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From Unity Church of Christianity in Houston, Texas,
this is The Awakened Life with Reverend Howard Caesar.
Unity is a non-denominational Christian church
providing a positive, practical, and progressive approach to Christianity.
Let's join the service in progress with the Reverent Howard Caesar.
[Reverend Howard Caesar] Here at Unity we are always in the dynamic
of seeking to expand our consciousness
and present ideas that can broaden the scope of your understanding
and your application of unity principles or spiritual principles—universal principles—
that help broaden and expand your life and make you a more powerful being in this world.
The word consciousness has become more and more commonly used in society.
And many have a grasp of, sort of, what it means.
Others can be somewhat uncertain about that word consciousness
even though it's used quite a bit.
It can be confusing to some. Prior to the 20th century we didn't have all these different subdivisions of the mind.
You know—it was in the 20th century that we began to divide up the mind.
And it was then that we began to refer to the conscious mind and to the subconscious mind
and to the unconscious and to the collect conscious and the collective unconscious
and the super conscious and the conscious, conscious, conscious.
That isn't—I just threw that in.
But anyway—we have come to learn that a person's individual consciousness
obviously is important in terms of how we manage, how we steer, and how we direct it.
It's through thoughts, ideas, beliefs, opinions—all of these things and more.
And they can be directed toward that which is freeing or that which is limiting
towards that which is healthy or that which is unhealthy
that which is constructive or that which is destructive,
that which is life giving or that which is life diminishing.
All of that is in there—that our lives reflect our consciousness and how we steer it really.
So we all recognize that we have a mind, and that our mind plays obviously a huge role
in forming our individual consciousness
and thereby our experiences of life.
And we have tried to make clear on a regular basis with some consistency
that all of man's suffering basically originates in the mind.
And we have said that the cause of that suffering is a sense of separation—
separation from God, separation from the truth.
That also originates in the mind.
And that's why I like to say, and others I think have said, it's a good thing to lose your mind.
Or it's a good thing to be out of our minds—
but in a healthy way.
You know—the mind, when thought to be simply our own,
like we have ownership of it, we tend to think of it as ours,
and then it becomes, sort of, separate.
That's one of the dynamics of it—really separate from others, separate from other things.
And living in the physical world as we do—
everything seems to be, sometimes, separate and apart in this 3-dimensional world.
There is me, and there is not me—you know?
There is here, and then there is everything that's over there or somewhere outside of me.
And that's all, to a certain extent, the illusion that we're not connected.
But you add to all that dynamic various dimensions of fear
and add to that the need to survive, or the fear that you're not going to survive
on whatever level—physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever—
and what happens is in all of that dynamic is we morph into a separate self.
We create a separate self.
We're protecting ourselves in a certain way, and we tend to think then
mostly about ourselves and protecting ourselves—getting through life ourselves.
But it—to a certain extent—is an illusion as it has been said because we're not separate
though it may seem we are, and we are part of something that is much larger and much vaster
than we have every realized.
In our spiritual unfoldment, we eventually begin to grow and understand that,
and that's part of what we're talking about today.
You know—science would have us believe that the brain is—
you know—what somehow makes consciousness—that the brain does.
And the assumption is that the consciousness is entirely local.
You know—and that it is produced by the brain, and that it is confined to the brain—our consciousness.
And that may be the view of science, but that is not the view of spirituality of course.
And spirituality and many existing evidences both ancient and in current times
support the idea that the consciousness is non-local—meaning it's everywhere.
You know—it's spilling over beyond the mechanism of the brain itself.
And—you know—we tend to say—okay—the mind is a source of separation.
Mind is a source of suffering.
Mind is not a bad thing.
Mind is a tool—it's all in how we use it.
Okay—we're to master it, but we've been mastered by it.
And that's where it's something we need to move out of.
It's understanding that we have—it's—you know—our mind and our heart as well—
and our heart has intelligence and mind in it—
is basically our link to God.
There is a universal mind that we are all a part of,
and there is this one mind of God that we access in varying degrees—each and every one of us.
Thomas Edison said something that was very significant.
He said, "People say I have created things.
I have never created anything.
I get impressions from the universe at-large and work them out,
but I am only a plate on a record or a receiving apparatus."
Interesting how he knew that he was accessing something vaster and more non-local
than his own individual, separate self, and brain.
You look at what Ralph Waldo Emerson said—
and he said, "There is one mind—not many minds—there is one mind
common to all individual men and women.
Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.
He that is once admitted to the right of reason
is made a free man of the whole estate.
What Plato has thought—he may think.
What a saint has felt—he may feel.
What at any time as befallen any man—he can understand.
