This video features the Sunday “talk” and Practitioner Graduation only. Watch the full service on our Facebook page.
DESCRIPTION
Join us this Sunday as we explore what spiritual bypass is and how it can hinder true healing and growth. As we face and integrate the shadows in our lives, we begin to integrate our whole selves, fostering genuine transformation and resilience, and freeing our light to shine.
Includes Practitioner Graduation!
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev Aimee Daniels (00:00):
You sing that song better than Miley Cyrus. And I can say that I listened to it this morning when I was driving here for a little inspiration. Well, good morning. Welcome everyone, and especially welcome to the families of our graduates. Yay. It’s a very exciting day here and the friends, and I’m going to give a shorter than usual talk, and then I’ll invite Reverend Linda up here to do the graduation. And of course, we had sort of a deep topic for graduation Sunday, this idea of spiritual bypass. So I’m going to try to weave a little shadow and a little light here both this morning.
(00:44):
And Ben, can you move advance my slide? We are technologically advanced this morning too. We’re zooming in a couple of our graduates, so you’re going to see them pop up on the screen in a little while. So have you ever had a period of time when you’re walking through your life and you think everything’s going pretty well? And then it’s like you fall in a hole and you can’t get out of it? I know the picture’s a little fuzzy, but you sometimes felt like that in your life, and these times you feel like you got to climb out of there. But sometimes you feel like I don’t even know what to do. And that’s the journey of life. And that’s why we’re on a spiritual journey. And as I was thinking about this, I was thinking about one of my times I fell in the hole, and I’ve talked about this before.
(01:30):
I had been dating someone and we were pretty serious. And then he had some things happen in his life and he had to go find himself and he ghosted me. And it was really painful, but something in me knew that I just needed to sit with it. I couldn’t put a bandaid on it. I couldn’t pretend I was fine. I couldn’t use some spiritual principle to explain it away. I had to sit with it. And I went to an agape silent retreat. And since I didn’t know anyone, it wasn’t hard for me to be quiet for four days. I didn’t know a soul, but I had to sit with it. I knew something was supposed to come out of that difficult time for me that hadn’t emerged before. And it caused me to examine my life. It caused me to examine some of my patterns.
(02:25):
And if I was really honest with myself, I knew that he was not in a solid place early in our dating relationship. We had broken up and gotten back together, but I was so mesmerized by this person who was so handsome and romantic and all these other things. I feel silly saying that, but it ended up being, for me, it got me to take a step back and understand what had happened in life a little bit differently, like the impact of my parents’ marriage, just my own tendency like, oh, I can make everyone better. And so then I’d pick people who weren’t so happy, who wanted to be better, but then it didn’t work out. And if I had spiritually bypassed and just said, oh, everything happens for a reason, I wouldn’t have had that insight and I wouldn’t be in the relationship that I’m in now.
(03:25):
And so that’s what we’re going to talk about, spiritual bypassing. This is actually a really cool book. It is the CSL book of also and Spiritual Bypasses When we take a practice or a belief to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds and developmental needs. And this was a term that was coined in the 1980s by a psychologist. It’s actually a lot more common than we think it is because we don’t have a lot of tolerance for being uncomfortable either individually or as a culture. And so we do things to numb our pain. Some of ’em might involve substances or other things, food, but sometimes what we do is we slap a spiritual bandaid on and say, it’s all good. Everything’s happening for a reason.
(04:22):
All of that can also be a form of spiritual bypass. So we have to, and this is tricky, right, because we’re spiritual beings having a human experience, so we want to stay in our spiritual thinking and our spiritual consciousness, but we can’t totally ignore what’s happening in ourselves or in the world. And so we’re looking to find a balance in that. So how do we know when we’re spiritual bypassing? These are what Robert Masters says are the signs of it, exaggerated, detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive. I think I’ve been really pretty guilty of that one. Anger phobia. So afraid of being angry blind or overly tolerant, compassion weak or two porous boundaries. I know this is one of the things I really had to look at in my life because my family doesn’t have boundaries. I didn’t honestly even know what they were. I mean, I didn’t know what they were. It’s kind of embarrassing to say that, but I’m not going to read all of them. But the bottom one is my favorite delusions of having arrived at a higher level of spiritual being.
(05:39):
Have you ever been that person or met that person, right? I’m above this. So this is just to get us to be honest with ourselves. Any of this, we want to hold in compassion. If we have a tendency toward any of this, you just hold it in a compassionate place for, and you can make a different choice. And that’s the important thing. We can always make a different choice. He also says true spirituality is not a high rush or an altered state. I really like that. I think we can believe that that’s what true spirituality is. You have one moment of really expanded awareness and then it doesn’t happen again for a while. And you can start to think like, oh, what am I doing wrong? But it’s really, it’s being in the practice every day. That is really the measure of our spirituality. And also this quote touches on something that I really like.
