OVERVIEW
What are you afraid of? How does that impact your life? How can you work with your fear to transform it? Join us this Sunday as we begin this month’s exploration of “Living Without Fear.”
TRANSCRIPTION
The transcription is automated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
Thank you, Paige and Greg and Nora for the beautiful song. You know, it reminds me suddenly. I see, I was thinking about this driving in this morning, like how you’re dealing with yourself and then all of a sudden, like you have an insight. So, you know, suddenly you see what’s going on. So I love the love, the song. And you might be like, Hey, where’s Reverend Dr. Jackie, wasn’t she supposed to be here today? And I’m sorry to share that. Um, Reverend Jackie’s sister died very suddenly on Thursday. So that’s why she’s not with us today, but we send our love and prayers to her. Um, she’s down with her family in Atlanta.
So fear freeing ourselves from fear. I remember when I was little, I was really afraid of the dark for a long time. Let’s just be honest. <laugh> and I was about five and I shared a room with my sister at that time, and she is 12 years older than I am. So she was about to go off to college and I was this little five year old and in the, and our beds were on two different sides of the room. You know, we had these little tiny single beds. Right. And I wake up in the middle of the night and I think that there’s a ghost at our door and I’m like, terrified, cuz I’m five. Right? And finally, I got up the courage to go over and like jump on her bed with her <laugh> and of course, I’m sure I startled her awake.
And I’m like, there is a ghost in the room, Judy, and she’s like, let me turn the light on. It’s a towel. I’m sorry. I left a towel on the door. But I love that story because it’s like, that’s sort of how our fears are sometimes, right? Like we’re making something up about something that’s there. That’s not actually real. Right. But we can all get triggered. Um, you know, because fear is built into the survival part of our brain and it’s there to protect us. It’s a natural response. It can also be a sign for us. You know that, Hey, here’s something I need to look at, but we feed it by what’s around us and think about the environment. A lot of us grew up in as kids, you know, there’s a punishing God out there. There’s the devil. God forbid that devil should come and get you while you’re sleeping.
Especially for those of us who are afraid of the dark, right? I’m making fun of myself here. But think about like the consciousness of that, that we’re instilling. And it creates within us superstitions and beliefs that don’t serve us. So what are you afraid of? You know, it could be rational. It could be irrational. There’s no judgment. And we know that throughout time people have faced fear, fear. The Bible talks about fear about 300 times, going back to around 800 BCE. The book of Isaiah says, fear, not for I’m with you. Be not displayed fear for, I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Buddha taught, look within, be still free from fear and attachment know the sweet joy of living in the way and in love is letting go of fear, which is based on the course in miracles. It’s a wonderful book by Gerald Jim Polski. He says fear, always distorts our perception and confuses us to what is going on love is the total absence of fear. Love asks no questions. It’s natural state is one of extension and expansion, not comparison and measurement love then is really everything that is of value and fear can offer nothing because it is nothing.
We live in the middle of con a conversation about fear right now. Don’t we collectively the collective conversation is a conversation of fear. And I don’t need to tell you that. That’s why I picked this topic. John asked last week at the after talk, how do you pick the topic Sam? And I said, I pay attention to what people are bringing up in classes. And I pay attention to what seems to be on people’s minds, but you know, just pick up the paper or turn on your phone, right? Another strain of COVID now there’s, monkeypox, they’re taking our rights away. People are getting shot. I mean, we could go on and on about all the things that are conversation of fear in our world right now. And what do we do when we’re afraid we contract, right? We go to our lesser self. We go live in the part of our brain, which is not very helpful, right?
And we’re not available to our higher selves to that loving part of ourselves because we’re in this fearful place. And to me love, and our higher consciousness are synonymous. It’s the same thing. Like I like the word love actually, instead of using the word God or spirit, I like the word love, cuz I think we can all get it. And whether someone believes anything or not, you know, I think we all can connect on this level of love. Right. And care when people connect, as people love is happening. Right. And, and I think that that is powerful.
