[Music] aloha there's a woman who was kind of lonely and she decided to buy a parrot for a pet and so she got this amazingly beautiful parrot and she brought it home and i have to say the parent was kind of nasty and she'd say oh you know tell me you love me and the parents say no i'm not going to tell you i love you and she said oh tell me you love me tell me you love me and the parents say no i'm not going to tell you i love you so she's one
day she's carrying the parrot around on her arm in the kitchen and she's like tell me you love me the parents no i'm not gonna tell you i love you and then the parent reaches down and takes a nip at her arm and she grabs the parrot she opens the freezer door and she puts the parrot in the freezer and shuts the door and the parrot rustles around inside the freezer for about a minute and then all of a sudden it's dead silence and the woman's thinking oh my gosh i killed the parrot so she
opens the door and the parrot is like standing at tension right in the center of the freezer right in the middle and the parrot says i'm very sorry i promise i will never do those kinds of things again i will be the most obedient parent that you've ever seen please forgive me the woman says okay all right i'll give you another chance come on out so she reaches out her arm and the parrot climbs up on her arm and she shuts the freezer door and the parrot looks at her and then the parrot motions over
towards the freezer door and says but tell me what did the chicken do i love that joke you probably heard it before but it's a great joke about forgiveness um years ago a friend of mine had this amazing mg and um this friend and i go back way back in fact he had this mg when we were in high school and as we got older and progressed and he the car no longer ran and it was in his garage and every time i'd go and see him we'd talk about the mg and the times that
we had and the fun that we had in and around this car and we'd always go and look at at it and talk about it and sit in it and as years passed he called me and said hey i'm going to get rid of this mg i need to get it out of my garage and i'd like to give it to you would you like it and i know that you'll fix it up so i was like oh yeah i'll take that car so we had it towed over to my house in center moon california
and i put in my garage and one day i'm out in my garage looking at my car and a neighbor across the street comes over and he introduces himself and he says hi i'm mick and it's obvious that he's english and we talk and he's talking about having this kind of a car himself and he said by the way i'm a mechanic and i could get this car running and make it beautiful beautiful for you are you interested so well sure so i let him do a few things and pretty soon it it it got
larger and he ended up spending months working on this car and made it the most amazing and beautiful car and in the meantime i became really close to him and his family and we were friends and we did things socially and one time we went to a carnival that was close by and i love to take pictures and so i took a picture of his daughter who was two at the time on the carousel and i have to say that picture just came out really really beautiful and i liked it so much that i made
mick and his family a copy of the picture and i made one for myself they hung theirs in their living room and i hung mine in my office and about a year passed and i would take this car out and drive it once in a while but every time i would drive it i'd come back and something needed repair and so i would take it across the street and and nick would fix it and this car became like a a hole on wheels that i kept throwing money into and so i told mick you know
i really need to sell this car and he says aye no problem i'll sell it for you and so he in about a week he sold this car for um two thousand dollars which is what i wanted for it and you know i said oh great you know can you write me a check or how would you like to pay me and he says well i have to tell you i i had to buy another car with the money that i got from your car because this is how i make my living by fixing and
selling cars so i can't give it to you right now but i'll give it to you soon so i was like okay well that's good so a month went by and two months went by and i'm like you know mick i really need you to pay me for this car he's like okay i'll i'll pay you i will pay you i promise and another month went by and then six months went by and one day i'm i'm in my garage and i open my garage door and i look out and i look at mick's house
and something's very different it's like all of the personal things around their house are gone so i walked over and knocked on the door and the garage door was open and i looked in the garage and all of mixed tools and everything were gone and they had moved out overnight unbeknownst to me and never answered my phone calls never called me back and um left me high and dry and essentially stole the two thousand dollars that i wanted from the car for the car from me and i was angry and i was upset and um
i really felt like you know all the love that i gave to mick and his family and and and what i got in return was lovelessness and so then i i went back in my house and i took down the picture of his daughter off my wall i took the picture out of the frame threw the picture away kept the frame and and actually left a pretty good size empty spot on my wall and every time i walked by there it would kind of hurt you know where i used to get this warm kind of
fuzzy feeling before um about our relationship and about this beautiful picture that i took now what i felt was emptiness and anger and i fortunately i discovered unity about that time this is in the early in 1990 and i took a workshop on forgiveness at unity center in walnut creek and and what i discovered was that i needed to give love for the lovelessness that i felt i realized that you know that what had happened when i stopped loving my friend there was a part of me that i started i stopped loving as well it's
like i somehow i i got angry at him and my reaction was to shut myself down so that i wouldn't give my love so freely or i wouldn't accept love from other people freely and um in that forgiveness workshop that i took what i realized that the love that we shared was real and so i'm titling this talk only the love is real and what i realized now was the love that i gave to mick and that mick gave to me and that i gave to his family and what he gave to me that was
