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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. [The Awakened Life]
Unity is a nondenominational Christian church
providing a positive, practical, and progressive approach to Christianity.
Let's join the service in progress with the Reverend Howard Caesar.
[Unity of Houston - Reverend Howard Caesar, Senior Minister] There was a policeman
that had got out of his car because he had stopped a teenager
who he had stopped for speeding.
[Today's Message - Understanding God] The teenager had already rolled down his window
and so when the policeman came up, the policeman said to the youth,
"I've been waiting for you all day."
And the teenager replied, "Yeah? Well, I got here as fast as I could." [laughter]
The policeman, after he finally stopped laughing, sent the kid on his way without a ticket.
So good things can happen once in a while.
As we grow spiritually, we discover that we actually live in a field of infinite possibilities.
We talk about that.
Infinite possibilities of good.
And infinite possibilities exist.
It's important for you to know that and to build that into the framework of your consciousness.
Jesus said, "Lift up your eyes and see, the fields are already ripe unto harvest."
And what he was talking about is the fields that exist around us all the time
have infinite possibilities of good, and it's already ripe. You don't have to wait.
You can begin to manifest and create in the moment.
One aspect of life is learning how to make those infinite possibilities of good
become realities in our life.
Possibilities are those good things that are waiting to be brought into experience and into expression.
They exist, but we have to bring them into being, so to speak.
Otherwise they're just always going to remain a potential, right?
So it depends on us.
The field of possibilities are out there, but they require us to act on it.
So where there is lack going on, there is always the possibility of abundance.
And where there is illness, there is always right there the possibility of wellness and wholeness.
And where there is hate, there is always right there in that moment love that is possible.
[For information about Unity - 713-782-4050 - www.UnityHouston.org]
And where there is disharmony, there is always the possibility of harmony.
Where there is separation, there is always the possibility of oneness.
It always exists at the same time.
It is always available, waiting to be given expression, waiting for the vessels for which to bring it into reality.
And so it's a sad place to arrive at the decision or the belief
that there is no possibility of good beyond where you are currently at and what you are facing
and the condition and the circumstance that is before you.
That's a sad place to arrive at.
It's sad in several ways, including the decision or the belief that that's the case for you. "I'm stuck."
Because that belief itself helps to keep you there
and helps to sustain the condition and the circumstance you're in.
And so there is always something that we can do internally, if not externally.
There's always something we can do in spiritual consciousness,
because we're spiritual beings, we live in the spiritual universe.
It's all about a spiritual realm.
And so there's always something that we can do in that realm—
the process of moving life energies creatively, co-creating with the divine.
And I believe that everyone comes to crossroads in their lives, not necessarily just once
but crossroads in which we are called to stretch and we're asked to go deeper
and to connect more deeply with God.
For some, they have called that the possibility junction.
And the alternative to that is to take the road or the path of going it alone, separate from God,
and even being angry with God and upset with God for what is happening.
And that in a sense would be called impossibility junction.
So one road is to move toward being and experiencing that you are part of God,
and the other road is toward being apart from God.
One road is part of God, the other road is apart from God.
And so the crossroads are these junctions that we come to over and over again,
because all of us have challenges and problems.
And I don't care, the best, most wonderful, most angelic,
glorious spiritual being on the planet has problems.
Everyone has encountered problems and challenges.
They come to us all because that's the way we grow and that's the way we even deepen and connect.
That's the way we access the divine. That's how we grow closer.
That is part of our spiritual evolution to have things to bump up against
and then to reach deep inside to something that is beyond ourselves alone,
to realize our connection with something that is greater than ourselves alone.
So this is one the ways in which it comes about.
It helps to develop inside each of us what the Bible calls a hunger and a thirst.
Hunger and thirst after God and after righteousness or right-mindedness
or having this rightness of consciousness.
We want to know more of God, we want to experience more of God,
we want to have God be more active in our life, to bond more deeply with the divine.
These are all things to hunger and thirst for,
and we all have varying degrees of that going on inside of us with all the other distractions
and responsibilities of life and living.
And so all of that really throws us right into what our actual understanding of God is
or what our actual understanding of God might be.
And it varies because God shows up in a person's life according to a person's concepts
and beliefs and understanding.
In other words, that becomes the box out of which God can be experienced in your life
is according to your beliefs, your understanding, and the concepts that you have about God.
And that's why it's important to be able to blow that box open
and not be limiting God in any way,
because God can only show up in the way that you hold God to be.
Those are kind of laws. It's the law that says according to your belief, so be it done unto you.
