Release Suffering by Embracing Values – Rev. Darrell Jones
This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
DESCRIPTION
One of the many practices of the Spiritual Journey is letting go. In particular releasing outcomes…but how do we do this AND grow, expand and become? Join us this Sunday as we uncover the three P’s framework (peace, purpose and passion) to release suffering by embracing our values.
SUMMARY
The talk discusses the importance of embracing one’s transcendent purpose and values to release suffering. Rev. Darrell highlights the three key pillars of peace, purpose, and passion as a framework for soulful living. He emphasizes the need to let go of attachment to outcomes and instead focus on being true to one’s dharma or sacred duty. Rev. Darrell also addresses the collective suffering in the world and calls for courageous leadership that promotes unity, compassion, and healing of divisions. He encourages the audience to affirm their inherent worth and live authentically, rather than trying to be someone else. Overall, the talk offers a spiritual perspective on navigating life’s challenges and finding fulfillment through embracing one’s higher purpose.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Darrell Jones:
1981 seems like enough time for peace to come to pass, and yet we still need this day. We still need to remember. There’s so many things swimming through my mind right now, so I’m going to do my best to stay focused and bring us into a powerful conversation. Has anyone experienced some suffering this week besides me? Maybe if you didn’t this week, has anyone experienced suffering in their lifetime? Okay. All right. I just want to make sure that we’re all human in the room and have feelings and emotions and challenges in life. My hope and intention today is that at the end of this talk, you are reconnected to your guiding values in life giving way to your transcendent purpose and igniting passion for living. And I don’t know if this was your intention, Jonathan. You came up and you said values in a way that I was like, you know what?
Even that word gets weaponized today, right? Do you have the right values? Do you have family values? Whatever that’s supposed to mean. So I want to, as best as possible, bring us to principle, the principle of living that helps everyone regardless of where they come from, the principles of living that actually free us from suffering. How many of you would like to be freed of some of the suffering you’ve been experiencing lately? Now, I’m not talking about I’ve got this snake oil. If you rub it on your knee, you won’t feel any pain. I’m not talking about that sort of suffering, but you have a story about the pain in your body and it’s telling you something about the quality of your life.
This is what we’re talking about, the clinging, the tight holding, the expectation that life is supposed to look a certain way. The shoulding that we do all over ourself and everyone, especially the people we love. So one of the many practices of the spiritual journey is letting go. Anyone ever heard that? All you ought to do is just let go, let go and let God. There’s been times in my life where I’ve said, if someone says that to me one more time, I’m going to let go of something else. In particular, this idea of releasing outcomes is what we’re going to focus on today, but how do we do this and grow? How do we release outcome and grow and expand and become? Today I’m going to offer you what I like to call the three Ps framework, peace, purpose and passion. Releasing suffering through embracing our values, and I think that it is so appropriate on this international day of peace.
Peace is something that I think everyone values. We’re going to bring that into the forefront as Paul read from Stephen Cope’s book, the Great Work of Your Life, which focuses on the teachings of the Bava Gita, but it’s a beautiful book that’s not only about the Bava. Gita tells stories of so many historical figures in their challenge of living into their life’s purpose. So let’s get into this work. The repeated instruction from the book is find your dharma, do it full out, and then let go of the outcome. It’s kind of a nice framework. It’s a nice algorithm if you will, a nice instruction. Find your dharma, do it full out, get into it and do nothing but that, and then let go of the outcome. And if dharma’s a word, you’re kind of like, ah, what does that mean? And it gets you too in your head. Let’s take that out and use the word purpose. Find your purpose, do it full out, and then let go of the outcome.
Let go of the fruits of your actions. It’s written. You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Do your work in this world as a person established within themself without selfish attachments and be alike in success and failure. Ouch. How many of you would say that you are alike in success as well as failure? I don’t think many of us can really say, yeah, I’m centered. I’m completely in my equanimity. Everything is well, even though I just totally screwed the pooch. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. This is the invitation for our soul’s journey. This is not the destination you get to. This is your purpose in life, period, regardless of your age, regardless of your working or retired, regardless if you have kids or don’t, regardless of you have pets or you don’t regardless of your bank account, your soul’s journey right now is to be in life, balanced, present in success and in failure.
