When I was growing up,
I was accused quite frequently of being too positive.
Always being too optimistic.
Always seeing the bright side of things.
Always seeing the possibilities.
Always being encouraging.
And I was really confused as to why people would criticize me for that.
And then as I grew older and came here to Mile High Church and started to do some of my own personal growth work,
I realized that there was some negativity that I had never allowed myself to see.
That what I was doing was somewhat ineffective,
And it is what they call today somewhat toxic positivity.
That I was ignoring the negative side of life for the positive.
That I always wanted to look at the positive,
Always wanted to look at the good,
And I wanted to ignore the negative.
And there is some good in that,
And some would say that might be what we teach here.
However,
When the negativity in our heart,
In our consciousness,
In our life is so profound that it's become toxic,
What I think we don't realize,
And what I didn't realize,
Is it's running the show.
In terms of consciousness and the creation of new life and new possibilities,
This would be like taking flowers and putting all sorts of rich,
Good stuff in the soil for them to grow and then pouring rotten things that are going to make them die.
And so in the soil of my life was this richness of this wonderful skill of seeing the good,
But this also kind of negative trait of pushing away the bad as quickly as I could and ignoring the bad and not wanting to look at the negativity.
That doesn't serve us,
And I think we sometimes have a misunderstanding of our teaching with regards to this.
And because of that,
We don't deal with our toxic negativity,
And so it continues to have its way in our life,
Or we don't even know how to deal with toxic negativity.
And I'm calling this detox because to some extent,
It makes sense to fast from it,
To turn away from it,
But at the same time,
It's important for us to understand what the power that negativity or that which we sometimes label negativity can play in our lives.
So for example,
Around here in this environment,
If we're talking about moving forward in our life and being willing to say,
Hey,
I took these steps forward and they just didn't work very well.
It didn't go the way I hoped it might go.
Sometimes I hear people go,
Don't be so negative,
Stop being so negative.
That's not being negative.
That is acknowledging,
Hey,
That didn't go very well.
I didn't really feel that great about it.
I wish I would have done that.
I wish we would have gone that way instead of that way.
And it's just an evaluation of myself or something in my world.
What is toxic negativity is,
You're horrible.
You don't know what you're doing.
What do you think is going on?
You're so stupid.
I can't believe you chose to do that.
That's toxic negativity right there.
Anybody else have that voice in their head sometimes?
I'm going to talk a little bit about that.
So we have to find our way to balance.
It's not ever that looking at things that didn't go well or aren't going so well or talking about them is a bad thing.
It's how we're doing it.
And to the extent that we're having these really strong negative feelings about ourselves or our lives or our bodies or our money or our work or our partners or our kids or our world or whatever it may be,
To the extent that we continue to feed that really toxic negative energy,
We're stuck.
Even if there's some other part of us going,
It's all good.
Everything's going to work out just fine.
No,
It's not.
It's horrible.
And we're going back and forth.
The balance is here in the middle someplace.
Yeah,
Some things aren't working so great.
I'm not sure I really like how that's going.
I think I need to do something different here.
That's not being negative.
That's taking a look at things and making some choices about them.
And so I'm talking today about the toxic negativity and the practice of possibly detoxing from it,
Which does require not an ignoring of it,
But it might in the first step of dealing with that negativity require a choice to fast from it,
To stop giving our energy over to it so profoundly.
In many ways,
Toxic negativity in our lives consumes us.
We don't consume it.
It consumes us.
And then we feel stuck and we don't know how to get out of it.
And so we have to move forward.
And just like anything else,
When we detox from it,
It can feel really uncomfortable at first.
If we are trying to let go of some substance we've been putting in our bodies in recovery,
The first step of recovery in addiction is to stop imbibing in that thing that may have served us,
May have helped us process things in our life,
May have caused us to feel like,
Well,
At least I have sugar or at least I have wine or whatever it might be.
But we know that it's gotten to the point where it's no longer serving us and we have to stop imbibing in it.
And what happens is that because the body is used to it and has been getting its fixes of it and has been allowing it to be serviced in the body,
The body goes,
Wait a minute now,
What's going on?
And detox occurs.
Detox is this very uncomfortable stage of surrendering up something that can cause us to go,
This doesn't feel very good,
I'm going back.
I'm going to eat that chocolate bar because I can't take it anymore.
I've got a horrible headache and I can't see straight.
