How To Change Your Life Forever, Today

Our message today,

How to change your life forever today.

How to change your life forever today.

And what I want you to know is that there's not some big sweeping choice that you need to make to change your life forever today.

It's actually just a little choice that you are called to make over and over and over again.

It's the choice to choose self-love over self-beratement,

To choose trust instead of fear,

To choose to see the world as it is and not as you worry it might be.

And if you make these little choices again and again,

You will prepare your life for the demonstration of that spiritual magnificence we were speaking to earlier.

Something I love about this teaching is that we wholeheartedly believe in a God presence that can perform miracles in your life.

Not only do we believe in a God presence that can perform miracles in your life,

We believe this presence is actively seeking to produce them in your life.

You don't have to beg for them or beseech them.

You simply need to do the little things that allow that miracle to demonstrate for you.

And you want to know some other great news about these miracles?

You don't have to perform them yourself.

The divine will do it for you.

Take care of those little things and the magnificence of spirit will demonstrate itself in your life in harmonious and incredible ways.

Do you believe that?

I believe that for each and every one of us here.

This is the great blessing of this life.

If we cannot just theorize about being expressions of the divine,

But actually act as if it were so and embody that and to know that blesses our life,

But it pleases the divine within us in incredible ways as well.

Ernest Holmes,

Our founder,

Taught what he called spiritual mind treatment.

And it's our form of affirmative prayer.

And he said that there are two types of spiritual mind treatment.

The first he called argumentative.

It's not about being mean to yourself,

But it's when you're doing your prayer work.

It's where you logically come to the conclusion about the spiritual truth of your life and who you are.

I know,

God,

That Patrick is hurting right now,

That he is in deep pain and in a deep sense of separation from someone that he loves.

But I know that the truth of Patrick is that his very being is love,

That even beyond the seeming fractured relationship that he is in,

That there is a love that bonds them.

And I affirm and know right now that that love is manifesting itself in his and in their life right here and right now.

And so it is,

Amen.

That's an argumentative prayer.

We get ourselves to the conclusion.

The other kind of spiritual mind treatment he called realization.

And that's where you just get it.

Patrick is a divine expression of an incredible,

Passionate,

Amazing love right here and right now,

Baby.

But ow.

It just is.

Miracles can happen suddenly in our life.

We can be grabbed by grace in the most amazing ways that realization can just happen.

But most of the time,

It's this argumentative style.

We have to consistently remind ourselves and lead ourselves to the conclusion that we are one with a power greater than we are and allow it to work in our lives.

We are not here to overcome God.

We are to overcome the perceived limitations within ourselves so that this source can demonstrate for us.

Changing your life forever today has nothing to do with changing anything outside of yourself.

It has everything to do with what's in here,

With what's within you.

As Eric Butterworth put it,

Things may happen around you and things may happen to you.

But the only things that matter are the things that happen in you.

When we can't know this truth about ourselves,

That's where your spiritual community comes in.

That's what our practitioners are for.

That's what I'm here for,

For you.

That's what your neighbor is here for,

To remember that truth of you no matter what.

And we are called to at least have that willingness to be open to those miracles happening in our lives.

Ernest Holmes had a practitioner.

Her name was Vitara Papke.

And there's a story about Vitara Papke that she went to go and pray for a gentleman who was in the hospital.

And she walked into his hospital room and she immediately turned around and walked out of the room.

And someone said,

What's wrong?

And she replied,

I thought I saw a sick person.

I don't think that Vitara Papke was so naive as to not think that the gentleman was suffering an illness.

If not,

We have an issue where hospitals are kidnapping healthy people.

But as a practitioner,

She knew that her duty was to behold the spiritual magnificence of the health and well-being of this individual.

And she missed it.

So she turned around,

Got herself centered,

And went back in.

This is what all of us can do in our everyday lives.

You walk into your bedroom and there's your husband sitting on the bed.

You turn around,

You walk outside,

And you say,

Oh,

I thought I saw him for his past behavior.

Let me go back in and see him for who he is right now.

Your teenager abuses the car privilege.

You go into their room to talk to them about it.

You turn around,

You walk outside,

And you say,

Oh,

I thought I saw a bad kid.

Let me remember to see a good kid who made a mistake and go back inside.

You go in the bathroom and you look in the mirror.

You walk outside and you say,

Wait a minute.

I thought I saw an unworthy person.

Let me go back in that mirror and remind me of how beautiful and love worthy and magnificent that I am.

There's this power.

It's always working in,

Through,

And around us,

But it needs us to work it.

We have to work on opening ourselves up for it to demonstrate in our lives in incredible ways.

