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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 Reverend Howard Caesar.
[Reverend Howard Caesar] So, love is always a great topic, and—you know—
it's interesting what children have to say about love from their perspective.
And a couple of things that I came across that children—young children—had to say about love.
It was—one of them was, "Love is when you kiss all the time,
and then when you get tired of kissing you still want to be together and talk some more."
"Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas
if you stop opening presents for a minute and just look around."
"I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes
and then has to go out and buy new ones."
Most sisters would love their sister for that—yeah.
"Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, and then he wears it every day."
"When someone loves you, the way she says your name is different.
You know that your name is safe in their mouth."
And finally, "Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on
shaving cologne and they smell each other."
So—I don't know what love is for you, but—anyway—that's what some of the perspectives are.
Well—the summer months are over, or behind us, I guess.
June, July, and August and vacations, summer vacations, are pretty much over now.
And kids are back to school. Labor day has taken place.
And I think Labor day sometimes reminds us that summer is over—
at least a new season is beginning; weather-wise we may still be pretty warm here.
But perhaps I've been conditioned from childhood to think in terms of September being
a return to a focus on learning
and kind of a focus on what's next.
And that childhood, kind of, conditioning has carried over into my spiritual life too—
in that—every September it seems I get a sense that I'm beginning again
or recommitting, if you will, to my spiritual growth and unfoldment,
or I'm heading back to class or classes of sort—the returning to a focus for learning—
learning more about what is next in my own spiritual evolution and unfoldment and consciousness.
Some of you may be returning from vacations and time away from the summer,
and you are back here, as we call it Unity of Houston on Unity Drive.
And whether you've been away physically or not really, there is nothing more important,
I think, than returning to Unity—meaning the consciousness of Unity—
not the building, not the church, but to return again and again to a consciousness of Unity and oneness with God.
That's what it's all about. What could be more important than really our Unity with God?
Think about that.
The ultimate goal in life, really, is to be united with one's God.
That is the journey, that is the path, that is what we're seeking to build in one's consciousness
and receive all the rewards and the benefits and the energies and the miracles of that relationship.
And so the goal is to have, as our natural state of living, a sense of being
connected and attuned in that one with that which is our source—
that which takes us forward and higher
and into a greater good.
And so sometimes the word God, for many a person, is a concept
that we hold in our mind.
And people have different concepts, therefore, of God.
And we conjure up different images of different sorts of things that have been seeded
in us even from childhood.
And the Divine spirit, however, is not some abstract being that is
living somewhere off above the Earth as we all have taught.
But God is a Divine presence, and that as a Divine presence
is revealing itself, himself, itself again and again to us if we're open and receptive
to experiencing it in.
God is continually seeking to reveal him, her, itself to you every day—every day.
And so everyone here believes in God—you wouldn't be here if you didn't.
And so our what, our when, and our how around God can vary
and create different experiences.
Our what is our what we believe about God can differ.
And our when is the idea of when we believe God is really helping us.
And the truth is God is helping us all the time; we may not realize it.
And our how can be—you know—how we gain a sense of closeness,
how we access God and how often.
Those are kind of our what, when, and how.
And most all of the masters and mystics and teachers through time,
and this includes of course Jesus,
have all made it clear that, to a certain extent or a greater extent,
our mind is often the obstacle
that stands in the way of a connection with God.
And our mind oftentimes keeps us in fear or has us disconnected
if it's not directed—if we're really not channelling it correctly
and being the master of the mind as opposed to the mind being master of us.
And so it's been said again and again that sense of separation is the cause of
all suffering for humanity.
And it is the cause of all unhappiness essentially.
And you either accept that or you don't.
And if you do accept that, then you want to move in consciousness in some way
toward eliminating a sense of separation and moving toward a cultivation of oneness
and unity with God—that that is the ultimate goal.
And that's where all the benefits and the rewards and the happiness and the joy and the peace of mind
that's where it all originates
and is found.
And so many people live with a feeling of being separate—you know—feeling alone
or feeling like they're different or feeling like they're left out
or they're inadequate or they're not okay
or they're unworthy, and they're separate somehow from experiencing a sense of peace and joy
and love as it's meant to be experienced.
We shut ourselves out oftentimes of the experience of oneness
because we've—you know—given our mind away to concepts and labels
and images and massive amounts of words and judgements
and definitions and what have you.
We get lost in all of that, and it takes us out of the experience.
And so our minds, as we all know, are very, very powerful instruments.
