One of my favorite spiritual teachers is the great Nasruddin,
A Sufi teacher,
Who is kind of like a spiritual idiot,
Which for some reason has great personal resonance for me.
And there was once a kingdom and the king declared that only truth could be spoken in the kingdom.
And Nasruddin arrived there one day and the king had a guard and their gallows set up so if you tell the truth,
You can get in,
But if you lie,
You get hung.
And so Nasruddin arrives and the soldier there asks him what his purpose is for entering the city and Nasruddin says,
I'm here to be hanged.
And the guard answers him,
Well,
We're only hanging people who lie.
Well then hang me anyways.
But that would mean the soldier said that you were telling the truth,
Your truth,
Nasruddin replied.
Not a very funny story,
But in some ways of thinking all these different versions of truth,
It kind of reminds me a little bit of what it's like to live in the United States in 2024.
Do you notice how fuzzy it can seem sometimes that the truth has become?
So much that many of us fear that we may lose it all together.
So many layers and misunderstandings and versions of the truth.
And indeed there are many layers of the truth.
My marriage has taught me,
For example,
That sometimes in an argument,
Even though I'm right,
I'm wrong.
Even though I might be right about the point or remembering something that happened in a particular way,
If I'm not listening,
If I'm not compassionate,
I've lost the truth.
It's a reminder that in our relationships,
Who wins in an argument isn't who's right.
It's who gets back to love first,
Just like the beautiful song that was shared with us.
One of the most important spiritual understandings there is,
Is that my truth and the truth are two different things.
My truth and the truth are two different things.
It's great when they intersect together,
But they're two different things.
My truth is made up of my experiences,
My thoughts and beliefs,
My feelings and emotions,
My hopes and aspirations,
My neuroses and my bias.
And I wouldn't say it's fiction,
But it's certainly not nonfiction.
Let's put it that way.
And when my truth for me is all that there is,
It's an isolating,
Lonely place to be.
I have to remember that even though I may not know every aspect of what it is,
That the truth is something real.
It's symbolic of spirit itself and the heart of all spiritual practice in so many ways is that willingness to put the,
My truth aside so that I can engage and open my heart with discerning faith to allow a greater truth in.
In the truth,
We may say there are some divine conclusions we can come to.
In my truth,
There is attachment to outcome.
In the truth,
There is a commitment to the highest and best.
In the truth,
In my truth,
There is my perception of reality.
In the truth,
There is comfort that can come in embracing the mystery.
In my truth,
I isolate myself in arrogance when I think it's all that is.
In the truth,
I enter with humility.
All are welcome.
The truth informs my truth and it grows.
In spiritual practice,
When I'm meditating only in a place of my truth,
I'm not really meditating.
I'm just processing all my thoughts,
All my feelings,
All my memories,
All my worries.
But when I open up to the truth,
I'm informed not by the life that I'm living,
But by that divine life that's living me.
I come present and I'm relieved of my stories.
I'm relieved of my judgments and I'm informed at the deep heart level by what's really,
Really real.
When I'm practicing affirmative prayer just from my truth,
It's all about trying to manipulate and bend the laws of nature to demonstrate what I want.
It's my wishes and my hopes.
It's not a bad thing.
But when I practice prayer and awareness of the truth,
I am ready to pray for the highest and best good.
I am willing to accept the life that the divine has in mind for me.
Emerson said of prayer,
That any prayer other than for the all good is vicious.
And I've learned that in my prayer practice.
If I can't wish it for everybody,
I don't pray for it for myself.
I don't mean that in the sense that I pray that each and every one of you has a better relationship with my spouse.
But when I'm praying for love,
I want love for you.
When I'm praying for abundance,
I want abundance for all people.
And there's something freeing and enlightening and uplifting about that.
Isolated in my truth,
I'm in a sad arrogance.
But when I'm open to the truth,
It's then that I can interact with the other my truths out there.
Your truth.
And there can be this space where my truth and your truth can meet in the truth together and we can deepen and grow.
The greatest sacrament in life there is.
Coming together in understanding in spirit.
So I'm sharing some of my own personal rules for spiritual discernment today.
And that's the first one.
That my truth for me is different than the truth.
And thank God for that.
Socrates said that the beginning of wisdom isn't knowledge,
But it's not knowing.
It's admitting that we don't know.
Shunryu Suzuki said,
In the beginner's mind,
There are many possibilities.
In the expert's mind,
There are few.
