Life’s Miracles | Rev. John Riley

I never saw blue like that anymore. Have you ever had that experience in life? That a that just walking outside and seeing something different for the first time? The bloom of a flower, the smile on a face, the experience of something. It’s just so wonderful. The music today be for me because it, it shows both ends of the spectrum of what we call the allness or God we’re doing. I’m doing a series with Eric Butterworth’s book, discover the Power Within You. And we talked last week about this idea of God, that short term phrase, that short shorthand phrase that talks about the allness of creation, that talks about, you know, everything from the very personal experience that we might have of that Deborah Sa saying about that personal experience of faith, that personal comfort to the trans, to that which transcends all of it.

The allness of everything is, Butterworth says, God is in you. Like the ocean is in the wave. There’s no separation. God is in us and we’re swimming in it. Right? It’s just, it’s all it, it’s the itness. I dunno if that’s a term, but someone, someone Googled that. And if so, we, we’ll get the url, the itness of it all, and that because God is in you, like the ocean is, is in the wave. You are it. Okay, everyone take a nice deep breath. It’s okay. You are that expression of it. You are here as individually to express that. And that’s what we talked about last week. And I love that idea of the, the Marvel super, super villain. But I’m gonna change it to the adverse ego. The adverse ego, because the other half of our ego is that beautiful, you know, Sunday in you.

Your Thought is Your Life

So we, we we’re not gonna squash that. So there’s, there’s the ego is here to serve that higher consciousness. That’s essentially what the first six chapters talked about in Discover the Power within You. Yep. There’s, there’s your cliff notes. Your John notes. So today we’re gonna talk about chapter seven only, well, not really, but the, the idea of chapter seven is “your thought is your life.” So God is our first principle here in Unity that ever present energy, the all knowledge, all wisdom all power in the universe, the allness of all of creation and the I am, I am a unique expression of that. I am a unique expression. And now how we bring that into manifestation is through our thoughts, the law of mind, action, those things that we think about and give great attention to are how we see our world.

So I’m gonna ask you a couple of questions. I just want you to very gently hold them with you throughout this talk. First off, what is troubling you that seems outside of your control? Just bring something to mind and don’t go too deep cuz we don’t wanna re-trigger anything. But just bring something to mind that you are noticing in your life that seems to be outside of your control, that you might want to change, that you might want to be different in your life. The second question is, where are you looking for the solution? Where are you looking for the solution? So just keep that in mind as we go through this. To start off the chapter, Eric Butterworth says, we are living in an age of discovery. I think he quotes Buckminster Fuller here when he says that’s a mouthful. The pace of scientific and technological discovery is almost unbelievable. It’s estimated that human’s, total body of knowledge between 1775 and 1900 doubled. It doubled again between 1,919 50. And again, between 1950 and 1958, are you seeing the pattern? And many people, he says, well, I think it’s every every 18 months or so, but that was back in the eighties and now you know, people are saying it’s every 18 hours where there’s some knowledge that’s being born, that there’s something new that’s coming along. And as Butterworth says, “it’s our relentless quest for understanding.”

So here’s what I think. There is an emerging, there is an emerging of a greater consciousness, that allness of life. Love and wisdom is coming into greater expression in the world. And our human self is trying to make sense of it all. But we can’t keep up, right? And we keep, we keep creating, we keep building things, we keep doing marvelous things as best we can, but the frenetic energy keeps coming and getting faster and faster, faster. We were talking about kids taking, you know, five, six classes a quarter to try and graduate sooner. Like my daughter took five quarter classes last quarter and she was, and then she’s like, well, yeah, I’m taking it easy this quarter. I’m only taking two. I’m like, okay. But we keep trying to move faster in the world. We keep trying to keep up with what’s happening.

“It’s All About Me” Consciousness

And I think the thing is we’re drinking from the fire hose of what’s emerging and we’re trying to make sense of it. And the question is through what lens are you creating? So with all of this knowledge, all of this wisdom that’s coming to us and we’re creating wonderful, marvelous things, through what lens are we creating? Most of us, most of human kind is creating from what Ken Wilbur might call a first-tier consciousness is creating from a consciousness. The way I like to put this is first tier is first person, and it’s me. It’s about me, me, me, me, me. It’s a me consciousness. So I’m gonna create things that yeah, you’ll like it because I like it, right? I’m gonna create things that are, are gonna help the business. Yes, it helps society, but it’s really behind it.

It’s about me. Even when we’re trying to help and and support other people, right? Within that first tier consciousness, we may rise to the understanding of we need to do something about that big concern that you’re holding onto that global concern. We need to do something about racism. We need to do something about inclusivity. We, we need to do something about the weather. We need to do something about the pollution in the atmosphere. We need to do something about how we’re using up our resources, right? Or is that just me? Did I just pick up the, are you not reading the news?

