Awakening

Namaste – the light in me, greets the light in you!

Last winter, as a trucker stopped for a red light, a woman drove up behind him, jumped out of her car, ran to the truck’s door and knocked on it. The trucker lowered his window, and she said, "Hi, my name is Heather and you are losing some of your load." The trucker rolled his eyes and drove down the street.

When the truck stopped at the next red light, the girl caught up with it again, jumped out of her car, ran to the truck’s door and knocked on it. Again, the trucker lowered the window. Once again, the woman said very cheerfully, "Hi my name is Heather, and you are losing some of your load!" The trucker shook his head in disbelief and when the light turned green continued down the road.

At the third red light, the same thing happened all over again. All out of breath, the woman got out of her car, ran up, knocked on the truck door. The trucker rolled down the window, again she said, "Hi, my name is Heather, and you are losing some of your load!"

When the light turned green the trucker reved up the enginge and raced down the street to the next light. When he stopped, he jumped out of the truck, and ran back to the woman's car, and knocked on her window. When she lowered it, he said... "Hi, my name is Kevin. It's winter in Wisconsin, it’s snowing and I'm driving a SALT TRUCK!

Some people need to awake up and get a clue about what is going on around them.

We all have a dream stirring within us; there is a longing that tugs at our heart and our mind that there must be something better in life – a more fulfilling way to live, a deeper truer way to love, some course of action that would lead to a lasting peace of mind. The truth is - THERE IS! It is right before our eyes, but like that young woman following that salt truck, we need to awake up and get a clue to the good before us. Believe it or not, this was the heart and core of Jesus’ message. He said, “The time is fulfilled, the time is now, the kingdom of ever-expanding good is within your grasp turn to it and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15) The good news wasn’t about some way to avoid that burnie place called hell, that we would go to for eternity if we didn’t measure up. But rather, the good news was about an ever-expanding wonder and marvel and goodness that we could experience right here, right now, if only we had the eyes and a child like wisdom to see it.

Unfortunately, as I said last week, most of us weren’t taught when we were young that God is nearer than our next breath, that in fact

God’s Sacred Life permeates every cell of our being, and everything that exist, and that Divine Wisdom and Life and Love flows in every particle of creation.

Instead many of us learned about fate and predestination– as most of Shavonne’s (my 17 year old daughter) classmates have learned – that things are just going to happened because your life has been predetermined, and you better get used to it, cause it’s just God’s will, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it. You were meant to suffer and if you got used to the suffering and accepted it, it might, gain you entrance into Heaven when all things were said and done. I

It was this type of thinking that enslaved a large portion of the population of western civilization to the land that they lived on, through out the very dark middle ages of human history, allowing a few to dominated the masses.

It is also this very same type of thinking that enslaves people today, not to the land they live on, but to belief systems and commodities and life style that no longer work for them. It certainly is a very bleak way to live, perhaps that’s why so many people drink, take drugs and anti-depressants and over eat.

However, in the Middle-Ages the serfs could clearly point to those who held them in them bondage. Unfortunately today in U.S.A., in the land of the free, there is no such clear indicator as to the things – the who and the what – that holds people in bondage. Rather what holds us in bondage are disguised in parental, social and educational morays, and articulate yet irrational and illogical religious doctrines like Predetermination, Original Sin and Precarious Atonement.

The fact is that some of us were taught that it was heresy, although its right there in the Bible, to believe that we were created in the image and likeness of God and that we are radiant beings of life. So, we shut the door of our mind to the Living Matrix that surrounds and enfolds us and have chosen to linger in the darkness of this physical world, content to sleep walking through life.

All the while the dream of awakening stirs in our heart, and I choose, and I know you do to, to sleep walk no more. For Spirit is awakening in me in this moment now, I can feel It stirring. Please affirm that with me!

At different points in our something happens, a challenging experience, a hardship, a fond memory, which will remind us of who we really are, it will allow us to see beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in and we are able to grasp a glimpse, an insight, into entirely different way of being. Like the situation the Jewish Patriarch Joseph, found himself in. Everyone knows the story. Joseph was a dreamer; not much help at work. His brothers became disenchanted with him and his favorite son status, and the way he boasted about his dreams. It wasn’t the dreams themselves that provoked his brothers but the egotistical way in which he shared his dreams. You know people like that right! Well boys will be boys, so his brother’s plotted against, him threw him into a pit, and then sold him as a slave to a passing caravan. And you thought you had problems with your family.

