You Can Create Your Life | Rev. John Riley

Good morning. Good morning. Well, I can feel that Spirit. I can feel that energy flowing in this room. Can you, can you feel it? What a joyous experience this is. We’re in a four…the third of a four part series about talking about stories. And we began with the idea of the power of stories and the idea that how our universal and cultural stories shape the way we think about and experience our lives. And you become aware of what stories are playing in the background. And it’s the – we talked about the art of reading the ancient text as the Bible, such as the Bible, spiritually as a way to empower life on a daily basis. And how we can look at those stories in the present moment and become aware of the stories that we’re living. And that can be a transformational catalyst for us.

A way for us to start to shift out of an old way of thinking into a new way of thinking, a new way of being, so that we can experience life through a brand new lens and break forth that authentic self, your Christ self. And try to start to write a new story in this very moment. And so today I’m going to start – we’re gonna talk about future stories. You know, the stories that we have about what’s gonna happen in the future. They may be stories like “what’s gonna happen this afternoon?” You know…”what am I…what’s on my plan today?” When’s this guy gonna be done? I’ve gotta get on letters. Yeah. So I know you’re all thinking about it, cuz I just said it. So go ahead and think about what’s happening this afternoon. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

The 49ers. Okay. That’s what it was. Not letters. Nobody’s writing letters to anyone. We’re gonna be watching the 49ers. Good for you. So now bring yourselves back. It could be, you know, with the holidays just around the corner, you know, we might start telling stories about the excitement of Halloween, the comfort of Thanksgiving, or the joys that come from Hanukkah or Christmas or Kwanza. Anybody have those kinds of feelings or stories that come up this time of year? Well, there’s a few. Yeah. Or we might be telling these other stories that happen. You know, when the holidays come around, the increased traffic, the hectic schedules, the, the swamps at the stores and the malls, or that certain relative whom shall remain nameless except for when they see them at the holidays, we have those kind of stories too. Can you, sense a difference in how the stories make you feel when we’re, looking into the future?

You might have other stories like dreams and goals. You know, we all have dreams, we all have goals. Maybe it’s a bucket list of the things that you want to see or experience in life. Maybe it’s the you know… the goals that you had from this year that you set for yourself that you’ve been working on, or the goals that you’ve forgotten. All of those ideas about what life is going to be like in the future. What 2023 is going to bring us? How is that going to be different this year? How am I gonna change this year? What am I gonna do? What goals or maybe career goals or relationship goals? You know, we had the keys to the Kingdom class a few weeks ago and there’s a group within that class that is doing it all over again just to keep that idea going.

That’s why we have classes is so you can learn them and then practice them over and over again so that they become real for you and they become part of your life. Well, today I want to tell you…I want to give you an illustration of our future stories by telling you a story about the past. This is not back to the future. This is a different story. So back in 1845, back in eight. Anybody remember? 18? No, No. Back in 1845. A young knight. Well, okay, Colin, you remember quite a bit what happened in 1849?

The Power to Change Your Mind

Yeah, well, that’s a great memory. See for me – history – I gone my son Ethan, excellent at history. He has a mind like a vault. He just remembers all kinds of things. Me, not so much. That’s why I have to look it up. So in eighteen forty nine, eighteen forty five, Myrtle Filmore was born. Now, if you don’t know, Myrtle Filmore was one of the co-founders of the Unity movement. And in 1845, she was born. And through her first 19 years she was considered very frail. She grew up in a very strict religious home, and they didn’t believe in any entertainment. So she didn’t really experience any of that. She was told that you have inherited this disease called tuberculosis. She was called an invalid throughout her life. Can you imagine growing up in that environment, being told that you’re an invalid, being told that you have tuberculosis being told that you’re invalid.

That’s another way to look at it. And so somewhere along the line, when she turned 19, the tuberculosis was really bad. She was struggling with it tremendously. And you may not know this, but back in the 1800s there was no cure for tuberculosis. There was no nothing that they could do for it. In fact, the CDC says tuberculosis accounted for 25% of all deaths in the United States. A quarter of all deaths in the United States was caused by tuberculosis. And so here at 19, she was suffering. She was really struggling. They had tried everything and nothing worked.

