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DESCRIPTION
Embracing divine discomfort can be a powerful catalyst for spiritual awakening. Join us this week as we delve into the idea that discomfort is not merely a hindrance but a sacred tool for growth and change. We will journey through the stages of spiritual evolution, highlighting how moments of discomfort often signal impending growth and the need to embrace new ideas and perspectives. By reframing our relationship with discomfort, we can unlock its potential to propel us toward greater self-awareness and deeper spiritual fulfillment.
SUMMARY
Rev. Aimee Daniels begins by expressing gratitude for a song that has been meaningful to her on her spiritual journey. She then shares the story of “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho, which follows a young shepherd named Santiago on his quest for hidden treasure. Along the way, Santiago learns about his personal legend and the importance of perseverance and spiritual transformation. Rev. Aimee relates this story to our own lives, where we may feel uncertain and uncomfortable during times of change. She emphasizes the need for recognition, self-awareness, acceptance, and service in our spiritual evolution. Rev. Aimee concludes by reminding us that our lives are always on track, even in times of disruption, and encourages us to embrace spiritual tools and seek support when experiencing discomfort. She ends with a prayer affirming our connection to the divine and our ability to evolve and embody love.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions
Rev. Aimee Daniels (00:00):
Thank you for singing that song. That song has meant a lot to me on my journey. For a long time, I was really seeking and I was really seeking outside of myself. And I don’t know, when I first heard that song, I thought, that’s it. That’s it. I keep thinking there’s some external, I don’t know, expert or thing that’s going to bring me to a place of comfort within myself. So thanks for doing that. So we’re going to dive in, and I want to begin with a story, and it’s actually a story about Alchemy. It’s the story of The Alchemist by Paula Coelho, if you’ve ever read that amazing book. And the story is about a young shepherd, his name is Santiago, and he has this dream that he is going to find gold by the Egyptian pyramids. So he decides to leave the comfort of his home, and he decides that he is going to go to Egypt and he’s going to find this treasure, this hidden treasure.
(01:12):
And along the road, he meet somebody named Mel Dek, who teaches him about his personal legend, which is his purpose in life. This is a new concept for him. And so he makes the decision that he’s going to sell his flock of he’s a shepherd, he’s going to sell his flock and he’s going to pursue his dream. So he sells his flock, but then pretty immediately after that, a thief steals all his money and he has to make a decision. Is he going to give up on his dream and go back home, or is he going to persevere and move forward? And so he decides to get a job and he goes to work for a crystal merchant to earn some money so that he can continue his journey. So after he gets stabilized again, he continues his journey, learned a lot in the process, learned a lot about perseverance, being an entrepreneur, a lot of things like that.
(02:09):
And he comes upon a caravan and he decides to go with them because they’re traveling to Egypt. So he joins the caravan to cross the desert, and he has this dream and this dream that he has is that the caravan is going to be attacked. So he goes to the elders and he tells them, I had this dream. I don’t know if it means anything, but I dreamt that the caravan was going to be attacked. And in fact, the caravan was attacked, but it allowed everyone to survive. And when that happened, he began to understand that he was gaining a connection to the broader part of life. And while he was there, he also met an Englishman who was studying alchemy, who told him about the philosopher’s stone and told him about the of life. And so he continues, even though at the caravan he had met the love of his life, Fatima and emotionally, he didn’t want to leave her, but he decided to continue on his dream and just trust that they would meet again later. So he continues his journey. He meets the Alchemist, who becomes his mentor and teaches him about transformation and teaches him that the treasure that he is seeking is not just an external treasure in the world, that it’s also a spiritual transformation. So eventually he arrives at the pyramids, which was his goal, and again, he gets robbed.
(03:45):
He wasn’t having a good day. And one of the robbers tells him that the treasure that he’s seeking is actually in the church, in the town that he came from. So he goes back home as often people do story and he finds his treasure in his own backyard, and then of course he marries the girl. But this is a great story for our own life because sometimes we can feel like we’re on the journey and we don’t know where we’re headed. And sometimes like this picture, it can look like light, but there’s also darkness in the picture because we’re going through a period where we’re uncertain, and this is what happens when we’re going through times in our life where things are changing. It’s uncomfortable, right? We might feel a lot of discomfort. And I know for myself, I always seem in my head to go back to getting divorced, which really put me on my spiritual journey.
