Off With the Training Wheels with Josh Reeves

[00:00:01] Hey so happy to have you here at our Mile Hi Church Podcast. Are you feeling some awe today? Well, we are and we're having the wonderful expert on awe Mr. Dacker, Kelpner with us in one of our renowned speaker events on Friday November 1st

[00:00:18] He knows about it. He studied it. He's a scientist. It's gonna be great early bird tickets are on sale for in-person sales right now through July 7th Go to Mile Hi Church.org to get your ticket. Love to have you with us.

[00:00:32] Good morning again and happy Father's Day again as well and get my quotes together here. I do have notes. They don't usually use them. They are, they are important anyone doing anything fun today? But Wilkinson, one of a celebrated college football coaches of all time,

[00:01:02] Oklahoma sooners. Any boomersuners here? Okay in the back there, boomersuner His son Jay several years ago published a book of letters that his dad had written him And I'm gonna be reading portions of a letter that bud wrote to Jay in September 1960

[00:01:24] And my spiritual hope is that you might hear a little bit of a fatherly voice speaking to you as well Jay had wanted to play for his dad in Oklahoma, but things wound up that he wound up at Duke University instead and he really was struggling there

[00:01:41] And but knew that and shared the following with his son When any person leaves a pleasant situation to enter the unknown, there's always the realization of how nice good and comfortable things were before Yet only by facing the future and accepting new and progressively more difficult challenges

[00:02:01] Are we able to grow, develop, and avoid stagnation? You have more total all around ability in all fields than anyone I have ever known You will certainly be a great man and make a great contribution to the world

[00:02:15] But to do this you must take on new and progressively more difficult challenges And well-consens speaks beautifully To me of this concept of what we call spiritual growth Spiritual growth which is about increasing our spiritual awareness But it's also about our commitment to our own thriving

[00:02:38] Parker Palmer one said the thing about wholeness is once you realize your whole you have to live your whole life And that does not mean a life of comfort and ease as much as we may enjoy comfort and ease

[00:02:53] It means stepping into the unknown it means struggling sometimes it means hard looks in the mirror That commitment to our own thriving is a byproduct of spiritual growth How many of us remember having training wheels on our bicycles when we were kids?

[00:03:15] And when did that be great if we just kept those wheels on our whole lives? No There are greater challenges that call us there is a greater Desire to be free to go as fast as possible to have fun

[00:03:32] How many of us remember when those training wheels were taken off? I remember writing free on my bike. I was doing just great. It was a great E.T. bike and then the handlebars fell off Tom Boygow, but but you get back on

[00:03:46] Rilky referred to the idea that life is about being defeated by grander and grander things And the rights of passage of our lives teach us this just this The walls of the crib come down the high chair gets handed down The car seat goes away

[00:04:06] We get to walk to the convenience store for the first time By ourselves Over and over life is calling us into these new and profound experiences But I wonder just like there are actual Physical training wheels if there aren't Training wheel ideas

[00:04:27] Psychological training wheels that are given to us to help us find our way And when we honor those training wheels and we let them go We move on to living in greater freedom

[00:04:41] But a lot of us because these training wheels are invisible we try to hold onto them We keep them in our lives and they cause us to stagnate Training wheels kept too long aren't wheels there are locks

[00:04:56] That keep us from greater ways of understanding and being the best who we are in our lives Again, they can be really innocent I'm going to find someone to complete me

[00:05:10] What a sweet idea and tell you learn that no one can complete you and that the best relationships or those where we celebrate our Holiness together I can do anything I set my mind to a Wonderful idea and yet as we live the spiritual life

[00:05:27] We realize that sometimes there's a bigger mind than just our own that has ideas for our life I'm going to embrace full freedom of absolute independence and doing just what I want to do

[00:05:41] And tell you realize that freedom has a lot more to do with commitment and responsibility than you thought Life is very complex and training wheels help us find our way But they will never help you be on your way

[00:05:57] on your true path and your true way of being and so I want to Explore a few of the training wheels that are common for children that some of us never grow out of and

