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[Unity] >>[male voice-over] 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 Reverend Howard Caesar.
[Reverend Howard Caesar, Senior Minister] There's a story I like to share, a true story about Winston Churchill.
And it was pretty well known that he was a man who liked to drink his brandy.
[Today's Message: Prosperity For All] And, as I say, it was well known.
It's wasn't something that he tried to hide,
and he was often teased about his liking of brandy.
And one time he was being introduced to speak
and some activity, and the master of ceremonies was about to introduce him,
and at this time Churchill was up in years.
And so he made a reference to his taste for brandy
and how he liked it and so forth.
And he went on to say—
and in fact, if all the brandy that Churchill had drank in all his years
were put in this room where they were speaking, and it was a big room,
it would come up to here on the wall.
He wetted his finger and drew a line.
And when Churchill got up to speak to the microphone,
he looked at the line on the wall,
and he looked up the ceiling,
and his line was, "So much to do and so little time."
[laughter]
Now we're in church and so I want you to sort of extract the drinking part about brandy
and the thing about consumption of spirits
and allow instead it to represent the idea of taking in life.
And instead of looking up at the ceiling,
think in terms of looking at the universe and the vastness of it.
As Michael just sang, life is so much more than it seems.
And to recognize that—our line, there's merit in the statement,
"So much to do and so little time."
In this universe we have so much to drink in
and so much to experience.
Sometimes we feel like we never find the time
or we don't, as I like to say, get off the dime
to step out and get out of the rut that we may be in
and step into the experience of all that life has, that it's offering us.
And sometimes we have a tendency to sell ourselves short,
and we tend to think too small,
and we are afraid to venture out and to just take a chance
and to risk and see all that life has to offer.
And sometime we forget that we come from something that is
referred to as almighty, all knowing, all powerful,
and that's an incredible, awesome, intelligent spiritual energy
that is moving and flowing through us that we say is infinite
and it is unending and it is everywhere present.
So we need to remember what our heritage is
and that from which we come and that from which we draw.
To often we are products of our past.
And we become loyal to all of our conditioning of the world sometimes
and the learned fears and hesitancies and cautions.
We may be too timid. We need to adventure a little bit more perhaps.
We may worry about making a mistake or another mistake
that might ruin our tomorrows,
and so we hold back and we wait.
We wait hoping for the right moment,
the time where all the lights turn green
and everything seems to say go,
everything looks perfectly clear.
It's all perfectly safe. It's a sure thing.
We can't lose.
Those moments don't come. [laughter]
They're very rare because our mind consistently will bring something up to get in the way—you see?
There are those that have had those moments,
but it's a pattern that they've developed within themselves
where they are blinded sometimes to what could the problem
or the risk or whatever. You know?
Every day we experience a certain amount of light, a certain amount of darkness. You know?
In every view of life there is some optimism and there is some pessimism.
When we're looking outside of ourselves to the world and the outer,
we can see from a multitude of perspectives
and a multitude of views and angles of views on life,
and therefore a multitude of conclusions can be drawn,
depending on what is it is we're seeing through the filters of our past and our conditioning.
So that's why we have to get to the place where we truly begin
forming our perspective from the within of us.
We have to look within first and then out
as opposed to without and then trying to charge forward.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said it so well when he said,
"What lies behind us and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
And that's the key.
So we're not to give our power away
to what hasn't worked in the past in our lives
or the different hurts that we've had
or the apparent failures or the discouragments
or not to give our power away to what looks like challenges
or obstacles that may come up in front of us,
either now or projected into the future.
And so they really cannot stand up to all of the resources of the divine that have been placed within you.
You are fully equipped as a spiritual being to meet any challenge and to remember that.
That's a sacred thing to actually have that thought.
That I have that within me that can meet and stand up to anything that I am confronted with
because life is a flow, life is a creative flow,
and when we are in it, we know it,
and when we're out of it, we know it also.
When we're in a creative flow everything seems to come together.
Our relationships, our health, prosperity—
all kinds of things good seem to come together with harmony and order.
And today I'd like to just address and single out and slice out
kind of an understanding around some of the matters
having do with prosperity, some of the principles.
Understand that in everything in life we talk about life is consciousness,
and prosperity is ruled by consciousness.
And so prosperity means that a person is living from the awareness
that the universe is their friend.
Prosperity means that the person is living from the awareness
that your needs are easily met.
It means that you're living from the awareness that there is more than enough,
living from the awareness that you live in a field of plenty, of abundance,
that you live in an awareness and are functioning from the conscious awareness
that good never runs out.
These are things that you actually live from,
are part of your awareness.