So dharma, for those of you who might be catching up from this month’s, focus on the great work of your life, a guide for journey to your true calling. This is a word that is used a lot in eastern traditions and dharma basically means your sacred duty. It’s the best, at least for me, that’s the best definition, your sacred duty in life. And I know that we all have a sacred duty. The fact that you’re in this room means that you are seeking purpose. You are seeking your sacred duty, but there’s a unique way that we all do it. There isn’t a duty, right? I do it a certain way. You do it a certain way, they do it a certain way, whoever they may be. Part of our work is to be less concerned about others’ Dharma. Anyone have a judgment on other people’s dharma?
Yeah, I know you do because I do as well. But our job is to pull our attention away from judging other people’s dharma and make sure that we are in the flow of our own. Because I guarantee if you are judging someone else’s dharma, you are way off kilter. Hi everyone Online by the way. This is an opportunity to stop multitasking and to be present to your purpose. Reverend Amy went on to entertain in her talk a few weeks ago, and this is what was my big takeaway, so thank you for this. In asking the question, how do I find, how do I discover? How do I uncover my dharma? There was this invitation to follow your curiosity. What are you curious about? What intrigues you? Now that sounds good and fine. There’s lots of things that intrigue me. Celebrate your successes, the things that you do well, but also pay attention to your pain. Pay attention to your suffering. Pay attention to your shortcomings. All things point to your dharma. If God is all that there is, God is not sometimes on. Your purpose is not sometimes on. Your purpose is always on. So even in the hardships of life.
So if this is true, then no matter what you’re experiencing, you should be doing your purpose full out. That’s what Reverend Linda took us into, right? Do it full out. Be on your purpose every day, not Monday through Friday, and then you take it off the weekend. There’s no time off. Your life is about your purpose. That’s it. And I loved the quote that she offered, and this brings us to you. Do you fear that you may have missed the boat, that you’ve become unmoored from your true calling and are drifting aimlessly out to sea? No, there’s no window of time unlike, oh, I’ve missed the window of my purpose. Every single day that you breathe, every single moment that you’re in, your purpose is there. You are living your purpose.
One of the big takeaways from Reverend Linda’s talk was a question, am I really doing my purpose full on? So if we’re always doing it, but am I really leaning into it? Am I actually embracing it unencumbered? Am I really living in my purpose or am I seeking approval in some form, whether it’s smiles, pat on the back money. And so this brings us to today’s topic into our first quote. Thank you for reading it, Paul. Slide number one, and finally, of course, the very central teaching of the Gita Let go of the outcome. Let go of any clinging to how this all comes out. You cannot measure your actions at this point by the conventional wisdom about success and failure living in our purpose has nothing to do with success and failure.
I’m going to repeat that again because that’s going to jack up some people’s math in their head. Living in our purpose has nothing to do with success and failure. These are words of opinion, success and for failure and success and failure are subjective. What I consider successful and what you consider successful at any moment, rarely are they the same thing. So as much as we may want to, definitely as much as the world may want us to and tell us that we’re right or wrong, we cannot base the quality of our living on the duality and the ideas of success and failure. You are here to be you and nothing else.
And as much as you may try and manipulate yourself, you really can’t do anything about it. You’ve been spending your whole life trying to be someone else other than you. You are here to be you. So why not accept this and embrace it and be the blessing that you were meant to be. Find your dharma, your purpose, or remember your purpose. Do it full out. Don’t hide, but let go of the outcome. Let go of trying to get anything because you already have everything you need to be who you are. So the talk title, release, suffering by embracing values. There is so much, so much suffering in our world today. There is the collective suffering that gets played out on social media and news outlets about war and famine, shootings, hate power, power hoarding, blatant disregard for human life, for animal life, for plant life, for this very thing that we all try to subsist on and breathe on. We don’t respect this planet.
