This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
Unlimited – Rev. Aimee Daniels- Talk Only
DESCRIPTION
What if being fully yourself is the most sacred act of all? In a world that often asks us to blend in, this message calls us to stand out—in love, in truth, and in divine expression. Join us as we explore how to reclaim our divine identity, affirm our uniqueness as a spiritual gift, and live from our true nature which is Unlimited.
SUMMARY
In this transcript, Rev. Aimee Daniels explores the themes of freedom, self-acceptance, and the unlimited potential of the divine within.
Key points include:
• Celebrating Pride, Juneteenth, and the inherent dignity and freedom of all people, regardless of identity or background.
• Encouraging listeners to embrace their unique divine expression and to overcome limitations or societal pressures to conform.
• Discussing spiritual practices like affirmative prayer, meditation, and journaling as ways to strengthen one’s spiritual foundation and connection to the divine.
• Emphasizing the importance of community, service, and holding a vision for a world that works for everyone during challenging times.
• Affirming the unlimited nature of the divine and the potential for personal and societal transformation through embodying one’s true spiritual self.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Aimee Daniels (00:01):
Well, that was just fun. It is a hard act to follow, but I requested it and Megan was so excited. She’s like, this is my inner child s singing this song. So we were all excited about it, but Happy Father’s Day, everybody. Today we celebrate all our dads. My dad passed away when I was 24, so I’m just holding him high today. His name was Robert Jackson. I’m just going to dedicate my talk to him. But we all have many dads in our life. We, I got a father-in-law last year and he’s 88 and he’s awesome. So happy Father’s Day, and there’s a lot going on in the world right now. There really is protests, immigration raids, the terrible execution yesterday of Melissa Hortman and her husband. And it’s a lot to take in and process, isn’t it? I got to tell you, I don’t get mad very often, but I’ve been like, what is going on in my head?
Because it’s disturbing. But we also see a lot of positive things. We see the rising up of the people and we see people bringing their voices forth for what they want to see in the world. Historically, every, well, I don’t know, maybe a hundred years or so, there’s a book about this. It’s called The Fourth Turning Society Forgets What It Knew, so it repeats it again. So this is really eerily similar to what happened a hundred years ago. But the positive part about that is that the generation that grew up during that created something different. And that’s the opportunity right now is for us to create something different. So I’m going to come back to that later. But this month we’re celebrating pride at Cityside. We’re also celebrating Juneteenth this month, and actually this week, it’s Thursday, which is a celebration of freedom, which is about not just freedom achieved through laws, but it’s also like the inner freedom, the dignity of voices reclaimed by people.
And I never knew this, but the reason it’s Juneteenth is because people in Texas didn’t know they’d been emancipated and they were still enslaved and Juneteenth came out of them being freed. So the same power that helps to free people is the power that creates everything, and it’s the power that creates us. And you are the universe. Individualized, you’re meant to be free. Freedom is a spiritual quality. And so we also want to, as we think about Juneteenth, and as we think about people who are marginalized right now, we need to remember that inherent in them is an inner freedom, and that’s what we want to call forth.
So one of my friends posted this on Facebook this week. Pride has zero to do with who I sleep with and everything to do with the fact that I survived you, your friends in school, family members, religious dogma, taught self-hatred. And now I’m tough enough to walk down the street in my own skin. I loved this quote because even though I did not experience that because I’m an ally, I am not part of the community, that community, I have to say, I can totally relate to not feeling at home in my own skin. I think when I came into this teaching, part of why it appealed to me is I didn’t have a sense of myself beyond what other people’s idea of my life was. And so divine expression is infinite. It doesn’t matter what your gender is. It doesn’t matter who you love. It doesn’t matter what your identity is.