(04:47):
That was when I was at the height of my seeking. And I lived in Des Moines, Iowa, and I had one single friend. So Saturday nights looked like going to Mondo’s for dinner. It was a place we all liked. If anyone knows Mondo’s, we would go to Barnes and Noble. I would buy five books every Saturday night. This was my social life. But while we were there, we found out about this thing called the Whole Life Expo. And did anyone ever go to it? I don’t think it exists anymore, but we found out about this thing called the Whole Life Expo. And at that time, Gary Zuckoff was popular and he was one of the speakers. So we go to this whole life expo and I learned about a trip to Machu Picchu. Now, I was sort of on this like, let’s go to every spiritual place in the world.
(05:35):
So I sign up to go to Machu Picchu, I don’t know anyone else who’s going. And Wayne Dyer was the featured speaker on the trip. And while I was there, I made some friends and one of them I was explaining my spiritual seeking to him, and he said, I really think what you’re looking for is the Unity Church. He said, I think you ought to go home and go to the Unity Church. So I came home and I went to the Unity Church. At that time, Reverend Ed was at Unity in Chicago. And that’s what really put me on the new thought path was just that synchronicity of, I happened to meet someone in another country who said, you should go do that. And of course, that ultimately led to where I am now, but I was very much in the question of who I was and who I needed to be at that point in my life.
(06:24):
And maybe we’re always in that question, but divine discomfort, embracing something new about your life, a new idea of who you are, maybe a new idea about why you’re here. It can also happen when you have unexpected change. You lose someone, you lose a job. Maybe it’s that you’re trying to step into the world and embrace a new identity. You just want to show up differently. You want to make a difference in a different way. When we move through these things, we can have a lot of discomfort because it’s not known. And I think it’s a little different than divine discontent because when I think of divine discontent, I think about, oh, something’s calling to me and I know what it is, and my spirit won’t let me rest till I do it. But discomfort to me is a little bit more about like, Hey, I don’t know yet. I don’t know what’s trying to reveal itself, but I’m just going to move through it.
(07:26):
And so it’s about embracing a new way of being. And as Donna read to us from Parker Palmer, one of my favorite books, let Your Life Speak. As we’re going through this process, sometimes it’s just not clear what’s trying to reveal itself. And we’re going to talk about trust the rest of the month. That’s not my topic today, but it really involves us stepping into a trust that there is something higher that’s trying to reveal itself. Barbara de Angelis says, divine discomforts and inner pressure from something in you trying to bring itself forth into your life and the world that in its efforts to move out collides with your own inner walls and obstacles. I love that quote, and Neville Goddard tells us to be aware of discomfort, is to recognize an area where our consciousness is calling for greater attention and transformation. And the awareness, just the awareness that we have, the discomfort is really shifting us to begin to move into harmony and peace.
(08:40):
But it’s not a straight line. It’s more of a spiral in life. Have you ever noticed that we’d like to say, Hey, I’m on my path and I’m going on this straight line and here I am, I’ve arrived. But it rarely happens that way, does it rarely does. It’s usually a spiral. Sometimes we revisit someplace we’ve been before and we’re like, why am I here again? How did that happen? So I want to share some ideas with you about how we can invite spiritual evolution within ourselves because that’s what we need to do to support ourselves on the journey. And we often talk about the kingdoms of consciousness here, but I think those kingdoms are helpful in telling us where we’re at. They don’t tell us how to move from where we’re at. And so I put this together. My labels might not be perfect, but really this is how our consciousness evolves.
(09:38):
So I’m going to walk you through it. So the first step is recognition. Earnest Holmes taught I live in the faith that there’s a presence and a power greater than I am that nurtures and supports me in ways I could not imagine. I know this presence is all knowing and all power and is always right where I am. So this idea that we’re part of a greater presence, we use the word God here, but what we really mean is the presence, the spirit. Pick your word, but we’re part of it. We’re not separate from it. It’s not separate from us. Some people would say the activity of the spiritual I am is the ruling consciousness. So beginning to have an awareness of the divine vine, beginning to recognize that there is a higher power or something guiding and directing us. And as we recognize that, we begin to see it at work.
(10:42):
And we do this in the prayer, the first step of prayer recognition, right? God is all there is. I’m one with God. We practice that here, but we also begin to understand or at least get an inkling of our oneness. If God is all there is and we cannot be separate from it, then we begin to understand our oneness. But that can be hard to get your head around at first, right? We may have been taught our whole life that it’s outside of us. So we begin with recognition. And Ernest Holmes says, the secret of spiritual power lies in a consciousness of one’s union with the whole recognizing our oneness with God allows us to see discomfort as a divine tool for growth and healing. And the only way we teach this, the only way you can change conditions and transcend your experiences in life is to begin to use the power of mind.