(06:35):
We need some heat to wake us up. Sometimes. It’s the things that go wrong that wake us up. It’s the things that go wrong that make us more compassionate. Losing someone we love losing a job. It’s like when something happens in your own experience, then you can have more compassion when you see it happen to someone else, you start to realize we’re all just on this same journey together. The higher power has a sense of humor. Some of the stuff that happens, you’re like, really? That was supposed to happen to me. But true spirituality is taking these experiences and moving through them and making something of them.
(07:21):
And so what’s your shadow? What’s the thing you don’t want to look at? Donna, read to us from Debbie Ford. Our shadow’s really the things that we need to shine some light on. I needed to shine some light on the impact of my parents’ marriages, on marriage, on myself, Juan. They were just married to each other and I needed to look at how that impacted me. I needed to shine some light on that. But there’s other things that come up in our lives that we just need to shine up some light on and not be afraid to take a look at ’em, right? I think sometimes our fear can convince us that it’s just too painful to do it, but once you start to shine a little light on it, it gets easier. And it’s by embracing all of us that we get our freedom to choose.
(08:15):
So every part of ourselves, what we might deem good, we might deem bad. Every part of us being embraced is what’s really going to lead to our integration. And that feels hard sometimes, doesn’t it? Right? We all have things where we just wish we were better or different, but we have to have grace for ourselves. And sometimes our shadow is the opposite of the gift we offer to the world. I can be too pleasing to other people. That’s actually served me very well in my life. I think being a pleaser avoider, I can get along with anybody. But the downside of that is sometimes I’m not acting from an authentic place trying to please someone else, or I’m trying to avoid a conversation that I really don’t want to have because afraid, what is the reaction going to be? So the gift and the shadow kind of go together, but we can make a different choice. So I just invite you to ask yourself, what are you avoiding looking at in your life right now? It could be a good thing too. Maybe you really love to be creative and you’re not making any space for it, just because everything else in life seems so important. It doesn’t have to be something that we might call negative. It could just be the thing. We’re not allowing the light to shine in on something that you love.
(09:50):
So spiritually. The truth is, as Ernest Holmes said, each person is a center of self-conscious light. God is the life principle animating us. While this life principle is forever hidden from our objective view, we are continuously conscious of its existence in us and animating all of nature. And I love this last line. The highest perception of humankind has been our sense of this inner oneness with the spirit. So that’s our work. When we feel the shadows lurking, or has anyone ever had this experience where you just start to feel icky and you don’t know why? You’re like a wave comes over you? Does anyone besides me have this? Am I crazy? I probably am, but we all have these things that come up and sometimes we’re not even sure what they’re about when they happen. But what I know is if we turn within and we do our work, if we pray, if we work with a practitioner, if we take whatever’s going on into our awareness and say, help me understand this.
(11:02):
What’s happening right now? Why do I feel this way? Journaling, contemplation, all the things we do. I like to just ask my spirit to help. I’ve shared, I’m working through a situation with one of my family members, and I would like to say I have no shadow left on that one, but I would be lying. And one of my friends is like, Ooh, I was spraying with one of my friends. Ooh, there’s a little happen in there. I’m like, okay. And so when I pray, I just ask. If I’m just praying in my own head, I just say, just help me with this. Just I want to let go whatever it is, and I am holding onto right now, if I do that, then I’m really free to be in relationship. And then I’m recognizing my oneness with this person. And we also have the shadow as a cultural issue, the things that we don’t want to talk about as a culture.
(12:03):
And we’re really seeing that right now. We we’re really seeing the shadow in what’s going on in the political environment. And I didn’t even want to list ’em because I’m kind of like, but I think our role is to say, what is my role in whatever’s happening? For me, it’s to be open, to listen, to be curious, to be available. One of John’s classmates called me the other day and she happens to live in California. I taught a class that she was in, and she was asked to work on something for restorative justice. And just in case you’re not really familiar with what’s happening, there’s actually something like this happening here, trying. There were a lot of people who, I think this is the main gist, you can correct me, but who were, they basically had their homes taken from them in the, I think it was in the fifties or sixties.
