You Can Overcome Obstacles | Rev. John Riley

Good morning, from a distance. You know, up close and personal life sometimes looks a little bit different, doesn’t it? Are you experiencing a sense of frustration in your life? Are you experiencing some obstacles — obstacles, some obstacles? You’ve got obstacles; I’ve got obstacles. Sometimes my obstacles are obstacles for seeing what is really there in front of me. 

So, raise your hand if you have any goals or dreams or visions in your life. Most of us do, yeah. There is something that we are looking for. There is something that we are yearning for or stretching for or moving towards. And raise your hand if you’ve experienced some obstacles towards achieving those goals in your life. Yes, just about all of us because there are times when things get in the way, when all of those things out there get in the way. And then what happens? We go watch TV. Sorry, it’s back to TikTok. 

Judgment, Agendas, Resentment

So, there are times in our lives when we feel that stress because that’s life. Life happens and all of a sudden what plops right in front of us is an obstacle. Now, sometimes those obstacles might be other people, those other people’s judgements that get in our way, those other people’s agendas that get in our way or those other people’s resentments that come out. I call them JARs — judgment, agendas, resentments. O.P. [other people’s] JAR’s. You got it? But what happens is when we get, when we have one of those JARs, we tend to take it and place it in our own JAR and make it our own. So, someone else’s opinions about what our goals should be all of a sudden become our opinions. Our JAR gets bigger, our own judgements about ourselves, our own disagreements or agendas that we have start to shift. Our own resentments start to build up. Our JAR gets bigger as we pick up other people’s JARs and we put them in ours and they become ours. That becomes our belief system. Have you noticed that? Have you observed that in life? 

Sometimes there is something outside of us that is actually stopping us. If our goal is to become, you know, I don’t know, an astronaut. You’re fifty-five and I really don’t want to go through the training at this point to become an astronaut, but maybe as a kid I did. So, there are some physical obstacles, there are some physical obstacles that are out there that may come in our way and so we say “Okay so much for that goal. So much for that dream.” We head down the path of apathy which is really what that is. “Ah, to heck with it. To heck with those people. I give up.” And apathy is just one step away from the blame, shame and guilt cycle. It’s just barely above that energy of blame and shame and guilt that we carry with us inside of our JAR. 

So, everybody has that little JAR and within it we can put all of our fears, all of our worries, all of our doubts and carry them with us. It’s just so handy. It gets a little heavy at times, so we’ve got to sit down and relax a little bit. But what would happen if we decided not to take on another person’s JAR. What if we decided to say, “You know what? I’m not going to make that my own obstacle just because somebody thinks that I should be doing something differently”. 

My daughter is heading to UC Irvine as a junior for her, to finish up her degree in studio art. Along that way, when we went down there, as I mentioned before, and I was thinking about all of the things she could do because she has a tremendous work ethic. She is so diligent, and she is incredibly smart. She has been on the Dean’s list at every school that she’s been to. So, my thoughts are “You don’t have to be in food service. You could go work anywhere”. Then after a while it’s like “Oh, wait a minute. It’s not my journey.” That’s my JAR I am trying to hand over to her. She’s got it.” Whatever I think she should be doing — I’ve become a “shouldabite”. You remember the “shouldabites” — ancient Egypt – “You know, what you should do …” So, I took back that JAR and I just set it aside. I got rid of it because it’s not my responsibility and she is on her journey and she has got it, whatever she is going to do. 

Overcoming Obstacles 

There are times in our lives when we come upon these obstacles in our lives and it is that time when we really need to, I think, focus. And so spiritually our goal here today is to look at how we can spiritually overcome those obstacles because I think most of the obstacles that come before us are because of our own optics. It’s because of our own lens, because of how we are seeing the world. So those things that we are seeing out there as obstacles are really just obstacles because we are accepting them as obstacles. So, our job is to keep moving forward, to move around it, find a path around it, find a path over it, find a path through it or maybe find a path to a different goal that makes more sense for us. Because sometimes our goals change in life. That goal I had as a kid of being an astronaut — yeah not so much anymore. I’m good here, grounded on Earth. So sometimes our goals change. 