And so they are spiritual principles and they exist,
and we've been placed on earth really to learn these principles,
to live from these principles, to apply these principles
so that we can look back on our lives and realize
that, gosh, we did learn the principles of prosperity,
we had a lot of good, by which God was able to flow through me
and to make a difference in the lives of people around me and in the world.
So there are various ways in which the spirit wants to emerge
in and through you as a vessel,
to benefit you, to benefit your family, to benefit those around you,
to benefit the world.
You are a vessel through which the universe,
God in his presence and power, love and absolute goodness
wants to pour goodness into the world through you. Okay?
You are a child of God. You are a unique expression of infinite possibilities.
So the universe is indeed your friend.
And in a sense I like to think of it as though
the whole universe is within each one of us, that we're drawing upon.
The only obstacle that we tend to face when we bump up against it
is really this idea of having a separate self
and the voice of that separate self.
And we have crafted that which we call the ego—Edging God Out, E-G-O.
And the message of ego is always sending us a message of separation.
We're separate from our good.
It's the sending us a message of limitation and lack and fear.
And then the perceptions of the ego are always long those lines—
that our good is somewhere else.
We're definitely separate from it.
We're not attuned and connected to our good
like we are connected to the source of good, which is God.
It's important to make that connection there.
So it projects onto the world—looking externally at the world,
it projects onto it lack and limitation and scarcity
and not enough and separation and all kinds of fears.
And so to experience prosperity and to be in the flow of good
a person has to get to the place where they recognize when ego is talking
and begin to transcend it
and then begin to stop and pause and question and reflect.
"Can that be true? Is that really true? Is that what I want to live from?"
So they rethink and they reflect on and they reexamine what it is
that has been the voice of ego that has pushed them around
and given them a perspective and a view on life
that has kept them kind of in lack.
Because if we don't stop and question and review and reflect on it
then really the ego's perceptions of not enough and of lack
is what will run our life.
And so we learn that here in Unity and other places we learn that
everything is energy, everything is energy. Okay?
And energy then doesn't run out.
Prosperity represents a divine substance that never runs out.
It's a divine substance. It's a sub-stands.
It stands behind everything, this divine substance.
And it all flows from that.
And a famous philosopher, Aristotle,
in approximately 350 B.C. he introduced the idea of aether. Okay?
This invisible substance that we're talking about has had different names through time.
And he introduced the word aether along with—
it was the fifth element that he added.
Along with earth, air, fire, and water, he added aether.
And that's where we get the word "ethereal."
And aether was seen to be this divine substance that makes up the heavenly bodies.
It's out of sight. It's heavenly.
And we have the word "metaphysical."
Metaphysical is beyond the physical.
It implies sort of out of site, the unseen dimensions of things coming together.
More recently we have the term or the field of quantum physics,
and quantum comes from the Latin word quanta,
which means it's a plural term.
And it was coined, actually, as a word in 1567.
And it was coined to describe how much—
quanta, quantity—and quantum means any of the very small
but measurable increments into which many forms of energy are subdivided.
All right?
So Isaac Newton comes along in the 1600s.
He gives us the laws of motion and gravity,
but also along with that he discovers that light is made up of particles.
And those particles were not named actually until 1925
when they became labeled photons.
And they were considered at the time the smallest particles
that existed in the electromagnetic field.
And then when we got to studying material matter
and discovered the atom, the atom was considered one of the smallest of all particles.
But then they learned that atom could be broken down into subatomic particles
of electrons and protons and newborns.
Then you had the 1950s where the atom smashers
where scientists were able to discover even smaller particles called hadrons and bosons.
And then in the 1970s with new equipment.
Then those were broken down into even smaller particles called quarks and leptons.
And science is continuing to look at how to break down quarks and leptons
into even smaller particles if they can.
And it was Einstein who said,
"We still do not know one thousandth of 1% of what nature has to reveal to us."
From the discoveries of quantum physics and these particles,
they noticed that a person's intent or intension
had an effect on the particles,
that they would do different things depending on the different intent.
There were different configurations that would come into being and move out of,
and all this depended upon the observer.
And so all of the actions of these small particles seemed
to substantially support the idea of the law of attraction, actually,
and the idea that images that hold and what it is that we give our attention to
causes these particles to respond in some way.
And so it seems to support the idea of masters and mystics through time,
and metaphysicians, who have said that there is
this invisible to the eye divine substance that stands behind all things,
call it thought substance or whatever you want,
that the individual as well as the collective consciousness is acting upon
and co-creating and entering into a co-creative process.
So what it's say, basically, is that there are keys to what it is
that impacts this invisible thought substance of particles that are so small
that come together to create your reality and create material things.
