This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
Overcoming Silence – Rev. Linda Jackson
DESCRIPTION
True belonging doesn’t come from fitting in, but from the courage to stand alone in our truth. Sometimes the voice we need most is our own—speaking truth to remind us who we are, what matters, and what else is possible. Join us as we explore what it means to break the silence and reclaim our voice as a path to healing, connection, and liberation.
SUMMARY
In this talk, Rev. Linda makes the following key points:
- Overcoming silence is the path to personal liberation and authentic connection with others. Silence can disconnect us from ourselves and perpetuate unhealthy patterns.
- Speaking up to share one’s truth, encourage oneself, and disrupt domination cultures is important for both individual and collective transformation.
- Music and affirmative thinking can be powerful tools for shifting our energy and beliefs to more positive, empowering states.
- As we do the inner work of self-acceptance and belonging, we become agents of change in the world around us.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Linda Jackson (00:01):
All right. I think we can all go home now. I am so grateful to Paige and Greg and Nora for always being willing to entertain these requests, right? So I still love that song, and it really speaks to the idea that sometimes the voice you most need to hear is your own. And I will come back to that song a little bit later. I want to acknowledge something else, and thank you, Judy, for mentioning Memorial Day. I went yesterday to a sound bath at Rose Hill Cemetery, which is a really beautiful historic place. And there’s a chapel and it was amazing. But I learned something or was reminded of something, and I am paraphrasing and it’s a little different. My take on it is a little different than what the man shared, but he talked about the three deaths in the Mexican culture, and the first one being when you leave your body, the second one being when your body is interred or cremated or whatever is done with it. And the third being when no one speaks your name.
(01:28):
So I just invite us to pause for a moment and remember those names, the ones that matter to you so that they can stay alive for you with you. And perhaps tomorrow you can make a long list and be sure to include everyone. Whew. So hi. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Those of you who are online, I’m Reverend Linda. My pronouns are she her. And we are wrapping up our May theme. Raise Your Voice. And we’re using Brene Brown’s book. I’m getting a little feedback there. I don’t know if it’s something I’m doing. Brene Brown’s book, braving the Wilderness, the Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. And there’s that sort of paradox of having to get right with yourself and be able to stand alone before you can actually belong. And there’s so much in this theme and in this book, and there’ve been a lot of great talks this month.
(02:39):
So I invite you to go back to the recordings and really dig into all of the material. This talk today. Yeah, I wanted to make sure I was connected there, overcoming silence. And what we’re looking at is how this relates to both individual liberation and collective liberation. So throughout this month, we’ve been hearing a lot about how true belonging is not about fitting in, but about being who you really are and belonging to yourself first, right? Finding your voice for self-advocacy, and then boundary setting for healthy relationships, moving from codependence to interdependence, moving from being a victim of our circumstances, to being an empowered co-creators of our lives. And today I’m adding this, speaking up to speak truth, to speak over yourself, to encourage yourself, to remind yourself who you are, what really matters, and what else is possible.
(03:58):
Reclaiming your voice is the path to your healing, the path to authentic connection with others, and the path to true liberation for everyone. The work we do individually supports the collective, and there are many ways to approach this idea of silence. Connie spoke to that a bit, right? The benefits of silence to quiet, the chatter, quiet the mind. That space where we tap into our inner wisdom to the divine within where we commune, where we receive guidance. So silence is a tool for inner reflection, for personal growth, discovery. And we’re being called to embrace vulnerability in that personal growth, in that transformation, to call out the parts of ourselves that we may have pushed aside or even kept secret, overcoming that silence. And I just want to acknowledge that you have every right to discern what you want to share. That’s privacy. There’s a difference between privacy and secrecy.
(05:25):
Privacy is about boundaries, about discerning, choosing what’s appropriate. It secrecy is a concealing. It usually carries shame, guilt. So the way to discern is to ask, why am I withholding this information? Is it out of privacy and discernment or am I hiding something? I’m not saying that we have to broadcast our healing. Just suggesting to break the silence on that shame and on the guilt as the first step to remember who you really are and breaking the patterns of our family dysfunctions. Do you have family secrets, anybody? I mean, it’s a clue. That’s a direct beeline to the dysfunction.
(06:24):
Because while silence may initially protect us, it ultimately disconnects us first from ourselves and then from everyone else. You can’t be connected to someone else if you’re not connected to yourself. You can’t belong anywhere until you belong to yourself. And I’ll go even a step further. You can’t feel loved if you don’t belong to yourself, because even if someone says they love you, you’re going to interpret that as they love the version of you that you’ve been showing them. So it’s not going to fully land. I’m very familiar with this. I can talk all about it.
