How to Better Yourself and Your Life | Rev. John Riley

Oh, good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Fay, can you feel that energy? Can you feel that raise in your consciousness as we, as we express and experience this allness of life, love and wisdom. Hey, take a nice deep breath and feel that energy is flowing through you today. It is so wonderful to see you here. Thank you for being here today on this very sunny day. Yay. We’ve had a lot of rain, haven’t we? California has needed it, although probably maybe not in the matter in which we received it, but I’m very grateful that it’s sunny now. And so we’ll hold all of those who have been affected in this, in this weather here in our hearts and prayers, knowing that divine love is doing its perfect work here and now. And yet, so it’s been raining and then it got sunny. Now, what do you think?

The first thing to emerge in my garden is weeds, flowers. This is realism here. We’re not spiritually bypassing weeds. Anybody ever have you noticed? All the weeds start popping up. So we think about this just as the idea of consciousness. You know, we, we go through stormy weather and then the sun comes up and everything feels good and it’s great, and what pops up the weeds? We’ll talk about that in a moment. A couple of weeks ago, we had our Whitestone service, and if you were here, you received a little white stone like this, and you were invited to come up with a word, an intention a, a touchstone for the coming year, something that you wanna hold onto for me. I carry my whitestone around me. And you could write your word on your whitestone if you’d like. And for me, this is my touchstone, and I have it with me most of the time, not every day, but most of the time.

And it’s just a reminder for when I want to recall that intention of what I want to emerge in my life, what consciousness I want to hold as I move through this experience of life this year. And so we, what we invited you to do after the service was to write a word on our Whitestone board. So I don’t know if you can see this at home, but these are all of the words that we came up with, that you came up with, that our spiritual community is here to express. And so I wanted to just touch bases on this as we look on this idea of emerging. So some of the words are faith, present, healing, joyful, agape love change, serenity leader vitality, be grateful, freedom, positivity, pain free, love, humble, listen, happiness, aware, thoughtfulness, patience, joy and fun, contentment kind, pause, productivity choice, mortgage free, 6 0 5, home.

Keep Creating a Better You

Adventure, spiritual, peaceful, present acceptance. So can you find something in there that you would like to express? Maybe one of those was, were were your words. And maybe there’s something that you want to, that’s you want to bring forward in your life. You see, I think all of us have this something in us that, that emerging Spirit, something that’s yearning to express itself, maybe a little bit more of, maybe you have joy, but you want to get to that next level, next level. Joy, can you trade that for me? That’s gonna be a Unity thing. Now, next level, joy, because we want to express just a little bit more of that divine inheritance that the daily word was talking about. We want to express just a little bit more of that serenity, a little bit more of that patience, a little bit more of that kindness, to give greater voice to that authentic self.

See, I think that’s our true, authentic self, right? That idea of, of that we, and Unity, we call it the Christ consciousness. You may call it your, your higher self or your spark of divinity or, or the light within you, but whatever you want to call it. For me, it’s really, that’s the authentic voice within you. That’s who you truly are. And as we move towards bringing more of that forward, you know, we express greater amount of joy in the world and the world benefits. Have you noticed? Anybody notice? Yeah, a couple people have noticed, I got two hands. So that, that makes up for, for everyone else. When somebody comes into the room that’s filled with joy, what’s your reaction to it? Joy or the other,

Embrace Your Emerging Consciouness

Right? It’s usually an either or it’s like, “oh, I’m, I, I’m in tune with that.” I’m, I’m bringing it in, or it’s, God, I wish I had more of that, so I’m gonna get that person outta here. So those are some extremes, but that’s sometimes the way we feel and express what we are here to do this year is to embrace that emerging consciousness. And I believe it’s a consciousness that is emerging across the globe. Now, you may look at the news and point to it and say, John, you’re absolutely wrong. But I believe that there is value in understanding what happens on an individual level. Because collective consciousness, global consciousness, world consciousness is nothing more than all of us put together. Yeah. So when we raise our consciousness, when our consciousness begins to emerge more in alignment with that teaching, with that, authenticity, and that raises the consciousness of the whole.

