Explore powerful tools for being a shining example and be the highest version of yourself in all relationships and activities.
[00:00:00] The following talk was given at Mile Hi Church in Lakewood, Colorado. Please visit our website at MileHiChurch.org.
[00:00:30] We're going to talk about how it is that we can walk forward in our lives and be the best version of ourselves, be the most authentic version of ourselves, be us completely.
[00:00:49] And that song just totally, totally invites us into an energy that is bruised or as uncomfortable as it may be. Our Legacy is us. That's going to be the message of this entire talk today that our greatest legacy is our true selves.
[00:01:11] I'm aware that I love the concept of unity and diversity that I see expressed in our universe and in our teaching, understanding that this life that God is is everywhere present but uniquely and diverse, expressed.
[00:01:29] And when I think about each one of us individually moving about our lives, the thing that most expresses that that's easy for us to understand is the concept of DNA.
[00:01:40] We all have DNA, all human life forms, we have DNA, DNA is in various parts of our universe but we all have unique DNA that's born out of the family heritage of two sides, two different beings coming together to create one unique being.
[00:01:57] And it seems as though our universe loves unity, it loves the connection of our life, but it also loves diversity. It also loves uniqueness.
[00:02:10] We see the unique forms in nature, the unique expression of life everywhere we look imagine how boring it would be if everything was the same.
[00:02:24] And often our attempts to create a sense of calm and assurance in life for the world and for ourselves are born out of a need to be the same, to even fall into normal, to want the mess of life as Reverend Simon was talking about great job on that talk, Reverend Simon, a beautiful power talk by the way.
[00:02:53] The mess of life to go away so that we can be more comfortable versus the invitation to find the deepest truth of who we are, so that we can encounter life and bring ourselves to it, bring our authentic self to it.
[00:03:08] And so that's my invitation today to understand that we all are born of the same stuff and yet we are all uniquely expressed.
[00:03:19] And in that effort to find our unique self, our world often thwarts that journey because we find ourselves uncomfortable feeling self-conscious because we think we're not normal, looking at our faults and looking at the things that we think are wrong with us.
[00:03:37] Just like last week I suggested to us that when we're looking at building a life of legacy, we may tend to look too much out at the world of form at what we have accomplished.
[00:03:46] Sometimes we look at the events of our lives and the decisions and the activities and we look at them just from the standpoint of their appearance.
[00:03:56] And don't always see the truth of ourselves because that is what many of us have come to believe is what's the most important thing about us.
[00:04:05] What did I do, what did I accomplish, how much time did I spend on things, how did I look, how did I come across, did I say the right thing, did I do the right thing?
[00:04:16] And not that inner knowingness of feeling right. In my own life, my struggles to find my authentic self have been battling with thoughts about myself of not fitting in, not liking my body and feeling that my body wasn't normal and struggling for most of my life, thinking that I needed to look a different way to be normal and an expanding huge amounts of internal effort at criticism and trying to be right.
[00:04:45] Thinking that I'm never doing enough in the world, I'm never giving enough. I'm never doing enough. No matter how hard I work, no matter how many hours I work or how much I contribute to life, it's never enough.
[00:04:57] Thinking that I'm not doing the right thing, or I didn't say the right thing, all those things that I just outlined have been part of my struggle to find my owner, my own inner authentic self.
[00:05:09] And I have to wade through them often and find myself pulled down into those old thought forms in order to find the truth of me. And last week, I invited us to consider on the day we die, what would be important that we would have accomplished in life.
[00:05:26] And when I think about that in terms of myself, I know that on the day I die, if I look back and I review my life or I have a chance to look at what I've done and who I've been in life, it's not going to matter how many hours I spent in work or it's not going to matter what I said or didn't say.
[00:05:45] And by gosh, it's not going to matter whether I ever have the ideal body that I think I should have. What's going to matter? What's going to really matter?
[00:05:55] You said I love myself. Did I bring myself to this beautiful thing called life fully and completely? Did I show up or did I hide behind the facade of my mind's chatter about what I think I should be doing?
[00:06:14] And not allow myself to really bring myself forward and feel that desire that I think lives in most of us, if not all of us.
[00:06:24] That desire to contribute, that desire to be fully alive, that desire to make a difference, that desire to be ourselves and to do good in the world.
[00:06:37] There's an important scene in a movie that I watched years ago that was just so hard to watch from so many levels, Shindler's List.
[00:06:46] And it was largely about Oscar Shindler, a man who was a Nazi, who secretly saved 1,200 Jews from being killed and being put into Nazi camps through his business efforts
[00:07:02] and kind of shepherding them away and making passage for them to escape Nazi Germany. And there's this scene at the end of the movie when it's all coming to an end, an Oscar Shindler is standing there, this character and saying, I could have done more.
