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Hi, guys. Good morning. Thank you for having me here today. You have a wonderful role in paying witness to my story for a short while today and I appreciate that.
I’ve been going through something of a shift lately, to use Wayne Dyer’s terminology. I’ve discovered that there’s this book out there called The Shift, and apparently what Wayne has begun talking about is this movement from ambition into spirituality and what this turning point looks like. I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, but it’s been brought to my attention a number of times and I’ve noticed in life–when things pop up on your radar a couple of times over the course of a week–you may want to listen; someone is trying to tell you something. It’s a little bit of serendipity there that I’ve been trying to be more tuned into as I’ve gone through my journey of life. There’s been times where it’s just come out and smacked me across the face and then there’s been other times where it’s been much more subtle.
Well, here I am, and the reason why I am here standing in front you is because I’m trying to listen more to that serendipity and listen more to the intuition that’s coming out.
I have Roman Catholic roots and, as a child, my mother was an Irish, red-headed, Roman Catholic, single mother of three and she ruled with an ironclad fist. She worked very hard to put us through Catholic school (private school) and so we were taught religion at a very young age. As children, we’re brought into this belief system; we’re just indoctrinated into it and told “This is what you believe.” It isn’t until you get to be in your teenage years–maybe your young adult years–where you start to question everything around you. You start to wonder why it is you believe what it is you’ve been taught and that’s if you’re lucky. Some of us may make it all the way through our lives believing the same thing, just continuing on, knowing everybody else on the planet is wrong, thinking “My belief system is the only way to go.”
As I began to question “Who is God” and “What does He really want from me,” you come up against a place where you’ve got to believe this, otherwise (in Catholicism) you’re going to Hell. That’s kind of heavy. Of course, we don’t even know what Hell is. You’ve never been hit with three seconds of Hell. You’ve never been hit with 30 seconds or three minutes or three hours or three days, or whatever the length of time it would take you to really get a sense of “Oh, this is Hell. I don’t want to be here so I’m not ever going to deviate from The Path. I’m going to fly right for the rest of my days.” We don’t have that.
So, to be given this doctrine to follow and say, “You follow this or else”–it didn’t sit well with me as a teenager and, so, I began to ask questions. I began to talk to people and I loved to get into theological debates at the time. There was one conversation I had with a co-worker of mine (I worked at McDonald’s as a kid.) We were doing our McDonald’s stuff and we got into this debate, what do you believe and why do you believe this. Turned out she was a Jehovah’s Witness and I didn’t know this. I had never met a Jehovah’s Witness before. (They seem like nice people.)
She said, “Well, all right, you believe in Heaven and Hell, right?”
I said, “Well, yes, yes, I guess so, yes, from what I know; that’s what I’ve been taught.”
She said, “Well can you possibly believe that any parent–capable of unconditional love–is going to condemn their child to eternal damnation?”
I said, “Well, it does seem kind of incongruent doesn’t it?”
There’s the whole unconditional love but if you don’t follow this–and by the way, you’ve never been punished before but if you don’t follow these rules you’re going to get the ultimate punishment: fire and brimstone (whatever you believe Hell is)–this is going to be it for you for the rest of your eternity. That’s kind of stiff.
And, so, I started questioning this and that was a key moment for me. Later, I ended up taking it another step further. If you’ve never been shown what the punishment is, how can it mean anything? How can you have that impetus? It’s got to come from within, sure. You’ve got this doctrine. You’ve got Ten Commandments and maybe you’re following them and maybe you’re not. I was always good about a few of them, the lying and cheating and stealing and that kind of stuff but going to church on Sunday not as much and some of these other.
So you try your best, and actually, I’ve got a friend of mine, she and I just had an off-the-charts conversation where–she’s been struggling. She’s trying to find her own way. She was actually led back to the Bible through metaphysical means. Just messages that had come to her, hey you need to–or metaphysical (what I’m going to call metaphysical) serendipity kind of led her back to you need to look at the Bible. So she got into the Bible and–you know there are places in the Bible where you can get stuck. When it talks about slavery is a good idea or marry your sister; that’s the Old Testament stuff. I cautioned her to draw a line at much of the Old Testament stuff. Christ’s teachings; there’s a core, there’s a kernel. Devour it because that stuff–I haven’t seen anything wrong with Christ teachings–but yes; watch out for the Old Testament.
Through this course of this conversation she and I went up and up and up in this kind of this spiritual feedback, and it was that conversation that got me thinking I want more of that. I want to go out and I want to talk to people, and I want to have these conversations with people because as I was bringing clarity (or some sort of calmness) to what she was going through I was feeling exhilarated. I was feeling a connection. I was feeling, “Wow, this is something I want to do more of. This is a God-inspired moment.” I even came close to crying at one point during that conversation because I believe in what Christ had tried to provide us by His example. Yet there’s these moments in your life where you don’t think you can do it.
