Embracing Uncertainty

The Gifts of Imperfection: Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith | Full Lesson

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Summary

In this enlightening sermon by Reverend Wendy Craig-Purcell at The Unity Center San Diego, the focus is on the themes of intuition, faith, and the human need for certainty. Drawing from Brené Brown's insights in 'The Gifts of Imperfection', the talk delves into how cultivating intuition and trusting faith can lead to wholehearted living. Reverend Wendy emphasizes the importance of letting go of the need for certainty and practicing mindfulness to tap into our inner wisdom. By exploring various aspects of intuition, including the 'still small voice' and the physical sensations it manifests, the discussion encourages listeners to embrace a balance between faith and reason to navigate life's uncertainties.

Highlights

Reverend Wendy Craig-Purcell discusses letting go of the need for certainty. ✨
Intuition is about leaning into the unsure and trusting the gut feeling. 🤔
Brené Brown's research highlights the importance of living a wholehearted life. ❤️
The discussion includes a powerful visual metaphor of muddy water settling to clarity. 🌊
Key insights into the balance between faith and reason in our daily lives. ⚖️

Key Takeaways

Intuition can manifest as a 'still small voice' or a loud, compelling thought. 📣
Faith and reason are both necessary to make sense of an uncertain world. 🌍
Letting go of the need for certainty can elevate our intuitive capabilities. 📈
Wholehearted living involves embracing both faith and intuition. 💖
Practicing stillness and mindfulness can help tap into inner wisdom. 🧘‍♀️

Overview

Reverend Wendy Craig-Purcell opens her sermon discussing the importance of letting go of certainty, a theme woven throughout Brené Brown's 'The Gifts of Imperfection'. She shares personal experiences and highlights how intuition and faith play crucial roles in living a wholehearted life. Wendy explains that while Brené struggled with defining these concepts as a researcher, she recognized their undeniable impact.

As the sermon unfolds, Wendy explores how intuition often bypasses the analytical part of our minds, emphasizing the need to listen to that 'still small voice' or a gut feeling. The practice of meditation and stillness is presented as a means to enhance our ability to receive intuitive insights. Through engaging metaphors such as muddy water settling and clear, Wendy illustrates the necessity of patience and openness in moments of uncertainty.

Concluding with practical guidance, Wendy encourages adopting daily practices to cultivate mindfulness and intuition. Acknowledging the challenge in waiting patiently for clarity, she draws on the Dao De Jing and highlights how sometimes faith requires trusting the unknown. This balanced approach, fusing spirituality with rational understanding, underscores the sermon’s message on embracing life’s mysteries.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Gratitude In this introduction, Reverend Wendy Craig-Purcell welcomes viewers to the Unity Center in San Diego and expresses gratitude for their support. She encourages contributions to support their work and provides an easy way to do so via their website. The chapter introduces themes from Brene Brown's book, 'The Gifts of Imperfection,' focusing on cultivating intuition, trusting faith, and letting go.
00:30 - 02:30: The Challenge of Intuition and Faith The chapter, titled 'The Challenge of Intuition and Faith,' explores the concept of releasing the need for certainty in our lives. It highlights the significance of embracing uncertainty as a part of personal growth and development. Inspired by Brené Brown's research-oriented approach, the discussion is grounded in examining how individuals navigate through life by harnessing intuition and faith. This exploration is particularly relevant for those who struggle with the discomfort of not having all the answers and emphasizes the liberating potential of trusting oneself and the process.
02:30 - 06:00: Understanding Intuition The chapter titled 'Understanding Intuition' delves into the complexities of living wholeheartedly, examining how some people manage to live fulfilling lives differently from others and what can be learned from them. The author acknowledges that exploring topics such as intuition and faith posed challenges, marked by a sense of discomfort, likened to 'wincing.' These themes are perceived as intangible and difficult to research objectively, reflecting the author's candid acknowledgment of the limitations and difficulties involved in studying such abstract concepts.
06:00 - 10:00: Connecting Intuition with Rational Mind The chapter explores the challenge of quantifying and proving intuition through control experiments. Despite the difficulty in measuring intuition scientifically, it is acknowledged that intuition significantly impacts our lives.
10:00 - 13:00: The Role of Patience and Stillness The chapter explores the lives of people who are perceived as having successful or well-functioning lives. It highlights the elements contributing to their success, emphasizing the practice of intuition. This involves trusting faith, leaning into intuition, and relinquishing the need for certainty. The chapter suggests that intuition plays a crucial role in achieving a balanced and effective life, supported by psychological insights that describe intuition as a rapid unconscious process.
13:00 - 16:00: Faith and Mystery This chapter titled 'Faith and Mystery' delves into the concept of intuition, exploring how our brain connects the dots between various life experiences. The narrative discusses how these connections are often made rapidly and unconsciously, leading to gut feelings. These gut feelings are suggested to be an aspect of intuition, occurring spontaneously and forming a part of the mysterious nature of faith.
16:00 - 20:00: Embracing Uncertainty The chapter titled 'Embracing Uncertainty' delves into the nature of intuition and how it manifests in different forms. It explores whether intuition is always a subtle, still small voice as commonly perceived or if it can sometimes be a loud, energetic thought or a compelling feeling. The chapter suggests that intuition can communicate in various ways, adapting to the person and situation, thus encouraging an openness to diverse manifestations of intuitive insights.
20:00 - 21:00: Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith The chapter emphasizes the importance of developing intuition and trusting one's faith. It highlights the need to be multilingual in our listening abilities, suggesting that effective listening involves creating space and practicing stillness and silence. The community's evolution in meditative practices is acknowledged, showing growth in not only refraining from speaking but also in achieving deeper contemplation and tranquility.

