This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
Start At the End – Rev. Linda Jackson
DESCRIPTION
We often work from where we are toward where we want to be. What if we reversed that? Join us this Sunday as we practice starting at the end—choosing the inner stance that aligns with the life we intend to create.
SUMMARY
Rev. Linda Jackson introduces the March theme, “What If?”, exploring imagination as the creative power through which life takes form, inspired by Neville Goddard’s book, “Awakened Imagination”. The talk emphasizes imagination as the gateway to reality, a central creative force within us, and not merely a mental exercise or fanciful notion. Imagination is described as the living presence of spirit within, enabling transformation and co-creation. The practice of starting at the end involves identifying the desired state and embodying it, rather than focusing on circumstances. This approach is seen as a sacred interior action, aligning with the living presence of spirit to create from a higher consciousness. The concept of revision is introduced, allowing individuals to internally revise moments of fear or separation to align with desired qualities. The talk concludes by taking the lesson into practical application and an affirmation of gratitude for their collective practice of alignment with the living power of spirit and the power to change the world.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Linda Jackson:
So I know that Don already spoke to this, but just real appreciation. Thank you, Sarah, for stepping up at such a last minute. I just gave them this song a couple of days ago. So really acknowledging, and this is her first time here, so she’s just stepping up. So thank you so much. And thanks to Dom for coming out of the back room, as Don said, and always thanks to Nora for the way she ties it all together. So the song, A Million Dreams, I don’t care, call me crazy. We can live in a world that we design. And it does sound a bit crazy in our current landscape, right? It’s important to know that when we close our eyes to see what could be, we’re not talking about escaping reality. It’s about engaging the creative presence within our imagination.
So I didn’t say I’m Reverend Linda. I use she/her pronouns. And I am starting off our March theme here, the What If? And we’re exploring imagination as the creative power through which life takes form.
And it’s inspired by Neville Goddard in his book, Awakened Imagination. The idea is connecting with the creative power within to move beyond wishing and hoping into consciously embodying what we want to experience. And it’s not a new idea for us here. And in Science of Mind and what we teach, in new thought, you know consciousness creates, right? You’ve all heard that. But early in the book, Goddard acknowledges that the word imagination takes on lots of different meanings. And he shares a few examples like when we say use your imagination, meaning open your mind to something new. Or it’s just your imagination, sort of diminishing what you’re experiencing as not real. Or when we say you’re a victim of your imagination, meaning that your untrue thoughts are taking over. But then we go and pay a compliment of, what a great imagination.
So he’s ultimately reminding us that imagination is more than a mental exercise or a fanciful notion. He says it’s the gateway of reality. It’s the central creative power within us, the force that makes transformation possible. He says, imagination is the living presence of spirit within us. So we’re not bypassing. It’s not magical thinking. It’s not passivity. It’s taking responsibility for doing our part, for creating from within.
As we awaken to imagination as the creative power within us, it’s what Goddard sometimes calls the Christ within. And I’m just going to acknowledge I still get a little nervous. Sometimes I guess I have my own bit of … I wouldn’t go so far as to call it religious trauma, but I know many people do have some religious trauma and I don’t want to trigger anyone. I don’t want to keep you from hearing the message because there’s a word that doesn’t work for you. So I like using the creative presence within, the spirit within. And as we awaken to imagination as the creative power within, we discover that through imagination, we have incredible power, the power to co-create.
And he says, Goddard says, through imagination, we may even disarm and transform the violence of the world. I’m here for that. What about you? Anybody? Let’s say yes to transforming the violence of the world.
Most of us start from circumstances and try to move toward vision, but in the spirit of our monthly theme, what if?, we’re asking, what if we reversed that?
Now, way back in the day when I went to college, and I did share this story once several years ago, but it’s funny to me because sharing this story, it actually sounds like I lived in a different era. But spirit keeps us young, so thank goodness for that. Way back when, I took a computer science class. It was part of my arts and science degree, fulfilling a science requirement. And computers fit in our pocket now, but this is when computers filled up a whole room or buildings, right? And maybe that still exists. I’m not much of a science person, but we used hole punches and cards to tell the computer what to do, right?