Who hath access this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done—
for this is the only and sovereign agent."
That one mind is the only sovereign agent that we can draw upon.
And this is why Jesus said to us, "The things that I do you can do also and even greater things than these if you believe."
Because Jesus was saying, "Hey, you're living in the same mind, the same one mind, as the mind of God as I am."
And you can draw on its vastness, you can draw on its expanse
the same way that I can, but you've kind of shrunk that down.
You've morphed into a separate self—it's all an illusion.
You think you have your own mind. No—you're only part of a larger mind.
And that's a big shift for a person to get to realize
because out of that you're able to manifest and demonstrate in powerful ways.
I don't know how many of you guys, folks, tend to read through the Book of Deuteronomy.
It's not a favorite.
But there is a precious verse—passage—in Deuteronomy that originates
there and actually found its way from there on in to the New Testament as well.
It's a significant verse.
And has—and carries great importance.
What it states is this, "Here, oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord."
Okay—"Here, oh Israel, the Lord our God is one God—one Lord."
"And," as it continues, "though shalt love the Lord they God with all they heart,
with all thy soul, with all they might."
And if you go to the Gospel of Mark, which is the earliest writings of the ministry of Jesus and his teachings,
and you go to Chapter 12, you'll find there that the scribes came and asked Jesus,
"Which is the first commandment of all?"
And Jesus answered, "The first of all commandments is 'Here, oh Israel, the Lord our God
is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
with all thy mind, with all thy soul,'" you know—that continued.
The emphasis is always on what followed the "and."
And often times we don't remember that prefaced in the old testament
and where Jesus quoted from.
And he actually stated was, "Here, oh Israel. The Lord our God is one Lord."
Now, for some that has meant—you know—and can mean that
there is to be only one God—not many Gods.
And that's true, but in—you know—if we say that the Divine
is an intelligence, and the Divine is a presence that fills all places and all time and all space—
you know—then we can say that God—an aspect of God is mind.
God is—also an aspect of God is the presence as love and various, but God is mind.
And mystics would say that what this verse really implies is that
the Lord our God is one.
You don't have to add the last word.
The Lord our God is one—is one.
And from that one, dimension of all-ness—
as Emerson is talking—flows the love of God.
And from that oneness—you live from love.
And so it's an idea that we are all part of a unified field.
We're all part of one mind, and our individual of minds can basically
not be put inside a container called a brain and be walled off from one another.
You know—all minds come together in some way well beyond our full understanding, and we are connected.
Emerson said—he said this also—he said,
"The over soul is that unity, within which every man's particular being is contained
and made one with all others."
And he went on to say from that that, "We live in succession,
in division, in parts, in particles.
And in the meantime, within man, is the soul of the whole.
The wise silence—the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related—the eternal one."
So, again, over and over, what's being said is we are all related.
We're intimately one because we're all really in this vast mind of the eternal one.
So if all individual minds are really linked and united to this one universal mind—
on some level it is important for us to know we are intimately connected to one another and all life.
That basically I can feel and sense what you may be doing on the other side of this country.
And I could possibly feel your energy if I'm tuned in to you.
That is conceivable because I'm non-local.
And what will do that is the lubricant of love
and the sense that I have an intense wanting to know or an intense sense
of oneness and connection to you emotionally in some way.
And that's what prayer is about, and that's understanding that your prayers are incredibly powerful
because you are linked to all space in this one mind—linked to all beings.
And it's powerful what we're able to do and be part of.
So our minds are not confined to our brains but are non-local.
And there was a woman who was living in the—on the east coast,
and she developed this powerful feeling that her son was somehow in serious trouble.
Her son lived thousands of miles away on the east coast.
And she was living on the east coast—I'm sorry—and he was living on the other side of the country.
And, anyway, she tried to ignore these feelings but couldn't.
And all of the sudden she had these string of numbers pop into her mind.
And they had no meaning for her. They had not familiarity.
And then she felt an urge and in her guidance to actually dial them in a phone.
So she went to a phone, and she dialed those numbers that had come to her.
And it connected her to an emergency room of a major hospital
where her son lived nearby.
And the nurse said, "May I help you?" that answered.
And she stammered, "I don't know if you can help me.
I'm looking for my son. I'm worried about my son."
And she said, "Well," the nurse said, "what's his name?"
And she told the nurse the name, and the nurse said,
"Well, he was admitted into ER a couple hours ago.
Dr. So and so just finished taking care of him.
And we—you know—he can give you an update.
He just finished." And so they brought the doctor to the phone.
And the doctor explained that, "Your son has been in a serious car—automobile accident.