(13:02):
And there’s a project here in Chicago right now to help do something about that. Well, there’s something similar going on in California where she lives. And she said, I was approached because I’m part of the church, and they thought maybe the churches could help find the people who were impacted. And she’s like, we don’t even have records. And she’s like, I just really don’t know what to do. And I said, well, one thing I know about you is you have an amazing consciousness, and that’s what you’re bringing. You might not have the answer or how to do it, but you’re bringing your consciousness and maybe you could help ’em get their stories out there about what happened if you can find the people or create something different for the future. But I really honor that. And she texted me the next day and she’s like, okay, I figured it out. I know what I’m going to do now. But that’s a shadow. And for all of us, we can be afraid to step into the shadow. But what I know is she’s going to do amazing work. She’s an amazing human, and that’s what we all need to do. It’s like what’s the consciousness we need to bring right now? I’m trying really hard to just stay open. And I say it this way, not be a hater.
(14:16):
I loved what Reverend Linda did with us where the one hand is like, this is not okay with me. Basically, on the other hand is, but I’m open and that’s the space I’m trying to hold. When I see something that I struggle with, I’m especially struggling with some of the stuff around women just to be real right now. I just have to remember, I have to hold the consciousness of a different possibility. I need to be open and I need to say not okay with me. And this can be challenging spiritually because we want to be for things and not against them. And right now, I think that’s a difficult space to hold. And that’s why it’s super important that we do our work, that we do our prayer work, that we make sure we’re coming from a good place within ourselves and that we’re not othering. It’s so easy to other right now.
(15:18):
So Roger Teal tells a story. He was a very famous minister in CSL. He was part of, he ran Mile High Church for a long time and he was part of the National New Thought Alliance. And he tells a story about going to a conference. And in the hallway there was a Jewish rabbi and a Palestinian woman, and they basically got in a fight in the hallway. And this was 30 years ago. I mean, this was not recent. This was like 30 years ago. And everybody witnessed it and people were kind of freaking out. And they went into the session and they said, well, this is the kind of stuff we’re here to do. We’re going to let them speak within the session. And he said, I want everyone else to be neutral. I want everyone else to just hold the space for the communication, not take a side, just take a spiritual space.
(16:17):
And one of the facilitators, and it was tough, but in the middle of it, one of the facilitators looked at both of the people and said, what do you hope to accomplish for you and your family? What do you really want for them? And they both shared, and it was the same thing. And by the end of the day, this makes me emotional, say, by the end of the day, they hugged, they hung out for the rest of the conference, and they’re still friends because they came to understand on a different level. There’s no other. We all want the same things. And that’s what we’re called to spiritually, to understand our oneness, to understand our connection to each other and to understand our interconnection, how we impact each other, and to not create them and us, which that’s also a lot of work right now, isn’t it? So stay open. We want to stay open because when we open our consciousness and we invite the light into our consciousness, then we create the space for things to shift.
(17:32):
Then you can go to my last slide. So this light of spiritual awareness is the beacon that guides us through the storms of a life, and it illuminates our path with wisdom and love. And that’s really what we’re calling in. We’re calling in our own illumination because when we invite this light into ourselves, then we share that with the people around us, and we really create the space for that light to come in for that light to happen. And so we’re going to segue into graduation now, but we have five people who are part of our community who have been working to cultivate this light within themselves for several years now. And I would like to invite Linda up to move into this part. Oh, we got to change laptops. Sorry. See, we’re so technical now.
Rev Linda Jackson (19:00):
I’m going to invite our graduates up… I’m going to invite our graduates to join us up here. So we have Jason La Reviere, Paul McHugh, and Mena Swanson Eastwood in the room.
(19:15):
And we have Shannon Hoffman and AJ Oetman online. And Jonathan Hoffman is one of our licensed practitioners, and he’s joining us online for this celebration as well as some of our other practitioners in the room.
(19:32):
So today we are recognizing our five new practitioners. And I’m just really grateful personally to have been one of your teachers. You have had many teachers, but you have each touched my heart and my life, and I know that you already have, and you will continue to touch the hearts and the lives of many others. The world is really better to have you and your consciousness in it. That’s what we do, we lift consciousness. And this supports everyone to have a different experience.
(20:16):
So beyond the licensing and the title, being a practitioner is a commitment to a way of living, to a way of being. And for many of us, we get into this teaching and our life is so transformed that we just want to go deeper. We want to study more, and then we want to share that. We want to help other people understand how to do that. And it’s a calling. It’s a calling. We’re called to do this work. We’re called to deepen in our own consciousness and lift ourselves from our shadow into the light.
