Burdens, Tough Times, and Persevering | Rev. John Riley

For the beauty in the imperfection, for the gifts. Yes. So we are so grateful for all of the, all of you who have supported us during this Easter Sunday. Should we bless them? If you were on Saturday or Sunday, would you stand? And for those of you who are not here, we’ll see the one person who was here on Sunday helping. Okay? There’s Karen. Yes. Okay, now the, come on. There we go. No, keep standing. We’re gonna bless you with our blessing together. We, we, we love you. We bless you. We appreciate you. And we see the light in you. And so it is. Thank you. Thank you. Well, today, yes, we are embarking on that idea of “nothing and no one against you.”

 Everyone take a deep breath. This is gonna be a three part series. I’m gonna be speaking today Rusty’s gonna be speaking next Sunday. And, and then the third Sunday we’re gonna get together and we’re gonna do the talk together. And if you have questions during the service, text them.

Text them to us. And on Sunday, on the, what day is it? The 30th, we’re gonna answer your questions and we’re gonna dive a little bit deeper into it. Yes. Yes. So I’ll bring that back up. So write down your questions as we go along here. Now, the idea, nothing and no one against you, this is what I like to call the full title, is the art and practice of nothing. And no one against you. Cuz I know the first thought that you’re thinking. Yeah, but you don’t know my neighbor.

Times When People Are Against You

You don’t know my boss. You don’t know that person on the other side of the aisle. I’m talking about this aisle right here. Right? You don’t know my ex. You don’t know. Dot, dot, dot. Because there are times when it seems as if someone is against us. Yeah. There are times when it seems that we could do no right? That we’re always being persecuted, that we’re always carrying that cross. There are times when that happens in life. And so the art and practice is meeting that experience centered in that authentic self that we talked about last Sunday, centered in that divine nature centered so that you can, you can be who you’ve come here to be. Now this was inspired by the quote that this is right in the center, right in the heart of Jesus’s, uh, um, big sermon. What’s it called again? Sermon on the Mound. Thank you.. I was thinking the Sermon in the Plains, but that’s in Mark. We’re talking about Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount. It’s the beauty in the imperfection. Right? Okay. 

Three of you are okay with that. This is, this is Matthew chapter five, verse 45. You have heard it said, “love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may have, that you may be children of your father in heaven. He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and send reins to the righteousness and the unrighteousness. This is one of Jesus’ favorite techniques of teaching. You have heard it said, but I tell you, and the reason he does this is that he was a great, a devout student of the Hebrew scriptures. He understood them front and back, and he loved them, but he also recognized that there was a shift that needed to happen. You’ve heard it said that, I tell you, and it sounds very gentle, doesn’t it?

Doesn’t that sound like, oh well, that’s a lovely thought but in reality, it’s really an upheaval of an existing structure, an existing culture, an existing crystallized way of thinking, because they were stuck. They were stuck in their old ways. They were stuck in their old habits, their old beliefs. This is the only way to do things. And what Jesus was saying is that, well, that worked then, but it’s not working now. And we’re stuck. And it’s time for us to move on to a new experience, to a greater level of understanding, to a greater understanding of our oneness with that divine essence of life, love and wisdom. Jesus’ message was one of personal empowerment. And at time, his message seemed in conflict with the Bible. And at times it seemed to expand the definition of the Bible, because the Bible is a fluid experience for us in Unity.

We look at it as the evolution of our consciousness from the beginning. You know, God created the heavens and the earth to this experience of upliftment. And it is fluid within us when we look at it spiritually and very applicable when we look at it spiritually. Today. Jesus was not teaching you what to do. He was teaching how to be, to be in alignment with that ever flowing expression of life, love and wisdom to be that what he, what we would call the Christ self, your divine self. That spark of divinity, whatever word you want to use. The word that I like is authentic. Your authentic self, because that’s your, your authentic being. You know, apart from your ego. This is your authentic self. And then ego is the, the beautiful expression that we get to present to the world, to each other every day.

