This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
The Mirror and the Myth: Seeing Through Fear’s False Reflections – Rev. Aimee Daniels
DESCRIPTION
Fear has a way of distorting our vision—of ourselves, of others, and of what’s truly possible. It whispers myths: You’re not enough. You don’t have enough. You are separate. These stories often manifest as self-judgment, judgment of others, and selfishness born of scarcity-thinking. This week, we’ll explore how fear becomes a mirror reflecting false beliefs back at us—and how spiritual awareness invites us to return to wholeness and connection with ourselves, others and the Divine.
SUMMARY
The transcript summarizes a spiritual message about overcoming fear and judgment through spiritual awareness and connection to one’s inner truth. Key points include:
– Fear and judgment are often rooted in false beliefs and stories we tell ourselves from childhood. These can be recognized and released through spiritual practice.
– Selfishness and a sense of lack often stem from a disconnection from our true spiritual source and abundance. Cultivating awareness of our wholeness and sufficiency can foster generosity.
– When faced with troubling events or conflicts in the world, the invitation is to examine our own beliefs and reactions, and find constructive ways to respond with clarity and compassion.
– The message encourages a meditation practice to identify and release fears, reconnect with one’s spiritual truth, and rest in trust and gratitude.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Aimee Daniels:
Good morning everyone. It’s great to be back. I was on vacation and I was like, I missed seeing everyone. We were on a very different time zone, so I didn’t even, usually I tune in when I’m not in town and I didn’t tune in. So it’s really great to be back. I love that song that Paige sang for us because I think we can look at standing in the light in a couple different ways. We can look at it like, okay, I feel free and safe to show up as I am in the world, but we can also look at it and say, I’m standing in the light of my own consciousness and I know my wholeness and I see who I am that is bigger than this experience that I’m having as a human being. I love that song. He won The Voice. Jordan Smith won The Voice. I didn’t know that. Anyway, let’s dive in.
Could you go to the first slide, Dom? I just want to give a special blessing on Dom. By the way, we were having tech problems this morning, and those of you who are online, give him some love because at one point it was like, I don’t know if this is going to work today. And he got it working, so thank you, Dom. So there’s an old story about a sculptor who was asked how he created such a beautiful angel from a block of stone, and he smiled and he said, I simply chipped away everything that wasn’t the angel. And so for us, when we think about our own identity, especially spiritually, we’re just kind of chipping away everything that isn’t our spiritual identity and fear and the stories that we’re told about ourselves, the stories we take on as children about ourselves can really make us think we’re not our true self.
And so I love that as an analogy. We’re just really unpeeling all the layers that don’t belong to us. So as Gordon read to us from when fear speaks, listen, fear can show up as the voice of judgment. Fear can show up a lot of ways, but judgment. We’re going to talk about judgment and then we’re going to talk about selfishness, which I was like, huh, selfishness, but we’ll get to that. But the whole idea is that of this theme is really we take on false reflections, we take on false identities, and they’re the things that probably get created in our minds when we’re little because we’re trying to figure out the world. Don Miguel Ruiz talks about this in his own experience. He says, when I was little, all of us, the first thing you get is language. You get language, and then people start to communicate to you, and then they start to tell you who you are or who you should be.
Be a good boy. Oh, it’s better to be a doctor or a lawyer or a whatever. And we start to judge ourselves according to someone else’s voice. And so that’s really where it starts. And so what does the voice of fear often say to us? The voice of fear is actually a messenger. It reminds us where we’re disconnected from ourself or where we’re feeling uncomfortable with things. And sometimes fear shows up as self-judgment. So when we think about judgment, sometimes it’s, I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy enough, I’m not smart enough. I should be a different person than I am. And sometimes it shows up as a judgment of others, and I think we can all relate to that right now. You’re wrong, black and white thinking all of that, you’re the problem. And just humanly, we can all do that in our heads. Sometimes we, I know I do. I always think it’s funny when I get the talk that I need to hear it happened again.
And so what we want to do is we want to begin to recognize these voices that are playing in our head that are not us. Could you go to the next slide, Ben? And as I said, our childhood mind makes up solutions and anything we put in our mind, just think about the brain for a second. It forms a channel with a neuro transmitter, and it’s like playing a program. It’s just playing a program that we wired in it at some point. And in his book, positive Intelligence, Zad Shain says, we all have saboteurs that come up in our brain. I like to say when we get triggered or when life happens, we all have these saboteurs and they’re really guardians that help us to survive our childhood, whether it’s a real threat or an imagined threat or we’re just trying to figure out what’s going on.