It doesn’t matter what your personality is. These are all just facets of the divine that are expressing through you. And what often happens when we’re different in some way from, I don’t know, for lack of a better word, the societal constructs or societal norms, is that we have the experience of being othered, being othered, not very pleasant. And we see that all over the place in society right now, backlash against DEI, people trying to take away marriage rights, the anti-trans movement, anti-immigration, the list kind of goes on and on right now in the world of form. And so I liked this quote because it’s about if we’re having this experience of being othered, how do we move through that to find our own power again? And as Megan saying to us from this beautiful musical Wicked who saw the movie, who saw the movie with the amazing Cynthia Arrivo, she’s a badass.
That’s my word for her. She also played Harriet Tubman, if you aren’t familiar with her work, but think about it, she’s born, alphabet is born with green skin, and from the time that she’s little, she’s experiencing people rejecting her, including her father. And then she also has people who are afraid of her because she has this magical power that at first she doesn’t know how to control, which seems normal. And then there is a teacher that sees the potential in her, and then she really begins to come into her own. And you see her through the course of the story really coming to accept herself. Instead of trying to fit in, she becomes more authentically herself. And the other thing I like about the story is when she stands up, she basically is standing up against a power that is corrupt. That’s the end of part one.
And she was painted as being wicked for that, that she was evil and wicked, but what she simply was doing was speaking the truth. That’s what she was doing. And her most iconic moment comes when she sings the song that Megan sang for us, defying Gravity. And she steps into her own power with this line. It’s time to try defying gravity. I’m through accepting limits because someone says they’re so love that line. And what is the gravity in our lives? It could be the people around us who don’t believe in us or who judge us. It could be not believing in ourselves, or it could just be that we’re conditioned to believe that life needs to be a certain way. Earnest Holmes in chapter five of the book we’re working with this month says, there’s nothing between God and man, but thought so we could take the word man out of there, God and I, but thought.
And what she did is she overcame other people’s stories about what was possible for her. And her journey is stepping out of her own false belief that she needed to fit in and stepping into this idea that she’s free to step into who she is and that is enough. And so she’s unlimited, right? We hear that in the song. I’m unlimited and so are you. You’re unlimited too. But it’s kind of hard to get our brains around it sometimes, isn’t it? I was talking to my father-in-law Friday night. We all went out to dinner. It was really cute. There was this party of 2020 young ladies who were celebrating Bachelorette or whatever, so it was super loud, Simon. I was sitting next to him and he says, well, when are you speaking again? I said, well, I’m speaking on Sunday. And he goes, what are you talking about?
And I’m like, that we all have unlimited potential because we’re part of the divine. And he, he’s 88, he goes, when I think about my life, he goes, I realize I haven’t thought enough about of myself. And he said, and I really wonder what I would’ve done if I thought more of myself. I know he’s the sweetest man, planet. He really is. Just love him. But think about it. We all have that sense, can have that sense of limitation in ourselves. And sometimes the people around us have a spell on us because they’ve told us what’s possible for us. Sometimes it’s Father’s day, but sometimes our parents do that, right? Don’t be a dreamer, be realistic, whatever your parents might have said to you. But the spiritual truth of you is that you are unlimited. Spirit is unlimited. And so I want to ask you, where in your life are you playing small so that you’re fitting in, right?
We all do it right? Go with the flow. Don’t rock the boat. My mom used to say, don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill. Anyone ever hear any of those things? But what gravity are you ready to defy in your life? Our gravity is kind of where we’re stuck. And so for me, when I think about myself, I’m like putting myself out there more, putting my own work out in the world more. I’ve talked about that 700 times, so just hold me to that. But I also think part of my gravity is time. It’s other commitments. It’s the fear of not being good enough. We all have these things that kind of weigh us down. So I just invite you to think about what’s yours, what’s your gravity? What stops you from pursuing whatever dream has been planted in your heart? So John, read to us from this thing called you.
