Resilience and Oneness with John Adams
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DESCRIPTION
This week we will explore the connection between all that we’ve heard and read about resilience and how it is organically connected to our New Thought principle of Oneness.
SUMMARY
In this transcript, John Adams discusses the concept of oneness and its connection to resilience. He explains that oneness is the experience of everything coming together, despite the individualized perception of the world. Adams emphasizes the importance of intentionally moving into a spiritual experience and letting go of limiting beliefs in order to tap into the fullness of oneness. He also mentions the use of spiritual tools, such as spiritual mind treatment, to cultivate a spiritual life and connect with spirit. Adams concludes by expressing gratitude for the demonstration of oneness and releasing his intentions into the universe.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
John Adams (00:03):
Oh my goodness, this weather. I’m moving the mic stand over because I like to. Holy moly. Well, you know what my plan is, and if you’ve heard me speak before, I don’t usually talk for long periods of time, so we’ll get you out of here pretty quick so we can all get home and out of the thunderstorm. Thank goodness. So thank you for the well wishes on the ministerial program. I did want to share with you a little bit about it just to say that it is a long program and it’s long because of the requirements and the way that the classes are arranged. And it will probably be another year before I finally finish it. There’s two sections. There’s the Holmes Institute, which is the academic arm of it. It’s very rigorous, very, very. They have this new director who is a professor at Rutgers, and he has upleveled the academic aspects of that program tremendously.
(01:05):
And then we have what we call campus classes, which are satellite classes where they help us with more practical aspects of ministry. So we learn all about all the ways in which ministers have to run spiritual communities. It’s a really interesting program. So anyway, it’s a ways to go before I’m finally done, but thank you for all the well wishes and positive thinking. And speaking of which I’ve been spending this whole week. So I’m in week eight of this term, and week eight always seems to be the week, the week when all the homework starts to come together and all the things start to become due and all the deadlines start looming. And I have been writing a fiend all week on imagination, which has been really interesting. And then this other paper that I’m writing is on sin, which is fascinating because we don’t really work with sin here in our philosophy.
(02:01):
So it’s really interesting to see. And my paper is about how does this idea play itself out in different spiritual paths and how does it help us understand the parameters of that path? So it’s very, very fascinating. And what I find as I read all this material and going through Judaism and Taoism and Confucianism and Christianity and Islam and on and on, is all the different threads that Earnest Holmes must have found, that wove together, that created this thing called science of mind. And if you don’t know if you’re new or maybe just starting our new thought philosophy orients itself in many new thought and ancient wisdom teachings, but most specifically with Ernest Holmes. Ernest Holmes isn’t the most famous new thought person in the world. He never wanted to be, but the way that he pulled all these threads together and expressed the various truths that he found within them is incredible and significant and something that we work with and cultivate an understanding of.
(03:04):
And one of those key principles is oneness. And oneness is this amazing experience of in the world of forum, as we’re going through our human awareness, as we look out into the world and we have this human experience, we experience everything as individualized, right? Everything is broken up and split up. There’s me, there’s you, there’s chair, there’s ceiling, and there’s this separation. Everything is separated by time and space. And in this individualized expression, it’s feels like things can be just expressing as specific aspects of the oneness. But in oneness, it all comes back together. So in our spiritual practice, we move into this experience of stepping away from this human experience and this human perception of individualization and separation into a collection, into a collective where everything is present, where everything comes together. I have a quote, I should have done slides, but like I said, I’ve been doing all this homework anyway. I mean, Brene Brown uses PowerPoint. Why couldn’t I? But I didn’t get to it.
(04:20):
This is by Kabar, Indian mystic. He says, behold, but one in all things, it is the second that leads you astray. If Rob were giving this talk, he would probably speak to it in the language of course, in miracles, which says, there is love and there is fear, and fear isn’t real. So there really is only one thing happening. And so we can touch into the oneness. We can experience the oneness by moving into having a spiritual experience. We can move out of this individualization into the oneness. And reason why that becomes important and why I think that is interesting, and I’m going to relate this back to resilience in a minute, is because in what’s a good example? An example is that in the world of form, we can have an experience of hunger. And we know that hunger exists because we’ve seen and we know and we’re aware of it.