We sense things as kids. I relate to that from my own childhood. My parents, I’ve shared this before, my parents didn’t have the best marriage, and it was sort of like the Cold War, and it sounds terrible, but that created in me the need to make everything. And that still comes up for me when there’s conflict happening or whatever. That still comes up for me because that got wired in me when I was little. Our saboteurs are there to help us, but as we become adults, we don’t need them anymore. But our brain still works that way. We all have the first saboteur, which is the judge, and the judge is the universal saboteur that afflicts everybody. And if you don’t think you have the judge, just walk around during the week and notice how often you’re judging. And I think it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes between judging and discerning, right?
Am I just discerning that I don’t like something and it doesn’t work for me? Or am I judging? I think sometimes that can be a little tricky. I know it is for me, but the judge is the universal saboteur that afflicts everyone. It’s the voice in your head that beats you up over mistakes and things that have made, and it warns you all the time about what could go wrong. Think about it. It’s just assessing. And sometimes this is the voice that keeps us up in the middle of the night. Anyone ever have that? I get the Sunday nights sometimes worrying about the week, but the judge is fixated on what’s wrong with you and with other people. And another clue to the voice in our head is just like, if you hear the word should or must, then that’s the voice in your head talking.
That’s sort of that voice driving you. And the invitation is to treat it just as that it’s just the voice in your head. It’s actually not you. And it’s pretty easy sometimes to think the voice in our head is the truth about us, isn’t it? Or it’s our life. But who you are is bigger than that spiritually. If you ever take a step back and really think about it, you ever think how silly it is that we get so upset about things? It’s like our spirit’s eternal. This is just the play we’re acting in right now. And I don’t mean to discount life in any way, but it’s like if you can pull yourself back a step, sometimes you just look and you got to kind of laugh, but the voice is there to be a messenger. And when you notice that you’re feeling fear, you just want to talk to it like a voice, and then you want to take it into your meditation and you want to listen to it, take it into your practice.
Because if something is up for you, it’s got a message for you. It doesn’t mean you’re broken. Before I came into this teaching, I think I thought I was broken. I had a guy who painted my house and he’s like, you’re not broken. You don’t have to fix yourself. But you know what? I didn’t get that then. It wasn’t until I came into the seat, and I’m not saying I’m perfect, it’s more just like, no, I’m allowed to be imperfect a human being, and my imperfection doesn’t make me bad. We all have it, but who we are is we’re bigger than that. And so the voice is a messenger and we just want to ask it to tell us, and we’re going to do a little exercise later, a little practice together. But we just want to ask it, what does it want us to know about our life? What’s here for us? Sometimes it’s as simple as saying, I need to give myself a little bit of grace. Sometimes it’s like, Ooh, I’m kind of in a place where maybe I do actually need to make some changes in my life, but just to listen to it and to know that there’s something here for you.
So Dennis Med Jones talks about this in the book. He says, we don’t need to fix ourselves. We need to remember ourselves. I really like that quote. We need to remember ourselves. And so when you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see someone who’s inherently worthy, or do you hear the voice of not enoughness? I dunno about anyone else. I don’t look in the mirror and say, gosh, I’m just so worthy. I look in the mirror and go, where did that wrinkle come from? But we’re not really taught that, right? We’re not really taught, or at least most of us are not taught to think well of ourselves. In fact, I would say when I was growing up, we were taught not to think too well about ourselves. Don’t be too big for your britches, all of that. And to realize that we can hold ourselves in a place of wholeness and enoughness, but not be conceited and fear distorts our view of things because when we’re afraid, it magnifies it.
Have you ever had that happen where you just feel like the fear took you over and then we don’t see things the way they are? I was thinking when I was working on my talk, I was thinking about when I got divorced. I didn’t really have a spiritual practice then, but I would just literally lay on the couch for hours if something was bothering me, which is really not my personality to lay on the couch, but I would just, that’s the only thing I knew to do. I laid on the couch. And what I noticed is as I laid there, whatever was bothering me went away and it just got softer. And so that’s the invitation is wholeness is not about being perfect. It’s about remembering that nothing that’s essential about you can ever be lost. That’s what wholeness is, and that’s really what we’re going for.
And there’s a great story. I love to illustrate this. It’s a story from India. It’s about a water bearer, and he had two pots, and one of the pots was perfect and the other pot was cracked. And apparently he could talk to his pots and one of ’em said, I’m so sorry. I’m not doing my job because I’m cracked. And every time you get to where you’re taking the water, half of it is gone. And he said, I planted seeds along your side of the path and you’re cracks watered the flowers and you’ve been serving beauty all along. And just this recognition that the things we see as flaws, sometimes those are actually the gifts that we are offering. Love that story.