That's why Jesus when people would have demonstrations and healings he'd say,
"According to your belief, so be done unto you."
God can only be God to you to the extent that you believe what is possible.
We have to move beyond our old limiting concepts of God—
concepts of an angry God, a jealous God, a punishing God,
an anthropomorphic God, projecting onto God the characteristics of a human being
who is moody and one day they're happy and nice, the other day they're not.
We have unconsciously—because we had parents that wanted us to do good
and when we didn't do good we would be punished
and would sometimes frighten us into being good
and were seemingly powerful because they were bigger than us—
we projected all those kind of characteristics onto God erroneously.
And so as we evolve and learn, we learn first by fear as a motivator,
but after that we become good because that's who we are.
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It is our nature, and fear is not the driving force.
We have to realize that in a sense we are creating our own God and yet we're not creating God.
God will always be God, but you and I are creating the framework
of how God is going to be in your life and the framework out of your beliefs and understanding.
There are people who talk about how God has showed up in their life,
the ways that God has showed up—
miracle things happening, demonstrations, all kinds of things.
And then there could be other people that don't know what they're talking about.
They haven't had God seemingly show up in some of the fashions in which people are talking.
They would maybe like to have that happen, they wish it would happen,
they wonder why it doesn't happen.
It's not that God is different—one way for one person, different for another person.
It has to do with each person's framework—the spiritual consciousness,
the understanding, the relationship, the depth of it that they've built,
that the person is actually living from,
and the spiritual laws and principles that they are either applying or not applying.
Each of us knows God based on our experiences and the framework that our mind has created,
our individual minds.
There are varying definitions, concepts, experiences that each person has of their God.
It's the same God but we may experience it differently because the framework may be different.
God has often been referred to as light, and if we consider each person to be
sort of a uniquely cut diamond, each person as their own unique stone or diamond,
in a way it defines and interprets the sunlight that is passing through it
by the nature of the facets that are in that stone or diamond.
All of us have our own unique facets based on our childhood, our conditioning,
our experiences, our belief systems and so forth.
And so the sunlight is the same for everyone, but it's being expressed and defined
and experienced in varying ways because we have honed certain facets different from one another,
some the same, of course.
It's beyond our capacity to know all of the infinite facets of God,
but many of those facets are inherent in us as children of God.
Some of God is unknowable. Some of God is unknowable. It's a mystery.
Like who created God?
Some people get stuck in that question and then they don't want to believe in God.
Forget that. It's a mystery.
Do you have to know who created God? Is that really that important?
It's unknowable.
The separate mind, the ego mind, wants to get stuck in there with that place.
When a person turns to God, light comes into their life.
One doesn't have to know all the mysteries of the light right away;
they only need to know that light is there and it's there to assist.
Light is coming into your life.
There are many names for God, of course, that we have.
We call God the divine, we call God the presence, spirit, universal mind, love, truth,
higher power, creator, divine mind, father, father-mother god. There are others.
Some people are very particular about what name is used for God.
Some are comfortable with certain names and very uncomfortable and not happy with other names.
We're all different. Different facets.
And the name is not important. It's not as important as what it represents in your heart.
What does that name conjure up in your heart? What kind of experience?
What kind of a feeling when you think of your creator which has given you the breath of life?
In Unity we teach that there are certain attributes to God,
that at the very least you must understand 3 particular attributes to God
to be able to really deepen your relationship and go further with it.
So it's important to understand.
Each week we affirm there is only one presence and one power in our lives,
in this church, in the universe—God the good, omnipotent. We affirm that.
I hope that you're really present with that and attuned and feeling what is being said there.
One of the attributes is that God is a presence.
That's no small thing. God is a presence.
We have to realize that there is only one presence, okay?
Only one God, that God is omnipresent. That means everywhere present.
There is no place where God is not.
To really grasp that.
To grasp that attribute that there is one presence, a universal presence,
that everything—everything—is part of God.
Everything.
And if we capture that realization that everything is part of God,
then our separate mind really cannot argue against you being part of God
and that we are all part of God.
You see? That is the truth.
Not everyone understands this or lives from this, of course,
but as this takes hold that we really are all one with God because there's only one presence
and that presence is in everyone—some are aware, some are not in varying degrees,
but as people awaken to that, it contributes to the world.
Conflicts begin to diminish, wars may begin to fade away, our world can change.
So what's important to realize is that whatever you are facing in your life,
because God is a presence, God is there.
That's huge.