(07:24):
So learning to love yourself, to accept yourself, to belong to yourself is really the first step. Overcoming the silence and revealing the hidden parts. We become more of ourselves. So this is that piece of overcoming silence for the personal liberation. That disconnection from ourselves begins with the silence that we learn, not through the helpful practice of silence, but the silence we learned from cultural and family conditioning from early messages like, be nice. Don’t rock the boat. And my family, it was children are to be seen and not heard. That still carries a sting for me.
(08:17):
And that type of silence comes with a cost. It comes with that emotional disconnection. It comes with identity erosion. We don’t know who we are, not to mention the unspoken pain and the powerlessness. That type of silence is a big piece of the codependent dysfunctional system. And overcoming that silence is the step toward your personal liberation, to your freedom to belonging. Silence is often rewarded in families, in workplaces, in society in general, right? But we’re being called to speak up to disrupt the patterns of domination culture. I’m going to share a story, and I’ve shared at least parts of this before, so bear with me if it’s redundant for you. But back in 2016, I was part of the Centers for Spiritual Living Practitioner Council, and we resurrected this practitioner gathering. They used to do them every year, and they hadn’t done one in a while. So we had this big practitioner gathering at CSL home office. We had 150 practitioners come. They toured the facilities, they toured the science of fine archives. We had speakers and workshops and musicians, and it was amazing. And the C-S-L-D-E-I committee had just been formed. So we had them come do A DEI training for the practitioners. It wasn’t even called DEI and B, yet it was newer on the spectrum of equity and inclusion. I mean, I know that’s been going on for hundreds of years, but in terms of our understanding of DEI, it was new.
(10:14):
Anybody here ever done a walk of privilege? It’s a very powerful exercise that helps us see our privilege. But I’ve learned they don’t really do them anymore because in the process of us waking up to our privilege, we’re sort of re-injuring the folks who are less privileged. They have to stand there while we figure it out, and they have to be put in a position to remember they’re less privileged. But at the time, it was a big idea. It was a new idea, and it was very powerful. People stand in a line, and there were over a hundred people participating in this. So we had to go outside in this huge parking lot, and we stood in one long line, all side to side, and the facilitator asks questions, and based on your answer, you step forward or backward. And so they ask questions about your life experience and background. And it’s questions like, if you grew up in a house with books, take a step forward.
(11:21):
If one of your parents had a college degree, take two steps forward. If you’ve ever had to change yourself to fit in at work, take a step backward. If you weren’t born in this country, take two steps backward and so on. All about socioeconomic status, race, gender, orientation, disadvantages, disabilities, all the things, right? You step forward or backward, and you have this physical experience of seeing your privilege in relationship to others. It’s powerful. But I can also see how hurtful that could be to the people who are less privileged. They have to experience it all over again.
(12:11):
So one of my colleagues, and I’m going to just call her, Jessica, had come to the US with her family from Mexico as a child. And as I progressed through the exercise, I was sort of just a little up from where we started. There were people way up at the front, and there were people way in the back. And I noticed Jessica was so far back, she was off the parking lot and in the grass, unbelievable. And afterwards, we had some breakout sessions, and it turned out I ended up in a small group with her, and I did sense her pain. And I’m grateful to know that DEI training has evolved and that we have learned to do affinity groups for trainings and not drag people through other people’s awakening. But I don’t remember the exact details, but she shared a story about her previous job where she had felt mistreated by her boss.
(13:25):
She felt degraded with biased statements and it was ongoing. But the thing that made it really hard for her was that she felt like none of her coworkers ever said anything. They never did anything. And she guessed that they just didn’t know how, and that they probably feared retribution from the boss, right? That’s a safe assumption. And I felt so much sadness for her. And I’m welling up with tears, as you see. I do that sometimes, but I did know not to make it about me and my feelings, because that’s another thing that we often do when someone is having an experience or a challenge. We’re so uncomfortable with it that we make it about how we feel instead of being able to sit with them in their discomfort. That’s another Brene Brown concept. It’s from a different book. It’s from her book During Greatly. But she calls that a narrative takeover.
(14:28):
So I pulled myself together and my next reaction was that I wanted to make it feel better for her. I wanted to make it go away. Also, not the solution. You can call it a bypass, but it’s actually another kind of takeover. We’re not allowing them to have their experience. We’re making it about us. I’m making it about me. And Brene reminds us that we have to move through the discomfort of the vulnerability and stay curious to new information, to choose courage over comfort, and to sit with it and hear it out, to bring some new information to the table. So I understood why her coworkers might be silent. That would be a difficult position.
