The Fourth and Fifth Keys to the Kingdom | Rev. John Riley

You know, it reminded me, today’s Daily Word is — I don’t know how they do it but they just match what I’m going to talk about, every time. It is amazing, and I don’t look at the Daily Word until like a couple of days beforehand. And then it’s like, “Ah, look at that”. They got it right. I mean, I got it right.

Let Go and Let God

Let go and let God. That music allows you to do that, doesn’t it. Just let go and immerse yourself in that Spirit, in that expression, in that joy, in that celebration of life. And let go and let God, because how many of us tend to let our anxieties, our attachments to the past, all of those things, weigh us down during the week?

How many? Oh, thank you, Lisa. There’s one or two, there’s a few at the back. Thank you. Yeah. During the week sometimes those things just weigh us down and then things come up. Anybody have anything come up this last week? No. None of us did. Well, you know, let go and let God. Let go and let God. I love this. This is what came to me as I was sitting there. It’s from James, the book of James, Chapter 1 at the very beginning. He is basically, this is to the twelve tribes scattered amongst the nations.

“Greetings. Consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” Everyone, take a nice deep cleansing breath because we all have those trials. Now, I’m not sure I’m ready to greet them with joy and enthusiasm and excitement because sometimes stuff just happens. Sometimes those things come up. Yeah? Yes? Okay, she asked you a question earlier and there was only three people who answered. I’m going to be keeping track now.

So, when those things come up, that’s really what this talk is all about. Release and make room, release and make room when those things come up, when we’re finding ourselves trapped in our own anxieties of the past, when we’re replaying the stories, when we’re in the middle of it, release and let go and just say yes to God. Just say yes. Just have an opening, just one little opening.

The Fourth Key

We’re in the fourth and fifth key of the Keys to the Kingdom. This is really where key number four is, to make room. Key number five is to let go of the past. Now I think, you know, it’s often reversed. We let go and then we make room but they do it in this fashion for a very particular reason. We’ll talk about that in a minute.

It’s make room first and then let go of the past. Those are the fourth and fifth keys of the kingdom. Now, this is really the bread and butter. This is the meat and potatoes. This is the kale and quinoa of the program. This is the core of it because if you did nothing else but eat your kale and do these two things, your life will be so much better. Your life, everything, will move so much smoother. Yes, we can have a vision and yes, we can make a commitment, and yes, we’ll give thanks but at the core of it, this is where the rubber hits the road. That’s like four metaphors now. I’ve got to pick one. This is where it all happens because when we make room, when we make space, that’s when our good can come in.

So, I want to start with the idea of the law of circulation. And the law of circulation is a law that exists. It’s infallible, just like all laws, just like all Truth statements with a capital T. Those are the unchanging things in our life. Truth statements with the lowercase t, well that’s what I think and those change all the time. It’s just what seems real for me. But these are laws that don’t change.

David Owen Ritz, in The Keys to the Kingdom, he talks about it as this, the law of circulation. “The universe, although infinite in nature, functions like a closed circulatory system. What we give out at every level, our feelings, our thoughts, our intentions, our attitudes, and our material things come back to us creating an incoming flow that keeps pace with our giving”. And we’re always giving to life. We’re always giving to life. We’re giving of our rumors and innuendos. We’re giving of our gossip. We’re giving of our anxieties or we’re giving of our joys and our enthusiasm, of our service, of our love, of our compassion and kindness.

We’re always giving to life and that which we give to life, we receive from life, for the universe just says yes. The universe just says, “Okay. Here you go. I’ll give to you as you’re giving to the world.” That’s the law of circulation. It works. And if you look at your life, you look at all the times when you’re frustrated and angry and holding in that energy. What kind of creative energy that is that you’re holding in and what it does to your body and to your feelings and your energy level. It just zaps us. It’s draining our energies when we are holding on to it, when we’re attaching ourselves to all of those things. We’re attaching ourselves to having to be right. We’re attaching ourselves to having to have an excuse for being wrong rather than just letting it all be and letting God, letting go and letting God.