Love Yourself and Your Neighbor

And so when the ego is aligned with that beingness, that authenticity, then life is good, then you can live in life in all of the situations, all of the stuff as if nothing. And no one was against you. As Jesus said, children of the most high in the heaven of, in the consciousness of heaven in you. Heaven is a state of consciousness. He wasn’t saying later on. He’s saying right now, understand your oneness with God. Understand your oneness with the infinite flow of life. Love and wisdom, all love, all power, all wisdom, all knowledge. Be one with it and live from that. And that is the state of consciousness that he called heaven. You are the children of the most high. Now today, how do we apply this? Today we are in a bit of a cultural shift. Anyone notice?

Yeah, there’s a cultural shift happening. And there’s been several cultural shifts that have happened over the last 40, 50 years. I remember, anybody remember your very first computer? Yeah. So what was it? Shout it out. And apple. Oh my gosh, you were so late in the game. And Atari. There we go. A wang. So my very first computer was an IBM PC Jr. Anybody remember those? They’re called door stops now. Yep. It adds 64 k of memory. Not megabyte, not terabyte. K. We had these little cartridges that I would plug in and these little things called floppy disks that you would probably need to fill this room to have as much data as I have on this little computer here. So that was a cultural change. You wanna know what it did for me in, I was in early, let’s see, I was in high school, this was probably my junior year. It raided my grade 0.1, full grade above what it was before.

I was no longer typing, making mistakes, you know, going with the white out, you know, backing up and redoing the paper, starting over again. I was no longer doing that. I could write it all stream of consciousness. I can go in and change it. It had this thing called spellcheck. Woohoo. Talk about life changing. I don’t have to know how to spell another word for the rest of my life. That is a cultural change. And for me, my grades went from a b, okay, maybe maybe a c c plus if I was lucky to a B plus or an A, simply because I could use that device. So here we are today with chat, g p t with Jesus, g p t, with, you know, all of these artificial intelligence, all of these systems and more coming out faster and faster and faster. And culture is struggling to keep up.

We Are Creative Beings

We are struggling to keep up with all of the innovation that we are creating. And the reason is that we, we haven’t shifted our consciousness to the why. We’re still in the what. We’re gonna create new things. We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna get more money, we’re gonna do that. We’re gonna create things because that’s what we do. We’re creative beings. And as, as consciousness evolves, we create greater and greater things. And at some point we need to shift our thinking around what we’re creating. Some people say, we’ve gotta get rid of ai. We’ll, forget it. It’s you, you can’t, it’s here. We’ve gotta get rid of the computers. No, I’m sorry. You know, we can’t let our kids use the PDAs. Well, you know what? It’s too late. My kids know more about my cell phone than they, than I do, and how to use it and how to stay connected and how to build relationships. And so it it’s different than we did it. Or at least I did it. Is it different for you? Has culture changed for you? And how are you feeling about it?

Oh yeah, I’m not so sure. Yeah, it’s happening. We’re resisting it, and therefore we think it sucks. I’m sorry, that was a spiritual term. Look it up in the metaphysical bible dictionary. Ah, dang it. I just got fact checked, like that word. So here’s the idea though. This is our time. And in our time culture is changing and in our time, and we see it here, right? In our sanctuary, we see it in how we do church. We see it in how we go to the grocery store. We see it in how we go to the movies now. We see it in, in just everything we do. We’re shifting and we can resist it and feel the struggle and the pain and be upset about it. Or we can change and we can learn how to flow with it.

And we can change the way we look at it. Not just from the perspective of how am I gonna be in it, but what am I gonna do with it? We are at a time when we need to change our why. Why are we creating this technology for more money, for the benefit of humanity? And that’s where we need to get to. Now, I know not all of you are in high tech, not all of you are creating gadgets. Not all of you are are doing these things. But what are you doing in your life to create this shift in your world? And how can you help this shift in humanity to go from this materialism to, you know, a world that works for all. Uh, you’re ready to share your vision of peace with the world, and we shift our consciousness by first shifting our perspectives and living from that authentic self.

