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THE POWER OF SURRENDER- Rev. Linda Jackson
OVERVIEW
As we move from unhealthy ego to healthier ego, we move from “life happens to me” to “I make it happen.” As we deepen spiritually, we “open to receive” and surrender to “know it is already done.” Join us this Sunday to explore how our greatest creative power is activated through surrender.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Linda Jackson (00:01):
Let’s give them one more round of applause. I’m telling you, I was literally welling up with tears listening to that. The musicians are such a beautiful demonstration of spirit expressing, they really show us how to be a full expression. And to me that’s a large part of what we’re talking about today, and that was a great song choice. Connie, thank you for that. So I was online for a few weeks. I was away and it’s really lovely to be back in the room and I really appreciate our online team, our technology team, and our online community and the folks who support online for making it possible to be both places and to stay connected while I was away. So we are completing the theme of January, which is life is what You make it based on the same book by Ernest Holmes. And it’s really an introduction to the science of mind teaching. And one of the main ideas in this book and in science of mind in general is that our thoughts shape our reality. So to quote earnest, we are bound by nothing except belief. And to elaborate on that, I have another quote from Earnest. I say Earnest like he’s my buddy. If we think of ourselves as being separated from the universe, we shall be limited by that thought. For it is a belief in separation from God which binds and limits.
(01:50):
So in short, we’re talking about our thoughts and beliefs. Becoming our experience and not thinking we’re doing it on our own is also a key component of that, not thinking we’re separate from God trying to make things happen. And in addition to life is what you make at our monthly book in January. Every year we work with these four concepts that are in the introduction of the Science of Mind textbook. It’s sort of back to basics for us in January to support our newer folks in knowing what we’re up to. And really, for those of you who already know this material, I am inviting a beginner’s mind. And a way to know if you’re in a beginner’s mind is am I open or am I closed? Because when I think I already know something, I’m closed. There’s no room for growth. And this is true whether you’re disagreeing with a colleague, arguing with your partner, defending your political views as well, when you think I’m right and you’re wrong, or I already know this, there is no room for anything new to happen. So I’m inviting a beginner’s mind and also just acknowledging that Daryl, Amy, and John spoke about some of these topics over the last few weeks. The thing itself, the way it works, what it does and how to use it.
(03:31):
So before I continue, I’m going to just invite us to take a breath. So taking a breath and let’s decide to open our hearts and open our minds, being open to learning something new or hearing something in a new way. So the thing itself is just another way that Ernie refers to the divine, to God, to the source. It’s the infinite power in back of everything. We are one with it and inseparable from it. And the way it works, the thing itself or divine source is a universal principle. And Ernest does a little bit of a geek about principles, which is kind of cool, principles that govern how life works. So he’s telling us that when we understand our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and actions and behaviors, our whole sum total of how we’re being, it shapes our experiences. So when we know this and understand this, we can consciously create our lives. It’s like understanding gravity. We can work with it instead of against it. And what it does, the divine operates through us. It expresses itself as us. It knows itself. It is consciousness knowing itself as us. And it is always operating, it’s always available. And whether we’re using it intentionally or not, it’s operating and we’re creating. So our work is to become intentional creators.
(05:28):
And this how to use it. And this is where I elaborate, earnest says through spiritual study using spiritual practices, especially communing with the divine, remembering we are one with the divine
(05:47):
Affirmative. Prayer is one of our primary spiritual practices and it’s such a great powerful spiritual practice for that experience of communion. We unify during the process of prayer. So we need to retrain ourselves to consistently hold positive images, affirm our desires, and develop an unwavering faith or a conviction in knowing that it is already done, believing that it’s already done. So we’re using the power of our mind within the power of the infinite mind, and we can use this to manifest our intentions and it’s so much more than that. So we use the power of the divine within to change our lives and the world around us. You’ve heard the expression, change your thinking, change your life. So from CSL foundations, there’s a slide here, I found this in one of the old CSL foundations courses from Jesse Jennings and I think it’s from 2012 or 13, so it’s older.