I love this story from the Household of Faith – the story of Unity. This was written by James Dillet Freeman. You you may know from the, the poem that we read at the end the Prayer for Protection. He was the poet laureate for Unity. He talks about this event, Dr. Weeks, Dr. Edy Weeks was coming along and he had been recommended by a friend who had been studying this new thought as was called back then, and felt that Myrtle might get some help from it for her physical condition. They did not know much about the subject, but they had tried everything else that they knew about, and it had all failed. And they had reached the place where they were willing to try anything. Have you ever reached the place? Well, you just give up. You let go. I’m willing to try everything. You let go of your thinking of this is how I’ve gotta solve this problem. This is the way it has to be. And we just say, “Okay, I let go.” Another way to say that, “Okay, I let go and I let God”, they had reached that point of letting go and saying, “Well, I’m just open.” And that’s the crack through which Spirit begins to work within us.

So they went, and after they came out of it, Charles Filmore came away from that lecture long ago feeling no different than he had, than he had when he gone. But the woman who walked out of the hall on his arm, was not the same woman who had entered it. A new, a different, a liberating, a transforming conviction was blazing in her heart and mind. Now, everyone has gone to a lecture and had the experience of having some statement of the lecturers stand out so vividly in their mind that they have felt he said that, especially for me. Have you ever had that experience? I know some of you have that you’ve said that to me after the service. Sometimes you tell me what I said and I realize I never said that, but that’s okay. I’ll still take credit for it.

Be Loved By God

But we’ve all had that experience that we have been to something that’s inspired us, right? We’ve had we where we’ve heard something, maybe it was on Instagram. We, saw the little reel, or we saw something that inspired us. Maybe we you know, heard it in a lecture or we’ve heard these words that just inspire us. We’ve all had that experience, right? Anybody, everybody have that experience at one point in time or another that something has inspired you in your life. And then what did you do the next day? We went back to work. We went back to work and we forgot about it. So we pulled that Instagram back up, right? That inspiration that was within us was that flash of spirits saying, “Hey, this is your next step.” And yet, sometimes it’s very hard for us to take that next step and to really own. And the reason it touched us so deeply is not because of the person on the stage, but because it touches something within you. It’s that spark that’s within you saying, ah, this is the way I need to walk. And so that was the way Myrtle Fillmore felt that night as she walked from the hall. One statement repeated itself over and over in her mind, “I am a child of God and therefore do not inherit sickness.”

I am a child of God and therefore do not inherit sickness. I am a child of God and therefore do not inherit sickness. Would you affirm that with me? Together I am a child of God and therefore do not inherit sickness. One more time. I am a child of God and therefore do not inherit sickness. Now, that was the message that was running through her head. That was the idea, That was the spark that said, “You know what? I am not this disease. It’s not my identity.” She grew up being told that that was who she was. She grew up being told that she was an invalid. She grew up, you know being kept from having any fun just to stay safe and stay healthy. And what did that do? It created more of the condition. In one hour, Myrtle Fillmore’s whole outlook towards herself, her life had been changed like a revelation. And surely it was this simple and divine idea that she was a beloved child of God and that God’s will for her could only be perfect life and wholeness.

She was a beloved child of God. And God’s will for her could only be perfect life and wholeness filled her mind and possessed her being. That one event, that one thought transformed her consciousness and created, birthed this idea called Unity. And it’s why we’re here today. It’s from that one transformational thought. Now, in truth, she didn’t just let that transformational thought sit, she just didn’t say, “Hey, that was a good thought.” But she applied that every day. It wasn’t a miraculous healing. The TV didn’t just disappear. In fact, it took four years of her meditating and affirming and forgiving herself, self-forgiveness before her consciousness was changed. Is that anyone sound familiar? Like the fifth principle, the practical application of spiritual teachings. It doesn’t become real for us. We can hear about it, but until we actually put it into work. And she put it into action for four years and eventually her body responded.