Oneness and Allness

So there’s this constant, we’ve gotta do something, but we’re still trying to solve it from a me perspective. And I think that what’s emerging is a second tier consciousness, as Ken Wilber calls it. And the way I like to define that is, you know, we have this consciousness of this idea of oneness. Yeah. Anybody heard of it? If you’ve been here, you’ve heard of it. And if you listened this morning, that’s what this idea of you’re one with Spirit, you’re one with the allness of life, love and wisdom that energy is within you. And that’s part of you. And then there’s the embodiment of it, right? Then there’s the actual living from that. Then, then there’s the understanding of you and me being the same thing. Stardust, whatever you want to call it, energy that you and I, regardless of what our outer appearances are, regardless of how we grew up, but we are the same.

We’re one in Spirit. We’re each part of that universal hole. And so it’s embodying that oneness idea. And that’s why I like to call it the allness cuz oneness. It makes perfect sense to me when I’m thinking about I and the allness of life, right? Me and God. There’s a oneness there. And then this is the allness, you know, in which is still God. And yet we have the idea opportunity to express it differently and to emerge and to allow that consciousness to emerge what’s going on over there to allow that consciousness to emerge to emerge gracefully. The allness, the allness is, yeah, it’s the allness. So Butterworth says, you know, over 2000 years ago, the master teacher Jesus was experiencing this, was demonstrating this and was teaching, this, was teaching the allness of life, was teaching his oneness with spirit where he said, the kingdom of God is within.

And he said, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And Jesus was a master at metaphor, always teaching at the level in which his flock’s congregation was listening. The kingdom of God is within you and the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And so the kingdom of heaven is, Butterworth explains, is not a time or a place or a thing outside of us in the future. Not something that we go to when we die, but rather a state of consciousness here. When you live from your oneness with Spirit, when you live from that understanding that you are one with the allness of life, then you are looking through and expressing that kingdom of heaven in the things that you do. When you say, until we put that lens of me on, right? The advers ego, and then, you know, all that’s where we, we see shades of gray. We see we, we see shades of evil in the world, what we’re calling evil. And it’s really just a, a yearning to get back to our oneness, our wholeness with God.

Eric Butterworth says, Jesus crossed the frontier of the mind and discovered a new world within himself. He realized that the man, that man has the responsibility of keeping his mind stayed on God so that the heaven of innate possibility can unfold into expression. He realized that the man is the man, is the, the mind rather is the bridge between us and the infinite. And that the important element in religion is not simply the fervency and the feeling, but your thoughts and your attitudes. Because I think at this time in our human, human awareness, were so caught up in the rights and the rituals we’re so caught up in the creation, in the knowledge we’re so caught up in, in, in the, in that finite aspect of it that we forget that all of those rights and rituals are there to help you experience the allness. That’s the whole point. And one of the best ways to do that, that Jesus taught was through meditation and affirmative prayer was going into the silence. Going into that inner chamber is shutting the door, closing out the rest of the world. So you can be still and be one with that infinite intelligence.

What Is a Miracle?

I believe that Jesus’s ministry was one of demonstration. And here’s my alliteration for you today. There’s Joe, here’s my alliteration for you today, Joe. It comes in as mind miracle, manifestation mind, miracle manifestation, mind the infinite intelligence of life. Divine mind, you might call it divine wisdom, the allness of of knowledge. It is there, it’s already there. There’s nothing that you can think of that isn’t already there. You’ve heard that term. There’s nothing new in the in in the universe, right? We’re just re re re sizzling things. Anybody heard that term? I dunno if the twizzle is an actual term, but , there’s no new ideas. We are just recreating them, right? And we’re doing it because each time we do it, we’re looking at it through new lens. So it makes sense now. I’m looking at it through my lens today as opposed to the lens 2000 years ago. So everything begins first in mind, and then the miracle happens. The miracle happens, and then that brings it into manifestation. So what is a miracle? Anybody know? Oh, well say it with enthusiasm “a shift in thinking, a fulfillment of divine plan, an unexplained phenomenon.” Here’s what, here’s what Charles Fillmore, here’s the right answer. 

Only if you are becoming a Unity minister or a licensed Unity teacher need you, need you remember this word by word, Joe.

A miracle, an event or an effect in the physical world, beyond or out of the ordinary course of things deviating from the known laws of nature or transcending our knowledge of these laws. Okay? He was, he was quoting Webster there, you know, Webster, the dictionary people. That’s what it is. It’s something beyond our understanding that’s simply it. And then he goes on to say, in reality, miracles are events that take place as a result of the operation of a higher unknown. Law for all true action is governed by law, including spiritual law. So the, the miracles that Jesus was performing over and over again as he said, these things you will do and even greater things you will do, but sooner, somewhere along the way the church decided, well, no miracles are only for Jesus. Everything else, you know, you don’t get to do.

Science and Spirituality

Until science came along and started revealing some of the laws that were already being put in place. For me, there’s no difference between science and spirituality. One is a physical understanding of what’s happening in the world. To the best of our knowledge, we create a theory and we test it. Someone will come along and adjust it, and that becomes what we think is our law until we discover it’s, there’s something different. What these miracles are all about. There’s something happening that we just don’t understand yet, we haven’t tuned into the wisdom of the allness of life, and yet it’s happening. And yet it’s, it occurs. I love that idea of, of the miracle, even within the science. It’s what? It’s the spiritual law that lies back of the science that we don’t know yet.

