This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
I of Myself Am Nothing: The Empty Vessel – Rev. Aimee Daniels
DESCRIPTION
Join us for the story of author Joel Goldsmith’s own realization — that the ordinary, effortful self was never the source of any good in his life. Come explore the most countercultural idea in the whole book: real power is never personal.
The summary and transcription were auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
SUMMARY
Rev. Aimee Daniels begins service by acknowledging the Chicago Marathon, mentioning Rev. Linda’s son-in-law who finished with a remarkable time of two hours and 42 minutes, and sharing that her own stepchildren Jacob and Eleanor are running. She introduces the central theme of the service: examining “the weight that we carry” before discussing being an open vessel, exploring what people would do differently if they knew life didn’t all depend on them. Daniels shares her personal struggles with the need to constantly be doing and “figure things out,” noting how this creates mental burden, and invites attendees to contemplate where they carry unnecessary burdens in their lives.
The talk builds upon Rev. Darrell’s previous week’s message about stopping seeking and starting beholding, moving from the concept of living “with God” to allowing the divine to work “through us” . Drawing from Joel Goldsmith’s mystical teachings, Daniels explains the biblical passage “I can of my own self do nothing” and explores how cultural emphasis on accomplishment contradicts the spiritual principle that “God is the doer”. She distinguishes between the “false I” of personal identity and the “true I” of spirit, explaining Goldsmith’s concept of the “second power”—the subtle belief that we must make things happen ourselves.
Daniels emphasizes Goldsmith’s healing practice, noting that when people kept reappearing in his mind after prayer, he recognized incomplete healing and would reconnect to divine wholeness rather than force outcomes. She uses the metaphor of setting down a tug-of-war rope to illustrate releasing struggle when we recognize there aren’t truly two opposing sides. The sermon addresses practical application through “treat and move your feet”—taking action from allowance rather than force, trusting that right doors will open.
The service includes reflective practices, inviting attendees to place hands on their hearts to feel their connection to the divine through breath and heartbeat, followed by a collective prayer emphasizing oneness with spirit, guidance, and gratitude for divine support. The audience is invited to receive “minute miracle” prayers from practitioners after the service, with Daniels encouraging attendees not to be shy about seeking prayer support.
TRANSCRIPTION
Rev. Aimee Daniels:
So am I on? Good morning everybody. How are you? Good morning. Happy marathon day. Reverend Linda’s not here today because her son-in-law is running and he finished in two hours and 42 minutes. So that’s a pretty remarkable time. My stepchildren are running and I was going to wear this shirt, but I though we’d all be distracted. This is their faces. I’m supposed to wear it later and they just passed the halfway point. So send some good wishes to Jacob and Eleanor. I know Rich is worried. One of them didn’t train enough. Okay. I’m not going to say which one it was publicly. Okay. Let’s just take a moment and center. Beautiful song. Thank you, Greg. I asked them to do that into the mystic. It’s one of my personal favorites and it’s perfect for Joel Goldsmith because Joel Goldsmith was a mystic and he lived a mystical life.
So today we’re going to begin talking about the weight that we carry before we talk about being an open vessel. So I want to ask you a question. What would you do differently tomorrow if you knew it didn’t all depend on you? What would you do differently?
I know for me, I’ll say two things. One is I always feel like I have to be doing. I’m kind of wired that way. I’m not so good at sitting down and doing nothing. I’m trying to learn. But I used to say a lot, I have to figure that out. And when I would work with my practitioner, she’d always say to me, “There’s nothing for you to figure out.” And so now I know when I hear that voice in my head saying, “I need to figure this out,” that I need to do a reframe. Because what do we do to ourselves when we think we need to figure things out? We put ourselves in brain haze. And I don’t know what’s true for you, but I know what’s true for me is that my wisdom comes to me over time. I’m not someone who in the minute’s like, “I got it.