So, making room is the idea of creating that space in our lives and it can be in the outside world, in the manifest world. And it can also be in our inner world, and making space in our lives so that the universe can give to us, so we’re open and receptive to what the universe has to give us, so that we have space to receive.

Now the wonderful thing about spiritual rituals, the things that we practice outside here, in the outer world that help create and generate an inner dialogue, an inner opening. And so, one of the tasks that they give you in the classes, and many prosperity classes have this, is go home and clean something. Cleanse something, because how many of us are living in clutter?

I’ve got two cats, one of them is our short haired, tuxedo cat named Frodo and, you know, he sheds but his hair is black so you don’t see it very often on the dark floor. And then we have our pandemic kitty, Alex, Alexandria Shoemy. I don’t remember the rest of the names that the family gave her but she has a very thick coat and a very dense undercoat. She is meant to live in the Himalayas apparently and so the coat is always growing and always shedding, and you can pet her and it’s like I can make a blanket out of the amount of fur that I’m getting from her. So, it’s like the floor is covered in cat hair. I just vacuumed.

But how many of us are living in some form of clutter? We all have junk drawer right. Everybody have a junk drawer? Anybody not have a junk drawer? Everyone has a junk drawer. Paul doesn’t have a junk drawer. Good for you, Paul. Or how about the nightstand where we just start piling things on top of it? For us, growing up it was our garage because my dad grew up in the 30’s, in the depression and never gave away anything. Never got rid, every screw had a jar that it was in. Anybody have a dad like that? Yeah. And you know the biggest, the biggest insult that I could give my older — they’re all older but the closest to me brother, Dave. I went over to his house one day, I looked in and said wow, it’s starting to like our garage. That afternoon he cleaned it out and pulled his car in because we could never get a car into the garage. So, he was there, it’s clean now.

But we all live in this idea of clutter. So, when we go out and we start to clean the world outside of us, you know, who knows, maybe you’ll find that $20 bill that got wedged underneath something and have that instant prosperity. But what happens is, it starts to create within us this idea of cleansing. Because cleansing is really about cleaning our consciousness, getting rid of the clutter that’s in our head so that we can create, so that we can receive, so that we can be in the flow of it and be observant of the flow and have that space within us for that flow to go.

So, making room is the beginning, is the fourth key, is to begin to make room, and we do that by first really becoming open. We become so cluttered by our old attitudes, anxieties and attachments. We can begin to make room by becoming open, becoming open to our unexpected good. As you’re cleaning up, what good will you find in there? It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I have twelve Philips screwdrivers because nine of them are in my junk drawer”. Becoming open to your unexpected good and just being willing to see your good in life.

So often we hold our dreams and our visions and then we expect, you know, it to come exactly as I wrote it down and it comes maybe slightly different and we don’t even acknowledge that that’s our good coming to it. Becoming open to all of the good in our life, to the beauty in our life. Becoming open to new ideas, new methodologies, new techniques, to being open to learning, to growing.

There is a saying about New Thought, right. Unity is part of the New Thought movement. It’s ancient wisdom with a new thought. Everything that we’re saying here has been passed on down through the ages from Socrates to Emmerson to Rusty Gaillard to all of you. We all have those moments of wisdom, but we all need to hear it continually in a new way. We all need to hear it constantly so that it will get through all of the clutter in our heads, so that it will start to push out all of those anxieties, all of those attachments, all of those attitudes that we’ve been holding onto that are holding us back. We’ve got to release those so that we can make room for these new ideas.

We need to become open to cleansing and organizing, cleansing and organizing our thoughts on a daily basis, releasing the thoughts that no longer serve us and organizing our mind, giving it a little discipline so that we are focused on the things that we want to create, the things that we want to generate. If you want to have better relationships then you need to focus on the idea of being a better partner with somebody. If you want to have more creativity in your life then you have to focus on letting go of all of those things that are distracting you long enough to start writing.