Gandhi said that his religion wasn't Hinduism,
But the truth.
I think that's true of us religious scientists as well.
Our religion is for the truth.
It's what we're committed to.
It's what we're dedicated towards.
Even if it disappoints the my truth,
We're always focused on heading where that truth is leading us.
Gandhi said,
I believe that we can all become messengers of God if we cease to fear others and seek only God's truth.
I do not believe I am seeking only God's truth and have lost all fear of people.
I do feel that God is with the movement of non-cooperation.
I have no special revelation of God's will.
My firm belief is that God reveals himself daily to every human being,
But we shut our ears to that still,
Small voice.
That's what opening up to a greater truth is.
It's listening to the deeper layers within ourselves.
And this is what I mean today by faith and discernment.
Faith and discernment for me isn't the kind of faith that's just in conviction of your beliefs.
It's about being open and committed to the truth wherever it leads us.
It's not so much the faith of fake it till you make it,
But the faith of taking divine ideas and experimenting with them in your life to see what shows up.
It's not the faith of act as if,
But doing our damnedest to be true to what is.
I want to be true to what is and deal with whatever the consequences are of just that.
I remember being 16 years old and reading the great Catholic mystic of the Middle Ages,
Meister Eckhart.
And I remember coming upon the following line that really helped shape my spirituality.
Eckhart says,
What is truth?
The truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it,
I could keep truth and let God go.
Little mind bending,
Isn't it?
What is truth?
The truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it,
I could keep truth and let God go.
I had to think about that for days.
I still think about it these days.
The idea being that God is truth.
And even if a perspective of God stands in the way of it,
We have to let it go.
It's that idea that we can see so many people challenged with,
That if your religion is keeping you from God,
It's not religion.
If your religion is keeping you from respecting humanity,
It's not religion.
If your partisanship is keeping you from patriotism,
You're no patriot.
If your participation in the diversity and equity and inclusion committee is keeping you from embracing diversity and being inclusive and supporting others,
It's not diversity,
Equity and inclusion.
It's so easy to make that my truth mistake that we wind up betraying the very virtues and spirit that we're seeking to create and bring forth in our lives.
And that's why there's so much wonder in embracing the mystery and being willing to not know so that we can be greater informed and uplifted in our lives.
A second rule of spiritual discernment for us this morning.
This is important for us at Mile High because we're big tent spirituality here.
Lots of different ideas,
Lots of different beliefs,
All united in our commitment to the truth.
And our tool here is affirmative prayer,
But you'll meet people here who consider themselves mediums or that work with a light or Reiki or that utilize tarot or wisdom cards.
And we're open at the top here.
We love to explore all of that,
Except I would suggest one rule for you that I use for myself.
And that is the moment anyone tells you that they have a power that you do not have within yourself or the ability to cultivate,
Walk away,
Walk away.
They can be talented.
They can be gifted,
But every great spiritual teacher who was worth their own salt,
Never pointed at themselves.
They always pointed to let you know that the truth is within you and you can utilize it and make it so in your life.
It's that misuse of power,
That manipulation,
That tricking,
Which has caused all of the negative stuff that comes out of religion and spirituality.
If someone's not pointing back to the power in you,
Walk away.
A third rule for spiritual discernment,
Similar but a little different than the first for me,
Is to recognize that perception is not reality.
Perception is not reality.
It can be part reality.
And it's interesting for us,
For the scientists,
Because in a way we're responsible for this idea,
You know,
Think it and get there.
And yet I think this belief,
If we look through social media and politics and news and everything going on in the world,
We buy into this idea that perception is reality and wind up surrendering our commitment to truth.
And in that sometimes we lose ourselves.
Sometimes we lose relationships.
Some of us fear that we may lose our country and our fellowship and good citizenship and care of one another from this idea that perception is reality.
We're spiritually mature here in our teaching in the sense that we can recognize the difference between lowercase reality and uppercase reality,
Uppercase R reality.
Lowercase reality is fluid.
It's always changing.
It's always transforming.
It should always be challenging us to grow and evolve and expand.
That capital R reality,
Which we refer to as the changeless reality,
Also includes those empirical truths,
Those unchanging facts of life.
And we get to live in both of them as we expand our understanding,
But don't sacrifice the greater truth to try and be right.
Just try and stay in that one perspective.
I love something our founder,
Ernest Holmes said.
He said,
Our thinking doesn't change reality at all.