Love Your Enemy

All of that from, you’ve heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemy. Now, when we look at this idea of love, we’re not talking about, um, you know, the schmaltzy love, right? The, the romantic love, right? It, it’s love is the harmonizing energy of spirit. I like to call divine love. That energy of Spirit that flows through us, that creates harmony in our mind and our thoughts and our words in our actions, and in our body. We create harmony in our world. When we are living from love, it doesn’t mean be a doormat. It doesn’t mean you know what you did to me. I will never forgive. Well, then you are gonna be carrying that resentment and that bitterness with you for the rest of your life, not the other person. Forgiveness is the ultimate aspect, the ultimate act of love, of loving yourself, of allowing that harmonizing energy to flow through us so that I can be free. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna ask you to dinner, right? That’s not forgiveness.

There may be some amends, there may be some outer experience, but forgiveness is an inner experience where we let go and we allow that love to flow. I’d like to read a quote by, um, the late Reverend Ed Rabel, who was one of one of the great unity Bible interpreters. And, and if you go to unity.org, you can put in a Bible quote, you know, change the, uh, the to, uh, Bible interpretation, the little dropdown, and you’ll get a, a lot of great things. Here’s what he said about this quote, Matthew, uh, chapter five, verse 45, the Sermon on the Mount. Thank you very much. Jesus was expanding, uh, one of his historic basic teachings, judge, not in order to truly be loving to all, it is necessary to release our tendency to judge between good and evil. The ability to express love perfectly is within us.

You have it already. You have that ability. It’s one of your natural powers. He’s not telling us how to act. He’s telling us how to be as we know our oneness with spirit. It will become the loving, non-judgmental source for all of the choices of our lives. All. And I’m gonna read that one again. As we know our oneness with spirit, as we do our practice of communing with spirit, as we move into prayer and meditation, as a way to develop that within us, as we become still and listen to guidance, to listen to the infinite wisdom telling us and guiding us in, in a direction, when we listen to that, when we know our oneness win spirit, it will become the loving, non-judgmental source of all of the choices of your life.

You Are Perfect

It may seem that being perfect is really severe, a really severe commandment, but that’s not how Jesus saw us. Perfection is simply the truth of who you are to be perfect. We only have to center ourselves in the spirit. We are in the s\Spirit. We are. And let it flow easily in our lives just to become centered. That’s really all it takes. It’s a practice because when you come to life centered like that, somebody can be throwing rotten tomatoes at you and you’ll think it’s a game of dodge ball. Become his little children in the kingdom of heaven, right? You won’t take it personally. I was listening to a podcast, I think it was Seth, God. He was talking about this idea of being perfect. And when you’re publishing books, right, that this, they only have five star reviews, then there are about a hundred of them, and there are no other reviews.

And he said, that’s because it’s very, a very small group of people. And then you look at the best sellers of the world that have moved mountains, that have changed culture, and they all have one-star ratings. Why is that? Because it made an impact. Because it went out into the world and they’re gonna be people who have ears to hear it, and they’re gonna be people who don’t. And that’s the whole point about unity. And, and what we look for is we’re here to teach. And if you have years to hear what we’re teaching, then it will do wonders in your life. And if you don’t, then just let it sit and practice it and see how it shows up for you, because you may discover that there’s a golden nugget in there for you if you practice daily. So here are three steps for this week for living, as if nothing and no one were against you. The art and practice of living as if nothing and no one were against you First. Take responsibility. There’s, there’s the chor. Go ahead, let it out. What the, okay, tell you. Nice deep breath. First, take responsibility. Second, focus on your why, your purpose, your spiritual values.

