Lecture - Les Price
Sunday 1st June 2025
Les began his talk saying that he had a busy week and that last night he was praying to the Gods of Talks asking them what they wanted him to talk about today.
“So, I as up in the hills last week and it was cold because it is winter but, it was so good to see how nature changes and how nature teaches us a lot of lessons. You know when we looked at the barren trees, they looked beautiful. They revealed everything. They weren’t afraid to be who they were. They weren’t hiding themselves. You could see their roots, you could see their branches, you could see their age, you could see the wisdom, and you could feel the connection. Nature teaches us about the gift of cycles and seasons in our lives. We have all been through cycles and seasons just as we have all been through winters and summers and autumns in our lives.
Today I will start with a story about a burglar. Now this burglar decides to rob a house and, as he is making his way through the house he comes into a room and all of a sudden, a voice rings out saying, “Jesus is watching you.” He shines his torch around the room and sees that, in the corner of the room, there is a cage with a parrot in it. And he says to the parrot, “Was that you talking?” “Yes,” says the parrot. So, he says to the parrot, “Do you have a name?” “Yes,” says the parrot. “It’s Moses.” He thinks that’s bizarre, so he says, “What sort of people would name a parrot Moses?” And the parrot says, “The same sort of people who would call their German Sheppard, Jesus.”
So lately I have been thinking about what it means to live an empowered life, a spiritually empowered life. And recently I have had a number of clients who have lost their parents, and this is a challenging time for them. It can often feel that we are alone because, on a soul level, our parents are with us for a purpose and whether we love them, get on with them, whether we disown them, they are part of our soul journey. And through the stories I have been hearing what it means to be a part of that journey.
If you think about it when we go to the funeral or celebration of life service, it is not about the money or the things or the house or how big it was. It’s not about the cars or the status of who they became. So, what is it about?
What do you hear about it when we go to the funeral? You hear about the connections with the people they knew, the relationships and who they impacted during their life. And that is beautiful to hear. I had an uncle who passed away and I knew nothing about his life until the funeral and then I heard all the stories, and I thought ‘WOW’ he had an amazing life. What else do we hear? We hear about the qualities of the person and when we keep those qualities alive, we keep their spirit alive, we keep that connection alive.
So, a lot of this has been coming up and I have been asking what does it mean to live a spiritually empowered life. What does it mean to be able to tap into the potential of our soul, our infinite soul. Because, while we are incarnated in this physical body it will, at some stage, return to dust. But we are infinite beings. We are beings of soul, of energy, of light.
And while we are here, it is our consciousness that allows us to go and touch lives, to make an impact, to do the work we are here to do. To care for people, to have those connections and have that character we develop as we go through our lives.
So, as I was exploring this, I attended a course, and it reminded me that I was brought up in a Christian family, but it didn’t resonate with me, and I drifted away and started exploring different faiths. Then in 2006 I had a business with my ex-partner, and it collapsed. In the collapse I got lost. I lost myself. I lost everything. I lost my identity. I had invested everything in that business and in that partner and - it was gone. So, I went searching.
And I ended up at a Pentecostal church and I was there because of the energy. I was into Spiritualism; I was into the great philosophy of Spirit. I knew there were many roads to get to Source. But at that church, they were very into the Bible, and I have never been that interested in it but one of the stories that really stood out, to me was the story of Moses. No, not Moses the parrot.
Now it is interesting that, when God came to Moses, it was through a burning bush. Can you imagine seeing a burning bush and as you approach it, and a voice speaks to you. God gave Moses a task, a calling, a purpose. God told Moses that He wanted him to lead His people to the promised land. Now, what do you think the first thing Moses did when God told him that?
Moses said he wasn’t worthy. In the Bible there are lots of people who are given a task, but they think they are not up to it and most of them refuse. What else do you think that Moses might have said? He might have said, “How? I have never done that before.” So, he came up with all this stuff and here is the interesting thing. When we are asked to do something, we immediately question ourselves. Can I do this? Am I worthy. What if I fail? Why can’t someone else do it?
