The New You in a Changing World | Rev. John Riley

Well good morning. The world has changed. Life is changing and it’s time for you to change. It’s time for you to empty your cup so that you can create a new you, and so that we can create a new world and a new experience of it.

Good morning, we are beginning a series today on raising our consciousness, on rising up in consciousness so that we can create a world as we envision it, create a world that works for all, create a world that has become more enlightened as we become enlightened ourselves.

Empty Your Cup

There was an old Zen proverb about a teacup. And there were many versions of this proverb and the one that I like the most I’d like to read to you, I’d like to tell you. There was, at one point there was, once a long time ago, there was a Zen master and people traveled from far away to visit the Zen master to learn and to grow. On this particular day a scholar came to visit. He said to the master, “I’ve come for you to teach me about Zen”. So, the two of them sat and began to speak and it soon became obvious that the scholar was so full of his own ideas, his own opinions, his own knowledge that he wouldn’t listen to the master. He would interrupt the master time and time again. The master just smiled and said, “Perhaps we should have some tea”. As the master began to pour the tea for his guest, the tea filled the cup up. The cup became overflowing onto the table. The tea then began to overflow off of the table and onto the floor and eventually on the scholar’s robes. The scholar said, “Wait, stop. The cup is full. Can’t you see?” “Exactly”, smiled the master, “You are like this teacup. You are too full of your own thoughts and ideas. Come back with an empty cup.”

I love this proverb because it talks about this idea of growth. It’s often used when we talk about learning new things, when we talk about how if we’re going into class we should begin with a beginner’s mind, begin with an open mind. But how often do we actually do that in life? This is a wonderful proverb, not just for learning and for classes, but for life itself because you see that cup, that teacup, is like our consciousness. Our consciousness is filled with thoughts, with ideas, with beliefs, with stories. So much so that even when we hear a spiritual practice or a spiritual truth, even when we receive something from the universe, it just flows over us and onto the floor and wastes away because we’re not open enough to truly receive it.

And so, our practice and what we are looking at with this spiritual principle is the idea of how we can empty our cup so that we can receive our good, receive our good, whether you call it Spirit, isness, divine mind, the universe, so that we can receive our wisdom, our guidance, so that we can receive ideas on how we can move forward to be in this new world that we’re living in, to create a new world that we want to create. How can we be in it, but not of it? How can we be in it and allow ourselves to express that goodness that is innate within us?

So, our practice is, how emptying the cup is making room for God, whatever word you want to put in there, our higher consciousness, our isness, that Christ consciousness within us, our higher self, making room for that higher self, higher consciousness, that Spirit within us to have room to breathe and to grow and to expand, and to express us. And so, we must take time every day to empty our cup.

Now, have you ever poured yourself a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or some sort of drink and mid-day you set it down somewhere and then you forgot where it was? Perhaps it was outside on the table, outside in your backyard or on your patio. Or perhaps it was in your living room on your coffee table or simply next to the next to your keys and you just forgot about it. The next day you come back and there’s your half-consumed cup of tea and you take a look at that and you say “Oh, okay there’s my cup of tea”. Well, how many of you make more tea and just pour it into the existing teacup?

Have you ever had day-old coffee and just tried to warm it up with more coffee? How does it taste? Now imagine doing that over and over again every day. Pretty soon the tea is going to lose some flavor. Pretty soon the tea is going to just taste terrible. It’s not going to be what you remember. You see, that half-day cup of tea in our consciousness, those are our stories. Those are the beliefs that we’ve created. Those are the things that are preventing us from filling our tea up with fresh tea, filling our consciousness up with fresh ideas, with new experiences, with our new good. It’s those old ideas that we need to let go of, that we need to empty in our consciousness so that we can be open to receive, so that we can have this receptive mindset for what the world has to bring to us today.

How often do we go about our day with these stories and even though our good, or our new ideas, new wisdom, even though great things are happening around us, we are completely oblivious to it because it still tastes not quite right? Let’s say we drank that tea yesterday and it tasted fantastic. We had that experience that we had yesterday, or the day before, or five years ago, or twenty years ago, or thirty years ago. That wonderful experience that was incredible — the first time we saw that theater production, that first time that we went to that baseball game, that first concert that we went to, that first experience of love, that first time on the beach. It was so wonderful, and we are holding on to that in our teacup and then when we pour a new tea in it’s like, “Well, yeah, it’s okay. It’s not quite as good as I remember. The beaches are a lot smaller than I remember. The playlist in the concert set list didn’t play my favorites, so it was okay.” Because we are hanging onto that old belief. We are not ready to receive what’s present and available to us. We are still living in that old pattern, that old story, those thoughts of the past and we are letting those thoughts of the past dictate how we feel and experience life and live life today.