This is one of my favorite Ernest Holmes books, and we want to start to recognize our unlimited nature to bring, to call this freedom to express into our life. So let’s break this down. There’s a lot here. You might want to take a picture of this and read it to yourself all week. So let’s talk about your divine self. You that’s bigger than the experience you’re having in the world of form right now, and that you is eternal, that you contains all possibility and that you is not your identity in the world of form. It’s not. We can think that whatever this is is our identity, but it’s not. And Earnest Holmes reminds us that you’re the universe individualized. A couple of weeks ago, Reverend Mark talked about the science of mind teaching symbol if anyone heard him, the V. So at the top of the V is like spirit, the divine, whatever your word is, God, whatever word you like for this infinite creative power and presence.
But it comes into form through us. So we talk about divine mind. That is like divine spiritual mind. It’s the mind. Your higher self connects to when you pray, when you set an intention, but it comes through us, through our own thought, into our experience in the world of form. So we need to get our focus out of the world of form. So our work spiritually is to pause and to shift and to get into that place, which right now can sometimes feel challenging. Yes, at least in my head, I’ll just be real about it. So here’s this quote from Earn Home. There’s a divine presence at the center of your being, and it’s literally living and moving and having its life as you right? You’re part of it. And there’s perfect law flowing through you because love is all there is. So it works through your life and you either work with it consciously or you work with it unconsciously.
So we’re trying to call forth more consciousness and how we’re doing it. And you fill a unique place in the universe, there’s no one exactly like you. That one’s a hard one to get your head around, isn’t it? Right? It seems like all the good stuff’s already out there, but it’s a cool thought, right? You fill a unique place and we believe in scarcity in our society. So we believe that all the good things are taken. We can believe that, right? But scarcity is not actually the spiritual truth. This is an abundant universe. There’s all possibility out there. And so there’s plenty of room here for you to express your uniqueness, and there’s something you can do that no one else can do. I have a hard time getting my mind around that one too. Maybe you don’t know what it is, but wouldn’t it be fun to be curious and find out? And it doesn’t mean that you’re inventing the newest thing in the world. It might just be that the way that you bring something forward is unique in your expression and it resonates with the people around you.
So this is the meaning of being you. This is the truth of your being, and when you discover it, you will be free. And that’s our spiritual foundation. That’s the foundation that we really want to build in science of mind. Ernest Holmes says, undoubtedly, we are surrounded by an immersed and a perfect life, A complete, normal, happy, sane, and harmonious and peaceful existence. I really love that line, but only as much of this life as we embody will become ours to use. So that’s why we need to strengthen our spiritual foundation because when we’re letting other voices run our life, then we’re not spiritually centered. Nora and I were talking about this before service, how much it helps if you simply take the time, because then even if you’re busy or other things are happening, you can move through ’em more easily in a calmer place.
So even though it can feel hard to move, especially if you’re having an of feeling marginalized or attacked or anything like that, we start with our spiritual foundation and all these things on the slide that Ben is just about to put up for you, all these things. But I want to talk to you about the why of doing these practices this morning. And I want you to think about your own life and what you might benefit from doing more of. So the first one is affirmative prayer, core practice here. Why do we pray affirmatively? We pray because we believe that we co-create our experience through the power of thought, which is aligned with truth, with a capital T, truth, spiritual truth, not like truth, as we might define it in the world of form. But what do we do when we pray affirmatively, we speak the truth of the situation.
We don’t speak the problem. We affirm whatever we’re trying to call in wholeness, peace, love, wellbeing, health. And why does it build the foundation? Because it reorients your human mind to principle to divine principle. That’s what it does for us. Let’s talk about meditation and stillness. We say all the time spirit speaks in the stillness. So we must be still to be able to have our awareness and our knowing. If we don’t take time to be still, we might feel disconnected. And when we sit in the stillness in meditation, we begin to become receptive to the divine intelligence which is always around us. Have you ever noticed this? Even if you just slow down, even if you just go for a walk outside and something’s troubling you, and then in the course of the walk you’re like, oh, you ever have that happen? That happens in meditation too, but it quiets our mental noise so that we’re available to have that insight, that intuition, spiritual study.
