The Light of Change – Rev. John Adams
This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
DESCRIPTION
This Sunday we bring our Dharma series to completion by exploring how to use our spiritual tools to move forward with clarity and purpose. Together, we’ll uncover principles that help dissolve the blocks along the way and open the path to greater freedom and flow. Join us for a time of deep spiritual connection and discovery.
SUMMARY
– Rev. John discusses the concept of “dharma” or one’s life purpose and calling, drawing insights from quantum physics and spiritual teachings.
– He outlines Stephen Cope’s 8-step process for identifying and activating one’s dharma, including asking for guidance, listening for a response, checking the guidance, waiting for confirmation, praying for courage, moving forward methodically, and letting go of the outcome.
– He emphasizes the importance of overcoming resistance to change, embracing a non-conformist mindset, and recognizing that one’s unique dharma is a form of divine creativity and self-renewal.
– The talk concludes with a meditation and prayer focused on connecting with the “light of change” that guides one’s purpose and revealing one’s true spiritual nature.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. John Adams:
Good morning everybody. So, oh, that won’t help. Poor Dom is like, what’s going on? So a hundred years ago, there were a group of scientists that were in a moment of puzzlement. It was Albert Einstein and Neils bore Schrodinger and others who were grappling with this new theory that they were working on called Quantum Theory. And what Quantum Theory was telling them is that, and the puzzle was that as they looked at the formulas that they were creating and they saw this wave function, that the wave function was made up of packets that were really just possibilities, and that once they observed it, the wave function collapsed and became particles. It became reality. And they couldn’t figure out how reality could be made up of possibility. It’s a puzzle that they continue to work on and we’ll let them work on it. But we understand this, and from our perspective, from our philosophy in science of mind, we know what this is about.
And it’s an interesting process to go from possibility to potentiality, to probability to reality. And we move through this process by applying our consciousness to it, our awareness to it. And so for me, this is like when our human self meets our God self, and we have this coming together of our human intellect and awareness becoming conscious and connected to that greater consciousness. And so in that moment, we are creating our own reality. And what I know about this for me, and I know about this for you, is that it has a purpose. We are on purpose. We come here for a reason. We are here with a purpose. And as we’ve been studying this whole month, that purpose is something called dharma, or it’s your calling, it’s your intention, your purpose in life. And so thank you for singing this song. For me, the light of change, to me, the light of change is that light is that north star, that calling, that thing that we’re moving towards.
And I think we all have it and we all embrace it to a greater or a lesser degree. So today, I mean Reverend Amy, Reverend Linda and Reverend Darrell really set us up so well by steeping us in this understanding. And if you missed any of those talks, I would recommend you go back and look at them. They were really, really good. And they’ve sold me, I am sold on the idea of dharma. I want to do this. I am in it. And we’re, we’re going to do it a little bit together today as we step into how do we know what our dharma is or our calling is, and then how do we activate it? And Stephen cope in his wonderful book actually gives us a process. So we’re going to look at that process today. And before we do that, I want to kind of set the groundwork a little bit so that we’re ready for it.
One of the things that can come up when we’re looking at our purpose, our calling, is that we can fall in love with the idea of something we fall in love with. The idea of, I love to be a whatever, fill in the blank and it sounds so good. But when it comes down to actually doing the work of being that thing, we actually don’t really want to do the work. So we don’t fall in love with the work. We fall in love with the idea. And I think the practice of dharma, the calling, the stepping into that intentionality is we actually fall in love with the work of it. We like to do it. I’m going to use myself a little bit as a Guinea pig this morning because I’ve actually been doing this in real life. I’ve been stepping into this ministry thing.