(05:18):
We can’t run around pretending that hunger doesn’t exist. It does. And we also know that in the world of form, somewhere over here, there’s food and sometimes that has the appearance of time and distance. They are not together, they are separated. But when we come into our spiritual experience, when we come into the oneness, they are together. And so in that togetherness, in that oneness, when they come together, I don’t think one erases the other or eradicates the other. I think there is a synergy. I think there is a coming together. I think there is a wholeness that happens. And if we’re talking about spirituality and we’re talking about spiritual community, we even say holiness. This holy space, this whole space where it comes together, where there is satiation, where there is completeness, where there is wholeness, where that sting of what seems to be lacking or missing or left out is now fulfilled. That’s what happens in the oneness. So you can think about that in any aspect of your life. If I’m experiencing or seeing, I dunno, lack of money or lack of relationships or whatever it is in the oneness, the answer to that already exists. It’s already there. It can’t not be because that’s what oneness is. If it did, if it was possible for it to not exist, then it would be twoness or foreignness or some other thing. But it isn’t. It’s oneness.
(06:46):
And we see this playing out in our world of form in various ways. This is the other thing that I’m writing in one of my papers about the mind body connection. So you can say something to me and I can blush, which means that my thoughts and my reaction to what you’re saying is affecting my body. And we know that other things can affect our body. The thoughts that we hold in mind, the beliefs that we hold in mind affect us physically. And we know that when we walk into a space, depending on how I’m feeling and what mood I’m in and what energy I’m bringing with me, I’m affecting everybody around me. So I know that my energetic field is affecting everyone. So that tells me, therefore that my thoughts are affecting everyone and everything. So there really is. That’s an example of in the world of form where we see oneness playing itself out. That has to be one, right? See confirmation.
(07:47):
So we already know that this is the truth of what is. How do we get there? How do we experience this? We use in our world of form, in our human experience, we have various levels of wisdom. I think Reverend Amy talked about this in her talk when we talked about the different kingdoms of consciousness. It’s not kingdoms. What’s it called now? I forget. I never remember. I know. I just always think of it as the kingdoms of consciousness to me, by me, for me, with me through me and the different wisdoms of different wisdoms kind of map to this. This was something that I came across in one of my readings and lectures, and I thought I would share it today because I liked it a lot. And so we can express and hold this wisdom of participation. That’s sort of to me, when I’m participating in, and that’s the experiential, that’s the, I’m having this experience and we gain wisdom from that experience.
(08:47):
We can have the more observatory kind of wisdom, which what did I map that to through me? It’s more of the scientific process where the scientists will take something and put it over there and they’ll look at it and they’ll study and they’ll turn it around and they’ll experiment with it. And from that observation, draw conclusions, create laws, create understanding around what that is. That’s a very objective kind of wisdom. So we have participatory, we have objective, we also have loving wisdom. And the loving wisdom is that space and place where we come together, where it’s a drawing together. That’s where all this individualization wants to, has this sort of a magnetic force that wants to pull it all back together again. So if I love you, I am drawn to you. You are drawn to me. We are pulling together. We are coming together in that magnetic attraction.
(09:46):
And so all the love that we’re expressing is this consciousness of human experience pulling everything back into the oneness and out of this idea of separation. And then there’s the poetic knowing. And the poetic knowing is that knowing of when I see something, when I hear something, if I look at the sky, if I look at the rain, I can see rain, but I can also see a deeper meaning, and we can find the deeper understanding, the deeper meaning, the deeper intention that may be underneath all that is happening, and we have the capacity to do that. And these are the gifts that we get. These are part of our human experience that bring us from that human awareness of this is superficial experience into a deepened spiritual experience.
(10:35):
When I was thinking about this, I was thinking about this a lot in terms of how I get very excited, how wonderful it is that we can have a spiritual experience anytime we want. We get to step into that experience anytime. Now, a lot of times we’ll hear a lot about people having spiritual experiences that come through. What was I thinking about? Oh, like near-death experiences where they have this profound spiritual experience that happens where the world of form and their awareness of this body experience kind of disappears, and they move into this other frame of reference, this other dimension of knowing that is very much of spirit.
(11:20):
The reason I was thinking about that is because I thought, well, we don’t necessarily have to have this traumatic experience to get there. We don’t always have to have this whatever it is, illness, car accident, you name it, that takes us out of our bodies and brings us into a spiritual experience. We don’t have to wait for that to happen. We can actually go there voluntarily. We can take ourselves there. We have the power to do that, and we use that and we create these tools and in centers for spiritual living where we are affiliated and we are a center for spiritual living, we say yes to that because we are saying yes to living a spiritual life. And so we have our process. One of our processes is a spiritual mind treatment and spiritual mind treatment takes us into from this human awareness of, oh, you’re there.