(11:44):
Constructively and discomfort really just tells us it’s time to realign. If we’re uncomfortable, if we feel a little off track, which we all do at times, it’s just telling us time to realign, time to realign with the divine consciousness. So that’s the first step recognition. The second step is self-awareness. And we could have picked a different word. I could have used unification here, but I didn’t. I picked self-awareness because all the great spiritual teachers over time have taught us turn within, look within, whether we’re talking about Socrates, Emerson, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, you name your teacher, they’ve all had the same message. Look within for your wisdom. And so when we cultivate our self-awareness, we’re really taking the time to do some inner reflection to begin to understand what are my limiting beliefs about myself and about life? What are the thoughts that I’m having and feeding, not just having but feeding in my life and what are my emotions?
(13:00):
And we begin to understand the power of this and how it’s creating our life. Louise Hay taught that discomfort can be a catalyst for positive change, and that challenges are actually opportunities to release our old patterns and to embrace new, healthier ways of being. She said, when we feel discomfort, it’s a sign that we need to change something in our lives and to let go of our limiting beliefs. And you might say, Hey, Amy, I know what limiting beliefs are. I’ve been studying this for a long time. This is nothing new. But I really want to challenge you to dig a little deeper on that. We all have limiting beliefs that keep popping up. I was talking with my practitioner this week and I was talking to her about two things that I thought were completely unrelated to each other. And she said, oh, can I share something with her? I’m like, sure. And she’s like, it’s the overgiving thing you do in both stories.
(14:09):
And why was I overgiving? Because I have a limiting belief. These are some of Louise’s limiting beliefs. I have a limiting belief that I must please others to be loved. So I overgive, and I know this, I’ve known this for a long time, but I can go unconscious to it because it’s such a habit. And that’s true of all of us in our limiting beliefs. We have to figure out, how do I know it’s happening? How do I know when my limiting belief is up? You know how I know I get resentful? That’s how I know. And I’m like, Ooh, cranky, resentful. What is that? That’s how I know my limiting belief is up, right? So I’m sure some of you’re okay. Who has a limiting belief they’re willing to share? Okay, come on up. So you can talk in the mics. They can hear you online. You love it when I get you up here. Okay? What’s your limiting belief?
Jason LaRiviere (15:12):
That I’m not creative.
Rev. Aimee Daniels (15:15):
Okay. And how do you know when that’s showing up for you?
Jason LaRiviere (15:20):
When I come across a project in my class that requires creativity, I immediately get very negative. Why do I have to do this?
Rev. Aimee Daniels (15:28):
I love that. Thank you. Awesome. Anybody else want to share any other brave sharers? Okay. Okay, we’ll keep moving. But the idea is figure out when your limiting belief is getting triggered. That’s the point of it. It’s like you probably know or you might just feel a little out of sorts in this thing called you. Earnest Home teaches us discomfort is often a sign that we’re on the brink of greater understanding. I love that. It’s hopeful, right? I’m uncomfortable, but I’m on the brink of something better. And that’s how I know because I’m uncomfortable. Something new wants to come through. And that card toll talks about how we believe that we shouldn’t have to suffer, but that actually when we are going through something, it’s better to just let it be and just be with it and accept it and move through it, because then it goes away faster.
(16:28):
So our invitation is really, we get to decide, right? I’m feeling discomfort or I’m unhappy about it. What am I going to do with it? Am I going to feed the story? Am I going to keep living that same story or am I going to move forward and transcend it? I’ve shared before there’s this thing in my family with someone, and it’s not just with me, but people keep bringing it up. And Rich brought it up to me on Friday night and I said, you know what? I don’t want to live into that story anymore. Could we stop talking about it? It’s not that I’m denying that it happens, but I just don’t want to live there. If I choose to plant a flag and live there, then I’m going to be in resentment. And I’m like, I just want to accept that this is what is.
(17:21):
I’d like us to not talk about it anymore and let’s just move on. And it could sound like that’s a bypass, but it’s really not. It’s saying this is what someone else chooses to do is God’s business. It’s not my business. We try to make it be our business. What other people are doing. It’s God’s business. What other people are doing. There’s only one person whose business it is in your life and you are your business, but you can’t control what anybody else does. So discomfort is allowing us to realign our consciousness. So the next step is acceptance. I started to touch on this already, but acceptance goes beyond accepting the situation. Acceptance is also beginning to work more fully with principal. Ernest Holmes in one of his books talks about how he feels that struggle has come into metaphysical thought. And what he meant when he said that was this.
