The Power Path of Heart Work, Part I with Roger Teel

[00:00:01] Welcome, this is Josh Reeves with Mile Hi Church in Lakewood, Colorado. Thank you for tuning in to our podcast today. For more information about our church, please visit our website milehighchurch.org. So, it's a reunion of another kind. I had a reunion with a story I've always loved, and I'm going to lay it on you. It's about the serendipitous meeting of a rabbi and a monk who were seated in the same row on an airplane. And so they started talking with one another,

[00:00:32] and at one point, the monk turned to the rabbi, and he said to them, now I'm aware that in your tradition, you don't eat pork, but have you ever slipped from that and had pork anyway? And the rabbi paused for a moment, and he said, well, yes, I did. I did have pork. One time, I had a ham sandwich. And they nodded and were silent for a little bit.

[00:01:00] Then the rabbi turned to the monk and said, now, have you embraced celibacy in your order? And he said, well, yes, I have. He said, well, have you ever strayed from that vow? And he said, the monk said, well, I must admit that one time I slipped from my vows with a woman I knew one time. And they nodded. After a little while, finally, the rabbi turned to the monk and said, sure beats a ham

[00:01:29] sandwich. You see, some things just have an edge over everything else in this life, much as what I wanted to talk to you about today. No one, in my humble opinion, no one can become all that they are

[00:01:56] designed and destined to be. No one can fully enjoy all the good of life that there is unless they have love as the center post of their life. And this is not merely romantic or emotional or sexual love, but I'm talking about the love that is the experience of the universal reality and presence of God,

[00:02:22] the one life, the one spirit, that universal light and cohesive, cohesive force in this universe. And in, as they sang, in every one of us. For as it is written, God is love and they that dwell in love dwell in God and God in them. It occurs to me that the spiritual journey

[00:02:47] is about disidentifying with the personality and the ego and identifying with our essence, with the true self. And the vehicle for that transformational process is the heart. The heart

[00:03:12] is the vehicle. The heart is our access point to the universal love and its healing potential. The heart is our connection into the unified field of all intelligence. The heart is our capacity to create heaven on earth. The heart. And so today and next Sunday, it's about the power path

[00:03:39] of heart work. And how it is that the heart is both a power of restoration in our life and generation. It's restoration and its healing capacities that bring us back to who we really are and heals the results of any negation. And the generation power. How it is that the heart fuels our pathway ahead and sources our authentic dreams. That's what we're going to be about.

[00:04:09] As most of you know, in 2019, I heard a call to step away from the formal ministry after 43 years in the formal ministry. And now I still am a minister. I mean, we're ordained for life and there's no way you can put one of us ministers out to pasture. It just don't happen. And so I have Roger Teel Ministries and I work with small groups and doing dream building and work with individuals who are really

[00:04:36] serious about their personal empowerment. I love doing that. It keeps an oar in the water for me. And it just dawned on me the other day that next month, I will have arrived at 50 years in the ministry because I started in June of 1976. I'm going to get the hang of it any day now, you know, any day. And so in that process, when I realized it was time to step away from the formal ministry,

[00:05:05] I knew it was time to disidentify with a role that had become so much a part of me. And instead to probe more into my essence and also to ask some really deep questions and explore the answers, not easy answers or immediate answers, but to just be open to these questions. And one of the questions most particularly was,

[00:05:30] just why, Roger, did you incarnate on this earth plane at this time? Why now? And as I reflected on that, I remembered a lofty saying that I also included in the last section of my book, This Life is Joy, by the wonderful novelist and incredible mystic Rainer Maria Rilke.

[00:05:53] And it's coming up on the screen. And he said, the work of sight is done. Do heart work now. And that hit me. The work of working with the visible, the tangible, creating this and that and the other thing is done. Turn to that invisible space and do heart work. It became crystal clear to me as I remembered that, that I commissioned myself to come here to do heart work.

[00:06:19] And I had a profound heart opening in my early 30s. And all of my days and years since then have been to really understand that fully because it was a bigger experience than I could even process at the time. To understand it, to deepen it, and to continue to explore how to express that in my life. And what I know though, is that I'm not particularly different from anyone else.

[00:06:41] I believe that apart from your unique agenda for being here on this planet, deeper than that, we are all here to do heart work. And it's time we understood that. That we are here to do heart work. That's what this plane is about. Let me explain some more.

[00:07:07] Jesus is reported to have said, in my Father's house are many mansions. And most theologians agree that nowadays in our parlance, he was saying, there are many dimensions in this vast incomprehensible reality called God or the Spirit or the life that is. Call it what you will. There are many dimensions. I have to imagine that they get more and more rarified as the beings involved in those dimensions evolve.

