Authentic Self | Rev. John Riley

Morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. You know, I was feeling that there was something missing here this morning, and I couldn’t quite get my touch. It, I couldn’t quite get my finger on it. And then I realized as I was singing the song, in the beginning, trying to look past the star on the tree, I didn’t like the tree. Now I feel complete – pass the basket…gorgeous – oh, maybe not quite that complete, but welcome! 

The Divine Potential In You

We are on our fourth leg of Advent – that spiritual preparation, preparing us for the birth of our way show or Jesus of the Christ, preparing us for that greater realization of that Christ consciousness within you, or that divine potential in you. And just being aware, more aware of that aspect of you that I like to call my authentic Self. That part of me that is, you know my ego has fun. Yeah? And sometimes my ego’s happy, and sometimes my ego’s sad, and it’s a little shadowy and it’s a little bright. But through all of that experience, there’s that Christ consciousness and that divine potential. And that’s my authentic Self. And that’s what we’re here to, to create a greater realization of or to draw upon. As we head towards the holiday season, we began our advent with a clicker that doesn’t work. Can you, can you hit the down arrow for me? Yeah. No, that didn’t work either. There we go! Oh, it’s not, it’s not supposed to be up there. It’s supposed to be. Oh, that one. It’s supposed to be right. It’s supposed to right there. No, it’s perfect right there. Dang it.

We began, we began an advent with faith. Faith, a mighty faith, a mighty faith greater than the realization of my unique that unfolds a greater – that’s where I unfold…I gotta just fix this clicker first because this battery… hang on here. Do I get it? Well, I’m doing it phonetically. There we go. Oh, I’ll – that’s right. I got my backup. They’re called notes. You know, I was sitting there thinking, I don’t need to print these out anymore because I got my little prompter here, and well, I’ll just print it out just in case. I don’t know if I was manifesting anything there or not. But we began with active faith.

The faith that knowing that no matter what you lose in life, you will find it again. That deep inner knowing, that act of faith, the unfolding of that greater realization of that authentic self that’s the power within us to really activate that aspect within us, that greater realization. And then we went on to the advent of peace and the understanding of our peaceful, creating a peaceful heart. And to create a peaceful heart, we had to first create peace in our mind, in our thoughts, in our words, and in our actions, so that we can experience that sense of peace within us. And as we experience that sense of peace within us, we then begin to open up to this energy called love. And we are empowered by love that, that harmonizing energy in the universe. As we saw last week, Dr. Maya Angelou said, you know, “perhaps it’s the energy that holds the stars in the affirmament. I don’t know, perhaps it’s this energy, but this energy that creates the leaves and the fleas, you know, created me.” And it’s all created through that aspect, through that energy of love, that energy that moves us in life. And when we bring and tune into that energy, we create in our life a peaceful world, and we create in our, our life, we empower that faith to actually move forward. And as we apply our faith, our peace, our inner peace, and our love, as we are empowered by love, the natural effect is joy. The natural effect is that joy that springs out from us. And sometimes we recognize that we might call it happiness. We might call it, you know, bliss, whatever we call it. But it’s that energy that just naturally fills us up.

Joy and Gladness

Charles Fillmore one of the founders of the Unity movement, said in the revealing word, he defined joy as the happiness of God expressed through its perfect idea, idea of human, of humanity, the perfect idea of humanity called the Christ…that perfect idea of humanity. So let, let’s think about this for a little bit, because I wanna unpack it a little bit because I, we often talk about we’re being, we’re human in having…we’re spiritual, having a human experience. Have you ever heard that? And so sometimes we create a dualistic identity. There’s my spiritual identity, but then there’s my human identity, and it’s separate from me. You know, I, that’s my ego, my shadow ego or my happy ego, whatever you wanna call it. But we look at it as separate. When the reality, it’s just, it’s the whole of who we are.

It’s the whole of it. So sometimes I hear, well, I’m, you know, I’m just human. And it’s like, you know, that’s kind of an excuse, because the definition of human is the expression of this authentic Self. So for me, it was a realization of, oh, okay, I’m gonna step into this a little bit more today. I’m gonna step into it a little bit more and own that authentic self. And yes, I’m going to, we’re going to have our shadow moments, aren’t we? We’re going to have our times when we’re frustrated, when we’re sad. And that’s all part of this experience of life. And, and at the same time, underneath that all is our authentic Self. So Fillmore goes on to say, “joy and gladness are strength giving, especially if the mind is fixed on things of spirit.”