Now what happens? And I think all of us perhaps have had an “aha moment.” Do you resonate with that? Maybe you’ve had like a spiritual awakening. You have a, you had a moment where it felt like, oh, this is fantastic, or Oh, I get it. There’s some aha moment or waking up moment that we’ve had. I think every individual has that at one point in time or another. And then we look at that aha moment through the lens of our consciousness, through the lens of our belief system, through the lens of our our automatic behaviors through the lens that we’re in. And it just is what it is. And so we will realize that aha moment to the extent that we can, you know, cleaning off our lenses. No, seriously, it’s a little, little smudged. I’m just saying to the extent that we can clean up a little bit, clean up a little bit in our consciousness so that we can make space for more serenity, more productivity, more openness, more joyfulness. And I’ll even say a mortgage free 6 0 5 home. I dunno where 6 0 5 is. I actually do, it’s South Dakota. Maybe they meant maybe they meant six 50. I don’t know.

But either way, what lies behind that intention? A mortgage free home. What do you think of? What do you feel, what do you experience when you think of mortgage free freedom? So maybe there’s a seeking of freedom, peace, prosperity, security. Safety. What was that? Fun. Fun. Hallelujah. Glad I Rent. Good. Glad I rent. I don’t give very many hallelujahs here. So thank you. Thank you, Catherine. 

Suffering? Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

So all of these things that lie behind that belief or that thought is what we’re here to express and experience. And that’s our divine inheritance. In some older traditions, I will say in some maybe first year consciousness or if you’re into spiral dynamics, some of the lower beige consciousness or blue and red and orange, you know, the, the idea here is that there’s a thinking that God’s will for us is suffering. That’s an old consciousness, that’s an old thinking. And it comes out of the idea that we’re suffering, and therefore it must be God’s will, right? But that’s not at all what Unity teaches. What Unity teaches is God is here to express itself as fully as a can in its creation. And we are all part of that creation.

As Brenna said, “God is in you. God is that substance within you.” I like to say God is in you, like the ocean is in the wave. There’s no separation from it. And so that purpose is for us to express more of it without getting caught up in judging ourselves versus someone else, right? Setting the bar or saying, well, that person has a higher consciousness than me. Or, well, those people down they’re old school consciousness. We don’t need them around here because our goal here is to include everybody because God is in everything and everyone. So can we include everyone where they’re at? Can we include everyone where they’re at? And, and recognize that even in those, you know, the, the old tribal mentality way back in the day, right? Where you were part of a tribe and you wore against another tribe, but there was some value in those tribes. And we still experience and express that today. 

Anybody a 49ers fan? Woohoo. Yeah. Well, I, I don’t recommend you raise your hand because the tribe may pounce on you. Anybody not a 49ers fan? Yeah. So that’s how right we, we band together our tribe. And it, it’s expressed, it’s expressed today in, in church, you know, when we get together with our group of friends, that’s our, a little group and we spiritually grow together. So there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how we create connection. So we can include that idea and we can transcend the warring side of the tribe, I guess express it through football or baseball or some other sport, or express it in some other way that might be a little more healthy.

How to Continue to Emerge & Grow

So you see these, we’re here to continually emerge, to continually grow and to express a little bit more of that. And, and to do that we have to open and change a little bit. We have to shift a little bit. Now, if you’re wanting more, huh? I just looked at open. If you’re wanting more openness in your life, what needs to shift? If you’re wanting more freedom in your life, more gratefulness, more gratitude, more vitality, more being humble, more love, more happiness, more being able to listen. If you want a little bit more of that in your life, what needs to shift? What needs to change? So just think about that for a moment for yourself. If there’s something that you want to express a little bit more of what needs to shift in order that to come through change is the biggest challenge for us. Yes. Now, I love change. I live for change. I’m cuckoo.

