The Soil From Which All Things Grow – Rev. Darrell Jones
This video features the Sunday “talk” only. Watch the full service on our Facebook page.
DESCRIPTION
The Law, our mind…consciousness is the soil from which all things grow. Consciousness is SO amazing it can grow anything from suffering to joy, sufficiency to lack, love to hate and beyond. As we continue to develop to flow with change, we must honor the intentions, beliefs and desires we are consciously and many times unconsciously planting into the soil of our minds and the law. This Sunday, gain greater insight into the power of your own mind and the intentions you set.
SUMMARY
TRANSCRIPTION
Rev. Darrell Jones (00:00):
Good day everybody. I have to give a big note of praise and high five and shout outs to Dom, our tech person, if you do not know the long flowing locks of Dom behind the wall, there he is. The man along with Ben who is not here today. Dom’s doing this by himself today, who run our camera and our audio and our live stream. 23 years ago when I first came into the Chicago Center for Spiritual Living, I was Dom. I was working sound. I was trying to figure out how to get microphones plugged in and someone would hand you a wireless microphone 45 minutes before service started and go, Hey, can we use this today? And you figured it out. So I just want to thank you, Dom. Let’s give him a round of applause.
(01:02):
So not only am I using a Lavalier wireless mic around my head, we have this handheld and it just makes life easier. There used to be lots of cables around here and it always felt like you were going to potentially fall and ship a tooth. So I’m grateful to have all of my teeth and I want to keep it that way. So thank you, Dom for supporting that. I missed you all last month. Life has been very full and rich for me. As Reverend Amy mentioned, I’m now part of the Leadership Council for the larger organization that is on my plate. Thank you. That is on my plate with so many things. I was talking to someone the other day and I was like, you know what? Life kind of feels like the way I approach a buffet. I get two plates when you only need one.
(01:52):
So I’m trying to be mindful with my consumption in life, but I’m here today and I’m so excited to further this conversation on flowing with change. How’s everyone flowing with the change in their life right now? Good, good. Whether it’s good or you may judge it as bad, we are all flowing with change. It’s just what is the experience of our flow? Do we like it or do we not like it? Are we running from it or are we leaning into it? I want to go back to the Change the World song in lyrics. I was just reflecting on that in meditation. Thank you for taking us into the Stillness, hunter. If I could change the world, I could be the sunlight in your universe and then you’d know that my love was something good. I want to challenge you today. If you hear nothing else from all the other things, the next time you hear that song or just sing it inside your own head, shift the tone of those lyrics instead of, if I could change the world, I could be the sunlight in your universe.
(03:14):
You are the sunlight in the universe and there’s no question about your love being good. It is, period. The challenge that we have is that oftentimes we’re going to get into the talk today about our intentions. Our intentions I believe are always good, and this is one of the things way back when I first came into this teachings where people start throwing bombs like, well, how can you say Hitler’s intentions were good? We can’t get into splitting hairs. But with that, but the bottom line is, is that everyone is trying to impact their world and they’re experiencing it through their history, through their body, through the stories they tell, and depending upon the experience of the individual that somehow colors the way we see the world and what we think we need to do in the world.
(04:14):
But if nothing else, just remember your love is good. The work that we have to do is as we come together recognizing the impact of our intentions, and before we can really, really understand the impact of our intentions, we have to come back to the basics, which is the power of this teaching. That your consciousness is one of the most powerful things that you have, that you are, and to recognize what that soil is that you are constantly tilling every day, all day. Is it nutrient rich or is it depleted? So the monthly theme was or is flowing with change and in the face of life’s constant, this is what Reverend Amy came up with. In the face of life’s constant changes in the noise of the world, we can maintain our self-awareness through our spiritual practices such as meditation, sitting in silence and mindfulness.