And he's had some serious injuries, but I can assure you—
having just operated—that he's going to be fine."
And what happened there—you know—I mean, these kinds of things happen.
There is this connection that we have—even I can think about
calling my mother, and the phone rings and it's her.
All right—we have this—don't we? So we know there are incidences where—that we're connected in so many different ways.
And that can be so powerful and assuring.
But something non-local was engaged by this lady and activated.
And that is beyond the individual brain.
There is a domain of information and knowledge that she was able to access.
And one has to stop and think, "Well, how regular could that be for us in certain instances
to know that that access is there?"
Einstein—it was said—ridiculed non-local connections, and he called them spooky action at a distance.
Those are—non-local connections he called spooky actions at a distance.
And those of you who have read his biography found in the book that
they pointed out that he clung to that—that was the wall he hit
because he kept trying to quantify and figure out this non-local connections business.
And he didn't buy it, and he basically had no more breakthroughs
in theoretical discoveries after that point.
He had all kinds of theories and discoveries up to that point,
and because he couldn't get past that—he didn't want to believe
that there was a non-local connection.
And he wanted to prove that, and that held him back the rest of the way.
You know—many of us said how we're connected to our pets—you know?
And we are—we can communicate over a distance.
So there are many instances where our pets know when we're coming home
when we're still miles away.
Several minutes before we get home or a minute or so they go to the door
or go to the window and sit and wait—that can be a fairly common thing.
Somehow they've picked up an energy there.
There is a book called, "The Haunting of the Presidents."
And in that book there was an unusual happening reported that occurred just
before President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater
in Washington D.C. in 1865.
Lincoln, whether you knew it or not, had a pet dog.
And it became frantic at about the time that the curtains were being raised at the Ford Theater.
And the dog started running around barking—it's normally a gentle and quiet dog—
it started barking uncontrollably—
seemingly seized with fear by those who were there.
It ran all around through the halls looking for Mr. Lincoln.
And then finally at one point stopped and threw its head back and began to wail.
And everyone there thought that something terrible had gone wrong
and that the President was in danger, and they were right.
That dog was connected.
The universe seems to be a vast web of particles that somehow stay
in contact with not another even over a distance.
Studies have been done to show that quite often—you know—
pets know so many things, and there is such a wonderful connection.
Rupert Sheldrake actually did 5 years of studies about the bond
that exists between humans and animals,
and it exists beyond a space and time.
One author told about her cat and how she would—
that her cat would run and hide every morning in which there was supposed to be
a visit to the veterinarian had been scheduled.
But the cat had been given no clue, but it would run and hide.
It somehow knew it was going to the vet that day.
There is also evidence that dogs can detect our moods—
the moods of their master.
President Woodrow Wilson once said, "If a dog will not come to you
after having looked you in the face, you need to go examine your conscience. [laughter]
Then there is the idea of swarming—you know—again, in animals.
And so much we can learn from nature.
But there are animals and birds and fish that swarm and move in sequence together.
I've been snorkeling and seeing little shiny fish—I don't know the name of them,
but schools of them, and as you approach them they jerk this way and they jerk that way—
and just a beautiful thing in harmony.
And they're not bumping into each other either.
And there is a video I've seen on starlings and starlings who have migrated
to a particular location of thousands of starlings.
And there might be a flock of a thousand starlings taking to the air.
And they're just doing this—just going—you know—a thousand of them
twisting and turning, and nobody is bumping into each other.
They're all in sync when somehow knowing when to turn.
And one of the things that those who study this say—you know—
there's really no explanation, but there's no one in charge. [laughter]
There's no general here giving orders. "Turn now!" You know? And all that stuff.
There's a—it's just knowing.
And the only explanation is some kind of a telepathy or a non-local—a non-local awareness
that is communicating—that links them together as one.
And so if animals can do this and demonstrate this then we, as part of, our own evolution
of consciousness can do so as well.
We are all part of 1 mind.
And yet we don't fully realize it, of course, and that's part of our evolution.
Sometimes children, before they have been indoctrinated into a linear kind of thinking,
and given blocks and limitations within the framework of that linear thinking.
They can access the universal 1 mind or this unified field.
There's a story that Joseph Chilton Pearce—
a wonderful author—you may have read some of his books—
and he's a psychologist, and when he was in his early 30s
he was teaching humanities at a college.
And he was deep into theology at the time
and into the study of the psychology of Carl Young.
And he was really, intensely in love with it, and he couldn't get enough.
He was almost obsessed with it—with this God/human relationship.
Well, what happened was 1 morning he was getting ready to go to class,
and he was in his room, and his 5-year-old son comes walking into the room,
sits himself down on the edge of the bed, and he then went into his 5-year-old son
a 20-minute discourse on the nature of God and man.