I used to like cocoa puffs, yes, thank you, but the sugar content just doesn’t work well with me. So I’ve given it up. But something needs to shift. We need to let go of something in order to create more space for that emerging to happen within us, that greater sense of joy. Now, that’s what we resist, right? The change is what we resist because sometimes we get into a pattern and we get into a pattern of, of either self-destruction or we get into a pattern of relationships, or we get into a pattern of judging, or we get into a pattern of cri criticizing or complaining or get into a pattern of, you know, physical ailments and, and you know, have you ever heard of people that get into the relationships and after relationship after relationship and it’s like the same person over and over again? And it’s because, not because the world out there is against me, but because I haven’t shifted my consciousness, I haven’t emerged enough to recognize that I can do better. I can have something better. I can be something better.

No More Sheltering or Withdrawing 

So we are in a process, I believe as individuals, as a community that we might call Unity Palo Alto. And as a world of emerging, we’re in a process of emerging from these last three or four years. These last three or four years have been different, haven’t they? And I’m not saying that you should do one thing or another. Wear a mask or not wear a mask or go out or not go out. That’s not what I’m saying. But as a culture and as a consciousness, we are emerging from a time when we had to shelter, not just physically, but we began to shelter emotionally and mentally. We began to shelter ourselves and withdraw from the world. And now and naturally we’ve been there. Now it’s our time to emerge from that in however way that shows up for you. Now, this emerges in consciousness reflects itself according to the researchers as a change in culture. And this change in culture started about a hundred years ago, where we are moving beyond our existing realm of understanding into something new that we just can’t quite grasp yet. Now, I think we, we have an understanding in Unity. We, we certainly have an understanding of what it looks like to be more joyful and what it looks like to be a little bit more of that Christ’s consciousness. And every time we practice it, that’s how we discover what it’s going to look like for us.

So the, to break it down into really simple, we’ve got to change. We have to open up and let go of some of the things that we’ve been holding onto so that a new us can emerge, a new us that is more happy, that is more joyful. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have paint or that we ignore paint or that we sweep it under the rug. It’s just that we’re, we’re able to deal with that pain a little bit more. So one of the challenges that we have is resistance. Every time we resist something, it stays with you. It’s part of who you are, that resistance, whatever you’re resisting or whatever you’re holding onto that story from the past is your story of the present moment. It’s a story of, now it may have happened 20, 30 years ago or 10 minutes ago, but it’s a story of right now because I’m living it over and over again. So how can we let go of some of those stories, let go of those beliefs that keep us contained and a certain mindset. How can we let go of that so that we can live more into that idea of the white stone of being more of who we’ve come here to be?

I think the first step in that is self-awareness is really God. You get to there through self-inquiry. It’s to notice when you know, the opposite shows up and what happens every time. We, we have one of those aha moments that we talked about before. What happens every time we have one of those, “ah, this is the way we think we’ve got it.” You know, it’s like, “oh, our life has changed.” Have you had one of those weekends, those seminars? I’ve had a few of them. And then the next day we’re back into our routine and rut cuz we haven’t shifted out of the behavior patterns, our automatic behaviors. And what happens when we start to spiritually grow is that the old belief system and structure starts to fight back. Now the Fillmore is, back in the early 19 hundreds, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, the co-founders of the Unity movement called, talked about this as chemicalization, right? That any, anytime you start to break out into a new realm of consciousness, you know, something bubbles up within you. And they were doing a lot of healing work. And so the result was they had a lot of unhealth bubble up and they recognized, it’s not that I’m doing it wrong, it’s just that this is the old consciousness fighting back.

Heightened Awareness

So we see that whenever we in all areas of growth, right? Whenever you come up with one of these words, you might find that the opposites begins to appear in our life. Not because the universe is testing you, not because the universe is against you, just because you’re now aware of it. You’re now aware that being open of how often I am closed, I have some great examples of how those old stories affect people. Some real world examples I’m coaching for somebody in the high tech area, spiritual coaching outside of our community, they all of a sudden have a new boss and they have a team of 25 people. And so that new boss comes in and says, okay, what’s happening? Now, what this person did was say, okay, well here’s where we’re at. I’m not gonna apologize for it. Here’s where the challenges are, here’s where the good stuff is.