(05:14):
By awakening from those thoughts that keep us distracted from our true essence, we can experience our divinity even in the constant flow of life’s comings and goings. The book of the month is Stillness Speaks. If you have ever read Eckhart, depending upon how you pronounce this last name, if you like the German pronunciation, if you like the American pronunciation, it’s T-O-L-L-E. If you don’t know the man, check out some of his books. I like to call him Eckhart Tole. You can call him tole, whatever you want to do. The bottom line is, is that this man sits in stillness and writes from stillness, hence his book Title Stillness Speaks, and this particular day I have been given chapter seven, which focuses on nature. I love nature. It has been even before I could articulate it in my early teens, nature has been one of the biggest classrooms for me.
(06:19):
From going to summer camp as a kid and experiencing stillness by Lake Michigan or at the top of a mountain from hiking or being completely depleted and exhausted from canoeing all day and just sitting at the turn of a river and not saying anything, but hearing everything, there’s something powerful about nature that I am going to invite you to embrace today. At the very beginning, the introduction of this chapter, he writes, we depend on nature not only for our physical survival, we also need nature to show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds. We get lost in doing thinking, remembering, anticipating lost in a maze of complexity, in a world of problems. We have forgotten what rocks, plants, and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be, to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is here and now. So the title is The Soil From which All Things Grow and the Focus that initially this week, the invitation was to explore the power of our intentions, which we’re still going to tap into, but I felt called to draw us back to the fundamentals of religious science and new thought teachings. We may have an amazing and amazing organic tomato seed.
(07:55):
You put it in some sand, some dirt in the health and the success of that seed growing has everything to do with the quality of the soil, even though it’s a pristine, maybe even heirloom seed, if you put it in soil that is depleted, bki, nothing or maybe one tomato, you may have the best intentions for yourself, for your relationships, for your health, for our country, for everything, a k, a, an intentional seed in your mind, but your intention has everything to do with the quality of the soil, your consciousness, what are you planting those seeds of intention in?
(08:57):
Can we have our first slide back to the reading? Wisdom comes with the ability to be still just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still looking and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found. That sounds lovely. Yes, and you vibe with that. It resonates. Here’s the thing that I think most of us probably pass over a little too quickly. Listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you right now. You’re trying to conceptualize what that means. What does that mean to me? What does that mean to my life? Why is he pausing on that? We’re trying to come up with a concept as opposed to recognizing stillness is where wisdom comes from and just allowing that to be. But no, we animals, we humans, these prefrontal cortexes, sorry, I’m doing a lot of work in the realm of EEGs and neurofeedback. So I’m thinking about this executive here that tries to govern and manage things all the time. The description that I wrote today was that the law of our mind consciousness is the soil from which all things grow. Consciousness is so amazing, so amazing, it can grow anything. So your consciousness is actually quite rich. It is not depleted.
(10:42):
It can grow joy and it can grow suffering. It’s pretty amazing. It can grow sufficiency or lack. It can grow love or hate and more as we continue to develop flow with change. To go back to our theme for the month, we must honor our intentions, beliefs, and desires. We are consciously and many times unconsciously planting into the soil of our minds in the law Today, my intention is to help you gain greater insight into the power of your mind and the intentions you set by tilling the soil from which all things grow, your thoughts, your beliefs, your habits, your consciousness.
(11:33):
One of the biggest gifts of the new thought teaching for me came from, I like to call him my spiritual grandfather, Reverend Michael Bernard Beckwith, and this idea of the four levels of consciousness. Everyone have an idea. For those who don’t know, oh, I’m sorry. Hi, people online and those in the room. Just a reminder, multitasking, that’s not stillness. So if you are trying to do something else and it’s okay, no shame in the game, but just recognize you’re not being still give yourself the gift of being present and available. So there’s these four levels of consciousness. The first level is the victim. This is where stuff happens to us. Now, don’t get me wrong, stuff does happen to us. It’s happening to us all the time. There’s no argument there, but do we feel as if we have no power, that there is only things happening to us and we’re just standing here?
