July 28, 2013 - Immortality - Rev. howard caesar - Sunday lessons at unity of Houston

From Unity Church of Christianity in Houston, Texas, this is The Awakened Life with Reverend Howard Caesar. Unity is a nondenominational Christian church providing a positive, practical, and progressive approach to Christianity. Let's join the service in progress with the Reverend Howard Caesar. [Unity of Houston - Reverend Howard Caesar, Senior Minister] We all share at least one thing for sure, and that is we all have been given a precious gift— the precious gift of life. And I hope you all hold that as a precious gift. It's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's fragile, it's many things. [Today's Message: Immortality] It is a gift from God, and it should not be taken lightly because there is one life, there's only one life, and we're all part of that one life. That life is now moving in and through all of us, and that's a sacred thing. And contained in the gift of life there are many experiences that we can have, of course, of all types and all varieties and what have you. There are many wonderful things that are a part of our life we can always look back on. There are memories of wonderful things that have happened and took place, and then there are also various challenges that we have met up with that were perhaps not easy but perhaps learning experiences. And there have been different stages we've gone through and different passages that we've gone through, and it's perhaps what we might call as kind of a maturing process, spiritually maturing, spiritually growing and unfolding, spiritually awakening, coming to understand ourselves more and be who we were really created to be. Among the many experiences like this that life includes is the experience of death. I include it as one of life's experiences because it's not an end to life; it's what we call in Unity transition. It's not a final experience; it's just one of the many experiences that we have along the continuum of eternal life, because what we like to say and teach here at Unity is that you are currently, right now, living eternal life. It's not like eternal life begins sometime down the road. What is this if not eternal life? If you are an eternal being and you really hold yourself to be that, then you are in this moment living something that is called life that has an eternality to it. And it's so important that you grasp that. Therefore, it doesn't become precious sometime later; it's how you're holding it now, how you're creating it, how you're allowing it to flow through you. [For information about Unity - 713-782-4050 - www.UnityHouston.org] It's something very sacred and precious. It's not something you get to later down the road that you call eternal life; you're in it. You're in it. And it's for us to wake up to that and understand how precious it is. We are now currently in eternal life because we are now currently eternal beings and beings that we believe perhaps even— there is evidence that we have existed prior to birth and of course that we certainly continue on after death. And death is not an easy subject to talk about because of the way that it's often been characterized. We tend to shy away from the topic. We see it as a heavy thing. It's just not easy to talk about. I think it was *** Allen who said, "I'm not afraid to die." "I just don't want to be there when it happens." [laughter] I love that line. But I think we need to get more comfortable really with the idea of death. Not that we're trying to rush towards it or anything. I'm just saying it happens. It happens around us all the time. Every day there are people that are moving on. So it's an occurrence, it's a part of life, and we need to be able to talk about it and this idea of eternal life and ongoing life. I think we're oftentimes afraid of what is unknown to us to some extent. So it's important for us to wake up on a more known level of what you are, and the ongoingness of life it's good to talk about. Also I think we're afraid about what we can't control. We feel sometimes that we're not in control at that stage. Or even when a loved one is passing on we feel so helpless sometimes. And so it frightens us not being able to be and understanding that it's just a natural process that every one of us goes through as part of the experience of ongoing life. Not an ending but a continuum. I'm not here to talk to you today about death. I'm really here to talk to you about immortality. Very different feel because we're immortal beings. We really are. And most of us in the West have been introduced or grew up with or were taught that there is a heaven and a hell. And some have been introduced to an idea of something in between, I guess, a purgatory. But many of us, or most, were told that we basically come to an end, this life, and then we are judged and then, depending on how we have been and evaluated, we either get to go to heaven, a good place, or we get to go to hell, which is not so good, if we didn't measure up. And all of us during the course of our life have had a variety of images thrown at us— drawings, cartoons, photographs, all kinds of things—depicting both places. And I don't know that there are all that many people that believe that the streets are paved with gold as it's often spoken of or that there are pearly gates or that you are really going to be met by St. Peter or that there are angels with wings to greet you or that they are going to be playing harps all around you or something. So there are different pictures that a part of our mind clicks off and says, "I don't think that's it. But what is it?" [Contribute to the Unity broadcast - 713-782-4050 - www.UnityHouston.org] And so some of us can be helped by knowing. There are different jokes about this too, who gets into heaven and who doesn't. There's a lot of that that goes around. I came across kind of a cute poem, it's a humorous poem— I'll share it with you—along these lines. It goes, "I dreamed death came the other night and heaven's gates swung wide." "With kindly grace an angel ushered me inside." "And there, to my astonishment, stood folks I had known on earth." "Some I had judged and labeled as unfit and of little