You know, here’s where we’re at, great, now let me meet everyone. So we, that person started meeting the team and there was one person on the team who immediately said, oh, they’re blaming me for what’s wrong. Immediately got defensive. Oh, you’re asking why this isn’t working? Well that’s because we didn’t and but got so defensive that they stopped even communicating with the new boss. Now where in your life have you experienced that? Where somebody says something and it’s like, oh, they must mean this. And we come up with their story and that feeds into our belief system because our belief system’s already there saying this is what it must be. And that brings us to a point of not being able to move forward. In fact, that person, that employee quit within a week, didn’t tell the new boss told HR. So it was that entrenched that all of a sudden I’m the scapegoat.

That story all of a sudden that, you know, it’s my fault, they’re gonna blame me to the point where they just walked away when that wasn’t at all the circumstance. Britney Brown has a great example. I it’s in one of her books or many of her books. I think there’s YouTube videos on it cuz she’s talked about it a lot. It’s when she and her husband were out swimming in open water. Have you heard this one before? Yeah. She and her husband were out swimming in open water. They’re on vacation or something. I’m gonna butcher it, but I’m gonna I’m going to paraphrase. And she just felt so connected to the world, to the universe, to her husband. They were out swimming, they stopped and she said, you know, I just feel so connected with you. I feel this is just so wonderful. And he’s like, “yeah, okay, great water.” And starts swimming again. What stories are going along? And so she does that a couple more times and he’s like, “yeah, okay, fine.”

And she talks about the stories that came up. Oh my god, he doesn’t love me anymore. He doesn’t like the way you’re looking a bikini, you know, they, they got out of the water and and she was thinking to herself, if I get divorced here on on the dock in my bikini, I’m gonna lose my stuff. But the reality was his story was that he was having a panic attack. His story was he had a dream that night that he was supposed to save their kids and couldn’t. And they were on a boat in the dream and here they are in open water and all he wanted to do was get out and he couldn’t even hear what she was saying. Have you ever had that experience? The challenge is how many of us would’ve had the presence to think, you know, maybe this is wrong, maybe what I’m believing isn’t right.

The Truth Behind Stories

Maybe the story that I’m telling isn’t quite the truth. And they had the presence to do some dialogue after that and everything was fine in that moment. So just think about how many times in your life when somebody says something to you or you’re driving past somebody and they have a look on their face and that creates a story, a condition within you. How many times, right? Are are we hearing something or seeing something and immediately closing up, immediately feeling unhappy, immediately feeling distress, anxiety, the practice that we have here in Unity, there are many practices, but one that has been really helpful for me is to remember that, is to breathe into that moment. And you know, there, there’s nothing wrong with the emotion. It’s just a sign that there’s something there to be healed nine times outta 10. It’s not what’s happening right in front of you. I think the course of miracle says you know, what you’re mad at is really not what’s in front of you is not what you think because there’s something that lies behind that anger in you. There’s the anger, there’s the fear, there’s the anxiety, there’s the story and the belief.

So if we can have a little self-awareness just to be curious to say, huh, I wonder where this thought came from. What I have found is that shifts us from that spiral down into curiosity and allows me to envision something different. My self-inquiry is now I wonder what’s inside of me that’s feeling that way. And I think we know this is true because we’ve all had those experiences where something out there was triggering us and that same stimulus with someone else didn’t matter whatsoever. It’s like, yeah, yeah, they’re a knucklehead. Anybody have those knuckleheads? And we’re just like, yeah, eh, whatever. So it’s not the stimulus that’s out there that’s creating the suffering, it’s our own fears. It’s our own limitations, it’s our own sense of disconnection with spirit. So if we get back into that connection with spirit, if we get back into that connection with the allness of life, love and wisdom, if we get back into that connection, then we can be in whatever situation it is and be present and be whole and not panic and say, yes, be transparent. Yeah. Here’s what it is. How do we move forward?

And then when we get connected like that, we can give ourselves what we need to feel safe, present, peaceful. We can pause, we can be powerful. We can feel that freedom when we let go of our resistance, when we allow that divine inheritance to be within us. And then we can give ourselves the love that we need, the self-compassion we can give ourselves the connection so we can source that inner source and give as spirit and allow that energy to boy us up in any situation, in any storm. Now beginning on Thursday, this is the part of the talk that’s a commercial beginning on Thursday, I am teaching a class called quant, the qu art and practice of quantum living. Now I used to call this class the art and practice of living with nothing and no one against you. How does that sound?