[00:06:09] invite each of you to think about training wheels that may be holding you back from your greater becoming as well One training wheel that was helpful for me. I'll stay in a few different ways Some people call it hell

[00:06:24] Some people may call it the idea of a judgmental god or just that this life is a struggle Between powers of good and powers of evil When I was young this mythology actually helped me a little bit

[00:06:40] Because I learned that there's good choices and not so good choices to make and I got really good at making those Choice those good choices in front of my parents and in front of elders but when no one was watching

[00:06:52] I got to think to myself what do I really want to do in this situation? And it was kind of helpful to consider that there was a presence that was watching me

[00:07:02] That was seeing if I was doing good or not so good not to send me to an internal lake of flames But but to watch me and it was a great mythology for something I couldn't understand at the time that we today tend to call

[00:07:17] Karma or the law of causing effect to learn that every choice I make whether or not someone is Watching is received by a creative medium That I co-create with this creative medium and it demonstrates in my life

[00:07:34] So it was a good idea when I was younger, but I held on to those wheels too long a belief in judgment a belief in an after life that could harm me And that caused me to have shame about my body

[00:07:51] It caused me to be less authentic and Transparent not wanting to share mistakes or sins that I've made at a fear of Rejecting it caused me so many times because of mistakes that I made to reject myself To keep myself out of heaven or love

[00:08:09] It caused me to Be watching all these things about battles between good and evil and to start labeling people that way It's this training wheel of of hell and of bad that is right at the heart of what I've been calling this year They the politics of other

[00:08:28] This politics of other that we see in our country and in many places around the world where it's our been our national Pastimes since our founding to demonize

[00:08:37] Politicians will probably always do that but we've got to this point where we now demonize the people who vote for those politicians You notice that?

[00:08:45] We get this politics of other where we're always classifying ourselves as the good and these people over here and these people over here as bad and we lose

[00:08:55] What we're needing the training wheel for to learn that we're all one to learn that we're all integrated to learn that we live on one planet I was Smith and a couple weeks ago to hear the story of Ed White Ed White in the 1960s was almost an

[00:09:14] Astronaut he wasn't astronaut. He just didn't get to go into outer space and when that didn't quite happen Became a world renowned sculptor and artist he's located right here in Denver, Colorado and a couple weeks ago He got to be one of these blue origin Amazon

[00:09:31] Space trips he got to be the oldest Person ever in space Beating out the great William Schatner who got to do it a couple years ago And I'm always interested in hearing what people have to say when they return and get back down to earth

[00:09:48] And White was in an interview and I love something that he said he said you look at the United States of America All these states were half of them are red and the other part of blue from space. There's no dividing line there

[00:10:00] It's all just one mass of earth and so why in the world do we have two groups of people that Can't get along with each other it makes no sense

[00:10:09] He goes on I wish that every single person that was elected to national office was required to take three Orbits around this earth and You'll see that there's no dividing things between these countries There's no dividing line between Russia and Ukraine and China and Taiwan

[00:10:26] This whole thing is integrated together and if we don't do something to protect this thing We can easily destroy it. I don't know about you, but there was that little box to check at the end of the taxes to send a dollar for that

[00:10:38] That program I would do it Also you could build a little station and leave some people up there everyone's in a while Our founder Irtis Holmes said if you want to stay out of hell No one can ever be in it

[00:10:55] If you want to stay out of hell No one can ever be in it. It sounds like a cute little saying but when you go deeper into it It's very profound

[00:11:04] It's very profound to me because it conveys to me that you can only enter into heaven when you have totally Eliminated a consciousness of hell no judgment no blame No resentment

[00:11:22] Then and only then can you enter into the kingdom of heaven be at a place or a consciousness that we embody It's not until we let this training wheel of other up hell of evil go as much bad as we see in the world

[00:11:39] That we can truly stand in the good and live as Presences for unity in our lives Well, Kinsen goes on sharing with a son You will grow and develop and direct relationship to the way you meet and overcome what at first seemed to be hard assignments

