Lola Wright reminds us that our beliefs become our experience as she closes our July Series “Disrupting the Unconscious” with her talk titled “Bound by Belief” and completes our final Sunday Experience with celebration.
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This “talk” is electronically transcribed. Please excuse any errors or omissions.
Lola: As I was putting my seven year old son to sleep I said, “I would like to speak a prayer.” Which is something we do at meals and something we do when I lay them down. And really what it is is a word of affirmation. It’s a spiritual truth about who they are. So the kind of prayer that is taught and practiced here is not a begging and a beseeching to some externalized presence that you hope will save you, but rather a recognition and a realization of the truth of who you already are.
Lola: The premise of these teachings is that there’s actually more to be undone than there is to be done. And so as I was speaking this with him, I noticed some tenderness showing up and I was feeling some sadness and I thought, wow, there’s a way that this conversation gets held here in the ritual of a Sunday experience. And that as the Sunday experience shifts into something else, there’s more responsibility that I’m going to have to take as a parent and keeping that alive on a daily basis.
Lola: And I think that’s sort of the point. I think that’s sort of the point actually, that these teachings exist to invoke an awareness in each of us not so that we demand this thing to be available each week, but that we’re actually practicing and becoming the expression of God that is the truth of who you are. So when I arrived here 14 years ago, and some of you know this story, you know multiple bags, blind dog and a backpack, multiple trains and a bus. It was a lot.
Lola: And by the time I would get into the seat, all I could do was breathe and just take a pause. And what I heard over and over and over again were truth statements. Who you are is the presence of all that is. You are the individualized manifestation of God itself. The presence of love comes to know of itself through you. Abundance is the nature of the universe. It is who you are. And there was a chemicalization that was happening in my being, it was a remembering of what’s always been true.
Lola: That for me is the high idea that we carry forward into this iteration, that that quality remains available for people. The people can show up and hear a lightening rod of truth, so a chemicalization of the soul can occur and a quickening into who they are is resulted. So that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to have a chemicalization and a quickening. Those are old school words for wake up. Wake up.
Lola: When I got here, I had never heard of this book called The Science Of Mind. And all that I’m going to speak to today comes from my two very favorite books. The Science Of Mind by Ernest Holmes and Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle. If you only have one book to read for the rest of your physical manifestation in this plane of existence, I recommend Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle. So when I heard this guy, Ernest Holmes, who I did not identify in any particular way. When I came across his readings, these were the ideas that jumped out at me.
Lola: If we think of ourselves as being separated from the universe, we shall be limited by this thought. For it is a belief in separation from God which binds and limits us. We are bound by nothing except belief. So, I don’t use the word God a lot because my experience is that most people have not deconstructed and reconstructed the word God. And so when I use the word God, I’m not actually sure if we’re even talking about the same thing, but let me break it down what that word means for me.
Lola: It is not some separate thing outside of you. It is nearer than your breath. It is vaster than your being. It moves in you, as you, through you and all around you. Then you ask, “Well, why do we not live in an experience of the realization of God? What is our problem?” We have a cosmology of beliefs. It is as if your being is constructed by a constellation, and each point in the constellation is a belief. And the question that we must ask ourselves is, are those beliefs working for you? Many of us are subscribed to a set of beliefs that are running us in deeply unconscious states that are of our own creation, of our family creation, of our societal creation, of our planetary creation, but they are not real with a capital R.
Lola: They’re the forgetfulness of your divine self. When I am walking in an experience of suffering, it is my forgetfulness of my divinity. So we are bound by nothing except belief. Everything that you are is a construct of beliefs. Your physical body is a construct of beliefs. It is the out-picturing of a system of beliefs. Your relationships are constructs of beliefs that create particular experiences. Your job is inside of a belief structure without which your job would not exist. So if we are not in a regular practice of waking up to our beliefs, see, you could say there are believers and nonbelievers, but nonbelievers believe in something.
Lola: It may not be an externalized God. It may not be an indwelling presence, but we all believe in something. So what are you believing and is it supporting your expansion? So my intention is in everything that I give my life to, to the extent that I remember is to commit to self-awareness, to identify my cosmology of belief, to recognize my creative capacity and to surrender to transformation. Those are my four steps.
Lola: Ernest Holmes goes on to say, “Nothing is going to happen to you that does not happen through you. Whether it be the result of your own erroneous conclusions, those of your grandfather or those of the human race.” We may change the trend of causation which has been set in motion at any time we decide to do so. So at any moment you can change your cosmology of beliefs and thus produce a different outcome. I posted something in this past week on Facebook and I said, “There is a distinction between a poverty consciousness and an abundance consciousness, and a poverty consciousness actually has nothing to do with your net worth or your income.