And I want to share three slight but important shifts that you can make to change your life forever today.

The first is to make the shift from victim to creator.

Make the shift from victim to creator.

I have maybe a unique approach to this in that I cannot look at any of you and tell you that you're not a victim.

Who am I to pretend like I know what you've been through?

I have no idea what you've been through.

What I know is true in each of every one of us here and everyone watching online is that there's no one here who hasn't been victimized,

Who hasn't had their dignity stepped on,

Who hasn't been properly seen,

Who has been mistreated because something was deemed as wrong or abnormal about them,

Who hasn't experienced at some level a breaking of trust or a betrayal.

I am so sorry.

I am so very,

Very sorry.

But I want you to remember what Carl Jung said.

He said,

I am not what happens to me.

I am who I choose to become.

And I want you to remember what Aldous Huxley said.

He said,

Experience is not what happens to you.

It's what you do with what happens to you.

And I want you to remember what Mary Oliver said.

She said,

Never,

Ever allow someone else to be responsible for your life.

When we're in that consciousness of victimhood,

It doesn't mean we haven't been victimized.

It means that we can't co-create with source to bring about those greater miracles in our lives.

We have to get back to responsible co-creator.

That being said,

I have learned in my life that the on-ramp to greater knowing happens on the road of experience.

And if I can't acknowledge my experience of being victimized,

There's no authentic way of getting to that higher knowing.

You ever been,

You know,

Slightly attacked for having a pity party?

I say,

Embrace it.

I want to encourage each and every one of us today to throw our own pity party.

And being a spiritual leader here,

I'm going to go first.

And I want to cordially invite you this morning to Josh's pity party.

Do you want to come?

I even have invitations.

In honor of all the God awful experiences he had in 2025,

Cordially invites you to his pity party,

Celebrating losses,

Failures,

Mistakes,

And all that is unsufferable.

Do you want to hear a little bit about the activities that are going to take place at this pity party?

We're going to karaoke to sad country music.

I have reserved for myself Gordon Lightfoot's,

If You Could Read My Mind.

You know,

If you could read my mind,

Girl,

What a story my thought,

You know,

It's going to be great.

We're going to play Pin the Tail on the X.

There's going to be a pinata shaped like an ex-supervisor of mine.

We'll have laptops and news clippings all over the tables that talk about all the terrible news events of the year.

Just in case you've forgotten,

They will be there to be reminded.

We'll have a bitter meal where whatever you order is returned to you incorrectly and not to your specifications.

And gifts are of course expected,

But most importantly,

Please remember it is my party and I can cry if I want to.

So you don't have to have the party.

It can be a ritual.

It can be a little ceremony.

But I invite you to see where you have been hurt,

To see where you have felt broken and to meet yourself there with an incredible amount of love.

But here's the thing.

When the party's over,

It's time to move on.

When the ceremony is complete,

It's time to move forward.

When the ritual is accomplished,

Own that consciousness.

You cannot step into initiating your next highest and next if you are straddling on to what is over.

We move into that consciousness of responsibility,

Which doesn't mean it's your fault that any bad thing happened.

It just means that you have the capability of responding positively to anything that happens to you.

We step into that place of creative responsibility when we reclaim our virtue.

When something bad happens to me,

I don't know about to you,

I lose my virtues.

You can reclaim your honesty,

Reclaim your integrity,

Reclaim your sincerity.

And next,

You open your heart.

You open your heart big.

And you develop and embody a new level of honesty,

Transparency,

And openness.

Lastly,

You realize that that person who hurt you is not your higher power.

That bad thing that happened is not your higher power.

That there's a power for good in this universe greater than you are,

And you can use it,

And guess what?

It can use you,

Too,

To produce well-being,

Wholeness,

Abundance,

Happiness.

Something if this is a big one for you to practice each day,

At the end of the day,

Think to yourself,

Is there something that happened in my experience today that I'm unhappy about?

Acknowledge yourself in that unhappiness,

But then ask yourself,

What is an experience I want to create tomorrow?

And get started on just that.

Move from victim to creator.

The victim to creator is the internal shift I'm inviting us to work on and make.

It's a long-time process,

It's an everyday practice.

This next one is more external,

It's more relational,

And it's to move from niceness to kindness.

To move from niceness to kindness.

My therapist keeps telling me this,

Josh,

I want you to be more kind and less nice.

And this is how I interpret what it means.

To be kind is to do what I was just talking about.

It's to embody your virtue,

But it's also to be committed to a newfound level of authenticity where you recognize that your truth is important and valuable,

And so you're not afraid to speak it.

To be nice,

At least in Josh's experience,

Is to placate to other people.

