Creating Your Legacy

Josh Reeves shares his message, Creating Your Legacy. In this talk he explores meaning, purpose and making your best life matter. Josh delves into topics such as personal growth, mindfulness, resilience, compassion, love, and self-discovery. They offer practical tools and techniques that can be applied to daily life, empowering individuals to navigate challenges, find inner peace, and cultivate a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Transcript

There once was a rural American family who in their home had at the center of it an inherited piano.

And everyone in the family grew to despise this piano.

Mother felt that the kids needed to be playing it so they each had to practice an hour a day which led to,

Oh noes,

And grief and whining and this annoyed mom and this annoyed dad as well and one day one of the children could smell something burning.

It was coming from outside,

Mommy,

Mommy,

Come on out and the two other kids chased mommy outside and there they saw on fire the piano.

And mom looks back and dad's there with a slight shmirk of satisfaction on his face and he says,

If I want to teach my parents one thing,

It's that if it ain't fun,

Don't do it.

And so my message for us today,

Graduates from high school but all of us that are graduating from one phase of life to another,

Is not only if it ain't fun,

Don't do it,

Maybe if it leads to fun,

That's okay.

But it has to do with this topic today of legacy.

That our legacy isn't so much what we accomplish in our lives,

It's how we show up every day.

It's how our loved ones will remember us most.

And for me,

More so than a narrative that people paint about us after we're gone,

Legacy is a virtue.

It's a virtue that allows us to move beyond our own self-interest to pay attention to the impact that we have on others and humanity.

I hope my legacy to my children is that we do conflict well,

So that they do conflict in a healthy way when they're adults.

I hope my legacy when I leave Mile High Church is that this is an even more warm,

Welcoming place where people feel seen in their spirituality and honored in their humanity.

I hope the legacy of my ministry is that I've in some way helped people find God as much in their struggles and in their humanness as in any area of their life.

Legacy for many of us,

It's not just about what we do,

Sometimes it's about what stops with us,

About what we don't do,

Not having a negative impact on others.

Ernest Holmes talks about out there being one mind,

And this is wonderful in the sense that we can all feel connected with one divine presence and infinite intelligence.

But the shadow of this,

Holmes teaches us as well,

Is that we inherit the whole thinking of the collective human consciousness.

Isn't that a terrifying thought?

But for a lot of us,

Our work in this life is healing that generational trauma that has been passed on to us.

It's being able to note from our human ancestors discrimination or judgments or ideas of they out there that we need to push down to lift ourselves up.

It's about stopping that and being better stewards of our earth.

It's about building bridges with people who think and believe differently than we do.

It's about committing to living our lives in joy so that our children can see just how to do that.

The great Bono of U2 has a lyric in one of his songs,

I can't change the world,

But I can change the world inside me.

I can't change the world,

But I can change the world inside me.

I love that because it speaks to this idea that we all live on the same earth.

And yet part of our incredible uniqueness is we all create this world inside of us that is made up not only of our thoughts and beliefs,

But our hopes,

Our desires,

The world as we believe it should be.

And what is life but our ability to try and make that inner world reflective of what's on the outside as well.

One humorous but deep example of this is a conversation that the founder of Apple,

Steve Jobs,

Had nearing the end of his life with his biographer,

Walter Isaacson.

And Jobs was dying of cancer at the time and they're in his backyard and Isaacson asked him if he believes in God.

He says,

I've always felt that it's a 50-50 venture,

But facing this illness I'd like to say that my faith has increased.

I'd really like to believe that all of the wisdom I've been able to attain in this life lives on in some unique and glorious way.

But then I stop and I think maybe I'm being naive and that life is just an on and off switch and one day it just switches off.

And you know what?

That's exactly why I never created on and off switches on any of my devices.

So you can see how just that little bit of legacy that exists in most of our pockets can express itself.

Legacy isn't as much about what you accomplish.

It's how you live your life each and every day.

It's about how you commit yourself to your values and body and reflect them to others.