Joy and gladness are strength giving. I mean, that’s a practice in and of itself, the realization that when we have our mind, our ideas fixed on Spirit, joy is the natural outcome. And it’s empowering. It’s, it’s moves us. And I think we’ve all experienced some level of joy at one time or another. It may have been it may have been at a rock concert. I don’t know. It may have been walking in the hills. It may have been on Christmas morning opening presents, or giving the gift of something to someone of experiencing, of simply smiling at somebody and feeling that, that warmth, you know what I’m talking about. You’re all kind of blank blankly staring at me, so I’m gonna make sure everyone’s still awake. Okay, good. Yeah. Thank you, Catherine. Yeah, that, that joy that’s within us. So I started to think about, so what really gives me a, a, the sense of joy, because I’ve felt it, and I don’t always have it, but I, I have felt it.

Grateful, Generous, and Guided

And the first thing that came to mind was gratitude and being grateful. That was the first thing. The second thing that came to mind was being generous. And the third thing that came to mind was being guided, guided by Spirit. So the three Gs are generous…being grateful, generous, and guided. So let’s start with grateful. There are lots of opportunities for us to be grateful in the world, in life, in our daily life. There’s a lot of opportunities, but so often we are not looking for those opportunities. And this is because, you know, we’re wired for the bad stuff. We’re wired for the threats, we’re wired, and we’re looking for those threats that are out there. The author, Dr. Rick Hansen, in his book he wrote a book called or I think it was, this was his blog, but just one thing, developing a Buddha brain.

One simple practice at a time. Dr. Rick Hansen is also an author, and he wrote this. He said, in order to keep our ancestors alive and harsh in often leath lethal settings, neural networks evolved that continually, continually look for react to store and recall bad news, both out there and in our environment and in here, in our, inside our own head. So that’s a natural part of being human. And that’s something that’s always active, just in case that sabertooth tiger comes running in the door. And there is a time and a place for that activity, for that part of us. But the challenge that we have is that we tend to always look for it. We tend to become conscious of it. And we’re always looking for the drama that’s out there. We’re always looking for the tragedy or the the reason to be upset.

We’re always looking at, you know, the things that people are doing and judging it. Well, what are they doing to me now? And so it becomes habitual. And Dr. Hansen says, if we compensate for the brain’s bias by actively looking for good news, especially little things that we are glad about, the little things, you know, a lot of times when we talk about these ideas of love and these grandiose ideas of gratitude and have the love of God. We have these big, you know, ideas of this is like the light shining down on me, and I’m uplifted, but sometimes it’s just the little things in life. And if we’re more pay more attention to those little things in life, then we start to cultivate gratitude. We start to cultivate a mindset of being grateful.

Find Things You Are Grateful For

He says, especially the little things that we’re glad about, we will feel happier, more at peace with the world, more open to others, and more willing to stretch for our dreams. That idea of just generating that sense of gratitude within us will change our outlook on life and can generate that sense of joy, that happiness of God, that energy that fills us up. Now we have several practices that we use. One of them is a heart coherence. If you’re familiar with heart math. And we do that here a lot. Sometimes we’ll, we’ll sit and I’ll, I’ll ask you to think about something that you’re grateful for or something that you appreciate. So let’s do that right now. Think about something that you’re grateful for, something in your life that you truly appreciate something. And, and let’s make it beyond the coffee after the service, which I’m very grateful for, but something that really brings you and lifts up.

And see if you can, you know, you might put your hand in your heart, or just feel your heart space, breathe into your heart space and bring to mind that sensation, that feeling of gratitude. And see if you can generate that sensation of gratitude within you and see if gladness doesn’t come with it. See if joy doesn’t start to bubble up within you. This is a practice that we can do any time, any place in any situation. You may be in the middle of a board meeting and things are going rocky or in the middle of a presentation and your clicker doesn’t work. Bring to mind something that you truly appreciate, like your platform leader Casey. Yeah.

And start to carry and generate that feeling with you throughout the day. Start looking for the things that you’re glad about. I love that. We’re glad because I think I add a little, a lot more juice to it, like gratitude. It’s gotta be, yeah, it’s gotta be something big, but just, I’m just glad about it. I love those words that, that both Fiilmore talked about, and Dr. Hansen talked about just something that you’re glad about. I’m glad that we have a heater in the room. I’m glad that we have our hospitality team who won’t be here the next two weeks. So we might need some help the next two weeks if you wanna. But I’m glad that we have a hospitality team. Thank you, Gabby. I’m glad that we have the ability to come together as a spiritual community. So what other things are you glad about?