Healing Experience 

Now she calls this her healing experience. And you can call it whatever you wanna look at it however you want. But this was the experience that she went through. And out of that came the idea of unity. Because the Fillmores were really searching around for what they, what what, what is this experience of God? They weren’t happy with just sitting around and hearing the words about God. They weren’t content with, you know, hearing everyone’s description about what they did at church. They wanted to have a felt sense and experience of the Divine. And that was the whole purpose. So that their ministries were very different. Charles’ vision, Charles Fillmore’s vision, his future thinking about Unity was this idea that we can create some education. We can create some structure around it. We can give…help people understand better what we’re talking about.

Help people understand what these stories are telling us, and then put into place practices that we can all use and do so that we can start to have that felt experience of God in our lives. That was Charles’s vision and that’s what he started working down. Now, Myrtle’s vision was much more feet in the street. And if you read or listen to Charles Fillmore at the time, you know, at the time, very intellectual, can be very hard to read. I’ve read the book Prosperity, which was written during the depression over and over and over again, and I get different nuggets out of it. You really have to study it. And Myrtle Fillmore was just so much like, “Hey, this is what you need to do. Just, just do this.” And so along the way her practice was-her ministry was really around the children because she grew up having a tape being played over and over again, a tape of of her own of what people said of her, right?

You are invalid, you’re an invalid, you are a sickly child. You have tuberculosis. This is the tape that was running through her head. This is the history from which you came from. And what, what she realized is what if we taught our kids to question that story, to create a new story in their life? What if we taught our kids to have that felt experience of Spirit in their lives? And so her focus was really on the children. She created the book, We Wisdom. I don’t know if  anybody have ever seen that. It was in my doctor’s office when I was a kid. It’s not published anymore, but it was a staple in every doctor’s office. And that was the only thing I looked forward to going to the doctor, is I got to read the We Wisdom when I was there.

She also was the, the inspiration for Silent Unity for our 24 hour prayer ministry that’s been going on for almost 130 years. Continually. And along the way, people would write her letters, letters over and over again about all kinds of things. Like how would you, how do you draw from source or what, how do you create permanent prosperity? And one of the letters she wrote was The Threefold Healing Pattern, The Threefold Healing, that all healing comes in three folds. Now these letters were put together and are in a book called The Healing Letters of Myrtle Fillmore. I think there are about three copies in the bookstore, but we’re getting more. They took all of these letters, I think they’re 22 of them in this book. And they, they put, they put ’em together for us to learn from. And I’d like to read from one of them because it’s so powerful.

Healing Threefold- Body, Mind and Spirit

This idea of threefold healing. Threefold healing is all healing begins in mind in consciousness. All healing begins in consciousness. Until we begin to heal our consciousness and heal our awareness and heal our stories, you know, we will still be experiencing whatever those stories are. So all healings, whether it’s in a relationship, whether it’s your prosperity, whether it’s your, your health, your sense of wellbeing, it all begins in consciousness, in your mind, the threefold healing. Talk about mind, body, and spirit. So start with your mind, you know, work on, work on changing those behavioral stories. Move to your body. Make sure you’re doing everything that you can that you need to for your body. So I have a goal of losing some weight and I’ve done great this year. I gained the covid 20, whatever that was, whatever that number was. Anybody else gain a little bit during covid, now that that’s over, whatever, however you wanna put that, it’s like, okay, now it’s time for me to get back into shape. And I’ve gotten so far with it, but I wasn’t, I haven’t been willing yet to get up and go for a walk. Anybody else have that kind of issue? Yeah, I haven’t been willing to do my yoga every day to stretch out my hamstrings, to do all the things that I need to do every day because

