The Power of Your Perception.

Transcription

1 The Power of Your Perception. Lola Wright Bodhi Spiritual Center You want to do a li.le bit of interpreta4on, because we've heard this word, "God," so many 4mes already this morning. Many of you know I have a sensi4vity around that word, because it provokes so much. I think it's a word that has been misused and abused, and misinterpreted, and so I just want to provide a li.le bit of context if that word is something that doesn't sit right for you. In the opening tune, that tune is called Om Shan4. Om is the sacred sound of humanity. Shan4 is the word for peace. The premise in which we've constructed this community around is that you are the individualized manifesta4on of that, which we call God, spirit, life. You are the individualized demonstra4on of this vast and holy universe. If you are s4ll in the process of deconstruc4ng the word God, or if that word doesn't work for you at all, just allow the sonic vibra4on to move you. If there's some place or space in you that that word s4ll pushes a bu.on, perhaps take it as an invita4on to deeper inquiry. Like, "What is that wound that may s4ll exist in me?" I don't have a lot of a.achment to that word, because I think it can some4mes make things more difficult for people, but I want to create the understanding for what we mean when we use that word here. What we would say is that you are the presence of God. There is no separate thing outside of you that is pulling the puppet strings of your life. There is your essence, and in this dimension of reality, there is your ego. We have become very seduced by the ego construct, by the iden4ty construct, and so much so that we think that's the realest thing around. The ego is a very useful tool, but when you think you are your ego, you will experience great suffering. When you start to no4ce, "I can u4lize my ego. I can lean into my ego," how big of an ego does one have to have to stand up here each week and suggest that several hundred people want to hear what you have to say? The ego serves one. Your ego will move you. Your iden4ty will move you. It's just not the all of who you are. It's not the truth of who you are. It's like an ouoit that you put on in this dimension of reality. Bodhi is a center for consciousness. What do we mean when we say, "consciousness?" We mean mental awareness, the ability to witness one's self. What self do you speak of? Well, if we were to capitalize the Self, we would be speaking of your essence, your God body. If we were to keep it as a lowercase S, we would be talking about your ego construct, your iden4ty. The great desire is just to be able to witness which one is running the show.

2 In our Conscious Leadership Program, we talk a lot about personas. Personas are the nuances of the ego construct, the nuances of the iden4ty construct. What we talk a lot about is the ability to put on the persona such that you can use it, versus the persona playing you. When you fall asleep to your whole and holy nature, and you think you are your persona, perhaps your persona shows you're made up of thousands of personas that were constructed primarily in the first six years of life, all as coping mechanisms to navigate whatever your family of origin and the world that you were born into looked like. I have one that Toni, our director of youth and family calls, "Lit Lola." Lit Lola's like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah." Some4mes people will experience Lit Lola, and I was told recently, "Honey, I think you've had a mental breakdown." I was like, "What? No, that was just Lit Lola. She was just coming out to play. I was just channeling her." My prac4ce of being able to witness myself gives me freedom to allow that one to come forward and not to be in the trance of her. Look, there are 4mes when I'm in the trance of her. That par4cular moment was not a trance moment, that was an inten4onal awake state of Lit Lola coming forward, being of high and holy service to the room. To develop a muscle such that you can discern and determine when you're being played by your ego, or when you're playing with your ego. Very big dis4nc4on. Love this. This wisdom is always s4rring in me, and it's owen4mes cited in the science of my textbook wri.en by a really brilliant philosopher that came... wrote several books in the '20s and '30s and '40s. He speaks a lot about, "You are the God presence whose center is everywhere, and circumference is nowhere." The presence of God is in all things. It has no beginning and no end. He did not come up with that context, it's very ancient, and when you Google, "God whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere," about a dozen people are taking credit for that one. I decided to go with the oldest one, all right? It's a German theologian. His name is Nicholas of Cusa. "God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere." To have a center of consciousness is to be a center that's curious in an awakened state, to have the capacity to witness one's self. Our series this month is 4tled It's All About You. The most sacred purpose that you have on the planet is to get deeply curious about you. The deeper your rela4onship is with yourself, the greater you can move on the planet. Do you have anyone in your life, or perhaps you are this person in your life, that is really skilled at poin4ng out all of the problems of others? Like very skilled. I have a par4cularly strong muscle in this one. Let me just provide an analysis for all of life. I can play with that one. That analysis is all comprised on the projec4on of your world of beliefs, so that which you are seeing out in the world of form is your cosmology of feelings, opinions, memories, beliefs, and thoughts that gets projected onto the movie screen of life. The movie screen of life then sends back the message, and you have something called percep4on.