But what does not change is Spirit. Spirit is always available to us to help us move through these experiences in our lives. And so, our practice — I had a wonderful quote and I have no idea where my talk is. It’s somewhere out here in the Unity ether. I had a wonderful quote from Napoleon Hill that says, “Every adverse condition in life carries with it the seed of opportunity”. Every adverse condition carries with it the seed of opportunity. So, if that’s true, the first thing that we need to do is simply pause. Pausing gives us that opportunity to get back to our conscious mind. Just simply pause and honor that obstacle.

Honor the Obstacle

Everyone take a deep breath now. I told you all to honor the obstacle. So, when that obstacle comes along if, in fact, it does contain a seed of possibility, of opportunity, of something that we can grow from and learn from and achieve from and move through so that we are a better person, then honor that obstacle. Don’t make that obstacle, don’t make yourself the victim of that obstacle. Don’t make that obstacle the cause of your despair. Don’t take that obstacle and put it inside of your JAR. But that’s what we do when we run across either situations or people or things in our lives. “Oh my God! Look at that. I’m going to take that and put it right in here. That’s my, here’s my victimness, right there”. I get back to that dualistic consciousness of victim/victor. I’m right down in there. “I would be fine if it wasn’t for all that stuff going on. I had a straight path.” So, we pause, and then we presence ourselves. 

Pause and Presence

That is the second step, pause and presence, if you’re taking notes. So, presence ourselves. Presence ourselves in the divine flow of life, love and wisdom that is always there and present to you. Presence yourself in that energy of Spirit that moves in, through and as you. Presence yourself in the infinite potentiality that is within you. Just become present to it, in the face of that obstacle that is in front of you. Be present to God.

Poised

The third step is poised. We are now poised in that presence in my I AM-ness because I am now taking on that mantle of higher consciousness. I have now moved into that space of knowing my oneness with God and so I am now poised in the presence of this obstacle. I am now poised in the presence of whoever is out there pointing their finger at me, all of those shouldabites in the world. I am poised in my own I AM-ness, not taking it on, not putting it in my JAR, just allowing it to be, just allowing it to be. 

So, get a sense of that because I think we all have had that opportunity in our lives, haven’t we? Get a sense of a time where you were moving towards your goals or moving towards your vision or moving towards that thing that you were most excited about and then all of a sudden there’s that thing that’s in front of you. Just get a sense of yourself being poised with it, not being upset by it, just being poised and presenced in the midst of it. 

We pause. We presence ourselves. We become poised in the I AM-ness that we are, and then we pivot. We move our focus away from the obstacle, back to our vision. We move our focus away from the obstacle back to our goal. We move our focus away from that which is standing in front of us, that is creating this experience, and focus back on God. 

The Power of Faith

Now, sometimes that pivot takes the form of moving into a different direction. So, when we are in that state of consciousness the way will open up to us for our next step. All we have to do is faithfully take a step. That power of faith. That power of faith of “I don’t know what is going to happen. I am just going to move in this direction because that is what I am feeling inside. That is what my intuition is telling me. That is what Spirit is telling me”. I will give it “hoity-toity” name. Spirit said, “move over here” instead of our ego saying and focused on what is right in front of me, focused on how wrong it is, how horrible it is, how awful it is. There are some things we can focus on in this world today. Yes? Well, stop it. That’s a different talk. 

Re-focus ourselves on our path. Honor what is there so you can find what is good, so that you can see the seeds of goodness that will guide you in your other direction. Honor what is there because it is growing you. As the Daily Word said, it’s making you more aware of you because I have to tell you in my experience all of those things that ya’ll do that, all of those JARs that I take on, all of those things that I put into mine, I am taking them on because I already believe them about me. 

So, half of the time the things that we are so upset about, we agree with. Oh my gosh. You are arguing about it, but you know what, I agree with you. There are times when I’m a knucklehead. Almost said something different. If you take that opportunity to look at what’s happening around you and look at that obstacle, and what is bubbling up within you, it’s revealing something that can be healed. It’s revealing within you something that you already believe in yourself, some false belief. We call it a sin, a false belief, in Unity. Something that is not true, but we believe in it. When we take aside that and say “Ah, there’s that belief. How can I look at it a little differently? How can I reshape it, reform it? How can I move a little bit differently around it?” 