[00:11:59] You will learn to love Duke to take great pride in the school and their football team You're that kind of person by developing as a student and an athlete you will prepare yourself to do bigger and better things when you graduate

[00:12:12] Always remember that I believe in you no matter what You must do what seems right to you Don't be swayed by what other people think My grandmother a great lady one of the finest I've ever known

[00:12:24] Always told me when I was a young boy growing up to dare to be a Daniel Dare to stand alone it is the best advice one can have for happy successful living You can know you have a training wheel idea when you haven't thought about it yourself

[00:12:44] There's no such thing as a training wheel idea that isn't passed on to us or given to us in some form It's when you're thinking for yourself that you're set free that you're on those two wheels when you're on the right road

[00:13:01] Another training wheel that we inherit as children that stagnates us if we don't get rid of them Don't talk to strangers Don't talk to strangers. How many people still abide by that now stranger danger?

[00:13:15] Stranger danger don't talk to strangers very important when you're a young child to learn over time That there are some people who are not looking out for your best interests that there are some people who Have issues of the wrong that you need to avoid very very important

[00:13:34] But as we get older what we have to learn is is discernment That trust should never be automatic But it's something we cultivate and build and yet the willingness to trust is one of the most important Points of human connection

[00:13:50] So do talk to strangers in a world today where there are infinite numbers a Points of view. I just wish that we were a little bit more focused on understanding On building our understanding so that our point of view can expand and include a little bit more

[00:14:11] And talking to so-called strangers or the other is such an essential part of how to get there To understand why someone decided to immigrate to America To understand why someone loves the person that they do

[00:14:30] To understand how it is that someone could root for the Dallas Cowboys with some curiosity and some good questions We can Grow in our understanding and we can make some of the best connections of our lives Some of my best friends are strangers

[00:14:49] I love the story of Ali Cole and Ruby. We're's Bikki who were two Young college students touring a university on a bus and they decided to build up enough Courage to talk to one another

[00:15:05] I often think of something that Emerson said he said there is more kindness in us than we will ever know And there's something when we start a conversation or we open up to listening to someone we haven't met yet

[00:15:17] That can reveal the depths of that kindness and can make us better people because of it and sometimes give us the deepest answers We're looking for in our lives So Ali and Ruby got to talking and they learned that they had a lot in common

[00:15:33] They were both of Chinese origin They both been adopted by American parents and because of their age they both knew that Almost certainly that they were victims of China's one child policy That either a they were given up for adoption because they were a second child or be

[00:15:56] They were the first child and not wanted And what an immense amount of Challenge to go through life in your own consciousness not knowing for sure if your birth parents really wanted you

[00:16:11] So they began to share a little bit more of their stories and one of the girls got brave as well and decided to pull up some pictures of the orphanage that she had grown up in The other girl passed

[00:16:22] Look there I am right there in the back of your picture The girls would share that for them this was a hundred percent god Strangers are the illusion that Where isolated is the illusion and when we're open with yes

[00:16:44] discernment and skepticism but also willing to show a greater amount of kindness and understanding We can make the best connections in our lives and it's often our conversations with strangers that let us know Where we're on our path and where it is That we are going

[00:17:01] I love something that tick not hon 1 said he said only your compassion and your loving kindness are Vincible and without limit when we can use that kindness and use that compassion

[00:17:15] We're off with that training wheel of other and we're living the lives that we are meant to live Can you identify for yourself a training wheel that you might be working on releasing?

