coming this way and we shifted that way. Then we settled back down and we shifted this way. Finally, eventually, we decided the right thing to do was to pause our in-person services for the time being. Now, I’m not even going to say, “here we are again”. I am not going to say that because we are not there again. That is not the reality of it. This is a completely different situation. Here we are two years later and this is different because you are different and I am different. The world around us is different. Yet part of our challenge is we tend to look at it as oh, I’m back in that rut again.

That is that thinking that takes us back to “See? I’m in this rut again”. That is our focus. Don’t look where you don’t want to go. But here we are in this horrible situation. We may be wrong. People are going about their day. Businesses are still open and it may not be that critical but the real question is, what is the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to really, when it comes down to it, just becoming still, becoming poised, balancing our ideas, our thoughts, weighing them and with grace making a decision. That is the only right thing to do because when we do it from a standpoint of being centered, being centered and being grounded in this idea of God, this idea of the allness of life, our oneness in life. And we are making the best decisions that we can with what we have.

How is that different from any one of our daily lives? Have you ever experienced that? Have you ever felt that? What decisions am I having to make today that will guide me in my direction? What choices am I making today to keep me on path, to keep me soaring, to keep me moving forward?

Keeping Your Focus on Where You Want to Go

So, don’t look where you don’t want to go tells us that we should keep our focus on where we do want to go, keep our focus on how we want to show up, on that white stone word, keep us focused on where we want, what that looks like in everyday life so that when the gusts come, when the thermals come up and knock us around, when the turbulence comes, we are able to calmly navigate it.

Sometimes we have this phrase, “Oh, here’s that lesson again. How many times do I have to learn this?” Well, we have to learn it as many times until we are comfortable navigating it because the lessons don’t really go away. The turbulence and the gusts and the things in human life don’t really go away. But what happens is we now have the ability to navigate it a little bit more. If you are learning how to hang glide you don’t strap on a pair of wings and jump off a cliff on your first day. You have to study. You have to learn aerodynamics. You have to learn how the mechanism works. You have to learn safety protocols and then you have to practice. You have a teacher and you should listen to your teacher. You should. You should listen to your teacher and if you make a mistake, guess what, it’s not your teacher’s fault. It’s just how — it’s part of the learning process. It’s just like spiritual growth. It’s just like chasing your dreams or living into your dreams, living into your white stone word, living into who you have come here to be. It takes practice. It takes effort to move along that path.

Spiritual Tools

We have a lot of spiritual tools that we can use, of course. Meditation, mindfulness. We could use the idea of releasing and letting go and establishing our white stone word and filling it up with something, or denying and then affirmations. We can use the practice of forgiveness and gratitude. We can use the practice of affirmative prayer. All of that is to help us stay centered and aware of what is going on in our head because that is where the real turbulence is. The conditions that are outside of us or in our bodies are just conditions, but it is in our minds, in our consciousness that we are experiencing our turbulence.

So, when we take the time to practice these mental activities, these heart activities, so we become in sync, mind, body and spirit. So, we are moving, we are listening to the wisdom of our heart as much as the wisdom of our mind, we are moving forward with grace and ease even if the decision is wrong. We can always change it. And it’s never the same. We like to think it’s the same. “Oh, here it is again. This is coming up again in my life. It’s my old wound.” It’s a little bit different because you are a little bit different. You still have the choice to say, “I’m going to do something different”, to move in a different direction.

The Kingdom of God

I think this is what the great master teacher, Jesus, meant in his great sermon when he said, seek first — strive first, strive at first actually – “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness. All of these things will be added unto you.” Strive first is a more accurate translation as far as I understand. So, it’s moving into that consciousness, that divine essence that we are. Of course, the kingdom of God, as Unity teaches it, is a state of consciousness. It’s a conscious awareness of our oneness with the allness of life, love and wisdom. So, when we strive to live from that on a daily basis, when we strive to be in that presence, everything else is going to be taken care of. Righteousness is just right thinking. That is all it means. It means thinking from that place that’s centered in our hearts, centered in our mind, balanced, so we are not veering off one way or another as our emotions take us there, we are not veering off in the other direction as our our belief system takes us there. We stay centered and present, in this moment.