(06:58):
And he outlines the steps, how to use the creative process. And I almost kind of giggled when I read this because it just seems like it’s so basic. Think about things as you would prefer them to be as though they already were that way. Support your thinking as desired with journaling, artwork or other ways of recording it and building on it, singing vision boards, all the things. Step into the picture you’ve created in mind and feel what it feels like to be there. That’s that. Cultivating the experience of it. Keep doing this until you notice that what you were envisioning has actually built itself out in form all around you. It’s now your real life. And that’s the one that makes me giggle because I feel like there was a pretty big jump from the picturing it and then already having it in your life. But if we work, it works. And then he says, relax and enjoy. And when you’re ready, select your next goal. So it’s an old curriculum, the teaching of science of mind. And the organization continues to evolve as we continue to evolve. As I was saying before, it’s not just about manifesting, it’s about transformation. I know I’ve said this before and I’ll probably say it hundreds more times. I had a teacher, Dr. Tam, Tom Sanner, who said, instead of change your thinking, change your life, it should be Transform the Thinker.
(08:32):
And there are a few concepts in this teaching and in some of the other studies that I have done in my life, a few concepts that I find myself using all the time, almost every client that I’ve seen in the last 10 years, I have worked with the science mind, creative process, the teaching symbol, and with the four aspects of consciousness. And John worked with the science of Mind teaching symbol. And Amy touched on the four aspects of consciousness. And I want to say that that science of mind teaching principle that John shared last week, and as you shared with your passion about the archetypes, I don’t see the teaching symbol up here.
(09:20):
You shared about the archetypes. And I love that you are able to take something meaningful to you and apply it to this teaching and think of it in a new way. And I invite us all to do that, to find what speaks to us, what works for us, and bring it to this teaching or bring this teaching to it and really make sense of it for yourself. And my next slides will look totally different than the rest of this presentation. And as a brand designer that’s driving me crazy. So I just had to call it out. These are slides that I work with all the time, so they’re from a different look and feel and I really didn’t have the bandwidth to redesign all of them. So anyway, I’m going to move quickly through this Next slide is my version of the Science of Mind teaching symbol. And now it’s a simplified version, but you see the circle. And if you were here last week or listened to John last week, you’ll remember the circle. Look at the one on the left. It’s a simplified version of the science of mind symbol and the circle represents all there is. And you see how it has the dotted lines, there’s the threefold nature.
(10:33):
All there is, it’s a little difficult to represent all there is in a little circle. So we’re kind of limited by its symbol, but we get the idea it’s a model. This all there is has these three aspects to it. And what’s true about all there is the macrocosm as the word they use is also true about the microcosm, which means you and me, the individual. So what’s true about God or the universe is also true about us. And this is a symbol that shows how things get to be the way they are, how it works. So in the science of Mind textbook, you would see lots of words in each of these sections. And I just chose some words that are helpful and meaningful to me. So if you think of it as the top part, being conscious mind, the middle being subconscious and the bottom being the conditions and the meaning.
(11:27):
Or you can think of it as spirit, soul and body. Or you can think of it as cause the law and effect. And if you look on the right hand side, you see how it works. Thoughts come into conscious mind, they move through the law that’s always operating. The law says yes. And then we have an experience in the world of form that matches what we put in through thoughts. And there’s an arrow of going down the left and coming up the right. That’s the involution, which is meaning spirit involving itself in us. And it comes into form and then it goes back into spirit because we evolve and become more of ourselves and we become more of spirit. So spirit becomes more of itself through us. This is exciting. So I aggregated some other concepts and I want to be clear. The next slide is not science of mind symbol, it is their symbol, but I have modified it.
(12:28):
So I find this very helpful. I’ve done work with limiting beliefs, done some spiritual psychology work, some hypnotherapy work, breath work, trance work, all the things because that’s where my growth was, that’s what my path was for healing. And just like John found the way to bring the archetypes, I find it really useful to work in the subconscious realm to look at what’s happening in our subconscious. In traditional science of mind, you wouldn’t need to go there. You just understand that there’s a limiting belief and you affirm the desired outcome. But for some of us who are having these limiting beliefs that are a little bit more niggly, I think sometimes whether there’s trauma or some other kind of body memory experience that it can be helpful to use sister teachings or compatible teachings that support us to shift. So in my diagram here, I’ve shown that in that subjective realm, in the subconscious realm, this is where we hold the false beliefs.