But somebody who's truly detoxing from it can take a deep breath,
Can find ways to stay balanced,
Can remember and stay attuned with the truth of where they're headed and can be supported in letting go of that which no longer serves.
I'm suggesting the same might be true for us when it comes to negative energy.
When it comes to wallowing in the negative and thinking negatively all the time about something or ourselves or something that's going on.
When we first decide to let it go,
The ego can argue for it.
Well,
That's,
You got to know,
You got to know what's going on in the world.
Stop.
You got to know how,
What's really,
And it'll talk us into,
But it's reasonable to think that negatively stuff.
It's reasonable to watch 24 hours of news every day.
Of course it is.
That's reasonable.
We should be doing that.
Why aren't we doing that?
And if we don't do that,
We won't know what's going on.
That voice will tempt us back in,
But we might have to step out and have some strength and to learn how to fast from it.
Our founder,
Dr.
Ernest Holmes,
Speaks about this a little bit because some of us may have been going through this with Lent.
The practice of Lent,
Right,
Is letting go of certain things.
Well,
It's not just to let go of those things just because we want to please God.
It's to let go of things that are distracting us from God,
Distracting us from the infinite,
Distracting us from that centered place.
And so that's the true,
True north of Lent.
And Holmes says in This Thing Called You,
Perhaps true fasting is a determination no longer to entertain negative thoughts.
Perhaps it means continually to be affirming the good.
The act of physical fasting is merely a symbol of this inward grace.
The need for the symbol disappears when you understand its meaning.
It is a good practice to fast so far as the negative is concerned and feast on affirmations only.
Why not fast from the idea of lack and feast on the idea of abundance?
So we're inviting as part of this Lenten process,
These weeks leading up to an acknowledgement of Easter,
A willingness to fast on toxic negativity.
Not to fast on,
Oh,
I need to go this way or maybe I should go that way.
Toxic negativity.
To step out of that extremism that we can fall into about ourselves,
Our lives,
And our world.
And I think there are some key ways that we can practice this.
As I've contemplated,
There are lots of ways.
But I think there's two main areas that many of us get pulled into toxic negativity that we could take a look at.
And the first one is to detox from your critical voice.
I just demonstrated that voice a few minutes ago.
That voice that calls your names,
That voice that beats you up,
That voice that tells you what an idiot you are,
How stupid you are,
How you didn't do things right,
Or how could you possibly have made that choice and you never should have done that.
It's not that thinking those thoughts,
It's the difference between,
Well,
I wish I wouldn't have made that choice versus you're an idiot for making that choice.
These are the kind of energies that we're talking about.
Toxic negativity comes with that energy.
And it's the critical voice that we've taken on about ourselves,
About other people.
It's the part of us that looks through the eyes of critique all the time.
Well,
They're not doing it right.
Well,
If they were a true religious science,
They wouldn't blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah.
Pick a little,
Talk a little,
Pick a little,
Talk a little,
Cheap,
Cheap,
Cheap,
Talk a lot,
Pick a little more,
Right?
I was in that musical.
I know that song.
It's the gossipy picking on everything.
It's that,
That,
That can,
That kind of borderlines on toxic negativity,
Especially if it's habitual and we're doing it all the time.
My mother used to say,
I bet your mothers did too,
If you don't have anything good to say,
Don't say anything at all kind of a practice,
That might be fasting from toxic negativity to say for a while,
If I don't have anything good to say about something for a bit this whole week,
I'm going to practice not saying something at all and see what happens.
Doing what Holmes says,
Only lifting up with my words.
It's also the critical voice that allows us to,
To fall prey to our critics.
People who want to tell us what we're doing wrong.
I'm sure everyone has one or two of those in their life,
Right?
Who wants to say,
Well,
You know,
You should really do that differently.
Have you ever thought about doing this?
I don't understand why you're always going blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah.
And we can fall prey to that critical voice,
To the critical voice of people who disagree with us on social media,
To the critical voice of our partners or our spouses,
Our kids or whatever it might be,
To the critical voice of our bosses or people we work with,
To the critical voice that is always at play.
And eventually as we give power to that critical voice,
That critical voice merges and becomes our critical voice often.
And then before you know it,
We're criticizing ourselves or we're imagining we can look at someone and just go,
Well,
I'm sure they're criticizing me for having made that choice.
And we don't even know for sure if they have,
But we've imagined that they did.
And so we experience that toxic criticalness.
And then we project it out also into the world and we look at what's going on in the world.