So, you’ve got to pour out those old stories so that the new story that comes in is fresh and new. It doesn’t mean necessarily that we forget about it. We still may have those wonderful memories. It just means that we are not holding that up as the bar for the experiences of my life, of your life. Have you ever left the teacup there for a few days and then gone back to it? Maybe there’s just a little bit of liquid left in it. Some of it evaporated and a week later, you look into it, and it doesn’t look anything like tea anymore. It’s got multiple colours. It’s got fuzz growing on it and if you listen carefully it sounds like it’s trying to form its own republic. It’s got its own little culture going on in there.

Now, how many of you would just take it, “Oh there’s my tea. I’m just going to pour in fresh tea and drink it up”? Of course not. But that’s what we do with our resentments. That tea sludge at the bottom of the cup, those are our resentments and if we hold on to those resentments and that anger, and that frustration in our relationships, that unforgiveness as we call it, then it’s like wishing that person would change but drinking the poison that’s in my own teacup. It’s my teacup. It takes some time and some effort to pour it out, to wash it out, to sanitize it, to scrub it, to get it fresh again so that the next cup of tea tastes wonderful. But so often we are just going to let it sit there until all of the liquid has evaporated and what you have is a hard layer down at the bottom. That hard layer in our consciousness that just won’t go away, that hard layer in our relationships that says, “What you did, I just, I’m done”, without any sense of being able to change your own consciousness and stop drinking from that cup.

Of course, that layer of sludge gets thicker and thicker as we go on and we retain all of these resentments. We hold onto all of these things, all of the negative stuff that’s happened in our lives. They become the memories that we live from. If you look down at the bottom instead of reading tea leaves, you are reading tea muck. It’s like, “Oh yeah I remember that one. I remember that one” and pretty soon there is very little room for anything to get in there. There is very little room for any sense of joy, any sense of upliftment, any sense of God, any sense of oneness, any sense of personal wholeness.

When we find a cup like that in real life, when we find a cup like that, what do we do? Do we try and clean it? No, we just throw it away. We get a new cup. We go searching for a new cup. So, we throw away our relationships. We throw away our careers. We throw away our dreams in search of something else, in search of something new, someone new, some new experience, some new cup. And then we find a bright, shiny cup. We pour our tea in but our behaviours haven’t changed. We didn’t do the work to create a new behavior about cleaning our cup so pretty soon we’re back to our tea sludge and our resentments, the muck that builds up. It’s time for a new cup. And we are on to the next one, never really growing, never really creating a new sense of self.

Henry David Thoreau once said, when any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before. Pouring out the cup, pouring out, emptying the cup of that sludge is unlearning, is letting go of those stories, is learning that there is a new possibility, that there might be a new outcome, that those stories may not even be true to begin with, that whatever we were thinking about and defining there could have a different reality, a new possibility.

And so, we empty the cup. We do the practice of emptying our cup. We do the practice of cleansing our consciousness, of letting go. And there are many, many ways in which we can do that. Of course, we teach that here all the time, whether it’s Byron Katie’s work, the work on your stories, whether it’s journaling, whether it’s the forgiveness work that we do here. There are so many ways and practices and tools that we have that you can use but the most important tool is that elbow grease, is getting in there and really cleaning out the cup, really allowing it to become clean so that we can really start to receive in a greater sense of the word, so that we can become open and receptive to all that life has to offer, so that when that good comes to us in whatever form it might be, whether it’s in a relationship, whether it’s in our finances, whether it’s in an experience that we have, whether it’s in a healing, whether it’s in a realization that life is different, and a new way to live life, a realization that, yes, you know things have changed in our world. Things have changed in my body. Things have changed around us and it’s not the same, but there is a new path, a new way, and a new you waiting to be born. It’s the calling that’s within you.