(13:33):
And in the middle one you see when the thoughts come in, they go through the false beliefs. And since the form is a match for those false beliefs, now it’s like it’s filtering through the creation. We’re now validating those false beliefs because we’re seeing in our experience the very thing that we have a limiting belief about. And now we get caught in this little pattern. Well, here it is again. Here it is again. Here it is again. And now this is especially not part of science of mind. I’ve added these little silhouettes there and I should have mentioned you all have these at your seats. I’m sorry, I neglected to mention that the silhouettes there, I have them holding the false beliefs. These are the little personality parts. These are the ways we have our coping strategies, our beliefs, the personality traits, the way we become, we hold those beliefs. And now when thoughts come through and out picture as a match, it validates our beliefs and our personalities, our behaviors, our coping strategies. So we actually think we’re right for the way we’re being. We actually believe the experience that we’re having is justified. So
(14:53):
This is second cause first cause was the first slide, right? It comes through consciousness, it moves through the subjective room where the law is saying yes and it out pictures in form. Well here, when we have these limiting beliefs and personality traits and all these other ways of being, we filter that creation and we end up with second cause. It’s not necessarily what we had wanted. And again, in my healing journey, I have found this very helpful to work with the subconscious. And I think Michael Beckwith said, we’re either pushed by pain or pulled by inspiration or he said something like that. And either way, whether we’re pushed by pain or pulled by inspiration, these foundational principles are transformative. But when we remain open, when we maintain a beginner’s mind, even when we’ve been in this work for 15 or 20 years, I’m still learning. When we keep a beginner’s mind, it allows us to keep deepening.
(16:00):
The thinker is transformed. And with one of my prayer partners this week in our conversation, I was sharing an idea from Eric Butterworth and it’s an idea that we’ve discussed before. It relates to a challenge that they have with work. And like many of us, we sometimes have that recurring thing that’s happening. And this idea from Eric Butterworth is just, if you’re struggling, I’m totally paraphrasing. This is just something that stayed with me from I think was the spiritual economics. If you’re struggling at work, your only real job is to bring your highest self, bring your highest consciousness to the job. How am I being? Am I coming in there defensive and angry and feeling like something’s wrong or am I open? Am I believing and trusting the universe is for me?
(17:01):
And when I first heard this, it probably meant something like, don’t justify taking postage stamps because you think they’re not paying you enough. And now I can say that it means I trust that if something’s not going well here, if I bring my highest self, if I stay open, and if I am in high consciousness, the workplace will either shift to rise up to match me, or I will be lifted out, somehow attracted or drawn to a different position that will be a better match. I can trust that I don’t need to be gripping and defensive in fighting my way through.
(17:48):
So my prayer partner didn’t say, yeah, I already know that you told me that before I’ve heard it. They said, oh, if you’ve shared that, I never heard it that way before. There was a shift. That’s that beginner’s mind, being willing, being willing to learn something new. And this is the beauty, right? As we grow spiritually, as we deepen in consciousness, we understand things newly. When we know that we’re seeing life through the filter of our beliefs, through our family constructs, our cultural constructs, our biases. Once we know that we have the ability to shift and we can be available for a different experience, we’re not bound by the past. That’s the great news. And John mentioned this last week, we can redress the past right now. We can change our outcome. Now the subjective mind, the subconscious mind does not know time. And it’s what Neville Goddard refers to as a revision. But I’m not going to go there. That’s a tangent. I could go on and on. I love this stuff. So the conditions of our lives are not static. We’re never stuck contrary to how it feels sometimes, right? There’s always hope. You’ve heard the saying, wherever you go in life, there you are. So I keep bumping up against my stuff, right? I keep validating my beliefs, my personality, the things I’m doing, proving myself, right? Gathering evidence, however you want to think of it.
