Do It Full Out – Rev. Linda Jackson
This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
DESCRIPTION
Life is Spirit in full expression—and that includes you. When we hold back or play small, we resist the very flow of Life that seeks to move through us. This Sunday, we’ll explore how saying yes all the way allows Divine purpose—your unique dharma—to shine through, and how living full out is a spiritual practice of trust, courage, and freedom.
SUMMARY
The key points around the topic of transcendent purpose and living in alignment with one’s dharma or unique calling are:
– Transcendent purpose is about aligning with spirit and truth, rather than ego-driven striving. It is about expressing love and the divine nature within us in our unique way.
– Living in one’s transcendent purpose requires trust, courage, and leads to the freedom of authentic expression. Many people are already close to their purpose but don’t recognize or own it.
– The speaker invites the audience to engage in a self-reflection exercise to reconnect with their essence qualities and step more fully into their purpose.
– The overall message is a call to say “yes” to living as a beneficial presence in the world by embodying one’s unique expression of love.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Linda Jackson:
All right, let’s see how our technology is doing here. I also feel like I might be having a wardrobe failure, and I don’t think it will be as exciting as Janet Jackson’s was. So bear with me. It’s the way the mic is wired. It’s feeling a little awkward for me. So thank you Paige and Greg. So much appreciation for you. Lady Gaga wrote that song, “Born This Way” in support of a safe space for the queer community. It’s rooted in L-G-B-T-Q plus activism, but it has expanded into a universal self-acceptance, right to embrace anyone who feels marginalized or misunderstood. And cityside… I’m sorry. Thank you.
I told you I was going to have a failure. All right, can you hear me? Good. All right, awesome. Thanks. So anyone who feels marginalized or misunderstood, (awesome.) Okay, great. And Cityside is here for that. We are here to celebrate ourselves exactly as we are. We don’t just celebrate Pride on Pride month. We really do welcome all and include all.
I’m not in charge of my volume. They’re telling me volume up. Maybe I do need the handheld.
So this is also an invitation. This song is getting related to our individual uniqueness and the opening into being in our purpose. I will begin with saying hello, friends in the room, friends online. I’m Rev. Linda. I use the pronouns, she and her. Thank you all for being here. Thank you Rev. Aimee for this opportunity and this month we are talking about Transcendent Purpose. Are you all hearing me okay now? Okay, great.
And before I jump fully into the transcendent purpose conversation, I hope you’ll bear with me for a moment. It feels important to acknowledge that there was another dark mark in the division in our country that occurred this week, and it feels like it would be remiss not to mention the shooting of Charlie Kirk. And we’re coming here to talk about purpose and dharma and upliftment, and it feels like it could be a bit of a bypass, not to at least acknowledge it. So I’ll pose another perspective to that in a moment. But I just want to voice that we cannot condone political violence, any violence ever. And I heard the Utah governor, Spencer Cox suggest that we, Americans must choose whether this is the end of another dark chapter in our history. He said, this is our moment. Do we escalate or do we find an off ramp?
It’s a choice, and every one of us gets to make that choice. We are always at choice, and I so appreciate hearing a political figure saying something that makes sense to me. And another bit of hope I found in the midst of this tragedy, I read about a couple of college students from opposing political viewpoints, a Republican and a Democrat organizer. They came together to create a new group based on non-violence. It may seem small, but there is hope in that. And I believe we are being charged with finding ways to come together across the divide. And I really want to encourage you to join our compassionate communication group. The second Wednesdays, we look at universal needs. The practice begins in our personal lives, right in our personal relationships, because the world out there is just a macrocosm of what’s going on within us. So when we develop self connection, understand our unmet needs, we can develop compassion for others and understand their unmet needs, and then new solutions are possible, it’s no longer an option, it’s a requirement. We’re required to do our work in here and out here in relationship, right? So I’m just posing that question. If we are always at choice, what choices are you making?