But when I’m in fear, what do I, what do I do when I’m in fear? I’m just gonna speak for myself. I wanna control. I avoid, we were laughing about that on the, as we were saying hello, like we, we enjoy apparently, um, I might confront, I might resist. I might wanna be right. You know, I don’t remember who taught this, but someone taught four fatal fears. The first fear is a fear of rejection. In our words, we might say separation like here I am. I’m by myself. I’m doing this all by myself. Right. Failure is a big fear. Like I, I might not be good enough to do this. Emotional discomfort is a big fear. You know, when John asked us to share what is something, you know, what’s a fear, you know, mine was about something. I feel emotional discomfort about I’m fearful of taking action and also just the fear of being wrong, right? Like we all have this part in us. That’s afraid we’re gonna be wrong. Right. And, or stupid or you know, whatever. And it can be fear can be a tricky, subtle thing because sometimes it’s obvious that we’re scared. You know, sometimes we know we’re scared and sometimes we’re just moving so fast through life that we don’t realize that whatever that little bit of anxiety is that it’s actually being fed by fear.
And so I was thinking about this for myself, cuz I always try to relate this to my own life when I’m speaking to you. And I have a situation in my life right now and I don’t wanna be too specific, but I was speaking with a friend and my friend said, what are you afraid of? And I hadn’t even thought that I might be afraid about anything. Right. And she’s like, what are you afraid is gonna happen? And it, that those two simple questions, maybe stop and pause and say, okay, you know what? There actually is a profound fear underneath this. And it’s sort of a suddenly I see moment where I realized like, wow, that’s gonna take some courage to move through that. And so I just share that with you because we all have those things. You know, for me, my area of gr of growth is always speaking my truth, right.
Because I’m a conflict avoid or I’m a pleaser put those two things together. It’s an interesting combination to live in. But you know, I’m also grateful when someone asks me a question like that and I try to ask myself questions like that when I got divorced, actually it was a question from a friend that got my attention. I was having breakfast with a friend I had gone to grad school with, and it was a Saturday morning. And he said, are you happy? And no one had ever asked me that question before. And I had a suddenly IC moment. And I was like, oh my God, I, I am not happy. Like I’m not happy. And so then I went over to my mom’s and I’m like, mom, I’m gonna go home and tell him I’m not happy if he throws me out, can I come live with you? <laugh> and that’s not exactly what happened, but we did end up getting divorced after some counseling. But my point is just like, you know, fear is natural, it’s natural. And when we’re anxious, you know, we can really, I don’t know, we can almost lose ourselves and we have to bring ourselves back to the center and say, you know, what’s going on with me. And, and we do that in our practice too. Right? One of the things I personally find most valuable about meditating is it gives me time every day to check in with myself, like, how am I doing? I think my walks outside or my jogs outside also do that. It’s just, you’re slowing down enough to say like, okay, what’s really going on with me right now. And, and is it fear? And then you gotta ask yourself, here’s the question I want you to ask yourself, are you feeding the fear?
Right? Are you feeding the fear through your thoughts, through your conversations? And I have to, if I’m really honest with myself, I’ve been feeding my fear lately. I know better. I know better. I’ve been in this teaching more than 20 years. I know better than to feed my fear, but we all do it. And my point is, we’re all on this journey, right? But we’re on it together. We’re not doing it by ourselves. So fear is normal. It’s our choice, what we’re gonna do with it. And I think worry is a great example. You know, we really fuel our Fu fuel, our fear when we worry, but what good does it do anyway? Remember who said, what I have most feared has come to pass? Someone said, famous, said that anyone know who it is, Isaiah. It wasn’t Isaiah, but it’s a good guess. It’s gonna bug me that.
I can’t remember it. But you know, we don’t wanna spend our time in fear and awareness is the first step in freeing yourself from fear. Just simply being aware of where you are as Connie read to us, no one imposes fear upon us. Rather, we create it in ourselves and our thoughts and emotions. What we need to realize is that we have just as much freedom to eliminate fear as to create it. So you have the ability to eliminate fear in your life. And I’m gonna invite you to repeat that after me, I have the ability to eliminate fear. Repeat that after me, I have the ability to eliminate fear. And how do we do that? Ernest Holmes said from time Memorial <laugh> big words. He uses a Memorial. It has been instinctive for a man when confronted with fear to turn to what he has considered a power greater than himself to seek release or protection from situations and conditions which have threatened what he considered a normal existence. So first and primarily, we do that through an active thought. And here we call that active thought prayer.