And the keys to this unseen world is basically your thoughts,
the spoken word—what it is that you're saying and speaking out loud—
the ideas that you hold, the beliefs that you carry,
the images and visions that you create, and your intentions, your intentions.
A good friend, Michael Beckwith, a wonderful minister on the west coast—
he's been here to speak—he likes to say,
"People are suffering from intention deficit disorder."
[laughter]
Intention deficit disorder—they wake up every morning
and they don't have a good intention of what they're going to do
and how they're going to be and where they're headed,
and they don't create the visions, and they don't—you know?
Because really there is this thought stuff that is helping
and wanting to co-create with us is what's being talked about here.
So prosperity represents this divine substance
that is like energy that never runs out.
It is infinite.
And so as we expand our consciousness then,
expand our consciousness of the all good, that is the all good of God,
then every aspect of a person's life could be altered and changed.
And can be really overflowing with divine good in various forms.
Many people have to heal their issues or their relationship to money.
when the word "money" is brought up, they almost tighten up. You know?
People have a charge around money and issues around money
and some still believe that it's the root of all evil, money.
It's not. It's the love of money.
It's making money your god that is the root. Okay?
And people do all kinds of things with money.
Some people do almost nothing with money.
They just hoard it.
So money is a symbol. That's all it is—a symbol.
It's a medium of exchange and it has taken on many forms through time.
It's been exchanged as salt, as beads, as trinkets, as cattle, as oxen, as sheep,
as gold, as silver, and then we evolved to where now we print the stuff.
You know, we print money, and it's what's commonly used.
Of course, even more so now is checks.
And even more so is a little plastic card that we use. All right?
However, I like to have cash on me.
Because it's always a reminder that I have money.
I have money. It's saying to my consciousness, "Oh yeah. I always have money."
Some people say, "I never carry cash anymore. I just have this little card."
I want to tell myself, "I always have money." See? In my consciousness.
And so I always have it with me.
But anyway all of these are a medium of exchange.
Whatever the form, it's an exchange of energy.
Just realize it's just all energy. All of it was energy.
Paper money is energy. Cattle was energy.
Trinkets were energy. All of these things.
Most important to realize is that it's all a circulation of energy,
and it allows people to extend and share and exchange
gifts and talents and products and food and clothing
and all these different things.
And so the problem is that people—
because people see money as a physical, material something,
then they see it as something that's finite. You know?
They don't see it as energy.
They see it as a physical, material thing,
and therefore it's finite, there's not enough of it,
and then they begin to hoard it. They cling to it.
They don't circulate it. Circulation is an important prosperity law.
We live in a field of inexhaustible energy called divine substance,
and we can see it everywhere in all of its forms. You know?
Whether it's the blades of grass or the drops in all of the oceans
or grains of sand on all the beaches—however you want to think of it.
Just as a vast expanse of energy that there is infinite and no limit to.
And so true prosperity is that awareness that our needs are always met,
that there is no limit, that we live in a sea of infinite substance and energy
and to have that built into one's awareness.
When one has that then that awareness demonstrates itself.
It manifests itself.
Just as a product of having that awareness, it will be showing up.
Your needs will be met. It's just there will be a flow. You know?
And these are the certain laws and practices, among them at least
that we need to be in harmony with.
And so as we're talking about, one to really capture the understanding
is this law of circulation. Very important. You know?
As money comes in, we need to circulate it out.
And we need to circulate a certain portion out
to where we've been receiving our spiritual inspiration,
where we've been spiritually fed, what feeds our soul,
what has encouraged us and uplifted us and inspired us,
so that it can be sustained and grow and help others as well.
And so in Scripture it talks about the first fruits of your labors being extended.
The first fruits of what you take in.
And biblically it's talked about as 10%.
I realize not everyone is able to do 10%.
But that's the goal. It's a 90/10 partnership with the divine.
Those who can do it, great.
Some in the world even do 20% and 25%
because they are so ingrained in their consciousness
that there is no limit to this energy,
and they demonstrate all over the place the flow
more than they know what to do with,
and they're giving 25%.
So you have to understand, it's just individual consciousness.
Well, we like to start people—if they can't do 10%, do systematic giving,
where you actually sit down consciously and say,
"Okay, this is my relationship with God. All right?
And I'm going to give 7% or I'm going to give 5% or 3%." Or whatever it is.
Whatever you arrive at prayerfully between you and God,
it's important to get into systematic giving
so that you are consciously in the circulation of a flow.
And you could build from there as your consciousness grows,
but you have to start somewhere.
It trains your consciousness to the idea that you have more than enough
when you start allocating a certain amount to give.
Then after the first fruits,
then the second of the fruits is to yourself.
And you give to yourself that certain to set aside for you.
It's a savings. It's not to be spent.