Byron Katie tells us that the world is nothing but my perception of it. I can only see what I believe. And when we judge others, when we gossip, when we criticize, when we withdraw, what we’re often trying to do is deflect attention from taking a look at what’s going on inside of us. And Byron Katie teaches us to just really in the same way, to look at it as a thought, do I have to believe this thought that my mind is having right now? So if I believe that I’m separate, if I believe that I’m not good enough, I see evidence of that. And so we want to ask the question, particularly as it relates to others. If I am judging someone else, what is it that I cannot be with? What is it about what’s happening that I cannot be with?
And I like to ask myself, where does that live in me? I find even if I don’t feel that I’m that way right now, but if I take a look at it, I’m like, okay, when have I ever been that way? And really, it’s about what we believe inside too. Sometimes we can’t be with something because it violates one of our beliefs. When I think about the world right now, I think that’s what triggers me. Some of the things going on violates my belief that everyone should have the right to be who they are. And I’m going to come back to that in a minute. So let’s talk for a minute about selfishness. As I said, when I first saw the title of this chapter, selfishness, I thought, what is selfishness doing in a book about fear? I just didn’t instantly get it. And what he’s really talking about here is believing in lack.
If I’m selfish, if I hoard, if I need things to be a certain way, then that really means I believe in lack. I have a scarcity mindset. And if you look at all the conflicts in the world right now, think about it. In our country, where we’re at politically, all the things we’re seeing play out is really based on people’s belief in scarcity. It’s a need to have a certain outcome. It’s a need to have the world or our country be a certain way. But it’s really a belief in scarcity. It’s a belief that God is not our source. And Michael Beckwith says, lack is not the absence of stuff. It’s the absence of awareness of your source. And your source is not just about money, your source is about your spirit. It’s like knowing that we’re always okay, regardless of what is happening. That is a connection to our source.
But what do I do? What do we all do if we feel cut off from source? We grasp, we hold on to things. We might become very stingy. We might not be generous either physically or emotionally. It’s normal. But when I trust that I’m connected to this thing which is infinite, then generosity is going to flow more naturally from me. And that’s emotional generosity too. I would say. When I think about my own self, I’m like, if really the two are actually a little bit connected for me, if I’m judging someone else and I’m being stingy with my emotional generosity about them, then I’m really living in lack. I’m not seeing the truth of the other person. I’m not seeing them in their wholeness. Does that make sense? So instead of practicing selfishness, we want to practice awareness of the sufficiency that is always present.
And I want to say if you’re personally experiencing lack, because we all go through times like that in our life too, that we have times where things feel more abundant. We have times where things feel more like they’re flowing, but if you’re experiencing lack, it can be really hard. It can be hard. And I think that’s when we need to honestly lean into each other. I think prayer is a major thing to help us shift an experience of lack. It’s a major thing in helping us to shift an experience of just being caught in judgment or just being caught in the triggering voice in our brain, because sometimes we just need to break the pattern of what we’re doing. And so I just want to talk for another minute about what’s going on in the world right now, because I think we just came back from vacation.
We were in Iceland in Norway, and it was great, but we went to the Nobel Peace Museum, and as we walked in, we decided to sign up for a little tour. The gentleman would walk you around, he’d explain about the Nobel Peace Museum, and he says, is anyone American here? We raised our hands. There were like five people, and I could tell he had some judgment because Norway was inhabited by the Nazis for five years, so they’re super progressive and whatever. And I said, yeah, I kind of whispered under my breath like, Hey, I’m sorry. We’re kind of a mess. I know. But I was walking through the museum and I felt this deep sense of sadness. One of the, because first of all, inspiring, all these people who are honored have done amazing work in the world to try to bring forth peace. But one of the honorees was an organization that helps prevent nuclear activity in the world. They’re like an anti-nuclear organization that was put together by the survivors of Hiroshima. And there’s all these terrible pictures about what happened to people. And I was sitting there as an American, I was like, oh my God, we did that.
And so I share that because I feel like we’re running into situations like that a lot right now in life where it’s just like things are happening. We don’t have a container to put ’em in. I don’t have a container to put ’em in. And I try not to be on social media all day every day. But I think within what is happening for us to recognize spirit in the world, I think we need to find what we’re called to do with what we see. My sister texts me constantly about whatever she’s reading. And yesterday she sent me something and it was about something about companies leaving America or something like that. And I said, this looks a little fake to me. And I put it into Chachi bt. I’m like, can you fact check this? And can you tell me if this is true or not true or whatever?