The Gifts of Imperfection: Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith | Full Lesson Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 hi I'm Reverend Wendy Craig Purcell here at the Unity Center in San Diego thank you so much for watching today if you'd like to support the work that we do here please consider making a contribution go to our website it's easy to do thank you in advance for that contribution mixing some of my experiences along with some of the words of wisdom from Bernie Brown's book the gifts of imperfection we're going to be looking at cultivating intuition and trusting faith and letting
00:30 - 01:00 go of the need for certainty letting go of the need for certainty see that part of it with me letting go of the need for certainty letting go of the need for certainty as you know if you have been with us over the start of this series or if you've read the book you know that brené Brown is a researcher and so she has approached these topics from that mindset and her motivation was to discover what is it about people who
01:00 - 01:30 live wholehearted lives well how do they do that how is that different from the rest of us and what can we learn from them and so some of the things that she learned were easier to research and easier to put her arms around so to speak but she acknowledges that when it came to topics like intuition and faith she winced a bit I like that word winced she winced a bit because it seems so out there it's like you know as a researcher
01:30 - 02:00 how do you quantify intuition how do you prove it how do you set up a control experiment well I'm not sure that you can and that's why she kind of winced at that and yet there's no question there is no question that these qualities absolutely make a difference in our lives and when we sit and we talk to
02:00 - 02:30 people whose lives seem to really be working and we begin to unpack as she did what are some of the elements of that we find that this practice of intuition this leaning into and trusting faith this letting go of the need for certainty is very much a part of that whole process and dynamic many psychologists believe that intuition is the rapid unconscious
02:30 - 03:00 connecting of the dots and and finding as we connect those dots rapidly and unconsciously that the brain is trying to scan our life's experiences to see where there are matches and then all of a sudden we get this gut feeling and I think that that can certainly happen that can be certainly be an aspect of intuition and certainly sometimes intuition comes to us much as was
03:00 - 03:30 described in the song as that still small voice as intuition ever come to you in that way is that still small voice not your head if so has it ever come to you more like a really loud energetic voice or a thought that is so compelling has it happened that way to you as well yes it's like intuition could speak many different languages
03:30 - 04:00 right many different languages and we need to be multilingual in our ability to listen but clearly one aspect of listening is that aspect of of making space of practicing becoming quiet and still I'm so proud of us as a community in the way over the years that we have grown into our meditative practice and our practice not just of not talking but going deeper and actually being quite
04:00 - 04:30 still and quite present to be available to and to listen for that intuition my experience of intuition my experience of intuition is a strong clear knowing a strong clear knowing it is also a sin a feeling and oftentimes that sense or feeling for me is actually physical I feel it in my body I think there are
04:30 - 05:00 many ways to experience intuition but these are mine a strong clear knowing a sense of feeling and here's an important part of it that bypasses my very active rational analytical logical mind anybody else like that do you anybody else have a really active and I'm glad I do but I also know that
05:00 - 05:30 that active analytical logical reasoning mind only takes me so far and it doesn't have the entire picture and a lot of times the most important parts of the picture it has left out because to find those missing pieces requires a different part of my consciousness requires that listening that making
05:30 - 06:00 welcome and insight and awareness I know that I know without knowing how I know it how many of you have been there and then you try to explain it to somebody else and they go huh and especially if they don't agree with with what that intuition that guidance has been for you where you just know that you know without knowing how you know it and you're a rock-solid faith about it unshakable and yet others may go I just
06:00 - 06:30 don't get it or I disagree and that's where I think spiritual integrity and leadership really comes in Brene writes that it is the need for certainty that Silas is it she said it's our need for certainty that silence is our intuitive voice because most of us are not very good at not knowing most of us are not very good at not knowing we
06:30 - 07:00 don't know because we haven't checked in with our gut in a really long time I remember the first time and this goes back I hate to say decades now it makes me feel so old when I don't feel so old anyway I remember a few decades ago the very first time we had brought Deepak Chopra in to speak we weren't even in this facility he hadn't even been on Oprah he wasn't the neap Deepak everybody who knows now some of you are naughty I