So I’ve been really reframing my whole dharma in life, my whole calling in life. And so for me, what I have discovered as I do the work of Cityside, sometimes Cityside has tasks and responsibilities and obligations that are like really? But the truth is that I never feel that way. I always feel like, oh, this thing is taking me away from Cityside. I actually really get a lot of joy out of doing all those things in this community. And it’s one of the ways in which I know, oh, okay, this must be my calling. This must be my dharma. So in order to do this and to kind of clear the way for ourselves, one of the things that happens is we really step into manifestation, right? I’m not going to get into a big long talk about manifestation, but I do want to touch on it just because when we are stepping into our dharma, we’re calling into the resources, the networks, the connections, the communities.
We do work a little bit in manifestation. And so to clear the way so we can really move forward, we just want to kind of check in on that manifestation thing. It’s something that we’ve all studied, we all know. But I want to just tickle you with a couple reminders. And one of the things that I have on my list of things to think about is something we actually talked about on Friday night at game night, which is giving up complaining and giving up grudges. And the reason is simple. It’s just that as we step into that complaining consciousness, we can stay cycled in it. We can get trapped in it. It becomes the thing that, oh, if only it weren’t for this, if only that, if only it wasn’t for that person, we can get stuck in that place and never move forward. And it’s an old prosperity teaching that we release those complainings.
So if we try that, and I’m not a big should must kind of person, I’m not like, you should do this, you must do this. But just offer it as an idea of try it, try giving up, complaining for, set a period of time for yourself. I’m not going to complain for the next week. And just see how that changes you. The same thing with grudges. If we’re holding a grudge, we’re kind of stuck in that same place over and over again and kind of stuck in that same pattern of thinking. So the idea of releasing ourselves from that, from forgiving, that moving into forgiveness. And I think we’re going to talk about forgiveness more later on in Cityside and learn more about how that liberates us. So I just wanted to touch on that. And the other thing that I wanted to touch on was sometimes when you get into the complaining thing and the grudging thing, you can feel really good to hold it.
And we can get into a place of, well, I just need to vent. I just need to vent. And as an aside, one of the really great things about being in ministerial school is that we were required to write these really long papers and they had to have research done by peer review papers that were created. So from scientific studies. So it was really based in something that was fairly well scrutinized. And I found this research on venting. And what it told me was that people who vented anger became more aggressive, not calmer, that hitting or punching a bag or a pillow or whatever while thinking of someone made participants more angry toward the person not releasing the anger, venting, rehearses negative emotions and makes it easier to be activated again and promote cycles of anger and sadness and can escalate the conflict. And they suggested the things that they came up with to do instead are actually things that we talked about on Friday night sort of spontaneously, which was journaling about your feelings.
So kind of identifying them, laying them out and starting to understand what’s underneath, what’s really going on here, and that lower stress and improves immune function. Changing how we interpret to remember that our perspective is only one point of view, but when we start to broaden that point of view, we can start to see things from different angles. And naming emotions helps regulate the amygdala response. And talking to a good listener can be really, really helpful. And we have the most beautiful trained, licensed spiritual practitioners here who are willing and able and excited to listen and share and hold space with you. So we know that venting doesn’t work, but there are ways that we can process through our feelings to clear the way. So we now have some breath and some space to move into this work that we’re going to do. And the other thing that I would say is let’s call in the resources and make space for them and welcome them in.
We welcome in people and opportunities. And one of the things that we welcome in that can get in the way of doing our dharma is money. We call in our money. And I’m just going to touch on this real quick. One of the things that I think really helps is to love money. To love money. It doesn’t sound very spiritual. In fact, many spiritual people will say what? Now? That’s crazy. But the thing of it is that money is just energy. And when we welcome it in, if you think of money as a person, if you’re there like, no, I can’t love money. Money’s awful and rich people are terrible and I hate money, does that person going to feel welcome in your life? I don’t know. Probably not. But when we say I love money, I welcome it in. I know that I can use it in the right and perfect way from my life to resource this dharma that is mine. I can be a good steward of it and share it generously from the overflow that is coming to me. It can be a real blessing. And so welcoming it in and making space for it can be a very spiritual experience.