And it came back with something and we figured out it wasn’t true. But my point in sharing this about my sister is even though she’s following this stuff every day, she’s doing something that’s making her feel better. And what she’s doing is she’s helping a candidate where she lives in Minnesota to get elected, and she’s gotten politically active, which is something she’s never done her whole life. And I look at that and I think she’s taken something that’s triggering to her, and she’s figured out a way to do something with it. And going to the Nobel Museum made me, we were leaving. I said to Rich, I’m like, gosh, I just feel like maybe we should be doing something in the world to work for peace. That was the inspiration I had coming out of there. And I share that because I have no idea what that is that I might be supposed to do.
But I think we all need to ask the question, if we’re triggered by what’s around us, what’s ours to do? And I look at that, and I said this already, but my beliefs are that everyone should be treated fairly. People should be allowed to live the life they want to live, and that we don’t need to control everything. And so for me, it’s taking a step back, looking at it, okay, what beliefs of mine are being triggered that are leading me into judgment or into scarcity thinking and just taking a step and take back and taking that into practice and say, okay, let me be sit with it when we’re emotional too. I don’t want you to stuff down your emotions. I’m going to come back to that in a minute, but just sit with it and see what emerges. And I meant to say this earlier, but I want to talk about emotions just for a second before we move on.
Because when we think about judgment and we think about anything that triggers us, emotions are a natural thing. And we can think on the spiritual journey that we’re not supposed to have them anymore. When you get into meditation and your brain gets hijacked by whatever you’re worried about, anybody feeling me right now? We can think that that’s not supposed to happen to us anymore. But the truth is, we’re human and it’s probably always going to happen. And you don’t want to suppress your feelings. I grew up in a house that suppressed feelings half the time. I don’t know what mine are until I go sit.
But if we suppress what we’re feeling, then it continues to live in us instead of in meditation to just really let it go. Just allow it to pass. Feel it, allow it to pass through you and let it go. Because if we don’t do that, then we’re just going to keep carrying it. It’s just going to keep getting triggered. And so I also offer that because if you are meditating and you’re noticing that that voice is still active in you, don’t criticize yourself. Just let yourself feel the emotions. We’re going to do a process in a few minutes to help you move through and start to ask the questions about what it is that’s triggering you.
Could you bring up the slide that says, fear to faith, Dom, thanks. I’m going to walk you through a little process that we’re going to do this together in a meditation in a few minutes, but I just want to walk you through this because this is a way that you can begin to identify when you are feeling triggered or you’re feeling fear, what’s underneath it. And this was created by Lloyd and Marsha Strom. I should have attributed that to them on here. But the idea is to first identify the fear. And you can do this in meditation, which is what we’re going to do today, but you can also do this journaling if that’s kind of your thing. You could sit down and write down the questions and you could just see what comes up for you. But the first question is, what’s the fear that’s happening?
What’s the fear? Maybe it’s, I’m not enough. There’s not enough. They won’t love me. I’ll just give a personal example. We had a little discord between a little family discord and a little part of our trip, and I started kind of within myself. It brings up anxiety for me when people are not agreeing. It wasn’t a big thing, but my avoider that hates conflict was just like, oh, I got to get out of here. So if I’m feeling a fear like that, and what’s the fear? It’s like I can just notice. I’m like, okay, what’s my fear? I’m afraid that we’re going to become disconnected, or I’m going to be afraid. I’m going to not be part of something or whatever. That’s my fearful voice. And then you want to feel it fully, right? It’s how you feel. Don’t judge it, right? Right now I’m feeling anxious. I want to make everything, and I want to avoid any kind of conflict under any circumstance. So that’s what would be happening in my head, just using myself as an example. You got to honor it though. What’s underneath it? If I want to please everyone and avoid conflict, what’s underneath it? It’s just because I want to be connected. It’s like it’s a call for connection.
And then I need to reveal the lie. What’s the lie? What’s the story that the fear is telling me and the lie, in my case, just to continue to use myself as an example, the lie is that if you have conflict in any situation, that something’s going to fall apart. I don’t really actually know where that got created in me, right? Maybe it was an experiencing the Cold War with my parents. They didn’t split up. They were married for 45 years, but just the connection wasn’t there. So I think for me, the lie is I won’t be connected. And that’s probably part of the fear too. As I’m saying this, I’m just working on myself here. But what’s the spiritual truth? The spiritual truth is we’re always connected. That’s a spiritual truth. And the spiritual truth is we’re never disconnected from our source. We’re never disconnected from our spirit.