3 My talk this morning is 4tled The Power Of Percep4on. Percep4on is that which you interpret through sensory informa4on. Your percep4on is developed by your central nervous system, that which you see, that which you smell, that which you hear, that which you taste. It filters through a cosmology of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, memories, opinions. The extent to which we can understand that life is a projec4on that is mirroring back to us and then being interpreted through our percep4on... Two words that you can play with this month: projec4on and percep4on. If you walk on the planet with great curiosity, how is that which is occurring a projec4on, and then how am I 100% responsible for the percep4on that I take? I've had a couple experiences recently where I had go.en some feedback from people, and it seemed benign. Like Paul, if you don't mind, I called Paul, and I said, "You're really brilliant." He is really brilliant. Paul is one of those people where it's like, "Don't say anything stupid around Paul, because he's just going to be like..." And he doesn't always make the move, but you can see it, right? Gina, you know... that's his wife... she knows what I'm talking about. So I called Paul, and I'm like, "You know, I know you're really brilliant, and I know you witness all kinds of things going on around here, and I would just love your feedback on some things." He said many things. We had a wonderful conversa4on, but he said this one line. I don't think he understood what a powerful metaphor it was for me in my life. He said, "My experience is in an effort to be inclusive, in an effort to be open and affirming, in our rundowns before service, I experience inefficiency." I was like, "Wow." You might be like, "I don't get it. What's the big deal?" But what he was poin4ng to for me, now here's where the opportunity is, people will say all kinds of things to you, and you can either get defensive and get irritable, and explain how that's not accurate, and, "if Paul really understood what I really am trying to create here, he would get the world of it, and then of course he would have a healing around the percep4on of inefficiency, and he would realize Lit Lola's brilliant. I had no idea what she was crea4ng." But if I see Paul as a reflec4on of my consciousness here to be a conduit for my learning, my growth, he is my greatest ally, how could he not be? He is before me. If he is my great ally, then I listen intently and go, "How is this for me? How is what Paul's saying true?" I've been siang with that over the last several days asking myself, "Where do I bleed energy? Where do I bleed 4me?" One way that I bleed 4me is I take more than 100% responsibility for other people's experiences. In an effort to be accommoda4ng, I create inefficiency. Now, I share that story with you not to get into the content of the story. Some of you might be siang here being like, "Well, perhaps I should a.end the rundown, and then perhaps I could help Lola with some efficiency tools, and then she would have a greater experience." No, no, no, no, no. The point is, there are voices in your world that can seem sort of like a pebble in a shoe. You really have two primary choices. One is to say, "Not of service to me, moving on.

