I have been a part of this spiritual community since 1979 as a member,
A practitioner,
And a minister,
And I have seen a lot of stuff over the years.
And sometimes when I'm talking with people or teaching a class,
People will say,
How do you really transform yourself?
Is that really possible?
Do people really ever transform some issue or condition of their life?
Or is it really that most people just keep doing what they're doing and maybe it improves a little degree here and there,
But not really in a big way?
Well,
I can say in my experience,
I have seen major transformation in people's lives.
I've witnessed people who'd been told by doctors that they should get their affairs in order because their body was no longer going to be able to stay alive and watch them live.
I've watched people in a relationship that they thought was going to fall apart bring it together again.
I've watched parents and children who were struggling in their relationship come back to center.
I've watched amazing healings of conditions of finances and bodily issues and purpose-driven issues change in big ways.
But I also admit I've watched some people be around our communities for years and years and years and watch them complain about the same thing year after year after year with apparently no progress,
No change.
They just kind of feel stuck maybe and they just keep doing the same thing.
And they say and demonstrate that they're doing the work.
They're showing up to churches.
They're showing up to classes.
They're seeing their practitioner prayer partners.
They're putting in prayers in the mystery of prayer and still their life doesn't really seem to be improving.
Why is this?
What does it take to really transform?
So I've been thinking a lot about that as I think back to some of the situations where I've seen true transformation.
What's been the factor that's been different?
And I think it's four things that I'd like to suggest to us today that if we really have an area in our life that we want to transform or a number of areas that we want to transform or our entire life is calling for a huge transformation that there are four areas.
And I put them into an acronym of a word that makes no sense at all but it might be easy then for me or for anyone listening to remember.
And the acronym is DATH.
D-A-T-H.
So give this some thought.
See if this might apply to you.
So here's the acronym.
DATH,
The first word,
D is decide.
Decide to change.
Set an intention to change.
To have something be different than it was before.
Really make a deeply profound decision.
What I know doesn't work is just flittering around in the surface and wishing for it,
Hoping for it,
Complaining about it,
Yearning for it,
Fantasizing about it.
That realm of thought is not where this occurs.
This kind of transformation occurs.
It occurs in a moment where someone says,
Enough.
I choose something different.
And honestly sometimes that's born out of pain.
That's born out of a moment of suffering.
That can even be born out of a moment of failure or discouragement.
But what I do notice is that people who truly transform their lives in some meaningful way,
They make a meaningful decision and then they represent themselves to that decision over and over again.
When they're tempted to go down the same path,
Nope.
I decided something new and they hold themselves to it.
They hold themselves accountable to it.
Decide.
The A stands for something that I think people talk a lot about but I think we don't really get the full measure of this and it's act as if.
And it's not pretending to be something that we're not.
To me acting as if is more about imagining myself versus fantasizing.
Imagining and seeing myself who I am and how I behave in this transformational experience that I'm seeking to have.
What's different about me?
How do I speak?
What are the different ways that I step forward in my world that I actually put it on even if it's just in my mind?
And of course when I get a chance to act as if in my world of form,
I actually take it on and allow myself to be at the very deepest level of my being the living embodiment of the transformation that I am seeking to experience and to express.
The S excuse me the T.
I was going to dash.
It's daff.
Dash would have been a lot easier but the T stands for trust.
This is a hard thing because to really trust means I have to trust things like how long it takes,
The timeline.
I have to understand that with trust I have to be patient sometimes.
One of the things that's challenging I think for us humans is we've behaved in certain ways for years and years and years and years.
It's very familiar to us and then we make a decision and we act as if and then we want it to happen just like that.
And sometimes we have to trust that there might be some more work to be done for us in the deeper consciousness of our life in terms of acting as if in terms of revisiting our decision over and over that these are active ways that we shift the energy of that creative process that's going on in our life at the outer and inner level so that we can truly transform ourselves.
And sometimes we have to trust.
Trust and patience means that when I take a step backwards or it doesn't go the way I wanted or I let myself down in terms of the other steps that I am loving and kind and I allow myself to see that I haven't stepped forward in the way I wanted to or that it's not happening.
It's not that we're in denial about it but that I'm patient with myself.
I'm patient with my journey and I'm patient with the unfolding of the good that I am seeking to embody and express.
So trust.
And the H stands for heal.
Do the healing work because what I also know and have witnessed is that the most powerful profound long-lasting transformations have come from people who understand that ultimately to get what we want it's not to convince people or to convince God or convince the universe to give us the good that we want.
It's about ultimately us healing some state of consciousness,
Some belief or unbelief in us that we haven't had up until now.
And so we get to do that healing work.
We might have to forgive.
We might have to let go of certain things that no longer serve us.
Substances or groups of friends or jobs or situations or conditions that no longer serve us.
We might have to take big leaps and take a healing journey in order to transform ourselves and if that's what's being called for sometimes this is the place where people get stuck.
They'll do all the things that I'm talking about but they won't do the healing work.
They won't actually work on their consciousness.
They won't actually let go of their resentments.
They won't actually let themselves be transformed in this powerful way.
So go forth and this week and try these on.
Try on death and even if you are walking through your life and you can feel that transformation coming and you can say to yourself inwardly especially because no one will understand what you're saying outwardly Oh death!
You might have a better chance of making a change or transformation.
So please join me now.
I'm going to do a prayer and that prayer and purpose of the prayer is all about welcoming transformation and embodying the steps that it takes to truly be transformed.