And I was learning Fortran. It’s not my cup of tea. I wasn’t really getting the instructor. And maybe it was hard for me to stay engaged because we were in this huge lecture hall, all these people, and he was just this little thing down at the front of the room, or maybe it was just because I wasn’t that interested. I don’t know. But I did know that if I dropped the class before a certain time and retook it within a certain timeframe, that that W from the withdrawal would be removed from my record. I could take it over and replace it with a decent grade, hopefully. So that’s what I did. And I retook it with a different instructor and this new instructor had a whole different approach to teaching. He had an excitement and an energy about it and he piqued my interests. He got me interested in it.
And the big assignment was to program the computer, to make a turtle, walk in a particular direction using the commands and codes of the Fortran language and punching the holes in the guards. And it would move the rudimentary bit mapped turtle around the screen to end up in a certain spot. And that’s what we were assigned to do, to learn how to make it do this, right? And all of you computer geeks, I apologize. This is my experience. So I did it. I got the turtle to move. I passed. But from that class and from that instructor, what I learned is one of the most important things that I learned in my four years of college. And it kind of seems obvious to me now, especially with what’s up on the screen, but at 19 or 20 years old, it was mind expanding and it forever changed the way that I approach problems.
When you are trying to figure out how to get from here to there, you start at the end.
And I was chatting about this with Chris and she said, when you do the maze puzzles, you start at the end, it’s so much easier to get back to the beginning than when you try to start in these different ways and find your way through, right? So we all know this. We start at the end and we find our way back to where we are now. And in bridging that gap, you find the solution, you find your first step. So starting at the end is not pretending that the circumstances don’t exist. According to Goddard, in choosing the inner posture and the inner power from which to meet the circumstances, starting at the end is not thinking of what we want, it’s thinking from the fulfilled state. And we define the end. So we don’t have to define it for ego gain or control or getting our way.
We can choose the end as peace embodied. We can choose the end as courage lived, as justice expressed, or for those of us with things going on in our bodies as wholeness assumed and love in action. So we start at the end and we ask, if the end is justice, how do I stand now? If the end is dignity, how do I speak now? And this is where imagination as the spirit within really comes alive.
Consciousness is creative. Our inner posture shapes not just ourselves, but the relational field around us. We impact the world. The practice of the individual impacts the collective. And when all of us come together in our practice, we really do make a difference. To start at the end is to consciously step into the desired experience, to feel and act from the end as reality now, not waiting for circumstances to catch up. And in this practice, imagination is not escape. It is the conscious creative force shaping our inner stance and the life we’re co-creating.
So if you’re thinking that this sounds like mindset work when the world is on fire, remember, if we come from fear, we build fear. If we come from scarcity, we reinforce scarcity. If we act from dehumanization, we deepen division. Reactivity only reproduces what it fights. When we come from dignity, we behave differently. When we come from wholeness, we speak differently. When we come from belonging, we organize differently. And this is not avoidance. We don’t start at the end to escape the world. We start at the end to enter it differently and to create from it.
So David Hawkins, you probably remember him, known for his research and consciousness and behavior with the map of the various states of consciousness. He positions imagination as a tool that can be used to either trap us in ego-driven constructs or to raise our consciousness toward higher states of reality. In simple terms, Hawkins explains it as being versus knowing about. He says, realizing truth means being it, not just accumulating facts or opinions about it. He’s inviting us to embody truth, to be truth. And as Goddard said, not thinking of what we want, thinking from the fulfilled state, from being it.
Hawkins also said, “The world is not as it appears. It is as we hold it in consciousness. What we experience externally reflects what we have consented to internally.” That means we’ve consented to it. We’ve agreed with it somehow. That holds us accountable. We are responsible for what’s going on in our consciousness. We’re in a time, place, experience where the collective conscious, the collective consciousness and social constructs appear to be unraveling. Reacting to it from fear only creates more of it. It’s uncomfortable and it’s scary and it’s an invitation. Starting at the end is a sacred interior action. As old systems are breaking down, if enough of us are doing our inner work, we can bring it back together in new ways. If what we experience out here mirrors what we’ve consented to in consciousness, then this moment is asking us to become conscious of our stance and to choose differently.
