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Clay Smith

Rev. Tracey Harrick - Revealing the Love You Are



 

This is the transcript of a talk given at Center for Spiritual Living Prescott on July 23, 2023 by Rev. Tracey Harrick, the new minister candidate at CSL Prescott.

You can also experience this talk by watching the video or listening to it on our podcast, Love Spoken Here.

 

All right, so the talk title today is Revealing the Love You Are: A Self Exploration, laying the foundation for transformation. And I have a reading that I would like to read to you, because it really odes to the whole talk and so I'm going to read that for you. “There came a voice resonant with divinity. It said O, there is a love which fears nothing, which is greater than life and greater than death. I am that love. There is a love which knows no limit, which is everywhere, which is in the presence of death, and which is all tender, even in the terrible. I am that love. There is a Love, which is unutterably sweet, which welcomes all pain, which welcomes all fear, which drives away all sadness. Which is whosoever thou dost search for it. I am that love. Oh, I am that very essence of love and owe my own self, I, that love and thine own self to truth.”

A special self is our individual self, our personality self. It is our mind. It is the part of us that we, that voice that we hear, the thing that says me, mine, I. The things that the voice in our head has a tendency to self judge. The special self says “what can I get from you?” And we're all born into this special self and it is not a negative, it is just part of the spiritual maturation of moving to the holy self. It is the transformation or the renewal of your mind. It is moving from me, mine, into the higher realms of thought and consciousness to oneness. And I'm not saying, well, first let's say the special self and relationship, we rely on people. We rely on people and things for happiness. We rely on that job, that person, that love, that thing outside of us that brings us happiness. But when we lose it, we are reminded that life, the objective world, is impermanent. It goes as fast as it comes and then where is our happiness? My teacher Ribi, who is in great part, I am here today in great part of his diligence and service to me as a teacher. One time I sat in front of him and he said “hey Tracey, you won the lottery today.” And I'm like “I did. Well, this is. How much did I win?” And he said “$10 million.” And I said, “oh, that's fantastic. I can live a great life.” And then we did a little studying and he goes, “oh, Tracey.” And I said what. He goes “you took your ticket to the store, but they told you it was not really the numbers.” You see, and I was like, what? And he goes “life is that way. We have these things that make us happy and then they're gone. And then our sadness and that part of us that comes up for us to look at is part of the natural flow of life. It moves us into our holy self.” So by nature it's just the process of life, part of the unfoldment.

But by contrast, the holy self is love. It is expressed as something you give. I apologize—it is not expressed as something that you give or get. It is something that grows between people, two people or groups of people, when they allow each other to be truly seen by one another. The poison to love is shame, blame, criticism. That special self, that part of the self, says me, me, mine, I want, I need, but the holy self, the transformation that comes from that, says “we.” It is the authentic part of who we are. It is the humbleness, human, it is our humility. It is our it is the beautiful part of us that is our true nature. This is what we are becoming. This in Science of Mind is what we explore. It is love. It is you, thine own self. It is such a beautiful thing. The holy self does not know lack, it does not know limitation. It only knows wholeness, fulfillment, internal validation and inner contentment. And when we get these things that we want so much, like this weekend for me, I mean God just moved so gracefully. Tracey didn't, by the way, but God moved so gracefully. Tracey, you know, she can really want something, and when she wants it, she wants it right now. And God reminded me in due time. I am bringing some spiritual maturity to you and you know all of the great sages and Saints will tell you stories about how they had to wait and why they had to wait and that it's not just about you, Tracey. It's about the beautiful community. And there is a marrying, there is an engagement, there is a process of moving from that special self as a group and the special self for me into the holy self where we invite each other into relationship. It is noticeable because you recognize the divinity in each other. You recognize the love in each other. The holy self is about shifting vision. It's not about changing one another, it's about recognizing the wholeness that is right here, right now. It is recognizing that holy self. So we start in that ego personality conditioning. It's our karma. It's our vasanas. It's our habits. And as we move because it is not two I am talking about. It's like it's two, but it's one. As we move from that special self into the higher self, we self-surrender. We give ourselves to the love that is God.

My special self, you know, it says, oh, you can't. Oh, you're afraid. Oh, what will happen? How's it going to work? When will it work? I mean, have you guys experienced this? Do we all recognize the difference between the special self and the holy self and we start to recognize when we move from that space, into the higher space because it feels good. It feels so wonderful, almost foreign, that the mind as insidious and loving as it can be because it thinks it's telling the truth, can self sabotage from those deep seated unconscious biases. And when we become self aware, when we explore through inquiry, when we look at ourselves and we are radically honest. And we usually see it when we're in discordance with another. We want to go out and we want to blame. We want to shame. We want to, you know, we want to bite. But that is the signal from the holy self to look within and to say, wow, what's my part in this? It doesn't mean that the other person isn't doing what they do to protect themselves. But what it does mean is that your maturity level spiritually has gone up because you are willing to look at your part in it and become a co-creative collaborator instead of a self-destructive destroyer. This is moving from the ego self, the special self, into the holy self. It is about shifting that vision. It's not changing yourself for another. It's not about I have to pretend to be what you need me to be so you'll accept me. I've been there. Have you all been there? Yeah, we've all been there. And, you know, we show up and when we're put in these circumstances that we really want, we can easily lose ourselves. And it feels kind of fake, you know? And then the mind kicks in.