Some people cannot save anything. They spend everything.
But you need to put some aside
because what it is does is builds into your consciousness "I have. I have."
It's not I don't have. I don't have enough.
You need to put some, no matter what it is, aside for you.
Because it then establishes within your framework
and begins to condition yourself, "I do have. I do have some supply." You know?
The Bible talks about this law of circulation in various ways—
give and it shall be given unto you.
Circle back. Okay?
Judge not and you won't be judged.
So again what you're putting out you will or won't get back.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
All of that references to the law of circulation.
And so the Bible also states,
"To he who has, more shall be given.
And to he who has not, even that which he has will be taken away."
Now that's just, again, out-and-out law of consciousness.
What it says is, "To he who has."
So to he who has that feeling of consciousness "I have. I have. I will always have,"
there is no having that will ever run out—that sense of it.
To him more shall be given.
But to him who has not,
who is living from "I haven't got. I haven't got. There's not enough,"
even what he has will be taken away
Because the Universe is always listening.
You're telling it, "I have nothing," so even what you do have is going to be taken away
because life is always feeing back to us information
and messages based on spiritual laws and principles.
And so we're always conditioning ourselves
or being conditioned by the world.
And if we don't take charge, we're lulled into a sleep
in which we will often be taken into where the ego wants to take us,
which is, again, not enough.
So when it comes to even paying your bills and your invoices,
let it be an exercise of gratitude.
Realize that the bills and the invoices actually represent
something that you have already received.
You've received something, you see, from the universe
in some sort of blessings or services
and realize that you're not paying bills.
You are circulating money. Okay?
You are circulating energy
that has already found its way to you
so that you could have a place to live,
transportation, electricity, air conditioning, water, whatever.
So think of it in terms of "Ah, I have to pay these bills, oh God, and these invoices."
No, you're circulating something that is infinite and limitless. It's energy. All right?
Michael Beckwith tells a story of his grandfather.
He would visit his grandfather—he and his brother—
and he would always give him like a silver dollar.
He's always have a silver dollar or two for them,
but then he'd always set them down and give them a little lesson.
And he remembers one lesson that his grandfather told him,
and the lesson was to the boys, they were just little boys,
and he said if the world was divided into two camps,
the givers and takers, rush to be on the side of the givers.
Then you'll discover the big man upstairs will always take care of you.
Okay? And so what he was teaching, his grandfather was teaching him the law of consciousness.
If you rush to be on the side of the givers, you'll never be empty-handed.
It's just the nature, it's a flow. You see?
You have to have an outlet in order for the inlet to grow larger.
It's the law.
Some have said that it'd be interesting if they put on money—
when you receive your paycheck each month,
that there was a certain portion that had an expiration date
that you just had to put it back into circulation
or it would lose its worth and its value.
to teach you that a certain portion of it is not to be held,
but it's meant to be extended.
I don't even like the word "spent."
"Oh, I'm spent."
Or "life is spent." Or "I just spent."
It seems like it's over, it's gone, never to be.
I don't even like that word.
Money is not spent. It's circulated.
It's circulated.
And so ask yourself where do ideas come from?
Where does wealth come from?
Where did you come from?
Where did your mind and body come from?
You will always be led back to the one source—God.
It's all God, and there's no limit to God.
God is infinite, and so what we're doing
is impressing our consciousness with the idea
that we are part of an inexhaustive, infinite flow of divine good.
It's all around us. It's there all the time.
But we have our own blocks
based on our conditioning and our past.
We're not bad people by any means.
We've just been taught some crazy ideas
about not enough and lack and things run out
and better hold onto and better hoard and all these things.
And they're not accurate.
You know, at night before you go to sleep
a good affirmation to say over and over is this:
God's good in all its forms, including money,
is forever circulating freely in my life.
We all have come into this world to be circulating God's good, really.
It's like blood in your body.
It has a message if you notice.
It is always circulating. You want it always to be circulating.
You don't want the blood to be hoarded. All right?
That's the way the universe works everywhere. Okay?
We did not come here just to be consumers, just to consume. You know?
We came here to be circulators.
Who wants to be just a consumer, to consume everything. You know?
Feels evil. [laughter] You know?
So god is a benevolent being and a benevolent presence,
and we as beneficiaries are beneficent beings, beneficent beings.
And so prosperity is a consciousness,
and our increasing awareness that we are not separate from all that is infinite and good.
We are one with it. One with the source.
Let it roll. Be a circulator. God bless you. Prosperity prevails.
[applause]
>>[voice-over] Thank you for joining us for today's message.
We invite you to be with us again next Sunday. [Sunday Service Times] [9:00 AM] [11:00 AM]
At 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.