(19:31):
And another way I think of this teaching is somewhere along the way in our life, something happened. We came to believe certain things about ourself or the world. We believe these things are true. So we develop these coping strategies, these personality traits, these ways of being. We’re navigating life because of what we think is true. We’re using these personality styles and strategies we’re seeing through the filter of that belief. So everything we see validates it. And then oftentimes we’re just in this loop. We’re just looping. We keep having the same experience, right? What I’m talking about here is the interplay between personality and the law. The law is always operating, berating our personality, the sum of our beliefs, attitudes, behaviors. It shapes our experience. And it’s so much easier to do spiritual work in a bubble all by yourself. I kind of tried for a while, but what’s the point?
(20:38):
What’s the point? The real work is when we come into our relationships, back to our family, back to our work, back to our neighbors, this is where we bump up against our personality and their personality where we get to do our work. So the next handout and the next slide shows the four aspects of consciousness. And this is just an overview of what you have in front of you. And I’m going to go through the sections here. We continuously have to look at our beliefs, assumptions and behaviors. And this model, the four aspects of consciousness is extremely helpful for developing witness consciousness, becoming more aware of how we’re being. And my understanding was years ago that Michael Beckwith downloaded this concept of these four aspects at the time he called them kingdoms of consciousness and then somewhere along the line he changed them to stages of consciousness. I think it sounded less old school Christian language or something. And now CSL has incorporated this teaching into a lot of their new curriculum and they refer to it as the four aspects of consciousness. So you see there’s two me by me, through me and ASME on the four sections. And I just want to say before I get into the details that as me, the divinity consciousness is the truth of who we are. That’s the real truth of who we are.
(22:16):
The wholeness, the perfection, the abundance, all that God is we are. And that divine identity is who we are. So these other ways, to me, by me, through me, those are just ways of being that we develop in a response to being human. And this model is really helpful in letting us figure out where we are, how we’re being so that we can shift. It gives us more choice. I also want to say it’s not a linear process. We don’t go from to me to by me, through me. And now I’m evolved. We’re bouncing around. We might have moments of through me being deep in our spiritual practice and get triggered and go right back to victim. And that’s not to make us wrong. This is just a model to support us so that we can be more aware and have greater choice of how we’re being, right? So if we look at the victim slide here, to me now, this is unhealthy ego and I have a whole nother model that works with this. But I’m not going to go there today, the victim triangle. But life is happening to me. We’re powerless, blaming, complaining, somebody’s fault. Somebody needs to fix it. And the opportunity there is to give up blame and shame and to begin to take responsibility. We take responsibility. This is when we move into manifester
(23:43):
In manifester. If you move to the next slide, that would be great. We move to healthier ego, we become a creator. I make life happen, right? So I go from life is happening to me to I make life happen. I create my experience, I created the problem, I can solve it. But even this comes with its own set of challenges. This is where we can get on the treadmill of creating and thinking we’re the one doing it. It’s where frenzy and burnout occurs. Or we can slip back into victim and think what is happening here? And the opportunity here is to give up control and surrender. And that’s when we move into through me. And in manifesting, we’re directing spirit to have our way in co-creator channel, we open to receive and allow spirit to have its way. So we’re not going to stop having personality. We don’t even want to stop having personality. We just don’t want to be run by our personality. We open to receive, align with spirit with first cause the thing itself, all the words you could call it. And we can create based on divine guidance. I like to imagine coming from through me receiving guidance and moving back to manifesto where I’m taking my action from guidance back to guidance, back to manifesto. So there’s this flow and balance between my creating and my guidance rather than me being on the, I’m doing it this way and it’s going to be right.
(25:34):
So again, our opportunity here is just to give up ego and separation and experience our oneness. And that is the divine identity slide. There’s really nothing else to accomplish in divine identity. We’re experiencing our divine identity. Oh, as me, right? Sorry, I saw too many up there. So divine identity, we are knowing our oneness. We’re open and in presence that we don’t have problems because we know we trust life is working for us. And there are some people that are apparently walking the planet in this oneness consciousness all the time, awakened beings. We’ve got an ecker tole and a Byron Katie and others. I’m sure for me and for many of us, it’s more of a slower awakening and we have glimpses of this oneness experience and then we move back into some of these other ways of being. But having this awareness and using these tools, we have more space, we have more opportunity to make a of how we respond.