(20:55):
And it doesn’t mean we don’t always have our shadow because it just comes back when it needs to remind us of something. But we have the ability to stay there less time and lift ourselves into the high consciousness, into the light. And that’s what these folks have studied and trained for. So for those who don’t know, being a practitioner requires a minimum of four years of study. They develop that consciousness of wholeness, love, peace. They recognize the creative power within, call it God within, call it love, whatever word works for you. They do their own personal work, their own spiritual work.
(21:40):
And through affirmative prayer and other spiritual tools, they clear their limiting beliefs and behaviors. And through their expanded consciousness, then they can hold that space for you. As our founder, Ernest Holmes says, the founder of Science of Mind. He says, change your thinking, change your life.
(22:01):
So we’re going to invite each of them to share in a few moments their personal intention for the vision of their life as a practitioner. And I would like to invite any other practitioners and ministers in the room to stand and that let other people see how many of us there are and to hold space for this. And I apologize if your view is blocked. We just want to create this sort of sacred experience. And Jonathan is also joining online. So the invitation is for us to have our hearts open in this moment as they share, connect with the love and the commitment that they are bringing and the impact they’re making. And as they each say their intention, they’re going to light a candle. And I would love for the practitioners and the ministers as they complete their intention to just affirm it by saying, and so it is.
(23:04):
Alright. So why don’t we start with our online folks? AJ, would you begin? Please. And when you light your candle, I will light one in the room to represent you.
AJ Oetman (23:16):
Sure. My intention as a practitioner is to allow spirit’s guidance in storytelling and teaching to empower, inspire, and reveal the oneness behind every eye. In so doing, spreading the foundational truths of centers for spiritual living.
Rev Linda Jackson (23:38):
And so it is Shannon,
Shannon Hoffman (23:47):
My intention as a practitioner is to live a heart-centered life. To be a light loving and accepting presence in the world and to help people find their connection with themselves, their divine, and the peace that those relationships bring.
Rev Linda Jackson (24:03):
And so it is. Jason.
Jason LaRiviere (24:06):
Oh geez. There we go. My intention is this, to hold the space so that people feel empowered to be the unique expression of divine.
Mena Swanson Eastwood (24:54):
Can you hear me okay? Okay, good. My intention, my mission to be a spiritual practitioner is to bring together, I’m a healer and to bring together the idea of oneness and universal laws. The idea of raising our vibration and healing and healing ourselves, healing others, healing the planet, and healing everything on this planet, all the animals, all the creatures. Just bringing a healing and a peaceful sense through teaching and working with that. We do this work that we do to be able to do that. And I know it’s just a start. There’s a lot to do on this planet, but I want to do that.
Jason LaRiviere (25:49):
And so it is.
(26:11):
Inaudible.
Paul McHugh (26:11):
I guess I needed more Boy Scout training. My intention is to hold consciousness for myself and others and advance love and understanding on the planet, and particularly to those for whom those ideas are a little bit foreign. I may have the opportunity to work with drug and alcohol treatment patients with my nephew center. And you can imagine people who are in drug and alcohol treatment, they have not had a lot of examples of love and peace and joy, much less oneness in their life. So that’s my highest vision of how I can contribute to people.
Jason LaRiviere (26:59):
And so it is.
Rev Linda Jackson (27:01):
Alright, I’m going to invite everyone Now, if you’d like to stand, you can stay seated, but we’re just going to raise our hands. And I just want to acknowledge all nine in the room we see you. Please repeat after me. We see you.
Audience (27:16):
We see you.
Rev Linda Jackson (27:16):
We see the light that you are.
Audience (27:20):
We see the light that you are.
Rev Linda Jackson (27:21):
We thank you for your commitment to high consciousness.
Audience (27:26):
We thank you for your commitment to high consciousness.
Rev Linda Jackson (27:30):
We know the world is better because of you. We
Audience (27:34):
We know the world is better because of you.
Rev Linda Jackson (27:38):
Thank you. Go forward in love and joy.
Audience (27:42):
Thank you. Go forward in love and joy.
Rev Linda Jackson (27:46):
And I’m just going to close this out with a prayer. Right here, right now. I know there is only one thing happening. It is the life of God expressing itself as in through every one of us. We are individual expressions of the divine. We are love, we are peace, we are wholeness, we are freedom. And as we each say yes to being this, to bringing this forward, our lives are transformed and the lives of those around us are transformed. And I am so grateful for all that has been shared, these intentions, these visions. I’m so grateful for the good that is moving through each of these beautiful practitioners. So grateful for the good that is moving through this community and out into the world. I just bless it all. I let it be so, and together we say, and so it is. You can go ahead and be seated.