I know for me, years ago, I got myself worked up over a book. My mom had sent it to me and it was a book that had in it pictures of the stigmata. It had pictures of the Children of Guadalupe receiving visions from the Holy Mother Mary. This book talked about the end of days and some of the revelations that came out through those visions and–I got myself worked up. I was reading this book at night, in my little studio apartment down in Florida, alone, and I terrified myself. I called up my mom close to tears and said, “Mom, how do I know I’m on the right path? How do I know? I’ve got it in me! I know I could pick up and leave everything and go to the other side of the planet and administer the poor, heal the infirmed… I’ve got it in me. I know I’ve got it in me. I don’t want to do that. Is God asking me to do that? Is Christ asking me to do that? I’ve got it in me, so all I’m doing is saying no.”
She said, probably the best thing she could have said when you’re child is 3,000 miles away and freaked out on the phone because they think they’re maybe being called to the other side of the planet to do the Mother Teresa thing. She said, “Matthew, you have been given a specific set of talents. It is your highest calling to use those talents to the best of your ability and make a change or make a difference in people’s lives with those talents. Certainly, I’m not going to stop you, if you want to run to the other side of the planet and administer to those less fortunate than yourself but… relax.” And I did, I relaxed, I was like “Whew, okay. Alright, I’ll relax a little bit.”
But don’t we have that in us? Don’t we all have that in us? If Christ were to walk in the door right now and say, “Follow me,” would we be able to do it?
I don’t know. Now I’m even more entrenched in this life than I was back when I lived down in Florida. I’ve got the family, I’ve got friends, I’ve got a j-o-b, I’ve got a company. Could I follow Christ if he was–and if you knew it was Christ, if you knew, would you be jumping out of the boat and paddling to shore? I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do that. I would want to believe that I would and I could, especially, once you got hit with that “This is Christ” or “This is God.”
So, I don’t know. What I have opted for on a daily basis when I’m making this daily decision what to do, where to go, how to best follow in the path that lays in front of me, is I try to see God in everything. You’ve got these satori moments where you really know in your heart you’re seeing a glimpse of God. Whether it’s in the operating room and your third child has just been born and you’ve got this little bundle of waxy, crying, baby right there for the first time and it’s the first time you’ve seen this child. You’ve been talking to the child for the last ten months, (it’s not nine months, it’s ten months, folks) and this is the first time you’ve seen that child. That’s a God moment, for me.
It could be on a dreary, cloudy day, just walking out in the cold air and nothing in particular happening, you’re just feeling the cold air on your face; that could be your God moment.
For me, as I began to prepare this talk, I began to think of all these sorts of stories that I might tell and I even wrote a couple down and been kind of blogging and that kind of stuff but I was beating myself up, thinking, “No, this isn’t it.”
There’s a little recorder that a mentor of mine offered me. I was working with this tool and getting used to it. It’s got a little time stamp on it, regardless of whether its on or off, you put batteries in it and it tells you the time. Well, I never set the time on this thing and I sat down last night to kind of go through the spiel and the time stamp had 222 on it. Now for those of you who know anything about me, you know I’ve been sucked into number patterns for about seven, eight years now. Don’t know what they mean necessarily, but they seem to occur. Like I had my grandfather died on November 11th, at 11:11. Just weird patterns and numbers and when I’m in the thick of a spiritual something, I’ll be asking a question or something like just wondering and I’ll hit on a revelation or something and a car will drive by me and there’s a license plate that says 1919 or 333 or just a weird little sign to which I think, “Okay, I’ll just take it as that.”
Well, this little device said 222 on it and I’m like, “Okay, all right, it’s all about this talk, 222.” Well, my wife–years ago–had given me this book, Doreen Virtue, Numbers of Angels or Angel Numbers or whatever the title–I actually brought it here today. It essentially said, under 222 (you can look up all these numbers from zero to 999,) “They’ll get the message they need to get.”
Alright God! We’re just going to go out there, we’re just going to let it all hang out!
So I think my give to you in this little chat is: I think we’re all students of life, and I think we’re all making our way, even when we’re wondering whether or not we’re on the right path, we’re on the right path. I would say when you have these coincidences that pop up in your life or you hear the title of a book a couple of times in a row…
I just had this experience again; Food, Inc. Has anybody seen Food, Inc. yet? You will never look at chicken the same. I gave that experience. I was the third one in line to mention Food Inc. to somebody the other day and over the course of their week and I said, “Oh you need to listen to that. Go get it. It’s going to mean something to you.”
When you see these patterns try not to drive yourself crazy with them, obviously, but pay attention and ask. If you’re wondering what the patterns mean, follow them, especially if it’s something is innocuous as “Go get this book” or “Go watch this documentary.”
Listen to it; that’s my encouragement to you. Just listen to it. Look within, listen to the message when it comes up and if you’re wondering what the sign is supposed to be about–ask the question and I bet you get that answer too.
Thank you.