07:00 - 07:30 remember he talked about that gut knowing and he said that there it's as if there are there's more awareness in the gut more cells of knowing I know I'm paraphrasing him then even in the brain there's a reason for some of us that we know it and we feel it in our gut I think the bigger challenge once we begin to listen for that's still small voice is one thing to listen for it it's quite
07:30 - 08:00 another step to listen to it do you get the difference right one is about and this is not a word that most of us a new thought like it's about obedience the listening to that still small voice really is about obedience to it obedience to it very I'm actually don't want to miss this quote there is a
08:00 - 08:30 practice that I have come to to lean on when I'm in a place of really seeking guidance really seeking and and asking for intuition to come to me it's a practice that I first learned about in my reading of the daodejing and this is the way it is worded in the daodejing do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the
08:30 - 09:00 water is clear can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself breathe with me those are profound words and not always the easiest to practice and you get a visual of that can you get a visual of a clerical a glass a clear glass filled with water and with dirt in it stir it
09:00 - 09:30 all around and it's muddy and you can't see through it that's what the DAO de Jing is trying to paint for us and saying do you have the patience to wait until that mud settles that's the overactive mind that's the monkey mind jumping here and there or asking what do you think I should do or how should I approach it this way or what says with this book say or that authors say that's like stirring that mud so that you can't see do you have the patience to wait
09:30 - 10:00 until that mud settles and the water is clear can you wait and hold space for the right answer can you remain unmoving for the right answer to arise from there that is such a powerful life-changing practice sometimes our intuition tells us wait wait I don't like that that's a
10:00 - 10:30 hard one for me but I've learned that it is harder if I don't listen to it this is what Renee writes about it if we learn to trust our intuition it can even tell us that we don't have a good instinct on something and that we need more data remember she's the researcher collecting data if we learn to trust our intuition it can even tell us that we
10:30 - 11:00 don't have a good instinct on something and that we need more data when we charge headlong into big decisions it may be because we don't want to know the answers that will emerge from doing due diligence we know that fact-finding might lead us away from what we think we want have you ever prayed for something got it and there's oh that really wasn't what I wanted or you got it you know oh well it wasn't quite what I thought it was gonna be
11:00 - 11:30 like I'm I'm not sure I really wanted that so you always put that little wonderful statement this or something better this or is something better so sometimes that still small voice says wait sometimes it takes longer times than others for that mud to settle she doesn't write about this but this is something I have come to know to be true and sometimes other things have to
11:30 - 12:00 happen first sometimes other things involving other people or other events or other circumstances have to happen first before that mother mud settles it becomes clear and there is a space for the wisdom the right decision to rise upward she struggled with as I said at
12:00 - 12:30 the beginning she winced when she would hear from whole hearted people words like intuition I listened to my intuition words like faith you know as a research is like I don't want to go there I don't want to go there here's what she writes about faith it's our human need for certainty and our need to be right that have pitted faith and reason against each other we forcers but we force ourselves to choose and defend
12:30 - 13:00 one way of knowing the world at the expense of the other it's our fear of the unknown and our fear of being wrong that most that create most of our conflict and anxiety we need both faith and reason to make meaning in an uncertain world we need both faith and reason to make meaning in an uncertain world from a research this is how she defines faith faith is a
13:00 - 13:30 place of mystery I would agree with that faith is a place of mystery where we find the courage to believe in what we not see and the strength to let go of our need for certainty it reminds me of the the the scripture verse in Hebrews that says that faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen the substance the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen
13:30 - 14:00 and as she called it so rightly there's an aspect of mystery to it an aspect of mystery to it in her research she talked about how scientists and religious folks sometimes pit themselves against each other when they don't really have to and how how she said it's not always a scientists who struggle with faith if you really want to explore that whole idea start reading about quantum physics