Alright, let’s take a breath. So this month we are looking at transcendent purpose, the discovery of our unique calling as an expression of the infinite. So true purpose, not necessarily a purpose that’s associated with achievement, but purpose based on alignment with spirit, alignment with truth. When we live in service to something greater, our lives become a gift to the whole. So transcendent purpose means we’re lifted above self-centered striving to this sacred partnership with all life. So you can see how relevant this actually is, if each of us remembers ourselves as a divine expression and we practice seeing the divine in one another. When we drop the self-centered striving, we partner with life, with love with one another. This is transcendent purpose. So talking about purpose, there’s so many models. Folks in business and marketing have lots of different ways of describing and defining purpose, mission, vision, and I worked in that industry for 35 years, and it has boggled me how they could just be slightly different from one another. And in our book this month, the Great Work of Your Life, Stephen Cope talks about purpose as dharma.
Dharma is a Sanskrit term and like purpose, it has no single definition. It varies and especially depending on the tradition that it’s being used with. But cope expands on how we typically think of purpose. Dharma encompasses an individual’s right path unique to their life, and it’s not an option to live in your purpose. The world needs you to live in your purpose. Spirit is always expressing itself in and as and through all life, and that includes you. When we hold back or we play small, we’re resisting the flow of life. We’re resisting the flow of spirit that is wanting to express through us as us. What would it look like if you lived full out, no holding back, no playing small, living full out in your dharma, your unique way of expressing love in the world? It requires trust, courage, and it leads to freedom.
Trust is required, courage is activated, and freedom follows. I’ve worked with people from high school students to college-age students to people in midlife, to people at end of life who were worried that they didn’t know what their purpose was. And I could get up here and just say this one thing. No matter the question, love is the answer. It doesn’t matter if you’re asking, how do we end hate crimes? How do we close the gross political chasms? How do we resolve the squabble with our neighbor or our friend? How do we discover our purpose? Love is the answer.
So our transcendent purpose is to be love and to do it full out. Michael Beckwith says, we all have the same purpose to express love, the love and divine nature that is already within us – in our own unique way as a beneficial presence on the planet. Love isn’t somewhere out there. Our purpose isn’t something out there that we have to go discover. It’s already within us. Cope shares a lot of stories about well-known folks and about ordinary people and how they related to or connected with their dharma or their purpose. One of the stories that I love in that book is a story of Jane Goodall. He tells a couple stories about Jane Goodall, and it’s a story that I’ve shared before because I really find it moving. She knew at a young age that she loved animals and nature. It was just she was born that way and her family had a farm out in the country in England, and she spent a lot of time there.
So this one time they’re at the family farm, and she’s fascinated by the chickens, the chicken coop. She wants to know where the egg comes from. And she’s little. She’s only like three, four or five years old, which fascinates me that she was allowed to wander the farm, but nonetheless, she was. And she spent all this time at the chicken coop wanting to see where this egg came from. And she realized that when she would get near the coop, the chickens would get all riled up and not allow her, or they wouldn’t even lay any eggs at that time. So she had the presence of mind to get very quiet and found a way to climb inside of the chicken coop and get still and wait. And she waited and she waited. And meanwhile the adults are going, where’s Jane? Because she’s being so quiet and she’s hiding and they don’t have any idea where she is, and they’re starting to be frantic looking for her.nWhere’s Jane?… running all around.
Meanwhile, the chicken lays the egg. Jane is thrilled. She’s so ecstatic. She’s finally discovered the egg comes from the chicken and she runs out beaming with joy. Her passion is heightened and her mother sees her. And of course she’s relieved to see her, but she goes running towards her daughter, Jane’s running for her mother. And I don’t know about you, but my mom would’ve said, where the hell have you been? But Jane’s mother said, “she saw the light in her eyes” and she got down at her level and she said, “tell me what you’ve been up to”. “Tell me what’s going on”. And Jane shared her love of the chicken, the story with the egg and the excitement she had experienced. So at that age, she was encouraged, she was loved, she was encouraged to be in her own passion.