Well,
That shouldn't be happening and that shouldn't be happening.
In the Buddhist teachings,
One of the greatest places to go to find peace is a lack of attachment.
The letting go of needing to be right,
The thinking that the way we see it is the way it should be,
To let that go,
To surrender it up,
Is powerful.
It's spiritual power.
And indeed,
Letting go of being willing to criticize ourselves and others and in that voice all the time is part of how we fast from toxic negativity and how we break the cycle.
It's absolutely OK to say,
Well,
I totally agree with what that leader is doing and I totally agree with what that that CEO is doing or I don't really know that I agree with them right now.
That is not toxic negativity.
That is standing in what I believe in.
But where it gets toxic is when we fall into this energetic that leads to anxiety and depression and fear and frustration.
And that doesn't really serve us in any way.
We can't grow.
We can't shine.
Years ago,
When I was here at Mile High Church on staff,
I got to be the events director,
Which meant that I worked with Dr.
Roger to schedule all of the the wonderful speakers that we brought in.
And so I got to know quite a few of them fairly well.
And one of the ones I got to know best was Dr.
Wayne Dyer and his team.
And he's a he's a great,
Great man.
I know he still is wherever he is in the universe.
Yeah.
And he yeah,
He was so supportive of this church and so supportive of me.
And when I was leading the ministry in Scottsdale,
We were going through a period in our community where we could feel there was this this growth of the community wanting to happen.
More and more people were starting to come and we could feel this energy of wanting to expand and and make a way to be a little bit of a bigger community.
And yet there was tension and resistance.
And the people who were afraid of growth were criticizing us and criticizing me.
And and their voices were very loud.
Some of them would say things like,
But I come to church now and I know everyone.
And if we let new people in,
I won't know everyone.
Yeah,
Because they're afraid.
They were afraid.
Who are these new people who are coming to my church kind of thing?
And so we had to kind of lovingly help people manage that.
Hey,
We want to I kept saying,
Isn't it a good thing when we have new people coming into church?
And so then they were kind of criticizing me and my ego,
Wanting a big church kind of thing.
And and as I hear sometimes,
Michelle Medrano is too much.
I am.
Yes,
I am.
Yes,
Yes,
I am.
I can be too loud,
Too fast,
Too much.
That's me.
Did you get that,
Melissa?
Good.
Yeah.
And so I invited Dr.
Dyer to come and do an event with us and to do this event the way we needed to do it.
We had to rent a bigger facility.
We had to expand our marketing.
And it was really scary for the community because it meant instead of a Sunday service with a few hundred people,
We were going to be having an event with about a thousand people and that our community was going to be exposed to them.
And it might be growth.
And it was so,
So uncomfortable.
And so the day that Dr.
Dyer came to do the event,
We also,
At his agreement,
Had booked him for all these appearances on television and radio all through Phoenix.
And so here I am in my little mom van driving Dr.
Wayne Dyer around Phoenix.
And of course,
We're chatting in between his appearances and and he's asking me,
How is it going and how is it working?
I'm telling him people are being so critical and they're so scared and they're so anxious about the life of our church.
And I remember at one moment he turned and he looked me in the eyes and he said,
You know what I have finally learned,
Michelle,
That you cannot live a big,
Glorious life without people needing to criticize it.
He said,
I know you want to live a big life,
You want to shine and you want to serve people on this planet.
You're going to have to just withstand it and be compassionate and understand that it's the voice when we are in that critical place,
It's the voice of our fear that doesn't understand the possibilities of what we can do together.
Just let it roll,
Be with it.
And that changed my life.
And indeed,
His appearance there changed our community because in every show he went on and even did a PBS special that day and stood up and said,
New Vision Center in Scottsdale,
You got to go.
And the services went.
And it was a big,
Huge step in our growth as a community.
And we weathered it with love and support.
No more.
It was like the toxic negativity just kind of disappeared as people enjoyed the pride of our spiritual community and embraced the new people who were coming in with warmth and love.
And that changed everything for us.
It continues to change things for me when I look around and I watch as we criticize each other.
I take a deep breath if I'm criticized or our churches or any of my colleagues.
I just take it in and take the information in and allow myself to be with it and allow myself to understand that when people are afraid,
Sometimes we act out.
When we're in our toxic negativity,
This becomes our modus operandi because we feel that the safest thing is to make everything and everyone wrong.
But we don't understand no growth can come of that.
We have to surrender that.
We have to fast from that.
That's one of my suggestions this week.