I mean, if you're facing an illness, if you're facing a prosperity challenge,
if you're facing a relationship, anything, God is here right now.
And to know that is an important attribute to incorporate.
Another attribute of God that we emphasize is that God is omnipotent,
that God is all-powerful,
and, to be more specific, that God is not only all-powerful but God is all power.
Therefore, we're saying that God is the only power there is. You get that?
The only power there is and that the true nature of that power is good.
You have to ask yourself if you really, really believe that.
And since God is the one presence and the one power in the universe
and since that one presence and one power is in all places,
then there is really no room for other powers.
In other words, there is no entity, there is no power of evil as an independent entity
somehow out there opposing God.
Many of us have been brought up on the idea and the belief that there is an evil entity out there
and that there is a force or a devil or a Satan that is trying to get you to sin,
to get you into hell instead of heaven, and that it's working on you.
We've been taught that.
But God, if you believe is creator of all and there's only one presence and one power,
God could never create such a thing.
God would never create a power independent to oppose himself.
But religion did.
Religion did as a way to explain why bad things happen.
Again, the teaching, "According to your belief, so it be done unto you."
So if people want to have a devil or a Satan, they can find evidences of it because they believe in it.
It wasn't they who did it, it was Satan that made them do it kind of thing.
You know?
So we teach total responsibility.
Really, Jesus didn't talk about a Satan or a devil except to say he's a liar and the father of lies,
which was to say that there is a separate self in your mind that lies to you.
That's all it is is a liar. It's not an entity and a being.
Religion created it into an image and all of this.
We're not saying that there are not bad or evil things that happen in the world.
We're not saying that that doesn't happen.
Clearly humanity living separate and distant from truth and love
has found themselves in degrees of hate and bitterness and resentment and mental confusion,
and out of that separation consciousness and these things horrific behaviors emerge—
wars, conflicts, crimes, all kinds of things.
And in simplest terms then, it's parts of humanity living in the consciousness
of basically fear and separation.
And they're seeded in a method of living from fight or flight, which is so ancient,
and part of their mind is lost in the ego voice, distancing and separating themselves
from love and truth and who they really are and what God is.
And so just as there are those who are clearly on the planet
who reflect love and compassion and goodness
and we can think of some of those resulting in various forms of goodness,
so do we also have the other extreme,
those people who are reflecting being least evolved and reflect this chasm of separation
from God in their consciousness.
Bad or evil things go on in the world because human beings can fall into doing bad or evil things,
largely due to their ignorance, their fear, their conditioning, their childhood,
things that have happened to them that have caused them to step back and growl
and want to bite at the world at the way they have been treated from childhood.
There are reasons that people go there, and it's driven by fear
and it's driven by a separation consciousness.
But when you peel all that away, there's still a creation of God, there's still a spirit in them.
There may be vastly lots of spiritual evolvement yet to be done, they have a long way to go, but it's there.
Human beings have been given free will,
and the free will is to decide how they're going to use the energies of life that have been given to them.
There are those that use those energies constructively,
and there are those that manage and steer them destructively.
We can use the power often used—electricity.
Electricity can be used to light a whole city or it can be used to electrocute somebody in a chair.
You can look at the atom and atomic energy,
and you can use that to light a whole city or to create a bomb
and drop it on people and do destructive things.
So the evolved live among the unevolved,
and the awakened live among the unawakened,
and the separate live among those who live from oneness.
It just shows that individuals and groups and bodies of people can come together
with a particular ideology that could be totally erroneous or aligned with truth.
And it's not an independent evil power or a Satan or a devil;
it's humanity expressing its distance from love and truth and oneness and who they really are
and are seen to be in the mind of God.
It's so important, that one of the purposes of our life is really to then let our light shine
because it offsets those individuals who still have a long way to go,
who are living from separation consciousness.
We basically offset because there's one big pool of energy and consciousness which we live from.
And so all who are really allowing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs to be of love and kindness and oneness
offset those who are so lost in separation—
that you are actually helping the whole world and all humanity
out of your interconnectedness with everyone by the prayer work and the meditation work
and the way that you hold yourself in oneness with humanity.
It's like Julia sang. Do it anyway. That's what unconditional love is.
No matter what's happening out there, no matter what people are doing, love anyway.
Love anyway.
We've been taught before that God's one desire, if there is one desire that God has,
it is to experience more of himself through his creation,
to experience more of himself through us. More light, more love.
Another attribute, the third and final attribute, is the one where God is omniscient.
God is all-knowing, God is all knowledge, all-knowingness.
