Interview with Temple Hayes on Universal Resilience
DEIDRE: Good morning. Today my beloved friend, the Reverend Temple Hayes who heads the First Unity campus in St. Petersburg, Florida, is joining me. She is an author, a spiritual leader and a change-maker and part of my soul pod. So, Temple, in my talks and newsletters I’ve really been focusing on the topic of learning to love no matter what, and how great acts of kindness are small or large. It doesn’t matter. Because in the field—the unified field and in God’s eyes—all acts of loving kindness are equal. They have equal merit and affect our world. So, my beloved Reverend Temple Hayes, why don’t you share some of your wisdom with us?
TEMPLE: Well, I feel one of the challenges that we have today is that so many people sit back because they see some of the issues that we have as being a lot or too big. They think, “I want to do something. But I just find it overwhelming.” So, sadly, they do nothing. And so, when you’re talking about those small acts, I think the key is to take a step forward and do something little. I heard someone say one time that “It will find you.” You look around in your communities. You look at broken toys in front yards, and you know that there’s the lack of love. I mean it’s easy to find something you can do. But it will come to you. I was telling Deidre a story about this just the other day.
DEIDRE: Oh yes. That was great… the perfect story of how one little act can grow and it’s like not even yours anymore. Please, tell us.
TEMPLE: I was in Brazil and I was determined to do nothing. I was going to be withdrawn with God and just be in that sacred place. Well, near where I was staying, like in so many areas of South America, there were all these abandoned dogs that were hungry and starving. And I couldn’t turn my face away. I couldn’t turn my cheek. So, I just became connected to them. We would dance together and play in the street and some of them would kneel down, and I would talk to them and say “Namaste.” We definitely became friends! So I made a promise, I will see you again. We’re going to bring you to the States.” So, to make a long story short, that’s what happened. Things occurred and people and another partner friend of mine got together and we brought nine dogs to the United States. All of them found families. And then that led to our spiritual campus organizing a Pet Adoption program. So far we’ve adopted out over 300 pets— dogs and cats, rabbits, whatever—all kind of animals over the past four years.
DEIDRE: Wow! That’s an amazing story. In the common law, the mystical Kabballah says that every act that we do in loving kindness and care repairs the brokenness of the divine. Why? Because the divine, in the ancient Hebrew text, is here. Earth is not separate from heaven. We are in heaven right here. But this is the part of heaven that’s in creation/evolution and so it’s broken. To have dominion over the earth, what that really means is to be the healer, to bring order and balance into the world of chaos because creation is birthed from chaos. We humans, it’s actually our job to bring balance here to this strata of heaven, and we do that by care. Caring for those who are sick, who are less fortunate. It’s about service, about giving service to dogs, animals, cats, the ocean, fish, every part of this world. I know it goes without saying that we’ve done just the opposite as humans. We’ve actually taken this piece of heaven and broken it even more. But I have hope. I have a lot of hope, because everywhere I see stories where people get an idea and then they clear, heal, and purify something. I was born near Lake Michigan in Chicago and I love that body of water. When I was four I believed that the water, that body of water, was my mother. That I had my human mother and then I had this water mother that I must cherish and take care of.
TEMPLE: Absolutely
DEIDRE: One day I went to the lake with my mother and there was a sign. I couldn’t read it but there were dead fish everywhere. When I went to run into the water my mother yelled, “No! No! Stop!” And I looked at the water and I smelled the water and I said, “My mother’s died.” I said someone killed my mother and I started crying. I remember having this meltdown and my mother looking at me like, “Oh my.” Much later I read in the paper about how terribly polluted the Chicago River, which feeds Lake Michigan, was. Today it’s all cleaned up and they’ve planted trees. People get in the water. And I think, “What did it take to do that?” All the people it took, we’ll never know their names. We’ll see the mayor stand up and say, “Oh, we’re so great.” But who’s the “we?” Right? It’s every person doing one thing—just one thing to help do the impossible. And that really is the energy of this new age. The “we,” the collective, working together for a greater purpose. In the 80s and 90s it was the “I,” it was the “me.” It was about “I’m great!” Now it’s, “I’m great and we’re even better!” Together we’re greater, we have more energy, we have the power to be able to move mountains.
TEMPLE: No doubt about it, small acts of kindness add up. Another aspect of it is, you know, a lot of people will say, “I can’t take on one more thing.” Oh, my goodness, people’s mantra has become “I’m too busy.” So, if you’re out there doing that, please, bury that mantra! Because it’s really a cry for help. It simply means you’re putting your energy on a lot of things you don’t really want to do. So, please, will you release that? Then you will realize that it’s not about you taking on one more thing. It’s about you emerging, finding the one thing that’s going to energize you and give you more life than you ever dreamed of! So many people come up and still thank me about what Carol Bundle and I did for the dogs. But I go, “You have no idea what the dogs did for us!” That cycle, it all comes back energetically and spiritually and it does bring us all together. I’ve never been more excited about the times than I am now, because “truths” that are non-truth will not last. Everything’s coming to the surface. And Mother Nature is out there yelling and screaming at the same time because we are birthing a new time and a new era of miracles and surprises.