worth." "Indignant words rose to my lips but never were set free, for on every face showed stunned surprise—no one expected me!" [laughter] So on a more serious note, we teach here that heaven and hell are really states of consciousness, that we are creating our experience of hell or of heaven here on earth. It's not like something that you go to later—that actually you are a part of creating that. We carry them with us based on our internal makeup. In fact, even a recent Pope came out with the idea that you're really experiencing your hell here on earth, and he said that you're even experiencing bits of heaven while you're in this life. That Pope was chastised and criticized—and it was in the papers and all of that— for having come out and said that. And actually, he was coming from a really scholarly basis, understanding the evolution of even what heaven is and what it means and the word hell and all of these things. If you really go back to their beginnings and their infancy and how they have evolved and got their way into the Bible and from the Bible into religion and all of that, he was coming from a very scholarly place. But we have often pointed out, quite often—and it's important that you get this, and that is that Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within you. And he went to great lengths to try and clarify and he said it isn't a place that you could say, "Lo, here," or "Lo, there it is." It's not a place that you're going to geographically go to perhaps or that you think of in that way. For he said, "It's not lo, here or lo, there, for the kingdom of heaven is in your midst, it's within you." And that's important that we grasp that. He talked about it in many ways, about that heaven that dwells within us. And we won't spend a lot of time on hell, but there are words that Jesus used to refer to hell. He used the word Gehenna, and Gehenna actually is the name for the city dump that was located outside Jerusalem where refuse and garbage was burning. Its flames were always going as though everlasting because there was enough garbage to keep the flames going. And so there became those metaphors and analogies that got developed from that. And so if we are led to believe that heaven and hell are not necessarily like geographical places or locations that we go after we die, then really what happens? That's a legitimate question. Well, you just took that away. What's coming back here? And basically, I always go to something that I use that Jesus said in the Scriptures, in the gospels, and I use this regularly at the memorials and funerals that I speak at. What he said was, "Let not your hearts be troubled." "Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me." "For in my Father's house are many mansions." "And if it were not so, I would have told you." "For I go to prepare a place for you." That is an incredible passage, okay? He begins by saying, "If you're worried about death or whatever— your own or somebody else's—let not your hearts be troubled." "First believe in God, believe in me and what I'm teaching you." "For in my Father's house are many mansions." "If it were not true, I would have told you." "And so I go to prepare a place for you." He's saying that basically there's not just one heavenly realm, that in the house of life, "my Father's house," are many mansions. There's many, many mansions, many dimensions, many realms. More than one is what it seems that he is saying. Don't limit it just one little room that you could go to in this great, vast cosmos that God has created. So you have to think in bigger pictures around that. Some scholars have used the word rooms, "In my Father's house are many rooms," that that's what he— But that works for me also because, again, "Let not your hearts be troubled because our Father's house is like one with many rooms." And so what I often say is if I were to leave the podium and walk out that door and around the corner, you wouldn't see me, you wouldn't hear my voice, you wouldn't know what I was up to, but I hadn't left the house of God. And the point that Jesus is making is you can never leave the house of life. You can go beyond our ability here to see another soul in the next room the same way if it's in your own house. We just don't have the eyes to see or the ears to hear when a person steps into the next room, the next dimension, the next mansion, the next realm of the many in the great house of life. It's very profound teaching that is contained there. We have to remember the truth of what we are, and that starts with Jesus telling us that God is spirit, God is spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And then we go back to what we are. In Genesis we're told that we're made in the image and after the likeness of God. Therefore, you and I are spirit, eternal spirit, immortal. It doesn't change. God is eternal spirit, immortal, doesn't change, no end. You and I are the same. That's us. We have that in us. There is that in every one of us that is eternal and immortal and unchanging. It's interesting, when you go to the ancient writings of the Bhagavad Gita that preceded by 2000, 3000 years the teachings of Christ, these ancient spiritual teachings in the Bhagavad Gita state something very profound. One passage states this: "Never the spirit was born." "The spirit shall cease to be never." "Never was time when it was not." "End and beginning are dreams, illusions." "Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit forever." "Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems." The house of it seems that it has had death. The house of it that they're referring to is the body. The body houses the spirit. But, "Never was the spirit born. The spirit shall cease to be never." "Never a time when it was not. End and beginning are illusions or dreams." There is that part of you that is birthless and deathless and changeless and remaineth your spirit forever. These are teachings that are thousands of years old, and masters and mystics have tapped into this deep knowing and they are sharing this with us. And so the house of it is referring to the body. And the body, there is birth and death and change for the body, but for the spirit of