I want to step into the eight step process that Steven cope outlines in the book. So how do we know it’s our dharma and how do we activate it? Now, I am going to have slides for each of the steps, but just so you know, I do have one slide at the end that has all eight steps on it. So if you want to just grab a picture of that, if that’s something that you’re interested in, that’s fine. It’s also in the book and he does a really great job of outlining it and then having his explanations of it. I’m going to share my insights to them for what they’re worth. The other thing you can do if you want to is you can always go to the YouTube channel and watch the talk after. And we have a lot of people who do that. So if you do go to the YouTube channel and watch the talk. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.
Truly. Okay, step one crazy. It’s a crazy step. I forget to do this all the time, right? We’re looking for guidance. We want to know what’s going on. How do I find my way? We ask for guidance. We ask for guidance. It’s always available. I have to tell you this. Wait a minute, I have this Is it here? Yeah. I have to tell you this quick about guidance. So I was listening to this podcast because it was about how to get in touch with your spirit guides and how to have this really close connection and really hear what they’re telling you. And I thought, oh, that sounds wonderful. I would really love that. I was really looking for some guidance and I was a little agitated, like, oh, come on, I just need some insight here. And so we’re going through this thing and they’re doing a guided meditation.
They say at some point they say something like, and you will have a physical experience or acknowledgement that your guides are with you. You will find a white feather. And I immediately shut the thing off. I’m like, what? I am in the middle of an urban city and an urban neighborhood. There are no feathers. I am not going to find a feather. Are you crazy? I got so angry. So I ended up out my chores and I was cleaning out my or taking the clothes. Is it in here? Yeah, I was taking the clothes out of the dryer. And what do I find if you can’t see online, it’s a white feather. I found a white. I’m like, no way.
So our guides are with us, our guidance is with us, and you can’t make this stuff up. It’s actually happening. So yeah. So we ask for guidance. We receive guidance, and then the next step, which is even crazier than the first step, we listen for a response, yes, and not hear a response, which is like you kind of hear it and then kind of go about your business. But we listen for a response, meaning that we’re taking it in, we’re internalizing it, we’re actually listening to the guidance that’s coming to us. And I would say maybe most especially if that guidance is surprising or is taking you into or suggesting something that you maybe hadn’t ever thought of for yourself before, that’s even more the time to listen to the guidance. So breathing that in. And then the next step, which is really great, is check it out.
Check out the guidance that you got. When I had this inspiration and you were a series of things that happened that led me to think about going into ministerial school, that’s what I did. I checked it out, I asked Reverend Amy, and Reverend Amy’s response was really, really enthusiastic. Now I will say, if she had said, huh, ministry for you, interesting. That would’ve been a no. That would’ve been a no, but that’s not what happened. And I checked it out with a few other people and it felt right, and I got some validation and I knew that this was the right choice for me. And then the next step, which I think is really powerful when we really do it, wait, wait. We got the information. We got the guidance, we’ve listened to the guidance, we’ve checked it out. If it’s real, it’s going to keep coming back to you.
And what happened to me, as I said, I was using myself as a Guinea pig. Waiting was built in. Once I said yes, I had to do the application, which involved getting letters of recommendations. I had to ask people, would you write a letter and get the letter and then do the application, had to write an essay about why I wanted to be a minister. I had to get a background check and pay the money and submit the thing. And I had to wait to find out if I was accepted. And then once I was accepted, I had to wait until classes started. And all of those waiting periods were opportunities for me to step back and say no. So it was an opportunity to let it gel and to check in, keep checking in, and keep checking in. Is this right? Is this right?
And I kept moving forward. And I will also say that about each of those steps that I took, that there was no effort. It was effortless, it was fun. It was, oh yeah, let’s do this. This’ll be cool, this’ll be great. And I didn’t feel like it was, oh, I got to do this thing. It was, this is part of my process. This is great. And then the next step and all these steps sort of interconnect, pray for courage. Yeah, we’re stepping into our dharma. We’re sometimes stepping into something brand new, something really different than what we were doing before. I know that’s true for me. And part of it is stepping courageously into it to be daring in our spiritual practice in life that daringness not in a egotistical way, but in a very open, actually vulnerable way to pray for courage. And related to that, let go of the attempt to eliminate risk. We can let risks stop us and stymie us and keep us frozen if there’s risk involved, maybe not, maybe I shouldn’t do this.
