I got it. I lost it. I found It. – John Adams
This video features the Sunday “talk” only. Watch the full service on our Facebook page.
DESCRIPTION
Truth is something we get intellectually. Truth (Spirit) can get lost in the twists and turns of life. Finding it requires us to know and express our personal Truth – our authenticity. Let’s explore this idea together.
SUMMARY
- The speaker discusses the challenges faced by the transgender community, noting that they are not hated but rather feared for expressing their authentic selves.
- The speaker links this to the ego’s tendency to create separation, objectification, and judgments as a way to maintain control and feel safe.
- In contrast, the speaker emphasizes that our true nature is one of unconditional love, which we are already and do not need to aspire to. The challenge is to let go of the ego’s attempts to curate and control love.
- The speaker encourages embracing our authentic selves and expressing the love that is our fundamental truth, using the courage of the transgender community as an inspirational model.
- Overall, the talk focuses on the importance of recognizing our innate spiritual nature of unconditional love, and allowing it to guide our thoughts, behaviors, and relationships.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
John Adams (00:00):
Good morning. Good morning. How are y’all? Lemme get this fired up. Okay, let’s all take a collective breath together. Breathing in, letting it out. It’s such a privilege to get a chance to stand up here and share with you. The reason I wanted to move that out of the way and try this setup with the iPad is because I feel like I really want to connect. This is really about us connecting in a conversation and the collective wisdom in the room. So I want to share some ideas that came up for me as I was reading this book, the book for the month. I have an acquaintance, someone that I knew a long, long time ago. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t remember me, but I remember her. She’s a performer and a singer, an activist named Alexandra Billings. And Alexandra was speaking at a fundraiser not that long ago, and she said some things that really stuck with me and I wanted to bring them forward today.
(01:02):
She said that she is a trans woman and she was speaking about what’s going on with the trans community and our climate and our world right now. And what she said was that what’s happening and sort of the movement of, I know a better word for it, oppression that’s happening isn’t about hate. They don’t hate us, as she said, they don’t know us. What she said is that they fear us. They fear our freedom. And that really stayed with me because this idea of our trans brothers and sisters are really expressing their authentic selves. They’re really putting themselves out in a way that is just true to who they are. It isn’t about anything else, it’s just their authentic self and the push that they’re getting, the sort of trying to put them back into a box, this paradigm of you must be this, this is the way you must be, is I think coming from this place of fear, right?
(02:05):
It’s this place of in conformity, if you conform, then we understand each other. We understand how we’re supposed to show up. I know that in that paradigm, it’s very prescribed it. How does a man speak to a man, a woman, speak to a woman, a man, speak to a woman? It’s all very orchestrated and it’s very controlled. There’s a lot of control that’s happening. And what I appreciate about that is that there is this connection between this fear that if we step outside that paradigm, something’s going to happen. And if we stay within it, we’re safe. And yet it’s very limiting. So this is why I see it related to ego, and I wanted to just, Eckhart Tolle in his book talks about ego a little bit. And I wanted to just share with you a little bit some of the characteristics of ego that we know.
(03:05):
We already know this. We talk about this here in our community. The ego is eternally unsatisfied. The ego is attracted to and gets attracted, attracted to, and gets attached to grievances. Judgments help reinforce the ego. That’s the ego, me versus the ego. You, right? And separation is the ego’s way of surviving. So keeping everything separate is the way the ego survives. And it’s one of the reasons why, and I was reading this, I was trying to find the citation for it, but I was reading about this recently is why we create objectification. Why we objectify things in our world. It’s because we’ve made ourselves into objects because that objectivity, creating objects helps us keep everything separate. And when we keep everything separate, we can organize it, we can sort it, and we can put them into these paradigm boxes. And we can also use it as a way to say from a very ego place, this is good, this is bad. These people are great, these people are not so much, and we see this happening. We see it. This is what’s so interesting about what’s going on right now in our world is we talk about these things sort of as theoretical, esoteric ideas, but it’s playing itself out in real time. Right now in front of us, we are in the midst of a spiritual awakening, a spiritual uplifting. I think that’s why all of this is happening.