Fasting from any criticism whatsoever of anyone,
Including of ourselves.
The next thing we think we have to deal with in this toxic negativity that we've had to deal with now for years and years as a community is detoxing from the negative news of the world.
And I'm not just talking about the network news and all that's out there in the news media.
I'm also talking about the people who come into your field and want to go,
Can you believe what happened last night?
My kid blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Like that.
All that negative news.
Everything's negative.
And it's the way sometimes we bond.
I invite us to really think about,
Are we choosing to try to bond with people with how bad things are for us?
You won't believe how bad I've got it.
Is there a,
A bad contest going on in your relationships?
And could we switch that around for a while and fast from that and invite ourselves to say,
Let's,
Let's have a contest to see how good it can be.
Tell me something wonderful that happened for you today.
Let's talk.
My mother has this annoying habit.
Our whole family goes,
Oh,
And she does it,
But it's an important habit.
When we sit down for a meal,
Tell me your win for today.
And all the kids go,
Oh,
Nana,
But it's a good habit.
It's a joyful habit.
Little things like this that can make a huge difference.
And I understand the dance of especially the network news and what's going on in the world,
That desire to,
I want to stay informed.
I want to know what's happening.
I want to get my thoughts straight about it.
I want to know what's mine to do around it.
And then the part of me that sometimes feels like it's too much.
It's too,
It's too much.
I have to fast from the news.
I got to step away from it.
I tend to believe for me as a spiritual leader,
When I'm centered and when I'm clear,
I want to watch.
I want to know so that I can be a prayerful support presence to what's happening to the world and in our country and for the fellow human beings I share this world with.
And so I tend to watch just a little bit,
But I don't watch a lot.
And when I feel any kind of weakness or anxiety developing in me,
I will stop and take a break from it all so that I can get centered.
And I choose to only consume it when I can be centered.
I can't consume it when I'm feeling weak at all because it pulls me into toxic negativity.
And then I walk around in my days.
You understood what I said there,
Right?
Yeah,
Very spiritual language.
It's important for us and it's important for us to find that balance of accepting what is so and being a person of increase about the good that we seek to have in the world.
Accepting what is so and being a person of increase.
Tiny Buddha,
It's this meme that I read says,
Life gets easier when you stop fighting it.
The rain will fall whether you complain or not.
Traffic will exist whether you stress or not.
People will act how they want whether you worry or not.
Focus on what you can change.
Let go of what you can't.
And part of the toxic energy of the negativity of the news is worry,
Isn't it?
And I've been reminded a lot and have said this to myself a lot of a movie that Ken and I watched called Bridge of Spies.
It's a historical drama about an incident that occurred in the 1960s where a gentleman named Abel,
His name was Rudolph Abel,
Was arrested by the CIA for being a Russian spy here on American soil.
He was put in jail and Tom Hanks plays James Donovan,
The attorney who is assigned to defend him in court as our American system would have us do.
Well,
Donovan was vilified by the public for this because we were very anti-communist,
Anti-Russia at that time.
And he and his family were treated poorly because we were giving this potential Russian spy American justice.
At the same time,
What was going on is that our military was sending flights over Russia to spy on them.
And one of our officers had an incident with his plane and he bailed on the plane and he was captured by the Russians.
And this brought forth a whole could we swap prisoner kind of a story.
Well,
In the story,
Here's the part that really rings true to me,
Is that Donovan would often sit down with Abel as he was working to defend him in the American justice system.
And he would say something to the effect to Abel about,
You know,
If you don't do this,
Aren't you worried that this is going to happen?
And aren't you worried that the Russians or aren't you worried that people are going to do this?
And Abel's response was always,
He'd take a breath and he'd go,
Would it help?
And then Donovan would go,
Well,
And then he'd say,
Well,
Shouldn't you be worried that if you don't do this,
That the Russian people are going to think this and that?
And then Abel would go,
Well,
Would it help?
And he said it many times through this movie.
And boy,
Did it resonate with me.
And it resonates with me right now.
As I fall into my toxic worry about the world or my kids or my life or something in my life,
I often hear,
And it actually is the actor,
Mark Rylance,
His little voice saying,
Would it help?
And I ask us today.
Does it help?
Is our toxic worry about things in our life,
Is it really helping?
Science of mind,
Ernest Holmes would say,
No.
Holmes says,
Worry is misplaced faith.
Toxic negativity,
Worry.
It's a spiritual mind treatment.