Balanced and Poised

The results, from what I have experienced, the results are that feeling that I imagine it’s like to be in that hang glider — poised, balanced, moving through the air with grace and just seeing and experiencing the world around you, being one with it, being in awe of it. I know in the decision that we made to pause our in-person services that there was a lot of stress within me throughout the week. There were some nights that I didn’t sleep very well. I was really contemplating the difference, the different sides and the opinions and the ideas. They are all valid. It’s just the information that we had, all the data, trying to weed out my own emotions, trying to weed out my own biases in that.

And then finally, when the decision was made, we thought we would go this way and then all of a sudden, nope we have to go that way. When the decision was made a whole weight was lifted off of me. It was just like here is where we are and here is where we are moving. There was no thought of “Oh, here we are again”. Nope. There was no thought of “Oh my gosh, how are we going to do this?” Oh, we got it covered. We had to change a few things and here we are. When we are able to move from that place of centeredness of being poised, centered and balanced then the decisions become so easy and our experience of it becomes easy, even when there is turbulence, even when we might have made a wrong decision and we have to change course. We are poised and balanced so that we can handle and maneuver during those situations. We can recalibrate our course. It’s as simple as that and then we keep moving where we want to go. We keep looking forward to where we want to be, not to where we don’t want to be.

In this decision — I think I’m going to grab a piece of paper here — it was Jho, I think, who said — I was asking different people and Jho reminded me when I asked her about this, she said “Safety and love came to mind upon reading your email. Keeping people safe is a way of loving them”. That’s all this really is. This isn’t a decision made on fear. This is just a decision based on love, based on what would be best in this moment in time.

So, think about something that you are currently struggling with or that you are wrestling with, something that might be a situation where there is turbulence, there’s something, the wind is blowing you one way or the other, where you might be a little off balance. As that situation comes to mind, I want you to just take a moment to breathe into it. Take a nice deep breath so we can release our tension and allow our energies to flow and just focus in on your heart for a moment and allow that feeling of love, self-love to come into play, allow that feeling of compassion for other people and other situations, allow that idea, that belief and oneness to come up so that you can become poised in the presence, so that you can balance out the pros and cons, so that you can balance out your emotions and beliefs, so you can seek and strive first for that peace of mind, that place within you that is pure and untouched, where pure wisdom comes, where pure understanding comes from and just be in it.

The Real Lesson

I think that is the real lesson in that story or in that phrase that Jesus was saying. So often we are searching and praying for something. We are striving and seeking in our prayers for greater wealth, for greater prosperity, for greater health, for greater relationships. We are striving for something in there. But the first step is to just be in it. When you are in it, all of those things can come but you have the skills and the presence and the awareness to navigate it. That is why these practices are so important to put into your daily life, to create a spiritual practice for yourself, to create a way of strengthening that spiritual muscle because that is what creates change in you. That is what creates peace of mind in you. That is what gives you the confidence to move forward towards your dreams, towards your goals.

I would like to move to our affirmation now. Seek first that inner poise and balance. I am going to read our affirmation and then I am going to invite you to affirm it with me and when you affirm it just allow it to be the allness of you affirming it.

With poise, grace, and balance, I am one with the Allness of life, love, and wisdom.

Together:

With poise, grace, and balance, I am one with the Allness of life, love, and wisdom.

Don’t look where you don’t want to go. When you find yourselves battered around or caught in the turbulence, become poised, seek first that presence. Seek first being poised. Seek first that grace that occurs when we become present. Seek first that balance. Seek first to know your oneness in the allness of life, love and wisdom.

Well, thank you all for being here today. I’m so grateful for your love and your blessings and your energy, so grateful.

Prayer for Protection

And now, our Prayer for Protection.

The Light of God surrounds us;
The Love of God enfolds us;
The Power of God protects us;
The Presence of God watches over us;
Wherever we are, God is!
And, all is well.

Love and blessings everyone. Have a wonderful week. We look forward to seeing you next week. Blessings.