[00:07:36] And that every particular dimension is designed to evolve the nature of the beings that are a part of that dimension. And so it seems to me that this earth plane dimension, whose frequency is sometimes somewhat dense, is about working to understand the parameters of our consciousness and to take it forward in the most productive ways.

[00:08:05] And most particularly, what this is about is learning how to go from fear-based lives to love-based lives. That's the core curriculum for this earth school. And there's no one of us that is not commissioned. We are all commissioned to continue to work on that. And that is why we're here.

[00:08:35] As we explore and have explored as a species the creativity of our consciousness, we've produced some incredible artistic wonders and technological wonders. And if we're honest, we have to take stock in that we have created an enormous amount of continuing atrocities and tragedies. It seems like as a species we have required, given where we are in our evolution, we have required pain for our growth to stimulate our growth.

[00:09:04] Now, none of us here, mind you. But that it's typical that our pain has been the stimulus to our awakening. And it's not wrong that that's the case. It just doesn't have to always be that way. But collectively, it seems like that's the way it is. That we have required pain to produce awakening. That we have required of ourselves to experience heartlessness

[00:09:33] to begin to awaken the longing for the heart, individually and collectively. And we see the fear that is sourcing that, so predominant, that has produced the patterns of domination and prejudice and bigotry, the patterns of fear-mongering, the lust for power and money.

[00:10:00] And we just see that as the immaturity of our species ever questing to spiral up into what's possible for us. And also, the immaturity in our relatively young country as we experience that ongoingly. So it's up to us, individually, everybody here, everybody watching online,

[00:10:28] it's up to us, individually, to climb out of that collective soup. And to no longer require of ourselves heartlessness to awaken our hearts. To do our heart work. The greatest work we could ever aspire to.

[00:10:50] And what's key in heart work is to become a student and a devotee of unconditional love. This is spiritual love freed of the egoic distortions of love that create the demands and the judgments, the insecurities, the manipulations, often ascribed to love.

[00:11:16] I wouldn't even think that those activities even deserve the word love, as we're talking of it. But to understand that the essence of the universe is an unconditional love, and we're called to practice that love without the conditions we normally place upon it. That's our heart work. Now this doesn't mean that we approve of certain deeds

[00:11:42] that are done that are destructive or pain-filled or create suffering. We don't approve of that. And yet what we're still commissioned to do is to separate the deed from the doer and still source, connect with, and access unconditional love for the being. And imagine were that to become a more and more common energy

[00:12:13] that we're all a part of producing. I sometimes think of the evolution of humanity as a cresting wave out in an ocean that's gaining more and more steam, even as things seem to be getting worse. It's actually fueling more of the energy of this breakthrough into unconditional love. That we can have a radical love happening in this planet. And that we can learn that that's my curriculum.

[00:12:43] That's my curriculum. How can I love here? How can I love that? It's interesting that we're celebrating the Buddha's birthday. I love a certain Buddhist monk, a lady named Pema Chodron, and she's written a number of fine books. In one of her books, she's talking about three basic commitments in Buddhism. And the second one is to take care of one another. That's a commitment that is invited of us. And it's about a lifelong commitment to heart work,

[00:13:13] as I'm describing it, and to living that path of unconditional love. And our challenge is to seek to do that universally as best we can, and understanding that there'll be times when we don't do it well. And we have to pick ourselves up, remind ourselves of the commitment that we have made or are willing to make, and start over again, seeking to love. And here's what she says. This taking care of one another,

[00:13:41] it means opening the doorway of our life to everyone. Not just to the people we like, or the ones that smell good, or the ones we consider proper, but also to the difficult ones and the confused ones. People of all shapes, sizes, and colors, to people speaking all different languages, to people with all different points of view.

[00:14:09] It means holding a diversity party in our living room all day, every day, until the end of time. It means hard work. We can seek to do it better and better. So how do we do this? How do we do this? Well, I've got three points for you here. And the first one involves an acronym.

[00:14:35] And I'm in a support group about that. The word is SOUL. S-O-U-L. And it's a part of the first key, and that is tap your wellspring. You have a wellspring here in your precious heart.