(15:18):
And I somehow mustered up the question of like, well, how would you have wanted to be supported in that experience? And she said, if you don’t know what to say or if you are afraid to say something, just come stand next to me. At least let people know you’re with me. That moment changed me. It’s never okay to keep my head down and act like something’s not happening. And this conversation deepened our connection. We knew each other in a new way. So the invitation is to get related to our own emotions. How am I being? And then to ask questions and to really listen to help us understand what others are experiencing, what they’re feeling when you allow them to be heard and seen. We deepen in connection. We create intimacy. And just a little plug, we’re doing this on the second Wednesdays, the compassionate Conversation or compassionate communication evenings on second Wednesdays. So if you’re interested, Alan Alda, the quote here, listening is being able to be changed by the other person.
(16:58):
That’s a new idea for me about listening and cultivating meaningful connections. This is not only rewarding and powerful, but it’s overcoming that silence for personal growth and collective liberation. So we see the value in overcoming silence of what we’ve hidden to reveal our authentic selves for our liberation, for our true connection with others. And now we see the value in overcoming silence to reclaim your voice in support of the collective liberation. And Martin Luther King was a master in the equity and equality conversation. So I have a few quotes from him. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
(18:03):
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people, but the silence over that by the good people. We’re being invited to raise our voice and we can get caught up in what’s appropriate as a spiritual community. Do we march? Do we stand against something or are we for everything? Do we hold high consciousness? Do we stay out of it? Darryl spoke about this last week, right? Martin Luther King says, cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic, nor popular, but because conscience tells one, it is right for me. It boils down to a simple statement I took away from my ethics class. Always do the right thing.
(19:29):
And it’s through that listening within and that listening with others that we inherently know what the right thing is. That still small voice inside nudges us. It tells us we know when it’s time to speak up. We know when it’s time to overcome the silence. Only. What is yours to do? Only what is the right thing for you? And in the spirit of our teaching, I’m inviting us to speak up, to raise our voices from high consciousness. And I’m circling back to the song, encourage Yourself. I had a recent experience dealing with some pain, and it was getting worse, and I was trying to get into different doctors, trying to figure out what my options were, and I was leaving messages and not getting responses. I had one doctor, it was going to take me eight months. I was just feeling so much frustration and sadness and feeling kind of unheard, just all really great evidence to validate and perpetuate my belief that my needs don’t matter and to perpetuate the idea that I’m unheard. The beauty of doing this work is that we develop the awareness to recognize more quickly when we’re going down a rabbit hole of our old beliefs, right? So I’m blessed to have sessions with my mentor and I encourage every one of you, there’s a list of practitioners up there or go see your therapist, a life coach, do the work. It’s transformative. Get support. People can see things and know things for you that you might not be able to see and know for yourself.
(21:27):
The big insight for me on this was that I was requiring to not feel heard in order for me to perpetuate that belief that my needs don’t matter and there’s the loop. If I’m not heard, my needs don’t matter and I can just stay there in that old familiar place, right? Overcoming silence for personal liberation requires vulnerability. I’m putting myself out there, folks. I went a little deeper in this, and it was, how have I not been listening to myself? How have I not been paying attention to the pain signals that have been going on for a while? I’ve been overriding it. I wasn’t listening to me, so I had that session. I have lots of prayer partners. I have a weekly mastermind group, and I’m committed to doing work in high consciousness to knowing something else is possible and taking the steps for a different experience. I started listening to that song, encourage Yourself on repeat at full volume. If you’re one of my good friends, I probably sent it to you and asked you to listen to it.
(22:51):
I could feel it changing me. I could feel it shifting my mindset, lifting my vibration. The original song is by Donald Lawrence and the Tri-City singers, and this woman, Sherry Jones, Moffitt sings it. It’s a big band, big choir version. Check it out. And I’m so, so grateful to Paige for her willingness for always saying yes to exploring the music. It’s such a powerful tool for shifting our energy. Sometimes you have to encourage yourself. You have to speak victory during the test no matter how you feel. If sometimes you got to pat your own self on the back, sometimes you’ve got to look in the mirror and tell yourself, I can make it.
(23:49):
Even if no one tells you, you can run. You’ve got to tell yourself. There’s a particular part in the version that the Tri-City singers do where she says, it’s a lie. It’s a lie. And I was threatening to get up here and do it myself, but I thought it was better to ask Paige to do this. But that last line there, I know something better is out there waiting for me. Speak over yourself, encourage yourself. Affirmative thinking makes a difference. It’s a Christian gospel song, but it’s so in alignment with our teaching, and the music magnifies the energy. It adds to that conviction. We know that those beliefs and thoughts with the most conviction are the ones that manifest the most powerfully.