Overcoming the Bad Things in Life

And how many things can you find during the day? Because Dr. Hansen says it takes a ratio of five to one, five good things, five things that we’re glad about to overcome. The one thing that we’re carrying with us that we’re not happy about, the one pre or post suffering, thing that we’re carrying around with us. It takes five things that we’re glad about to start to rebalance ourselves and to generate that sense of joy within us. So our task this week is to look for how and count how many things that we’re glad about during the week. Let’s write ’em down at the end of the day so we can celebrate them. That’s, that’s number one. That’s grateful. The next G is generous, is to be generous. Now, this came to me, and, you know, this really spoke to me in this, about this idea of when I’m giving, whether it’s of my time, my prayer support, you know, my words, my actions, just holding a door open.

I feel good. I feel good about myself. I feel good about what’s happening in the world. You know, I  occasionally go to the 7-Eleven around the corner, and I open the door for some guy, and he was like, thank you. And I know it’s silly. I know we talk about it all the time, but those little things in life add up. If we let them, if we look for them if we allow them to be a part of our life, so generous, how am I giving to the world? How am I giving to the world? And we’re always giving to the world. You’re always giving something, whether it’s, you know, you walk into the room, and you’re giving. And we know that because our presence, you know when someone comes into the room, we feel their presence. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s, we think not so much.

So when you’re entering the room, what are you giving to people? When you’re interacting to people with people, how are you giving to people? It’s all about sharing. And the wonderful thing is there’s this idea that I think that sometimes our ego has that if we give, then we will receive, or we better that if we give something good, then we better receive. I may have told this story before, but when I was in college, I was driving down to Santa Barbara to visit a girlfriend. And I was driving another guy who was visiting his girlfriend. We all were coming from the Bay Area. So on the way down, we got to talking, and he said, you know, I’m helping my friends all the time. You know, I’m doing all these things. And then, when I needed it, they weren’t there for me.

I said, well, how did someone help you? Well, yeah, someone did. Oh, just none of the manner in which he was expecting. He said, well, maybe I don’t understand the universe. Well, maybe let’s broaden the perspective. Give without the expectation that you will receive. Give knowing that you will receive, because it is an endless flow. I love this from, I read this in the daily word. I found this, this was a 1924 daily word that I found this in. And this week, when one is conscious of the unlimited supply of God, there is no fear of depleting the store.

Be Guided

When you realize that that flow is always flowing, unlimited supply of substance, of good that we can take and create with, that we can receive and give, it is a continual flow. It’s not a transaction. So when we make our generosity a flow rather than a transaction, we start to live in that experience of joy, that naturally results when we’re giving. The great spiritual powers are continually giving, continuously giving, give back into the consciousness of the absolute, where the giving is done. Sorry, get back. Oh, this is a directive. Get back into the consciousness of the absolute, where the giving is done. So the giving the true gift isn’t the transaction of me handing you something or doing something for you. It’s in our consciousness. It’s in the way we interact. It’s in how we, we get that energy that flows between us, not the actual item or the thing, the activity, but the energy that flows within us. And in the absolute, it’s unlimited. So get back into that mindset of being unlimited, of having that unlimited supply of substance.

It then says, be one with the giver. Stay in that consciousness of the unlimited flow of life. Love and wisdom. Be one with the giver. And as you receive, be one with the giver, as you give, be one with the receiver, and be one with this ever present flow of life. So when we start to look at giving our daily interactions from that perspective, we start to see the good in our lives, and we start to cultivate that joyful heart. And soon life becomes more and more joyful. There’s more opportunity for us to experience it. So let’s, this week, let’s be generous and really look at how we are giving to the world. Whether you’re walking into a room, whether you’re giving a gift, whether you’re receiving something, look at how that energy is flowing through you. The third G is guided. Guided. I found an affirmation.

I love it. The spirit of God in me inspires me, and I joyfully follow the inner light and direction that I receive. The spirit of God in me inspires me, and I joyfully follow the inner light and direction I receive. I joyfully follow the inner light and direction I receive together. I joyfully follow the inner light and the direction I receive together. I joyfully follow the inner light and the direction that I receive.