The action of thought is prayer. That’s why in unity, they teach our thoughts, our prayers. So first we wanna look at before we can move it into prayer. We need to take a look at what are the things that are fueling my fear. So superstition, I mentioned superstition already, but how many of us can name superstitions we have from our childhood? Like I have a, there’s another shoe that’s gonna drop superstition. I just have to admit that things aren’t going too. Well. I got that one. Or, um, you know, if I’m not good, I’m gonna get punished or if something’s going wrong, it’s like a bad karma. I did something and it’s, you know, it’s coming back at me. We all have superstitions. So I just invite you to explore whether you have an, and some of ’em were given to us by our families, our parents, the people around us, they were given to us. And also, you know, it’s funny, I just talked a class this weekend. It was a second class of a leadership class for homes Institute. And people were telling their stories. It was part of one of the exercises that we did. And you know, not just superstitions, but sometimes beliefs about ourselves were implanted by someone else. Right?
And so we don’t wanna take that as the truth, cuz that can feed our fear. Like if that story about me was true, there was an incredible story. One person told I’m not gonna tell the story, cuz it was told in the cone of silence. But what I wanna say about the story is she knew when someone said something to her, she intuitively knew in herself that that was not true about her. She had the inner wisdom to know that’s not true about me. I’m not taking that as my story. And it really touched me. I’m like that takes a lot of strength because when you’re surrounded by people trying to tell you, that’s your story, you can accept it. Right? <laugh> but it’s not true. Right? The truth of your being is that you are already whole in your spirit and our philosophy doesn’t teach a punishing version of God.
You know, Ernest Holmes called God. It, I like to think of it as the ground of all being just like energy or love. That’s my, it that’s my version of God. But what Ernest says is creation is a fact. Therefore the creator must also be a fact by the creator. We mean the intelligence principle running through everything. And we don’t believe that this creator is separate from its creation. The creator is in the creation also. So every cell of your being is part of that creative energy and your life is an expression of that creative energy. And there’s nothing outside of that creative energy that can harm you. And that’s hard to believe in the world of form where shit happens, excuse my language. But that’s the words that are coming up for me. Like in life, shit happens, right? People get sick, people die.
We get disappointed. Shit happens in life, but it doesn’t affect the truth of who you are. Right? It can’t really hurt you. We fear the discomfort of some of the bad experiences that happen in life. But none of those bad experiences impact who you truly are. And that’s why we do our spiritual practice to remember that, you know, we teach love. So this higher power and beingness and the law Ernest Holmes said, man is a spiritual being using the law of mine, living in a world of objective form and being surrounded by an unfoldment of his experience, which is the counterpart of his persistent thought. So what thoughts are you feeding? Are they seeds of fear? And we also feed our fear by replay the past, right? It’s like a little film clip in our head. Right. Um, and sometimes we reactivate the old film clip sometimes when a fear comes up, like the irrational fear of the dark, you know, I had this weird experience when I was on vacation.
We were staying at the top of this mountain and it was really dark and right. And, and people at dinner had been talking about how the house was haunted. Okay. And so we go to sleep. My friend is like snoozing away, slight snore. And I think I was sort of half awake and I thought I heard a voice that said, Amy, help me. I can’t breathe. I was so breaked out. I’m like, did I dream that? Did my friends say that? Is there a ghost in the room? Like they had little kid who’s afraid of the dark. Totally got triggered. I put my glasses on cuz I can’t see without him. I’m like, I’m looking around the room. I’m like, is there a ghost in this room? I mean, that’s ridiculous. Maybe there was, I mean, I’m not saying there wasn’t, but my point is just like life, life triggers us.
Right. And, and when we’re playing an old story, we can’t play a news story. And so we really wanna check in with ourselves, how do we, how do we step into a new story? I was thinking about this as I was preparing thinking, you know, it’s almost like when you wanna step into a new story, it’s almost like you take a step in a new set of clothes, right? You don’t wanna wear your old Grimmy clothes that have been through, you know, the past with you. You wanna step into a new set of clothes, a new way of thinking. And that’s the invitation. And sometimes we clinging to our story, right? Because it serves us. We clinging to our story, which reinforces our fear. I have someone in my life who’s very scared of being alone and this person really clings. And then it has the opposite effect because people don’t like it and it actually creates more of it.