I want to jump to the next step also, because these two steps are interrelated, move forward methodically. So in other words, we are addressing the risks that we can address. I knew when I was stepping into ministry, I had to figure out how I’m going to pay for it. How can I make this? Can I really make this commitment? Yes, I can figure this stuff out. But there was still an element of risk underneath even when I addressed those surface things that I just had to accept. So we do it smartly. We don’t do foolish things. We step into that risk with a certain amount of planning and understanding and accepting that we’re never going to get rid of all of it. And then the eighth step let go of the outcome.
When I think about the stories that we’ve studied this month, I think about like Harriet Tubman, when she stepped into her dharma, her dharma to me was about, I am free. I know that about myself and I know that about everyone around me, and I am going to live that and do everything I can to bring that about. She had no idea what the outcome would be. She had no idea that she was going to help one person or a hundred people, or she was going to get put back into the system that she escaped from. She had no idea what the outcome was, but she knew that she had to lift it.
The other thing I want to say about letting go of outcome, I think about it in two ways. One is the way I just described the other way is in new thought, in centers for spiritual living, in science of mind, we can get these teachings that seem to kind of argue with each other in a way. We get the teaching of be open at the top and set an intention. We get the teaching of let go and let God and hold a mental equivalent. They don’t always seem to want to play well together. And what came up for me as I wrestled with this is that the are just spiritual tools that to let go and let God is right. In many situations, in many circumstances, holding this mental equivalent, which is if you’re old enough, some of you are not to remember the secret.
In the secret. They would have you do a meditation to get the thing that you wanted. If it was a car, you’d imagine yourself in the car with your hands on the steering wheel and all the accoutrement and the smell and the visuals, and you’d be really real about what it is. You’re calling in that very clear, very specific mental equivalent. And there is a time and a place and a purpose for that spiritual tool. And we have a lot of different spiritual tools that we use. So part of what we’re cultivating in our community here and going through this, studying these principles and sharing together is developing that wisdom of knowing, oh, this is the time to use this particular tool. This is a time to use this other particular tool. And when we’re struggling to figure out, well, what’s right, first of all, I would say, you’re never wrong. It’s always going to be fine, and you’re always fine. And you can always seek the support of a spiritual practitioner who can help you suss out what would be the right thing. What would be the best thing for you right now in this situation? So the teaching, then the coaching that Steven cope gives us is to let go of the outcome. We don’t know where it’s going to go. We just know going to take us somewhere, and we accept that and we know that it’s taking us into our greater good.
So Ernest Holmes science of mind says that light represents the creative impulse of spirit. Change is spirit’s way of expressing that creative impulse and transformation is not random. As I said at the beginning, we are not random. Our transformation, our dharma, our purpose, our moving into it and making the change light of change that we’re moving into is not random. We are setting the intention and we are moving forward in that way. And that is the activity of divine creativity that is always moving us towards our greater good. No matter how hard or disruptive the change may feel, it carries the potential for renewal and rebirth. It points us towards faith as we trust this spirit-led process of change and opens doors to new beginnings. And it’s always self-renewing as you’re in your dharma and living it. Some of us are already living our dharma. Some of us are maybe thinking about moving into a new way of being, but either way, we’re always renewed, we’re always rejuvenated.
We release our resistance to change, and we recognize it as a messenger illuminating our calling, our dharma. There is an element of this experience that I think of as non-conformity because we’re all individual expressions of the one. We all have our own unique way of expressing love, of expressing our purpose of expressing art. So even though I am doing this ministry thing and Amy is doing this ministry thing and Linda’s doing this ministry thing, we’re all doing it a little bit differently. And that’s beautiful. We’re all in our own way, non-conformists because we’re finding our own path with it. And I wanted to share this with you. This is not really a quote, it’s short. It could be a quote, but it’s really a poem. And this poem is called Bushwhack. And I’ll put the slide up. There’s the slide for all eight steps. If you want to take a picture. I’ll leave that up for a minute.