Our purpose is to express the love and divine nature that is already within us. What lights you up? If someone else were in your presence, what would they see was lighting up your eyes? Your purpose is not a certain job. Your potential is not limited to expressing only one way. Your purpose is to express love in your own unique way as a beneficial presence on the planet. So we’re being invited to dial into the way of expressing love that is uniquely you as a beneficial presence. When we live in service of something greater, our lives become a gift to the whole. And I’m reminded of the book by Gay Hendricks, the big leap where he talks about being in your genius. It’s when we’re alive, expansive, and free. It’s the intersection of our gifts and spirit’s call. I think of it as the thing you’re doing when time stands still, when work doesn’t feel like work, when it feels like the divine is working through you. A friend said to me, it’s the way he feels when he’s writing. It’s like something is channeling through him. Look at Page and Greg talk about love being expressed and being a beneficial presence on the planet! That’s spirit moving through them.
I’m fortunate to have the experience sitting with clients where I feel like it’s not me doing it when spirit is working through me and I’m having some understanding and connection and guidance. And when I’m creating, I’m a maker. When I’m creating, I have insights and inspiration. It comes to me. It’s not, oh, I had a brilliant idea. No, it’s spirit moved through me and inspired me. It doesn’t mean that it won’t require practice. And living full out requires trust. This is from The Facets of Unity by AH, Almass on basic trust. When this basic trust is present, the development of the soul moves towards being. When basic trust is relatively absent, the soul develops more toward ego. It’s part of the human experience to have an ego, but the degree that we identify with ego is influenced by how much trust is present. Basic trust is the deep embodied sense that life is trustworthy, that life is supportive and fundamentally good.
Without it, of course, we play small. Of course, we grasp for control or stay in the safe zone. With this basic trust, we can lean into spirit. We can let go of fear and live in purpose, on purpose, live full out. So trust requires getting outside of ego to reconnect with our authentic self. Remembering the truth of who we are with unlimited potential with love as our essence. But living on purpose requires that trust.
And Ernest Holmes, the founder of the religious science and Science of Mind, said, God, source, creator, divine can only do for us what it can do through us. Many of us didn’t have experiences that encouraged our light, and some of us had experiences that encouraged us and then shut us down. And we just feel confused about whether it’s okay or not. So we’ve been dampened to varying degrees. So we lost trust.
We developed the ego coping mechanisms, but we’re invited to do the work, to clear our subconscious, to lay down those masks of ego, reconnect with our authentic self, with who we really are, not the personas that we have to show up with in order to navigate life when we’re in fear. And that’s how we rebuild trust with ourselves, with life. And it clears the way for spirit to express through us more fully. We can reclaim our light. We can live full out. In the reading from the Great Work of your Life, Stephen Cope asked, do you fear that you may have missed the boat? Do you fear that, oh, sorry, that you have become unmoored from your true calling and are drifting aimlessly? Anybody, anybody ever felt like, oh, maybe I missed it. He goes on to say, most of the ordinary people he studied imagined that to claim their dharma, they would have to invent an entirely new life. Like they would have to give up selling insurance and move to Paris to paint or quit their job as a hospice nurse and sail around the world. Not so. Did you ever think that you have to do something bigger or greater? He says, not so. He says, as it turns out, most people are already living very close to their dharma.
These people are as close as they are to the deepest mystery of dharma. Just know very little about it. They don’t name it, they don’t own it, and they don’t live it intentionally. Living full out in your dharma requires the courage to own it, to name it, and to live it intentionally. And I’m going to invite us to do that today. Living full out means embracing your dharma, your unique purpose. He says It’s better to fail at your own dharma than to succeed at someone else’s. Following this path requires trust and courage and leads to the freedom of authentic expression. Freedom is being unapologetically yourself. When we trust spirit, find the courage to say yes and live full out. We discover the deepest freedom of all to be who we were born to be.
It’s a choice, and every one of us gets to make that choice. There’s only one life expressing uniquely as you. And when you fully embrace your authentic self, you become a clear channel for spirit’s, creativity, and love to express. Yes, trust is required, and yes, courage has to be activated, but freedom follows. It’s worth it. Seeing little children with the light in their eyes, seeing grown people with light in their eyes. How many of us experienced that type of support as a child or had mixed messages about it? When I think of this, I have some regret about how I raised my own children. We’re doing the best we can, but I feel like I probably dampened them sometimes. And when I see my granddaughter, I am so moved. They build her up. They encourage her light. They do everything they can to support her dreams, her desires, her interests. She and Jane have it going on.