It's to hide my sincerity,

To try and make someone happy.

It is to not always tell the truth because I think it will please you if I put this mask on and act a certain way.

My only one with this issue?

No.

Okay,

Thanks.

It's good to not feel alone.

So imagine you're at the supermarket and your basket has some groceries in it and the person behind you says,

Excuse me,

I have less items than you and I'm in a real hurry.

Can I cut in front of you?

And you look at their basket and maybe they have a couple less things than you do and you're pretty sure you have somewhere to be too.

If you're just embracing that niceness,

It says,

Sure,

Go ahead,

I don't want to hurt your feelings,

I don't want to create any conflict,

Would you like these boundaries you just crossed over?

And it's really fun if you're spiritual because you can try and talk yourself into it,

Okay?

I'm such a spiritual being,

There is no time,

I am in no hurry,

It's all about the love,

Go ahead.

There's another reaction which has to do for those of us who sometimes sacrifice our own needs in the desire to support and placate others,

Which is absolute triggered rage that you've been holding on,

So watch out,

Person behind us.

But then there's the kind response,

Which considers the request,

Takes a deep breath,

And with a big smile says,

I'm sorry,

That won't work for me.

You know,

It's one thing when it's somebody in the grocery store.

It's another thing when it's someone you love and care for very much,

Who perhaps you think you've been supporting by placating and being nice to them,

But really isn't served by that.

And maybe if we had the courage to be kind,

But to speak our truth and communicate our own needs,

It might not just help us feel better,

But help them live a better life too.

Move from niceness to kindness.

Victim to creator is the internal shift.

Niceness to kindness,

That external shift.

And lastly this morning,

I want to talk about a communal shift,

And it involves something like this,

Moving from advocate to champion.

Moving from advocate to champion.

Anyone here happy with the consciousness in our country right now?

There might be some yeses.

There's a lot of divisive energy out there,

A lot of manifestation of a polarity consciousness that's causing ridiculous things to take place in our country,

And it hurts my heart because I love my country so,

So,

So much,

And all the people who have lived and died for its promise and its prayer.

And one of those things that I think needs to shift is to recognize that it is up to each of us to champion the voices that we want to see more prominent in the directing and leadership and running of our country,

Because those are sometimes the voices I'm not hearing at all.

And one of the approaches that we can take to that is instead of advocating,

I know there's advocates,

I know this is not the best word,

So please forgive me.

If we're not careful,

We can see groups of people as victims,

As opposed to important voices and spirits that our country needs to grow and to expand and to lead.

It's one thing to fight for voices that we think need to be on the table,

That aren't included in it,

It's another thing to fight for the influence those voices can have for everybody at the table,

That makes our community better,

That makes our country better,

That makes our lives better.

I would argue that our children don't need advocates,

They need champions.

That the disenfranchised don't need advocates,

They need champions.

That this environment and this earth we live in doesn't need advocates,

It needs more champions.

That peace needs less advocates,

It needs more champions.

And I know I'm just asking advocates to bring a championship layer to what you're doing because you're all working so hard and we are all here to be enlightened citizens,

But to step into that in a greater way where we're doing what Ernest Holmes modeled for us when he gave us the phrase,

Be for something and against nothing.

In his famous Sermon by the Sea,

One of the last sermons he gave at the Asilomar Conference Grounds,

He said,

Find me one person who is for something and against nothing,

Who is redeemed enough not to condemn others out of the burden of his soul,

And I will find another savior,

Another Jesus,

And an exalted human being.

And so the final question to ask ourselves on a regular basis here is,

What is that which I want to champion in my community?

It could be in your church,

It could be in your town halls,

It could be in your country.

And think of how you can do that in a way that celebrates their voices.

What does it mean to want to champion immigrants in our country,

Documented and undocumented,

In a way that celebrates the gifts that they bring to our country without opposing or being against anyone?

What does it mean to be for the Second Amendment and to celebrate its influence on who we are as a democracy without being against anybody else?

What does it mean to be for those voices that we see disenfranchised?

What does it mean to stand up and champion black genius,

Female leadership,

Trans liberation?

What does it mean to champion financial pragmatism?

We can do all of these things without needing to be against anybody,

And guess what?

People might listen a little better to us.

And we might make a significant difference if we do.

Move from victim to creator.

That's the internal shift.

Move from niceness,

I know we're all nice here,

To kindness.

That's the external shift.

And as we're continuing to seek to be enlightened citizens in our communities and in this country,

Let's hold that higher consciousness and seek to bring everybody we can along with us without needing to push anybody down.

If we can do that,

Just like Holmes said,

You will find yourself being a master teacher in so many different ways.