Did I put the poem in my notes? I don’t think I did. I’ll have to read it from the slide. Yeah. So ask for guidance. We listen, we check it out. We wait. We pray for courage. We eliminate the need for risk. We move forward methodically, and we let go of the outcome. And this again is in the book. This is Stephen Cope’s work. So this poem about being a non-conformist is by Rosemary Ola er from her book, all the Honey, and it’s called Bushwhack, and I’d like to share it with you. I followed the road as if it were a teacher. It went up, I went up, it turned, I turned. It was a long time before I realized the road is not the only way to go. The first day I walked away from the gravel, I fell. That was the day I learned. Staying upright is not what’s most important. Conforming is not what’s most important. Following the path that others have created or others are pushing you into or wanting for you is not what’s most important. What’s most important is for you to follow your heart, to pray and get that guidance to step into and wholeheartedly praying for courage into your own unique dharma. So what I’d like to do now is just take us into a moment of meditation, just a very short one, and then we’ll go right from meditation into prayer and close out.
So just taking a breath, coming together again and taking a gentle breath in and let it go. And allow yourself to soften into this moment. And imagine you’re standing in a quiet space. Maybe it’s just before dawn. It’s that early dusky morning. The world is still the he is full of possibilities. And around you on the horizon, you notice this first glimmer of light. This is the light of change, gentle, steady, unhurried. It begins by touching the sky with softer color. Then slowly spreads, revealing more and more of the landscape around you. This landscape that is calling you in to be explored, to be discovered, to be revealed.
And as you breathe, you see this light also shining within you. It moves through your heart, your mind, and your body. It illuminates the places that are ready to grow, that are ready to release or ready to transform. And I just invite you, you can say this silently to yourself, self, these statements, the light of change guides me. The light of change reveals my good. The light of change is spirit moving through me. Now, the light of change guides me. The light of change reveals my good. The light of change is spirit moving through me. Now, feel yourself walking forward towards this light supported and safe and renewed.
Taking this final breath in our meditation, just knowing the light of change is always with you and gently returning you to this moment. We step into prayer, recognizing source as the all that is all this unconditional love that is everywhere. And when it is the light of change, it is our human self meeting, our God self in this now moment. And I just recognize that I am one with source, one with God, one with all. That is all. I bring my consciousness to it. I bring my awareness to it. I bring my whole self to it. I invite that for each and every single person joining me in this prayer and this communion with spirit. Just knowing that we anchor ourselves in this understanding that we are the change we are looking for. We are the guru we are looking for. We are the spiritual expression of God in this world, and we are on purpose.
We are here with intention. We are here for a reason. And I know for each person who is seeking their purpose, their reason, their dharma, that they are finding it with gentle assurity, that as each person prays for guidance, they find guidance and praise for courage. They find courage. Yet they call in the resources that they need to live their life of dharma, of their calling, of their truth, and just see and know each person receiving exactly what they need, strengthening all that is, and bringing forward all the renewal and the new that is needed. I just call this such a blessed time. This is such a blessed community. I know that this consciousness of love that we hold right here right now is extending out beyond the borders and the walls of this community experience going throughout the world. Just calling in kindness, calling in beauty, calling in joy, calling in a softening that we see and know that empathy and joy and connection and helpfulness and collaboration and cooperation, our blessings, our good things, our strengthening things, and we release anything that doesn’t look like it. Just knowing this great good is here and now, and all these blessings and all these teachings. Again, just blessing. Reverend Amy, Reverend Linda and Reverend Darrell for their great work this month. And knowing that we sit in the center of divine wisdom, knowing it has made manifest here and now. So grateful for all of it. Releasing it now into the action of law, knowing it is done. It is. So I let it be. And so it is.