[00:07:20] I could have helped more people. I could have saved more lives. I could have done more, and that scene was just got wretched for me to watch because I felt that way myself, it said to people around me, I want to live in love people and serve people and help people come into the truth of who they are in such a profound way and not get to the end of my life and say it wasn't enough.
[00:07:44] I wasn't enough, I didn't do enough, given enough, I didn't be enough. So every day I invite myself to consider, why do I have to do today to show up? To really show up and be me.
[00:08:02] In many respects for me it has to be a daily question. Otherwise I get caught up and all that other stuff, I don't look right away.
[00:08:12] All that stuff gets a hold of me and so I have to be willing to be vulnerable and that can be difficult. It can be very difficult to be vulnerable like that because we've all learned to protect ourselves.
[00:08:26] All learned what Brenna Brown says are the art of conspiracies and confabulations. Conspiracies that we make up stories we make up about how we're not enough, just like all the ones I've shared with you about myself.
[00:08:42] The fear of season about people aren't going to accept me or like me because blah, blah, blah, blah things that I can have about in my head that are conspiracy theories. I'll never fit in. It won't be enough.
[00:08:52] And confabulation, she says are lies that are told truthfully. Like the way he just looked at me, he doesn't like me at all. I'll never be able to make that dream come true because I don't have what it takes.
[00:09:05] I'm not young enough or bright enough or beautiful enough or lovable enough. These are confabulations. Brenna says to us the most dangerous stories we make up are the narratives that diminish our inherent worry, we're theness. We must reclaim the truth about our love ability, divinity and creativity.
[00:09:27] We must reclaim that truth, but it can be difficult. And as I thought about this this week, I thought about right now we're all being encouraged to wear masks in our world for safety and that makes sense.
[00:09:38] And as I've worn my mask around, I'm really grateful for Susan who's in the band giving me this really cool more comfortable masks than I've had.
[00:09:45] As I wear my mask around, I know one of the things that I miss the most is smiling at people being able to smile and know that they're seeing my smile.
[00:09:53] And so I've had to try to express it through my eyes. But in terms of today, this metaphor for embracing our true selves, I want to talk about the masks we wear.
[00:10:02] So this is one of the masks we wear. While we're in COVID-19, we wear this mask to keep ourselves in other safe. But in the realm of personal awareness, we also wear some other masks.
[00:10:16] And what happens is we put our masks on or we learn to put our masks on and we walk around in the world with these masks on in safety and the belief that we're safe this way. I'm totally safe now. Nothing can get to me.
[00:10:34] But the challenge, of course, there's a number of challenges with this.
[00:10:39] Number one is I walk through the world with these masks on thinking that I have to hide myself, thinking that if I just put the right outer appearance on the right outer shell that you will see me and love me,
[00:10:53] I can't really be seen, can I? All I can be seen is for the facade that I have.
[00:10:58] I can't really be loved because the facade gets in the way and you might fall in love with this facade. You think, wow, I really like those blindfolds fill up. Those blindfolds things she's got on. And I don't want her ever take them off because they're so cool.
[00:11:14] But in this game of masks, personal masks we lose. And then when someone does decide they like our facade, one of the biggest, most challenging things is to show them our true selves. We feel extremely vulnerable.
[00:11:33] So what if we learn to take the masks off? So here's what these masks represent to me. Mask of sight.
[00:11:42] With this mask on and not being willing to see the truth about myself, a couple things happen. I never allow myself to see my inherent divine wholeness, my divinity, my uniqueness. I never allow myself to truly see myself as I really am.
[00:12:01] And I work hard to try to see myself in ways that I'm not in non-authentic ways. This is different than seeing where we're dreaming and imagining ourselves forward.
[00:12:14] This is a looking at my life, looking at myself in the mirror, looking at my life, and constantly not seeing the good about myself. And with this mask on, I'm tempted to constantly compare my masks to other people's masks.
[00:12:28] Do I look right? Did I do the right thing? Did I say the right thing? Do I am I wearing the right thing? What's going on? Is everything okay in the world of form?
[00:12:36] When I take this mask off, my hair is a mask. But when I take this mask off, I can see myself more clearly. I can see the truth of me. I can begin to see within myself. I can see myself in my own mirror.
[00:12:50] I can see my wholeness if I allow myself to. And not only that, I can allow you to see me. I can allow you to see into my eyes, into the truth of me, into my heart. This mask is a mask of self-expression, the mask of authentic expression.
[00:13:08] And if I wear this mask, I refrain from speaking my truth. I refrain from telling you what I really think and believe. I am more interested in telling you what I think you want to hear than what is really the truth of my heart.
[00:13:24] And my life. And so when I'm speaking here and I'm doing this with my mask, I'm not really allowing myself to even speak my truth. Holding myself back.