And so for me, there’s you know, some of you may be feeling uncomfortable because I brought in science and spirituality, but for me it’s all God if God is the allness of life, and it’s our understanding of that nat, of that expression, of that divine energy and how we take things from mind and bring them into manifestation. Miracles are also, you can look at the miracles that like Deborah was singing about the beauty of the sky. The, I’ve never seen that blue before and we’ve never seen that blue before because we were never looking at it through the lens of spirit quite the same as we were in that moment. What a miracle it is to be able to stand, to walk, to speak, to see that blue, right? Yes, there are cones and rods in your eye. I learned that in school. And then the brain translates those into something and that’s the physical manifestation of that experience of allness.

Consciousness Emerges and Discoveries Occur

So that was for me and for Butterworth, that’s really one of the key components that Jesus is talking about, that miracle, that mystery that we just don’t know yet. And are there things that we don’t know yet? Yes. And will we continue to learn? Yes. I don’t know how many years ago, I think it was 2011 or so, we, we discovered the God particle and people thought, okay, we’re done. Well, some people did, but we keep going. We keep exploring. And so this, this is the age of discovery, but I think we’re beyond the age of discovery. I think we’re in the age of emergence. We’re in the age of allowing that divine wisdom to flow through us. And if we allow it without struggling from it, without trying to effort it, and just take a step back and allow that consciousness to emerge, we will find the new discoveries and they will be in ways that we’ve never seen before.

And there will be physical understanding of it, but there’s also a spiritual understanding of it that we are, we are one with what’s emerging. And the more we fight against this higher consciousness, which we all do, you know, we don’t wanna say that we fight against God is the rain stop. There’s no lightning clouds in the sky, right? But we do every day we’re fighting against that, that wholeness that’s within us, and we’re fighting against it when we are, are pointing our fingers that other people are saying, well, they’re the problem over there and they need to change. So how can we, how can we include everybody and have a discussion and grow and emerge and allow that miracle, that spiritual fulfillment of the law that lies back of the unknown or lies back of the manifestation to come forward.

In our writing group, I think it’s the third Tuesday of the month, is that right? Our third Sunday of the month. Is that right? I don’t know if it, who’s in the writing group? Is it, is Patricia here? No, Kamala. Is it the third Tuesday and it starts at what time? Yep. The third Tuesday, also known as Sunday. I know. The third Sunday at 11 o’clock on Zoom, which is also known as 1130 . Hmm. It’d be a miracle if I get these times right. The third Sunday at 1130 on Zoom is a writing group and the writing group comes together. They’re self-directed. They, they determined their, their topics and, and I think the last topic was miracles in February. Is that correct? Well Patricia Gil Telan sent me her writing and gave me permission to, to read some of it. And I’m going to include this in next week’s email newsletter.

So if you get that, you’ll get it there if you don’t sign up. But here, I thought this was a perfect experience of this idea of miracles, of having that miracle mindset. One of the essential elements of miracles is connectedness. Nothing happens without a connection. As I look at any miracle, it’s the spontaneous connection between divine energy, humans, and matter. The combination brings it to its fruition and its miraculousness the interconnectedness of everything and the power in the form of energy, often called love, can make miracles happen everywhere at any time. They happen the most. When we create a world with supportive and uplifting people, focused on the energies that surround us and move us. Being fully inclusive, defining nothing as bad or good, continually including everything and allowing my energy to, to resonate with the energies around me. I choose to recognize all the energies to the best of my ability and just to allow them to be a part of my experience. In reality, I accept everything and this opens me up to see more miracles.

The Miracle of Life

There are miracles happening every day within you, around you, the miracle of life. And if you can take that mindset as you move through life, then you will be looking at your experience of life differently through a different lens. You’ll be looking for the mystery, the magic, the unfoldment of life. You’ll be looking for the good and the grace in every experience. This is, I think what the apostle Paul was telling was telling the people in his second letter to Timothy when he said, stir up the gifts of God, which is in thee. They’re already there. You have everything you need. And we as a society have everything we need to emerge into a greater understanding of our oneness with each other. We have all the intelligence and all the resources we need to solve whatever problem we are facing. If we decide to look at it from an allness perspective instead of a me perspective, knowledge is emerging faster than our current thinking can keep up.

And so we need to shift from that oneness. Think from that me thinking to an allness thinking I believe this is the true mission. This was the true mission of Jesus. To help people to discover that light energy within themselves and to let it shine. And when we get stuck, we get stuck in our current thinking, our current beliefs and our current patterns. If we can just let them go and then discover the mystery in that lies behind it ins, you know, whatever ritual or right or or thing that you do in life to help you. Whether it’s meditation, affirmative prayer, lighting, a candle, going on a hike, you know, saying a mantra. If you look behind the practice of it and see the innate energy that, that it’s trying to, that’s trying to emerge through it, through the practice, then you have a good understanding of what it means to stir up the gifts of God within you. And that’s really the practice of Lent cuz we have to let go, let go, let go, let go and just allow the allness to emerge, allow love to emerge, allow spirit, allow divine energy, however you want to put it, but allow, make way for that emergence within you.