And this is where we practice starting at the end.
In Goddard’s book, This is How It Looks in Practice. You identify your end, what state you want to experience, not the exact outcome. He invites us to focus on the quality. So is it peace, clarity, freedom? And then we assume the inner stance. We can ask if this were already true, how would I be? If peace were already here, how would I speak? How would I respond? How would I walk? How would I lead? How would I love? This is where imagination as spirit within and consciousness as creative become fully engaged. You’re actively embodying the living presence of the divine.
And key in all of this is that your awareness is not only shaping your beings and actions, it is shaping your relational field and your experience and the experience of those around you. And then he introduces this concept of the revision, which I love this idea. We often work from vision, but he offers us an opportunity to revise what didn’t work. In a way, it’s refusing to let yesterday define tomorrow. So at the end of the day, or whenever you’re doing your practice, he invites us to inquire within, where did I act from fear or separation? And then pause to revise that moment internally, to revise it within us for the end that would have been more in alignment with what we’re wanting to create, to come from love and oneness, not rewriting history, but reclaiming authorship.
And by the way, we do this in affirmative prayer. We speak it into existence. We align with spirit within, with the creative consciousness. We affirm the desired outcome. And often we are revising where we went off track. We’re not static. Life is not static. Everything is always becoming. We can always begin again. So how are we being, how we are being is moving us toward the becoming. You heard in the reading, it’s distilled from the Edenburg lectures, Thomas Troward. Spirit of life seeks expression through us, and as we recognize its presence and consciously cooperate with it, we become channels for its intelligent activity. The power which we call imagination is not a mere faculty of idle fancy, but the formative power of thought, acting upon the substance of the universal mind. The law always says yes. What are we putting into it?
And when we realize that our thought is creative, we see that to think from a higher standpoint is to bring into manifestation a higher order of experience by accepting the end as already implicit within the beginning and by holding firmly to the idea of the end, we align ourselves with the forward movement of the creative spirit itself. The deepest part of ourselves, what God sometimes calls the Christ within. I call it the living presence within. It is imagination itself, the inner presence that envisions what’s possible and moves us toward it. So imagination is not pretending our circumstances don’t exist. It’s choosing the inner posture, the inner power from which to meet them. Starting at the end is not thinking of what you want, it’s thinking from the fulfilled state. So we’re being called to bridge the gap. In business, we would say like a gap analysis.
We’re finding the space between how I’m being now and who I need to be in the fulfilled state. So to start at the end is to step consciously into the living presence of spirit within, to imagine the desired state we want to experience and feeling it as real now, letting it be the inner stance from which we move and have our being from which we create.
I want to say it again, starting at the end is sacred interior action. So we get accused sometimes of a philosophy that doesn’t take enough action that we think it’s all within us. This is action. I’m not saying we don’t take steps and I’m not saying we ignore our grief or our experiences. We have to do all of that too, but we have to do the work in consciousness. And as we all do our inner work, we come together in a new way. And if the outer world mirrors consciousness, how we are being matters and how we are being collectively changes the world. I want you to get that. I have so much gratitude for coming here and practicing with people who are wanting a similar end result that I do, that is peace, that is love, that is harmony. And when we are being that, it matters.
The world may not change overnight, but you can. We can. The quality of the presence that you bring, but when you are steady or reactive, open or defended, it alters what happens next and that matters too. So it’s about becoming internally aligned with the world that we say we want to live in. Can’t wait for someone else to create it and us to join it. We create it now, not by striving harder, by standing differently, by speaking differently, by how we are being. Our inner work is consequential. It matters. And practice is where this becomes real.