I know what I’m supposed to do. I know where I’m supposed to go.” For me, it’s sort of like noticing what doors are opening, what doors are not opening. And I always say we will know when we are supposed to know. So figuring it out is a habit and we put a burden on ourselves when we do that, when we think we’re the doer. Some of us might be guilty of feeling like we’re responsible for everything and everyone, anyone besides me. I don’t know where I got that. Had it for a long time, but I know when I’m out of whack, I have physical manifestations of not taking care of myself. Years ago when I worked in my corporate job, I had terrible headaches. I was having some health problems and I don’t think I was actually smart enough quite yet then to know that that was what was causing all of them.
It was how I was internalizing things. I didn’t know how the brain worked then. So I just want to invite you as we move through this to think where are you carrying things that you could let go of? It might even be a person. It might be someone in our family that we feel we have the need to help or save, but where are you carrying something? I just invite you to hold that as we dive in here. So last Sunday, Rev. Darrell invited us to stop seeking and start beholding, you might remember those words. And he closed with his God relational window, which I really loved, this idea that life is not happening to us or for us, but living with God as a divine partner. Joel Goldsmith really takes it a step further. He would say God is happening as you, which that’s a big thing to get your head around.
We can all understand these things intellectually like, okay, that’s the spiritual principle, but really, really living it feels harder, doesn’t it? It feels harder to live it. And so we’re going to take the step from with to through today. And when we stop being the doer, when we allow ourselves to be led, when we’re not trying to figure it out, then we are truly letting the divine work through us. So the scripture in the Bible, it says, “I can of my own self do nothing. The father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” We’re going to come back to this nothing idea later, but it’s the idea that we’re not, again, we’re not the doer, right? God is doing us. And if you think about our culture, that’s a pretty crazy idea. It’s not how we live. None of us live that way.
I’ve got to go out. I’ve got to accomplish. I’ve got to do. But God is the doer. We’re not the doer. So Darryl talked about this idea that God is all, and I think most of us agree. We may struggle with it a little bit, but Goldsmith talks about the belief in two powers. And Don read to us about this. So the second power, historically, who did we think the second power was if we grew up in the Christian church? We thought it was the devil, right? We thought it was the devil, but the second power might be an illness. It might be lack that we’re experiencing in our life. It might be limitation or a difficult person, but there’s an even subtler second power, and that’s me or you, because we have willpower. We all have willpower. We might be trying to manage things. We might have a private belief that it’s up to us to make the good in our life happen.
So we say one power here all the time. We say one power, one presence, all of that, but do we really live it? And Goldsmith names it plainly. He says, and Don read this, “As long as I think that I must make a living, find a home or decide what to do next year, I will be facing problems. Not because those things don’t matter, but because the I that is carrying them is the wrong I.” So it’s our individual I. It’s not like the big I, which is God.
And think about how maybe we were taught to pray, to use God to overcome something. Well, if we’re separate, then there’s two powers. There’s me and God, right? There’s two powers. And so we want to move toward knowing this presence as our very life. And if you think about how we pray, a couple of weeks ago we talked about gratitude and release. And at the end of the prayer, we let it go. The prayer is complete, it is fulfilled, it is done. And what happens actually is that we’re being called to release as our life, not just as a step in the prayer. Have I really let it go? In one of his many books, Joel Goldsmith, people would come to him to be healed. And it’s kind of crazy the way it started. They would come to him. He just became known that he was someone who prayed for people and they healed.
And so people would come to him for prayer and he said, “If the person kept popping back into his mind after he did the prayer, he knew the healing was not complete.” And so what did he do? He didn’t go back into his head and pray and beg God to make the person whole and complete. He reconnected to the wholeness that is God. That’s how he spoke about it. He was really an incredible teacher. I really encourage everyone to read this or many of his other books. So he was reconnecting his own oneness with God and the awareness that the only thing present was God.