Lola: So we are all in. If we were to create a buy in area, it’s more like a spectrum, but we are in a poverty consciousness or an abundance consciousness, that has nothing to do with your gadgets. It is a state of mind. And someone commented on there and they said, “Well I think this is flawed through an equity lens.” I said, “That’s so bogus.” The fact that you are living inside a construct but says that someone’s abundance is attached to equity is exactly the problem. You have been co-opted in your mind to think that the source of your existence is outside of you. The source of your existence, which is the indwelling presence of abundance itself is right where you are. It will never be determined by systems, structures, governments, economies, none of that. And that’s what I was told when I came here.
Lola: And so the $80,000 of debt, the lack of child support, the repeat struggle that I was in a cycle of, if someone had met me inside of my considerations and conditions, I would not have the life I have today. So do not be seduced by that bogus claim. Your success is measured by whatever you deem success. Your freedom is always present to the extent that you realize it. And the thought that your freedom is tied to someone else’s decision making is total baloney. And it is part of the very thing that keeps us all trapped.
Lola: So as I’ve said before, if I start to meet you inside of your limitations or if you start to meet me inside of my limitations, we’re playing some other game, not this game, not this game. So the question here is, if nothing is going to happen to you that does not happen through you, then that suggests that you have agency to create that what you desire. But that what you’re experiencing is the result of your own erroneous conclusions, those of your grandfather or those of the human race. What are you subscribing to?
Lola: The most profound experience that I had here early on, you have heard many times before, but it is a mental equivalent for my own transformation, was me sitting at Bank of America and perpetually looking at my overdrawn checking account. And thinking I’m doing all the things, why does it keep showing up this way? And for me at that time it was too big a leap to say I am abundant. But what I knew I could do was say, this number is not the truth of my being. And as that worked in my soul, as that chemicalization continued to occur, that belief structure loosened. This overdrawn checking account is not the truth of who I am. If this is not the truth of who I am then what must be the truth of who I am.
Lola: See, you can’t say, “This is not the truth of who I am,” and then not be asking yourself, “Well, what then is the truth of who I am?” So the question is, what is the truth of who you are? And by the way, who gets to say? I had an unwillingness to believe that some externalized force held the destiny of me and my two children. I was unwilling to subscribe to that. I have oftentimes said that I believe The Science Of Mind is absolutely a liberation philosophy. So waking up should be creating an expansion of freedom.
Lola: If we are living in constricted states, the place to start is in evaluating our belief structure. So, Eckhart Tolle goes on to say, “Feel the emotional attachment you have to your victim story and become aware of the compulsion to think or talk about it. Be there as the witnessing presence of your inner state. You don’t have to do anything. With awareness comes transformation and freedom. When you combine beliefs and feelings, you amplify the experience of whatever it is you want or don’t want.” So what he’s saying here is be mindful of your emotional attachment to the ways in which you experience life as happening to you.
Lola: And then … Because neuroscience tells us, see, this guy wrote this book in 1926 and he was interested in the intersection of science, religion, and philosophy. Science now says … Sure we know that there is place and space to move, get it out, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the loop, the loop. And you know, we love an audience. I love an audience. But have I surrounded myself? Have you surrounded yourself with people that are not interested in indulging that victim story? See, when I call Tone, not a lot of time and space for that.
Lola: It’s not the quality or the resonance of our conversation. You got about two minutes to work it out and then we’re moving on. Because allyship around this is without collusion. When you take your belief structure and you multiply or add it to your feeling state, your emotional attachment, it expands. So you want to be real clear about your belief structure and you want to be real clear about what feelings amplify the belief structure.
Lola: So my question for you is, do you know what you believe? It is the reason that I desire this organization to be highly skilled at producing affirmative content. This past week I watched the Robert Mueller testimony, not the coverage of the Robert Mueller testimony. Actually the testimony, those are two very different things. And at the end of the Robert Mueller testimony, the committee people, the committee leaders did a press conference and one of the committee leaders said, “This testimony did not yield any new information.”
Lola: That was not the point of the testimony. The point of the testimony was to get the American people at the consciousness with which they vibrate at, which is soundbites. And if we can spoon feed you soundbites around the state of our political arena, maybe then you’ll wake up, but here’s the challenge, if you only watch the soundbites, it’s going to be through the filter of someone else’s belief structure. So if you are watching one network, you’re going to be adopting one set of beliefs, and if you’re watching another network, you’re going to be absorbing someone else’s set of beliefs.