And then there’s the quiet suffering, the quiet suffering of your life that no one else may ever know about, but it’s still devastating. It doesn’t need to be broadcast on news. It may be the untimely death of a neighbor, a colleague, or a family member. It may be our own unhealthiness or illness or the caretaking that we may have to do for another, the news of another person we know afflicted with some expression of cancer. Maybe your bank account doesn’t hold the resources needed to pay the bills that are waiting. The relationship that you’re in isn’t quite fulfilling what you think it should or maybe the relationship that you desire seems completely impossible. These are the sufferings that we hold quietly to, but they still are devastating.
The global theme for the Centers for Spiritual Living, the larger organization that Cityside is affiliated with this month, the theme is transcendent Purpose. This theme is the core message in the Science of Mind magazine. I don’t know if anyone gets that magazine. It’s a very amazing supportive tool. There’s daily inspirational quotes and little just messages to get you grounded through the week, but there’s over 400 plus communities in the world that are based and affiliated with centers for spiritual living. They’re all independent and they can do what they want. But the larger organization offers these themes to help bring a message of love to the world.
And I want to read to you, and we can have the next slide, please. This comes from the notes that are given to the ministers on transcendent purpose. Living from transcendent purpose involves and bracing a turbocharged passion for life and striving to bring forth a new reality. It could stop right there. Most of us are not trying to create a new reality. We’re trying to preserve something. It means reaching inwardly to express outwardly, not reach outward and try to make something fit within you. It means going inward to express outwardly what spirit is calling for, connecting to a higher vision that transforms imagination into tangible experience. This approach to purpose transcends ordinary goals, guiding us toward a profound truth and a paradigm of living that aligns with the center’s spiritual livings vision of creating a world that works for all our universal transcendent purpose or dharma as spiritual practitioners, which all of you are practitioners, you realize that, right? It doesn’t matter if you have been licensed as a spiritual practitioner through centers for spiritual living, although celebration to those who have done that deep work, but you are practicing the law of life, even when you say, I’m not practicing, I’m not a practitioner. You’re doing it in that statement and in your attitude. We are all spiritual practitioners and your charge, your purpose, your transcendent purpose, that’s bigger than anything on the planet like your name, your age, your race, your cultural background is to know God as your life. That’s it.
That’s it. Thank you. Imagine if instead of blame, shame, hatred and making others evil, what if including our nation’s leaders, our city leaders, our neighborhood leaders, what if we all affirmed, I am a part of everything for all is God and so am I. God is in everything I see, even if I don’t understand it and even if I don’t like it. How might that shift your relationship to everything in your life? This is your purpose. This is the collective dharma that all of us are constantly sitting in. And let me tell you something, folks, this modern world that we live in does not let you rest. You are not here to be comfortable anymore.
We could call maybe from the, let’s say after World War II to present day. We could call it the comfort era or the comfort age. We spent so much time trying to be comfortable and making thing okay and automating everything, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s no more time for that. The boundaries that we have in our world are no longer existent. Fact that I am streaming on a phone right now, a phone, who would’ve thought 50 years ago that we would be sending something with no wires attached to it that someone could be watching across the planet. All of the things that we think are protecting us, all of the things that we think are making us comfortable, so we have to learn how to be with not only the things we like, but also the things that we don’t like.
I want to read to you a letter. This comes in terms of leadership. Unfortunately, most of the political leaders in our country are scared, and so they try to lead with fear. And I’m not just talking about one side of the aisle, I’m talking about all sides of the aisle. Fear does nothing but create more fear. Shame does nothing but create more shame. I hate shame and I don’t use the word hate much. It doesn’t feel good. I have shamed people and I never feel good when I shame them. They don’t feel good when I do it. It does nothing but make the world a worse place. We need leaders that are charging us to be something more than we already are. We need leaders that are calling us out of the age of comfort into a healthy relationship with discomfort, and I feel that the leader of centers for spiritual living, the Reverend, Dr.