(04:38):
We think we are a body moving through time and space. We think that we have this differentiation, and I found this quote that I really love. Can you go to the next slide? This is great. This is Della Hicks Wilson. She says, honey, honey, do not let your beautiful mind become a battlefield. Just because someone shows you their weapons does not mean you have to accept the war. Those who tried to break you are expecting you to be in fight mode, conquer them with your peace. What I love about this quote, just so you know from my perspective, is this is a different way of framing it, but this is course in miracles, straight up course in miracles. So if that’s a teaching or a spiritual idea that you’re curious about, join Rob Wozniak when he does his monthly course in miracles gathering, it’s really a tremendous teaching. So what is the call to action in this? The call to action modeled by our trans brothers and sisters is to be our authentic selves that we are to step out and step into the world at least even if we are not as demonstrative as some of our friends are, in terms of just being in the world in the most exposed way, at least in the quiet of our own minds, in our own body temple, in our own selfhood, we can know our authentic self.
(06:11):
I like this quote too. I was telling Amy, I found all these quotes. Spirit was really talking to me this week. I didn’t use AI or anything. They just came to me through different publications and things and I was like, I have too many, but I put a lot in for this talk. So the next quote is by am Maya Niro. She says, you don’t owe anyone a version of yourself that keeps them comfortable, but leaves you exhausted, choose you, even if it’s unfamiliar at first, which I love because we get caught up in the, I want to fit in, I want to want to be accepted. We get caught up in the conformity of having to make other people comfortable. So I’ll show up the way you need me to show up. And if we do that over and over again, and some of us do that a lot in our lives, particularly if you’re in a marginalized community, what happens is your authentic self can feel unfamiliar. So I love that she says choose you even if it’s unfamiliar at first.
(07:20):
And what is the authentic you when we’re talking about this in our spiritual community? This morning I was listening to an interview by Monica Mason. Monica Mason was the director of the Royal Ballet in London. She’s retired now, but she was a company member and a dancer, and she became the director and they were asking her about her process when she was putting together a program of night of ballet. So how do you put all the different pieces together? How do you match dancers together, choreographer’s, music? And she was talking about this process and she said, well, this creative process is really very interesting and there’s a certain pain involved with anything that I do that’s creative. And of course it’s a dancer. So of course there’s pain involved, right? I’m sure that’s something she landed on. And she just kind of said it and moved on and it really stuck with me and particularly because she used the phrase creative process.
(08:16):
And the creative process is something that we teach here in our community. If you’re new to our teaching, the creative process is this idea that our ideas come from spirit. The gifts, the good that comes from spirit comes through our consciousness and expresses in our lives, in our real time life experiences. And in that creative process, which he’s suggesting is that there is a kind of pain that shows up. And I think that that’s kind of interesting because in creation, whenever we’re creating, speaking as an artist, and that’s a great way to think of it, we are actually taking a part of ourselves and separating it and putting it out in the world and saying, there, let it express, let it be. And what’s interesting about that is that it has to have its own life, its own integrity. It has to have its own expression.
(09:12):
And what’s interesting about that, and because it is spiritual, it doesn’t diminish us as we’re putting it out there. In fact, it enlivens us. It expands us. What I love about this, and I talked about this in one of my classes recently, this idea of these paradoxes that show up in love and light and spirit. It’s these paradoxes that show up constantly, and this is one of them that we are always putting something out to have its own life, and yet it enriches us. You can think of it like another way to think about a good metaphor for it is, or analogy for it. As children, you have your children, you put them out, you have to let them have their own life, and yet you are enriched. You are expanded by that creation and that love. Knowing that and sitting with that, we start to understand that with each other.
(10:11):
As we hold each other in spiritual community, as we come together in spiritual community or in any community, we know that this creative process is always happening. We’re never not doing it. We’re always, always creating it. Whether we’re creating a talk for a Sunday morning or making coffee or doing a spreadsheet or whatever it is, Jason created a prayer for us today when he prayed us in spontaneously in the moment, just created it. We’re always in the creative process and in this creative process we are. There is always this sort of element of pain. Another word we might use is surrender. We’re surrendering up a part of ourselves, an aspect of ourselves to be expressed in the world. And so knowing that for ourselves, I think it evokes, it brings forward. We hold that idea. We know that we can step back and go, okay, I know what’s really going on here because we cope with that pain in a lot of ways.
(11:13):
It shows up in behaviors and personality quirks and so forth. We step back from it, we kind go, okay, I know what’s really happening here. It brings forward a compassion and empathy, a patience with each other. It is that love that is already in the center of our beingness and that love is our truth. We are already unconditional love. There are some spiritual paths that will teach you that we have to aspire to find and achieve unconditional love. That’s something that we aren’t, but we have to try and be. We have to try and get to. I would submit to you that we’re already there. We are already unconditional love. We were born unconditional love. We are made. We are created as unconditional love. We’re already there. The thing that happens is we start to get to a place with all this paradigming and sorting and trying to say these people and those people and you and me and the separation.