[00:17:31] Many of us are carrying around training wheels that maybe helped us them but they're damaging to us now The purpose of life is to get married and live happily ever after That's not a great training wheel when your marriage sucks Right or you're in some divorce

[00:17:49] There are so many different examples of Things that we think we need to do to please or win the acceptance of others What our role is supposed to be in a society and then it doesn't work out where we hold ourselves

[00:18:04] Hostage with these training wheels and we feel stuck and I'm willing to bet I'm a betting minister that if you go to that place where you may be experiencing Struggle right now Where there may be a problem or challenge

[00:18:23] I'm going to bet that the bigger problem than the problem or the challenge is the idea that you have about the problem or the challenge If you find yourself in an area of your life hitting your head against a wall over and over

[00:18:38] It's a training wheel idea that it's time to say thank you for how you serve me up to now But I'm ready to let you go Can you say that with me training wheel? I'm ready to let you go all of us have

[00:18:57] What I would call our role of empowerment and our role of dysfunction and the training wheel ideas these old ideas that we carry With us are essential to how this plays out You know you're in your role of empowerment when you're living in trust

[00:19:15] When you feel a creative spirit When you trust yourself each day to bring the best and all life around you and those that you work with to come together and become their best as well That at least for me is when I'm in my role of empowerment

[00:19:32] You can know that you're in your role dysfunction when you're leading from a place of fear instead of love When you're leading from a place of control instead of trust When you're leading from a place of manipulation instead of honesty

[00:19:46] When you're leading from a place of passive aggressive victimhood Instead of responsible assertiveness You can know that you've given your power over to an idea that is limiting you and serving you no longer Yes, life can be hard. Yes, there are challenges around us all the time

[00:20:04] But until we are willing to look at the thoughts that we are contributing to these We can only find where we're being locked where we're holding ourselves back As our founder Ernest Holmes once said if you believe you are locked in a room and

[00:20:19] Believe it so firmly that you do not even try the doors and windows the results are exactly the same as though you were Though the actual truth may be that there is no lock and that you are free to go as you please

[00:20:33] Set yourself free by catching those training wheels when they come up and Continue as often as you need to to let them go I remember an experience of the day that I knew I was going to propose to my wife

[00:20:51] It was a day I let go of some training wheels and the training wheel I was operating in we had been together for four years is that a good relationship is harmonious

[00:21:04] That a relationship is about being with this perfect person who's totally committed to making you happy and as Many of us learn in relationships. They're not always about that

[00:21:14] And at this particular time there was I don't even remember what we were struggling with but there was some fighting and some arguing I was at the church I was working for at the time and we had a wonderful board president of onwards and she says Josh

[00:21:26] How's your relationship going? And I gave it dramatic sigh well It's going okay, but it sure is hard work sometimes Hmm and if on See look me right in the ice is a Josh. I've been married for over 50 years and it's still hard work sometimes

[00:21:47] And boom off went those training wheels even though I was in my mid 30s There was that strong realization at that time that a hard work is not a sign to exit your relationship That hard work isn't a sign that your relationship isn't working

[00:22:02] It's a sign that it is and so what are you going to do about it? Are you going to do the hard work? Are you going to do the hard work? And I knew that day

[00:22:10] I would propose to my wife and thanks for staying married to me so long April One more training wheel to rid ourselves of that we grow up with as as children that's kind of important Is that work and play or different things?

[00:22:29] The training wheel that work and play are different things. We need this as a children eat your peas and then you can have dessert Do your homework and then you can play outside Sit with that and hell in for an hour and then you can play video games

[00:22:43] Good training training wheel gets us into balance but when we carry that into our lives We wind up living a superficial work folks during the week and escape artists on the weekend We don't live a coherent life when we make work and play separate things

[00:23:01] To truly embody the co-creative spirit of co-creating our life with an infinite mind all around us is to Realize that we can engage in our work with an immense spirit of play and creativity and that we get the

[00:23:17] Absolutely best work done when we're at play and having fun That's the richness of life and when we can find great wisdom in the mundane And have a sense of playfulness and release even when we're engaged in our hardest of work

[00:23:35] We lost another great musician this year the great Richard Sherman of the Sherman brothers Richard and Robert there were Disney's music men Great contributors to the great American song book and

[00:23:49] Definitely your worm writers of songs that gets stuck in your head perhaps even in an annoying way such as it's a small world after all Chim chim Tery the bare necessities and so on and I love a story that

[00:24:05] Robert who died several years ago his son Jeffrey tells about his dad and the brothers Working for Disney wanting to please him we're working on the film Mary Poppins and their music kept getting rejected

[00:24:17] Here's going to be one of the biggest movies of all time. They already know it They're in charge of the music and they can't quite get there and they're really struggling

[00:24:24] So much so that Jeffrey shares that he came home from school one day to find his father Robert Absolutely in pitch dark blackness All the blinds were drawn and yet Robert loved his son so much that he'd lit up and he said how was your day?

