Healing Our Sense of Separation – Rev. Aimee Daniels
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DESCRIPTION
The illusion of separation keeps us from fully experiencing our divine interconnectedness. Our hidden biases and limiting beliefs reinforce this false sense of division. Join us this week as we uncover and release these unconscious patterns, allowing us to step into a greater flow of unity and love. By shifting our perception, we open the door to deeper connection and transformation.
SUMMARY
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Aimee Daniels (00:01):
…(inaudible)… Good morning everyone. Thank you for being here on this snowy day. I myself drove through a snowstorm to get here. I was coming from Michigan and sometimes you just have to accept what’s happening behind three snowplows and you’re going 23 miles an hour and that’s what’s happening. And I think that’s a great lesson for us in life right now, and thank you for that beautiful song Music team. We’re waiting for the world to change, but the only person that we can change is ourselves, right? That’s the only person we can change is us. And so I’m going to go back to an old story. You know this story, Adam and Eve looking all cute in the Garden of Eden there. And I like Don Miguel Ruiz’s interpretation of this story. He talks about the story in the voice of knowledge and he talks about it not as a fall from grace as some of us might have been brought up to believe.
(01:10):
But he talks about it as the moment that we began to believe the voice of the liar in our head and in his version, Adam and Eve lived in perfect harmony with creation. They were fully connected to life. They were fully connected to each other. They were connected to the divine, and they didn’t question their own worth. They didn’t question whether they belonged. They didn’t question their place in the world. They just knew that they fit in and their world was full of love. It was pure. They were whole. There was no judgment, there was no fear, there was no sense of lack. Everything was present. And then tree of Knowledge, good and evil, that bad Eve? No, just kidding. That’s how we were taught the tempts. Eve got her husband to eat from the tree of knowledge, but they ate from the tree of knowledge.
(02:10):
What happened then? They realized they were separate from the divine. They start started to doubt themselves. They were ashamed. They covered themselves up. They literally covered themselves up and they hid. And that was the real fall. It wasn’t a punishment from spirit or anything like that. God. It was a fall into illusion, into a belief in separation. And as soon as they believed the voice that he calls the liar, then they began to operate differently in their life. And he teaches that this voice teaches a voice of judgment, doubt and separation lives in us. We know that. We sometimes listen to my head. I’m like, Ooh, it’s a little rough in there, but it exists in us. He calls it. He actually says it’s the parasite. I don’t personally love calling it that because I think about that Star Trek movie where they put the creatures in his ear.
(03:19):
Anyone know what I’m talking about? Wrath of Kana. Any Star Trek fans, I love that movie, but I invite you to think about when was the first time you felt a sense of separation For me, what popped into my head when I was thinking about this is when my sister got married, I was three years old. She was my person. She took care of me while my mom was off doing whatever she was doing. She was really mad when I was born. She was 17 and everyone thought I was her kid, but she gets married and her husband didn’t really want us around. And so I was like, I was devastated. I all of a sudden felt like I was alone. And our childhood can magnify this, right? It can magnify it. Maybe we got picked on in school or maybe we felt like we were othered, right?
(04:12):
But then we start to build a story. Why is this happening to me? Why are my parents mad at me? I don’t know what I did. We begin to build a story and that is separation. So this ties beautifully with Greg Braden, by the way, because it’s all about the energy we have in the science of mind. We teach love and law. Love is all that is. It’s the wholeness, it’s the ness, it’s the infinite potential. Law is what we work with to create as human beings and we can create positively or we can create negatively. But what Greg Braden says is we’re not separate from this energy that created us. At the time the universe was created, that energy was like the size of a pea. It was the size of the pea of a pea. And that contains everything that we have seen in this universe that very essence is isn’t us. That’s kind of a crazy thought, isn’t it? It’s a crazy thought. So Greg, could you go to the next slide? Not Greg. Sorry Ben. I dunno where that came from. Greg, could you go to the next slide?
