The Majesty Of Spiritual Living

The ground of spiritual practice is meditation.

The ground of spiritual practice is meditation,

Which on the ground floor is all about hanging out with yourself.

Do you like hanging out with yourself?

Yeah,

Sometimes.

I don't know about you,

But me and me,

We sometimes have a dysfunctional relationship.

And we can all ask ourselves this question right now,

Where am I?

And it's easy to say Mile High Church,

But if you're like me,

Sometimes I'm in a thousand different places.

I'm doing everything I can to avoid being who I am,

How I am,

Where I am,

Right here and right now.

And that's what meditation is.

We bring awareness to how we are in the present moment.

And I don't care if it's peaceful and joyful,

Anxious or uncertain,

In hurt or in pain,

In anticipation.

When we bring awareness to who we are,

It develops this little thing called composure.

This little bit of self-acceptance of how we are in the present moment brings forth this consciousness or this presence called composure.

And there's this little bit of magic when we become conscious that we're in this thing called the present moment and that the present moment is different than what we think it is.

Meditation helps us move out of the universe as I think it is or ought to be into an experience of what it really is.

Ah,

What the present really is.

It's living not in my universe but in God's universe.

And there's a little bit of magic in there.

Ernest Holmes said of life that it's infinite energy coupled with limitless creative imagination.

Don't you like that?

Infinite energy coupled with limitless creative imagination.

There's something about this present moment that has a magic to it,

A special energy.

I remember in Dickens' A Christmas Carol,

There's the ghost of Christmas present.

And it's kind of interesting because he's this big giant but nobody can see him.

And he's got this torch and he walks around and sometimes he might be in a coffee shop or something and he just sprinkles some magic dust on people already in conversation and they're filled with this enchantment,

With this energy,

With this magic of being in the here and the now and getting in touch with the possibilities of what that can be.

And when we touch that magic,

It brings forth this quality we call equanimity.

Meditation,

The ground of spiritual practice,

Begins with composure which leads to equanimity,

Which leads to what I'll call today a God awareness.

A God awareness.

Don't get me wrong,

Meditation isn't about thinking about God because God is bigger than anything that you could think about her.

Meditation involves this most interesting experience of the divine becoming conscious in us.

God becomes aware of herself in each and every one of us and we become aware of that and it creates this most interesting connection.

I like how Paul put it in his letter to the Corinthians.

The mystics articulate this by saying,

Know as you are known.

What does it mean to know as I am known by a greater spirit?

By my own soul.

This is what I mean by having God awareness.

It's allowing the divine to announce itself within your own being saying,

Here I am.

And just being in that experience.

Composure,

Equanimity,

God awareness.

Do you have non-negotiables in your life?

Yeah?

Do you have non-negotiables in your life?

Yeah,

How much?

I'm going to sleep.

Not right now,

Thank you.

I'm going to get my exercise in.

I love you but I ain't going there with you.

Be aware of your non-negotiables and I would share with you that meditation is my number one non-negotiable.

I am a giving,

Perhaps even dysfunctionally,

A martyr-like person in terms of giving to others.

I do not sacrifice my morning meditation for anyone or anything.

It is essential to my being and my well-being.

Every once in a while my daughter will say to me,

Daddy,

I like mommy more than you.

Why is that,

Sweetheart?

Because mommy doesn't meditate in the mornings.

And I want to explain to my beautiful six-year-old kind of this challenging idea that I love you so,

So much,

Sweetheart.

And when I meditate in the morning,

I can love you even better.

That's the thing about commitment to the spiritual life.

We put God first.

We put God first,

Which doesn't mean above or more than anybody else.

We put God first so that we can put others first,

So that we can care for others.

We care for our own being because what other being do we have to love and to support and to uplift the people that we care about around us?

Make that morning time,

Even if you feel like you know what,

To develop that composure,

That equanimity of realizing you live in a greater-than-your-understanding universe.

Thank God.

And to have that awareness of what is sacred and meaningful,

Not just to you,

But to experience what you are to it.

There's a micro and macro level to meditation.

The micro meditation is the ritual of meditation.

It's the closed eyes and the om and the mudras and all of that stuff,

Whatever your fancy.

But what meditation is,

Is the awareness cultivated in that meditation.

So the macro of the meditation is your whole day.

You will know the quality of your meditation by the quality of your consciousness and your awareness throughout your day.

And I would argue that in our everyday lives,

Just like in our meditation,

There are two things,

Two polarities calling for our attention.