Sonny Cantrell Smith is someone who is doing that on the planet. This past Wednesday, she released a note to a press release called Sacred Oneness, A Call to Heal Divisions, and I want to read it to you. Science of mind teaches that all life is one. A divine unity binds together every person, every event, every moment. In this understanding, separation is illusion. Our thoughts, words and deeds are powerful, and what happens to one is part of what happens to all. Each life is sacred and each act of violence wounds the whole. Today as we witness an alarming rise in gun violence in the United States, we see this oneness deeply violated. As September 11th of this year, 2025, there have been 301 mass shootings, and I want to put in my caveat that that’s just talking about gun violence. There have been 301 mass in the US in 2024.
There were 503 mass shootings. It is difficult to understand this amount of violence in Minnesota. This year, two legislators assassinated in their homes. Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, they were killed, and Senator John Hoffman and his wife were wounded. Targets of political violence that punctured the idea of safety in public service. Also in Minnesota on August 27th, 2025, two young children, eight and 10. Eight and 10, they were killed and dozens more were injured in a school shooting at Annunciation Catholic School and church in Minneapolis where a gunman opened fire during the morning mass. Now in another shocking act of political violence, Charlie Kirk, conservative activist was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley State University on the same day in Evergreen, Colorado, a student shot two students and then himself, the two wounded students were hospitalized and one is still in critical condition. We are living in a moment where isolated incidents no longer feel isolated.
The oneness of life means that when politicians or public figures are shot or our children die during a school mass, all of us are touched. All of us suffer in some way. Such events shake our sense of community and our spiritual peace. From the teachings of science of mind, we are being called to more than grief and outrage. We are being called to raise our thoughts to hold an inner vision of peace, justice, and compassion. We are being invited to act from the realization that we are all in this together and that no one is free until we are all free. We are called to speak truth with kindness, to support measures that promote safety and dignity, to heal the divisions that let violence in, to heal the divisions that let violence in to heal the divisions that let violence in. We must continue the struggle for justice, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
If we truly envision a world that works for all, as Ernest Holmes said in a radio address on August 6th, 1950, but faith without works is dead. We should not only pray, we should act. We should act each contributing the best they have to the common purpose, each willing to make any sacrifice necessary, not a sacrifice reluctantly made by one who offers all that they have to give, but to give for two, two purposes. There’s that word again. Purpose. Value one in a certain sense is a selfish one for we all desire self preservation, but the other is the greater sense that there can be no individual self-preservation without the preservation of all. Let us come together now across differences of party belief and religion and for the United States and for all places in the world where political, cultural, and religious strife is impacting lives. Pray for the children and the wounded students and their families.
Pray for our politicians and leaders that they may find courage, wisdom, and compassion, that they put down weapons of division and instead collaborate for the good of the United States. I pray we be moved by love. I pray we remember our oneness in every act, every word I pray, peace increases and violence diminishes. I pray we are now rising to the moment united, compassionate and whole, standing with you in love, Reverend Dr. Sonny Cantrell Smith. Those are the types of leaders that we need more of on the planet today. We are going to explore quickly. I know time is moving along here, three guideposts that are sure to support us in this knowing peace, purpose, and passion. These three pillars or qualities have been a part of my life for the past year. I’ve been signing my emails with those three words as a way of reminding myself and they’ve become a framework for experiencing a soulful connected spirit field life.
I am always seeking frameworks and pragmatic ways of practicing my spirituality, and I think it’s so important for us to have Sunday talks and to take classes and to talk about spirituality and to study it. But if we aren’t bringing it out into the world and how we live and how we choose, then what is it for? What does it serve? This is why I wrote and published my book, soul Jim Emmanuel, for Soulful Living, connecting Mind, body, and Spirit. I see a lot of talk and very little practice in the world. Well, there’s a lot of practice, but people are practicing things that maybe they aren’t realizing the impact of. We talk about things. We talk about hardships and challenges as well as successes and the things that we can do to support positive growth and change, and we get hit with inspiration only to wake up the next day and it seems as if nothing has changed and no time has passed.