(05:29):
So Rob, read this to us from the Divine Matrix, and here’s what I want to pick up on in what Braden said. Science and spirituality now affirm what the ancient wisdom traditions have always taught. We live in a field of infinite connection, so that has scientifically been proven. Ernest Holmes teaches us the belief in separation is a construct of the conditioned mind, not a spiritual reality. Think about that. Think about that experience of childhood where you’re trying to figure out what people around you want from you. It impacts you. I know it turned me trying to watch my parents, whatever was going on there turned me into a pleaser. It also turned me into an avoider because God forbid we should speak the truth about what’s happening. But then it also turned me into someone who really needed to try hard all the time. But think about that energy driving me versus this energy of love that you’re already okay.
(06:37):
There’s nothing to fix in you because spirit created you. You’re good not because somebody in the world says you’re good or bad, you’re infinitely good. You’re infinitely whole. It’s all in you. I mean, this is so mind blowing. If you really think about how science and spirituality fit together. Even think about your body chakra’s, energy that connect you to the divine. We literally are communicating all the time through our energy, whether we know it or not. It’s pretty really pretty amazing. And this is also consistent with other teachings in Buddhism. They talk about Maya, which is illusion, which keeps us from seeing that everything is interconnected. In Hinduism, they have Aveta, which is all is Brahman, the divine essence. If you grew up in the Christian faith and the father are one, I’m not separate from this. This is not something outside of me, and yet there’s messaging all around us that it is.
(07:45):
So this voice in the head, the parasite, the unhelpful voice, whatever you want to name yours, it’s talking to us all the time. Something happens, it’s talking to us, good, bad, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’ve started calling my voice the narrator because I notice I’m always narrating my life. I’m walking down the street and someone cuts me off with their car while I’m walking the dog. I might have some choice words in my head, so my narrator’s always happening or I get some feedback or I think I’m going to get some feedback and then I’m worried about it. That voice in our head is always narrating our life and our culture. Others, a lot, especially right now. You’re an other from me. I’m good. You’re not good. And I know we’re seeing a lot of really upsetting things right now. And by the way, not everyone’s upset by the things that are happening.
(08:58):
Now, you know how I know that I’ve had some conversations with people where this is just what is, but there’s a lot of upsetting things and some of them have happened to people I care about personally. We have a friend who had just been promoted to the top role in his field where he’s worked for a part of the government for 30 years. He got demoted because he was deemed a DEI promotion That makes me so angry. Can I just tell you I know this person, I know his worth, but I can’t let my anger overwhelm me. I can’t because then I’m not available to how I can help if I’m putting out anger. Actually, Neville Goddard said this a hundred years ago. We can’t create from anger. So that’s really our work. Our work is to be begin to understand what is my inner voice saying?
(09:53):
And does it serve me? Does it make me feel more separate or does it make me feel more connected? That’s my invitation to you this week. Just walk around and listen to your inner parasite, your narrator, whatever your word is that you choose, you can kind of laugh at it if you give it a name. Oh, my narrator, there goes my narrator again. But just to begin to notice, because on the other side of noticing there’s freedom. If you notice the voice, you can say, okay, what am I upset about right now? What am I upset about? What does that tell me? If I’m upset, what is my spirit wanting? My anger about what happened to my friend? My spirit is wanting everyone to be treated fairly for who they are. That’s what my spirit wants. My spirit wants a country that doesn’t play favorites. That’s what my spirit wants. And so what’s my role in that?
(10:58):
How can I be like a, I don’t know what the right word is right now. The word’s not coming to me. How can I be available to help? I guess I’ll just say it that a cooperative component. We say in CSL, we believe in a world that works for everyone. That’s what I care about. So let’s talk about some of our barriers to unity inside of us. Reverend Rod talked to us last week about changing our beliefs. He was great. It was a great talk. And I think we want to also begin to explore our mental constructs beyond our beliefs. We all grew up into a certain way of seeing the world. We did. It depended where you grew up. It depended what your parents were like. It depended who you were around. And yes, that’s belief, but there’s something deeper there and us versus them.
(11:55):
Who else is guilty of this besides me? I just want to say I’m totally guilty of this and we don’t even have to talk about politics. My work with Vistage, I hear myself saying the word they a lot. Well, this is what they think matters. I need to grow up a little bit on that one, right? But it’s super challenging right now. It can be super challenging right now where we’re at right now on the us versus them. But there is no them. There is no them. I was having a conversation with some friends at dinner and just this topic of who would I be willing to help? We were having this conversation of who would I be willing to help? And I said right now, we need to be willing to help everyone. It doesn’t matter who they voted for, it doesn’t matter what their point of view is.