(24:40):
And the flip side of that is be careful what you’re listening to. What kind of music are you listening to? What kind of news? What kind of gossip? What are you telling yourself? Are you lifting yourself into the higher vibration? A lot of our music is historically about unhealthy attachment, self-sacrifice, seeking validation, and the very codependence that Brene Brown is talking about. We even have the oldies like Diana Ross, I’m going to make you love me. I’m going to do all the things for you. I’ll sacrifice for you. I’ll even do wrong for you. How crazy is that? I’m going to use every trick in the book. Try my best to get you hooked. Oh, baby.
(25:30):
Keep in mind, our nervous system in childhood regulates itself to stress and fear, and that becomes the default comfortable state. I know I was listening to a lot of unusual music when I was a kid. I was the youngest one. I had older siblings playing all kinds of stuff. What are you regulated to? The police? Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take. I’ll be watching you every single day. Every word you say, oh, can’t you see? You belong to me? I mean, it’s creepy both songs, right? I mean, what about mutual consent, right? Again, it’s like the domination culture that we’ve been indoctrinated into, and we play these things and we’re like, oh, it’s like we’re taking it in.
(26:37):
All right. I got one more just because I think it’s fascinating. This is ga, and I have to say, I really like this song, so it kind of hurts me to have to call it out a little bit. You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness. I think of all the times you screwed me over believing it was always something that I had done. I mean, I am not saying that we have to eliminate pop culture. We just have to be aware of it. We have to pay attention to what we’re listening to. We have to choose how we’re going to accept the meaning into our experience, what impact it’s having on our body.
(27:23):
We are vibrational beings, and through awareness and intention and some good music, we are capable of shifting our energy. We don’t need to stay in old patterns. Transformation is always available. How we carry ourselves in thought, emotion, and energy is a living prayer. I said this before, worrying is praying for something you don’t want. Well, if that’s true, then singing twisted lyrics is like really pumping up the jams on something unhealthy, right? Love is at the highest end of the vibration spectrum. We’re tuning ourselves to the energy of source when we’re in the vibration of love, singing, encourage yourself, looking in the mirror and telling yourself you can make it. You can shift your life by shifting your energetic frequency. It’s like affirmative prayer in a song.
(28:35):
I’m going to invite the music team to make their way back up. So our inner transformation is social action. As we awaken, we naturally become agents of transformation in the world around us. If this requires courage, the willingness to stand for truth, to look at our patterns, to get right with ourselves, to raise our voice, to overcome the silence in service to our personal liberation and in service to collective liberation. So I’m going to take us into some practice. I invite you to turn your attention inward, and then I’m going to begin with rereading that passage from Ernest Holmes.
(29:32):
Take this in, let it be about you and for you, I am a center in the divine mind, a point of God, conscious life, truth and action. My affairs are divinely guided and guarded into right action, into correct results. Everything I do say or think is stimulated by the truth. There is power in this word that I speak because it is of the truth, and it is the truth. There’s perfect and continuous right action in my life and my affairs. All belief in wrong action is dispelled and made negative. Right? Action alone has power and right action is power, and power is God, the living spirit almighty. This spirit animates everything that I do say or think. Ideas come to me daily, and these ideas are divine ideas. They direct me and sustain me without I’m continuously directed. I’m compelled to do the right thing at the right time, to say the right word, at the right time to follow the right course at all times, all suggestion of age, poverty, limitation, or unhappiness is uprooted from my mind and cannot gain entrance to my thought.
(31:24):
I’m happy, well, and filled with perfect life. I live in the spirit truth and the conscious of the spirit of truth lives in me. My word is the law unto its own manifestation and will bring to me or cause me to be brought to its fulfillment. There is no unbelief, no doubt, no uncertainty. I know and I know that I know. Let every thought of doubt vanish from my mind that I may know the truth and the truth makes me free. Let’s just take this into our closing prayer. Remembering we are one with this infinite intelligence, that as we turn within to that infinite intelligence, we tap into that realm of unformed substance, the subjective realm of infinite possibility, that it is available to us always. That we tap into that perfection, that wholeness, that peace, that abundance, all that is available through God as God through us, as us, and through the power of our word. We speak over ourselves. We encourage ourselves.
(32:55):
Sometimes you’ve got to look in the mirror and tell yourself you can do it. And as I minister to you, I minister to myself. I know something out there better is waiting. Encourage yourself, speak over yourself. Use the power of your word to bring it into your physical experience. I know it is available to us, and I affirm each one here is taking this practice with them and changing their experience through the power of their work. And I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful to be in a community full of people who are always doing the right thing, who are saying yes to speaking up, saying yes to their own work in service, to the collective. So grateful to be part of this loving community. I release all of this into the law that always says, yes, I know it is. So I let it be so and so it’s.
(34:15):
Thank you, Reverend Linda.