(18:24):
Often we speak into a challenge that we’re having in our life, or we speak into a challenge that we expect to have in our life, and we know that whatever we give our word to is what happens. So he says, if we speak into a challenge as if we’re absolutely, definitely going to have it, what’s going to happen? So we really want to keep our mind clear and we want to rest in the principle, accept the principle that is going to just make the way forward. There’s nothing to oppose it except if we throw something in the way that says, not that, not that, not that. So be honest with yourself for a second. Is there any place in your life where you’re letting struggle come in through how you’re talking, how you’re thinking? I especially find this in my family how families have a wrap on things like they like to talk about the same thing over and over again.
(19:26):
Sometimes it’s complaining about someone. Anybody got a family like that? I do. But it’s about, and some of the teachers, like Neville Godard has said, how you see someone is what your experience is going to be of them. So we want to get ourselves out of the negative groove. We don’t want to be in that negative groove. We want to see what’s possible. And we really want to work to accept these principles that we teach and work with them, accept this greater divine truth that we’re part of. And we need to, I think for me, I need to let go of my ego’s idea of who I’m supposed to be, just only talking for myself right now, what I’m supposed to be doing in the world. And I also need to let go of comparing myself to other people. No comparison in spirit. This is room full of people.
(20:24):
We all have different gifts and talents. Thank God if everyone was the same, it’d sure be boring. So we want to accept that the way that we’re made, the way that we are personally wired, that that is our gift to the world, that is our offering to the world. And we don’t have to be like anyone else. Ernest Holmes offers this hopefulness to us. Nature will not allow us, let us stay in any one place for too long. She’ll let us stay long enough to get the experience needed to unfold and advance our soul. I love that. That’s hopeful. If I’m in a bad place, I’m only here long enough to figure out what the message is, what is the lesson here? And then I move on. And then you will begin to see that your life starts to transform. If you’re practicing new thought principles every day, which is what we teach here, and you’re applying them, you’re thinking positively, you’re affirming, you’re praying, maybe you’re visualizing or visioning, you’re doing things to keep your mind focused on the experience you want to call in, you’re going to start to see your life as transforming.
(21:44):
And it might be in big things, it might be in small things, but you begin to see your life change. Michael Beckwith tells a story.
(21:54):
He runs agape in California if you don’t know who he is, and he’s very famous in new thought. And he tells a story about how as a young man, he was actually agnostic and he went to college in California at a time where people smoked a lot of pot. And so he ended up somehow getting into the business of selling it. And he had quite a large distribution network, but he kept having this recurring dream that these three guys were chasing him and had the dream over and over. And eventually they caught him and killed him in his dream, and they stabbed him in the heart. And he said, instead of dying, he woke up to what gives me the chills to tell this. He woke up to what he calls love beauty. That’s how he refers to spirit, love, beauty. And he started to change and he made the decision that he was going to get out of selling drugs.
(22:54):
And ironically, he had one less delivery to get rid of, and he had never before ever brought anything into his home. I think he might’ve had young children at the time. And he brought the stuff in his home for whatever reason, and he gets arrested because someone had reported him. And he said, I’m in court. I’m reading a spiritual book in court, and I’m affirming that I’m not going to be going to jail. And somehow he got off on some kind of a technicality. But he went up to the judge and the judge said to him, young man, I don’t ever want to see you in my court again. And he said, you will never see me here again. Because he knew that he had changed something new had opened in up in him. And I love that because it really embodies how we can change. All of a sudden something doesn’t fit us all anymore and we let it go. So that’s transformation and awakening, spiritual evolution, whatever our word is, is not changing who you are, but it’s discarding who you’re not. It’s discarding who you’re not.
(24:14):
And then we begin to demonstrate this in our life. And when we speak about demonstration here, we usually mean, like I said, a prayer. And then it came true. Whatever I prayed for came true. But I also think that demonstrating is the practice itself. We have all these, I am statements up here, but when we affirmatively put behind our I am whatever we’re calling forth in our life, we begin to notice that our nature is changing. And so we not only see the tangible results through our prayer and our spiritual practice, but you’re going to also see them in improved relationships. You’re going to see them in my way of being is just different. I’m showing up more authentically. I’m showing up with more integrity, and I’m coming more into my divine nature. That’s what we do when we demonstrate.