Why do we do that? What’s the why of that? Because literally it’s reinforcing the sacred texts, whatever they’re, it doesn’t matter what they are, they’re reinforcing the truth with a capital T for you. So it’s reminding you of the truth. We all know it, but we forget, right? So that’s why we do it. And so it doesn’t matter who you’re studying, but it helps you build your foundation and it helps you see actually how spiritual laws are working in your life. And it helps you. It reinforces your faith. Another word for faith is just your intention. Your faith is your intention. The next one, journaling and self inquiry. Who’s guilty like me, of not doing this enough? I don’t do this enough. Okay, I’m just going to out myself. But what happens when we journal and we self-inquiry? You start to notice that things come out.
If you’ve ever done the artist’s way and you do the three morning pages, you are like, wow, I’m writing about the same thing every day. Something must be going on here. What do I believe is true, right? And what in me am I being called to remember? What’s the spiritual truth about me? So it helps us to be self-aware and it helps us to begin to notice our limiting beliefs. Like, oh, I don’t believe it’s possible for that to be different. I need to challenge myself. I need to shift that belief, gratitude, and celebration. Why do we practice gratitude? It reminds us of the good that’s already happening. It helps us to see how we’re being cared for. And even if it’s as simple as I like when I go to bed at night, part of my go to sleep thing is I’ll just be like, what am I grateful for today?
What happened that I was grateful for? And as I start to do it, I realize, wow, there were a lot more things than I might’ve said. But it shifts our focus from lack, from scarcity, which we’re surrounded by to divine sufficiency. That’s what it does when we practice gratitude, visioning. The soul has a divine blueprint that’s ready to be expressed through our life. When we vision, when we ask the question, what’s the highest idea of my life? Then it helps us to build our life on purpose, not on ego. So the world tells us what we should do based on ego. And that’s especially true if you’re around. Sometimes when you work with other people, there’s a certain expectation of what should matter to you because there’s the norms of where you’re working, but it helps to remind you what’s really important. And finally, service and sacred activism.
So when we express love through being activists or being out in the world caring for other people or serving, it helps us to get into that flow of that energy of community and to get into that flow of love that we are part of that is always present. And so I want to invite you to look at this list and just say, what does my spirit want more of? When I look at this list, we’ve been super busy lately and constantly having a lot of people around at home, and I need some more stillness because when that happens, I start to feel disconnected from myself. And I also think I would benefit from doing more journaling and self-inquiry. So what is it for you? Because if you really are unlimited, if you start asking your spirit, what would I do if I stopped myself? Right? Your practice helps you do that. What would you embrace? What dream would you pursue if you stopped limiting yourself? And what would you give yourself permission to do that you’re not doing now? What would it be and how would you be serving the world? That’s a question I like to ask, especially right now.
But sometimes when we’re trying to change our life, it’s a little hard, isn’t it? If there’s something we’re trying to shift, it can be a little hard because it can be hard to pray for yourself, especially if you have something in your life that’s unwanted, it can be super challenging. So Tasha Silver is a spiritual teacher that I absolutely adore, and I want to read something from her book, her book, this book Change Me Prayers is a bunch of little vignettes, and they’re all about things that have happened to herself, to her, or to people in her life. So I just want to read you this chapter. It’s called Unholy Scam. Don’t you like the name? Unholy Scam? The Divine made you as a holy expression of love exactly as you are. But many get told they need to become worthy of love from some other humans and even from God.
However, trees, grass, seashells, kittens, dragon lizards, spider monkeys, pomeranians, chipmunks, and just about anyone or anything besides diluted, brainwashed humans do not feel that way. Sense a scam. Here’s the truth. You already are love. You are already worthy. This is a central tenet of existence, independent of age, race, gender, charisma, height, weight, bank account, sexual orientation, and this part cracks me up and genital size over time. The divine can reveal this if it is sincerely offered. Why the heck not? And what I like about her book is her prayers are simple. They’re simple. You can just read ’em. It helps recenter you, and it can help us when we don’t believe in our own possibility. Just to say she says divine, beloved a lot. That’s her word for spirit or God. But I’m going to read the quote and then I’m going to ask you to read it with me.