But Moses had reasons. His first reason was that he didn’t have any authority. So, what did God do? He gave him a staff. And He said that the staff would give him power, and authority and people would pay attention.
Moses’s next excuse was, “But I can’t speak. How do I talk to them. I’m not a leader.” So, God said, “I am giving you your brother, he is a speaker. He will speak with you.” So, every excuse Moses had, God gave him a solution. What did God want Moses to do? He wanted him to lead the people who were imprisoned under Pharaoh and had been for generations. He wanted Moses to lead them to the promised land. And where was that promised land? Yes, it was Jerusalem.
Now most people think is a long way but in reality, it is just 200 miles, a journey that should have taken approximately 20 days but, here’s the thing; those Israelites spent 40 years wandering through the desert so, what do you think might have been happening. Was it that they didn’t know the way? Or could it be that they had to change their attitude? I think that maybe it was because, while Moses got the Israelites out of Egypt, he could not get Egypt out of the Israelites.
They refused. They were in fear. They argued against each other. They undermined what Moses was trying to do, that’s what took the forty years. Their mind and ego overrode their trust and faith. So, it is interesting that on our journey we do this. We get the call; we are inspired and sometimes, we will go into in our ego, and we will create excuses and reasons as to why we can’t do things.
So, it is a great encouragement from Spirit, we have this life. Is it a long life? Deepak Chopra says it is a “Parenthesis in eternity.” We have been given this bracket to experience right now. Yes, the soul continues and will experience many things but the life energy we had is here. So, with this said, how do we make the most of this energy.
Today I had three little insights to share. First one is all of us need to know that our lives are not a straight line going from A to Z. How many wish it was? Here is the interesting thing. If our lives were fully planned for us, if we did know what to do and where to go and what would happen, where would be the joy? Where would be the lessons? Where would be adventure? Where would be the growth? There would be none.
So, the pure fact is that we don’t know where we are going, we were not born with a manual but, we have family around us and there is wisdom that could be passed on about life and how to live it fully. In our lives there will be phases, there will hills and valleys, there will be moments when we want to escape but there will also be moments, when we will sing from the mountain tops.
For me, I have been in a spiritual desert. I know that I am in the desert, and in the desert, everything stops. Is it comfortable in the desert? No. As human beings what do we want? We want things to happen. We want things to move. But when we are in the desert, we can’t have that. We have to wait it out. We have to be patient with ourselves until we have the energy to move again. And that takes patience. It takes courage. It takes vulnerability. It takes awareness as well because, if we are not aware that we are in that space we might find that we resist it and then the desert can become the norm.
So, what do we do. Well, number one thing we can do is find the deeper meaning. One of the great stories about this is about a man named Victor Frankel. Victor was a Viennese psychiatrist and in the 1940’s, he was incarcerated in Auschwitz concentration camp. He was a Holocaust survivor.
And while in the camps he observed people. He observed those who had the will to live no matter what the circumstances. And he found those who, for some reason, maybe because of their energy, their life force was not strong enough, they gave up. And they lost their lives. And he started to ask the question. What is it about these people that allows them to survive, while others seem to give up on life? And what he realised was that it was the meaning they gave to the experience.
And here is the thing with Victor Frankel. At one point in his incarceration, he was given the opportunity to escape with other prisoners. Now, if you knew that potentially you would die, would you not want to escape? Well, he decided to stay because he had found his purpose, and his purpose was to support other people.
So, when he came out, he wrote a beautiful book, ‘Mans Search for Meaning.’ He created a whole new era of psychology and psychiatry about finding the meaning in mind which was called ‘logo therapy.’
Another story I love is about this lovely lady named Frances Xaviour Cabrini who was born in Italy in the late 1800’s. She wanted to help people, so she tried to become a missionary, but she joined a nunnery and while she was there, she became inspired by a bigger calling. She wanted to go around the world helping people and, in the end, she petitioned the Pope at the time and finally convinced him to send her to New York where she started helping immigrants.