(12:44):
There’s no us or them. So we need to begin to realize this in our language. And Reverend Mark, when he talked about that, forgiveness comes from our spiritual heart, like our spiritual beingness, not our human heart. And I think that the same is true with letting go of us and them. My human self is not capable of that. My human self is not capable of that. I’m going to have an opinion on everything, but if I take it into my practice, then I can rise above the us and them. There is no us and them. There’s only us. That’s the spiritual truth. And when I do my practice, I can heal whatever is going on within me. So I’m available to be open to everything. And everyone, let’s talk about stories of separation. We all have. I don’t fit in. I don’t belong. I’m never going to be accepted because I will never be part of the group because does anyone have a story like that or had an experience of that sometime in your life?
(13:55):
We all have those stories of separation. We do. You’re not separate from your source though. That’s the thing I want to say. You’re never separate from your source. Our human self is going to get triggered. Our human self is going to be sad. Stuff happens in life. People have stuff happen that’s unfair. My nephew is going through a really contentious divorce and custody thing right now. I mean, what’s happening world of form? Is it fair? I don’t know. But my human self can’t rise above the details of the story. But if I go to my spiritual self, I’m available to pray for him, to pray for his family, to pray for the highest good of all of them. And that’s what we have to do. We have to pull ourselves up. We got to pull ourselves out of our human self. And I just want to repeat, I said this earlier, but if you have story about yourself that something is broken in you, it’s not true.
(14:56):
We all mess up. We all mess up. We’ve all done stupid things. God knows I’ve done 7 million stupid things in my lifetime and sometimes they come back to haunt me at a quiet time. You’re like, oh, when I did that 30 years ago, that was dumb. But you’re not in that moment now. You are not in that moment. Now that’s not the truth about you. Maya Angelou said, when we know better, we do better. So that’s my invitation to you is when you are having those thoughts, bring them into your practice. And we’re going to talk about how to do that in a few minutes. Let’s talk about ego, identity, fear. I would say ego and identity might be running this show in our country right now.
(15:47):
And I’m not just talking about the politicians. I’m saying it’s kind of how we’re collectively living right now. We’re living in a time where we’re very focused on what’s happening on the outside. Think about Facebook, Hey, this is what happened to me today. And then what do we do? We go and we compare ourselves or whatever. But that’s not the truth of your spirit. And if we could simply move beyond thinking, and we have to do this in ourselves first, we have to change ourselves first. If we could move beyond believing that what we do or what we have is who we are, we would be free. And that’s true not for us individually, but it’s true for our country. Who you are is not what you do or what you have or anything that anybody else would say about you. Your eternal essence is the truth of who you are.
(16:52):
So I just invite you just to think about what do you say to yourself? What do you say to yourself on a regular basis? And I’m going to get a little practical now, and I’m drawing a little inspiration here from a person. I like her work a lot. She’s not particularly spiritual, but Mel Robbins, she wrote a book called Let Them. If You Struggle with Reactivity, I mean actually we should all listen to this book because here’s the short version of the book. If people are doing stuff, let them, let them do what they do. Let them do whatever they’re doing. But then let me consider my own reaction. Let me do my own work. Let me do my own work. If I’m experiencing something as unfair, what’s for me? Maybe I am. Maybe there’s something else. So there’s a few things that I want you to consider and just for yourself.
(17:58):
So the first thing is comparison. Mention social media. Anybody ever compare themselves with someone on social media that maybe they do the same work as you? Or maybe you’re an artist and they’re an artist or whatever. Anybody ever compare themselves ever? Come on. Okay, so what do we do when we compare ourselves? We feel bad. We feel bad. I’m not as good as they are, but you made different choices than they do. And sometimes that comparison is an invitation, right? It’s an invitation. I’ll say something that I get triggered by is when people are promoting themselves a lot sometimes, sometimes they’re promoting themselves at something I could consider promoting myself at, but I don’t feel comfortable with that. So if they’re triggering me, that’s about me. That’s about looking at my own sense of worthiness. Do I feel worthy? Clearly I don’t if I’m triggered.