[00:15:03] You have a wellspring that can bring forth the light and the energy and the love that we seek that makes life worth living. But we have to train ourselves to be here. And that's where that acronym comes in. It's a four-part process for actually experiencing and deepening this heart energy that I'm speaking of today. And the first, the S, is to shift. To first of all notice, compassionately, when you're judging, when you're triggered, when you're afraid,

[00:15:33] when you're out of this space that I'm talking about. Just notice it. And decide that it's time for a shift. Just decide the shift. And what you do, first of all, is take a deep breath. You take a deep breath. You take a deep breath. You still the mind. It might help. It always does me to put my hand on my heart. And then sense that the energy that is usually locked in and focused up here in the head, that energy of awareness,

[00:16:01] that I'm actually now moving that energy gradually, gently down into the heart center. That's the shift. Still from here and all the stuff our heads come up with, our egos come up with, with our past and all our habits. Take a deep breath. Get still. Bring it here. And then the second, the O, means open. Don't force anything here. Open. Your heart knows how to warm.

[00:16:31] Your heart knows that when you show up at home here in your heart, it knows how to quicken. And so you open. You don't force. You allow. Allow. Open. Just be there. Get acclimated. Recalibrated in this space. Then unify. Understand that all that you have believed about yourself, practiced, all that's been told about you,

[00:17:01] all the past, that's over. And this heart space knows nothing of it, doesn't care about it. Unify. And just proclaim, this is who I am. This is who I am. Not that stuff. And then the L is let go. Let go. Don't allow the analytical mind to come and say, oh, let me understand this here. This is what we need to do with this. No, no, no. Be still. Let go.

[00:17:31] Trust your heart. I could have put listen here too. Let go and listen. And be available to a higher leadership for your life. You've gone from the thinker to the knower. And that's our heart work. When we access the knower, we're always happier with what we do and how we think and how we live. So that's the four parts. Shift. Open. Unify. And let go.

[00:18:01] Trust your GPS. Trust your GPS. God's precious scenarios unfolding within you. So it begins with tap your wellspring. Secondly, claim your magnificence. Now this is not an ego trip. This is an appeal that we fully love ourselves.

[00:18:31] Because self-compassion is a necessary prerequisite for bringing compassion to our world. And having done this wellspring process, the soul process, we can finally say, I'm good. Sure, like everybody, I've had my journey, my ups and downs, things I regret, things I'm happy about, things. But what I know is that it is well with my soul.

[00:19:00] That indeed I am a spiritual being. And I'm willing to accept the universe's unconditional love of me that I might then be equipped to impart it into the world. A writer I've loved for years, the late Anthony DeMello, has quite a story. He was a Jesuit priest and a psychotherapist born in Mumbai, India.

[00:19:29] And earlier in his life, he admits that for many, many years he was neurotic, anxious, depressed, and selfish. And he writes, everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them. And I agreed with them. And I wanted to change, but simply couldn't no matter how hard I tried. What hurt the most was that, like the others,

[00:19:58] my best friend kept insisting that I change. So I felt powerless and trapped. Until one day, my best friend came to me and said, Anthony, don't change. I love you just the way you are. And he goes on to write that in that moment something deep within him clicked in. He had an epiphany.

[00:20:28] He had his first experience that he could be loved as he is and as he is not. That love wasn't withholding it from him until he was different. That he was beloved now. And he writes that it was an enormously powerful, transforming experience. and he discovered that in fact he did have the capacity to let go of many of the old patterns which were really the way he armored up

[00:20:57] and kept people distant and avoided intimacy. And something took him over and his heart became on fire. And in his later years, he was a totally transformed person. He went on to do incredible things, give himself in great selfless service. Moreover, it's generally agreed that he reached a very high stage of enlightenment especially via his writings until he passed in 1987.

[00:21:27] But such is the power of unconditional love to be willing to claim that my soul is magnificent. and keep the ego at bay because it's not any more magnificent than anyone else. And yet it's God-inspired, God-intended and precious. Can you claim your magnificence and own it? It feels so good. Just as you are and just as you are not, there's something bigger.

[00:21:58] It's called the beautiful beingness that you are. And then finally, after you've tapped the wellspring, you claim your magnificence, then just share your magic because then you're a vibration. You've recalibrated your consciousness to a higher frequency and you're going to find opportunities to share that magic. And the thing to do though is to constantly ask the question, what's the unconditional love curriculum in this situation?

[00:22:29] Because what I'm about is heart work. What's the unconditional love curriculum in this person, this relationship that's going on? What's the curriculum before me? And you realize I've got so much I can offer. Even if it's a very difficult or darkened experience, I've always been touched with the example of Etty Hillesum. Etty Hillesum during the Holocaust. She was a young

[00:22:58] Jewish Dutch woman. She kept a diary in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam while she was awaiting deportation to Auschwitz. She'd been assigned to the Westerbork transit camp and she wrote because, see, what happened for her is rather than hardening, she was opening and she wrote, I wish I could live for a long time so that one day I may know how to explain it,

[00:23:29] this love for human beings. Well, witnesses at that camp report her walking around as though she were free, helping, comforting, shining. She died at 29 in Auschwitz and it was a couple of decades before her diaries were published and they have touched people's hearts and transformed so many lives. You see, her heart outlived that which was trying to extinguish it.