Well, at that point Joseph would not have been considered the perfect a guide on how to win friends and influence people or thought to be the world’s best motivational leader.

Joseph goes through several more hardship, before he was finally thrown into the darkest cell of the Pharaoh’s jail, where he hits rock bottom. Here in his solitude, when things seem most bleak, Joseph awakens to promptings of spirit, and a crack in the eternal ethers opens up and he grasps an entirely new way of being. Joseph surrenders his ego driven ways and seeks an understanding and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Something moved within him that helped him to see his life differently; consequently, he was set free from what held him in bondage.

Interestingly enough, Nelson Mandela, one of the most remarkable people of our time, also found his freedom while he was being held in prison. It has been said, that they only thing you can control while you are in prison, is your own thoughts. It is literally all you have, and if you able to still the mind of all that seeks to hold it in bondage, you can create an opening for the awakening to your truest self to begin.

Or how about the tale told in the movie Living Luminaries of the Black Panther who was arrested and imprisoned unjustly. He was thrown into the darkest of cells and was fed only bread and water. Fire ants found their way into his cell and started fighting him for his bread. Of course it wasn’t a fight the fire ants could win, so the began to bit him over and over again. The more he resisted these tiny creatures the more pain he felt.

Then one day while he sat in the darkness of his cell, he started to give the bread he was given to the ants. Not only did they stop biting him when he stopped resisting them, but they began to bring him food on their tiny little backs that they had found other places. In that moment he realized what was happening, a light dawned within him, allowing him to see beyond the circumstances. He grasps entirely new way of being. He had an awakening to his true self, which change his life forever. Shortly afterwards evidence was discovered that proved his incidence for the crime he had been found guilty of. Interest!

Michael Beckwith says, “Many people are more in prison on the outside of them, than some prisoners who are actually locked up in maximum security prisons.” They are held prisoners by the narrow perception through which they think and perceive the world. Every thing they think and do must fit into the small box of their beliefs, and they can’t perceive how anything could exist outside of those parameters.

Something, also keeps us in the small box of our beliefs, and as long as the mortal mind has it’s way, we resist and judge anything that seeks to draw us out into larger, more expansive frame of mind. So you’d better begin to watch out for those challenging experience, for they are meant to break you out of that small box and set free from the things that hold you in bondage. You can choose to learn from the experience or you can fight it, like that Black Panther fought with fire ants, until he surrendered and became non-resistant. When you choose to learn from the experience a portal in the eternal ethers opens up and provides you glimpse of the Holy Spirit’s Kingdom of Good.

Michael Beckwith added we need to get a small box vaccination. That right a small box vaccination. So we can free ourselves from our limiting and restrictive ways of thinking and being, so we can awaken to the ever-expanding good that is all about us. I am sure that’s how and why a few of you first found your way here. You followed the promptings of spirit to find something better, more fulfilling that what you were experiencing. It wasn’t necessarily about finding right worship experience, or to get spiritual high, so to speak, but to get free, free of the bondage of old worn out beliefs and ways of being that cast your life in darkness.

So let us declare that this Belief, this condition (the limited restrictive thought or way of being) has no truth in me and no power over me, for I am radiant expression of God’s life, thank God for I am free. This Belief, this condition (the limited restrictive thought or way of being) has no truth in me and no power over me, for I am radiant expression of God life. Thank God for I am free.

This desire to break free of our unknown conditioning is one reason why so many of us are so excited about the transformational pilot program that we are going to hear about later today. The Transformation Experience is designed to lead us to a place of awakening to the truest part of our being.

Making a choice to follow through with a dynamic changes will lead us from one reality of being into another, it is not just about improving our human situation. It is about unveiling an entirely new paradigm for being. It will be a transformation in the reality of our understanding and experiencing our world. As we evolve in our awareness of Truth the positions we take within our mind and the beliefs we cling to, will dissolve one by one, until all we see is the truth, the Truth of our spiritual reality, or our Oneness with God Life and Love and Peace. You see, problems dissolve as we evolve. And to solve the problems of this world we have to evolve.

You might say, “Why us, why me?” – Michael Beckwith says, “Why not U!” Why are we here, why do some grow and go, while others are left behind? When you prayer for love, for peace, for abundance, it is actually part of you, the good in you trying to get out and express Itself. You see, we create the conditions and the situations that we find ourselves in, and we can choose to react and resist those circumstance or we can choose to act and free our selves from our bondage.