(26:46):
And for me, this model shows that our greatest power, our greatest creative power comes through the power of surrender. Letting go of thinking that I need to make it happen. And I want to give a little example, and I’ll try not to make this story too long. Back in 2019, I sold my house and some of you have probably heard it before, I’m sure. And I’d had some medical and health issues. So I was having a little bit of financial fear because I was spending a lot of money not working as much and so forth. And I sold my house and I ended up in a beautiful, beautiful place to live. And I could tell you a story about that too. I have lots of manifestation stories, but I was trying to figure out where I wanted to be. This fan is really bugging me. It’s blowing my hair in my mouth.
(27:44):
I was trying to figure out where I wanted to be. Did I really want to be in Chicago? I do. My kids are there. My mom was still only an hour away and I was taking care of her. What do I want to do? And I really wanted to be in Chicago, but I just, the winters, and I mean I know y’all can relate right now, right? The winters. And I was making up this story that there wasn’t really an easy way that I would be able to spend the winters somewhere warm. Like I was going to have to partner with a friend or I needed to find a significant other. Or I was outsourcing my power, outsourcing my good to someone else, thinking it was going to have to come from somewhere out here.
(28:34):
And I recognized this and I began to do some spiritual practice around it. I surrendered and I said, you know what? I’m letting that go. I’m trusting that something else is possible, something greater is possible. And around the same time, my daughter asked me if I would be willing to go to Atlanta, if they paid for my ticket, if I would fly to Atlanta to babysit for my granddaughter while they went to a wedding because they were going to go somewhere else and fly there before they came home. And I was like, that’d be great. I’ve got cousins in Atlanta that I’ve been talking about visiting for years. I’ll go visit them for a couple of days and then I’ll babysit for Olivia. So my cousin picks me up from the airport, turns out that my other cousin forgot that I was coming.
(29:26):
That’s convenient, I’m just kidding. It actually worked out very well because I was closer with her than I was with my cousin who was there, the one who picked me up. And it gave me an opportunity to spend the time with her and to deepen that relationship and to bond with her. And I had dinner with her daughter and her family and it was just a really lovely visit. And then a couple months later she had surgery. It was a planned surgery and there were complications and it didn’t go well. And her daughter, I was checking with her daughter, how is it going? How’s she doing? And she said, is there any chance you’re coming back soon? And I said, well, I’m not planning on it, but I will if you want me to. And she said, please. And I was surprised, but I went and I spent a week there and she was in the hospital and she ended up having to be taken off life support and it was very challenging.
(30:24):
But in the process I became really connected with her daughter. My cousin was like 10 years older than me and her daughter’s like 10 years younger than I am. So I became connected to her and a few months later, as it turns out, there was another, a funeral in this area. And Kim, the daughter and her dad brother came to Chicago for this funeral. And then she stayed and visited for a few days and she’s asking me about my place and the move and what do I want. And I shared with her what I shared in the beginning, I love Chicago, but I just don’t know if I want to be here in the winter anymore. And she said, well, why don’t you just start coming to the beach house in January? And I’ve been going for the last four years. And I’m telling you, I could have never in my wildest imagination constructed that series of events to go to Atlanta to have the other cousin forget I was coming to spend the time with her then to have her fall ill and all of it, all of it.
(31:32):
And that place in Florida is not anything that was on my bucket list of places to go. But it is amazing. I have mystical experiences when I’m there. So I just wanted to demonstrate how it works when we surrender, when we let go of trying to make it happen. Now the next slide is the other side of the sheet. And it just quickly we’ll share the way this is shown here. It goes from to me up to by me. And this is demonstrating that we move from victim into manifesto. We are moving from unhealthy ego to healthier ego. So this is a very important part of our development. I don’t want to knock manifestor consciousness. It’s important we develop our psychological health. And then when we drop down into through me consciousness, we are deepening spiritually. And as we deepen spiritually, we remember our oneness and we awaken to the truth of who we are.