So I’m going to invite Dom to come up and give me a little music in the background. I’m going to take us into some practice, and it’s a little longer practice than what I would normally do here, but I want to explore these ideas. We’re going to put this idea of starting at the end into practice. So I invite you to settle into your seat, assume a comfortable posture, whatever’s comfortable for you, but feel the weight of your body in your seat, knowing that you are held and supported. Maybe resting your open hands in your lap for a receptive pose.
Taking a couple of slow, deep breaths at your own pace, inhaling and exhaling. Notice how it begins to calm the nervous system. Just continue breathing at your own pace. We’re not fixing or efforting and soften your attention inward. Being here now, fully present in your body. And take a moment to open yourself to the divine within in whatever way is natural for you. I like the idea of communing with the divine within. Remembering that we are one with the divine, with its infinite nature, with all that it is, with the peace and the harmony and the order and the abundant flow. It is the truth of who we are. We are the inlet and outlet for the expression of spirit, and we come in this practice to commune with the living presence of spirit within, to remember it.
And just in that practice, I feel my vibration raising, rising. And now let’s start at the end. Take a moment to identify what is your end. Maybe bringing to mind an area of life that feels unsettled or unresolved, not making a story out of it, just feeling the experience of it and not asking what do I want to happen? We’re going deeper. What quality or state do I want to experience here? Is it peace, clarity, love, freedom? Maybe belonging with the God quality of oneness or confidence with the quality of power. Maybe it’s relief with the God qualities of ease and flow and peace. Let it be simple.
Simply choose the state or the quality, not the details of what to do or how to do it. Let that quality become clear in your mind and we will practice assuming the inner stance or the felt sense of the quality. If this quality were already alive in me, how would I be? If peace were already here, how would I speak? How does my body feel? If clarity were already present, how would I respond? If freedom is already mine, how do I walk into the room? Just begin to notice any subtle shifts in the body. Does your breath deepen?
Does your spine shift? Does your jaw soften? Just imagine lifting yourself into the high vibration of the quality of the state. Feel yourself embodying it. It’s just a quiet internal shift. This is the practice. Not trying to make something happen, just allowing yourself to stand in that state, feeling it as real now. And let us have that quality be the inner atmosphere from which we move, from which you decide and relate and interact. And stay here for a few more breaths. Your awareness is not just shaping your thoughts, it’s shaping your presence, your being. Your being shapes the felt sense of your experience, not pretending circumstances don’t exist, but choosing the stance from which you meet them.
Creating from this, from this mental atmosphere, from this higher vibration. So this is our practice to live from the desired outcome. I’m just staying there another moment, and I’m going to just say a bit about this idea of revision. At the end of the day or anytime you practice, the invitation is to pause and notice where you reacted from fear, where you were contracted, where you reacted from separation. Revisit those moments gently. So allow something to come to mind when you reacted from fear, contraction, separation. And let’s take a moment to practice this revising that moment internally, using your imagination as the living presence of spirit. It is the power within that does the work. Imagine responding from the state or the quality that you chose a moment ago.
How does it feel to come from love and oneness or peace or clarity, whatever your quality, not denying what happened, but to refuse to let yesterday define tomorrow. This is how we train our consciousness. This is how starting at the end becomes a lived experience. Take another intentional breath. Let those chosen qualities settle in as something available now, and I’ll close us out with prayer. I’m grateful, grateful for the conscious communing with spirit, grateful for the amplified power of coming together in practice, grateful for the remembering of the living presence of spirit within, working through the power of our imagination.
As we align with the higher vibration of the desired state, the living presence within as imagination itself, the inner presence that envisions what’s possible and moves us toward it, lifting ourselves out of the fear, out of the separation to remember it is not the truth of who we are. We are one, we are already love, we are already peace, and we create from this. We bring these qualities into the world. As Godard said, through imagination, we disarm and transform the violence of the world. I’m so grateful for the power of this practice, grateful for our collective practice changing the world, grateful that as the world is shifting and old constructs dismantling that we are choosing to create it newly from this high consciousness, co-creating with the living power of spirit within. So grateful that we are aligned here together. And if any part of this resonates with you as being true, please join me in affirming it is so by saying together and so it is.