That infinite wisdom, that inspiration, that guidance is always there. And when we start to move into it and allow it to be, our path becomes clear. And we can joyfully walk down that pla path. There will be times when we will feel lost and bewildered and confused. And the times where we feel lost, bewildered, and confused are the times when we are in darkness, right? The fear or anger, the self pity or resentment that darkens our mind. And so we’re, it’s like we’re moving in circles. We’re moving in circles and bumping into those old stories, bumping into the, the pre suffering, the posts, suffering the stories, the things that are, that are creating it in our heads, because we’re living in that darkness.

Affirm and Feel Uplifted

And so that’s the point where we let the light in it’s time to open ourselves again to that indwelling presence, to allow ourselves to feel that comfort, that love, that guidance, and to move through it. I let the light, I let in the light by affirming the Spirit of God inspires me. I let in the light by affirming the Spirit of God inspires me. The Spirit of God inspires me. Now, you may call it by something different. You may call it infinite wisdom or infinite intelligence. You may call it that divine spark or that guidance that you receive, or Holy Spirit, or whatever you want to call it that has meaning for you. But allow that presence, that power that intelligence in. And when you allow it to come in and it inspires you feel uplifted.

There are times in my life when I have felt the most joy, and those times have always followed deep affirmative prayer. Now, sometimes, you know, we talk about meditation and prayer. We kinda lump it together. And that’s, that’s the Unity’s prayer practices to first move into meditation. So we can quiet that little monkey mind of ours. So we can quiet that ego and get to a point of oneness, of stillness, of what I call Unity calls. The silence that’s being in the presence without having to justify it or think about it just being in the presence. And from that higher state of consciousness, we affirm truth. We affirm that I am one with the allness of life, love and wisdom. We affirm that that great energy flows through me, and I am healed and healthy and whole. We affirm that, that I am guided every step of the way.

The affirmations that we create in those moments have the most power within us, because we are at our highest form of consciousness. And when I’ve come out of those meditations and prayers, I think that lasted about, those were about 30 minute meditation, 30 minute prayer, affirmative prior treatments. And I come out so uplifted, so con feeling, so connected with the, with the universe. And I can remember a few of those times very deeply. One was when I was 14, and I was in y u and I was at Unity Village at for conference they used to call it. So it was an international conference. And I went to the little prayer chapel on grounds at Unity Village. And I was there meditating, lying on the floor. There are chairs there, but you know, 14 year olds, they can do whatever they want.

Joyfully Celebrate Authentic Self

I’m lying there. And, I’m just – I’m in it. And then I come out and the whole world is shimmering. I can see the energy and feel, you know the power of love, the power of the universe. And I just felt one with it. And I felt so uplifted and joyful. When you have that kind of experience, it’s like, “yes, I can do it.” Yes, you can do it. We can all be there. And sometimes it takes practice. The risk is now, I’m always judging myself. My meditations on that one experience. And we can’t do that because our ego’s still going to experience it. However, the ego experiences it in the moment. So just allow it. And when you receive that guidance, whatever it is, joyfully, joyfully, follow it. Follow that inner light and direction that you receive. Did I have something written down for that. I joyfully celebrate my authentic Self. You can go to the yeah – thank you. I joyfully celebrate my authentic Self. I joyfully celebrate my authentic Self. Would you affirm that with me? Together, I joyfully celebrate my authentic Self. There was a little bit of joy, especially coming from that part of the room over there.

That was a little bit more joy over there. Okay, I see. I joyfully celebrate my authentic Self. Everyone. Woo Joyfully. Celebrate my authentic Self. Yeah, and don’t judge yourself just because you know, Catherine over here is jumping up and down. still feel that joy within you, even if you’re calm and poised. No, what that joy is within you know that joy is a part of who you are. And celebrate that authentic Self. Let’s go to the next slide, Casey. Thank you. So just to recap the three Gs, I know, you know, that’s an old cell. I was thinking, trying to relate it to cell phones, but that’s way outdated Now. I couldn’t come up with two other Gs. Is there a six G now I think.

That was just too much. That was just too much work. So I came up with three. Grateful. Find your good, find reasons to be grateful this week. Find reasons to be glad and celebrate that gladness generous. Stay in the consciousness of abundance as you give to life. Whatever it is that you’re doing or or experiencing, give with that consciousness of abundance and guided. Let the light in and joyfully follow your guidance. Allow that guidance to come and allow it to be.