(12:09):
I’m there. I’m having this individualized experience back into the spiritual awareness of oneness where everything comes back together. And so we start that by setting an intention to say, I want to do that. And then I take the time and the space and the energy to move myself consciously and intentionally into that mindset. And I recognize that there really is just this oneness. I understand that I can see it, I can experience it, and I am one with it because I can’t be separate from it. If I were separate from it, then there would be twoness or somebody else, but I have to be oneness with it, and it must be one with me. So I am engaged with it. And within that oneness, I find all of it back together again. So if in my life I’m experiencing lack, let’s just say I see the abundance that is already there.
(13:01):
It is already there. What I become aware of is that in my world of form, in my human perception, I’m only seeing one aspect of the oneness expressed. I’m missing this other aspect. It doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s just not clear. I’m not perceiving it. I’m not allowing it to be part of my experience. Something is blocking it, usually limiting belief, usually fear something is blocking it. And so in my awareness of the oneness, as I’m sitting in this space and I’ve intentionally moved into the spiritual experience and it all comes together, I can bring that back with me and I can affirm that. I recognize that and I affirm that. I know that, oh, right, there really is no place where God is not. There is no place where spirit is not. There is no place where source is not. And so if I’m looking out and seeing lack, I have to see the whole thing because that’s what really exists.
(14:03):
And so I changed my perception and I move into this space of gratitude for it and gratitude for what I’m seeing, but also gratitude for being willing to give up the old perception, for willing to give up that limiting belief, for willing to give up that way in which I may identify myself and now see myself in a new light. We can do that a lot with lack. We do it with a lot of things walk around going, well, I’m this person and I only have this much money in the world. Or I’m this person and I’m always sickly. I’m always, I’m the sick person, or I’m always the needy person, or I’m always the whatever person. We give those identities up. So to the extent that we’re willing to do that, the full expression of the oneness can be made manifest in our lives.
(14:58):
And so what I find about that is that we are setting ourselves into this intentional spiritual experience. We know that within the oneness is all we know that we can express that in our lives. And to the extent that we’re willing to let go of our old way of looking at things and looking at things anew, that fullness of that expression is showing up. And then of course, in our spiritual mind treatment, we would do a release. We would say, okay, I just now release and allow, and I live in expectation of seeing this in my life, seeing it showing up in my life. It is our five step prayer treatment, our five step spiritual mind treatment. It’s a process that we use here. If you’re not familiar with it, you can seek prayer after service or online in various forms here at Cityside to have that spiritual experience.
(15:56):
When you’re ready to say, I’m ready to move out of this human chatter box and move into the spiritual experience, you can have someone help you with that. We have licensed spiritual practitioners who have committed their lives to living on that spiritual plane, to moving out of just seeing and reacting to the world, but rather being a co-creator of the world, co-creator of their experience with this spirit, with this truth. So we move into a real intentional way of living so we can connect with our spiritual practitioner and have them hold that consciousness with us as we step into that new way of thinking, new way of being, and that new expression in our lives. And it’s very exciting. It’s really fun when you get good with it. And when I’m talking about all this stuff, this is certainly things that I’ve read about and talked about and learned about, but there are also things that I’ve experienced.
(16:54):
So when I’m talking about this idea of moving my human awareness out of this superficial stuff, it’s not always easy because this is so compelling. It feels so real. It feels so solid, it feels so immovable. This is a thing that’s happening. I can’t change it. But the answer to that thing exists. The thing that’s kind of miraculous about it is we don’t even need to know the name of the answer. I have this big thing that’s happening, and I know there’s an answer to it. We don’t even need to know what the name of that answer is to bring it forward, to bring back into the wholeness. We just know that it is, and it happens again and again and again, and it happens. Well, at least for me, it happens in ways that are really interesting. And not always the way in which if I were going through the catalog of things to pick out and say, okay, that’s the one I want to have manifested. I always get something a little bit different, but I always get something always shifts as Tiffany was just singing about. Everything changes. And we can either be in reaction to that or we can set an intention and be a co-creator of that, right?
(18:19):
There is a space in there for us to move into that awareness and that oneness where we let go of our will, our forcing of making something happen the way we want it to happen, and we listen and we’re receptive. And when we can do that, when we get into that place of trust, there is this miraculous moment when what comes forward, what the wholeness looks like in the world of forum is even better than we could have ever imagined. And so we breathe into that room. He says, what’s the roomy quote that I wrote? There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen, that’s what we do when we do our meditation. We have these various spiritual tools that we teach here. So you can always take a class and deepen those tools that really help us move into an intentional way of living a spiritual life. That is what we’re committed to in a city side, in a center for spiritual living. We have said, yes, I’m done with just being reactive to the world and being a victim of the world we’re saying yes to. I am going to be an intentional creator in my life. I’m going to be an intentional manifesto. I’m going to be an intentional connection with spirit and channel of spirit into my life. And that channel is always a channel of love, peace, harmony, joy, wholeness. Yes.