you, uh-hunh (negative). We teach here in Unity that the body is the vehicle that we use, that houses the spirit of you, the eternal of you, the divine of you, the essence of you. It is the garment. The body is the garment that the spirit of you, the soul of you, has worn for a time. And just as we lay aside a garment at the end of a day, so do we lay aside the garment of flesh at the end of a life. Everyone does at some point in time. It escapes no one. But the body houses the spirit. Paul refers to this in some way as the unseen that is housed within the seen. If you go to Second Corinthians, you will see where he encourages us to have our eyes fixed not on the things that are seen but on the things that are unseen. He says, "For what is seen passes away. They are temporal." "And what is unseen is eternal." You have to have eyes, the ability to begin to see and recognize that there is an unseen dimension to you and to life and to many phases of life. In another place, in First Corinthians, Paul talks a bit more about the unseen and the seen, again, the seen aspect of us being temporal and the unseen being eternal. He talks about man as having 2 bodies. Actually, you can go back to Genesis and there's 2 creation stories. One is the creation of the physical form, and the other is really the creation and the formation of spiritual man. It's deep and it's in there, and there's only about a chapter away in the 2 creation stories of man. Paul is picking up on that and he's saying we have 2 bodies. Literally, he said this, "There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body." "Behold, I show you a mystery." "We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed." And so the natural body, of course, is the physical form, the physical body, and the spiritual body is the spiritual body as he is speaking of it. And so that's why we refer to it as transition. We're really transitioning from a seen dimension on into our unseen and from releasing the natural body, the physical form, and stepping into the spiritual. Actually, there's that beautiful verse that we refer to and love that our consciousness was taken to by the beautiful writings of the psalmist, the 23rd Psalm. Many people know the 23rd Psalm if they know any psalm. And what does it say in the 23rd Psalm? It says, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of eternal life and you shall dwell"—where?—"in the house of the Lord forever." It's a house. You don't leave the house of life. It's talking about eternal life, and it's a house. You never leave it. It is beautiful. It's sprinkled through the wisdom literature of the ages. And even in the great writings of Wordsworth he hints about this preexistence, that the eternal in us he calls or refers to as our life's star, like we have a bright star that is the light of God that is in us. Perhaps you've heard his writings, Wordsworth, where he says, "The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, "Hath had elsewhere its setting and cometh from afar: "Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, "But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home." Powerful stuff. More evidence that right now he's saying we are living eternal life. It doesn't begin some other day. You're in it and it's sacred and it's holy and it's for us to awaken to the preciousness of that gift. There are many who are tied to the element of the seen in life, which is the body. They think solely of themselves as a body, and they forget this other dimension of the indwelling divine that is the unseen dimension of themselves. Many even in Jesus' time thought that the day would come when the bodies of the dead would be resurrected as if they were in graves waiting patiently to be resurrected. And they believed that life depended on the body. They were focused on the seen. They hadn't captured the unseen dimension. And as a result, they had kings' chambers and tombs and mummies and all kinds of things that they tried to do to make sure that they could preserve the body, you see. But Jesus tried to clarify that, and you can read about it in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says, "And as for the resurrection of the dead," he says, "the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God?" And he quotes the Scriptures that were there before him in what is the Old Testament. We refer to it as now the Torah. "I am," he said—this is God speaking and Jesus is quoting this— "I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." "He is not"—this is Jesus talking again—"He is not the God of the dead but of the living." Okay? And so nobody dies is what he's saying. He's a God that is always a God, and he will always be a God of the living, not ever a God of the dead because there is no dead. That's an illusion. And that's what he's saying. So we are right now alive and well and living eternal life. An important point also that is made is to realize and understand that eternal life as Jesus taught it is a process. It's a process of continual growth and unfoldment. We should be progressing and we should be waking up. He said, "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone." "But if it die, it beareth much fruit." And he's saying basically that the seed must die to being a seed. It has to crack open and break out of the same way that a chick has to break out of its egg and be what it was created to be— that there's the seed of God in you that you've got to crack open and you've got to progress and grow and bear fruit in this life. You've come for a purpose and meaning and you begin to transform, and out of that the fruit of the divine begins moving forward. It's growth in consciousness, it's bearing the fruit of being a more loving being, a more compassionate and forgiving and nonjudgmental being. All of these characteristics is bearing fruit. And so death is not the end of a chapter; it is only the end of a chapter really but not the end of a book. There's the main character in the book that you're writing and it's always deepening and being developed and it continues on. Some of you are familiar with the name Dr. Raymond Moody and the book Life After Life. It was several decades ago that he