And as I think about this person, I’m like, well, I have to admit that I’ve been that person. Right. I was had one relationship. I’m like, I think I was that person. When I think about it, like I was so afraid of the person not being with me, that I like totally acted from a place of fear and it didn’t help us. Right. It didn’t help us. And so my point is just, we all have these things, but Jesus taught that faith or belief was a way to move through the situations of our life. And if you’re put off by the word, Jesus, I know many people are just know that when I speak of him, I mean, he was a way show. He partook of the divine nature, which we are all part of as did other great spiritual teachers like Buddha and Mohamed and more modern teachers like tick, knot, ha we all partake of the divine too.
We are not separate from the divine, but Jesus demonstrated his divinity in our lives just as we demonstrate our divinity in our lives. Right. Sometimes we do it consciously. Sometimes we do it unconsciously, but what do we put our faith or belief in? And I think this is the thing about science of mind. That is so powerful because we’re not asking ourselves to believe in a power that is outside of us. We are embracing a belief in a, you know, an energy I’m gonna call it in energy that is ever present, that we know creates into form through this thing called that we call the law, right. And it’s not outside of ourselves. So our faith is in a universal spirit. That’s not a finicky like today. I like you. And tomorrow I don’t like you kind of a spirit that I think, you know, that’s kind of how God occurred to me when I was growing up.
Like is God in a good or bad mood today? I wonder, is he gonna like me today or not? Right. So we don’t believe in that here. We believe that there is a universal presence and we work with universal principle. And if we work with it, we see it demonstrate, you know, if we work with it through prayer, through affirmation, we see it demonstrated in our law. It’s scientific in our life. It’s scientific. It’s predictable. What you put in, comes out and we have to overcome our own doubts about that being the truth. Right. Which is hard, cuz we’re in a world of skepticism too. Not just fear, but we’re in a world of skepticism right now, but we have to overcome our own doubts. And we do that by practicing principle. We do that through prayer. We do that through affirmation. We do that through taking classes. We do that through being together with like-minded people who remind us of who we are and who are for us when we forget.
And you might be saying to yourself, well, when I’m fearful, why does it seem like the stuff I don’t want comes to be right when, and, and we can all say, that’s true. You ever have a bad day. This to me is the best example. Did you ever have a bad day? And I’ve said stuff like this before, but you’re like having little, little personal pity party about your bad day. Right? And then it just gets worse. Like everything goes wrong then like, you know, your tire goes flat and then you’re late. And you know, do you ever notice that like if you feed the energy of what’s going wrong, that more of it happens and that’s what I’m talking about. It’s not, you know, it’s not to make anyone wrong. We all have moments like that. But these principles work, there are no exceptions. So we wanna be focused and affirming what we want, not what we don’t want, the experience we want to have. And when we’re having an unwanted experience, then we come back and do our work. That’s what we do.
So we wanna make sure we’re not feeding the thought of the unwanted. And you know, sometimes we need to have a little bit of tough love with ourselves too, you know, to have a little hard talk, you know, we have habits, right? We all have habits. And sometimes, you know, our habits, aren’t helpful to us. You know, calling our family, my family likes to have the conversation of what’s wrong. Sometimes it’s just like a habit. Right. And we have to break that habit. And that’s why we have to commit ourselves to being in practice because it helps us to notice how are we doing?
And I wanna talk about one last fear because it’s, we were talking about this yesterday. You know, for some of us, we’re afraid to receive our good and yesterday with these lovely eight future ministers, some of them were talking about that. Like I’m afraid how my life would change if that actually happened. And so our fear can be about things that are kind of good also, right? Like what if I really step out? What if I’m bold? What if I go out and, and do this thing in the world that seems to be calling to me what will happen then? You know? And what if people don’t like me, you know, and you know what, if it doesn’t work. But the thing is like that, which is the expression of your spirit is always gonna make you feel good. And we have to detach ourselves from the outcome of that because what I know, you know, Michael Beckwith, when he was a young minister and he started agape, he used to have he at first he had about 12 people and I know someone who was there then, and she’s like, he wasn’t good. Which is really hard to imagine Michael Beckwith not being good, watching him now. So my point is, life is a process for all of us. And if something is speaking to your heart, go for it.
