Bring Your Vision to Life | Rev. John Riley

We have been on this journey of discovering, discovering that idea of abundance, that principle of abundance, and how it expresses in, through, and as our lives as we tune into that idea that you are the hands and the heart of God and that you can fly as long as you believe, as long as you have that idea within you, as long as you put your energy into what it takes to do it, you can do it. Yes? 

Last week we talked about our first key to discovering that idea, that kingdom of God, that expression of abundance in your life. And the first key was commitment. And we all agreed, we all agreed, every single one of you even if you weren’t here yesterday, even if you weren’t listening I’m sure you would have agreed, I’m in. Are you in? Say, “I’m in.” I know there are a few of you that are still unsure. That’s okay. 

Vision

Here’s the second key. The second key is vision. The second key is vision because if you believe that you can fly, if you believe that you can touch the sky, then you must have the vision of what that looks like in your life. You must have that vision and hold that vision of what it looks like to fly. If you were the hands and the heart of God, as the Daily Word said at the end there, what does that look like for you? And that’s the question. How will I show up, because you are called to be that. You are called to be kind and compassionate. You are called to be love, and to be experience. You are called to be abundance. You are called to live in the flow.

And as we begin to look at what that would look like in all areas of our lives then it becomes, it starts to become real for us. It starts to become something that we can see for us and for ourselves. And in the book, David Owen Ritz who created The Keys to the Kingdom, he said this, “creating and holding a higher vision for your higher possibility”. That’s our task, is to create and hold a higher vision for expressing that good in your life, holding that higher vision because he says, what living a truly abundant life would be like is the question that we have to ask ourselves. What would it be like to live a truly abundant life because the reality is none of us will rise higher than our vision. You will not be able to achieve anything greater than what we can imagine ourselves achieving. 

Greater Possibilities

And so, the opportunity here is to stretch, is to look to greater possibilities, look to an even greater – and if you’re happy with life, fantastic — look for an even greater experience of that happiness, of that joy, of that abundance. Look for even greater ways to serve the world, greater ways to give to the world, greater ways to be in the world, because we are called to be that light. 

And so, he lays down five areas in which we can begin to create that vision. That’s our task, to create our vision for our world. Five areas of our life and our health. What would it be like to have, experience greater health in our relationships? What would it look like in your life to have a deeper relationship, to have a more expansive and compassionate and loving and kind relationships? What would it be like for your career and creative self-expression? What would it be like for your spiritual and personal growth? What would it be like for your finances, for all of life? What would it be like? 

What would it be like if you were called to live fully in all of those areas? And only you can decide that. Only you can decide that for yourselves and it’s the extent to which we can imagine that and hold that in our thought and consciousness that we can begin to express it and bring it into manifestation in our lives. Only to the extent that we can hold the idea of let’s say world peace, can we bring peace in our lives, can we begin to create that. Only to the extent that we can hold the idea of equality, can we bring equality to our world. 

So, it’s within our control to create and the world’s ready for us to create a more expansive and be a more joyful experience of Spirit. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Are you still in? That’s the task, is to hold that for yourself every day. And we’ll go through an exercise where we, we kind of get into that a little bit in a moment, but first I want to address what the challenge is, what the opportunity is because when you start to think about that, a lot of things start to come up, right. 

Challenges in Life

A lot of challenges start to appear in your life and I have to tell you I think the most, the biggest challenge, your biggest challenge is your “but”. I see eyes going wide. Let me explain. Let me explain. Your but, with a single T, not your butt with two T’s. Okay, just so we’re on the same page here. Man, someone’s lifting the phone for HR hotline. Your but’s. When you start to think about the idea of what your relationships can look like, what comes up? “Yeah but, my relationship would be great if that other person would start to be kind and friendly.” “My finances would great if I had better education.” “I would have greater health and wholeness if I didn’t have what happened to me in the past.” 

All of these things come up for us that keep us stuck in our current way of thinking, our current way of thinking. And in order for us to grow, in order for the world to change, we have to change our thinking. We have to change and grow our consciousness. 

And so, the challenge is really looking at, how can we address your “but”. Now, the but has its origin in the amygdala, that little almond shaped part of your brain that doesn’t understand English. All it understands are emotions. It’s in charge of your emotions and your but’s are generated from the amygdala because what’s behind the but — this is a weird talk. I don’t know what to say. What’s behind your but? Fear. Right? Your amygdala’s spouting off fear. It’s fear, fear of not being good enough, fear of doing it wrong, fear of criticism. If we’re a writer and we don’t write, we call it writer’s block because we’re afraid of not having the perfect work. If you’re a programmer, it’s fear because I used to program when I was a young lad, a wee lad, and you know it’s like after I got done with it, it’s like, “Oh, that took me eight hours. It could have only taken me four hours if I’d used a different model.” The fear of, you know, of — we just replaced a sink in our bathroom. I let it sit there for a long time because I didn’t, I broke it to begin with and I didn’t want to break the new one. No one would do it so finally I got down there and I did it. Simple things like that. 

