What is coveting...really. Text of talk given at Unity on the River August 7, 2022
Unity on the River talk August 6, 2022
How did you all do with starting a Sabbath practice? We are invited by the fourth commandment to eliminate, for one day a week of your choosing, a habit or activity that keeps you from experiencing the divine in your life. Maybe it’s certain food, or going shopping, or working at your job, or watching Sunday football instead of spending quality time with your family (that’s the one I’ll be taking on shortly). Perhaps you will make a commitment to not complain about anything, no matter what, for just one day (one of you made that suggestion after my last talk). Or not use any swear words. Or no social media or television or live streaming, tick tocking, or anything else that keeps you separated from your own divine self.
Then you look for activities to add on your special Sabbath day. Meditate, pray, attend a service, read, sing, dance or have a glorious meal with friends and family, even with ones you don’t like. Create a Sabbath ritual, like lighting a candle, playing special music, going for a peaceful walk or hike to a certain place, have a special conversation with a loved one. Author Jack Canfield asks his partner every Sunday to rate how he was as a partner the previous week, to give him a score from one to ten. And if the score is not a ten, what he can do in the next week to make it so.
Carol and I had not kayaked together for many years until we went out recently on a Sunday. We went again this past Sunday and stayed out a little longer than the time before. We felt the joy of being in nature and being together that made our Sabbath time special.
When we honor the Sabbath, we unhook from our everyday pressures and connect with something profoundly joyful. And as we carry this joyful vibration throughout the week, everything goes more smoothly as we feel God’s blessings with everything we do and with every person we interact with.
If this is new to you, or if you haven’t started yet with your own Sabbath practice, start today. Choose your day, it can be any day of the week, make a promise to stop doing just one thing, and adding just one new practice and see if you notice a change. It is a great step to living a life of experiencing the peace that passeth all understanding.
As you may know, when I stepped down from my staff position here at Unity, I made the choice to step into who I always was, a healer. It was a little scary, I admit. I always had more traditional jobs, like Civil engineer, sign maker, restaurant owner and operations director. I had a few clients, no real marketing plan and little savings to fall back on. I was driving for Lyft to fill in the large gaps I often had between clients. But I was happy. I loved the people I served in whatever I was doing. I had a perfect 5.0 customer rating on Lyft. I felt guided and led into the direction I realized I had been heading in for the previous forty years. I didn’t matter to me what my father did, what career my friends were pursuing, what trips others were taking, how nice the car was that I was driving or even how much I was earning every week, although I did keep track of that carefully. As long as I was getting just a little bit better each and every week, that was OK by me.
As I delved deeper and deeper into energy healing, I made it a point that every week I would study, take online classes, watch instructional videos and work toward additional certifications. I joined a weekly Zoom meeting of practitioners from all over the world where we would support each other and share ideas as well as perform healings on each other. And I opened myself up to adding to my own practice things nobody else was doing. Like opening each and every session with every client with prayer. Calling in our angels and guides to assist us in finding balance, harmony and joy in our lives. I have done over 3,000 of these prayers now, and each and every one of them is unique; I’ve never done the same prayer twice. I wondered if anyone would ever be turned off by this opening to our sessions. If they were, nobody ever said anything. And I now know this practice deepens the healing and integrates our emotional bodies to the divinity that exists in and around all of us.
One day, I was giving a woman an energy healing session on the phone, which is how I do virtually all my sessions since March of 2020 when the pandemic struck. We were clearing old emotional pains and experiences that were blocking her from experiencing happiness and joy in her life today. We, meaning me, her and her higher self that we were connected with, identified a trauma emotion called “coveting.” I explained to her that coveting refers to the emotion of wanting what somebody else has that we don’t have, which causes us pain. My client, who is Jewish, said to me, well, that’s not really what coveting is. I knew she was well versed in what Jew call the Elder Book, the Old Testament, so I had her explain the meaning of coveting. Here is what she said “, In the ten commandments, we are told “Thou shalt not covet.” The real meaning of “Thou shalt not covet” is that when we covet, what happens is that we forget that we are one with our creator, one with God.
Wow. I needed to think about that one. And I have for the many months since that initial conversation. And when the trauma energy of coveting comes up during a session, I have a discussion about it with my clients. About how, when we lose the memory of our connection with God, it creates a kind of energetic trauma in our energy fields.
Here at Unity, we learn the five Unity Principles. For years and years they were display behind me for us to see, absorb and meditate on whenever we were in the sanctuary. As stated in unity.org and on your handouts, The Unity principles are:
1. There is only one Presence and one Power active as the Universe and in my life. God the Good.
2. Our essence is of God; therefore, we are inherently good. This God essence was fully expressed in Jesus, the Christ.
3. We are co-creators with God, creating reality through thoughts held in Mind.
4. Through prayer and meditation, we align our heart-mind with God. Denials and affirmations are tools we use.
5. Through thoughts, words, and actions, we live the Truth we know.
The first four of those five principles, when denied, can cause a disconnection with God, our innate divinity and result in the negative energy we in energy healing call coveting. Is there a one Presence and one Power or is there not? Is active AS the universe or not?
When we deny the existence of one presence- one power in the Universe and in our lives, we are coming from the belief that there is no higher power, that we are separated from our divinity, that we, are not divine. Sounds like ego to me.