(32:38):
A challenge in spiritual teaching is that people try to go from victim over to through me and they’re spiritually bypassing. They haven’t done the psychological work, they haven’t become healthy in ego before they deepen. So this is just a representation of that. And on that page, there is a little worksheet there for you where you can write your challenge, a challenge in the space and then go through the boxes. How would I solve this from, to me, consciousness, how would I solve it from by me, through me, from asme? And it’s a really great exercise in developing witness consciousness, in becoming aware of how we’re being. And it’s important to acknowledge that whether we’re creating from our messy victim consciousness or if we’re directing and commanding and imagining to create or if we’re receiving guidance and inflow and allowing, in any case, our consciousness creates. This is the thing itself and how it works. The inherent nature, the power is always seeking to express itself through us.
(34:04):
So our work is to become clear channels. Would you skip to the slide that says witness consciousness at the top? So developing witness consciousness, I’ve given you an example of that. How am I being noticing? Is my energy going up or down? Am I closed and contracted? There are many practices noticing what the body is doing, the emotions, the thoughts. Meditation supports being in presence rather than being in a triggered reaction, raising our vibration, using intentional breath with all the things we have going on around us, all the stuff being bombarded, we’re being bombarded with all of these practices support us to stay in presence rather than being in our triggered, disconnected state. And part of my current practice is to balance my spiritual experience and my human experience. And the breath really cultivates both. The breath is our connection to spirit and it also soothes the body, the nervous system. It calms its somatic therapy for releasing trauma. Amy spoke about it. Seeing the breath is our journey back to spirit. And then when we exhale, we’re reconnecting to the world. This is a beautiful way to think of our breathing, connecting to spirit and reconnecting to the world. And I just want to invite this idea of affirmative prayer. It’s a sort of underutilized service that we offer here. We have amazing practitioners who offer prayer online in the room, you can write in prayer requests. You can call me for a prayer if you want to. It is a powerful, powerful practice.
(36:04):
Earnest Holmes was a mystic. Communing with the divine is the primary practice. If there’s nothing else you do, I would start there. We open ourselves as channels for guidance. The power is in surrendering, letting go of gripping and experiencing the peace that comes when we trust life, when we trust spirit, when we trust our guidance. So join the breath workshop next week. Take Amy’s class, change your thinking, change your life, stay for prayer, ask for prayer support online. Send in a prayer request. Use these resources to support yourself. And I’m going to close and I invite you to turn within whether you want your eyes open, your eyes closed, it’s up to you, whatever works best for you. And I invite you to take a breath, nice deep breath, exhaling, feeling your body, releasing some tension, another breath in and exhaling and releasing the tension and breathing at your own pace. I invite you on the next breath to direct your attention into the body. Notice any places or spaces that want attention, no stories, just noticing, seeing if there’s anything there, any insight. And on the next breath, directing the attention toward the emotional state.
(38:26):
No stories, just noticing what are the emotions moving through you and is there anything there for you? Any insight. And on the next breath, just noticing what the mind is doing, noticing the thoughts and intentionally choosing to let the thoughts go. Just letting them be what they are. So just keeping your breath at your own natural pace that’s comfortable for you. Opening to spirit, opening to the God of your being. Opening to the infinite, the divine source of all it is here in this inner sanctuary that we experience, the unformed realm where we connect with spirit as unlimited potential, pure potential, creativity, harmony, peace, order, all that God is right here within me, right here within each of us. And from that place, I just affirm that we are each deepening in knowing ourselves as this, knowing ourselves as pure potential, knowing ourselves as harmony, as peace, as love, as the high vibration. Saying yes to the high idea of who we are here to be. Letting go of that which is gripping or tightening or causing us to contract and expanding into the high vibration of spirit. Expanding as us, creating through us, feeling the goodness in our lives, appreciating all that we have.
(40:33):
I know there is a deepening. I know there is an expansion. I know there is good unfolding for each of us. And I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful for the power of this teaching. So grateful for each one’s, yes to their own growth. I release it into the law knowing it is so I call it good. And so it is.
Paige Kizer (41:04):
Thank you, Linda.