AIF Week Four: Finding True Waters with Josh Reeves

[00:00:00] This is Josh Reeves and you're listening to the Mile Hi Church Podcast. Kudos to you for focusing

[00:00:05] on your spiritual growth. Speaking of spiritual growth, have you had your moment of awe today?

[00:00:11] Dr. Keltner wrote a great book called Awe, and it's all about how awe can heal us, uplift us,

[00:00:17] and keep us dialed in. He's going to be at Mile High Church on November 1st, talking about it. You

[00:00:22] can join us in person. You can join us online. It's going to be fantastic. Check out milehighchurch.org.

[00:00:28] Dr. Keltner, I'm grateful to be completing our adventure in faith today. Finding True Waters is

[00:00:38] our message today. Finding the true waters. Ralph Waldo Emerson, our philosophical forefather of our

[00:00:47] philosophy, he said, that is always best which gives me to myself. That is always best which

[00:00:59] gives me to myself. Does that resonate with you? Sure the hell does resonate with me. Let's say it

[00:01:04] together. That is always best which gives me to myself. What for you are those activities,

[00:01:14] those practices, those relationships that help you to feel yourself again? Because I want you to know

[00:01:24] they're the secret to living a great life. I don't know about you, but when things are challenging,

[00:01:33] I tend to blame myself. Anybody else do that? I think there's something wrong with me,

[00:01:39] and that's why this challenge is taking place in my life. But if we could only make that little switch

[00:01:44] to see that what is really going on is that a greater version of ourself is being called forth.

[00:01:50] It's not being who I am that's messing things up. It's not being enough of who I am that's causing me

[00:01:58] this challenge. We forget sometimes that when we don't think for ourselves, we let someone or

[00:02:08] something else do the thinking for us. Doesn't that scare you a little bit? It scares me,

[00:02:13] especially in election time when we know people whose job is to get us to not think for ourselves.

[00:02:20] If we don't feel for ourselves, we allow the perceived feelings or fears about other people

[00:02:28] become the center of our life. And when we don't prioritize for ourselves, we let anyone and anything

[00:02:37] set the priorities for us. We lose ourselves. And thus, it is so important to be able to recognize

[00:02:46] that which allows us to get back to being who we are. Sometimes it's doing something playful or relaxing.

[00:02:54] Sometimes it's making intimate connections, having conversations with people here in your spiritual

[00:03:01] community at Mile High Church. Sometimes it's learning to re-engage in a meaningful spiritual practice.

[00:03:09] If you ever take a class with me here at Mile High Church, you've probably heard me say,

[00:03:14] if you get anything out of this teaching and your time and this philosophy,

[00:03:18] I pray it is a daily spiritual practice. There is no greater way I know that gives me back to myself,

[00:03:28] that allows me to find those true waters, to look within them, and to see my true self looking back at me.

[00:03:39] A former Trappist monk with Thomas Merton and psychologist by the name of James Finley,

[00:03:44] he had a definition of spiritual practice that works for me. It goes like this.

[00:03:50] It is any act habitually entered into with your whole heart as a way of awakening, deepening,

[00:03:58] and sustaining a contemplative experience of the inherent holiness of the present moment.

[00:04:05] I love that. The inherent holiness of the present moment. By caring for ourselves,

[00:04:13] by going to our own well, we unlock an experience of the divinity. By taking care of ourselves,

[00:04:23] we reveal our relationship with a higher power. By nurturing our being, we bring forth the spirit

[00:04:33] of our becoming. And what I recommend for everybody in terms of spiritual practice is to first look at

[00:04:40] those traditional spiritual practices. Those that come to us from religion and from family and ancestry,

[00:04:49] things like meditation, prayer, forgiveness, gratitude, yoga, creating an altar, tai chi.

[00:04:57] Always find a couple of these that work really well for you. But don't forget about those secular

[00:05:02] practices as well. Those things you may engage in on a daily or weekly basis that if you could bring

[00:05:09] more of a reverence for that holy that is in the present moment could also expand your sense of

[00:05:17] spiritual life. Exercising, listening to music, having a good conversation, listening to a podcast.

[00:05:26] These things sometimes that we don't think are going to create any material good for us actually put us

[00:05:32] back in touch with being a soul so that we can live fully and wholly again. Sometimes it's as simple

[00:05:41] as just being willing to set any plans aside for the day and just bump around, just be.

[00:05:49] One of the most important periods of my life was a little under two-year stint that I lived in San Diego,

[00:05:56] California. And I was not happy with what led me there. I had become a minister and my first ministry

[00:06:04] was a total failure. It was not only a failure in starting a business for me, it was also created a

[00:06:12] crisis of faith. I had ended a relationship. Have you ever been in one of those relationships where

[00:06:19] you're on the train and you see that it's about to crash? And for some reason you say,

[00:06:24] I think it's a good idea to stay on this train. So that's what I did and it went boom.