Change me divine beloved into one who knows without question, my own beauty, worthiness and desirability. Let me remember constantly who I am, a spark of divinity, of love in a temporary human form. Awaken me from any trances of amnesia. May I always recall my true nature is radiant light. We’re going to read this together out loud. Now, change me divine beloved into one who knows without question, my own beauty, worthiness and desirability. Let me remember constantly who I am, a spark of divinity, of love in a temporary human form. Awaken me from any trances of amnesia. May I always recall my true nature as radiant light? So Tasha tells the story in her book about when her first book was called Outrageous Openness, and she had gotten it published and she went into a bookstore in San Francisco in that area where she lives. And the woman said to her, this book is never going to sell.
I’m not going to carry it. And so she’s standing there, she’s got her book, and this very tall man walks in with his girlfriend and he grabs the book out of her hand and he says, it’s exactly the book I need to read. And so the three of ’em end up going outside since the bookstore owner wasn’t interested. And he buys their book and his girlfriend says, this book is going to bless a lot of people and see, we can, I think she got a divine message, don’t you? She got a divine message. She was not supposed to stop. And we can all think that things are supposed to look a certain way in our life. And when it doesn’t happen exactly that way, then we think, okay, I’m not supposed to do this anymore. Anybody do that to themselves besides me? Yeah. So we got to trust, right? We got to turn it over. We need to listen to the divine voice, not the voice of others who might have a limited view of us or who might not share our values. Might think what we’re doing is dumb, right? We can’t let that voice be the voice that decides what happens in our life.
So you may know this lady, can you go to the next slide? This is Laverne Cox. Anyone know who she is? She’s on Orange is the New Black. And she was the first transgender person to be nominated for a primetime Emmy Award in acting. And she was born in Mobile, Alabama. Her mom was raising her alone with her grandma, and they were in a very fundamentalist church. And when she was about 11, she tried to take her own life because she realized that she had developed feelings for her male classmates, and she had been being bullied for a long, long time. And she said, because I did not behave the way that someone who was assigned as a male at birth should behave. But she overcame that. She overcame being told that she had to hide who she was. And because she was brave enough to come out into the world as who she is and to be an actor and do these other things, it has given a lot of other people courage.
But she had to believe in the spirit within her. And I just really, I bless her. And the example that she set for others because she really claimed her own freedom to be who she is. And that is divine truth, that we have the freedom. Every human is endowed with the right to be free. And freedom’s not just a destination. It’s a journey. It’s a journey that we’re on every day of our life. And so it’s never too late to embrace freedom, and it’s never too early. And right now in the world, I feel we’re called to support freedom for those who are not experiencing it. And we can do that in a lot of ways. We can do it through protesting. We can do it acts of justice. We can do it through working for justice, for standing side by side with people who are being oppressed.
There’s a lot of ways to do it, but when we do it, we are embodying divine freedom. That’s what we’re doing. And Victor Frankel in Man’s Search for Meaning said, everything can be taken from a man. But one thing, the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. So this is an important time in our country for us to place our collective consciousness on the spiritual. We know that humans have these patterns that they keep playing out, but we need to hold what’s possible, and we need to have the discipline to not get sucked down into what I think is normal for all of us to do. Honestly, when we see the things that have been happening, I mean, you’re going to have a moment, right? I’ve had a few of ’em lately. Like yesterday, I was like, really?
You’re going to kill someone for believing something different than you do? That’s crazy. But we have to spiritually rise above it, and we need to hold the truth that there is freedom for all, and we need to see beyond our differences and see others in their wholeness and oneness. And that can feel challenging right now also, right? Don’t go on Facebook. I’ve realized I grew up with people who believe all sorts of different things that aren’t the same as me. Imagine that. But the consciousness that created and is sustaining this society is not going to create the new, right? So we need to bring in a new consciousness and we need to embrace what we’re for. And CS l say, that’s a world that works for everyone. That’s what we’re for, a world that works for everyone. And that’s threatening to some people because it might mean their lives might, right?