(12:39):
We have no choice, we have no authority. That is the mindset or the level of consciousness that’s identified as the victim. Then there’s the manifester or the victorious one where we kind of step over that and go, no, this is my life. I’m going to run some stuff up in here. I’m going to manifest this, and we start co-creating, right? We have this sense of success and being victorious over the conditions that come into our life, and then some of us even get to step into the space of being a conduit. We’re a portal. We’re an opening where life happens, but we realize, oh, this is an opportunity for divine love to flow flowing with the change and then the highest level, I guess if you will, the big level, the one that we all aspire to is mastery, and that’s where not only are we just a channel like this conduit, this pipe that God flows through, but we are the conduit and the thing that flows. We are one with all that is, and that’s why in religious science we do this type of treatment or prayer where we first identify that there’s only one thing happening and it’s not happening outside of us. It is us. We are one with it.
(13:57):
The thing that determines our level of consciousness and how we’re relating to life, it’s the foundation. It’s our soil. It’s our consciousness. Our consciousness is never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever static. I don’t care how many times you’ve been around the sun, how many jobs you’ve had, how much education you’ve had, what schools you’ve gone to, what books you’ve read, who you’ve shaken hands with, what experiences you’ve had, you do not plateau. There is always an invitation for your consciousness to expand. It is always being stressed to expand. Our early life experiences and upbringing builds our consciousness, our formal and informal education, including the books that we’ve read, formal schooling and intellectual exposure impacts our consciousness. Spiritual and philosophical studies impact our consciousness. The spectrum of personal experiences from success to failure, traumatic to transformative events impacts our consciousness, personal beliefs, our personal religion, our personal spirituality, our emotional and psychological state of wellbeing impacts our consciousness, our biology, our neurology.
(15:37):
All of these things influence and impact our consciousness. No one else has had the experience of life that you have, so therefore your consciousness is unique. It will never be like anyone else’s. But here’s another tidbit that I want you to take away. Much to everyone’s chagrin, including my own, our consciousness has less to do with our intellect than we would like. We often think that we can think ourselves into a new state of being. I’ve been trying for 50 plus years and does our thinking impact our consciousness? Absolutely. But in our modern day of data and information and consumption of data and information, somehow we think if we just consume the right thing that our consciousness will shift to the place where everything’s going to be okay. Anyone tracking me on that?
(16:47):
Much to our chagrin, including myself, I got to keep bringing myself back into this. Our consciousness has less to do with our intellect than we would like. Our consciousness is always shifting day in and day out, primarily because of the coming and going of stress. The thing that new thought, spirituality and philosophies challenge us with though is that we ultimately play the most influential role in our own lives. You are the only person, the only thing that is always there what we think, what we believe about ourselves and others influences everything. So let’s come to our next slide. Wherever there is silence around you, listen to it. Allow nature to teach you stillness.
(17:49):
I should have just had this be the statement and on Wednesday night, we’re doing the Wednesday night gatherings and the third Wednesday I’ve been bringing the soul gym practices here and we did mantra where we just stated something over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to saturate the soil of our consciousness. We could have just spent the entire morning saying, whenever there is silence around me, I listen wherever there is silence and whenever there is silence around me, I listen to remind ourselves to slow down and pause. But why is it so important to do that? Why is it important to pay attention to the trees, to the morning doves that were sitting out on my back patio this morning to water, to the sunrise or to the sunset?
(18:48):
How often do you really experience stillness in your life? I mean, really experience stillness. Is the TV always on the radio always playing? Are you always looking at your phone playing a game or starting to scan and scroll through social media when there is nothing else immediately entertaining your attention? There’s nothing wrong with this. I do it too. Before server started, I was like, I got to tell everyone that I’m speaking today. I’m all up and down social media, but we must come to understand and remind ourselves over and over again that our consciousness is the soil from which our experience of life grows. And just like the soil from which most of our fruits and vegetables today grow from depleted soil, it doesn’t have the nutrition, our consciousness for calm, for peace, for perspective, it once did to grow amazing thoughts of possibility, of joy, of hope, of expectancy. Just as a farmer needs to rotate their crops or even sometimes stop and not grow anything at all, we need to embrace great stillness and stop so that we can create soil from which peace and the seeds of hope that we plant can grow, trust, joy, expectancy, passion, purpose, compassion, patience, gratitude as opposed to the easy weeds of anger, fear, animosity, judgment, mistrust, power, hoarding and manipulation.