DEIDRE: Absolutely, we are entering the Age of Surprise, and this age that we’re in, this time where we seem to feel like, “Oh, that can’t happen” and then that something happens … there’s a sense of grief. And, you know, grief is not bad. We have this false notion that to be in oneness we don’t experience things like that. But part of the reservoir of oneness is grief. It is a feeling of loss. And we’re all feeling this loss right now because we’re in the midst of change. The ego-mind tends to always look back and go “It was better then.” But if you went back, you’d go, “Oh no! It really wasn’t better then. Actually, it would be better over there.” The ego’s always like “If you’re here it’s always like, “No. I want to be over there.” You know? And that brings a lot of confusion inside of us. But when we move forward and when we see things happening like they are today, it is a healthy response to have grief. Grief is holy, because grief is really the alchemy, the internal alchemy of your soul wanting to take that rupture, that pain, and turn it into a diamond. The way the Earth takes coal and presses it into a diamond, each of us is a Tree of Life. And this tree is a unified field of creation. Just as the trees take in carbon dioxide and give us this beautiful oxygen, we, in our souls, experience and take in the loss and grief of the world. And through our alchemy we create oxygen. We create more life. And that’s the Phoenix, the Phoenix within us.
When we acknowledge grief and just allow ourselves to bring it to the light in deep prayer, something happens that is beyond our understanding. Joy. Joy comes and we realize, “Oh, okay, that was then, this is now. I release that.” Oh! Then you have a new joy for life, a happiness, a zest. And when we don’t acknowledge this grief, the grief just starts to press us down and down and down. Then our friend the ego comes along and says, “Oh, that grief belongs to me. I think I’m going to use that grief.” And it takes that grief and it beats us up with it and it beats other people up and it blames people and it gets angry. The big ego is just having a jolly good time. So, I say take that grief back from the ego. Acknowledge it as part of the alchemy of your service here and we can turn all of it into wine, into goodness, into the age of awakening.
TEMPLE: When you think about it, one of the most significant and strongest emotions we feel when we are being birthed into this world is the grief of our mother. It’s the final moment of “I let go,” and you are coming into the world and you think of the mothers that actually experience post-traumatic stress—a grief of “I’ve carried you and now you’re no longer there.” So, it’s a beautiful design, creation. And that’s why you and I talk about this. How could anyone ever feel disconnected from that which created them? It’s like saying you, a cup of water from the ocean, isn’t the same as the ocean. It is the same. And heaven on Earth is that capacity to grieve that, to have that emotion, because it means we’re being born into something else. Grief is more than the things we’ve learned it is—that you’re helpless or “It’s over,” or whatever. It’s a new emerging. It’s a new coming forward. It’s the grand finale. Mother Earth is crying with us now because she’s birthing into another space. It’s happening along with us. And so, in allowing that, we are so powerful.
DEIDRE: Oh! So beautiful. Absolutely! I’m so glad you brought that up about the mother, because part of the energy of our service today is about birthing. And, you know, it’s no small act of greatness. But really, what is greatness? I think we misjudge it, because we think greatness means, “I am making or doing something wonderful.” When the ego ends up thinking like this it’s just on Cloud 99.
TEMPLE: It’s the best feeling.
DEIDRE: It is the best feeling thinking that I’m great. But that’s the ego’s definition of great. The spirit’s definition of great is any act of generosity, any act of kindness, any act of care or any act of nurturing. When I go out in the world and work with people, I see many many people doing such great work, being kind and generous. You know? But so often nobody thinks it’s great. They go, “Oh! Well, it wasn’t anything. It doesn’t count.” But that’s just more ego in reverse. And I want to tell people, “Please! Just hold this belief that these small acts you do are great. Just play with me and pretend it’s true even though it’s hard to believe it’s true. I can see these multi-dimensional realities. I read energy. I see energy. And so I see that all these acts of greatness are having a huge influence on the world.”
TEMPLE: Yes!
DEIDRE: A huge healing influence and so I just wanted to remind you today that you’re great and that you are performing greatness when you nurture, you care, you’re kind, you forgive. When you have an “aha!” transformation, when you choose your soul instead of your ego and you say to the ego, “Oh, you’re so cute. But you’re going to go sit in the corner today.” Yeah, we have to love that ego too. Right? We have to love the ego.
TEMPLE: Yes we do!
DEIDRE: I mean the ego is the youngest part of our consciousness and it’s just having a field day. It’s kind of like if you gave your five-year-old the keys to the car. Can you imagine what that would look like? But at the same time, we want to love our egos too. It’s really about love, about us coming together and realizing all the acts of kindness are seen as great in the eyes of creation and the field of all that is. The intelligence that birthed us, that created us—she, he, they—see these acts as great because they know how difficult it is to be a human. We’re all angels down here operating in the hardest stratus of reality.