Be Committed to Learning

And three, judge not. So let’s start with take responsibility. I love this from, this is from the 15 commitments of Conscious Leadership. It’s by DeMar Chapman and Klemp. It’s a great book. And we’ll be using it as we go throughout the year. To net it out, there is above the line behavior when we are living from that higher consciousness, when we’re living from our authentic self. And then there’s below the, the line behavior, which is 98% of the rest of the time for me. I’m sorry, not for you. I’m not talking about you. So above the line, behavior above the line, when we are open, when we are curious, and when we are committed to learning. So just let that sink in for a moment. How often am I open and curious about what’s happening? How often I am actually committed to spiritual growth, to learning, to becoming a greater expression of that divine consciousness? Below behind behavior is when I’m closed, when I’m defensive, and when I’m committed to being, right?

I’m like wanting to ask you to raise your hand. I know that might not be good. I’m gonna listen. That’s still small voice. Move on. So am I open? Am I curious? And am I committed to learning? So think about that when you’re coming into an argument with somebody, right? Where you’re sure you’re right, which you know, for me is like 50% of the time, 50%, right? And 50 anyway. So you’re sure you’re right and you want to get your point across. Are you open, even open to what they have to say? Are you curious about where they might be coming from? Are you curious? Is there something else in there for you to learn? Are you curious? Could there be another point in here that could move me forward? That I can shift my consciousness, that can shift our relationship if I’m willing to at least understand it. Now, at the end of the day, it may be a no, but at least you have the opportunity to listen, to be open and to learn when you’re closed off, when you’re defensive, and when you’re committed to being right. There is no opening, there is no opening whatsoever. So this is how the 15 commitments of conscious leadership puts it from the perspective of taking responsibility and being responsible.

Be Respnsibile for Your Mental, Emotional, and Physical Health

I am committed to being, to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life and for my physical, emotional, mental, spiritual wellbeing. And I commit to supporting others to take full responsibility for their lives. Now, just let this sink in. I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances in my life. So what is around me? The things that are happening around me, the situations, the experiences that I’m having are, are my experiences. I commit to taking responsibility for them by looking at them from the,  standpoint of this is mine. This is mine to own. If I’m experiencing it, it’s mine.

Taking responsibility, committing to taking full responsibility for the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing of me. I own my own spiritual growth. It’s not up to the minister to make you grow. I just say word things. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes not so much. And if you have ears to hear, if you have the, the capacity to, to say, what does this have for me? How is this live within me? Is this true for me? Because it may not be because I’m still growing too <laugh>. You’ve heard it said as Jesus said about the Bible, but I tell you, he reframed it because we’re always growing, were always learning and even greater things than he had done, we will do when we come from that authentic self. So he was even, he was correcting the Bible. He was expanding the Bible. Because there are times when we get to a point, when we are stuck in our consciousness, when we get stuck in our way of thinking. And that’s where we get to this point of culture change. And we are feeling uncomfortable, angry, frustrated, fearful that toxic fear.

Take Full Responsibility For Yourself and Others

So committing to taking full responsibility for you, committing to supporting others to take full responsibility for their lives. I’m not responsible for your life. Can you commit to that? Now, yes, some of us has little kids, some of us have big kids that and, and people that we need to care for. And we do have responsibility for people in our lives. That’s a truth. That’s what is, that’s not what we’re talking about here. It’s like on a daily basis, on your interactions with everyone else, right? Can you allow them to be who they are and allow them to take responsibility without trying to fix them, without trying to make them wrong and make you right. Just knowing that it’s their responsibility. The second one, the second step is what is your why? Getting back to your purpose. Anybody have a purpose in life?

Yeah, that’s pretty good. That’s about a third of us. Not everyone does, you know? So get a purpose. And what is a purpose and what is your why? Well, for me, my purpose is to claim, energize and celebrate the love and joy of the divine in all. That’s it. And if I stuck to that, how would my life be different? My values are, it begins with self-awareness. Everything begins with self-awareness. Once I have self-awareness, I, uh, add, you know, i, i dr. Draw from the, the idea of divine love and wisdom, draw from love and wisdom, and I act with faith and will, and I express myself open-heartedly. Those are my values. Self-aware, love, wisdom, faith will open-hearted.

