OVERVIEW
To receive the abundance of the universe we must practice radical acceptance. Accept and embrace all the parts of you. Accept and surrender to life as it is. Accept and receive Divine abundance expressing as you and through you. Watch / Listen Rev Linda Jackson as we explore radical acceptance of the Divine.
TRANSCRIPTION
Thank you. And I love that Tiffany mentioned that letting the child out to play when the child can play, we’re in flow. And that’s what we’re talking about this month being in flow. And it’s so good to be here. I haven’t been up here in a while, and we have a different perspective in the room. My friend told me he thought I should get up here and insist that I still wanted to stand over there when I did the talk today. Um, but it’s really great to, to be here and I feel so joyful and grateful, uh, to be part of this community. I, I really do. I mean, seeing all of these people in the room, knowing all of you are online and all of the good that is occurring. And you know, I just wanna mention to you folks online, we have practitioners there. We want you to get prayer after service. We want you to be supported by the practitioners and the consciousness that’s in the room. So please, please take advantage of that. And if you’ve been here the last few weeks, or if you’ve read the emails, then you know that we launched our annual giving campaign. And it’s also our November theme,
Your Life, your Gift. And this is really just recognizing that we are co-creating abundance in our lives and in our community. And the invitation is to shift your relationship with divine flow or source or God, whatever your word is, and express your life as your gift. So I just wanna invite you to drop into your heart with that for a moment. Are you expressing your life as your gift to the world? When we’re in divine flow, we’re in that flow of giving and receiving. You’re receiving the abundance of the universe and you express your life as your gift. How do we get in flow? Everything we do here is about connecting with the God of your being, aligning with source, being more aware. That’s what we teach, that’s what we work on. But to receive the abundance of the universe, we must practice radical acceptance. And I’m taking this from Tasha Silver’s book, and I’m calling out three ways to practice radical acceptance. One, accept and embrace all the parts. All the parts, the ones that play and the ones that have temper tantrums, right? Accept and surrender to life as it is, not as I think it should be, as it is.
And then to receive divine abundance, that means not grasping for it out here, allowing. And as Tasha silver says, non doership, it’s how we’re being, we’re being abundance. So the book I’m referring to is Tasha Silvers. It’s Not Your Money. That’s our book this month. And her tagline is, how to live fully from divine abundance. From divine abundance, not how to get abundance, how to live from abundance. It happens through us. And some of the key concepts in this book you’ve been hearing for the past couple of weeks are offering everything up to the divine, offering everything to love your problems, your money, your relationships, everything. Trusting versus controlling, trying to make it happen. Releasing that doership as she calls it, embracing surrender. So being versus doing and letting go of grasping, grasping in order to receive. As Reverend Roderick shared last week, her idea of, uh, taking your foot off the hose, it’s another way that we cut off flow, grasping, stomping. We have that energy of cutting ourselves off from flow.
So I just wanna acknowledge this idea of offering everything up to the divine. And Reverend Dar mentioned this too. At first, I have a little bit of a trigger around that because I’ve spent a lot of time getting in relationship to the God of my being the divine as something that I experience within me and through me. And when we’re offering something up, it can sort of feel like something out there. It starts to go back to that old idea of God. But don’t let that take you out. I resolve this for myself by remembering a key concept of science of mind. It is God is all there is in as through me, all around me. It’s everything. And ultimately, Tasha speaks of the divine expressing through you as the gift of your life. And that’s really not so different. So if you’re triggered, stay tuned, I’m gonna probably trigger you a little bit more.
When we’re triggered, we’re not in flow. That’s just the simple, like it’s a like a cheat sheet. If I’m triggered, I’m not in flow. If I’m triggered, the opportunity is for me to look within. And I’m guessing that when we started talking about the pledge drive and about giving money, that at least a few of us in the room are going to a, uh, oh <laugh>. Not this, it’s that contraction, that cutting off of flow, right? And then there are others that are already in the flow, giving, receiving. They probably love the conversation. And this isn’t about judgment because those of you who aren’t triggered by the money conversation are triggered by something else, <laugh>.
So maybe you’re cutting off flow in other ways. I mean, is there anybody here in the room who doesn’t have an area of challenge? <laugh>? Oh, good. All right. All right, Jason. So just map this conversation onto whatever area of life you are working in. All right? So if it’s not about money for you, let it be about whatever your area of challenges. So this idea of radical acceptance, accept and embrace all the parts of you, accept and surrender to life as it is, and accept and receive abundance expressing through you being not doing. So we’re gonna start with this idea of accepting all the parts of you, wherever you get triggered or defensive, if you’re willing to listen, you know, if you just pause when you’re triggered and listen, take a closer look inside, you can, I feel opening, just saying that, right? We open back up. Maybe there’s an old story around church or tithing or a part of you that just has a thing about money being bad or a part that doesn’t wanna be told what to do, whatever it is. Radical acceptance includes accepting and embracing all the parts.