But, you see, the fear jumps in our way whenever we start to have these grand visions of our life, whenever we start to think about maybe I can deserve freedom and happiness. So often our visions, if we’re talking about our finances or our personal growth or we think about things in our life, right — many of you have heard the story about the burnt orange McLaren from me in the last time I taught the Keys to the Kingdom class. I was using that as an example of my vision is to have this burnt orange McLaren. I went on about it in during the class and literally in the break, someone went out to the courtyard and there was a little burnt orange McLaren toy car sitting out there. This is a true story. They’re not, Ian’s dad is not here but he can verify that when he comes back. 

But, you see, it’s not the thing. Often, it’s not the thing that we’re looking for, it’s the experience behind the thing. It’s the experience of freedom, of joy, of beauty. It’s the experience of self-confidence and connection. It’s the experience of having that sense of love and appreciation for each other. That’s what we’re really looking for but that “yeah but”, behind us there is saying, “but you don’t deserve it”. Our society has built that idea of, you know, “You’re a miserable sinner. How can you afford that? How can you? You don’t deserve this. This is what’s happening in your life because of X, Y and Z”. So that amygdala, that resistance that’s coming up is thwarting your own vision. 

Goals in Life

That’s why we have – you know, have you ever had that grand goal and it’s been sitting there for years? You bring it out, you dust it off and well, “It’s because, well, I didn’t want a burnt orange Malaren. I really wanted a black Malaren because they’re so much more cool.” Right? We change it a little bit and it’s not because we didn’t do the things that we — it’s because we don’t think we deserve it. Whatever the “it” is and it’s really the experience. But you are here to be freedom. You are here to be compassion. You are called to be these things. That’s what we, that’s what keeps coming back as we talked about that divine impulse. And so, when we go to our vision we go back to that divine impulse, that yearning within us, that calling within us to be more, to express more, to be that greater expression of life. 

Now, Steven Pressfield, he was the author of The War of Art, Winning the Inner Creative Battle. He talked about it like this. He said, “We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are, more than our parents, more than our children, more than our teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us, that we may actually have the guts, the perseverance and the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our promised land and we fear this because if it’s true then we become estranged from all that we knew, from all that we know.” He calls that resistance. We are resisting that greater expression. We are resisting that vision.

And the amygdala is very clever. Right? The brain starts coming up with all of these reasons why that’s true. And the more we try, the more we work at it, the more important it is, the greater the resistance is within us. The more we try to get rid of it, to shove it away, to get rid of the fear, the stronger it gets, the bigger it gets in our life, the more challenges come up, the more we’re struggling against it, the more we’re pushing against it. 

And so, the key is not to resist it because the fear, the anxiety, that sense of not enough is going to appear because that’s, and things are going to happen in our lives that are going to be contrary to your vision because life is messy. The wonderful thing about life is how juicy and beautiful and exciting it is and, guess what, it’s also very messy. Anybody experience any messiness in life? Yeah. Sometimes it’s messy. And when we look at that mess and we look at it and say, “Oh my goodness, you know, where’s God now? Oh, my goodness, where’s my good now? What happened to my vision? You know, everything opposite seems to be coming up.” Everything opposite comes up because deep down inside there’s something that we’re resisting. Deep down inside there’s that belief that we’re not enough. Deep down inside there’s a fear. And the key is to not resist it, but to acknowledge it. Just say, “Oh, there it is” as soon as we can become aware of that critic. 

Critics in the Cheap Seats

Brené Brown I think it was her book, Braving – Braving? Is that the — Daring Greatly. I think that’s what it was. Where she said, you know, don’t worry about the critic in the cheap seats. We all have those critics, right, outside of us, the critics in the cheap seats. They don’t pay for anything. They don’t support you. They come with their bag of tomatoes just knowing that you’re going to say something wrong and then they go pass them out beforehand, right. That’s the lens through which they come to the arena with. Don’t pay any attention to the critics in the cheap seats. 

And then there are the critics, the people who are your supporters, the people who really care about you, the people who are really behind you. You can listen to them because they’re here from listening from their heart, not listening from that lens through which they are seeing the world, not listening through the lens of anger and frustration or the lens of jealousy or the lens of, you know, “You’re not good enough. This isn’t what I wanted.” They put all of the blame out there. That’s the lens through which they’re seeing the world. 

And what we’re called to do is to change that lens within ourselves because what I just described is your inner critic. How many of those have you heard? Yeah, that inner critic, that inner critic who has that tomato just waiting. “Go ahead. Doesn’t matter what you say I’m going to throw it at you. Just doesn’t matter.” That inner critic is the part of us that’s blocking us and preventing us from being more present to that infinite intelligence, blocking us from being more loving, being more kind and more compassionate, of moving towards those ideas of the expression of good in our lives, that expansive view of God in our lives. 