I started that this week again. I started, I took my advice from last week. We were talking about Isaac Asimov and he got up at six in the morning and started typing until noon everyday and he had four hundred books published, four hundred books published. So, I’m following that suit. I got up at seven and I started typing at eleven and I stopped at noon. But in that hour, it’s like, “Oh my gosh. Here’s some great ideas” started flowing. I had no idea what to start with so I just started typing. Well, here I go. I’ve got to start typing and the brain is, the subconscious is like going, “Okay buddy, step aside” and then I started writing. Then I just started writing.

So being open to cleansing and organizing and being open to the unknown, the unknowable. Being open to God, being open to the wisdom that just seems to happen in our lives without us egos trying to make it happen, just being open to it. David Owen Ritz says this, he says, “Remove something that you no longer need in your life with the clear intention of releasing it unconditionally.” Oh Lordy. Because how many times, “Well, I’m going to get rid of this” and we go get another one. “I’m going to let this one go but then here’s something else to fill its space”. Just letting go of all of it, and unconditionally. “I don’t need it anymore. Here, I’m going to give it away to Goodwill so that someone else, or some other organization, so that someone else can use it. Someone else can benefit from it because, clearly, I don’t need nine screwdrivers in my drawer.” Then observe the action of the law of circulation as it moves in to replace it in kind.

So, as you’re giving, give with love and compassion and joy in your heart and then watch to see what comes in. See if it comes in with love, compassion and joy. If you’re giving it away angrily, see what comes in. See where the anger is coming back. Just observe it so you will have an understanding of, “Hey, this is working. This is how it works and now I can start to use it in my favor”.

So, we get to jumpstart with the manifest realm. We get to jumpstart that cleansing of our consciousness by doing the work out here so that our consciousness our subconsciousness picks it up and says, “Okay, I’m going to start doing it internally, clean that junk drawer, that bookshelf, that nightstand and let it go”.

The Fifth Key

And then we come to the hard part — letting go of the past. The law of circulation works on many levels, on all levels really. It works on your emotional level, the emotions that you are giving to the world or the emotions that you are receiving from the world. It works on your mental level. The thoughts and energy that you are putting out into the world are the same resonant thoughts that will come back to you. It will work on the material world. That which you create in the world, that which you do out here is what will be done. And it works in the spiritual realm, in your spiritual mind.

So, it’s the manner in which we are doing things. When we start to become focused and open to and aware of how we’re living life, how we’re dancing with life when those problems come up — remember from last week? – it’s a dance. We’re here to dance with those problems. I may not rejoice with them, as James said, but it’s like, okay, I’m open. Here’s a challenge. Here’s a situation. I’m open to what I can learn through it, what I can learn in it. And I’m focused on what my thoughts, my words and my actions, what my emotions are, what’s going on within me so that I can be in it and dance with it and have more experience of it.

Forgiveness

“For many, the past is not completely the past”. Anybody holding onto any negative energy from ten minutes ago, let alone ten years ago or ten decades ago? We keep holding on to it and so that past becomes our present because it comes back up for us. And that’s where forgiveness comes in. Forgiveness has nothing to do with out there. It’s all in here. The biggest growth opportunity for us, the biggest rejoicing is being able to forgive unconditionally. I hear ya. Exactly. Forgive unconditionally.

So, here’s what forgiveness is not. What he says is, “Forgiveness is not forgetting.” Forgiveness is not denying or excusing the behavior. Forgiveness is none of that. Forgiveness is unconditional within of letting go, within and it’s ongoing. It is ongoing. It is ongoing because we will all have mountains in our lives that we have to cross. They just come up. And as they come up, we forgive.

And so, forgiveness is about letting go internally so that I’m not holding onto it and bringing it up every five minutes. It’s not driving my life as I’m going through the drive-through, as I’m going through life, as I’m going through my classes, as I’m going through my relationships one after the other. It’s not driving that behavior anymore because I’m forgiving and I’m letting go. It’s a cleansing of our own consciousness, of our own mind, of our own heart so that we can heal and love again and learn some more and be present in the situation. So, forgiveness is that opportunity to let go for me.