This is why I wrote the book to remind myself first and foremost, but all of us, that if we don’t do something to stretch our minds, our bodies, and our spirit, it stays the same or most likely, it atrophies into a lesser version of itself. A muscle that has not offered some resistance, not get any stronger. There is no magically wishing our body to be stronger. It needs a workout. A muscle doesn’t magically become more agile and flexible again. It needs some positive resistance to activate its ability beyond its current level of comfort and effortless motion. Our mental, psychological, and emotional and spiritual selves are no different. We need some healthy resistance to be stronger and more agile, but it takes intention. It absolutely takes effort, and it takes work. So let’s get to work. This is your dharma. This is your purpose. The framework of peace. Purpose and passion is fairly direct. First, we must awaken and discover peace in the moments where we are.
Get it, okay. Allow your nervous system to calm right now. Notice where your nervous system is, and if there’s tension in your body, if there’s tension in your mind when we shift out of fight or flight and go into rest, digest, and heal, something shifts within us, then we can move on to reclaiming our attention and our awareness from all of those shiny things outside of us that are trying to say they’re more important than our wellbeing. And once we step into this piece and embody some level of it in the moment, then we can reclaim our attention and remember, oh, but wait, what’s my purpose here? Regardless of what they’re doing, who am I here to be in this moment? That’s right, my grand purpose transcending my age, transcending my education, transcending all of the limitations that I may put upon myself or that the world attempts to.
I am here to be love, wisdom, joy, creativity, passion, excitement and more. And once we remembered and connect to that purpose, there’s a certain passion that kicks into gear no matter what we’re doing, if it’s raking the leaves, that’s one of the things I’m kind of excited about for fall, by the way, raking the leaves or writing a brief or teaching a lesson, we are called to remember that this transcendent purpose does not take a certain form. This is where most of us get caught up and we’re go, what’s my purpose? And when you say, what’s my purpose? You’re not asking, what’s my purpose? You’re asking, what am I supposed to do? Your purpose doesn’t take a certain form. It lives in all forms and in all lives. Your life, my life as it is right now today, you sitting in this room, you are fulfilling your purpose.
Do you realize that when you leave here, no matter what you do, you are on purpose. Purpose isn’t a certain job or a title or a level of recognition. Purpose isn’t affirmed by a certain amount of dollars or accolades or degrees. Purpose is period. The transcendent purpose is to be the expression of God. We are everywhere. We are in the moments that feel easy and especially in the moments that feel hard. This is the resistance required for growth, but to stay present, we must only be in our work and let go of the outcome. This is where we get caught, folks. This is where I get caught up every single day. I want things to look a certain way. I’m not going to deny that that’s part of my human experience, but the spiritual journey that I have said yes to is learning to do the double Dutch purpose, outcome, wanting, desiring, clutching, surrendering, letting go, allowing back and forth all day long. This is your purpose, folks. It’s never going to end, ever.
This is why I believe that it’s, I’m so glad that it’s international day of peace, embracing peace in some way. Every day is so important not to change what’s happening in Ukraine, not to shift what’s happening in Sudan, although I do believe it will, but there’s no possible way that we can be in relationship to the challenges in our life if we aren’t at some level of peace. If our nervous system is jacked up, we’re going to make all sorts of decisions that don’t work. Has anyone ever made a bad decision and you go, man, I should have just taken a beat before I made that decision. That’s what I’m talking about. This is your purpose. Whether it’s a decision to order french fries or a salad, or if it’s to hit, send on that email. And you know what email I’m talking about, don’t you? Or that text message.