So we can live our lives like we’re in a tug of war, can’t we? Imagine a tug of war. You need two sides and you’re pulling against each other. And it’s a struggle, but Joel Goldsmith would just say, “Set the rope down.” If there’s not two sides, you’re not struggling. There’s no contest here. Just set the rope down. And you’re not blaming yourself or negating yourself or doing anything by doing that. It’s just noticing where you grip because we all do it if we’re honest with ourselves. We all have things we grip and setting it down. So think for yourself about your own life for a minute. Where are you trying to manage God instead of being an instrument of the divine flowing through you?
Just think about that for a second. Maybe there’s a place, maybe it’s a place where it’s hard to trust. I think we all sort of have our area of work in our life. Mine has always been relationships, just to be honest. I feel like I’m doing a little better in that category now, but that has always been where mine was. Not even just romantic, but just personal relationships because I can get in that foggy place in my brain about it and feel like I have to go help or I have to go fix instead of just letting it be. So where are you gripping? Okay. Let’s dive in a little bit to the two senses of I, which Don talked to us about. There’s the false I, which is us, not making us wrong, but the I of the world, your identity in the world.
And then there’s the true I, which is spirit. So Don read to us, “The troublemaker is the personal sense of I.” So Goldsmith distinguishes the false sense of I is the personal self that believes it has its own power and its own wisdom and it has to decide and make things happen. And I’m saying that and I’m like, “Wow, that seems like a hard thing to let go of, doesn’t it? Our personal sense of I, many of us have struggled even to have a personal sense of I, right? But I think in spirit, you can know you’re safe. If anything, I think as you practice more, you come to accept yourself more. You stop trying to change who you are because you’re already okay. You’re the perfect expression of yourself. So I don’t want anyone to get down on themselves here, but the right sense of I is God is the I.
God is the one consciousness. Some people don’t like the word, but God’s spirit is the only true I. And he says, Joel Goldsmith says,” There’s only one error in the world entertaining a false sense of I.
“So if you’ve thought of a problem that you carry, just notice how much you might say to yourself,” I have to, “or,” I have to, or I should, or I must. “Like all the language we use with ourselves, just notice it because if we’re doing that, we’re grasping. The word I means God. It never means any person. It means God appearing as a person. So we’re God governed, we’re God maintained, we’re God sustained. We’re going to do this in the deepening in principle after service. He taught that when you sat down, that you should bring your energy to your heart first because the pumping of your heart shows you that this presence, which is creating all of this, that you are part of it. And I love that because I think it can feel like when we sit down, we can feel like we’re grasping just to meditate sometimes, but just to know that we’re okay in that moment, right?
Our heart is beating. There’s this amazing thing that keeps the body going without us trying. It’s pretty amazing. So I with a capital I is God. Me is the personality that the I is wearing. I of myself am nothing means the me is nothing on its own and the I is everywhere. Every everything, excuse me. So Jesus said I am the way. You probably heard that before. And in Exodus, story of Moses, I am that I am. And I always found that so confusing. I just want to say I found it so confusing. I think it’s as simple as that my identity in the world of form is God. I think that’s what he was saying. I’ve heard other interpretations. I forget the guy’s name that he actually, we had him do some St. Francis thing here. I can’t think of his name right now, but he would say, “I’m also the chair.” I don’t think that’s what it meant.
It meant I’m one with God, that I am made of the essence and the energy of God.
Charles Fillmore, who was a unity minister, taught the I am in each person is the Christ identity distinct from the personal sense-based self. So when he says the Christ identity or when we say Christ consciousness, what we mean is the awakened self. That is the awakened self. That’s the part of you that knows you’re connected to spirit. So let’s talk about the word nothing, right? Many of us might have been taught when we were young that we’re not worth anything. When you think of nothing, you’re like, “I’m nothing. I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy. I’m sinful.” Whatever we were taught. Does anyone relate to that? I think we’ve picked up a lot of stuff, right? But nothing in this context does not mean that. It means you’re not small, you’re not separate. It’s really recognizing that you’re not separate at the end of it, right?