(20:51):
Whenever I watch or listen to the news, it doesn’t matter the source, whether it is a conservative source or a progressive source, and I do my research, folks, I listen to both. I don’t like what I hear, but this is the truth. All of it is coming out of a collective consciousness of mistrust, shame, blame, and intolerance. I love NPR and I think I’m righteous, and I listen to this progressive station shame, mistrust, and intolerance way, way, way back at the beginning of the pandemic when everything shut down and everyone went completely batshit crazy, I was like, all right. I got to embrace the full spectrum and I downloaded a very, very conservative newspaper. Mistrust, shame, blame. Now, what people say is important, but forget about that for a minute. If the ground of our being is the soil in our consciousness from which things grow, even if we have good intentions for the world, if the soil is soil of mistrust, if the soil is soil of greed, if the soil is soil of shame and blame the spectrum on some level doesn’t matter.
(22:26):
This is the biggest thing that I feel like we are missing in our world today. We are quick to blame. We are quick to shame. We are quick to point fingers over there, but what are we doing that from? What is the literal soil that we are standing upon from which we are accusing whomever we are accusing regardless of what we are accusing them of? Are you tracking me? This isn’t necessarily the nicest thing to hear or feel. It’s humbling whenever there is silence around you, listen to it. See if you can slow or pause the need to fill that place in that space and let it do something to actually nurture and heal you, and please do not conflate being still with passivity. This isn’t an invitation to be a doormat, to not be caring. It isn’t an invitation to be insensitive. It is a challenge to welcome moments of silence and stillness into your life, and I just have to veer off, I just did a podcast about this the other week.
(23:41):
We often do conflate stillness with silence. To be still doesn’t mean the world has to shut down. It doesn’t mean that you are going to shut down. Your mind will never ever shut down. It doesn’t shut down when you go to sleep. I use this example all the time. You have crazy ass dreams, so don’t think because your mind doesn’t stop spinning that you cannot find stillness. This is why Eckhart Tolle invites us to take a look at nature. There are trees growing in the midst of the most active city on the planet. The train is constantly running. Someone is always mad at someone and honking a horn, and yet the tree is just like, what if we could be like the tree a little bit more? The next slide says, when you deeply accept this moment as it is, no matter what form it takes, you are still you are at peace.
(24:43):
I’m going to read that again. When you deeply accept this moment as it is, no matter what form it takes, you are still, you are at peace. One of the hardest concepts for most of us today in our modern world, powerful stillness arises out of the practice of acceptance, but how can I accept what’s going on? I don’t want to accept what’s going on. Then guess what? You’ll not know. Stillness, you will not know peace. It will be really hard to find a path to some inner wisdom. When you deeply accept this moment as it is, no matter what form it takes, you are still. This is why meditation is a powerful training ground for embracing the practice of acceptance.
(25:47):
When you accept yourself in your meditation practice, a stillness comes over you. There isn’t a pushing energy. There’s a softening that takes place, and in that softness, stillness, and oftentimes peace arises. How many of you would like more peace in your body, in your mind, in your emotional framework and context? There is a framework that I have been working in my coaching practice and in my personal ministry that has acceptance as a part of the process. However, one just doesn’t arrive at acceptance. Again, we think this is an intellectual process, okay, I’m going to accept things as they are. You can say that over and over and over again. There is a process for you to get there. Can you pull up that next slide, Dom? Now, this isn’t a perfect framework, but here we first have to have a state of awareness, and it’s from that awareness that we move into some level of understanding we like life or we don’t like life. Then once we understand that, we can reconcile it and from that reconciliation, then we start to move into acceptance.