Some people think it does,
But it never flattened the world when they thought it was flat.
It only flattened their experience on a round one.
When someone knew it was round,
They could navigate it.
I apologize to any flat earthers out there in the audience.
What this means to me,
And it's part of our calling as religious scientists and mile hires,
Is that we always recognize even in the most dismal or challenging circumstances,
There's a greater truth.
We edge towards love and peace.
We embrace greater possibility.
We believe in the inherent love,
Beauty,
And divine perfection in each individual and their ability to embody and bring it forth.
It's hard sometimes.
It can be damn hard work,
But that's what we're called to do.
Some of you may have noticed we're in a presidential election year.
Anyone notice that?
And I was getting to share with our spiritual leaders at our centers for spiritual living a conference in South Carolina a few weeks back,
And I'll share it with you as well,
That it's about that time when congregants are going to start coming to spiritual leaders,
Pulling out their hair,
Going a map,
Where do you think it's better to live,
Canada or Mexico?
There's that anxiety.
And it's understandable to have anxiety when you care about your country and what direction it's going in.
And as spiritual leaders,
This is for all of us,
We have to decide,
Are we going to pull our hair out too?
Are we going to say,
Well,
That place looks pretty cool in Canada there.
I wouldn't mind living there.
Or are we going to respond,
Not denying that we may be anxious,
But with that higher consciousness.
It's something again,
So unique and powerful about our teaching is that we are an American spirituality,
Not just in the sense that we were formed in America,
But our faith more than any other faith there is,
Is aligned with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence,
Which we embrace to mean that every individual on this planet has a divine right and a divine calling towards liberty,
Towards freedom,
For justice,
For the pursuit of their happiness and their joy.
We believe in that not just as the law of our land,
But as an article of our faith.
On page one of the Science of Mind,
Holmes says that the divine plan is one of freedom.
Bondage is not God ordained.
Freedom is the birthright of every living soul.
What an opportunity for us in the midst of uncertainty,
In the midst of the election to hold that higher truth,
That our country is a divine idea in the mind of God and that we can give that energy and encourage others to,
To know a highest and best outcome is taking place.
Not always easy,
But that's the calling.
Another one for us is to bring a consciousness of wholeness to every circumstance.
That doesn't mean we put on rose colored glasses.
That means that we include all of the my truths in our consciousness of our country.
That's the one that recognizes that,
Yes,
We love the Declaration of Independence and our founders didn't apply it to everybody at the time.
We've only been practicing it for like 50 years,
Seeking to.
It's that ability to,
To recognize and still hold all of our institutions as sacred,
Even when we may be criticizing them,
To hold sacred our three branches of government,
Our schools and our teachers,
Our churches and our ministers,
Our doctors and our nurses,
Our police people and our fire people.
You can uphold the highest expectation of them and still seek to reform them.
It's when we get on the fringes that we so distrust that we,
We weave that pessimism.
And when we get back to center,
We can have that consciousness of seeking to transform and uplift,
But we do it from a place of wholeness and love,
Not spite and hate.
We have that ability.
I love what James Baldwin once said.
He said,
I love America more than any other country in the world.
And exactly for this reason,
I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
We can,
We can practice tough love with one another,
And yet we can hold a consciousness of wholeness for our lives and our country and for our wellbeing,
Because I want you to have hair.
I want you to have as much peace of mind as possible.
Lastly,
Something us religious scientists are so good at,
It's the,
It's the covert curriculum of all of our talks and all of our classes,
And it's how to communicate with one another.
We know how to listen.
We know how to seek to understand where someone's coming from.
Even when we don't agree,
We seek to expand understanding,
Not to limit understanding.
I was listening to an interview with a Republican congressperson from Pennsylvania,
And he said that he thought that the number one problem facing our country was lack of bipartisanship.
And I thought that was a profound thing to say in light of gun violence and reproductive rights and the economy and the deficit and immigration,
All these important things.
But it speaks to that idea that some of these issues may actually have pragmatic solutions,
But there's so much distrust.
There's so much,
My truth is better than your truth,
That there's not that ability to listen,
To build trust where it's lacking,
And to make those important decisions just like we do in our own individual life.
And again,
It's not my intention to be political here,
But to recognize that all of us are affected by this in our day-to-day lives,
Who are seeking to be good citizens.
And it's our sacred responsibility to use faith and discernment to seek that greater truth that we want for our children and for their children as well.
Speaking of perception not being reality,
I always love watching everything that's happening in the social world.