I’m not a thing unto myself, separate from God. I am that. Does that make sense? It’s a big idea.
So Joe Goldsmith would say, “We don’t use God. We let God use us.” And he uses the images of the rose and the orchid and the tulip that Don read to us about just to illustrate that nature maintains its identity as each flower. And that flower is just cared for, just in the way that we are cared for. And what we’re called to do is to recognize that we’re the earthen vessel, right? We’re the earthen vessel of God. So think about a vessel. Its value is that it’s open. Its value is that it can be filled. There’s a zen teaching who talks, the teacher talks about filling up a cup with tea until it overflows. But if our cup is full of who we think we are in the world, we’re not available to be filled up because we’re already filled up with all these things we think we are that aren’t our true identity.
So I of myself am nothing, this really means that nothing is the open space where everything comes through us.
And we might feel like that means we’re surrendering. I just want to say this. It doesn’t mean surrendering is not being passive, it’s really allowing. And Joel Goldsmith also talked about how his work that he did in the world, I think he was a minister for 20 or more years. I’m not really sure, but it seems like that he wrote for 20 or more years and taught. He said his teaching never changed, but he changed. And that’s what we do when we practice every day. We begin to change. We begin to see ourselves differently. We allow ourselves to be filled up in a different way. Emily Katie who wrote in the 1890s, believe it or not, she’s got a book that’s a real gem. I’m just going to say I’ve been just picking it up and reading it. She said, “What we all need to do above everything else is to cultivate the acquaintance of consciousness of spirit within ourselves.
We must take our attention off of results and seek to live the life. Results will be added onto us in greater measure when we turn our thought less to the works and more to embodying the indwelling Christ in our entire being.” So again, we’re going to replace Christ with awakened awareness. That’s how we want to think about that word.
So the Father within me doeth the work. We don’t produce the work, we embody the presence and the works are added. And so we want to take our attention off the results and just live our life. Ramana Maharshi, that name is a little bit hard to… I think I said it right. He tells a story about a traveler who boards a train and he’s got his baggage on his head. He’s balancing his baggage on his head and he’s straining, the train’s moving, he’s straining to hold this baggage on the head. He simply could have put his baggage down. He would still have gotten where he was going because the train was moving, right? So that’s what we’re called to do. We’re called to set our baggage down. The Bagavad Gita tells us only the one confused by ego thinks I am the doer. Only the one confused by ego thinks I am the doer.
So when we strive, we say it depends on me. When we allow, we say it moves through me. It moves through me. So we may even be doing the same thing in our life. We’re just doing it differently. And you can tell the difference when someone’s striving or forcing when someone’s allowing. It’s great practice in our lives. Anyway, I don’t want to go off on a tangent, but we often say treat and move your feet. So I want to address that because someone might be saying, “But what about treat and move your feet?” Yes, we’re still going to move our feet, but not from the energy of I’m forcing this, from the energy of I’m allowing it to reveal itself to me. I’m allowing spirit to let me know what my next step is. I don’t have to force it. If it’s for me, the door’s going to open.
And if it’s not for me, the door won’t open. So I think about what we carry alone. I was thinking about this as I was preparing my mother. I probably said this already. When I was little, my mom said, I used to say, “I’ll do it myself, mommy.” From the time I was very little, “I can do this myself, mommy.” But underneath that is a belief that I didn’t want to bother anybody because my parents were 40 and 48. When I was born, it was pretty clear that maybe they were tired of being parents. And my mom very much wanted to have her life. She’d already been raising kids for 20 years and I’m not making her wrong, but it’s like I could sense that she had a restlessness and she did do a lot of things. I mean, I really admire what she did at that point in her life and she went out and got the education that she stopped because she married my dad and stuff.
But underneath it, I had a belief that I was a bother, right? So I have to do it myself, otherwise I’m a bother. And I know for myself, I forget to ask and I’m still working on that like, oh, I could ask for help. What a novel idea.