All forgiveness, as Wayne Dyer said, all forgiveness is self-forgiveness. All forgiveness is self-love. I do it for me so that I can love myself again. I have self-forgiveness. I have forgiveness out there so I can love myself again, so that I can experience love again. “Love is the prerequisite for true abundance”, David Owen Ritz says. “You must love yourself completely and unconditionally.” And the practice of self-forgiveness gets us into that pattern. It’s acknowledging, “here’s what happened; here’s what I’m willing to let go” so that I can free myself, so that I can make room in my consciousness, so I can put that energy that I put into it every day into something more creative or more productive for myself.

He says, “Practicing self-forgiveness and self-honesty are high on the list of self-esteem building, self-esteem building disciplines. You can perform no greater act of self-love than to release your past, then to release your past, embrace your highest potential and allow yourselves to become the person that God intended you to be”, allow that higher I AM consciousness to be. Cleanse that, eat your inner kale, would you people. So, I have — and then dance with life. You know, get out there and dance with the things that are going on and look at it from the perspective of, “It’s okay. Here’s what’s happening, how can I dance?”

So, here’s a story. Yesterday, my youngest, Rae, made their debut dancing in ballet en pointe. So, this is the first time that she danced en pointe in a production. She’s been practicing for over a year. And she was in a ballet intensive for the last three weeks from whenever she got there, nine until five, doing ballet and practicing. And they did dances from Piquita and from … I can’t remember. It’s another classic. It’ll come to me later. I’ll just shout it out and you’ll know why. She was, can you imagine, she was pretty nervous. This was their first time dancing en pointe, and she came on stage and rocked it. She was glowing. She did the duet with a friend of hers who’s, I think, two or three, two years older who’s been dancing longer, who’s a beautiful ballet dancer, and they were in sync. Now was Rae’s leg raises as high as everyone else who had been dancing? No. Was it perfect technically? No. But for a first time it was bliss. And I can see it in her face when she was performing. Was she perfect? Yes, according to Dad. But technically, maybe not.

And afterwards, you know, she had that glow. Normally it’s like. “Okay bye. It was terrible. See ya.” But she didn’t want Tiffany, my wife, to leave. She was like, you know, hanging on, not saying anything. Of course, a thirteen-year-old wouldn’t say, “Hey, I did so great. Would you hang out with me for a little bit, Mom?” but she had the cling. You know the cling. Have you seen, have you felt the cling? So that was her, forgiving all of those other mistakes and just being in it and dancing.

Dancing isn’t easy. Do you know how long it takes to learn how to dance en pointe? It takes a long time. Your dancing won’t always be easy. There will be times when it gets a little difficult in life. But all you need really is just a small inkling, a willingness, a small opening, a small opening that says “yes”, a small opening that says, “Okay, universe, here I am. Yes, I am willing. I’m willing to do what it is. I’m willing to forgive. I don’t know how. God, that’s up to you. I’m willing to move towards my goals. I don’t know how but the way will open up, will open up and be made clear.” Just say yes. Bless you.

Moving Mountains

There’s a — I’m sure you’ve all heard of this — there’s a parable that Jesus talked about, the mustard seed. Everyone hear that one? Okay, tell it to me. No, no. I won’t put you on the spot. But you know, it’s basically Jesus talking to his disciples — and I’m going to read the whole thing because I think it’s fascinating — talking to his disciples and what we all remember is, “Truly I tell you if you have faith the size of a mustard seed”, a mustard seed, “you can say to this mountain move from here to there and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Nothing will be impossible for you. If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can say to this mountain move, from here to here.

Now, human nature, what’s the first thing that you think about when I say that? Yeah, yeah right. You all start thinking about your mountains, right. You all start thinking about all of the things in your life that are impossible to move. We all start getting fixated on that mountain. But the key isn’t the mountain at all. The key is the mustard seed, the little, tiny thing, the little crack, the little crack in your heart that says yes. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this mountain, over this mountain, around this mountain or maybe I’m going in a different direction but God, let go, universe, divine intelligence, I say yes. You let me know.” Just yes, to that little, tiny seed.