And they can either be used to help or to hinder, or they can construct or destruct.
Or they can be used for good or ill.
And so—you know—I recently heard a term that has stayed with me,
and I really like, and the term is frequency specific.
We are all living at different levels of vibration and frequency.
We all want to be on the frequency of oneness with God.
And just as one channels in the dial on a radio station,
one has to be frequency specific—really be adjusting,
really be intentional, really be focused.
So do we have to be frequency specific in the sense
that we hold tightly to a positive focus and to a positive perspective
to be frequency specific in terms of how we're aiming and steering our energies, our outlook,
our attitudes, our thoughts, our beliefs—all of that.
Be frequency specific.
There's an old Hindu story about a man who wandered throughout the world
seeking to fulfill his deepest desires.
He wandered from one city to another. He wandered everywhere—all over looking for happiness and fulfillment.
And he never came upon it.
And so finally one day he was tired from his search,
and he sat down underneath a great tree at the base of a mountain.
And what he did not know was that this was the great wish fulfilling tree.
And so whatever one wishes when one is underneath it immediately becomes true.
And so as he was resting there under the tree he thought to himself,
"What a beautiful spot this is. I wish I had a home here."
And—poof—instantly before his eyes there appeared a beautiful home.
And then surprised and delighted he thought further, "You know, if only I had a partner
to be here with me, then my happiness would be complete,"
Poof—in the moment a beautiful woman appeared
calling him husband.
And next he had a thought of—you know—he was hungry.
And so he thought, "I wish there was food to eat here."
Immediately a banquet table appeared with everything you could ever ask for—every kind of food.
He began to eat, be satisfied, and then he felt—had the thought,
"I wish I had a servant here to help me with the rest of this food and meet my needs."
And so—poof—there was a servant that appeared.
And so he was finishing his meal and kind of sitting back, leaning up against the tree—
this wonderful tree—and he began to reflect on what had just happened.
And he thought to himself, "How amazing it is that everything I wish is coming true.
There's something mysterious—a mysterious force—about this tree.
I wonder if there's a demon who lives in it."
And sure enough, no sooner had he had the thought that a great demon appeared.
And he went and thought, "Oh my—this demon will probably eat me up."
And that is just what it did.
This is an old Hindu story, and this is how it ends.
It's not a happy ending—I'm sorry.
But the moral of the story is that the mind can be used in ways
that bring about amazing fulfillment, or it can be used in ways that
eat away at or eat up our sense of happiness, health, prosperity, fulfillment.
It can eat away at it, or it can fulfill it.
It's all on how we direct it.
Thought is creative and is frequency specific.
And so we need to stay in the perspective that the end result
is really what we want—stay, holdfast to the vision, the thought, the idea, the belief,
the image of what it is that we really want as the result to maintain
a frequency specific is very important.
Our definite intentions produce definite results,
and so what's the best frequency specific that we could have as an overall, ultimate goal.
Well, we've already said that; the ultimate goal really is unity with God.
And so how can we attain best a sense of unity really with God?
We're told that the most unifying, uniting force, or power in the universe is love—
that love brings everything together in harmony and peace.
It's the most unifying force—most powerful in the universe.
If people could just love—everything would take care of itself in the world.
If everybody just moved and flowed at that frequency specific—
not everyone does, but you and I are called to do that
because we are consciously waking up to these truths.
We are being intentional; we are here to be a light in the world.
We're here to make a difference. We're here to be frequency specific.
Scripture tells us that God is love.
It also tells us, as the words of Jesus, that the greatest commandment of all
is to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
It can't be done with the mind alone.
The mind alone is ineffective; you cannot feel anything with your mind.
It has to join with the heart; it has to join with the soul.
The mind holds us, oftentimes, in the realm of concepts and analysis.
It takes us out of the experience of what really could be happening
if we go mind alone.
And so love transcends the mind; love transcends the mind. Always remember that.
And—you know—just looking at a sunset; there's a difference between
seeing a sun set and experiencing a sun set—okay?
And we've all experienced a beautiful sun set that has kind of taken our breath away
and taken us to a place beyond what it is that we are seeing
and taking us to a sense that there is a presence and an intelligence that lies behind
that sunset that we're going oh and ah about.
That's what takes us there is the knowing somehow intuitively, instinctively there is
something that is behind it that created it—that loved me enough
to place me here, to see this and experience it—the profoundness of it.
There's a saying from the Upanishads that when before the beauty of a sunset
or a glorious mountain, you pause and exclaim, "Ah"
you are participating in divinity.