(20:01):
So this wholehearted living that Brene Brown talks about, this is part of it. To be in wholehearted living, we have to be in harmony with ourselves. She says, get off the blame game. Get off the self-judgment in the blurb that we read today, right? No matter how much you got done, how much you didn’t get done, how much you should have done, no matter what you should have said or didn’t say, or you’re still worthy of love. And so from that place of surrender, that place of consciousness, we move into our spiritual practice and we come into the oneness and we know that we are deserving of connection to spirit, and we let go of any place where we believe that that is not true. And that kind of acceptance is life-changing.
(20:53):
So how does this connect to resilience? Resilience has been brilliantly. I mean, have you guys been here? I mean, the talks this, the last couple months have been Reverend Amy, Reverend Linda, Reverend Darrell, Reverend Jackie. I mean, we’ve had incredible talks about this and just a sharing of tools, of things that we can do to really enhance and brilliantly bring that into form. And so what I know is if I’m in the oneness, if I’m in this spiritual truth, if I’m in this spiritual consciousness and living my life intentionally, that my resilience shows up organically, of course I’m going to be resilient because I know that whatever is happening, the answer is already there. The answer was already created the minute that I identified that as a problem. And so I know that I can pull that into my life experience. I don’t know how, I don’t know what it’s going to look like.
(21:53):
I may not even know when, but I know that it will happen. And that is the place of intention. That is the place of spiritual awareness. That is this place of spiritual consciousness that we are continually cultivating and stepping into. Yeah, we step out of it. Absolutely I do. Yeah, okay. But we come back to it again and again, and we help each other and we hold each other into that space. That’s why we have spiritual community. That’s why we dedicate ourselves with our mission and vision to be in this space of I am going to live a spiritual life. I am done with being just the victim of whatever’s going in the world. I am living that rich, beautiful, harmonic life and bringing that energy into every space that I go into. So we’re going to practice this now. We’re going to take this into prayer and just do a little quick little spiritual mind treatment while we’re all together.
(22:53):
And this is completely voluntary. You get to choose whether you move into a spiritual experience or not. It’s up to you. But I just invite you to be having a spiritual experience with me right here, right now, and just taking our breath, and we shift our consciousness. We intentionally and with our own volition, shift our consciousness away from how everything is individualized and separate into an awareness of spirit, into awareness of oneness, where everything comes back together. And if there’s a way to do that, it’s stepping into that atmosphere of love. We create an atmosphere of love because love is always drawing itself together. It is always pulling together anything that is appearing to be separate. It pulls it all back together again. And this love is unconditional. It is everywhere. And when it is in and through, because I am one with it, this is oneness.
(23:48):
And as I can see and know this for myself, I can see and know this for each and every single person online, every single person in the room, every single person watching this as a recording, every single person, one with the one. And so from this place, I just say a word of thanksgiving and gratitude and blessing upon all of us as we say yes, to living our spiritual life as we say yes, to knowing and affirming that whatever the problem is, whatever the issue is that we see separated out in the world of form, we know that that is just one part of the oneness expressing, and we can express the fullness of oneness, all of it, the answer to that, the completion of that, the wholeness of that. And so that wholeness is absolutely present here and now and expressing for each and every single person, this is what I know.
(24:39):
It is not a esoteric idea. It is not a theory. It is not an affirmation. It is a knowing. I know this to be true, that this oneness is and that it is expressing, and I know that it is expressing for you as it is expressing for me. And I know that from this knowing there is this resilience, this power to experience whatever’s happening in the atmosphere of the world I’m living in, whatever’s happening in this world of human form as I swim through this world and all the 7 billion people and all the different consciousnesses that are participating in joining and collectively creating whatever is going on. I swim through this in co-creation with spirit. My resilience is absolutely assured because I have this inner knowing and this inner discipline of coming back to the oneness again and again and again. And so I just lean into this, and I lean into all the tools that have been shared over the last two months that bring me back into this awareness of resilience, this awareness of the oneness, this awareness of spirit.
(25:49):
And this is the life that I choose to live. And I know this for each and every single person. I’m so grateful for this, so grateful for each person saying yes to living a spiritual life, to living an intentional life. I’m so grateful for each and every single person that is made manifest in their lives. All the fullness of the oneness, the complete picture, not just one aspect of it, but all of it. The wholeness, the holiness of it. I’m so grateful for the demonstration of this principle, so grateful for all of this. I now release this into the action of a law. I know that it is done. It must be done. It can’t not be done. It must be done. And together and collectively, we say, and so it is .