So whatever the story is, there’s something running in the background, a belief that keeps you looping. And I just sort of imagine these, uh, defensive parts, little child parts, persona parts, whatever you wanna call them. And they’re sort of gripping, you know, like fear or anger, sadness. And if we take the clues, those emotions will point us back to the beliefs. They support us in healing. And the emotions are meant to be fully expressed, not pressed down. I, I picture, uh, a dog. I know we have a lot of dog loaders here. And you know when a dog like gets into a scuffle and they get all like tense and their hair stands up on their back and everything, and then what do they do? They just kind of try away and then they shake it off. I wish we could make that same sound that dogs make when we shake it off <laugh>, but they just release it and they move on. They’re over it.
We need to learn to move the energy to practice shaking it off our fear, our anger, whatever it is. Or cry out your sadness, dance out your joy. Let yourself feel your feelings. When we don’t fully express our emotions, we are cut off from divine flow. We are cut off from source. And in the book, Tasha suggests throwing coconuts to release anger. <laugh>. She insists it’s very satisfying. And I kind of imagine that would be a pretty cool sound that the coconut would make, but maybe not practical in the city. <laugh>. And I can attest that using a tennis racket on a couch cushion is also very satisfying. <laugh>.
So we can’t and accept and embrace all the parts unless we’re aware of them. All the ways we practice here at Cityside, the key is becoming an observer, taking observer consciousness. So we practice becoming aware of how we’re being, rather than pointing out here what we think is wrong. And we do our inquiry and it’s really pretty simple. If we feel open and available, if we feel love, we’re in flow. If we feel closed in defensive and fear, we’re cut off from flow. To receive the abundance of the universe, we have to align with flow and we have to radically accept and embrace all of our parts. And I’m gonna just, um, suggest a simple practice that I’m borrowing from the 15 commitments of conscious leadership. And I imagine there’s a few of you in the room that are triggered by that. So you can do your work. <laugh> um, present scene is such a simple practice and it’s so powerful. You literally can just set a timer to go off during the day to remind you to do it. And you just take like 30 seconds to notice what are my physical sensations, what are my emotional state, what is my emotional state?
And what is my next thought? And you just practice doing this over and over and over again without any story, without any explanation for why you feel the physical sensation or why you have the emotion or why you’re thinking, you’re just observing and practicing being an observer allows us to make a choice. I used to be so annoyed by this practice because I actually felt like, um, well I think I was just cut off from my physical feelings. So I found this kind of like a, and I can tell you that just sort of disciplining myself to do it has been a really, really valuable practice. Cause you don’t know if you have emotion or a physical sensation that’s causing a contraction if you’re living like cut off from the neck down. And this causes us to get back in our bodies. So with practice noticing the physical signs and emotions, then when you have a heightened experience, you can actually practice moving the energy. And this is a continuation of a 15 commitments practice where you use a nonverbal sound to match the emotion and a physical movement or posture, and it just moves the energy.
This really is effective. It’s an invitation for you, for your homework. And in chapter five, Tasha talks about the forgotten inner kid. She suggests taking time to ask the child part. What do you really want? What do you really need? So we’re refunding and embracing the child part. Only when we embody it, when we invite it in, can it stop identifying as scared, angry, abandoned, whatever story it’s making up, we have to embrace it, bring it in. We don’t get rid of it. We wanna also embody all the gifts it brings. And when we do invite it in, it settles down, begins to trust again. So embracing the inner child requires awareness. And Tasha suggests a sun culpa, which is a Sanskrit word for a vow or an intention, a sun culpa to love, support, or to stop persecuting the inner child. This brings us back to creativity and play. As Tiffany was saying, the child wants to play, it enhances our sense of wonder. It brings us back into flow, into that full expression. Your life, your gift. So the next part of this radical acceptance, we’ve accepted, embraced all the parts of us. Then we move into accepting life as it is. As Tasha says in chapter six, the crown jewels, you get custom made just for you. Opportunities to develop non grasping, detachment, and surrender.
You have to trust everything is happening for you. Trust that the universe is ready to s to provide you with everything that you’re supposed to have. Not what your ego thinks you need, what the universe wants for me. And as usual, this topic was a perfect assignment for me. And the life gave me a custom made just for me opportunity. So I’ve talked about my mom before she recently turned 94. Uh, she’s about an hour, an hour and 20 minutes away depending what time of day. She lives independently, but needs a lot of help. And we’ve all committed to keeping her at home as long as possible, as long as it’s safe. She has very low vision. She relies on a walker. We’ve made arrangements. You know, I go once a week or every 10 days and my sister, my nieces, my daughter stop in other family. And she has neighbors, wonderful neighbors. One takes out her garbage, one brings in her mail, she has a physical therapist who comes. We have a visiting nurse, I have a chaplain. I mean she’s, she’s in pretty good shape, but little by little she needs more. And this has been starting to weigh on me.