One of my great spiritual heroes is the great Joseph Campbell,

Who in his younger years didn't quite know what he wanted to do with his life.

He had been a track star in high school.

He played the saxophone and he had some money saved up in 1929 when the Great Depression started.

And what he decided to do is,

Although the world seemed to be crumbling down around him,

It was time for him to commit himself to what he loved most,

Which was to read.

And so he exited the world,

Kind of hermit-like,

And got a cabin in the woods of Woodstock,

New York.

This is 1929,

So this was 40 years before Dr.

Berry would show up asking where the party was at,

Woodstock Concert.

He was there.

And he said,

I just read and read.

And it was such a glorious time for Campbell.

He would even write publishing companies saying,

I don't have the money for this book,

But if you send it to me,

I promise to pay you back.

And they would often send the book.

And Campbell would develop his most famous phrase,

Follow your bliss.

Follow your bliss.

What does it mean to give your life to your bliss and then to follow it?

Campbell's theory being that when you know what your bliss is and you commit your life fully to it,

That's when the real adventure of life begins.

And the universe and all of its magic begins to come and support you in fulfilling the adventure of following your own bliss.

I don't know this for a fact,

But reading quite a bit of Campbell,

I believe this idea of follow your bliss developed from his study of Hinduism and what's known as the five sheaths.

It's this idea that we don't just have one body,

But many bodies.

Each of us has what we might call a food body,

The part of ourselves that's just for the worms.

Then there's the breath body,

The body of I am,

Of existence,

Of being right here and right now.

Then there's the body of the senses.

This is the body that gets us really attached to this form,

The smells,

The sights,

The sounds and so on.

Then there is an intellectual or wisdom body.

That's that part of us that contains all of our thoughts and feelings,

But it's also that part of us that connects us with this one mind,

With this infinite intelligence,

A part of us that does go on and on.

And then lastly,

Campbell calls it the bliss body.

This is that part of ourselves that knows it's one with God all of the time,

That knows how loved you are,

That knows that you are a dynamic expression of something infinite,

That knows that life is about gratitude and grace all of the time.

And yet how sad it is that so many live their whole lives unconscious or only with glimpses of this bliss body.

To truly create our legacy and to live our best life,

We have to remember that we're not just worm food,

That there is a deep and profound part of ourselves that is here to live in the highest joy in spite of the sorrows of the world.

Campbell would teach us.

I love how Maya Angelou put it.

She said,

Joy is an important element of happiness.

It is sometimes the difference between striving and thriving.

One must nurture the joy in one's life so that it reaches full bloom.

And I'm not sure if there's any greater legacy that we can leave than to live our lives in joy in spite of challenges,

To recognize and exercise that bliss body,

To rock your God bod in so many different areas of our lives.

And it's this that our children and loved ones will remember.

It's this that will inspire them to live in greater love and greater joy.

Remember that legacy is a virtue.

It's the virtue of moving beyond your own self-interest to have a positive impact on others.

Legacy isn't about what you accomplish.

It's about how you show up every day.

Your legacy is not in your future.

It's in your right here and right now.

Your legacy is your courage to bring forth the best of yourself and to trust that that is just what the world and your loved ones need to be inspired and to live great lives.

What is that impact that you want to have?

One last story for you today.

It's about a woman who in the late 19th century dated two different former British prime ministers.

And she was being interviewed by whatever the gossip column of the day was.

And she was asked,

What was the difference between these two great leaders?

And she said,

Well,

With the first prime minister,

You always left believing he was the smartest person in the room.

That's often how I want to be remembered.

She says,

But the thing about the second prime minister I dated is that you always left feeling like you were the smartest person in the room.

When we think of legacy,

We think of all the ways that we want to be remembered and seen.

But it's not real legacy,

Not just about how much love we have to give,

But how loving we let others know that they are.

Is it about all of the wisdom that we've accumulated,

Or is it about those we've inspired to know how wise and how precious they are?

How can each of us be a presence to inspire others to be their best selves,

To live their legacy so that we can all seek to live in a greater sacred joy?

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