So the ultimate goal is to be united with one's God
and to go past all the concepts, if we can, transcend the mind,
and experience the "ah" that has love in it.
Frequency specific.
Ernest Holmes, a wonderful new thought leader, he stated,
"Love is the central flame of the universe.
Nah—it's the very fire itself."
The poet, Rumi, said love is a fire, and I am the wood."
Put me on fire with love is what he's saying.
Teilhard de Chardin, the great Jesuit priest and paleontologist,
he stated, "Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves,
the tides, and gravity we shall harness the energies of love.
Then, for the second time in the history of the world,
we will have discovered fire."
The fire that we should all be on fire with which is love.
Today I want to highlight the importance of becoming frequency specific
in relation to the love of God—to opening to the love of God.
On a scale of 1-10, where are you in terms of love for God?
How consistent, inconsistent?
We may not realize that the degree to which we are, perhaps, not being deep,
regular, consistent with a feeling of love for the source that has given us breath of life
and that we are really meant to be a vessel through which this
fire is to beyond in us.
That's what Jesus meant—he used the word light.
Be a light in the world—others have said to be a fire for love.
And God wants to have a loving relationship with each of us,
but we have free will, so we have to make the move—you know?
God's love is unconditional whether we head toward God or not.
God loves us no matter what.
And the hand of grace has been operating in our lives whether we've been aware of it or not.
God has always been helping us—that is the movement of grace
and realize that God relates to humans as though God was a human.
He wants to communicate. He wants a connection.
He wants you to talk. He wants you to take on that nature.
He wants to be intimate just as it's natural for us to want to love more
and to show more love to someone who is showing love towards us.
In a sense, even though God's love is unconditional, it's as though the
more we love God, the more we notice God's grace moving in our lives—
things are happening, coming together for good, strange coincidences—
they appear; they happen out of that strong intention.
So—wonderful statement to take with you and affirm actually.
I've done it at various times; in preparing for this lesson I've done it.
And that is simply to say I love the Lord my God with all my heart,
with all my soul, and with all my mind.
And every time I say it I can just feel the energies in me shift.
It really is a transformation internally.
You feel a coming of something that's bigger moving through you.
That's a great affirmation. I'm reminded of a true story that I've never forgotten.
It was handed to me and given to me about 29 or 30 years ago,
and it was told to me by a fellow named Dean Tucker.
Dean Tucker used to come through—make the circuit around the country to new thought churches.
And he was a photographer, and he would show slide shows put to music.
And they would be so inspirational and uplifting—
beautiful with the music and the slides.
And he travelled around the world, met a lot of people, made a lot of connections.
And when I got to know him, having been here 2 or 3 years in a row, and
we were out to lunch one year, and he was here.
And he shared with me a story about a guy that he had met in Chicago, Illinois
that he had gotten close to, and his name was Bill Warner.
And Bill was 25 years old at the time, and he was—he told this experience to Dean.
And he said that he was at the mirror shaving one morning,
and he just had this realization that he had everything he wanted—
that he had 5 healthy children, he had a great wife, he had a nice home, he had a great job.
He had everything he needed in the material world, and he had this sense of what else is there?
And he's a religious man, and he read the Bible.
And he turned to the Bible where it said, "Love your neighbor."
And he said he felt that he did that.
And he read where it said, "Love yourself," and he felt he did that.
And then he read where it says, "Love God."
And he thought he could do that more.
And so it was that new dimension that he began to uncover within him
was a deepening love of God.
That was his intent—he started praying with love in his prayers.
And virtually every waking hour he would just think of the love that he had for God.
He was a superintendent of construction of major building sites throughout the state of Illinois and Wisconsin.
So, he did a lot of traveling and driving.
And so while he was driving he would pray in his car, and he would pray
for all the people he would pass on the street and send them love.
And he would pray for the hospitals when he passed by all the people.
And he'd pray for trees and flowers and everything—just love was oozing from him intentionally.
Frequency specific—he had been doing that for over a year.
And he later realized that he was attuning his mind and heart to God,
the source, in a wonderful way.
And he had developed an intimate relationship with God.
And he called God, "the Beloved—the Beloved."
And he came to a point in his life where he said, out of love, he said to God,
"Beloved, I will do anything for you."
And he remembers saying that and making that commitment.
And several months after he made that commitment, he had a unique experience.
At 3:00 a.m. in the morning the phone rang, and he thought it had to do with work somehow.