And he spoke—Chilton Pearce said—he spoke in perfect publishable sentences
with pause and without pause or haste
and in a flat, mono-tone that came from kind of a knowingness that he was in a zone of knowing.
And he used complex theoretical terminology.
He expressed to Joseph—he said what seemed to be everything
there was to know.
And Joseph listened, was astonished, his hairs stood on end,
he had goosebumps, and finally he had tears.
And it ended with the beep of a horn that was his child's ride to kindergarten that day—okay?
And so Joseph said what he heard was awesome.
It was too vast and deep beyond any concept he had grasped himself to that point.
And the son had no recollection of it happening.
How can you explain that?
You know—he was a normal, bright child, but he had responded in someway
to field of information that he could not have acquired independently.
So where did that information come from Joseph Chilton Pearce asked.
And he came up with or suggested that it was coming from, as it has been termed,
the cosmic soup—the cosmic soup.
And it is a term for the 1 universal, all-knowing mind.
And—you know—I have a view about that that essentially all of us are like—
we think we are independent—like little zeros—spiritual zeros, or let's say O's, not zeros.
That's a bad term. [laughter]
And if you were to draw a bunch of zeros—circles on a page or
a whiteboard or something, that's all of humanity we'd say.
Then if you drew a circle all the way around all of the—
that's the 1 mind that you and I are inside of.
And we are allowing or accessing in differing amounts.
The way I sometimes like to think of it is the idea that we're all Cheerios.
We're spiritual O's, and we've been thrown into this soup—
call it spiritual broth—and we're there, and we're connected to this fluid.
But some of us know it and some of us don't.
And in this place there is this larger view beyond our common world view.
And it may differ in degree for all of us because some are resistant.
And some of us kind of float on the top of the broth and stay dry.
You know—and live in our individual consciousness and separation.
Others become soggy and saturated with this Divine fluid or broth.
And the result of that integration and that saturation
catapults them into a larger field of knowing and experiencing and discovery
of the dynamic of understanding life and being one with it.
And it moves into a field then where anything is possible for good
because we have come to an understanding that we truly live and move and have our being
in this field of love and this field of Divine order and this field of compassion
that is all around us. Some of you know about Dr. Eben Alexander.
And—you know—he's the one that had the near death experience,
wrote the book "Proof of Heaven."
It was so vivid to him—he said that it was more real than ordinary waking awareness.
And he said he was aware of a Divine presence.
He said, "I was far beyond any kind of human consciousness.
There was really just 1 consciousness," he said.
He said, "My experience showed me very clearly that incredibly
powerful consciousness, far beyond what I'm trapped in here in the Earthly realm,
begins to emerge as you get rid of the filtering mechanism of the brain."
Here you have a neurosurgeon of 25 years, written over—or almost—200 papers—
scientific papers—recognized as an expert, coming out, and declaring
that consciousness exists independent of the human brain.
We all live in an ocean of God—really.
And we're all a drop in the ocean.
We are not saying that we are the ocean,
but we have access to the whole ocean.
And we need to understand that, and the more that we realize that really—
that 1 universal mind, the more we find our way into a broader sense of who we are,
the interconnectedness within us all, the difference that we can make.
The only way out of the 1 mind is to think your way out.
You think—you see—you think such separate thoughts.
You think—you know—you're separate from God, you're separate from people,
you're separate—the the truth—it's an illusion; you're still
in the 1 mind. You just created an illusion in your own framework of a litany of thought.
And so you can never really think your way out of it.
You can think your way out of the experience of all the 1 mind offers you
by simply directing and misdirecting our mind in another way.
Through the years, what has been practiced is the stilling of the mind
through meditation and contemplation and prayer and these kinds of practices.
We still the mind, and in quieting the mind we are able to connect more clearly with
this ocean of love, this ocean of all knowing, this ocean of being
that we live in, and as Emerson said, "There is 1 mind common to all individual men
that every man is an inlet."
So the 1 universal God could be called source or absolute or pure being
or creator or Lord or whatever,
but when you think of yourself and you think of this life that you're living,
realize in consciousness that you are part of a larger whole—
a vast sense that connects you to limitless—the infinite—that the love, the peace, and the joy
that the Divine wants to help you pour itself through you into the world and make a difference.
So we are really here to be vessels of God and 1 mind. We're one. God bless you all.
Thank you for joining us for today's message.
We invite you to be with us again next Sunday.
An Unity, we believe that God's presence of love and goodness is everywhere
and that life is meant to be good.
You can find out more about Unity and our teachings at UnityHouston.org.