So it’s also important for us to remember when we’re wanting to manifest something in our life, think of yourself like a hose, right? A hose doesn’t make the water. The hose is the carrier. And so what we want to be is the carrier of whatever it is that’s seeking to come through us. We don’t have to be the water. And I love that analogy because it helps me remember what’s my work really? It’s my job to stay open and let spirit lead me. And as we often say in this movement, let spirit have its way with us. So before we get to our prayer and stuff, I just want to talk about setting yourself up for success for a minute. I think this is very… Because practicing, being able to practice the presence is very a practical thing, right? There’s a wonderful book right now by Angela Duckworth.
I don’t know if you know who she is. She wrote a book called Grit. She’s famous for it, but it’s a book called Situated. And what the book said, it really talks about is how do you set yourself up in life to succeed? And she uses some really famous examples like Michael Phelps and some swimmer after him and a lot of people that you’ve heard of. But the idea is that they took steps to make themselves available to what they were wanting to have. That’s the bottom line of the book. And so in your life, in your practice of practicing the presence, how are you setting yourself up? I think our habits are super important just to talk about preparing the space to practice. I was struggling with our condo here in the city because I liked to meditate in the living room because the couch was more comfortable than the couch in my office, but I realized I was constantly being interrupted, right?
So I’m like, well, I just need to make my office a more beautiful place to go meditate in the morning. And that’s what I do. I go in there and I know that’s a dumb example, but if you live with other people, you have to create your own space, right? You have to. And so what do you need to do to set yourself up so that you can really practice the presence and bring some of these principles into your life to really make it a habit? I begin my day with it. That works well for me. If I don’t do it, I feel ungrounded, right? It just sets the container for the day. So that’s my practical hint for the day. So let’s talk about what you’re going to practice this week.
I of myself can do nothing. The presence within me does the work. So what I invite you to practice this week is to hand over the doing. Anything you’re doing in your life, hard conversation, have to take on a task, anything you’re worried about, just take a breath and turn it over. I of myself can do nothing. The presence within me does the work. So let yourself be the vessel, not the source. So we’re going to move into prayer in a moment and we’re going to pray collectively. We are going to continue to do the minute miracles at the end of my prayer. So the practitioners will line up after I’m done praying. If you would like to get a one minute miracle, please walk up to someone who’s standing around the room and get a prayer. Don’t be shy. Don’t be shy. Stand up and get a prayer.
So let’s turn within. So I just invite you to put your hands on your heart right now and to feel into this energy of your heart that is pumping and moving and breathing your body, your heart and your breath connecting you to the divine. It is the divine in you.
And from this beautiful connection, we turn to spirit, this one life, this life of God that is expressing in is and through everything, that is the presence, the power, the possibility, the creativity, the goodness of spirit. And I know that I’m one with this presence and power. I’m one with this spirit. I’m one with this possibility. I’m one with this creativity and goodness and joy and expansion. And as I know this for myself, I know this for each of the beautiful people hearing my words, I know that we are all one with spirit, with this power, this presence, which is guiding and directing us, creating us, living us, breathing us, leading us forward in the perfect expression of life as us.
So from this place of oneness, I just speak a word of realization for each and every person here. May we all deeply realize the presence of the truth of our being today as we are here together, as we move out into the week, just knowing that God’s got this, knowing that God’s got us, creating this open vessel, this open container for the good to come in, for us to be led, for us to receive divine intuition about where spirit is calling us to go, who spirit is calling us to be. And I know that spirit knows what it is doing with each and every life of each and every person hearing my words. So I know that God’s got this. As we turn to God, God turns to us. So I know that all our needs are met in this very moment, that we are moving forward and all is well.
I’m so grateful for this, so grateful to know that we are guided and directed, so grateful to know that we are open to this transformation of our life. So grateful to know that we now and always are fully supported and with so much gratitude for all of this, I simply say, and so it is.