Some of you remember where I referred to a book by Raymond Burroughs
telling about his experience of a near-death experience.
The book was called God Smiles for Me.
In his book, as in many others, they share in their account how they came to a place
where in their near-death experience, as they approached the light and were experiencing the light,
there was a sense of knowing everything.
And the way he said it, he said he was given the answer to every question he had ever imagined.
He said, "I understood everything."
"Not only where I was and what was happening but the answer, I believe,
to every question ever asked by mankind."
I share that only to say that, yes, God is all-knowingness.
The answer to every question exists. The solution to every problem exists.
And that's an attribute that's very helpful to know,
because wherever you are, in each and every moment there is a presence there
that is all-knowing and all-powerful that can give you the answer and give you the solution
if you are willing to remember that's the case
and have that be part of your framework.
It helps position you to get ideas, to get inspiration, to have results and make things happen.
God is all knowledge and all-knowingness.
Since we're all part of God, we're part of God's mind
and we have to access that.
I'm not sure it's possible that I could give any lesson that would answer all your questions.
In fact, I know I couldn't. I'll say that now.
Many lessons I give cause you to have more questions.
And that's probably good because it means we're all on the quest.
But even scientists, they're always measuring and weighing and calculating.
"Is light a wave or a particle?"
"Is the universe expanding? Why?"
Their questions lead to answers, which lead to questions, which lead to answers,
which lead to more questions, on and on.
Then you have theologians who are always philosophizing, of course,
and they contemplate and they discuss and they question.
"What is God and what is truth and why are we here?" and these other questions.
Their questions lead to various doctrine and dogma that they conclude,
and they consider those answers, which, however, lead to more questions,
which lead to more answers, which lead to more questions, and it continues on. It really does.
And so our mind and even our ego always wants an answer,
wants to understand everything.
It's linear. It's logical.
We can get swept into our left brain and our left hemisphere, if you will,
and when we are there alone, basically we are living only in the past and in the future.
God is not just to be explained; God is to be experienced more than anything.
We'll never truly know God until we experience God.
The experience is beyond explanation. It is mystery.
The right brain or the right hemisphere involves the present moment,
it involves the feeling experience.
It comes down to a question of, "What am I?"
That's the question we have always asked.
And the question is not, "Who am I?" because that's superficial. That's temporal.
"Who am I?" is my achievements. "Who am I?" is my job.
"Who am I?" is the stuff I've collected.
But it's "What am I?" that is the question and to live from that.
What am I? I am a creation of God.
I am an individualized expression of the one same God we all share.
We're not the whole of God. I'm not the ocean but I am a part of the ocean.
I'm living within the ocean and the ocean is living in me.
As Emerson says, "Man is a piece of the universe made alive."
And so we're spiritual beings. We're spirit. We're eternal. We are mortal.
And we're here to deepen our connection to the divine.
It means to open ourselves to a God that is present as a presence.
It means to open ourselves to all power, the power that will see us through all things.
It means to open ourselves to all knowledge and all knowing that will guide us on our way.
So we have to want it, we have to hunger and thirst for it,
we have to ask and seek and knock at the door of the experience
and pray and meditate and live in the light.
So let this everywhere present, all-powerful, all-knowing God be the God that you and I experience
moment to moment and thereby make the fields of possibility become reality.
Go be a light in the world. God bless you.
[♪ music ♪] [Unity of Houston - A Positive Path for Spiritual Living]
>>[male announcer] Unity's spiritual family is given the opportunity to make a financial pledge
for the upcoming year.
People prayerfully decide what they are led to give per week or per month
and designate that on a pledge card.
[Call for a Commitment Card - 713-782-4050] If you are guided to help Unity continue to do amazing things
in people's lives and the world through God's loving work at Unity Church and the TV ministry,
then simply call the church number on the screen and ask for a card to be sent to you.
Once your pledge card of financial commitment for any amount is received,
we will send you a wonderful little book titled How to Speak Unity.
>>[voice-over] Thank you for joining us for today's message. [Sunday Service Times - 9:00am, 11:00am]
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. [(713) 782-4050 - 2929 Unity Drive @ Hillcroft - UnityHouston.org]
You can find out more about Unity and our teachings at UnityHouston.org. [Copyright 2013]
[♪ music ♪] 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.
[Howard Caesar, Sr. Minister] Let me suggest you try Unity Church.
We are a positive, practical, progressive approach to Christianity.
Many who have found us have said,
"I didn't know 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. Come join us.
[2929 Unity Drive, Between Richmond & Westheimer - 713-782-4050]