(12:23):
We get to the place where we are trying to turn off the love. It’s not about turning on the love. We’re trying to turn it off. We’re like that person who hurt me 10 years ago, they’re so bad and I’m not going to forgive them and I can’t forgive them. And we’re trying to turn off that love. But the truth is we can’t because we are love. That is who we are. It is a habitual thing. It is almost a indoctrinated thing that happens in our society where we try to curate love. I’m going to love these people, not so much those people. I’m going to love this. I’m not going to love that. And when we try to do that, we are creating a dissonance within ourselves. And that dissonance, that conflict is what creates anger and frustration and even physical illness because we’re working against our natural state of being.
(13:18):
But when we get into our authentic self, our true self, our spiritual truth, our authentic truth, breathe into that, allow it to be, we are realizing that that love is continual. We don’t have to work at it. It’s simply there. What we work at is letting go of the superficial, letting go of what’s in the world of form. And the world of form is very compelling and sometimes very, very alarming. I’m not saying that it isn’t, but when we step back, what we have is love. It is who we are, like it or not. And I know there are moments where I am going to turn this off. I am not going to love that person. I don’t care. I’m turning it off. And you can’t. And that’s where I think a lot of this energy can come out of.
(14:20):
Our love is very active. We act on it, we behave out of it, particularly when we embrace it. So stepping into that authentic self, we start to change how we show up. There’s a compassion, there’s an empathy, there’s a forgiveness, there’s a surrender into love that happens that just brings forth patience and kindness and understanding that allows us to be together with all our quirky personalities and just be in acceptance of it is another quote that I wanted to share. This is Ursula Egu, wonderful writer. If you don’t know Ursula, I’m looking at Connie. I know she said that love doesn’t just sit there like a stone. It has to be made like bread remade all the time. Made new love is this thing that we experience, but it’s this thing that we generate. It’s this thing that we are putting out through our creative process. We do that through this idea of holding the high watch, holding that higher consciousness, being in forgiveness, being in that place of unconditional love. That is our natural state of being. I mean, that just kind of blows my mind that that’s the truth. The truth is that we’re already there. We’re just kind of covering it up. And once we get out of our own way, it just kind of comes forward.
(16:00):
Where are we? Oh yeah. So we have our ego and we have our unconditional love. So we’re kind of building this model here a little bit. And the two kind of dance together and the ego has a purpose. It’s here in the world so we can survive and have this human experience. Okay, fine. But I think whatever our job is to come back to our authentic nature, to not let ourselves be seduced by the trappings of the world, the materialism, the me versus you, the comparisons and the competition. There’s something that happens I think for a lot of people who come into spiritual community. I dunno if this happened to you. It did happen to me way back when I first started in new Thought, and it was this very familiar idea of getting sick and tired, of being sick and tired. Just like, Ugh, okay, what else is there? There’s got to be something else. There is. We just fell asleep to it, so we’ve always had it. I got it and then I lost it, right? And in order to find it, we go through the next phase of our experience, which is the transformation.
(17:34):
Transformation is knowing the pain from the creative process, knowing that we have this habit of trying to turn off love, knowing that our ego is eternally unsatisfied and can never be stated. We turn within, we find our authentic, our authenticity. We express ourselves, we behave ourselves. We pray ourselves, we act ourselves. So as Ursula reminded us, we are active in this love. We are our behaving out of this love. We are making choices out of this love. We are in that place of authenticity, pure love and joy. There is a quote by Eckhart, oh, there’s transformation. Oh, where’s the Eckhart quote? Go back a couple slides. There we go. You don’t have a life. You are a life.
(18:28):
You don’t have a life. You are a life. And I think the reason why I love this quote from Eckhart is because it speaks to the eternal nature of our beingness. We are eternal beings having this human experience. And on the meta level, when we step way back, a lot of the things that are happening in the world of form, I don’t want to say they don’t matter because I think they matter, but we start to get a different perspective on it. They take on a different meaning because I do think this is my thinking, that all of our experiences aren’t just an out picturing of our consciousness. They are that, but they are also evolutionary. They are evolving us. They are informing us. And when we have the awareness, the spiritual awareness of knowing that, okay, I’m already love. I’m already peace, I’m already joy and this experience is happening, whether it’s an illness or it’s a conflict or it’s an event that I was really not happy about.
(19:33):
I can sit with it and know for me that it is for me in some way. There is something for me in it, and there may be parts of it that are not for me, but there is certainly something in it for me as Reverend Amy would remind us, we don’t always know what things are for particularly in the moment that they’re happening. Sometimes it takes a while to get that perspective so we can have those life experiences and not let them derail us, not let them take us out of that love finding it. You don’t have a life. You are a life.