Be Careful What You Water Your Dreams With

Lao Tzu and the Dao de Jing said that, be careful about what you water your dreams with, that vision that you are holding, that vision of where you want to be, that goal that you have set for yourself. Be careful what you water your dreams with because if you water your dreams with cynicism, with frustration, with resentments, then you are going to reap the weeds of resentment, the weeds of cynicism. That is going to be the lens through which you see the world. So be careful what you are watering your dreams with. Water it with a vision of what you would be like, what life would be like when you are there achieving your goal, when you are there living your vision. Imagine yourself already being there and experience life from that vantage point, from those optics. As you do so the way will open up. The path will open up around it, over it, through it, maybe in a completely different direction. 

How many of us have made changes in our lives, have made a career change, have made a degree change, have made some sort of redirection in our lives, sometimes multiple times? What time is it? Be careful about what you are watering your vision with. 

I will give you a really quick example. My daughter and I were coming home from the city after an event Friday night and we took public transportation. Of course, everyone is in masks and things and it was late at night and we got on the train in the city and we were waiting for people, waiting for the train to go. It was the last train — for those of you who are not from the Bay area, the city is San Francisco. Just saying. At no point in time ever do we say San Fran. Just saying. Or Frisco. Now that we’ve got that, now that we’ve educated the world. — We were coming home from the city and I started to just doze off and I was ready and we were coming down to Palo Alto and Erin says “Hey, it’s time to go”. So, I got up, we got there, got off the train and we are walking away, and the train is going by and I’m like, “I don’t have my phone”. I know. Does anybody not have a phone? Yeah, everyone has cellphone that they carry with them. I don’t carry a wallet anymore. My cellphone has my ID and one credit card and that’s it. That’s all I carry around and there it goes, south on the train. 

So, I am sitting here, looking at this obstacle from a sense of deep — it started with frustration, inner rage, because you know, I don’t blame anyone else for this. It was all me. Erin just looks at me and goes “We can catch the train at another station. I can get it.” And I’m like, “What? Are you kidding? No, come on”. So, she drives and she knows yep, we can catch it at this station, like two or three down the road and we are driving next to the train tracks, no train. Past California, no train. Past — what’s next? — Mountainview, no train. Come up to Sunnyvale. Here comes the train but we are stuck behind the train and the car — what are those things called when the guard rails and ding, ding, ding, ding? — There goes my train. The rails come up and there goes my train. Erin is like okay, we can catch it at this station, a few stations down. I’m like, alright. We get there and the train hasn’t come yet and I jump out. I run out to the platform. Here’s the platform, there are the tracks. I am looking, here comes the train. I pull out my ticket just in case I need it. I don’t know. I am nervous. I need to look at something because I didn’t have my phone. Otherwise, I would be looking at my phone. 

Here comes the train and there is the train, two platforms over. They put a fence between the platforms and the tracks, luckily, otherwise I might have made a dash. So, I am looking frantically because there is a subway somewhere to get over to that track and I run down there and by the time I get up there. There is the train. I know, right? Such a victim. I go back slowly to the platform and I’m like I better not be slow because she is going to have another idea. So, I start running, I get up to the car. I was on the wrong platform. Okay, we will make it here. She went to the last stop and all the way there I’m like, “You really think they are going to have it? I mean, someone stole it. My credit cards are already on the internet. It’s just gone.” I turned to her and said “What is the likelihood of them actually finding it?” She says very high, a high degree of confidence in this. I’m like okay, she had enough faith for me. 

I just let go and we got to the end of the line and she says, “I’m going up this time. I know the station” and I’m like, “Oh, thank God”. Five minutes later she comes down with my phone, intact, everything in it, because the conductors go through. 

She is an incredible manifester. I would have been gone, canceling credit cards. She would have said “Well, you know, if you don’t get it that day then you will get it but it will take about a week or so because you have to go through all the paperwork. The conductors go through the train everyday after every stop to pick up stuff. I have lost stuff and picked up things” and all I could say was thank you at 2:30 in the morning as we drove home. Must be Tiffany. We, she is an incredible manifestor and so are you. 

Feed the Goal

So, when you meet these obstacles what are you going to manifest? How are you going to meet it? As a thing of misery or as something to learn from, something to grow from, something to shift our focus away from the misery and back to Spirit? Feed that goal with Spirit, with love, with joy, with enthusiasm, with “I don’t know” consciousness. Dorothy Pearson, an early Unity minister, would often say “I am in the realm of I don’t know. But God does.” That infinite intelligence if we just open up to it will guide us into our next step with faith.