4 Keep it moving." The other is to say, "How is this for me? How is this for me, and how can I be quick in my learning?" Another person recently said to me, "I know you think you're up to some big things, but you're really not." That's my cliff notes, okay? They might be like, "That is not at all what I said," but that's how I heard it. I heard it like, "I know you think you're up to some big things and you're a big deal, but you're really not." I was like, "They're right. They are right. I am a legend in my own mind. What am I really here to be up to on the planet?" I'd like to you to bring to your mind's eye in this moment something that has been said to you recently that was like an "ouch" where you are. What has someone said to you recently that it has an ouch? I'm going to invite you to take a deep breath and close your eyes for a moment. If there isn't something recent, I bet you could access one from some point in your decades of existence. Someone said something, and it had an ouch. What is the giw in that? Not from a place and space of self-loathing, but from a place and space of curiosity. How is this one before you that delivered this bit of wisdom, look it's all about you? Take a deep breath and open your eyes. God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere. If in fact we are walking on the planet as God mee4ng God, mee4ng God, mee4ng God, mee4ng God, mee4ng God, and I go to Paul and I make an inquiry, and then he delivers some wisdom, how can I take what I like and leave the rest? How can I walk on the planet from a place of openness and curiosity sucking the marrow out of life? This is my movie. This is your movie. You're projec4ng all kinds of stories. The power of percep4on is in your hands. It's your narra4ve. You get to decide what is true and what is not true. Beau4ful book. It's called You Are Always Your Own Experience. It's by Tom Johnson. I don't even think it's in print anymore, but this is why you want to keep folks in your life that are of high service to you, because you'll find resources that you otherwise might not have had access to, so for me, Gaylon McDowell is a great, great fellow traveler. He'll be here next week. We share resources all the 4me, and I was out at Christ Universal Temple a few months ago, and they were having a used book sale. I love walking through their bookstore with him. "I hope you like this, this, this." I'm like, "All right, all right, all right." You are always your own experience. Tom Johnson says, "The more you are Self-aware and realize the power of your awareness, the more you func4on as a great and unlimited power in the world. As you are Self-aware, you dare to assert yourself, be the God Self in ac4on." No4ce the word Self is capitalized. "The more you are Self-aware." This is not saying, "The more you are aware of your limited sense of self." This is actually saying, "The more you calibrate with the essence of who you are, the more you recalibrate with the power of who you are, the more you recalibrate with the God body that is you, you are God made manifest."

5 Audience: That tune that [Symbert 00:16:44] sang said, "You are the source of your own salva4on. No one is coming to save you, it's you. You're the one you've been wai4ng for." Maya Angelou said that. You are the one. You are the one. Place your hand on your heart for a moment. You might say to yourself, "I am the source of my salva4on." I am the source of my salva4on. Isn't there a li.le one in all of us that wishes someone else would save us? I mean, I love the knight and shining armor. It would just be so much simpler, we think, because if you are saved by another, your source of security, approval, and control is always externalized. The locus of control is always beyond your capacity to influence. That line of thinking... twofold. One, perhaps you could argue just came about in the evolu4on of human consciousness where it seemed like, "I don't understand the mystery of the world, so it must be that there's something out here pulling the puppet strings of life." That is perhaps the evolu4on of human consciousness. Another theory, though, equally true, is imagine that if we keep folks disempowered and vic4mized at the effect of their circumstances and condi4ons, they will always need us. Then we create value. We become their source. It's all about you. You are the source of your own salva4on. The power lies in your percep4on. Life is always providing you with s4mulus, and then there's a filter of thought through which you get to decide how the story goes. When this community was in significant levels of transi4on six years ago, the predictable future is that it would close. That was the predictable future. The financials suggested it, the state of the community suggested it. It was on very, very dicey ground. Anyone know what happened? A few people dug in, hunkered down, and said, "That is not the truth of who we are." A few people said, "No, no. That's not going to be true." We are here for something more. We are here to be a catalyst, a conduit. Each of us had been influenced and impacted incredible ways by the capacity of a conscious community to come together, transcend dogma and doctrine, and s4r people into an awareness of who they are. That's a big deal. That ma.ers. In 2018, that inten4on came to full frui4on such that we exceeded our historic trends of giving. Why? Because a few people said they were more willing to invest in possibility than probability. It's all about you. What limita4ons are you imposing on yourself? What stories have you already wri.en an ending for? There is a self in you that is greater than this dimension of this reality, greater than the finite capacity to create. When you tap into that one, you can move mountains. When you tap into that one, you can experience a life that does not make sense. Logic only serves us so much. Would you be willing to play in the land of possibility? Would you be willing to play in the land of imagina4on? Would you be willing to create? Be like li.le children. Be like li.le children. In the Chris4an bible it says, "But seek ye first the Kingdom of God in its righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." This is where we got a li.le wonky. We