“There will always be forces that try to keep you small,” these are the words of Plato. Mankind has known this truth for ions, yet those in control seek to keep this wisdom from you. The question is how will you respond? I say, don’t resist, lean it to them and set your soul free! Spirit is awakening in you in this moment now, can you feel it stirring. Claim that truth with me. Spirit is awakening in me in this moment now, I can feel it stirring.

In our pursuit of awakening, how do we break free of what holds us in bondage? In the book Teach us to Pray, Charles Fillmore writes, “Each individual must first awaken to the truth that God is everywhere and that God is there as omnipresent Spirit. He must realize that God is with him constantly, permeating every cell of his being, and that this earthly substance that surrounds us is a living part, (a living breathing pulsating part), of the God substance in which we are immersed.”

Step two, as we open our awareness to the allness of God, an awakening will occur in us to the fact that everything around us is energy, God Energy. The way we move our body, a blade of grass and a flower that walk by in a park, are filled with living energy that is God Substance.

Our purpose for being here is to learn to live in alignment with this Divine Energy, awakening to our truest self. To seek to express It, saying “USE ME Lord, I am your hands, your feet your heart in expression.” We need to jump in the field of living energy with our fullest awareness and explore IT, become aware of It, feel it, sense it, be it.

Learn to see it with the “inner eye.” Ask our self, “do I see because I have eyes, or do I have eyes because I see?” When we close our eyes and try to visualize a thing, are you using your eyes to see the image? Or is there something else in you that sees?

Stop relying on your physical senses and learn to see with your inner awareness. When you close your eyes, can you see the ocean in your mind? If you rest in awareness of the ocean for a few moments, you will be able to hear, smell and feel the ocean as if you were really there! What empowers you to do this? Stretch your inner awareness at every opportunity. The awareness of joy, peace, love, abundance and freedom all are with in you and grow as you develop an awareness of them; so cloth yourself in God’s joy, peace, love abundance and freedom.

Our third step is to, as Bryon Katie would say, “surrender to what is” and allow yourself to experience true freedom, by extending forgiveness to every person, place or thing that you believe has harmed, betrayed or done you wrong in anyway. They couldn’t have done it unless you let them and invited them to do so. They couldn’t have done it with out your help. Do you control your thinking, or do they?

And our final step is to learn to ask the right questions. Our society is so caught in the pursuit of knowledge and believing they have all the right answers that we’ve stopped growing and fail to even understand what the challenges are that lie before us. When we ask why me, why this, what’s wrong, it sends us down a path of darkness, blame and pointing fingers for all things that plagues us, and draw us into experiences of more of the same.

At the workshop last month at Unity Village, Michael Beckwith pointed out that we need to learn to ask empowering questions, like: “In this situation what is mine to do?” “What am I to learn, how can I grow, how do I see Love’s Presence, how do I express my truest self.” As we rest within these types of questions the Spirit Wisdom within us arises to provide us the answer and action that will lead to the awakening of entirely new reality.

In this day an age, we have become so caught up with high tech gadgets - palm pilots, cell phone, computer and internet. But the Human Spirit is on a much higher frequency than high tech. We forget about that. We sit in front of our high tech computers and we think they are most captivating, powerful thing in our universe. But do you know, you are the highest technology ever designed, especially when you realize you are the light.

We need to do as Jesus said, “to let our light shine into the darkness,” to realize we are a point of light, of Divine Light, a radiant being of light and energy created in the image and likeness of the Infinite. Some times we forget that… So, what did Jesus really mean when he said “You are the light of the world,” well I believe that is something you will have to set on out on the path of awakening to truly discover.

Spirit is awakening in me in this moment now, I can feel It stirring

Resources for this lesson:

· Teach Us To Pray, Charles Fillmore, Unity Books, Unity Village Mo

· Notes from a workshop with Michael & Rickie Beckwith at Unity Village, Aug 2009

· Living Luminaries, a movie by the Spiritual Cinema Network 2008

· The Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, Charles Fillmore, Unity Books, Unity Village MO

· Let There Be Light by Elizabeth Sands Turner, Unity Books, Unity Village Mo

· Sermon Notes of Christopher Chenowethe, www.positivechristianity.org

· The Holy Bible, NSRV