Yet our culture would say she’s spoiled. They’re making her the center of attention. And I hope it doesn’t hurt when she finds out that she’s not that important. It doesn’t have to be that way. Jane Goodall, her mother even went to the jungle with her and set up camp. It’s not about blaming our past experiences. It’s an invitation for us to heal what needs to be healed from our past so that we can be there for ourselves.
Now, it goes something like this. Some point in your early life you had an experience or a series of experiences and you come to believe something about yourself and or the world. You unknowingly cross out some parts of yourself, sort of split off from your essence and develop these personality traits with coping strategies and behaviors, right? How do I navigate the world based on this thing I’m believing? And then we’re gathering evidence to validate the false beliefs and the personas in our survival mode. And that’s when we find ourselves in that loop.
As we begin to heal, we reestablish basic trust. We reconnect and accept our authentic self. We can remember our essence qualities. We can reclaim our light. We can live full out living on purpose.
And I’m going to invite us to go into a little practice and process here and just trust that the right experience comes forward for your highest good. So if you’re willing to turn your attention inward or just take a downward gaze, whatever’s comfortable for you. Consider a recent experience when a limiting belief or a personality, a strong personality trait was running the show.
And just let that come forward In your memory there, this experience of a challenge where you’re limited in what you think is possible and you’re activated to handle it through personality. I’m just asking what’s the story that you’re telling? How is this a familiar story or a pattern in your life? What have you made up about yourself or the world? Is there something you stopped accepting or loving about yourself? What coping strategies or survival behaviors did you develop? And how do these behaviors serve you? It’s important to note that they’re not all bad – coping behaviors work until they don’t work anymore.
But how might these coping strategies and beliefs have crossed out your essence qualities, your nature? The parts of us that get crossed out actually point back to those essence qualities, our love, our purpose. So considering that you have uncovered or remembered some qualities that have been your nature, the things that have lit you up since the beginning of your memory, let’s imagine retrieving those parts or any parts that were crossed out or splintered off a sort of soul retrieval, if you will. Imagine energetically returning those essence qualities to you. They could never actually be separate. It is only the ego that believes they are separate. But intentionally reminding ourselves to bring those qualities in to embody them, perhaps even imagining where you feel them in your body.
Who are you when basic trust is present? Who might you be as you reestablish basic trust? Make any agreements with yourself that are needed to feel complete here. And let’s set the intention to move forward from here with focus on stepping into your purpose, bringing forward those qualities that are your light, living full out.
And just inquiring, is there anything that you are making up that keeps you from living on purpose? What dampens your light? And how does the retrieval and the remembering of these qualities support you in stepping more fully into your purpose? And if you can now imagine a time when you were in your genius or in your brilliance, in that high vibration of love and purpose, what were you doing? What brings that light to you, that passion to you? Let go of the actual activity and get underneath it. What are the qualities you access when you are in your purpose, on purpose, feeling that light? And how can you support yourself to have more of these experiences? What is the benefit to yourself, to others, to the world?
When you share your purpose living full out in your dharma, your unique way of expressing love in the world, trust is required, courage is activated, and freedom follows. And I will close us out here with a prayer. Just staying in this connection deeply connected to self and remembering that it is there in that inner sanctuary that we have access to the infinite, that we are the conduits to spirit, that we are the channels for that love, that we are one with that intelligence, that creativity, that love always. That it is always desiring to express in essence and through us.
And it expresses through us to the degree that we are available to it. And I affirm right here, right now that we are each saying yes to opening to greater expression, to being the conduits for that love, for stepping fully into our unique expression. That as a beneficial presence on the planet, that the planet needs now more than ever. It is not an option. It is a requirement. Saying yes to who we were born to be, to bring love to the planet in our own unique way. And I’m so grateful. So grateful for a room full of people and a group of people online who are saying yes to being love on the planet. I’m so grateful for all of the good that ripples out from this and for the change that we experience in the world because of it. So grateful for the fulfillment of this prayer. I release it into the law knowing it is so, I call it good. And I invite you to join me in saying and so it is. Thank you.