We can just think we are right. We can convince ourselves we are. And so you affirm the spiritual truth, and then you rest in trust and gratitude. So have you ever noticed when you meditate that something opens up? Right? And if you’re not having that experience yet, stay with it. You will, I promise. But something opens up. So when we affirm the truth and then we allow it to come into our consciousness and just sit with it, then we begin to experience more peace, which is the beauty of having a spiritual practice. It’s really we’re taking ourselves out of our human way of being and whatever’s happening in the world, and we’re just sitting with ourselves. That’s what we do when we practice.
Dennis Merritt Jones says, the opposite of fear is not courage. It’s clarity. The opposite of fear is not courage. It’s clarity. So if you think about it, judgment’s just a mirror for us, selfishness is just like a mask in a way. We protect ourselves. And scarcity is a myth, right? This universe is abundant and it’s sufficient. But when we have clarity, fear is no longer in charge. So that’s what we’re going for. We want to get to a place of clarity and really to know the truth, to say to ourselves, I’m not separate. I’m not lacking. I’m not broken. I’m whole. I’m connected. I’m loved simply because I am by the way, simply because I am. So we’re going to move into a practice now, and if the music team wants to come up and give me a little bit of an underscore, this is just going to be a short meditation, which is going to move you into the process of starting to work with these questions that we just did. And so I just invite you to take a deep breath and turn within and close your eyes and just get centered in your body.
And I invite you to bring to mind a situation or anything in your life where you feel like fear is speaking to you. It might be a judgment about something. It might be comparing yourself. It might be a sense of lack. It might just be a sense like, I’m not settled. But just bring to mind an area of in your life where you’re feeling that way, and without trying to fix it or figure it out or do all the things we do to ourselves and our minds. Just let it be there and just breathe into it. Just ask yourself, what am I afraid of?
What am I afraid of? And then ask, what do I believe that this fear says about me or the world around me? What am I afraid this fear has to say about me or the world around me? And just breathe into it. Just hold it lightly. Give yourself some grace here and just softly speak to your heart and say, this is not the truth of me. And ask your spirit to reveal to you what is the lie here? What am I believing that isn’t true? And ask your spirit, what’s the spiritual truth here? And let this deeper truth arise within you.
And in your mind’s eye, you can speak to yourself. I am enough. There is enough. I am not separate. I’m already whole. And just breathe into this and just rest in this truth and just breathe more deeply into your heart, into this sense of peace and wellbeing, which is the truth of your spirit. And just feel gratitude arising within you. Gratitude for whatever has been revealed to you. Gratitude for the spiritual truth you want to call forth. And gratitude for this sense of wellbeing that is always available to you when you turn within. And just breathe into this as we move into a moment of prayer. So in this moment, I am knowing the presence and power of spirit surrounding and supporting us in each and every moment, this love, this grace, this wisdom, this inner freedom, this wholeness, this eternal beingness.
And I know that I am one with this. I am one with this eternal spirit. Just as each person hearing my words is one, with this eternal spirit of love, of grace, of wholeness, of wellbeing, of inner freedom. And so from this place of oneness, I speak my word for each and every one of us just knowing and affirming divine clarity. I declare that by the power of this word, whatever the fear is that any of us are feeling, I just declare that in the awareness of the fear, it dissolves. And I know that it is replaced by something greater. It is replaced by the divine possibility, the divine quality, the spiritual truth, wholeness, health, happiness, joy, prosperity, any word we might add for spiritual quality. I just know that that is what is being revealed for each and every one of us. I know and declare that God is our source, not just of our abundance, but God is a source of our wellbeing, of our wholeness.
God is the very source of our eternal life. This love that always and everywhere is present. So this is what I say yes to on all of our behalf. I know that spirit is holding each and every one of us in love, in grace, in wellbeing, and goodness and happiness and possibility and choice. And so I just am grateful for this. I’m grateful for the shift which is happening by the power of this word. I’m grateful for the wholeness of each and every person hearing my words. I’m grateful, really for all of our wholeness seen and unseen. I’m grateful for the revelation of Spirit as our lives, and I’m grateful for this shift, this inner freedom, this light that is the truth of who we are. And with so much gratitude, I simply say, and so it is. Amen. Thank you, Reverend Name.