[00:06:32] And I was lucky to get offered a job in San Diego. I was also not taking care of my body. I was smoking

[00:06:40] and drinking and not eating right. And the most wonderful thing happened in San Diego. I got to be

[00:06:48] in my own energies again. I got to live alone for a little while. I got to get back to my spiritual

[00:06:55] practice. San Diego was just this great place to walk. So I just bumped around here or there. And I probably

[00:07:03] accomplished nothing of great material good in those two years, but I came back to myself.

[00:07:11] I rediscovered my interiority. I got back to my center. And when we get back to our center,

[00:07:19] it sets the creative process into motion. And I can tell you, if it wasn't for that time,

[00:07:25] I would not have been capable of becoming a successful minister. I would not have been capable

[00:07:31] of becoming a good husband or father. I wouldn't have understood the importance of a commitment

[00:07:38] to thriving and well-being. So doing nothing, being back in my own energies created a path for me to

[00:07:50] fulfill my purpose in career and in personal life and in personal health. I get to start teaching a

[00:07:58] class about the great Joseph Campbell here in a few weeks. And it's kind of a full circle experience

[00:08:03] for me. The class is called The Art of Living. And what it really is, is it's about what happens when

[00:08:09] you learn to live from your own center. And I made the class up right when the pandemic hit in and we

[00:08:14] all stayed at home. It was a great marketing. Let's have an online class. We're all stuck at home.

[00:08:18] You kind of have to come. And I don't know how well the class went because I just made it up. But

[00:08:24] the idea was we're heading into survival times. And Campbell teaches us that when the world seems

[00:08:32] to be falling apart, there's only one thing you can hold on to, and that's your bliss. What you love to

[00:08:37] do. What makes you happy. Hold on to that and you'll be okay. And recreating or refining the class for

[00:08:44] coming up, it helped me to see that quote in a different way. That holding on to our bliss is

[00:08:50] actually how we bring the world together. Holding on, discovering, cultivating, and practicing our

[00:08:57] bliss is actually how we pull our lives together. By giving ourselves back to ourselves through those

[00:09:05] activities and practices that matter, it gives us everything we need not only to confront the

[00:09:11] challenges, but to step into the potential things to celebrate in our thriving. Speaking of this idea

[00:09:19] of just wandering, of just bumping around Campbell shares, oh, those were glorious experiences.

[00:09:26] I was just flopping around, sniffing out what I would do and what I wouldn't do.

[00:09:30] I only wanted to do what made sense to my interior. I don't see how one can live otherwise.

[00:09:36] And nothing is better than reading when there is nothing else to do.

[00:09:41] Now, I would love to prescribe that you all take a month off of work,

[00:09:45] family obligations, and just bump around. And I realize that for many of us, that's not possible.

[00:09:52] But even better reason to find a couple times in the day to do that which is best for giving yourself

[00:10:02] back to yourself, for remembering who you are, for recalling your spirit and realizing you don't just

[00:10:09] have a soul that exists somewhere, but that you are a soul living this human life for a reason.

[00:10:16] Find those spaces in your life so that your life isn't something you have to escape to get back to

[00:10:22] your center, but is a daily example and expression of what it means to live from your center.

[00:10:28] Because when we're not living from our own center, we're living from something else. And I promise you

[00:10:33] that something else is not good. It's not good. It's not your way. It's not your path. It's not your flow.

[00:10:40] It's not you. And if there's anything that might be missing from your life today, trust me. Trust me.

[00:10:47] It's you. It's you. Campbell goes on.

[00:10:53] When you wander, think of what you want to do that day. Not what you told yourself you were going to want to do.

[00:10:58] Don't think of new things. Don't think of achievement. Don't think of anything of the kind.

[00:11:02] Just think, where do I feel good? What is giving me joy? There's an old Sufi story,

[00:11:12] Sufism being the mystical branch of Islam, where a king calls him an advisor. His kingdom is

[00:11:19] struggling and he's looking for advice. And the advisor says, my great king, you are like a fountain

[00:11:24] and your kingdoms are the streams. And the king's not quite understanding. What are you trying to say?

[00:11:31] He said, well, if you were dying of thirst in the desert and someone offered you a glass of water for half of

[00:11:39] your kingdom, would you give it to him? And the king said, I suppose I would. And if you drink that out of that

[00:11:46] water and an hour later, someone else told you that it was poisoned and he would give you the antidote for the

[00:11:51] other half of the kingdom, what would you do? I suppose I would give it to him. Why then, the advisor said,

[00:11:59] would you pay so much attention to that which is only worth a glass of water? Only worth an antidote.