real regardless of how the what the circumstances were and how it turned out the love was real it was always real um you know and what i realized now there was something going on that i didn't know about in this dynamic that i can forgive mick four because i realize now that he was unconscious and couldn't come from that place of love within himself and that he was holding back you know when someone hurts us it's because they're unconscious because they're not fully present to the truth that they are and jesus gives us a perfect
example of this when he's being crucified and he says father forgive them for they know not what they do and when people hurt us or do unkind things to us it's because they've forgotten for that moment for that time the truth of who they are and we in this in a similar way when we feel like there is lovelessness involved we're not receiving the love we too are unconscious and we have forgotten that only the love is real you know forgiveness gives us the opportunity to give love for lovelessness you know i can forgive mick
because i i know he was a good person we shared that love together and that but i realize now that he was acting from some kind of fear and doubt and maybe a difficult situation financially that i didn't understand at the time and i could only imagine what that was but the truth of it is i can understand that he was unconscious in some way and know that the love that we shared was real you know i believe that the law of cause and effect is always present and and you know something tells us sometimes
that we need to get back at that person in some way um but the truth of it is i believe that that everyone is given the opportunity to reap what they have sown you know and if we uh if we act out of love then we receive love if we go unconscious and act out of unconsciousness then we reap that unconsciousness and we're not able to accept that love there's a great story that i like i watched a documentary years ago and it was about a tibetan man who was imprisoned in a chinese prison and
he was i think he was there for six or seven years and in that prison he was tortured and he was starved and he was oftentimes kept in isolation and he said during that time he contemplated hating his captors and in fact he he says it clearly i remember this quote from the documentary he said what worried me the most was that i saw in my heart the temptation to hate my captives wow and i and what i like i can see in my own consciousness and looking back at this story with mick i can
see that that what and what worries me now when i look back at it was that i saw in my heart the temptation to be angry at mick to dislike him maybe to hate him and his family and i believe that you know everything that we think say and do is infuse with the consciousness with which we do it you know it's like what we put out into the universe the universe responds to and comes back to us in like manner so really what we get to look at is how can i respond in love
how can we respond in love regardless of what happens to us you know i still get a little bit of a zing when i think about mick when i think about the fact that you know i have two thousand dollars less than i would have if he had paid me back for the car i get a little zing about that but what i realize is i get to choose again am i going to come from lovelessness and be angry or can i embrace the situation with love and find peace in it regardless of the zing
that i sometimes feel this story was a great lesson for me and when i realized that i had to forgive mick i found the negative uh you know the the the film of that picture and i went and had it developed again and i had prints another print of that picture made and i put it back in a frame and put it back on my wall in the same place where it was before and so i was really able to take that negative that film and turn it into a positive into a picture and on
a metaphorical level i was able to take that potentially negative experience and turn it into a positive by forgiving mick and forgiving myself and to change my perspective and now i understand how important it is to forgive others for the things that we perceive that they did to us you know the truth of it is we forgive others not for them but for ourselves because when we forgive others it's like we we take away the veil that keeps us from experiencing the love that the universe wants to give us it's like we take the kink
out of the hose that is bringing love to us when we forgive there's a great story that i like and i've told him many times about dr albert cliff he was a biochemist and an author a spiritual teacher a spiritual counselor he wrote the book let go and let god and he tells about a patient that came to him one day and the patient walked in and the patient was on crutches and could barely walk and the patient sat down and they talked and albert asked him you know tell me what's going on with you
how long have you been crippled and the man said i've been crippled i guess about eight years and uh dr cliff asked him well tell me what's happened in those eight years and he said well um eight years ago my brother and i had a business together and i discovered that my brother stole money from our business and so it it forced me to withdraw from the business and it forced me not to like my brother in fact to hate my brother and dr cliff had an incredible idea and he says you know i'd like
to sit with you right now and for you to write a letter of forgiveness to your brother so they sat down and they wrote this letter and they um the man signed it they put it in an envelope and they stamped it and then dr cliff said i want you to take to take this letter to the post office right now and mail it and man's like oh great okay so the man stood up walked to the door and turned around and said thank you and dr cliff said haven't you forgot your crutches and the
man said i don't need them i don't need them and he never needed crutches again and that it makes me think that when we don't forgive we um we ourselves you know it's like we we the the ability to be whole and present in the world we ourselves because we're not able to love we're not able to receive love and i like to end this talk by sharing with you a poem that i wrote a few years ago and it's titled only the love is real even when it feels as if you've hurt me with