Our devotions and our distractions.

Every day is filled with devotions and distractions.

My daughter's smile,

My son's laugh,

Take me closer to God.

Devotion.

That complaint and criticism going on over here takes me away from what is sacred and meaningful to me.

Distraction.

A song that I love and adore and fills me with the meaning of my life.

Devotion.

Closer to God.

Worried and panicked about if I'll have enough time to get everything I think I need to get done done.

Distraction.

Takes me away from the sacred and who I am.

Now it's only pragmatic to say add to your devotions and seek to limit your distractions,

Right?

In fact,

I would encourage each and every one of us to intentionally add some devotions to our day.

Every day this week I'm going to have a parking affirmation.

Whenever I park,

I'm going to say I'm right where I am supposed to be.

Every day this week I'm going to add in a song that fills me with devotion and gratitude for my life and everybody in it.

Even so-and-so.

I'm going to add that in.

See,

There's something that good meditators understand about devotions and distractions.

That properly understood a distraction can take us away from God,

But ideally we can use it to get us back there as well.

We can look at those distractions that take place in our meditation and we can use them as alarm clocks to get back to center.

The construction started outside.

Thank you,

God,

Getting back to center.

That text message going off at 7 a.

M.

When I wish they wouldn't text me at 7 a.

M.

It's getting me back to God.

That thing that I forgot to do yesterday that I need to remember and I'm going to fall apart if I don't write it down right now.

It's going to be an alarm clock to get me back to the divine.

Good meditators know that there's no such thing as a distraction-free meditation,

But we do have the opportunity to utilize everything in our lives to get us back to center.

Even the distractions in our everyday,

We can use them as anchor points to pivot back to the divine.

That criticism over here,

I'm going to use it as a pivot to get back to that memory of my children's laughter.

That worry over here,

It's going to remind me to pivot back to know as I am present in the now,

God takes care of every how.

Whatever may be taking place that draws my attention away from what is most sacred and valuable to me,

It is an alarm clock to get me back to myself,

Back to my purpose,

Back to my God.

Composure,

Equanimity,

God-awareness.

This is meditation.

This is the ground of spiritual practice.

Prayer is the flower.

Meditation is the ground,

And prayer is the flower.

Because without that composure,

Without that equanimity of the magic and the possibility of the present moment,

Without that God-awareness,

Prayer can be effective,

But it's just asking God for stuff.

It's just wishing for things to happen.

That's all well and good.

The prayer that is the flower of the ground that I speak of today is a way of seeing.

It's a vision.

I don't know about you,

But as much as I pray for things to happen and take place this particular way,

Nine times out of ten,

The prayer is the answer that I'm seeking.

Because the prayer allows me to see the truth of who I am,

The truth of who others are.

Prayer is the panoramic view that helps me see my life with a consciousness of wholeness.

And nine out of ten times,

That's all I need.

Sometimes my prayer requests get in the way of the answering of my prayers.

Have you ever noticed that?

When I first became a minister,

I wanted to start a successful church.

And when it was not as successful as I wanted it to be,

It led to a crisis in faith.

I was very upset.

Why aren't my prayers working?

And what the divine would reveal to me over time is,

Josh,

You have a deeper prayer than that.

The prayer to connect and to serve spirit in all places.

Why do you need to decide just exactly how it's supposed to look like?

And so it was letting that initial prayer request go that led to me getting to be here with you today,

Which is pretty damn cool.

Yeah.

I'm not saying don't pray for things to happen.

There's so much wisdom in knowing what it is that we want.

But know that you have more wisdom in you than you will ever know.

And that there is a guidance and a passion and a purpose in you that is leading and guiding if you would just let it.

Prayer is that vision that allows us to see our lives with clarity and everything that might be seeming apart coming back together again.

In my morning spiritual practice,

I do that ground.

I do all that meditation I was talking about.

And then I have this little pivot through some reading.

I do a little prayerful reading.

This last week,

It was Thomas Merton.

He said,

The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self and enter by love into union with the life who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls.

And then I get to prayer.

And I always begin with myself,

Not because I think I'm the most important.

It's just to get it out of the way.

I'm going to start with me.

And I hold a consciousness of unity and love and well-being for my life.

And I'm not always good about saying what I want.

So I always pick four affirmations to start my year.

I say them every day.

This year for me,

I experience a deep and real love.

I embrace the richness of my life.

I am healthy and thriving.