Here is the purpose of this treatment.
Oh,
Universe,
May I please have some more of this?
So fasting from it removes us from that energy for a minute where we get to say,
Worrying all the time.
Does it help?
No.
What does help?
What does help?
What does help in my life is courageous conversations.
What does help is going out and being with people that I feel connected to.
What does help is for me to talk about the things that I'm worried about and discuss issues about life and health and well-being in the world.
What does help is what I need to go for.
What does help is prayer treatment.
In fact,
I want to end here with some things that I think could really help us break the cycle.
Once we've made the decision to fast from the toxic negativity and manage and accept that we're going to go into detox,
We're going to have times when we do it where this is like,
Oh,
I really want to worry about that,
I really do,
But I'm not going to do it.
And we step out of it.
So here are some things that we can do,
Because here's something important that Thich Nhat Hanh,
The beautiful monk said,
An entire sea of water can't sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship.
Similarly,
The negativity of the world can't put you down unless you allow it to get inside you.
Right.
So we have to find practices that allow us to step out of that negativity.
So some of it is cognitive disruption.
It's disrupting those thoughts that come up to recognize and own and say,
Yeah,
I've got a little toxic negativity going on and I'm choosing to step out of it.
And the minute I start to step into it to have some cognitive disruption,
Some people suggest,
Say,
Giving that voice a silly name.
Like I saw somebody say that they named their voice Brenda the Doomsayer.
Oh,
That's Brenda the Doomsayer.
I hear you,
Brenda,
Back in the toxic negativity camp.
I gotcha.
I hear you.
And I'm going to choose today to see the possibilities.
I'm going to choose to stay in balance.
I'm going to choose today something else.
Or if you're really trying to stop a negative pattern that won't leave you alone,
Some people suggest to start singing a really irritating jingle in your head.
I'm not singing any of them because they'll get stuck in the rest of my day in my head.
But yeah,
You know what they are,
Right?
Yeah,
You probably have some.
And I think one thing that's helped me a lot is when I am choosing to fast or detox,
When that negative thought does break the barrier and has its way with me,
I let it and I say,
OK,
You got me.
I was really worried right there.
But now I get to sit and write 10 things that are going well for every negative thought.
I get to write 10 things.
That's kind of what Holmes is talking about in the beginning.
It's allowing ourselves to fast from the negative and embrace not the toxic positivity,
Not like it's all horrible or it's going to be fine.
Well,
Maybe there are people who will help me get through this.
So,
You know,
I could probably could talk to so and so.
I bet they have some experience with this.
I know that there's help there for me,
That sort of thing.
And to focus on the divine.
I was talking with a class the other day about how the great author Emmett Fox says whenever you're tempted to think about a problem,
Allow yourself to turn your attention to God.
Oh,
There's a problem.
I said,
I know that God,
The infinite presence,
Is bigger and grander and is activated through me and in me and as me to face this challenge.
Turn it that way into spirit.
Turn our attention to spirit.
And lastly,
Taking those things into meditation.
Powerful,
Powerful.
I close with a quote from Katherine Dunham,
A dancer and choreographer,
Who says,
Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out.
We need your candle.
We need the candle,
The light of every person to walk through the individual and collective challenges we may be facing.
And it does no good to let the world blow our candle out.
And so we get to choose to do that by detoxing from negativity.
Let's do that now.
And let's pray together now.
I invite our prayer practitioners to stand with me as I speak this prayer and recognize that they are available down front every week to help all of us to continue this process of detoxification through claiming powerful,
Powerful ideas for ourselves.
So feel free to come forward at the end of the service to be prayed for.
Here now,
We step into that space where we recognize that infinite power and presence that God is right here in this moment is the very essence,
Is the very light and life that serves and supports us.
That is the very,
Very love that guides our steps in our journey.
And as we step forward into this space,
I accept and affirm that that light and that love is everywhere.
Therefore,
It is right here in me and as me as I speak this word and in and through and as every person who hears that word.
And we collectively walk forward from this place in this morning,
Choosing to be a balanced space of love and light,
Meeting the challenges in our life and the challenges of our day and the challenges of our time with love and joy and peace and wholeness,
Being the light that God is in the world.
I accept and affirm that we do this and we are brought forward with creativity and love to do this and to experience a greater sense of wholeness and light here now and every day.
And I give thanks for this.
Joyous thanks that this is our truth as I release this word and let it go and let it be.
And so it is.
Amen.