Now, Jesus was brilliant because mustard seeds, mustard, if you plant a mustard seed, it’s going to grow like a weed. It germinates almost in a day. You can’t get rid of it. You can put it outside. You cannot water it, you know, the wind will come. It survives because what’s built on that mustard — what a brilliant metaphor because what’s built on that mustard seed on that little, tiny faith is that kingdom, the divine essence that is you taking root. That’s you taking root when you give that little tiny faith an opening.

Here’s the whole verse. It starts at Matthew seventeen, verses fourteen through twenty-one. “When they came to the crowd a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. Lord, have mercy on my son, he said. He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples but they could not heal him”. Jesus goes on to say, “You unbelieving, perverse generation. How long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here.” Now, granted, I’m adding I’m adding a little flare to that. But, you know, you unbelieving, perverse generation. How many generations have you said that to? I don’t understand this Tik Tok thing. And he is saying to them, “Look, how often do I have to teach you? How often do I have to show you? You’ve got to start listening because I’m not going to be here forever. This is what you have to do” and, you know, he heals him. They don’t go into much. It’s just Jesus rebuked the demon which is negative consciousness.

The Demons

So, demons in Unity and metaphysics are those anxieties, those thoughts that keep us stuck, those beliefs of anger and hatred and suffering. Those are the demons within our consciousness. And the boy was healed in that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “So, why couldn’t we drive it out?” “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move, and nothing will be impossible to you”, just having that faith.

What’s fascinating is that there’s another line that’s been removed. The twenty-first verse, that’s been removed from most modern versions of the Bible. I looked in like four or five versions of the Bible and they removed line twenty-one. “Nothing will be impossible to you. But this does not come except out of prayer and fasting”, except out of prayer and fasting. So, prayer and fasting, fasting in consciousness. This is all about consciousness, right. So, fasting in consciousness, fasting from those negative beliefs, fasting from the gossip, fasting from the anger and anxiety, fasting from that, releasing those things intentionally so that you can renew that “yes”, renew that mustard seed of faith, saying no to those ideas, fasting from those ideas so that we can refresh ourselves in that I AM consciousness, letting go of our anger and our frustration and our stress so that we can just be in the bliss of knowing our oneness with God.

That’s a big but, isn’t it? Why do you think they took it out? Here’s what I think. I think, you know, somewhere — and the reason I know about that is I was looking at, I was online looking at the Charles Fillmore Bible, study Bible, while I was researching it and they had that line in there. And like, “Wait a minute. Where did that line come from?” Then I went onto Bible Gateway and I looked at four or five different versions and it’s all gone. The only thing I can think of is like a hundred years ago, some ministers up there saying, “And you can tell this mountain to move from here to there” and the crowd goes “ahhh”. And the crowd cheers, and he’s like, “Okay, I’m done”. The little acolyte there saying, “But you forgot the last line”. “Kid, don’t worry about it. Cut it. You’ll learn about this later. Once they’re cheering, you end the service. Quick, pass the basket.” Mic drop. Bing. Because that’s a big statement.

And then there’s the “but”. Now, personally, I don’t think it’s a but. I think it’s an “and” because the mountains happen and yes, you can do that and yes, it will take some effort. It will take the effort of releasing those feelings that you have about the mountain, of releasing the anger and the anxiety that you have about the situation, the condition, the diagnosis, the other person, whatever is happening in your life, releasing the fear that you have around it, the attachments that you have to it, releasing and just letting it go.

It’s like forgiveness. We’re not saying it doesn’t exist. We’re just saying, okay, we’re practicing non-resistance instead of attachment. “There it is. Yes, God, where do I go from here? What’s next?” Oh my gosh. It’s late. A simple grain of willingness of faith opens the channel for good, for healing, prosperity, for intuition, for inspiration, for creativity, just a simple grain of faith. Release and let go of your fears, your anxieties, your frustrations. Let go of it and be refreshed. Be renewed. All God needs is that little opening, that little opening for the energy of Spirit to flow through, that little opening for the harmonizing energy of love to widen.

And all you have to do is say yes. Eat your kale.