But the holy self says be still and know that I am God. The holy self, it lifts you up. It's who you truly are. It's what I see you when I—what I see when I look out at you. It's what I see in this weekend through many talks and questions, and just the love. I try to explain many times, how, through my special self, words through Tracy, I tried to express what it meant to me, but the special self just wants to say, you know, be still, be still and enjoy, be still and be in love, be still, and know thyself. Thy own self be true, and when we start to know that self, that self comes in, it purifies mind, it becomes what you move and act and have your being from. This feels good. It can also feel so foreign.

For many years, I wouldn't say that I lived my life from a space of joy. I went kicking and screaming. Can anybody identify with that? I went kicking and screaming? I used chocolate. I used ice cream. I could hide in my room, maybe throw a pot or pan or two when I was young, when I didn’t get my way. But you know, God had a plan that everything you've ever been through is for your greatest good. And I know that's so hard to hear when some of those things are deeply painful and inflicted by another person who is wounded. But as we go into self inquiry, as we go in to explore the higher self, the transformation happens within you. You become magnetic and you draw unto you that which you are. Like, whoa, everybody's being really nice to me today. Oh my, gosh I—everybody I met today reminded me of how wonderful I am. Do you know why? Because your outward world, your objective world, is changing because you are spiritually maturing. You could not sit in this audience if that were not true today. We might be all at different levels of consciousness. I don't know. I really don't know how that works. I have just learned to trust it. And I have learned to trust it because I have worked it. And when you work it through direct experience, it becomes you and then you can speak from a place of clarity and when you—what Jackson said when somebody asks you, you can speak so clearly in two or three words, they're, they're like, I want some of what you got? Where do you get it from? And that's what this community has spent with Reverend Cath. You've spent becoming a beloved community, a mission building a community and look here overflowing and it will become so magnetic it will draw unto you that which you are individually and as a group, and as it just starts with you and it goes out. We start to leave the special self behind. Ernest Holmes says. This is the atmosphere of home. This is what I call home. Everybody say this is my home. This is the heart in which I move and have my being with and I trust it. I invoke the holy self. Amen. So Earnest Holmes says this “the atmosphere of home should never be clouded with uncertainties of the outside world. Here, in the place of human love, all else should be forgotten and an atmosphere maintained, which will be a shelter from the world. Here should be the ruling passion and harmony should reign supreme. Here, above all other places, should be the Kingdom of God, and it should reign supreme.”

And I would like to tell you how do you know that you're on the path? Well, because you are. You're here. But how does that manifest in your outward, outward objective world in form? My beautiful, my beautiful friend. I can't talk today, my beautiful friend Mark. He's a retired practitioner and I had the beautiful honor of doing their wedding and he shared with me some things from the big book. And I thought they were so beautiful. He took his own take on them. So in closing, I want to share these things with you. These are some clues, some bread crumbs on the yellow brick road to your higher self that you have your own experience and no one can ever give you their experience. They can tell you about their experience. They can tell you how an orange tastes, but they can't know it until they've tasted it. Right? Taste the spirit, all right. That sounds like a commercial for Sprite or something doesn't it? All right, so you are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. You will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it. You will comprehend the word serenity. You will know peace that passes all understanding. No matter how far down the scale you have gone, you will see how your experience can benefit another. That feeling of uselessness and self pity is gone, out of here. You will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in your fellow man. Self seeking will slip away. Your whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave you. Fear of people and economic security will leave you. I like that one. You will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle you. You will suddenly realize that God is doing for you, as you, which you could not do for yourself as the special self. You are on the path. You are the holy self. It isn't something you need to find. It's something that is revealed.

I always really do like to say that that talk does seed us. The talk itself stands as a prayer because it is from Spirit to you. But we'll do the customary and have that prayer. I just know right here, right now there is only one. One beloved individualized as many. One beloved that whispers to us quietly in the back of our mind, come to me. Give yourself wholly to me, allow me to renew your mind. See the false and step into the real. Let it go. Let me lift you up and carry you. I will take you the full way. We release into this knowing that these truths are high and so beautiful that as we begin to move through our experiences of life that trust in faith is seeded in us. The great teacher knew these truths. He gave himself completely and as we slowly understand how we just stop and sit in the stillness, that there is nothing we need to do. We only need to be open. We only need to live the best life, from the highest truths, from reality. There are many teachers you will meet on your path if you call them forth, trust them. Be committed. These words given by Spirit touch the heart and break us open, showing us the way, the divine way, forward into the lives we were destined to live. There is no one on this planet that does not deserve to be here. There is no one on this planet that isn't the aspect of God in some form. See that in your brother and sister and remind yourself and them through your magnetism, being big for God as this transformation happens. Be prepared for the love and life to show up in full force. I send these out to the universe knowing that it is done. Knowing that it is the best life, knowing that whatever you are going through God has got it, the universe, your source has brought you this far and it will and does and has taken you all the way. And so it is.


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