That’s pretty cool. I like that I changed it cuz the people who certify me changed it. But I like that idea. And every time I taught it, someone came up and said, so this is the class where everyone’s gonna love me afterwards, right? Well, not quite. It’s the art and practice of living as if nothing and no one is against you. Because even if those people who you see as against you are not really against you, they’re against that part of you that’s fighting back, they’re against that part of them that feels hurt. Not their authentic self, not your authentic self. They’re not seeing that divine essence within you. They’re not seeing and expressing that divine essence within themselves. They’re not living from that consciousness that we talk about here in Unity. They’re not using the power of their word, as Brenna said in our daily word, affirmation, that power that is within you.

So if we can see each other from a state of oneness, now we talk about oneness and Unity. But really it’s time for us to embody oneness. And I think first it takes that intellectual understanding, that aha moment for us to begin to practice, to see what it shows, how it shows up within us. So if you take away something today, take away the idea of when you’re feeling the opposite of your white stone, breathe into the moment and become curious. I wonder what is in me that’s resisting, that’s, that’s getting upset. What is it that I’m resisting within me? What is it that is blocking me within me that I can release and let go of, that I can heal, that I can give myself some compassion and love? We talked about the weeds earlier. Anybody, you know, at our house, we’ve been living in our house for about over 20 years now and back in the eighties. So what, I don’t know, you do the math. That’s like, what, 40 years ago they remodeled and they redid the front yard, they got rid of all the privets. Anybody know what a privet is? It’s a wonderful plant that they used in the eighties to separate you. They didn’t have fences, they had PTs. It’s a great bush. You can, it turns into a tree, but you know what, you can’t get rid of it. So 40 years later, I’ve got pivets popping up in my garden.

Now how many of us want to go to that weed and pull it out? Anybody? How in our consciousness do we have? Oh, this is from 40 years ago and it’s popping up. Oh, and I get rid of that thing and we wanna pull it out. Well don’t, because I hurt my shoulder trying to pull out that darn privets.. So the thing about privets is that they have very deep roots. So what do we do instead of pulling it up? Clip. We clip it at the surface. That’s right. Eh, I don’t, it’s not here. You know, just, just think about the lilies, right? Remember that saying consider the lilies, God closed the lilies and all these wonderful things and, and let’s plant some lilies here. So we, we plant our flowers around our privets. Two months later, guess what comes up? Not one, but two.

What is Spiritual Bypassing? 

Now how is that like our life when we’re trying to shovel something under the surface, we’re trying to, you know, sweep things under the rug. We call that spiritual bypassing, right? We plant the pretty flowers around our problems so that it, oh yes, it’s a beautiful pivot, but look at my pretty flowers. Don’t look at that. Look at this over here. It’s the process of bringing that root, that into that problem into your life. It’s the realization that that root goes very deep. And unless I’m willing to get a shovel and really start digging to get it out, that pr, that route, that PTs gonna come back. And of course, we blame the rest of the world. We blame the rain, we blame the sun, we blame our neighbors because they built a brick patio next to it and we built a brick, concrete and a fence and I can’t dig anymore. So the PTs there, I’m just gonna keep clipping it. So we can resist that in what happens to us, stress, strain, frustration, or we can accept it. I’ve accepted that pt, I accept that that PTs gonna come back. I honor that pt. I honor that part of me that is painful, that comes up every once in a while. And I can say, oh my dear friend, here you are again.

And I can treat it how I need to treat it. Instead of shaming myself. Instead of ignoring it, I can allow it to emerge. So that’s what the class is all about, is helping us cr with a process that helps us discover what lies back of those problems so that you can then bring that shadow self into the light to give it the love that you need yourself as spirit to allow God to be God in you. And if you don’t come to the class, that’s okay too. Breathe, become curious. What in me is seeking healing? What lies behind that pain and behind that pain and behind that pain? And how can I look at it differently? How can I give it the love that I need so that I can be a more joyful presence in the world so I can allow my consciousness to emerge, pivot and all so that I can support the emergence of this collective consciousness?