Now Frances was an interesting soul because she was the one of most powerful people in her time; in a male dominated religion, she held her own. Over a period of 40 years she created what she called, an ‘empire of hope.’ She created over almost 60 organizations to help orphans and orphanages and hospitals. There is a Cabrini hospital here. And to think that she did all this while being ill with lung disease. When Frances passed away at the age of 67, there was a big gathering for her funeral because she had done so much to help those people.
A few years later she became America’s first saint, and their first saint was a foreigner. But what is interesting is that at her funeral there was another lady by the name of Mother Theresa. She was so inspired at hearing the story of Frances that she set up the Sisters of Charity. I have a connection to Francis Xaviour. I watched the film that came out last year which was very moving.
So, meaning. When we find our meaning, it gives us life. It allows us to step into that purpose and make it our own.
So, Number Two that Spirit wanted to share with you today. If you want to find your path, you want to feel empowered, you want to find your purpose, you need to step out of the boundaries that you place around your mind.
Sometimes our minds restrain who we are. We are pure consciousness. We are connected to the God Source, the God Essence within us. Yet our mind tells us that we are limited to this human capacity. I was drawn to Yogananda, and he was one of the most profound mystics and masters to bring yoga from India to the West. He travelled a lot through his teaching through his calling from the age of about 12. He found his spiritual insight and then he went to America to teach the West how to open their consciousness.
One of the statements he made was, “Self-realization is the knowing in all parts of your body, mind, and soul, that you are in possession of the kingdom of God. You don’t need a middleman. And you don’t have to pray that it will come to you. God’s omnipresence is your omnipresence. The God essence is within you. I was created by God. It is not out there. It is within you. When we pray for things in the West, we pray as a beggar but, in the indigenous traditions they don’t pray for things. When they pray for rain, they say prayers of gratitude, “Thank you for the rain that has already fallen.” Not, “Give me rain,” but “Thank you for it now.” When you shift your energy, when you pray, when you open to the omnipresence, you open this awareness of the God force.
Number Three was really more about being ready to be inspired. We all have busy lives, and it is sometimes hard to get inspired. Sometimes it needs determination to find the channel for Spirit to flow through. And that is what it is like to be inspired.
So, with this I am reminded of a story of a young man who was travelling through Syria and Turkey, and his name was Rumi. He was a Sufi poet. When Rumi walked the Earth, he was a lost man. He knew there was a calling from God and Spirit, but he didn’t know what it was. He felt empty. He wandered the Earth for several years until he met his teacher who was called Shams-e Tabrizi and he said that, when he met the Shams-e Tabrizi, it was almost like his life came alive.
“I saw in that person the energy of the God force that I was looking for all my life. And in that moment my heart leapt, and I was inspired, and I was filled by Spirit.” And for days and weeks Shams-e Tabrizi and Rumi spent time together talking about philosophy and Sufism and mysticism and the wonders of the world. But unfortunately, the son of Shams-e Tabrizi became jealous of the relationship between Rumi and his father. So, he had Shams-e Tabrizi killed. And Rumi was distraught. He shut himself away for many years but, in that time away, he wrote 10,000 poems about love because his love was so deep.
Rumi was a man who was inspired. He was filled with Spirit. He was filled with energy. And this energy is with us. Do we have to do anything to receive it? No. We just have to be ready to accept it.
To be empowered means to find a deeper meaning, to know that we are more than our mind, that we have a connection to a greater power; a power that, if someone is unwell, we can work with them and help them heal. We could work with a child and let them know that they are not alone.
I just want you to know that Jesus is watching. That God is watching. The Source is watching and is with us right now. It is within us. It is as close as your breath, as near as your heart and is part of your soul. Ask yourself today – What can I do to find a deeper level of meaning? What can I do to acknowledge that I am more than this body, more than my mind, more than my conscience.
Acknowledge; I am a Source and Channel for Spirit.”