came out with that book after studying about a hundred and some subjects who had had near-death experiences. They were pronounced clinically dead and were revived, and he went and met with them and explored the account that each gave of their experience on the other side while they were clinically dead. And it was amazing, overwhelmingly similar. And you've heard some of these things. But that has fed into the consciousness of humanity, that and other books that have followed, to help people a little bit understand because there's such a consistency of what's being said. And if you really embrace it, it really reflects a lot of what the truth of many of the mystics and sages and seers have been telling us through the ages as well. Most recently there was the number 1 bestseller by Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven, just for one. But to review what happens, Moody tells us that a person is dying and at some point reaches a significant physical distress and they feel themselves moving out of their body. And it's commonly reported that they rise to the ceiling, and if there's a surgery going on they're basically standing back looking at it, seeing the doctors and nurses working over them. They can hear the conversations, they can see what's happening, and they talk about oftentimes just stepping back. And many of them are often confused because they aren't familiar with what has happened to them being outside of their body, and they're caught up in wondering, "Why is it I'm seeing myself from a distance?" But the majority of them reported that they found that they were in another body. And when they tried to explain this, they were often very frustrated. They couldn't find the words. They didn't know how to explain this. There weren't the words for it. But most often they used the term, "I was in, like, a spiritual body." Interesting. Back to Paul's teaching. Spiritual body. Genesis, that there's a natural body and a spiritual body that was created in you. One talked about it as being like waves or a cloud or an energy, whatever, but basically a spiritual body. And it's interesting to find that those who had damage physically to their body— one was in a car accident and had lost most of his leg, and he was from a distance seeing that, watching them work over him, and he said, "I was whole spiritually. I was whole, complete." And that means basically that any individual who's gone through disability or even blindness, they're able to see as soon as they step to the other side. The perfect reflection of the divine emerges. The spiritual body is the perfect you. And one can conclude that. Many of them saw a bright light, of course, and we've heard about that and a being emanating so much love and so much warmth that it was beyond words. It was unimaginable, indescribable, and people would break down crying talking about it even if it had happened 25 or 30 years previous. It was so moving to them. And they would have nonthreatening questions that would come, some of them, at them, nonthreatening but in a kind way as to the kind of life that they were living. And they would have a review of their life, and it was with the intention that it provoke reflection. "Look at how you're living your life." "Look at some of the choices and decisions you have made and are making." "Do you want to stay with that?" It was very healthy. Two things that were always emphasized, they said, more than anything is the importance of learning to love while you're here and also acquiring knowledge—knowledge of life, how to live life, how to be. And obviously, they all had to come back because they all reported this, and they all came back with thoughts that basically were the result of thoughts that had to do with responsibility to family and a desire that might have been unfulfilled, a mission that was unfulfilled. But the effect on all of them was very positive, and their lives were deepened and they became more reflective and they became a better person and they began to want to do more in the world of good, not just for themselves. They felt more connected, that life was more precious. New goals were formed, new moral principles were formed, a yearning to learn more about life and have just an overall new perspective and no longer overwhelmingly across the board were they afraid of death any longer. They had another whole sense of who they were— the eternal, the immortal part of who they were. I share all of this because when I hear these stories of people who have had them there's value in them. I resonate with some of the points of what was gained as being so truthful. And they're just reminders to us. Overwhelmingly, there are spiritual truths there that are telling us that life is eternal, God is love, and life is for loving and that you have a spiritual body and that death is not to be feared and that life is a school and a process of learning and a continuum and life that you've been given is the most precious gift from God to man. And so all of us need to step into that place where we realize, "By gosh, by golly, I'm living eternal life." "This is the time for me to love and to create heaven." "Not to find my way to it but to begin to create it." "That's my job, that's my mission—to shine my light in this world." To be more reflective on, "Am I doing that and how am I doing that and what can I shift and what can I change and how can I be more aware?" And so immortality, it's not just a concept. Immortal and eternal, that's what you are. That's what you are. God bless you. [applause] [announcer] Thank you for joining us for today's message. [Unity] [Sunday Service Times - 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM] We invite you to be with us again next Sunday. At Unity we believe that God's presence of love and goodness is everywhere [(713) 782-4050 - 2929 Unity Drive @ Hillcroft - UnityHouston.org] and that life is meant to be good. You can find out more about Unity and our teachings at UnityHouston.org. [♪ music ♪] [Don't Miss Caroline Myss] [Exploring the Mysteries of Inner Guidance, Grace, and Healing] [7:30-9:30pm - Thursday, September 19th] [For Tickets - www.UnityHouston.org] [♪ music ♪] [Or call 713-782-4050]