I love taking care of me.

I fulfill my calling every day.

I love these because I'm not telling the universe what to do.

I'm just sitting in the energy of these affirmations and thinking about how they may apply to that day.

So I do my prayer work for myself,

And then I focus on the people I love.

Not with plans and schemes about what I think ought to happen in their lives.

I just know how much I love them.

I just see them in their wholeness.

I just know that there's a highest and best unfolding in them,

Even if I'm having trouble seeing it at the moment.

And friends,

There's no greater gift I've ever had than to be able to know the truth of the people that I love.

I spend some time,

Not too much time,

And then I move to people who've made particular requests of me for prayer.

They've told me what they want,

So I know the truth for them and see it as unfolding,

Just as they wish it to be,

Knowing this or something better.

Sometimes I have all these prayer requests written down and I look at them.

Sometimes I do my best to respond with memory.

And then I just move into,

I just call it freestyle.

I just sit there and say,

Who else is being called forth from my heart today to know the truth for and about?

It could be a friend I haven't thought about in ten years.

It could be a member of the Mile High congregation.

It could be someone who's been dead for a decade.

It could be someone I've never met.

Someone on the other side of the world,

Just calling out for someone somewhere to know the truth of who they are.

And this is what that practice of prayer is to me.

But it is only the flower that I reach in that grounding of experience.

Where meditation goes with you into your day,

I would argue that prayer can precede you wherever you go.

That your prayer can be in the room before you've even entered it.

That when you know you have a courageous conversation to be had,

Or you're going to go out and have fun with someone,

Or you know you've got some meetings to facilitate,

You can simply know that that spirit that you've nurtured in your prayerful vision has already arrived.

That it's already taking place.

Have you ever had that experience when you stepped into a moment that you knew you were anxious about,

And all of a sudden you got in it and you just felt full and complete trust?

All of a sudden you were in the zone.

You were like LeBron James dunking it.

You were in the zone.

You were in the flow.

And it was as if there was a higher part of you just working through you.

That's part of what prayer can do.

It can precede us in every encounter.

And you know what?

Our lives are worth thinking about.

Our lives are worth envisioning.

Our days are that important.

That we can surround them.

We can imbue them.

We can line them with a consciousness of wholeness.

Not of control or being too wishy,

But of just knowingness and trust and faith.

It's incredible what can demonstrate.

Meditation is the ground.

Prayer is the flower.

And divine guidance is the principle.

When you have the ground,

When you have the composure,

The equanimity,

The sense of possibility and magic,

The spirit awareness,

And you have that prayerful vision,

It's like it kicks in this principle of divine guidance that you can see active in every area of your life.

You know what I'm talking about?

Ernest Holmes talks about a creative medium,

A creative law that responds to the consistency of our thinking.

I'm talking about that creative law,

But this aspect of the law,

It responds to the quality of our consciousness.

Not the content of our thinking,

But the quality of our consciousness.

Because when you're dialed in in that sense,

It's not that one person's awareness is any better than anybody else's awareness,

But you know it can be a little different sometimes,

Right?

And that quality of consciousness that we earn through the ground and through the flower,

It begins to reveal itself as a divine guidance in our lives.

Ernest Holmes said of this principle of divine guidance,

Since there is no great and no small to the infinite,

All that seems of little consequence in my life has the divine guidance just as perfectly and completely as that which I think of as being tremendously important.

Divine guidance is in all aspects of my life.

A divine and gentle but firm hand is leading and uplifting me in all that I do.

There is a divine purpose for my life that is unfolding through my relationships and my encounters,

That is responding to the quality of my consciousness and my courage to live bravely and authentically as who I really am.

You'll see this divine guidance show up in three particular ways.

The first we call synchronicity.

Divine guidance showing up through divine coincidence.

I was ministering in Seal Beach and I,

Of course,

Knew who Roger Teal was,

But I knew him from Adam.

I'd never met or spoken to him in my entire life,

And I had used his book,

This Life is Joy,

Which I think is the best spiritual book written of the last 20 years,

As the book of the month with the congregation.

But on this particular Sunday,

I was going to take a little idea that I'd read in Roger's book,

And we ministers sometimes like to change a word or two and just make it our own.

You've never done that?

There's no such thing as plagiarism.

We're all just borrowing each other's ideas.

So I'm going to make it my own in this sermon,

And I get out there and I give the sermon,

And somehow I catch myself and I say,

Roger Teal says in his book,

This Life is Joy,

Da-da-da-da.