Open and Receptive

The only real way to get to that calling is to become open and receptive to it, to unlearn the patterns that we had in the past, to let go of the stories that tell us no, that’s not true, that’s not who I am, to let go of the self-limitations that we create for ourselves, to let go of the self-augmentation that we have for ourselves, “Oh, I am so good. Oh yeah. I don’t need any of this spiritual stuff. I got it all”, to let go and see if there is something new because I know when we do, when you do, when I do, we experience more joy than we ever have before. We experience a greater sense of bliss than we ever have before.

I was on a vacation, just a few days, at the lake, at a lake with the kids and Tiffany. We were boating and pulling the kids on inner tubes and I usually vigorously participate in that activity but I had strained my back and so I decided I wasn’t going to be on the tube. I was happy just to sit in the observer’s seat, or sit in the driver seat, or to just hang out. And I had an empty cup because I didn’t have the expectations of what I would be experiencing on the inner tube. It’s just like “No, whatever shows up I’m here for it”, a completely empty cup and it didn’t matter that it was a hundred and eight degrees out. The boat’s driving, the wind’s blowing, it feels okay. We have a big lake we can jump into. The kids are having so much fun. That’s all that mattered. Because I emptied my cup, I was able to feel and experience bliss during that experience. It was unlike any other boating experience I have had before.

So how do we empty out our cup? Each morning we need to start with a new cup. We need to start with a clean cup. So, every morning we’ve got to take some time. Don’t go searching for that three-day old cup of tea that’s starting to grow. Don’t go looking for that. Don’t get up and say “Oh, there’s my tea. This is my tea in life and that’s my tea”. I should have waited for that one. Anyway, we have to start with a clean cup. So, each morning we need to begin our morning fresh, open, ready to receive. Whatever has happened the day before, it’s time to let go of it. Whatever has happened during the night, whatever dreams came up or whatever happened three weeks ago, it’s time to start fresh today, to set the intention, today I start anew with a clean cup, open and receptive to all that life has to give me.

As we’re open and receptive to what life has to give us, as we’re drinking from that tea, that brew of life each day, as we move through it, we need to realize that when the tea has gone bad, it’s time to clean my cup, time to take a moment to go back and become centered, time to have a mindful moment so that we can see what our thoughts are, see what our emotions are, observe them, bless them and just let them drift away without any blame, shame or guilt. Just pour out the tea. Life is too short to drink bad tea. I think that’s a bumper sticker. Maybe we should — no, okay. So, clean our cup regularly throughout the day. Know when it’s time to let go. Know when it’s time to take a step back, to take a breath while we are in the moment, in the experience. When those ideas, when that fuzziness starts to build in our tea and our tea starts to go bad, recognizing, “Oh, okay, there is a new way to look at this. There is a new possibility here”. Let’s just pour out the cup. Let’s start fresh and allow Spirit to fill us up anew in that moment.

At the end of the day, we should give thanks. Give thanks for our daily tea. Give thanks for our daily bread. Give thanks for that which we receive, which in spirit and consciousness are ideas, ideas of truth, ideas of upliftment, ideas that inspire you. Give thanks for everything that came your way, every ripple on the wave as you’re driving the boat and there were some pretty big ripples. Give thanks for every breeze that comes your way. Give thanks for the flowers that are still blooming, the fresh water, the fresh tea, the fresh relationships, the fresh you in an old relationship, a new perspective that you have about something that is happening at work, a new perspective that you have that you can bring forward and create something new for you and all of those around you, a new perspective that you can bring to the world. Give thanks. Be thankful.

So, at the end of the day when we are washing our cup, we can remember all of the beauty that was there. We can recall all of the moments that we experience Spirit in our lives, all of the moments where we fell off the Spirit wagon and got back up with ease and grace. Clean out your cup at the end of the day. Set it down so that in the morning you can start fresh.

I’d like to go to our affirmation.

I am inseparably unified with God, constantly receiving inexhaustible abundance. 

I’m going to repeat that and then I’m going to invite you to affirm it with me.

I am inseparably unified with God, constantly receiving inexhaustible abundance. 

Would you affirm that with me? Together:

I am inseparably unified with God, constantly receiving inexhaustible abundance. 

There are a lot of long words in there. You can pare down if you like – “I’m unified with God, constantly receiving abundance”.

As we go through life, a lifetime can be spent on just this one practice, on just this one practice of emptying our cup so that we can receive all that the universe, all that the world, all that God has to offer. An entire lifetime can be devoted to it. It would be a lifetime well spent. A lifetime of love, a lifetime of joy, a lifetime of self-realization, a lifetime of knowing your oneness with God.