This is the most difficult place to choose goodness, to choose hope, to choose to not be angry, to choose to not hate, to choose to love no matter what. This is so hard! So any time we break through that, all of heaven goes, “Yay! Wonderful my children!” So let’s acknowledge this and have the empowerment of that knowledge. You know in the age of celebrity worship, in the age where we worship money, success, you know, how high is your pile? In the eyes of creation, that doesn’t mean anything. So let’s be celebrities for the universe. And when we are, all the unseen friends, the angels, the tree spirits, nature, the animals, dogs, puppies, they will all say, “Thank you! We love you!”
Listen, you will hear their voices. When you perform even small acts of kindness and generosity you will hear them cheering you and giving you a thumbs up on a universal Facebook out there of God. Once you develop the eyes to see you’re going to see that you’ve got millions of followers because that’s the world they live in.
TEMPLE: I am mindful of the quote, “There’s one thing stronger than all the armies of the world and that’s an idea whose time has come.” I love that quote. And as you’re listening and you’re desiring and needing to take that one little step, just be mindful to have the right people on your boat with you. It’s been so energizing for us to connect because you want to have people on your boat that really see you and mirror who you are so you can draw from that strength and rejuvenate and keep that energetic presence. Because you can’t be all things to all people.
DEIDRE: That’s such a beautiful piece of wisdom because it’s true. You know, one thing we’ve been talking about is the soul pod. I had that awareness when I was watching the dolphins off the coast of Hawaii as they were all swimming together. I love the dolphins and I’ve been speaking to the dolphins they’ve been speaking to me for many many years. And the whales. So, I said to the dolphins, “Oh, you’re so happy!” Because I can feel their happiness. And they said, “Well, this is because we have our pod. If you see a dolphin all alone in the ocean it would not be a happy dolphin. We swim together and we take care of each other. We work together. We’re safer together.” And that’s just what you were saying. It’s so important that you have people around you that have a similar resonance that can mirror back your spirit. It’s very very important to find that soul pod and to come together. And that’s why we love that you’re here and that we’re here together. Because, I mean, do you feel it? I feel everybody’s presence. I feel your love, mirroring back, and my heart expands and I feel a deep sense of peace.
TEMPLE: Oh, yeah, everybody, all these folks online—and Joyce and Danielle, Betsy and Forrest and Mustapha and many others tuning in this week— it’s really awesome because that’s how easy it is now. It’s easier to come together than it ever has been before.
DEIDRE: This is the positive side of social media.
TEMPLE: Absolutely. It’s wonderful that people know they are out there in their lives making a difference whether they realize it or not. In owning it, the fundamental question would be what difference are you making? Are you adding? Are you just joining the tribe of naysayers? Are you looking at the thing that you’re called to do and doing something? If you are driving through neighborhoods in your city and you see those broken toys out there and you recognize that sense of poverty, you can pray over that area every day. Light a candle. One day you’ll drive by there and see that changes are occurring. There’s no limit to what an energetic presence can do. So, be willing to know it’s a difference-maker. The steps you need to take will come to you. The people will show up. It will happen. You don’t have to take it all on. Just be willing to make that first step.
DEIDRE: That is universal resilience. Life happens, and through that our ego will be softened and those lessons are learned for our growth. Universal resilience is the resilience of our soul, our spirit, and it is the resilience that’s beyond what we can see. So, when we pray, when we light a candle for something, when we use our capabilities to change something, we are creating from the universal resilience principle. It’s a principle in the universe, a principle of growth and new life that is going to happen globally and that is behind the big shift that is coming. So, allow yourself to stretch. It’s not the time to be holding back.
TEMPLE: No holding back!
DEIDRE: It’s been so wonderful having you here with us today, Temple. Thank you! So, right now I’d like to end with a short meditation.
Saint-Germain is the overseer of the violet consuming flame and the violet flame is the central pillar of your Tree of Life. It is the principle of the secret alchemy that just takes that difficult time of grief and turns it into joy in creation. So, allow the violet flame of healing and transformation, the violet flame that births the universal resilience, to fill your whole body, blessing your body as you bless the world and the sun-warmed fields of flowers and the billions and billions of souls, like flowers, turning their faces to the Sun and shining like the Angels that they are, bearing a golden bowl of violet flame, the violet transforming flame. Deeply breathe into her peace, activating yourself as a keeper of peace and the keeper of the peace flame healing the ruptures in our world, healing all chaos, all pain and suffering. As you enter her sacred doors through the mystical gates, the gold and white light, the emergence of hope, resilience, recovery, restoration, redemption, salvation, unity, oneness, are yours. We are one. Beautiful.