[00:24:00] And then there are the times that are ordinary times and the magic can show up through you, through me. A couple of weeks ago I was at a doctor's office getting some tests, done. And I walked in and it was the same thing I've experienced many times. There was about six or seven folks already there. It was very early in the morning and everybody was kind of shut down and closed and just sitting there and they'd look up real briefly and go back to their phones or back to the magazine. And there was just sort of an icy

[00:24:29] feeling in the room, which understandable I suppose. And I went up to the desk to check in and to receive this clipboard full of papers I had already filled out a half dozen times before. But I assumed that they have fires regularly in the file room and that it's important to keep filling these out. And so I took my clipboard and just as I was turning around another lady came in with this beautiful child of about five years old I believe.

[00:25:00] A Downs syndrome child. And she went up to the desk to check in and I sat down. And this little girl was carrying this sort of woven cloth. It was like these layers of quilted, it was a sack, carrying some toys I guess or her precious things. And this wonderful little girl looked all around and she started going up to every one of us and giving us something out of her little bag.

[00:25:29] I got a green sort of felt squishy thing that I think was a starfish. Other guy got a car, another person got a ball and she went up and she just looked at us so intently and gave and she went around and the room warmed up like crazy. People were now looking at one another and they were giggling and they were admiring what they have. A couple started sharing,

[00:25:59] changing, exchanging and this little girl was in heaven. I thought, wow. And little child shall lead them. So I went in, had my appointment, came back out and I left with a different commitment that I was going to enter the room. I'm not going to bring a bag of toys next time but I am going to come into the room with a better energy. I'm not going to align with

[00:26:29] the pull away, hide out. Life's too damn short for this, isn't it, gang. Let's go in and share some magic. I don't know what you're going to do the rest of the day but it's going to be littered with opportunities to share your magic. So this is our heart work. I'll speak more about it next week. Heart work will lead you to

[00:26:57] so much good because just remember we have only ourselves to heal and only God's love to reveal. Let's have a prayer together and let's just do this shifting. Alright, you came here carrying perhaps some heavy burden or something on your heart perhaps or maybe you're just here to soak in the radiance that is mile high or maybe you tuned in online and you're

[00:27:27] just all so ready to receive so many of the gifts. So let's tap the wellspring. You take a deep breath, you quiet the mind. If you choose to, your hand can rest gently on your heart and just feel yourself bringing that energy from a focus in the head back home to the heart.

[00:27:57] The center meant to be the leadership of our lives all along and open. Allow. You don't have to control this, you don't have to do anything, don't work at this. Remember, your heart knows how to welcome you, how to warm you, how to begin ushering you into the holy of holies and unify. This is who I am.

[00:28:27] Not those old tapes. This is who I am and let go. Be available, just listen. Trusting that in those right moments the knower within you will guide you, uplift you, and even now invites you into the joy of

[00:28:56] being for there is only one. That one life is infinite love, infinite intelligence, the mighty presence of the living spirit in which you and I live, move, and have our being now and always. Ah, and it's love is centered right here in the heart.

[00:29:27] This isn't a private love we're concocting. It's the love of the great love flowing into our being as us. So I give thanks for the sanctity and the beauty of your precious soul. You are magnificent. You are a God intended being. I am a God

[00:29:57] intended being. And I affirm and know that as we center ourselves in this place, our consciousness expands, calibrates to a higher frequency, and as Thoreau said, we walk forward with the license of a higher order of beings, co-creating a world of love, peace, and abundance, oneness revealed, joining hands and hearts,

[00:30:26] perceiving the face of God and those around us, forgiving ourselves when we fall short of that and recommitting to this high walk, this great work. And I affirm and know that as you give, as you share the magic of your love for self, that returning to you multiplied are all the abundance you could imagine of every kind because you become an attraction for greatest good.

[00:30:56] And I affirm this is your design, your destiny, and I give thanks in our growing capacity to do this holy heart work. Thank you spirit, thank you God life, so good to know we've never been given up on, we've always been loved, and now we're participating, and it's good and very good. We give thanks for a world that works for everyone that is emerging,

[00:31:26] we give thanks for this Mile High Church community, truly a beacon of light, we give thanks for one another, life is good, we breathe it in, we own it, thank your spirit, and we let it be, and together we affirm, and so it is, and amen. Thanks for

[00:31:55] 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 milehighchurch.org.