(19:05):
Otherwise I’d be like, Hey, high five, good for you. And that’s what I try to say after I notice I’m triggered. I’m like, good for them. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So don’t feed the voice when it happens. If you have a voice saying that you’re less than in some way, just tell it to shut the F up. Just tell it to shut up and just remind yourself, what does this tell me about what I’m desiring? And then ask your spirit to help you to know what action you should take. Hey, I am feeling, I’m feeling bad about this. I’m sitting with it. Help me understand what you want to call forth in me, what wants to come forth in me by this situation? By seeing their being in this situation. I had someone call me on, I’m going to hold that for a second. So let’s talk about judgment. We do it every day. We judge ourself. We judge other people. And right now we live in a world where people feel very free to judge and out people and cancel people. We see that all around us.
(20:24):
And I try to remind myself, I’m not anybody’s keeper. It’s not my job to worry about what they’re doing, because I realized a long time ago that if I judge someone, I seem to end up in that situation. And so when I notice that my judgment is coming up, I just have a talk with myself and I say, okay, can we just let go of the judgment? And sometimes I have to talk to myself and say, I can see from why from their point of view that would be true for them, right? I can see why. And for me right now, I’ve had some conversations with people who have different political points of view than I have, and actually probably have had a lot of those. But it’s not my job to judge. It’s not my job to judge anyone. And I want to talk about the difference between judgment and discernment.
(21:26):
So judgment is when we say bad, wrong, evil, whatever discernment is when we say, this doesn’t really work for me, that was my experience in my corporate job at the end of my corporate career, I was like, values that I’m expected to live. It’s not me. I discerned that, right? I got a call from someone I work with the other day who was helping me with a problem. And she was saying that she thought her boss was about to fire her. And so we had a talk. And what came up is that because this person was judging her, she was judging herself instead of discerning that like, oh, hey, maybe I’m not in the right circumstance for me. Do you get the difference? Right? She could make herself all wrong and like, I got to be better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But her discernment was, I’m not in the right place for myself. That’s the difference. You get the subtlety in one. We’re kind of blaming in the other. We’re just feeling into what’s right for us. And then the last one is being right. Biggest devil in the world of being right? Rich will be laughing right now if he’s listening. Someone taught me this adage. I use it all the time. You can be right or be in relationship.
(22:56):
And it’s so true because when I notice myself trying to be right, I’m like, Ooh, how about the other person? How about our relationship? Right? And I know right now it’s super hard. I think it’s probably hard politically. I think one of the hardest places is with our family, just to be real. I have someone in my family, I’ve shared this, I’m working through some things with, and it’d be really easy for me to be right, but I’m really more concerned about my relationship than that. And so that’s my invitation to you is if you notice you’re trying to be right, take it into prayer, set it down. Ask your spirit to help you to rise from your human perspective to a higher perspective. And we’ve got lots of examples of people who have done that. The best one that comes to my mind is Nelson Mandela.
(23:57):
If anyone see the movie about him, about his, I forget Invictus, maybe it was the one about the rugby players, soccer players, one of those things. Anyway, someone said to him, why are you kind to the people who persecuted them or persecuted you and put you in prison? And he said, because I know and I knew that I have to forgive for this country to move forward. I have to rise my thinking up. And we have so many other great examples of that. I think Martin Luther King Jr. A perfect example of that. He raised himself up. I have a dream. I see a bigger picture for what’s possible in this country other than what’s happening. Lots of good examples. So let’s talk about how we do our work.
(24:47):
And this is just some little homework. I’m going to give you two homeworks. We’re going to do a practice at the end. So if you want to take a picture. The first one is we shift our mindset. We shift our mindset from I am separate to I am one with the divine. I am one with divine wholeness. Whatever your word is for that. I actually am going to invite you to say this with me. Okay? I’ll say it and then we’ll say it together. I am one with divine wholeness. Let’s all say it out loud. I am one with divine wholeness because whatever you put in your mind is going to come back to you. I was driving in and I was having flashbacks of Bible quotes from when I was little. This morning, low. I am with the always. Anyone know that one, whatever we put into our mind comes back out.