[00:12:06] We get so caught up in the state of our kingdom, in the state of our affairs, trying to hold

[00:12:13] everything together, trying to fix and patch those holes, forgetting that it's our own fountain,

[00:12:21] our own needs, our own well-being. If we can take care of those, that's right. Thank you for that.

[00:12:28] We can set our life into motion. Campbell continues, I mean it. It's simply basic. Get those pressure

[00:12:35] ideas out of your system and then you can find, like a ball on a roulette wheel, where you are going

[00:12:41] to land. The roulette ball doesn't say, well, people think better of me over there than over here. Take

[00:12:47] what comes and be where you like. What counts is being where you feel you're in your place. What people

[00:12:53] think is their problem. What if the correct response to a challenge is to do what you love?

[00:13:04] What if when you're struggling at your most, the message is, do what you love? It doesn't mean

[00:13:11] live in avoidance of the problem or the challenge. It means get back to yourself first and you will have

[00:13:18] everything that you need to walk through and transform that challenge. The great Carl Jung

[00:13:26] was in the middle of a midlife crisis. He's in the middle of his 40s and he's wanting to write and

[00:13:31] he's doing, he's developing all of this depth psychology and he's feeling stuck and he asked

[00:13:37] himself kind of a silly question. What did I love to do as a child? And the answer was play with rocks.

[00:13:45] And so he said, okay, I'll try it. So here's this 45 year old man going into the forest, getting on his

[00:13:50] knees and playing with stones, playing with rocks. Eventually he'd become a master stone mason and

[00:13:55] build his own home. And he shares that there was some sort of dormant energy within him.

[00:14:02] Some part of his spirit that had fallen asleep or he had fallen asleep too, that became awakened.

[00:14:10] That all of a sudden filled him with a sense of creative vitality. And because of that practice

[00:14:16] he shares, he was able to go on and write his great works about the shadow and archetypes and

[00:14:23] personality types and all of these things that we have so much interest in today. Just by moving into

[00:14:31] that spirit of play. Is there an activity that is meaningful to you? Perhaps that you haven't allowed

[00:14:38] yourself to embark in or engage in in quite a while because you are oh so busy and have oh so much to

[00:14:45] get done. That if you could just put things down for a little bit and get back to that, you get back to

[00:14:51] yourself and back to that creative energy that wants to move you forward. In the fountain of our lives,

[00:14:58] in the river of our lives, I would love to say that everything always feels full. But the truth of

[00:15:05] the truth of it is that some of us feel flooded and some of us feel empty. How many people these days

[00:15:11] like me feel flooded? I think election season can do that to us. You're flooded when you're feeling

[00:15:17] like yourself, but you're taking on everything, even all of the world's problems. You're feeling them

[00:15:22] right there on your shoulders and you feel that it's flood time, that there's no self-control,

[00:15:27] that the flow is running past you, and it's overwhelming. When we're empty, that's how many

[00:15:35] of us feel empty? Thank you. Honest group. It means that we've given all of our energy to supporting

[00:15:43] everything and everyone but ourselves. That we've allowed ourselves to run dry and we've forgotten

[00:15:49] that if we don't take care of ourselves first, we cannot properly meet the spiritual, emotional,

[00:15:55] and physical needs of others. And we have that experience of drought, which feels not like

[00:16:00] solitude, but a kind of sad isolation. The great mystic Howard Thurman has some advice for those of

[00:16:07] us who feel flooded or empty. He said, the answer to the flood time of the river is a greater opening to

[00:16:14] the sea. The answer to the drought of the river is a larger opening from the sea. The sea is the answer

[00:16:20] both to the drought and the flood time of the river. The sea is our source, is that place where we meet God

[00:16:29] and we allow the divine to meet us as well. The sea is that place that is always around us, but we forget

[00:16:37] it and get so caught up in our own idea of flow, of our own sense of the amount of water that we have,

[00:16:45] that we forget that those true waters are always provided through us if we open up to allowing them

[00:16:52] into our lives. Remembering in the sense that that wholeness of who we are is always there. In our

[00:17:00] Adventures in Faith material this week, there's a little exercise where you're invited to write a little note to

[00:17:07] yourself in past time. Remember writing notes? Remember writing letters? This isn't a text message thing,

[00:17:14] not an email. Write an actual note. You're encouraged to a time in your past. I wrote to that part of me

[00:17:21] that was suffering before I went to San Diego. And I told him, Josh, I want you to know that letting

[00:17:29] go isn't failure. That it's okay to let go. And that real failure comes when we try to control,

[00:17:35] when we're unwilling to move on in the direction that life is pointing us to.