[00:24:39] Said my day was just fine. I got the polio vaccine today and Jeffrey was terrified of shot So he said are you okay did you get a shot?

[00:24:46] No, no, they just put a cube of sugar with the medicine right there in the spoon and it went right down Robert's eyes lit up He grabbed the phone dick get over here quick and they wrote what's the song?

[00:25:02] Okay, we don't have to sing the whole thing there it is And Jeffrey would say of his father I think that the love of his family and each of us kids inspired different things all the time for him

[00:25:14] It was kind of like that was his yarn and he could make it into the most beautiful afghan He could take something mundane like that and see the magic in it and I love that idea of the of the yarn

[00:25:27] To see your creative spirit your co-creative relationship with God in every aspect of your life To make doing the dishes the meditation to make going to work going to recess To make going to recess that place where you get your best ideas There was a great

[00:25:48] Book that came out several years ago called how to get ideas by Jack Foster and I love what he shares He says Richard Drew has a bad idea that turned out to be Scotch tape Joseph previously invented carbonated water while he was investigating the chemistry of air

[00:26:03] Alexander Graham Bell was trying to invent a hearing aid when he invented the telephone Volcanized rubber was discovered by accident by Charles Goodier so was Annie not gasoline by Charles Cettering so was electric current by Luigi Giovanni so were potato chips by George Crum

[00:26:21] So was America by Christopher Columbus the moral never cry over spilled milk Find a use for it or invent a better milk carton when we're able to identify our training wheels When we're caught or confused or stuck or when we're writing free and looking back

[00:26:43] We can say thank you to them and keep moving forward But one of the most important things is that we we own our own thoughts We own our own feelings

[00:26:52] We own our own possibility and when we bring that sense of motivation into our work and into our play We begin to weave that yarn in a way that creates a brilliant and beautiful mosaic for our lives

[00:27:08] To close with the end of but's letter to a son Jay After analyzing and evaluating the circumstances always do what seems best to you in light of your own good judgment

[00:27:22] Only in this way can you find peace of mind because you cannot be happy doing what other people think you should do You must do what you think you should do. I love you Jay more than anything in life

[00:27:35] Don't worry about things live each day by doing your best We'll look forward to talking you tomorrow love always dad and Perhaps as we move into prayer becoming aware Of the fatherly presence is in our life

[00:27:52] Physical or spiritual perhaps we might hear them say to us right now. I love you more than anything in life Don't worry about things Live each day by doing your best We'll look forward to talking to you tomorrow Love always dad

[00:28:11] Somebody of our practitioner prayer partners to stand and hold consciousness in this prayer and know these incredible beings are available for and Affirmative prayer in front of the stage after service Let us open our minds in our hearts

[00:28:28] To that divine life that is with us now and is also Encouraging us to step even more deeply into what it is Giving thanks for the ideas that brought us up to this point May we now give great thanksgiving for the ideas of now and tomorrow

[00:28:47] That help us step into greater healing and to greater wonder and to greater play and to greater creative work and to greater forgiveness and And to greater releasing and to greater self acceptance Into our greater becoming giving thanks for this divine mind and all of its emanations

[00:29:07] For all of those spirits that are rooting us on in our lives with great pride Holding us within a sacred vision that sees us as beautiful as Wonderful as magnificent just the way we are and yet holds us as well to embody that divine spirit

[00:29:24] The nose that we are whole and it's time to live fully just like that is so We let it be we let it become and so it is

[00:29:37] Thanks for listening to the mile high church podcast this podcast is made possible by the generous contributions from listeners like you to make a donation Please visit milehigh church.org