And one of the big perception things that's coming up a lot has to do with age and ageism.
You notice that?
I'm not here to apply it to the election in any way,
But it's so interesting that we live in this time where we no longer know what it means to be 80 or 70 or 50.
It's kind of a wonderful thing,
But we have to stop and pause and say,
What does it mean?
What does it mean now that I'm this age?
I don't know.
We have to decide what it means.
I love a gentleman,
A Dr.
Howard Tucker,
He's a hundred years old,
Still a practicing doctor in Ohio.
And he shares,
The number of older practicing physicians has increased.
This is a tribute to the sophistication of modern medicine,
Which allows doctors to live longer and to the fact that many physicians have forsaken smoking.
I remember when doctors with a cigarette dangling between their lips would advise patients to smoke because it will curb your appetite and quiet your nerves.
Dr.
Tucker has been practicing medicine for 75 years and he shares that studies shows that only about 30% of people over the age of 65 show or demonstrate cognitive decline,
Which means 65% don't at all.
And as I know,
Because many of my friends are in this congregation,
The ageism out there is a real thing.
Someone who has Carl Rogers has said,
Said not growing older,
But older and growing is,
Is trying to get a new job and they're told you're too experienced.
They go in to get some healthcare and they're,
They're spoken down to or treated like they're overly frail.
We want it.
We want to get that out of our consciousness.
We want to get ageism out of our consciousness and judge each individual by themselves.
If Dr.
Tucker's exhibit a,
I'll give to you as well.
Exhibit B,
The Rolling Stones,
80,
79 and 76 years old,
In my opinion,
Put out the best album of the year in 2023.
It's called Hackney Diamonds.
And if you like rock and roll,
It's wonderful,
But it's some of the best songwriting that I've ever experienced.
And it's so cool because they're not trying to be 20 or 40 or 60 or even 70.
They're being who they are and they're able to write songs that a 20 year old probably could never write,
Sharing from the wisdom of their experience,
Their joy of life.
And in their elder wisdom,
That's the sense of timelessness that only a song and really good music can bring you that,
That sense of experiencing the beauty of life.
So my truth is not the truth.
If someone is telling me they have a power that I don't have within me,
I walk away.
Perception is not reality,
Although we,
It's what we have to discern reality,
But be,
Be humble about it.
Hold a high consciousness.
And I have many more,
I'm going to share one more.
One of mine that I share with ministers is that if your talk is under 25 minutes,
It's about them.
If it's over 25 minutes,
It's about you.
And I realize I'm right at that point.
Here's the last one.
Never hold yourself back from who you are becoming.
Never hold yourself back from who you are becoming.
The greatest obstacle between you and who you are becoming is yourself.
That self judgment,
Those stories we tell about ourselves,
What we think we're not capable of,
So we're afraid to try that resistance that gets built up.
Never hold yourself back from who you are becoming.
I remember my first day of ministerial school,
It was the summer of 2002.
And we had this retreat in Santa Barbara,
California,
And we're all getting our food.
We're like first day of school,
Nervous students.
And there is a great minister in our movement,
Dr.
Lloyd Tupper is there to speak and he's chatting it up with the students.
And I was a part of the Huntington Beach Church and the senior minister there had just resigned.
And so he got to chatting with me and he asked me where I was from.
I said I was from the church in Huntington Beach.
And he said on purpose really loud,
Are you going to be their next minister?
And I was kind of like a fifth grader who gets called out on their crush in front of their crush.
I just turned beet red.
No,
No,
That's not me.
I could never do that.
And I was a little mad at him and I kind of wrestled with it for a couple of days and I figured out,
Oh,
He did that on purpose.
He knew I wasn't going to be the next senior minister of the Huntington Beach Church of Religious Science,
But he was testing and encouraging me to step into who I was becoming.
It's so wonderful when we have those people in our lives who hold us to who we are becoming.
But the best spiritual thing we can do for ourselves is to hold ourselves there as well,
To overcome the resistance,
The fear,
The sense of not enoughness,
And to know that by stepping into who we are becoming,
It gives us all the tools that we need to live the grandest and best life possible.
Who you are becoming is a real thing.
It's not just a possibility,
It is an actuality in the mind of spirit.
And when we have enough courage to step into it,
Enough vulnerability,
Enough strength,
Enough discernment,
It is embodied in us and we become not just what we are meant to be,
But that who we really,
Really are.