new eyes i see that the unforgiveness lies in me only the love is real you hurt me and do not know but i can look within and let it go the love in my heart you cannot steal only the love is real when i look back at the times we laughed all the joy and the love we shared love has been the truth for us only the love is real the things you did cut me deep i have decided it's time to give them rest i know we really did our best only the love is
real i won't be captivated by my pride in truth only love can abide no matter what i feel only love is real from the truth i will not hide even if you are no longer at my side forgiveness and my heart has healed only the love is real only the love is real for me right now and that's our affirmation today affirm that with me only the love is real for me right now say it again only the love is real for me right now and i invite you to close your eyes take a deep
breath breathing into this moment maybe to take that conscious journey to your heart to the area around your heart and to to feel the love and to say only the love is real for me right now breathing in and breathing into your heart space breathing in to this place of love knowing that only love is real and perhaps there's someone or some situation that you can bring into this safe space around your heart today or tomorrow and maybe that image comes into your mind right now of something where there's a emptiness in your heart that
wants to be healed towards someone that has maybe hurt you or some situation that is painful and maybe right now there's nothing more to do than be aware but to be aware and to imagine that you can take this person this situation and bring them into the space around your heart and to say to them to say to the situation only the love is real only the love is real only the love we shared only the love we have is real it's still there nothing can take it away and let's just take a few moments
to rest in this knowingness in the silence only the love is real breathing in and breathing out giving thanks for this awareness for the truth for the love only the love is real right now breathing in breathing out and beginning to bring your awareness back to this moment to sense the light in front of your eyes and to open your eyes whenever you're ready and so it is namaste and i invite you now to prepare your ties your love offerings your contributions to unity church of maui and i want to thank you in advance for
sharing your gifts with us because it is your gifts that give us this financial energy to continue to do what we do and to to bring this message to our community and to the world and i know and i believe that as you share your gifts with us you are partner with us in this good work and that you are cr part of this creative energy that's moving in and through the world so as you hold your gifts in your mind or maybe physically in your hands let's affirm and pray together our prayer for prosperity
which begins through a grateful giving heart my mind and life overflow with the abundance of god's all-providing infinite supply and so it is amen and namaste so i've got just a couple announcements uh for you today um my next week's talk is titled um we are the people and i believe that we are the people you are we are the people that are building the consciousness on this planet that we are creating together a field of love and that we are called on to be called on by that inner desire of true truth within ourselves
to be expressions of perfection and community right now and i hope you'll enjoy i hope you'll join me next week in my talk which i'll share some uh really um thought-provoking and powerful stories about people who are joining together as we are to make this a better world and we're seeing it happen in our spirit groups at unity church of maui and i'll share with you some stories about how our spirit groups are making that contribution here on maui and in the world to help to create a planet that works for everyone so that'll be
happening right here next sunday also as you know we're about ready to start our dismantling racism spirit group series which begins on thursday august 6th and i really like to invite you into this conversation and we'll be talking and meeting for six or seven weeks we're really not sure yet about racism in hawaii and racism in our country and you know we acknowledge that that we don't know we're not experts in this field but i think that by having this discussion we'll become a lot more aware and be able to be present to how can
we be in a loving way available and present to whatever is going on so that we can be part of a healing energy on this planet so i'd like to invite you for that that'll be happening at seven o'clock on every thursday beginning august 6th for an hour and a half and we'll be looking at a number of videos from different people and reading some books and then i i'm envisioning we're going to have some amazing discussions about that so if you would like to be involved in that please contact emily and i'll give you
her phone number and it is 808 268-8310 and you can call her and text her and please sign up we're going to have a fabulous time so please join us and if you enjoy our sunday services i invite you to check out our youtube channel unity church of maui youtube and we've got lots of videos and music up there that you can check out if you're missing our music there's quite a bit posted there a lot by our good friend adisa omar and other people who have shared their gifts with us so i think that's
about it um so let's see before emily is signaling me something what is it oh thank you yes the zoom meetings okay right this is why um emily goss is sitting here right behind the camera to remind me of things that i uh i might have forgotten and i almost forgot to tell you about our zoom meetings we're meeting at 11 o'clock today sunday to discuss this talk and dismantling dismantling racism and whatever is on your mind and you can find the link to that zoom meeting by going to our webpage or in our newsletter
and clicking on the link at 11 o'clock today also you can go there and um gosh what else what else about that um oh the daily word every every every wednesday at noon we do a meditation and daily word and you can link to that also on our webpage our inner e-blast so thank you for hanging in there with me and so before i do anything further or without further ado why don't we praise together our prayer for protection which begins the light of god surrounds us the love of god enfolds us the power of
god protects us and the presence of god watches over us wherever we are god is god bless you thank you for your good work namaste and aloha i live [Music] there are rainbows you