[00:17:42] The second part of the exercise is to imagine a future self that's writing to you where you are right now.

[00:17:50] In the midst of a challenge, in the midst of a celebration, what is it that you think your future self would

[00:17:57] want you to know? My future self says, Josh, give yourself a little bit more credit. You're trying really,

[00:18:05] really hard. In your work, in your family, in your personal life, take a deep breath and know that

[00:18:13] everything is going to be okay. What does that wholeness of your future self want you to know about

[00:18:21] where you might better be in relationship with who you are in the midst of whatever the uncertainties

[00:18:29] in your life may be? Thurman goes on, speaking of our flow, the flow of the sea into the river of our

[00:18:37] lives, it may twist and turn, fall back on itself and start again, stumble over an infinite series of

[00:18:43] hindering rocks. But at last, the river must answer the call of the sea. It is restless till it finds its

[00:18:50] rest in the sea. Where's the sea calling you in your life to get back to source, to get back present,

[00:18:59] to open yourself up to that greater experience of that incredible spiritual power, the only spiritual

[00:19:06] power that is yet wants to express as the spiritual power that is who you are, the treasure, the gift,

[00:19:14] gift, the jewel of your spirit and your vitality that your life is longing for.

[00:19:23] Campbell talks about the experience of finding our jewel, that beautiful jewel that you discover in sacred

[00:19:28] space and in sacred time and this thing, he calls it being the master of two worlds, where you now have to

[00:19:34] take it back into the world. You're called to bring it into the world because the world needs who you are.

[00:19:40] Your loved ones need who you are. Your life needs who you are. And he says we have three choices when

[00:19:45] we discover that jewel and we're called to go back into the world, what T.S. Eliot sometimes termed the

[00:19:50] wasteland. And the first is the refusal of the call, which says, screw it, I'm moving to the woods.

[00:19:58] I'm going to stay with this feeling of being myself and that's all I'm going to do.

[00:20:03] So that's refusal of the call. The second is refusal of the jewel by looking out at the world and the

[00:20:13] wasteland saying, what do other people want me to be? What's going to help this person think better than

[00:20:18] me? How can I present myself in a superficial way to keep this person calm or make this situation okay?

[00:20:24] And when we do this, we refuse the gifts that we've discovered and been given.

[00:20:31] Lastly, we can enter back into that original world and become the master of two worlds where we give

[00:20:38] our jewel with authenticity, with transparency, and with a willingness to grow. And what I have come to

[00:20:45] believe is that when we do just that, even in challenging times, it's like a vitamin C for our

[00:20:51] lives. When we stay committed to our true self and bringing that into our relationships and into our

[00:20:56] work and do all that we do, it's only practical, but it's also the greatest magic that there is

[00:21:03] to realize that within you, within your own center, by owning who you are in your own interior,

[00:21:11] your life begins to fall into line, your vision becomes into view, and the day-to-day adventure is

[00:21:20] no longer something to control, but an adventure to enjoy. So moving into prayer as we close this

[00:21:28] Adventures in Faith, I invite any of our incredible practitioner prayer partners to stand and hold

[00:21:32] consciousness, just honoring our incredible spiritual community here in the sanctuary and everyone

[00:21:37] watching online as well. Let's again become aware of the affect of being given back to ourselves,

[00:21:51] of returning to the place of our beginning and realizing it is also the place of our eternality.

[00:21:58] That although we may have gotten caught up searching in the world for something to complete us,

[00:22:04] something to make us acceptable in someone else's eyes,

[00:22:09] we remember that it's been right here within us all along,

[00:22:13] that learning to trust ourselves, that finding joy in getting to know ourselves,

[00:22:19] and taking the time to articulate feelings grand and even decrepit.

[00:22:25] We communicate and bring forth our authenticity, realizing that when we do,

[00:22:30] it sets forth the creative medium into action, and our life begins to become filled with what may

[00:22:37] have felt like it was missing. A sense of deep healing, a profound flow and coherence,

[00:22:46] of a sense of resonance, reverence, and deepening with our very lives. The ability to enjoy the moment in

[00:22:57] its fullness and also to have the optimism for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our country,

[00:23:02] that better and better things are in store. Opening ourselves to the treasure and the gift of ourselves,

[00:23:12] we find our true waters are not as far away as we may have thought, that they're right here with us,

[00:23:19] moving us onward into grander and grander experiences of this beautiful thing called life.

[00:23:25] And so it is. Amen.

[00:23:30] Thanks for listening to the Mile High Church podcast. This podcast is made possible by the

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