The ego, wanting us to be separate and alone, wants to keep us from knowing in our hearts that our essence is of God, this one power and that we are one with it. Therefore, the essence of coveting is ego. We can choose the ego or choose to affirm that our essence is of God, principle 2, which continues to say that this God-essence is fully expressed for us by our way-shower and teacher, Jesus, the Christ. In Unity, we do not say Jesus Christ. We acknowledge Jesus as our master teacher who teaches us, even to this day, that the essence of God is love and that we abide in this energy.
So if the essence of God is love, and we are not separate from this ONE PRESENCE and ONE POWER that is God, then our essence is LOVE. Therefore, anything in our energy fields that is not of love, is not of God and is not a loving expression of our inherent divinity is not real. We declare, today that our negative emotions, our harsh judgements, our physical ailments, our upsets, our anger, our fears and this incredible, and I mean this as saying that it is coming from a place that is not credible, belief that we are somehow separate from that which created us is null and void and not real, but is only a construct of our egoic minds (remember what Rev Shipley called the ego, Edging God Out).
When we attach a desire, a yearning, a lust, a wanting of something material to our energy field, which doesn’t take much effort to do, we are telling our subconscious selves that we are not one with our creator, that our essence is not of God, that we are not, as the principles say, inherently good. Then we look for things not of God to satisfy our ego’s need for satisfaction. When we forget this oneness with God and look outside of God, that is coveting. And in the Elder Book, of which the first four books calibrate energetically extremely high, we are commanded to not “covet.” To remember that in all things, we are one with God.
What did Jesus say about coveting in his teachings? He said quite specifically that attaching our egos to the material is the source of our worries. In Matthew 6:25, the famous “lilies of the field” teaching it is all spelled right out. Here’s the passage from the New Interpreter’s Bible:
(read from Bible: Matthew 6: 25-34)
Now we apply this to Unity Principles 3, 4 and 5.
Principle 4: Let us co-create something new, making a new commitment to something, anything, creating a new reality for our selves through thoughts held in mind. There could not be a more perfect time of the year to do this than right now. Tomorrow is August 8, 8/8.
Eight is considered one of the luckiest numbers in numerology and often corresponds with wealth, success, and ambition. Visually, the number 8 looks like an infinity symbol turned upright, which represents unlimited potential. 8/8 is numerologically significant, since eight is the number of abundance and prosperity, Being the eighth day of the eighth month of the year charges this date with the energy of success and good fortune, which can better enable us to set clear and effective intentions.
Do your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take this most auspicious time and set an intention. If you really want to go for it, set 8 intentions. Ones that you will co-create with God through mind-action. Intentions can include:
1. Greater health and vitality
2. Elimination of a debt
3. Forgiving that someone or something that you know is not an energetic expression of God’s love.
4. A change in the daily professional activities you are embarking on that you know in your heart no longer serve your highest good.
5. Somewhere you would like to go or do or become as you step into a richer life of oneness with God.
6. Create an activity, a hobby, a joyful past time that feeds your soul.
7. Re-commit to a spiritual practice that will deepen your connection to the Divine, principle 4. We are going to give you an example shortly.
8. Take on a new service to mankind, specifically chosen to be an expression of the truth you know, principle number 5. This could be service to the elderly, to children, to a cause that is based in God’s love, or to your community. This year, I took on being an alternate member on my town’s Water and Sewer Commission. Not very exciting, but fulfilling as I give back to the community that has been my home for 31 years now and it gives expression to the years I spent as a civil engineer, somehow thinking that was my divine purpose at the time. I sing and entertain at senior homes with my piano-playing friend, Nat. And we have our Sunday night dinners. What will you take on.
There are eight categories for you to choose from. Then for each intention you choose, write down eight actions you will take for each one. Make a phone call, sign up for a class, get that book about your topic online or from the library. Start meditating again at the same time every day, in the same spot, wearing your special meditation clothing (if you don’t have one, there’s another action step). Research new ways you can express your divinity with your physical body: chanting, yoga, Xi Gong, breathwork, or tapping. I have a neighbor who never goes to church, has no traditional spiritual practice. But at this time of the year, he is at the dock across the street standing as still as one of the herons in the bay, fishing. Casting out, drawing it in, rarely catching anything, and when he does, he always releases it back. For an hour or so just about every day. Casting it out, drawing it in. That’s meditation.
By the way, the text of this talk will be posted on my blog, www.BalanceHarmonyJoy.com/blog so you can access some of these suggestions.
So, let’s take on a practice right now. Let’s chant. Sanskrit is an ancient language, thousands and thousands of years old. Sanskrit chants carry a strong vibrational resonance that connect us to our heart-space, our divinity, our connection to God. We will be chanting to Om Nama Shivaya, which roughly translates to, I honor the God within. The chant will be slow and meditative. Our team up front will chant, and then you will respond. Then we will repeat it over and over for a longer time than we normally meditate. As you chant and wait to start again, listen to what your thoughts are telling you. Is it boring, are you uncomfortable, is there going to be coffee today, when is this friggin chant going to end, etc. All of it is the ego, keeping you in a state of coveting something outside of God, keeping you from the only thing in your life that is real, love. As time goes by, your mind relaxes, the rhythm takes over, the energy sinks in and your connection to your inner divinity flows in.
(talk ends with group chant)