And as life would have it in the past month, aside from my caregiving with my mother, I’ve experienced a lot of other loss. Now my son went to South Carolina for work, which is a beautiful thing. There’s nothing wrong there, but he’s one of my people and I spent a lot of time with. And to suddenly have him absent, there was a big void. Then a family member had a diagnosis,
Then a friend ended his life, then another family member chose to go off treatment and into hospice and made her transition.
This is a lot to process in a very compressed period of time. A lot of grief loss. And then my mom had a health scare. Even the word health scare, right? Puts the scare in scarcity. I was really struggling. It did bring up all of my scared parts and it showed up like I have to figure this out. I wanna be able to spend more time with her. And all the different parts are activated when I go, I’m not working, so I’m not earning money and it costs me to drive over there. There’s gas and toll and the stories are spinning. How is this gonna work? What am I gonna do? How I’m not ready to leave my house? She doesn’t really want me to live with her. All the stories right? And there’s this grief and this loss and what it looks like putting this work into practice. Now mind you, it didn’t happen right away. I was a few weeks in before I got to doing the work <laugh>, I finally allowed myself to feel the feelings. A full expression, allowing the grief to move, crying, curling up in a ball, pounding on the pillows, all the things. It’s cathartic.
And I comforted and embraced the parts, the scared parts, the sad parts, the confused parts. And when I opened myself up, unhealed past loss started coming up. There was more, which is often the case. You have to keep going. You have to stay in the game. The triggered parts are grasping, trying to find an outcome. And when we’re attached, nothing new is possible. When we’re gripping, nothing can change. So through this practice of observing, I could witness move through it. And I’m not saying it was fun or easy, but I had these tools and I offer you these tools I cared for and comforted those parts of myself. I reached out for prayer to loving friends who could hold a higher outcome for me without a story, without trying to fix it, accepting life as it is. And it’s a beautiful thing. As I accept those parts of me and accept life as it is, I’m changed. It just happens. So when you’re not trying to change it, as in my case, I felt a softening. I felt this peace come over me and then a sort of new aliveness, a new possibility. I began to feel hopeful
Just by letting myself go. As Amy said that, can you really be grateful for everything? I’m grateful for the moving through that grief. I began to notice gratitude for my capacity, for grief, and for the ways that I’m able to support others in their grief and, and in their lives to live fully expressed and to die fully expressed. And the the third piece of radical acceptance is accepting abundance, expressing as you and through you being the channel. And that was the feeling that I walked away with, is that I was open, I was aware I had this capacity, this was mine to do. And I don’t recall the details of what happened next, but I somehow landed on a job platform that I don’t normally use online. And it was almost as if this job had this like halo around it,
And it was like 15 minutes from my mom’s house, spiritual care and bereavement work. I could be there a couple of days, it would alleviate some of my concerns with, you know, work and travel. Something else was possible. But here’s a really important piece in terms of non grasping and surrender. It would be really easy for me to get attached to the outcome of that. As spiritual seekers. You know, we see a sign, we get elated, we think, Ooh, this is divine guidance. And then when things don’t work out, we’re like, oh man, what happened? I thought that was divine guidance. I thought that was really supposed to be it. Has anyone ever had that?
And then we start to put our foot back on the hose. We have those push pull contradicting thoughts. I want this, but I don’t believe it’s gonna happen. I’m in fear and I’m grasping blocking flow. As she says, you can’t water the roses if you’re standing on the hose. So we’re being called to the next level. Keep doing the work. Keep noticing what unhealed parts are coming. Whether the job works out or not is not the key. It opened me to think about the situation differently, to see new possibilities, to be in flow. So to receive the abundance of the universe, we practice radical acceptance. Accept and embrace all the parts of you. Accept and surrender to life as it is. Accept and receive abundance, expressing as you, your life, your gift. And Tasha says, non grasping is one of the deepest secrets of divine flow. Non grasping. A para gra, the more the hands open to receive, the less they grasp and clinging. Let go of everything that wants to go. Oh, let everything that wants to go go and everything that wants to come, come aligning with flow. Open to accept and receive divine abundance expressing through you, your life,
Your gift. And I’m gonna move into a little practice as I close out in this moment. Just taking a breath and a pause to feel yourself centering, to align with flow. Recognizing divine flow here and now. Everywhere present, not grasping for it out there, divine abundance, expressing as each of us in as and through you. Each being called to be our fullest expression of the divine. Called to trust. Radical acceptance of all of the parts of me. Radical acceptance of exactly how life is right now.
And radical acceptance of being abundance, allowing flow, allowing source to express through me as only I can. Express it as each of you are individualized. Divine expressions of source. Expressing as only you can express it. Saying yes to sustain in the game, saying yes to moving the energy, to return, to flow. The flow is always there. We are the things that step out of alignment. We are the ones who put our foot on the hose or grasp. We open ourselves, we open ourselves. Our hearts are open, our minds are open, our hands are open. And we are saying yes, yes, yes, yes. To flow. Availing ourselves as divine abundance, your life, your gift. And so it’s.