He answered it—on the other end of the phone was the voice of a little boy.
It wasn't anyone he knew, but the boy on the phone said, "Can you come and get me? I'm cold.
I'm in a phone booth." Obviously this dates back a while.
And he told him where the phone booth was and hung up.
Bill didn't believe it; he thought it was one of the construction workers playing with him.
It's a trick, and that the next day they would all gather around and laugh at him for waking him up and so forth.
But then he had the thought what if it really was a little boy?
It had the voice of a little child.
And so, he said he didn't even know if he could get out of the driveway
because it had been snowing so hard—it was over a foot of snow that had gathered that night.
But he went, and he drove to the place that had been described
of where the phone booth was, and there was a 10-year-old boy.
He was in bare feet and night clothes—pajamas.
Bill put him in his car, wrapped his coat around him, and Bill asked him what his name was,
where he was from, who his parents were.
The boy said nothing—just shivered and said, "I'm cold."
That's all he said, so he took him home, carried him into the house, again, questioning him.
"What's your name? Where are your parents? Where do you live?"
All the boy said was, "I'm hungry and cold."
And so he heated up some soup, gave it to him, and then Bill started thinking—he says—you know,
"I could—I could get in trouble for this. An anonymous boy picked up. Who would believe it?
Why didn't I take him to the police right away?"
And so Bill says to the boy, "You have to start telling me what your name is,
who your parents are, where you live, or I'm going to call the police."
The boy was quiet—wouldn't say anything.
And so Bill went to the phone, and he started to dial the police.
And as he was dialing he—you know—had his back to him,
and then he turned around, and when he turned around the boy was gone.
So, he put the phone down and hung up, and he went to the bathroom looking—
thinking the boy had gone to the bathroom and wasn't there.
He looked all around, didn't hear a door open or close.
Then he began to wonder, "Have I been in a dream, dreaming all of this?"
And then he went outside, and he saw where there were tire tracks
in the snow that he had left and come back.
He saw where his footprints in the snow were fresher coming back
because it had been snowing while he went to get him and so forth.
And he didn't have an explanation—he told no one.
A week later at 3:00 a.m. in the morning, the phone rang again.
He answered it; again, it was the boy.
The boy said, "I want to thank you for helping me out the other night.
It is true—you will do anything for the Beloved," and hung up.
Love activates grace; grace is the movement of God in wonderful ways
to bring good—to communicate when we're on track.
There are things that can happen that we can't always explain.
We don't always understand.
There is mystery in God, and we need to be okay with that—
that we don't, in our mind, understand everything, but just accept the glory of the mystery of God's movement
and the experience itself.
Our definite intentions product definite results.
Our mission is to love.
Whatever your condition is that you're facing—let love in.
Let your mission transcend your condition—okay?
Be frequency specific.
The great commandment—love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Go ahead and make that an affirmation.
Take that with you for a while, experiment, see what happens for you, see if there is a shift,
see if grace doesn't move in miraculous ways for you—you know.
Let it be our intention daily to declare our love because love is who we are.
God lives within us—Ezekiel said, "A new heart will I give you.
And a new spirit will I put within you."
We call can have a new heart and a new spirit—a new fire
if we open up to the truth of our nature as being love.
If you take time daily to sense this loving presence in your life
and affirm it and accept it and believe in it, the life you have known until now will gradually disappear.
And something new and wonderful will be born in you life you have never known.
It can be no other way—for love is what you are.
That's the truth. God bless you.
[Don't Miss These Coming Events] [Unity of Houston] [♪ music ♪]
[Caroline Myss—New York Times Best Selling Author] [September 19th 7:30-9:30pm]
[Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.—Author of "The Five Levels of Attachment: Toltec Wisdom for a Modern World."]
[November 7th 7:30-9:30pm]
[Don't Miss These Coming Events!] [Unity of Houston]
[For Tickets 713-782-4050] [www.UnityHouston.org]
Thank you for joining us for today's message.
We invite you to be with us again next Sunday.
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.
[Reverend Howard Caesar] Are you currently church shopping, looking for that right church for you or your family?
Perhaps you've been looking and been turned off by organized religion.
It happens—let me suggest you try Unity Church.
We're a positive, practical, progressive approach to Christianity.
Many who have found us have said, "I didn't know there there was a church that taught what I always believed."
Let's be honest—people shop for clothes, good restaurants,
and the right church that feeds them spiritually.
If you're seeking a spiritual truth beyond tradition, try Unity Church.