Here’s a couple of other words of inspiration. Quickly on peace. This comes from the book. Rest is Resistance, A manifesto by Tricia Hersey. We must believe we are worthy of rest. We must believe that we are worthy of rest. We don’t have to earn it. It is our birthright. It is one of the most ancient and primal needs. Release the shame you feel when resting. It doesn’t belong to you. Purpose. You are here to be you. Stop trying to be something else. You’re not here to be Tom. If your name is Shirley, you’re not here to be Issa. If your name is April, be who you are. You can love the way someone does something and you can aspire to it, but you’re never going to be them. You can only be you and you are enough. Joseph Campbell says, we’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purpose of outer value, that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive. And that’s what it’s all about.
Marianne Williamson picks up the baton and says, the purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best, which is within us. And Ralph Waldo Emerson brings it home. To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment, let your life be a great accomplishment. The world will not stop trying to make you look and do something different, but you having the ability to stand up to that, not to fight it, but just to affirm and be in who you are, that’s your purpose. We need more of that so quickly to close. I’ve been doing a lot of values work lately. If you’re familiar with Brene Brown, she has a worksheet and a whole process that she does where she’s got over 100 values on a page and she invites you to go through them.
If you go to her website, you can look it up and she invites you to look through and pick out 15 values and then go down to 10 values, and then she challenges you to just two. Because ideally, we value everything, right? All those different values of hope, joy, acceptance, understanding, sufficiency, I love all of those things. But there’s some core values within you that you can’t live without. For me, it’s standing and acceptance. Those are two things that I hold as high. I love understanding. That’s what drew me into this tradition and faith study. It’s what makes me want to lean into things that I don’t understand because I want to understand an acceptance. Acceptance is a thing from the moment I came out of the womb that I realized is needed on the planet. And it always guides me. It always guides me.
If I can remember at some point in the day, regardless of what’s going on, regardless of what just happened in the news, regardless of what someone says to me, that I value, understanding and acceptance, everything kind of like just gets soft. And I’m reconnected to a power that allows me to interact with the world that is there. The suffering that we experience is the clenching that we do on ourself and others to have things look a certain way. So if you can come back to those two values, those two things, then I think the hope and intention for today will be fulfilled, that you’re able to connect to your transcendent purpose and ignite passion for living. To close. Today, I offer some words from Howard Thurman. If you could pull up our last slide. These are words that meet me and hit me all the time in a way that I need them because he speaks to the humanity of this spiritual journey of living.
Our dharma and purpose. We forget, keep fresh before me, the moment of my high resolve, despite the dullness and bareness of the days that pass. If I search with due diligence, I can always find it, some deposit left of some former radiance. But I had forgotten. I had forgotten how easy it is to forget. There was no intent to betray what seemed so sure at the time. My response was whole. It was clean, it was authentic. But little by little there crept into my life. The dust and the grit of the journey details, lower level demands, all kinds of crosscurrents. Nothing momentous, nothing overwhelming, nothing flagrant just wear and tear. And the quietness of this space surrounded by the all pervading presence of God, my heart whispers, keep fresh before me in the moments of my high resolve that in fair weather or in foul, in good times, or in tempest, in the days when the darkness in the foe are nameless or familiar, I may not forget that to which my life is committed.
Bring your hands to your hearts and just take a moment to breathe in two things that you value more than anything on the planet. Not people, not places, not things, but the qualities of living, the essence of spirit that you are called here to be. Keep that fresh before you. In this moment as we lift up, that there is a power and presence. There is a whisper from the individual and the collective heart to keep these values high. And what I affirm and know is that we are not separate from these values, that the world is not separate from the values, but we are here to be catalysts, to remind ourselves and everyone else that we come into contact with, that these values are of service to us, all that they actually guide and direct us in powerful ways, in times of tempest or in times of ease.
What I affirm and know is that we enough, you are enough right here, right now to live the life that you are living and to step into the becoming. But we let go of what that becoming is supposed to be and just trust that the next step reveals itself. I’m so grateful to remember this truth. I’m so grateful to understand and accept this truth, and I am grateful for the fulfillment of it. However it out pictures, because I know that it is without a doubt the expression of the divine. So may we step into this week releasing the suffering of should and embrace the power of our values, to love, to affirm and to express our divine purpose. And so it is, is, and so it shall be.