[00:13:34] And I take this mask off. Number one, it's a lot cooler. But when I take this mask off, I become more willing to speak my truth and say what's so.
[00:13:43] And become expressive in my world. And this mask that covers my heart, this mask is the mask where I hide when I really feel. This mask is where I hide. My deepest love, where I hide my vulnerability, where I hide my heart from people.
[00:14:11] And therefore, maybe don't really tell people not only what I really feel about things, but really don't tell people that I really love them. They really care about them. I don't tell people that heartful truth.
[00:14:27] And when I take this mask off, my heart can be really present in my world. My heart can be really present and I can show up and be connected to people.
[00:14:39] Now I want to say with this kind of vulnerable expression being myself, it's not always going to be safe. I won't lie. The reality is that not everyone's going to like the true you.
[00:14:54] Not everyone's going to appreciate the true you. Not everyone's going to resonate with the true you. But what I get is that at the end of my life, I feel that I will have such great satisfaction to the degree that I've shown up.
[00:15:15] My legacy is me. My deepest most profound legacy is me. And when I take those masks off, I am poised to truly be myself.
[00:15:30] Parker Palmer says, we arrive in this world undivided, integral whole. But sooner or later, we erect a wall between our inner and outer lives, trying to protect what is within us,
[00:15:41] or to deceive the people around us, only when the pain of our dividedness becomes more than we can bear. Do most of us embark on an inner journey toward living, divided, no, no.
[00:15:56] And so, Reven Simon issued invitations to you and I also, during this time when we are to some degree without so many people around us, I'm suggesting it might be a really good time to take that mask off.
[00:16:11] Walk around your own house, if you're alone or live alone and take the mask off and to consider, what would I be thinking and saying and feeling and being if I were my authentic deepest, trueest self? How would I be in resonance with the light of my beingness?
[00:16:31] To consider and ponder and be willing to embrace and step forward into that truth of us, is an amazing gift. I welcome that gift from people in my life.
[00:16:48] I know that the divine welcomes that gift that we have not been placed here in this beautiful world, in this beautiful universe, just to be mediocre, just to be normal. That's not why we came. We came here to shine.
[00:17:06] And what I suggest to us is that as we get our shine on, as we take this time for inner reflection
[00:17:12] to claim our own shininess and to ask ourselves, what gets in the way, what masks have I been wearing that have been keeping me from shining my light?
[00:17:21] And then consider the vulnerable idea of pulling that mask away or removing that mask from our inner, most self that our shining becomes a path and a trajectory towards our greatest life.
[00:17:36] And it also becomes a shining example for those of us who want to be a good example. I can tell you that the people who have impacted me have done so most of the time because they just wore themselves.
[00:17:49] They showed up and they were authentic when it was comfortable and when it was uncomfortable, and they were God informed. I close with this quote from our founder Ernest Holmes, from this thing called life, page 120.
[00:18:03] Pure spirit exists at the very center of our being, at the innermost part of our mind. It is our true and eternal self, such life as we have flows from it. There is nothing to our real being other than life and what it does through us.
[00:18:21] Let's surrender to that today and always. And let's pray together. Please join me as we go within. We breathe in this beautiful life.
[00:18:32] We breathe in the breath of life and allow ourselves to just feel and sense that divine presence within us that is calling to each one of us. I know it's calling to me and to every person who's listening and watching because we're here together,
[00:18:49] and I believe that we are always drawn to that which is most important for us to see and hear at any given moment. And so we are here together now because this is life and God and the universe is called to each one of us.
[00:19:03] That says, please my beloved one whom I am well pleased. Show up. Be here fully. Be as alive as you can possibly be. And so we heed that call of our soul. We heed that inner, inner most intentionality to step forward being our authentic self.
[00:19:28] And I accept an affirm that that divine life is touching and expressing through each one of us powerfully guiding us into the surrender of the masks that have kept us from being and experiencing and expressing our true self this day.
[00:19:49] I know the wisdom that permeates each one of us. I know the divine love that guides us forward. I know the light that lives in every being is seeking to shine itself through all in all and as all.
[00:20:06] And so this prayer this day is an alignment with that call for each one of us. And I invite us to take a deep breath and to accept the call.
[00:20:19] The call to be ourselves simply, joyfully and to trust our life to be in resonance to the greatest and highest good for us as we continue to be more and more and more of the authentic self.
[00:20:37] And I'm so grateful that this is the truth for us about us and as us now. So very grateful. I release this word into the action of the law, letting it be, letting it go in full surrender and say and so it is on man.
[00:21:00] Thank you for listening to the Mylhychearch podcast. This podcast is made possible by the generous contributions from listeners like you. If you'd like to make a donation, please visit us at Mylhychearch.org. Have a fabulous day.