So our culture can really feed our insecurities. That’s the other thing I really wanna speak to because it’s really been on my heart lately, how young people are doing. And you know, you look at social media and people think they’re supposed to look like Kim and Kardashian my waste. Wasn’t that small when I was like eight. Okay. <laugh> you know, but like we create these expectations for people of what they’re supposed to be like and what they’re supposed to look like. And, and that feeds people’s fears and insecurities. And one of the reasons I believe in this teaching is because I really think it can help people. And I really think it could, can be transformational for young people as it is for all of us. And so that’s really on my heart. So I wanted to share it. You know, one of the most powerful things that ever happened to me is someone who was working around my house said to me, you know, Amy, you’re not broken.
And when he said it to me, I was like, wow, cuz I was, I was trying really hard to make something work in my life that wasn’t working, you know? And the fact it still makes me choked open. He died. Not that long after that was terrible, but you know, just simply someone saying that to me, like the power of that, and you all have the power to do that for someone else. Right? Like I see you, that came up in my class too. We do the little checkout at the end. And one of the women said to the class, she goes, I just wanna thank you all for seeing me. I finally feel seen. I’m like, wow, it was incredible. And so that is what we can do for others to help them with their fears is we can help them be seen. We can simply be curious. We can listen. You know, we can be curious, what’s their story. What’s their experience? How is it different than me? And what can I learn from it?
So this is the power of our teaching. Ernest Holmes says, let go of worn out ideas, take them off like old clothing and to embrace change and to let go of our fear. We just need to move. Maybe we just need to change something in our physical environment. Maybe we need to challenge ourself to do something new, something that brings new energy in, you know, affirm what you want. And also practice gratitude, like start to begin to notice like, wow, you know, I’ve been working on this and I’m starting to see it show up at the end of the day. What am I grateful for? What happened today? That was good. That is showing me that I live in this affirmative universe with a spirit that is for me. And we’re gonna talk about prayer next week. I think when Linda’s speaking, but prayer is very important.
Forgiveness is an important practice because sometimes our fear is related to something that happened in the past. And we need to let go of any resentments we have for that other person and any judgment we have about ourselves. Cuz let’s be honest. Who else makes up stories about themselves? When things happen, we all do it, right? Build your muscle of faith. That’s the invitation. You can free yourself by practice. You know, there’s a story in the, um, a parable in the Bible and Jesus taught in parables because it was how people could understand at that time. People didn’t read, nobody read and it’s the parable of the sewer and the seed. And in that parable, you know, we plant seeds, right? So the dev the idea was the sewer planted a seed. Some of it fell on soil where it couldn’t grow. Some of it fell in weeds and they got it, got choked out.
Some of it landed in good earth and it grew. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re planting seeds, we’re sewing seeds. And in a modern interpretation, we might say the divine spirit, whatever your word is, love is like a broadcast channel. And we wanna listen to that channel and use that to seed our life. Not the channel created by man, which is around us. So the invitation I wanna leave you with today is to feed love and not fear in your life feed, where you’re going, not what’s wrong and we’re gonna move into prayer now. So I just wanna invite, I think Nora’s gonna come up and play for me. Just wanna invite you to move into your heart and just place your hands on the center of your being. And just repeat after me, I release my fear to the divine. I release my fear to the divine. I trust that spirit has me. I trust that spirit has me. I feed only loving thoughts. I feed only loving thoughts. Love is the truth of who I am. And as we breathe into this, knowing of the divine of this spirit with is a, which is a presence and never an absence.
I know my oneness with this divine loving presence, which is always with me. That is for me, that is love itself. And as I know this for myself, I know this for each and every person hearing my words, that all are one with this divine presence of love that it infuses their very beingness. I know the spirit that is the truth of each and every person hearing my words infuses their hearts, their minds, their entire bodies. And so from this place of oneness, I just speak my word of transformation for all of us. May we move in love? May we release fear? May we strengthen our muscle of faith? And I just know, and declare that from that place of powerful, knowing of spirit as the truth of our beings, that life moves forward, new things are possible that we leave behind things that no longer serve us. And we embrace that, which is calling to us. I just know, and declare for each and every person hearing my words, just a deep and profound shift in knowing what is possible for yourself and your life. This is what I’m knowing and declaring. And I know that spirit God, the divine source, whatever word you like that, that power and presence already has the perfect plan for that. And so I give thanks for this. I give thanks for this time together and community, I give thanks for the transformation of our hearts and minds. I give thanks knowing this prayer is fulfilled and with so much gratitude, I simply say. And so it is ah, amen.