Cuz I’m a little cuckoo, which I’m sure you all agree. But besides that, because in my consciousness I haven’t healed that, I haven’t made that a priority. I haven’t decided that that’s what I need to do. I haven’t decided that my body’s worth it to go through this process to really strengthen it and, and be more vital. You do the things that I need to do. So healing begins with the awareness as well as the willingness to do it. And that’s the body. And then the spirit is aligning ourselves with spirit, aligning ourselves in our thoughts, our words, and our actions with that one presence in one power. You know, being open and willing to, to just be, to let go and let God, to let go of the project and control, you know, model that we all live under. This is what life’s gonna be like. This is when, when he who shall not be named is gonna come over. This is what it’s gonna be like. And I can’t wait to go talk to my friend tomorrow about all the things that happened yesterday.

That gossip is just, you know, that’s, that’s what our, our lives have become. Until we become aware, until we wake up and say, Oh, this is what I’m thinking. How can I change that thinking in order to change my life? And am I willing to do the work? And can I align myself with spirit? This is what she says in the healing, the healing words of Myrtle. Philmore daily declare that your spiritual life and world, your mental life and world, your physical life and world are all unified. And that you were expressing harmoniously the ideas of the Christ mind. That authentic self, that higher self within you. You are expressing that on all three plains, mind, body and Spirit. One who strikes a balance between the study of the mental side and the manifestations and the living in this threefold beingness is truly blessed in prosperous.

Create Your Life 

So it’s not enough to just think about it. We must put it into our consciousness, into our awareness so that we start being it. It’s not enough to do the things, like to go on the walk, but I need to change my beingness. So I’m willing to, to, to enjoy and to express and to allow it to flow through me. It’s not the doing that’s important, it’s the returning to the being of it. Let me first start being that expression of spirit. When me first start being and, and knowing and feeling that expression of spirit in my life. And then from that, having that rich abundance flow through me. Then I start doing from that experience, it’s moving from predict and control to what they call the chaotic experience, right? The world is chaos. Has anybody ever noticed that? If you haven’t, go look at the news.

You’ll see there’s a little bit of chaos out there. And this human experience, there’s stuff that happens. But if we can maintain that balance in the midst of all that chaos, if we maintain that spiritual balance, that mental balance or thoughts continue to come back to Spirit, come back to, you know, being in alignment with love and compassion and understanding and kindness. And then if we can start acting from that, treating ourselves like that, just moving from that perspective, then our life begins to change as she puts it. The past doesn’t worry. The one who does this, the past does not worry them. The future does not entice them. They know that a full measure of good is here and now a full measure of good is here. And now in this moment, the one who does this, profits by the past, glory is in the now and is fearless looking toward the future.

We create continuously. We are creative beings. We create our life experience. The stories that we are are living, we share those stories with each other. We create the world around us, and we do it all right now, in this present moment. Yes, there may be taxes that we have to do later on. Part of our manifesting of all this are things that we have to do in the future. And we can predict some of those. But when those shifts come and it doesn’t happen the way we thought, return to balance and just say what’s the next path? But we predict or we create in this present moment. And every story that we tell has the potential to bring us closer to God, closer to that indwelling Spirit, that infinite flow of love that flows from within that infinite flow of peace, that infinite flow of joy is always there. And our stories can bring us closer to that, to experience that more fully. Or our stories begin to edge God out.

Our stories begin to think, “well I’m not that I’m invalid, I’m not worthy, I’m not willing, I just can’t.” Our stories push that aside. And another word for edge got out is ego. That’s great. So our ego begins to have all of these worries. Our shadow self, our shadow ego comes out even even our, you know, our pompous ego. Anybody, don’t raise your hand. Anybody have a anybody have a pompous ego there? I’ll claim it. Of course, we all have those, those times when we feel like we’re on top of the world. Nothing wrong with that. As long as we know that the world is spirit and I’m here to serve Spirit instead of edging God out, I’m here to be in the flow of that abundance. I’m here to create my future right here now by being in the flow of abundance. And that was the great lesson that Myrtle Fillmore brought. Whatever healing that you want to do in the future, whatever experience that you want to create in the future begins here and is always operating here and now.