(25:41):
So we need to be really conscious of our mindset. I’m one with divine wholeness. That voice comes up for you. I’m one with divine wholeness. Whatever that negative voice is. The second thing we want to do is we want to have heart centered awareness. And you can do this in any moment, and you can do it in the middle of a meeting. You can do it when you’re about to have a conflict with someone in your family. But just this idea, if you feel triggered or scared, no matter where you are, just take a moment. And if it helps you to put your hand on your heart, do that. But just breathe in. Because when we breathe in, we reconnect with our spirit. When we breathe out, we connect with what’s around us. That’s how powerful our breath is. So let’s just do it together right now. Put your hand on your heart, just breathing in. I reconnect with my spirit. Breathing out, I connect to all that that is around me. Let’s do it one more time. Breathing in, I reconnect to my spirit. Breathing out, I reconnect to all that is around me.
(27:01):
You feel better after you take a breath. Okay, sacred action. We can actually practice kindness in our life. Every day. We can practice service in our life. Every day we’re going to close with a little forgiveness practice. But what does it do? When we practice kindness, when we practice forgiveness, when we practice service, it helps us realize our relationship with those around us. It naturally heals our sense of separation. And so it’s important that we consciously take the time to do this. As simple as, who can I help today? Who can I help today? Who did God’s spirit? Whatever your word is put in front of me, that needs help because that’s how we feel connected with what is around us. And finally, we go to affirmation and prayer. We teach affirmative prayer here.
(28:04):
The two most important steps, recognition meaning God is all there is the universe is all there is source. Whatever your word is, pick your word. The divine is all there is. And then unification. I am one with it, right? So I just invite you to come up with an affirmation that reminds you of that. We’re going to say this one together out loud, and then we’re going to go into a practice. And I am aware that I’m over time everybody. So on the team, okay, just let’s say this together. I am one with all of life. There is no separation, only wholeness.
(28:50):
So we’re going to, I put the instructions up here so you can do this at home. This is just a little practice, a simple forgiveness practice that you can practice at home. So if you want to take a picture of it to do it during the week, we’ll do it together. So I just invite you to close your eyes and take a deep breath. And as you breathe in, you’re reconnecting to spirit. As you breathe out, you’re reconnecting to all around you, breathing in, reconnecting to spirit, breathing out, connecting to all that is around you.
(29:46):
And in your mind’s eye, I invite you to know these words of truth and to repeat them to yourself. There is only one life, one presence, one love. I am not separate from it. I am an expression of it. Just know that truth in your mind. I am not separate from it. I am an expression of it. And in this moment, I choose to remember my unity with all of life. So in this moment, know your unity with all of life, all this love, all this goodness, all this grace. And I just invite you to bring to mind something that you need to forgive. It might be something you need to forgive for yourself. It might be something that you need to forgive with someone else or a situation. And just know in your willingness to forgive, the spirit of love begins to move.
(31:26):
So I invite you to say this to yourself. I am now willing to forgive. I am now willing to forgive. Just breathe into that. I am willing. I now release any belief in separation, judgment or resentment. I release any belief in separation, judgment or resentment. I forgive myself and others because I’m ready to be free. I actually want to invite you to say that with me. I forgive myself and others because I’m ready to be free. So in this moment, for each of us, I choose love. I choose peace. I choose to see the divine in myself and everyone else. I know that we are all whole. We are all free. We are all one with all that is. And I just know that whatever is in hearts to be released, that thing to be forgiven, that thing that we are holding onto, that belief or judgment that we’re clinging to.
(33:16):
I just know and declare by the power of this word that that is shifted. I declare that this is a new day for each of us. And we choose differently. We choose to be the conscious co-creators with spirit that can truly change the world. I know that we are changing ourselves. And as we change, the world changes. So that is what I’m knowing and affirming. I’m just calling forth more love, more grace, more freedom, more goodness, more compassion. This is the spiritual truth, and I know that, and I declare that now. And I’m grateful for this. I’m grateful for the love, the wholeness, the unity, the oneness. That is the truth of all of us. And I’m grateful to know that God’s got all of this. God’s got all of our human concerns. And I’m grateful to know that everything is moving forward from here. I’m grateful to know that there is hope, there is peace, there is love. There is compassion, there is possibility, and it is happening now. And with so much gratitude, I simply say, and so it is. Amen.