Lola: There is a high level of awareness around how to spoon feed humanity, and it produces particular outcomes. That is true of your life. We’re consuming all the time. Inside of what belief structure are you consuming? Is it life-giving, is it affirming or is it diminishing? Is it sucking? I want to be in places and spaces and conversations and relationships that lift me up. That’s very different from spiritual bypass. That does not mean we have an incapacity to be with the shadow.
Lola: So he goes on to say, “When you fully accept that you don’t know, you give up struggling to find answers with the limited thinking mind. And that is when a greater intelligence can operate through you.” See, the reason I don’t use the word God is because so often that that word is used to disempower human beings. It is like a carrot dangling outside of your being. But my belief is that if you don’t have something greater than this, it’s going to be a lot of painful nights.
Lola: So what this place taught me was begin to create a vision for what you say your life could be, not what you’ve been told your life could be. Hold a vision in your mind’s eye that is transcendent and more amplified than words. Your mind does not think in pictures or your mind does not thinking words it thinks in pictures. So to see in your mind’s eye, the life you desire, to amplify it with feelings and then to release it into this thing that we call universal law.
Lola: See, this universe is impersonal. It is no respecter of person, place or thing. This thing called universal law only and always says yes to the nature of your song. So if your song is one of being broke down, yes, and so it is. If your song is one of aliveness, abundance, freedom, possibility, yes, and so it is. But a few weeks ago, my friend Gaylon McDowell was up here and he said so often he sees people that want to go from the to-me state to the as-me state. Remember, we have to-me, by-me, through-me, as-me. You wake up to your creative capacity as a manifestor, as a portal for the universe.
Lola: If you don’t go through your unconscious or your subconscious mind and do a constellation, a true plotting of your belief systems, you can’t just jump to Jesus. Wouldn’t we love that? Turns out I was a real jerk at Starbucks yesterday, but by right of consciousness today I am the living Christ. I just don’t experience that as the way it works. There’s actually something about sitting in this idea of like, “Holy smokes, I just did that at Starbucks. That just happened.”
Lola: What is going on in my cosmology that had me tell Mattress Firm in Brooklyn that I would destroy them. What is going on in your soul, Lola, really? It may be that we ascend into Christ consciousness or Buddha consciousness, but to me that’s not really the game. The game is actually to get deeply curious around the system of beliefs that cause me to experience suffering with Mattress Firm. Because I always think it is so funny that we want to have world peace, but we act like we do at Starbucks.
Lola: Oftentimes, over the years people have said things like, “Aren’t you going to do any service for anybody else?” Oh Gosh, this would be a great service to humanity, if a thousand people sat and deconstructed their belief system and then reconstructed a belief system that was of service to humanity, that would be the greatest service imaginable. If we actually did that, there would be no need for soup kitchens. There would be no need for shelters, which is not to diminish the power of those places. But stop looking out here. It’s right here. That soup kitchen exists because it is a projection of your creation.
Lola: There is a system, a cosmology of beliefs that is living at a cellular level within each of us. Some of it’s yours, some of it’s your grandfather’s, some of it’s your communities and some of it’s this nation and this planet. That’s the big idea. We are bound by belief. We are bound by belief. So I started showing up here and believing a new idea of me. In the classes that we teach here we’ll oftentimes say, “If you only ever said God is I am, God is I am, God is I am.” And you actually got that, nothing else is needed. If you actually got, if I actually got that, I am the individualized manifestation of all that is, how would I walk on the planet? How would I walk on the planet?
Lola: And any place or space in me that gets shaken up by something is an invitation to exploration. As Denise Schubert said here years ago, “I may have pushed your buttons, but I did not install them.” Right? So get to the button, get to the belief, reconstruct it in a way that’s of service to your expansion and watch the world around you change. That is the greatest gift you could give to humanity. So I thank you. I mean it’s really fun to see some people here who haven’t been here in years.
Lola: This community has impacted thousands upon thousands upon thousands of lives. The life I have today is because people long before I arrived contributed to this place. I would not have the life I have if it wasn’t for Kemery Bloom, if it wasn’t for Jim Dethmer, if it wasn’t for Jonna Mogab, if it wasn’t for Shakti, there are so many people that have made this place possible for a next generation. I’m asking you to be the people that seed this place for the people who aren’t even yet here.
Lola: Bodhi is not a Sunday experience. Bodhi has had a Sunday experience. Bodhi is an infinite idea and the universal mind that is a portal for possibility expressed through each of us. That does not change because Sundays go away. So I ask you, if you love this place, if this place matters, whether it is your first time, it is your final time to hold in the high altar of consciousness that places and spaces that affirm the wholeness of humanity remain available, that that actually matters. That I would be willing to organize myself such that that remains available for people. That’s what this place exists to be about. And I hope that you’ll choose to join us on this next iteration of the journey. Many blessings.