So come from those values. What does that mean? Think about a value for yourself for a moment. What does that mean? In fact, here are a list of values. These are your 12 powers. Everyone has this power, these abilities within you. You have faith within you, you have love within you. Understanding zeal, strength, power will release wisdom, imagination, order life. Pick one, pick one that you truly value, that that resonates with you. If you don’t understand it, don’t worry about that one. But pick one that resonates with you is you have another word, another value that you live by. Bring it to mind for a moment.

Everyone got one? I’m down to a third. So just try this. Pick one value, something that you truly value in life. The question is, how do you show up as that? How do you show up as love? The harmonizing energy of the universe? Being openhearted is one of the best things that I’ve added to my list just recently, probably in the last year. Open-hearted, which speaks to me as like, okay, here’s an argument, here’s a situation. Here’s something that’s not working for me. Here’s where I think I’m right. What if I’m open-hearted? What if I can just be open-hearted in this moment? What if I can deeply listen to what they’re saying and, and then see if there’s truth in it for me? What if I can have authenticity in the moment and say, okay, here’s what’s true for me. So when you come to your why, and this is something that, you know, we’ve been talking about a lot in unity and in the world, you know, if you, you’re not sure about what your why is, look up Simon Sinek and you can see his video about why, why is important.

It’s your purpose. It’s how you’re showing up in the world. And if you showed up from love, from your own experience, you know, no matter what out is out there, you know that nothing is against you, right? It’s just someone else showing up from their own sense of fear, from their own sense of wanting to be right of below the line behavior, of, of feeling uncertain of their own wounds. And when you look at it from that perspective, now you can have compassion for someone else knowing that they are a beautiful, perfect child of God and they’re now wounded. They’re living from some fear. That’s a different story. Isn’t that a different scenario than, you know, the, when I said your neighbor across the street, it’s a little bit different. So what is your why and what is your purpose? If you anchor yourself in your why, if that is truly why you’re here, if you anchor yourself in those values, this is why I’m here, to express that, to be more of that divine consciousness in everything I do. How would your life be different?

How would you show up? And when you know, the stuff hits the fan, it’s like, okay, there’s the stuff, there’s the fan. Here I am centered in love, open-hearted, listening to spirit. And that’s really what the third process is all about, judge, not when you start to judge the other person, when you start to judge the situation as good or bad, you’ve, you have already closed off. You already have your, this is the only way it can be. Go back to being open, curious, and committed to learning. Judge nut rather turn within to hear the still small voice, the voice of love and wisdom within you. Allow that divine energy, a love spirit to guide you.

It may not be an agreement, right? But at least you’re coming from your authentic self as best you can understand it at the time. And if you need to change that later on, you change it later on without worry because you did the best that you could do. You’re not judging yourself. And then act, act with faith, act with a willingness to move forward, a willingness to create a new experience in the world. I didn’t talk about the below the line behavior, did I? I commit to blaming others and myself for what is wrong in the world. I commit to being a victim, villain a hero or talking or taking more or less than a hundred percent responsibility. That’s the opposite. I take 98%

Responsibility. I take 114% responsibility. It wasn’t them, it was all me. None of those are authentic. Just get back to being you, being that authentic self. Yes. Let’s move to our afro. Oh, wait, oh wait, oh wait. Before we do that, because I’m all fancy now. Oops. Uh, now can you go back one Felix on the slides? I went too fast. I was too fancy. If you have questions, comments, doubts, insecurities, it’s okay. You can scan the QR code, you can text them to us. And in two weeks Rusty and I will talk about them next week. You’re gonna get a different take on it, a different viewpoint. A another thing to take into your sense of is it right for me to something to try to practice so that you can be more open to growth. Yes. Thank you Alec. Uh, Felix, can you now move to our affirmation? It’s very short, it’s very sweet. I commit to living my authentic life today.