Living Two Lives

Steve Pressfield goes on to say, “Most of us have two lives. The lives that we live and the unlived life within us. In between those two stands that resistance”, that resistance that we are grappling with, that inner critic that we’re grappling with, and it’s all within here. And so, our task in moving through this is to not let the inner critic get us down. Not resist it because, again, in the resistance comes the suffering. In the resistance between those two lives that we live comes the suffering. 

I love this from Pema Chödrön, the American Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author, when she wrote in her book Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change, “We resist change. When we resist change it’s called suffering.” Now listen to this. “But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.” Not resisting it and creating our own suffering, whatever the “it” is, right, whatever the situation is but embracing the groundlessness of the situation, the groundlessness. 

So often we’re using that situation to define who we are. We attach ourselves to whatever is going on. We attach ourselves to that inner critic. We attach our identity to what everyone else is saying about us. We attach our identity to that fear of what might happen. And it’s all groundless, baseless. So instead of doing that, we can identify when we’re doing it. It’s like, “Oh, there it is. My old friend. Come on over. Come sit next to me.” Embrace that situation. 

You know, I’ve talked about it as our shadow self. We have to pull that shadow into the light so that it can be healed. When you’re going through a visioning process, look for the resistance that you have within you. Look for your “but” because that’s going to show you and tell you where you can heal. And the way we heal is by dancing, is by dancing with your “but”. 

Now, during the pandemic, at the start of the pandemic, as one of the ways of coping with that, our family would have dance parties in our backyard. Sorry neighbors. It usually would last till about ten at night. The music is blaring. We’re out there dancing so when I say dancing it’s not like, you know, as my kids would say, the dad dance. You know the dance that you do when you don’t really want to dance and you don’t want anyone to think, “Oh my gosh I can’t dance.” It’s not that kind of dance. It’s dancing with your whole “but”. It’s bringing that shadow, that doubt out with you and say, “Let’s play”. It’s like, “Okay, inner critic, you’re saying you’re not good enough. Well, you know, there are times when I don’t think I’m good enough, but so what. I’m going to do it anyway. Let’s have a dance with it.” The more we can play with that shadow, the more it loses its power over us, and your vision becomes clearer. The more frustration and anger that you have, the more that you can dance with it, “Oh my gosh, look at how silly I’m being”, and all of a sudden, it becomes lighter and easier and effortless to move through it. 

It’s going to be there because life is messy. It’s going to be there because the inner critic and the amygdala is there. It’s going to be doing its job. The amygdala doesn’t know the difference. It’s been very helpful to us when we were growing up in the savanna or growing up in the jungles. It knew when a saber tooth tiger is coming. The problem is the amygdala can’t tell the difference between a saber tooth tiger and your manager, the saber tooth tiger and the teenager, or your best friend, or your worst friend. All it says is, “Look out. It’s time for you to fight, to run, to hide under the pew.” That’s why we leave the pews. There’s so much room under there. Just dive right in. The critic is going to be there. Just know when it’s there and dance with it. You gotta get that “but” moving. 

Here’s an example. Many of you, I’m sure know the name Isaac Asimov. He was an author, a very celebrated author. He wrote many science fiction books and I was listening to a podcast by Seth Godin, permission-based marketing guru, and he said, “I had this conversation with Isaac Asimov and said, well how do you do it. How did you write so many books?” Do you know he had published, he had over four hundred books published? This was before the kindle and self-publishing. Four hundred books. You know what he said? “I’d be up at six in the morning and I’d start to type and I don’t stop until noon. Every day.” That’s it. He did it, even when he didn’t want to. He did it even when his inner critic was saying, “This is not very good”. He did it even when the publishers and the critics were saying, “This is not very good”. He just kept doing it and doing it and doing it. Whatever your vision is don’t let your inner critic distract you. 

Here’s how mine does it. “Oh yeah, I’ll get to that tomorrow. I’ve got at least a week before that deadline’s done. I’m gonna do that but first I’m going to play Forza with my thirteen-year-old daughter.” No one knows what that is. It’s a racing game. We race cars on the Xbox. No, they’re Alpha Romeos, but thanks for asking. They were not McLarens. How many ways do you distract yourself? How many ways do you say to yourself, “Well, I’m going to do that but I can’t get to it today? I don’t have the time. Oh my gosh, I don’t have the time.” If you don’t have the time, you don’t really want it. If you want to know what you really want in life look at where you’re spending your time and that will tell you exactly what you value. 

If you want to expand and to be more, then you’ve got to be in. You have to work it even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s hard, even when people are looking at you, saying it will never happen. Keep working at that bliss. Whatever that vision is for your life, in your relationships, in your creative expression, in your finances, in your health, keep working at it because you are here, you are called to be that shining light, that beacon. You’re called to live that full expression of life.