(20:17):
We find that within ourselves, through this process of recognizing the ego, recognizing that we are already unconditional love and the transformation in our lives is to start acting from unconditional love rather than acting from ego. And I will go to that Ernest Holmes, Ernie. Ernie says, you are more than you appear to be. Life is greater than you have ever known it. Oh, this is the best is yet to come. The best is yet to come. We can look out into this world right now and see a lot of things that maybe don’t work for us that we’re not happy about, that we’re not ready for. I have friends in the spiritual community who are tremendously wise and smart, and they are really putting forward the idea that the current climate that we’re in had to happen in order for us to see the shadow side of things.
(21:20):
For us to make the choice to be in love, to make. We can’t just sort of, sorry, Paige say it’s all rainbows and look at everything with rose colored glasses and it’s all fine. It’s all good, it’s all whatever. We are forced to be engaged with what is happening in the world right now. And from that engagement, we choose love. We choose to be the consciousness of love, the agent of love, the behavior of love, the embracer of it, the model of it. Looking at our trans brothers and sisters, they model their authenticity for us all the time. They have a kind of courage that it deserves tremendous respect. We can do that too. If they can do it, we can do it. They show us the way we’re on the way. So we just say yes to this. We say yes to this beautiful love, this beautiful truth, this beautiful life that we are.
(22:25):
So that’s what I got from reading the book this week. I love the idea that we’re already there, that we don’t have to try and achieve unconditional love, but we are always and have always been, and we’ll always be unconditional love. If I leave you with anything, I want to leave you with that. I want you to know that because I know that and I know that for you. You’re just really, really beautiful. These beautiful beings having this experience. And the more we lean into that, look at all of the saviors and prophets and wise folks that have come before and their life story and the way that unfolds. All the good came to them. Not because they were aspiring for good, but because they were just expressing this love and things just this good, just kept happening, kept unfolding. All their needs were met, all the beautiful people that would gather around them.
(23:22):
Look at us, look around this room, look at the beautiful people in this room. It’s incredible. We’re so blessed to be with each other and to have each other and to hold this idea. So I’m going to leave you with those ideas just to see what, just to let you ruminate, let it mull, let it sit with you. We’re going to pray a little bit now just to kind of solidify all these ideas and thoughts that I’ve brought together for you and what I know right here, right now, as we take a breath and come into whatever it is for you. That is your sense of self, sense of spirit, sense of connection to that place that’s within you, that is that unconditional love.
(24:11):
It’s always been there. It’s so familiar in fact that you almost feel like, oh, that can’t just be it. That can’t be God, that can’t be sourced, but it is. It’s the source that is. And in through all that is this unconditional love. That is the truth, the center of all. It is the creation of all. It is that space and place of just perfect kindness, perfect acceptance, perfect inclusion, perfect happiness, perfect wholeness. So knowing this, I know that I am one with it. I must be one with it because I’m part of this creation, this creative experience. I know that I’m having this happen to me in real time. Right here, right now. I am one with God, one with source, one with all that is. And knowing this for myself, I know this for each and every single person joining me today, just knowing and affirming that each and every single person has their beingness as unconditional love. That is their essential truth. Their fundamental truth is unconditional love.
(25:28):
So from this place, I just know and call forward that love to express itself in ways expected and unexpected in each and every single person’s life, knowing that it’s showing up as this deep abiding kindness, this deep compassion and empathy, not out of a sense of I know and you don’t, or whatever. It’s out of a sense of comradery. It’s out of a sense of I recognize you. I recognize the pain in you. I recognize the struggle in you. I recognize what’s going on in you. It’s in me too. And together we can rise up. We can rise up to that place of unconditional love. We can call that forward and hold that as our truth.
(26:15):
I am so grateful for it, so grateful for connection and community to call us forward, to rise us up. So grateful for my trans brothers and sisters to model authenticity for us in a way that is so courageous and so beautiful and so grateful for that beauty. So grateful for the mission to be inclusive here at Cityside and to welcome all and to know that this is a safe space, to be our authentic selves, to be in full expression of that authenticity and knowing that authentic expression, we are deepening that experience and that expression of spirit in life. And knowing that from that, all good comes forward. So holding that in consciousness for each and every single person. I know your wholeness. I know your abundance. I know your peace. I know that all those circumstances and conditions that need to be unraveled or unraveling, need to be smoothed or smoothed. All manner of good is here right now. Knowing it is. So I confirm it now together with everyone releasing it, letting it be, and together we say, and so it is.
(27:37):
Thank you, John.