14:00 - 14:30 expose yourself to those ideas because when you get on the outer edges of what we now know and what we now understand at a macrocosmic level you can't help but get into the realm of mystery that's a whole other topic she said you discovered that it's not always a scientist who struggle with faith and their religious who fully embrace uncertainty that many forms of fundamentalism in religion and extremism
14:30 - 15:00 in religion are about choosing certainty over faith about black and white thinking I shouldn't be wearing black and white this morning about black I couldn't come up with the mustard color I'm sorry about black and white thinking right interestingly in my years of doing ministry and in my years of trying to understand dynamics of of church growth not just in new thought but beyond one
15:00 - 15:30 of the pieces of information that has been researched in the church world is that in times of uncertainty and great chaos and change in a country it is religious fundamentalism that will grow numerically because people don't want to live within chaos and uncertainty so they're looking for someone to tell them it is always like this it is always like that it is black it is white done they
15:30 - 16:00 don't want to have to think you and I are not part of that kind of theology or belief system not at all we really are mystical in our approach to the way that we live our lives to the way we try to understand how life works I believe it is in her book that she quotes theologian Richard Rohr who writes my scientist friends
16:00 - 16:30 have come up with things like principles of uncertainty it's got to be tough to be a scientist when you're in that degree of it right my scientist my scientist friends have come up with things like principles of uncertainty and dark holes they're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories but many religious folks insist on answers that are always true we love
16:30 - 17:00 closure resolution and clarity while thinking that we are people of faith how strange that the very word faith has come to mean its exact opposite that's quite a slam on religious fundamentalism I would say Bernie says to engage wholeheartedly and life requires believing without seeing can I have an amen to that amen so a little bit of practice work a little bit of homework I should call it
17:00 - 17:30 something else because if I call it homework you might shut down but here's a way you can take this beyond just sitting here and and listening together and it is to really commit yourself to a daily practice of getting still and quiet so you can hear what you're saying so you can hear what you're saying to really commit yourself to a daily
17:30 - 18:00 practice of getting still and getting quiet if you have young children you might have to get up before the crack of dawn to do that I don't know when to fit it into your full and busy lives but I do know this if you do your life will change for the better one of the fundamental beliefs we hold in unity is that there is such tremendous wisdom within each and every one of us and for
18:00 - 18:30 many of us the vast majority of that wisdom is untapped and it's untapped because we are so in our busy mind or so in the outer world doing doing doing doing that we just don't stop and get incredibly still and incredibly quiet and begin to turn within and to listen for that still small voice probing ourselves in that time of stillness and
18:30 - 19:00 quiet with a very basic question like speaking to your soul what is it that I need to know what is it I need to be paying attention to and then shutting up doing your very best to quiet that act of mind that wants to jump jump to an answer and fill in the blank and seeing what wants to arise can you feel the difference between that something that's wanting to arise compared to something
19:00 - 19:30 that you tried to go after and figure out an answer to that question what do I need to know right now so committing a practice of that for those of you who love to read I think I did a series on this this particular book of Pema Chodron some time ago her book of comfortable with uncertainty comfortable with uncertainty it's an excellent excellent book on the topic and then to have a what I call a simple
19:30 - 20:00 take away practice a simple not take away a simple go to practice when you feel yourself needing to make and wanting to make a decision where you want guidance but you're jumping all over the place trying to figure out an answer or you're very much in that place of uncertainty have a go to practice and that simple go to practice might be a prayer like the serenity prayer god grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference or put a little glass on your
20:00 - 20:30 desk with some dirt in it don't drink it stir it up and let it be a visual some of us are visual right some of us want to read some of us need to take it in in an auditory way but cultivate a life that allows you to practice these things and you will never regret it you will find that your life does funtom it fundamentally change so it is about cultivating our intuition I've given you
20:30 - 21:00 some ideas on that it's about leaning into and trusting our faith and letting go of the need for certainty which just means making peace with the fact that sometimes you're gonna have to wait for the mud to settle before it becomes clear what is your next right step namaste [Music]
21:00 - 21:30 you