(27:13):
Do you see that acceptance is not just something you decide in a moment and it happens. This is the tilling of the soil. Farmers don’t just till their ground once and say, oh, I’m just going to grow and see what happens. They constantly have to work that soil. You must constantly work your consciousness over and over and over. Read books, new books, reread books, pray, meditate, talk to someone, come to service here. Come on Wednesday night. Do something to till that soil, because acceptance is not something, a gear that you pull and then all of a sudden you’re on your way. You have to work it, and it’s only my favorite point is once we get into acceptance, and I think this is where peace really arises, is then we get to integrate back into life.
(28:05):
If I could change the world, we want to go out there and move the chess pieces around on the board. That’s not the way it works. Back to the original reading, the conceptual mind. It’s an amazing thing. Just this morning I was sitting in meditation to get myself ready, and I actually didn’t sleep well last night, and all of a sudden I was like, well, why didn’t I sleep well last night? What does it mean that I didn’t sleep well last night? What does that say about me? I’m supposed to be the spiritual being that gets up and does all these things and I should be sleeping well. My conceptual mind was trying to make up so much, and the only thing I really needed to do was accept that I didn’t sleep well, and you know what? I was able to just get on with my meditation, get ready for my practice.
(28:55):
I made a little coffee. I had some toast. I talked to my wife. I petted my dog and I’m here, but I could have easily, my conceptual mind could have just taken apart. Oh my gosh, I didn’t sleep well. I’m not going to have a good day. This talk is going to go horrible. And then then the last thing for today, stillness is also an inner peace and that stillness and peace are the essence of your being. Back to those original lyrics from, if I could change the world, you are the sunlight of the universe. Your love is good, not if it’s good. It is good. The essence of your being is peace, and it arises from an inner stillness, not from an external condition.
(29:53):
It is inner stillness that will save and transform the world. So in all that is happening right now, I challenge us this week to honor and recognize this is not about being passivity. This is not about being passive. This is not about being complacent. But if you want to have a conversation, if you want to write an article to change the world, if you want to do anything before you open your mouth, before you write anything, before you do anything, get still look out the window at the tree. That stillness has wisdom that will only be available if you slow down and pause, and I guarantee from that stillness, what you bring into your day, what you bring into your action, what you bring into anything will only be love. So let’s begin. Now. Let’s get still.
(31:01):
If your legs are crossed, I challenge you to uncross them. If your arms are crossed, I challenge you to uncross them and free your hands to be in your lap, either palms up or down, taking a generous breath, but put more emphasis on your exhale. See if you can blow all the air out, deplete yourself, and then let the body naturally fill itself up and relax into the stillness of this moment, a stillness that doesn’t need perfect silence, a stillness that is simply softening, that is active as you feel yourself, tighten and conceptualize and ask, just soften release.
(32:09):
Accept where you are and what is happening. There is a consciousness that is not only individual, is collective. It is a consciousness that is fertile, that is ripe, that is rich, that is not separate from us, but it is us. It is a part of us. It moves through us. We are not only a conduit for it, but we are it. Yes, life happens to us. There are things that are laid upon our plate that we didn’t choose, but we are still autonomous, powerful, conscious beings of love, peace, wholeness, creativity, freedom, health, possibility, and more. This is what I affirm for Cityside. This is what I affirm for everyone in the room today. This is what I affirm for everyone distant today in the digital realm. This is what I affirm for everyone listening to this recording at another time. It does not matter time and place.
(33:20):
This consciousness is the same. It is the foundation from all beings. So let us get still and know that our consciousness is enough. Let us know that our life is enough. Let us know that this moment is enough, the perfect time and place to slow down and pause, to allow nature to remind us of its power, one breath at a time. And so I, bless us as we step into whatever awaits us in this day and in this week, may we bring fertile consciousness, loving consciousness into everything we say and we do, and so it is. Amen. Peace and blessings to you all.
(34:13):
Thank you, Reverend Darrell.