So he gets the credit.

The next day,

I get a random phone call.

Do you know who it is on the phone?

It's Roger Teal,

And he's invited me to come and guest speak to you here at Mile High Church,

And he goes,

It was so interesting.

I was watching your talk on video this morning,

And you quoted me.

If he only knew.

If he only knew.

So divine coincidence,

Divine synchronicity can tell us,

I'm in the right place.

I'm moving in the right direction.

Thank you,

Divine guidance.

Our only job is to keep moving forward.

We don't have to know where life is going,

But we know how to get to wherever that is because divine guidance is always with us,

Responding to the quality of our consciousness.

Second,

Through fate.

Fate is an interesting term,

Because I don't mean by fate,

Your pre-destiny.

Fate for me is what happens when we're living in alignment with our calling.

Some people spend their whole life running away from their calling,

Fighting and wrestling with their calling.

No,

No,

No.

When you live in alignment with your calling,

It shows up as fate.

These divine right experiences that reward you and tell you that you are spiritually and humanly home.

I love the story that the great astrophysicist,

Neil deGrasse Tyson,

Tells about his meeting of the great scientist Carl Sagan.

Neil deGrasse Tyson had the opportunity to go to Cornell,

And he received a little handwritten note from his hero,

The host of Cosmos,

Carl Sagan,

Who wanted to walk him around the labs.

And he met Sagan there,

And Sagan gave him the tour,

And he drove him to the bus stop.

It was snowing outside.

And he wrote down his home phone number,

And he said,

If the bus gets stuck,

Please call me.

I will come and pick you up,

And you can stay at my house.

And Tyson shared that this was the most inspirational experience he had had in his whole entire life.

He said,

I thought to myself,

Who am I?

I'm just some high school kid,

And to this day,

To this day,

I have this duty to respond to students who are inquiring about the universe as a career path,

To respond to them in the way that Carl Sagan had responded to me.

And what I would argue is that Tyson's purpose wasn't just to be a great astrophysicist,

It was to support people on their journey.

And when he made that commitment,

It was in alignment with his fate.

And when we are in alignment with our calling,

The adventure of our life,

Although scary and nerve-wracking at times,

Is in good hands.

It's in good hands.

The last way that divine guidance shows up that I want to share with you today is this opportunity.

Opportunity.

That new job possibility,

That new relationship opportunity,

That opportunity to take care of yourself in a new and profound way,

That opportunity to just take a deep breath.

Thank you,

Life.

These opportunities fill our lives,

And often they don't lead where we think they're going to take us.

But that's okay,

Because these opportunities can lead us into a greater way of living our yes.

Sometimes there are opportunities to say no,

Opportunities to affirm something even greater and better for ourselves.

But when we listen,

Are open to the opportunities,

And we step into them,

Yes or no,

They begin to create a pathway for us to live in alignment with our higher good.

I am so grateful that I am not alone in my life.

I am so grateful that even though at times I feel isolated,

That in discovering solitude,

The ground,

The flower,

The principle,

I realize I am never alone and that there is always a power greater than I am operating in my life that I can use through developing and deepening and enriching my quality of consciousness.

I invite you to find that ground each day to allow the flower to bloom and to allow this principle of divine guidance to begin working magnificently in your life.

Moving into prayer today,

I invite all of these incredible prayer practitioners to stand with us.

Let's give them a round of applause again,

Even though we're in the middle of a prayer.

And they are available for prayer after service.

But what this represents is that idea that we are held in a consciousness of love and compassion.

You and I are held in a consciousness of love and compassion.

It is our job simply to allow ourselves to enter into that consciousness,

To know as we are known by that divine depth of soul that knows every hair on our head or lack thereof,

That knows the fullness of our heart's desire and possibility and the acceptability of ourselves as beautiful and wonderful just as we are right here and right now.

It is soul guidance,

It is divine providence.

It is that healing grace as we allow ourselves to move out of any tired,

Long time should have been extinct knowings of ourself that keep us imprisoned or tied to ways of being that no longer serve us to think about ourselves or as our way of living.

We allow those to dissipate,

To evaporate,

To be evacuated into a higher consciousness and knowing of our being,

Allowing this being to speak to us,

To whisper to us in its wonder,

To guide us in our living,

To help us to see truly and awesomely the beauty of who we are and the beauty of this thing called life.

We simply say yes to it and we allow it to work.

And so it is.

Amen.