6 thought that was a geography. There is not a loca4on called The Kingdom of God. You're it. It's now. I was talking to someone just the other day, and they said, "The choice exists for me to experience heaven or hell." I said to them, "Like right now, right?" They're like, "Yeah." They said, "You know, I know some old people I used to date that I could create hell with in a nanosecond." Good awareness. The Kingdom of God is here now to the extent that you are able to realize it. The most sacred service you could give to humanity is to become in4mately familiar with your interior, because the well-being of your interior space is being projected on all of humanity, and then we are playing out storylines of hurt. If I take 100% responsibility for my internal state, for my well-being, that doesn't mean I live a life free of conflict, that means that I don't lose my foo4ng as easily when conflict arises. That means that I don't become a slayer of the one before me, it just means I become conscious of what's true on planet Lola. In this book You Are Always Your Own Experience, Tom Johnson goes on to say, "You can never do anything about someone else." That is the good news and the bad news. Remember that one who would like to provide a hewy analysis for all of humanity? It's very discerning, it's very wise. If humanity would only just listen to the guidance of my intui4ve knowing, that which I see in the landscape, suffering would be over. That is the healthy ego playing. The fact of the ma.er is, you can do nothing about another one. One of the great bits of wisdom from the 12 steps, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. God where? God right here. Lola, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Lola. Self. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It's all about you. The power of projec4on, life is feeding back to you that which you put out. If you want to experience something new in 2019, 2019 is not magical. Nothing new is occurring. One sun goes down one day is just a li.le mental hack to create the percep4on of a new beginning. Let's play with the hack. A new beginning is here. Take a deep breath. Oh my gosh, a new beginning is here. A new 2019 is here. It is. Holy smokes. I can be free. It was as true yesterday as it was today, but we'll tap into the collec4ve consciousness and create something new. What you are resis4ng is maintained in your experience. It is maintained because it has your a.en4on. What you give your a.en4on to is always what you experience. What you are resis4ng is maintained in your experience. It is maintained because it has your a.en4on. What you give your a.en4on to is always what you experience. That right there could be the single guideline for living in this dimension of reality. I have responsibility for the life that I create. I can get fixated on that which serves and supports my higher Self, capital S, coming forward, or I can get fixated on that which is not working. The fixa4on on that which is not working, another skill I have very well

7 developed, the fixa4on on that which is not working will create more of what? That which is not working. Your mind is like a li.le computer. It's not personal for you, it's just like input in, input out. Input in, input out. My mind is projec4ng. It's filling back to me that which I've put out, and now I have the choice to perceive it. If I had heard Paul's feedback like, "Oh gosh, something's wrong. This is not good. This is not good." Inefficiency. Inefficiency. I mean, first of all, what's hysterical is you should know my fixa4on about inefficiency. The fact that Paul used the word, "inefficient," is comical, of which he knows nothing about. There's only one life. That life is the infinite. That life is my life now. Paul is a projec4on of my mind's eye delivering back to me fodder, which I can use as wonderful, rich ingredient, or I can dispose of and be at the effect of. Choice is yours. Michael Beckwith, you've heard me say before, was here February 15th and 16th of I'm going to figure out a way, I'm really sure it's not that difficult, but to get you the recording of the night he was here. It was one of the most powerful talks I've ever heard. Now, what's true is it was a complete projec4on of where I was. You might listen to it and be like, "I don't get it," but to me it was a big deal, so we'll see. He said something that night that he doesn't remember saying. I have it on recording, and now I think he's sort of worked it into his sh4ck, "Have dominion over your awareness and you'll have dominion over your des4ny." That was a game changer when I heard him say that. "Have dominion over your awareness and you will have dominion over your des4ny." That which is unique in the human experience is the capacity to witness one's self, to be able to watch, and the extent to which you can play with awareness, consciousness. It is our great burden and our great delight. Have you ever had the thought where you wish you didn't witness yourself? It's like, "Shh, please [inaudible 00:29:32]." It's a great, great giw. As we move into this 2019, I ask you to be a community of people that take radical responsibility for your projec4ons. Be a community of people that take radical responsibility for the world that you're walking in, because there's no one else. It's you. You're the one. If something bothers you, it's likely placed on your heart to be part of the solu4on. If something bothers one that does not bother you, rest easy. Rest easy. It's not yours this life4me. That is not a way of absolving ourselves of personal responsibility.