I think if you look around right now, people are afraid of someone else having a right because they’re afraid they’re going to lose theirs, right? Fear is behind it. Actually, that’s what we’re going to talk about next month is fear. So just give you a little bit of a preview. But we do know that the divine spirit, whatever your word is, it’s unlimited and it contains unlimited possibility. And I believe if we work together, then things can change. Being part of the being around spiritually people is so powerful. I know that from my personal experience. I know many of you also know that from your personal experience, other people can hold the truth for us until we’re ready to hold it for ourselves. And that’s the power of being in community.
And it’s interesting when you think about where we’re at as a society and oh, I just noticed my time. Okay, so I’ll be quick here, but I’ve been listening to a book by Sebastian Younger called Tribe. And when the settlers came to this country, whoever, their leaders were very surprised to find that the people who moved from Europe actually wanted to live with the Native Americans because they looked at their culture and they thought, this is an inclusive culture where everyone is part of it. And it’s so interesting because we’re so individualistic in our society. And so when I think about that, it’s like, isn’t that what people want? They want to belong. They want to be part of something. And I think also being aware of who you surround yourself with is super important right? Now, it doesn’t mean we all have people in our life who have different points of view than we do.
I know I do, but what are the voices that you’re putting in your head all the time, right? What are you choosing to feed? Because Ernest Holmes says, there’s a strength in the union of community that’s greater than the individual and more enduring than any isolated hope. And together we can transform the world. Ernest Holmes said that I made the language a little more modern on that one, but it starts with you because you have the divine presence at the center of your being, and you are unique. And when you begin to embody it more, then you build and strengthen your spiritual foundation. So you’re moving through life with that. And what happens when your spiritual foundation is stronger? You start to know your own worthiness and you know the worthiness of others. So I just really want to invite everyone to lean into community and be the light not just for yourself, but be the light for other people.
Very small acts. Give hope to another human, even just someone to be around and talk to someone who’s listening to you. But when we all do this together, we can transform the world. So we’re going to pray now, Greg, would you please come up? And everybody else, so I just invite you to turn within, just take a couple deep breaths with me while we get settled with the music team, just breathing in and breathing out and breathing in and breathing out, and just feeling this presence of spirit, this presence which is never an absence. This infinite life, this one life which contains all things is all things, wholeness, worthiness, grace, peace, love, divine wellbeing. This infinite life of spirit, as in through you, this unlimited divine potential, this divine creative power that I’m one with, that we are all one with expressing in as and through our lives.
And so from this place of oneness, I just declare for each person in this room that they deeply know their worthiness, that they deeply feel within them, that which is unique, that is wanting to express through them. I know and declare a realization of the unlimited potential of spirit as in through you. And I know and declare that more is possible for each person hearing my words and really for the entire world. I just know and declare that there is a shift in consciousness that is happening now, and that it begins with each of us. So I know and declare that more peace, more love, more acceptance, more freedom is the divine truth, and we now allow it to become embodied in our lives. This is what I say yes to, and I just trust the divine to bring this forth. I just know that we are surrounded and supported in love, and I just bless the United States knowing something greater is coming forth for us here as a country, knowing that new voices are coming to the forefront and that these are voices encouraging love and peace and care and acceptance, the highest good for all concerned.
And so I know that there is a shift that is happening here, and I know that it is happening not just in the United States, but it is happening around the world that there is more love coming forth, more care, and I just deny that war or any other discord that we might talk about. I just deny that that is a power unto itself, and I know and declare that spirit, the divine is the only power, and I just claim a deep and profound realization for all of this us as our truth. I say yes to this, and I give thanks knowing that God truly is unlimited and that all of you are also, and with so much gratitude for all of this, I simply say, and so it is. Amen.