(25:15):
And as we begin to demonstrate, we begin to move beyond ourself. And I put you up here, Judy, don’t be mad at me. But service is also an important part of coming outside of ourself. If anyone is familiar with aa, I think one of the most brilliant things in AA is they early on, they encourage people to get into service of each other. It’s a part of the program. It takes your mind off yourself. So anything that we can do to be of service to others is going to help us spiritually because then we realize we’re connected, right? I think that’s one of the things we’ve lost in the world the last few years, is people are not looking each other in the eye. They’re not connecting. But how good do you feel when you do that? Or if you just even do a small kindness for someone, how do you feel to be connected? Or someone does a small kindness for you? So it’s really moving into service, using your gifts and talents and figuring out what’s the positive impact you want to have in the world. There’s so many ways you can do it. You can do it through your work, you can do it through your volunteering, but how are you serving the world through what you uniquely bring to the table?
(26:37):
And finally, we move into unity consciousness. We’ve unified. Early on, we began to recognize that I and this presence are one. But as we move along this path and we practice it every day, we begin to experience unity consciousness, which is a state of enlightenment where we pierce the mask of illusion between separation and fragmentation. I think it might’ve been Earnest Holmes who said this. I read recently that love is the power, love and oneness are the power to heal separation. And that’s really what we’re doing when we’re stepping into unity consciousness. We’re choosing not to other people. That’s not the easiest thing, especially not in today’s world. But that’s when we step into this unity consciousness. It opens our hearts, and that is how we spiritually evolve.
(27:50):
So these stages of spiritual evolution are really just representing a journey of evolving where we move first from recognizing that there’s something bigger than we knew before, and then we move through the process of embodying it in our life. And what I want you to hear is that your life is on track regardless of what is going on. It may appear that it’s not on track, but your life is always on track because spirit is seeking to bring something forth through you, through the experiences of your life. They’re not an accident. And there’s a lot of disruption right now in the field, which is the planet earth. Whether we talk about wars or we’re talking about politics in the United States, I mean, we could pick our category changes to laws that are not favorable. I mean, there’s a lot of disruption right now. It’s rocking people.
(28:53):
People are afraid. I was at a dinner party last night and they’re like, okay, where are we moving if we don’t like who gets selected? There’s a lot of disruption, but we have to decide who we’re going to be in all of that. The way that I’m trying to hold it is to say even more important than ever, that I do my spiritual practice even more important than ever, that I show up and recognize my unity with other people, even people who don’t have the same point of view as me. How do I show up as a presence of love so that I can build a bridge? And sometimes things do get bad or uncomfortable before they get better, right? That’s true in our life, that’s true in our collective. But we know that love is going to have the final word. It always does.
(29:46):
Love always has the final word. And so my invitation to you is to begin to embrace these tools in your practice. And if you’re going through a period of discomfort right now, please get prayer. I think Gordon’s probably praying in the back of the room this morning. I think Denise is praying online or work with a practitioner. Do something to support yourself so that you heal your own sense of that you might be doing it on your own. And I just noticed the time, and I’m way over. So we better pray. I haven’t even looked because I was on a roll. Okay, let’s go into prayer. Just invite everyone to close their eyes. Ah, let’s take a breath together. Just breathing in and connecting to this one field, this one presence, this one power, this one love, which is God’s spirit, the universe. Source light, love, grace, ease, peace. And I know my oneness with this source. I know my oneness with this love, this grace, this peace, this inner sense of loving goodness. And as I know this for myself, I know this for each of the beautiful people hearing my words, I know that we are all one with this love, this field of possibility, this field of creativity, this goodness, which is spirit.
(31:30):
So from this place of oneness, I speak my word for each person here and for us collectively, that we are evolving, that we are moving through any discomfort in our life. That spirit is providing the way forward. And that something even better is getting creative here. So I say yes to each one of us, more fully embodying love, more fully recognizing our oneness, more fully being of service to the world with our unique gifts and absolutely always and everywhere, being connected to spirit, to our source, to that which is true for each of us. I just declare and know that today is a day of breakthrough. And I say yes to that, and I’m so grateful to know that God’s got this prayer is fulfilled, and so it is.
Typhanie Monique (32:35):
And so it is… Thank you, Reverend Aimee Daniels.