TO LISTEN TO PART 12 OF THE STUDY GROUP, CLICK HERE
This audio tape is the studied chapter from the book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, by Joe Dispenza, which you can purchase on Amazon. We are also excerpting the music of Peter Kater and R. Carlos Nakai , “Becoming Human” and Wade Imre Morissette “Still,” which can be purchased on i-Tunes.
“You have all the neurological machinery to transcend time, to make this a skill. What some might call miracles, I describe as cases of individuals working toward changing their state of being, so that their bodies and minds are no longer merely a record of their past but become active partners, taking steps to a new and better future.”
“Transcending the Big Three: Peak Experiences and Ordinary Altered States of Consciousness At this point, you understand that the main obstacle to breaking the habit of being yourself is thinking and feeling equal to your environment, your body, and time. . . .”
We will continue on Monday, at 8 PM, by calling 218-936-4986, pass code 48201.
Enjoy our other websites uplifting a consciousness of grace at http://www.spiritmuvmeditation.com (we are on over 1000 days of a meditation challenge); http://www.spiritmuvvideo.com (we post videos for our Miracle Minute Meditation, as well as our Metaphysical Bible Journey); http://www.spiritmuvblog.com (where we continue to uplift our community of growth in consciousness); http://www.myrtletreepress.webs.com (our publishing website); and http://www.spiritmuv.com (our main website).
IMAGES BY GEORGE REDHAWK
The call to spiritual transformation is the call to freedom.
Malidoma Patrice Some teaches us that “ancestors have an intimate and absolutely vital connection with the world of the living. They are always available to guide, to teach, and to nurture. They represent one of the pathways between the knowledge of this world and the next. . . . [T]hey embody the guidelines for . . .all that is most valuable about life.” (Of Water and Spirit (Putnam: New York, 1994) at p. 9)
If I am still, I can hear them distinctly – not downtrodden as they were in the physical world, but holy and divine. Their call is one of deliverance. It is a call heard in the midnight hour, in the rustling of the leaves, in the sip of the living water: a call to Spirit and to Truth.
God is big indeed–a power too awesome and all- encompassing to even conceptualize. God fills our hearts; embraces our bodies, blesses our souls, lights the sky above our heads, strengthens the earth under our feet. God is the sun and the stars and the moon.
God moved Sojourner Truth to sojourn for Truth in a manner that would liberate not only herself but other captured Africans. She remains a master teacher of the principle that God is much larger than any beliefs or concepts we might have – larger even than existence as we know it. Her life and the lives of other Africans in this country are a critical example, rarely acknowledged, of how the recognition of God pushes us far beyond even our greatest expectations.
The Brown Girl dares to step out of the box of conventionality that has always excluded her – to envision a creation that is far more inclusive, one that sees beyond the European biblical tradition that “remade its past to suit its own interests”– and recalls ancient Africa’s place as the Motherland of creation.
Moses says to the Israelites, “you forgot the God who gave you birth” (Deut. 32:18 NIV). Isaiah said that God cried out like “a woman in childbirth,” reminding her children that she upheld since conception and “carried … since… birth” (Isaiah 42:14, 46:3). It was this Mother God, Hosea recalls, who taught us to walk, who healed us, who lifted the yokes from our necks, who bent down to feed us (Hosea 11:3-4).
Even Pope John Paul I recognized that God is not just our Father; “even more God is our [M]other.” Hence, we should not be limited to a male-dominated creation mythology that leaves out the Mother Creator.
God as Mother is not merely Creator but is creativity itself.
Creator as Mother is the epitome of Love: love as grace, love as compassion, love as peace, love as strength, love as power, love as wisdom, love as community, love as justice, love as faith, love as hope. Creator as Mother is not a gender – but is the energy of creation constantly and continuously creating itself.
Few would dispute that due to European male dominance of Christianity as a tradition, God the Father governs the majority of our relationships with God. But that solely paternal relationship is often limited to the over-literalized metaphor that it is.
The paternal image of God as Father has so monopolized “Christian speech about God that the equally legitimate and in some ways even more appropriate symbol of God as Mother [has been] eclipsed.” However, this historical, political, cultural, and economic dominance of man over woman does not dispel the Truth that God is greater than any pre-conceived notion of human sexuality or gender. God’s attributes as Creator can be better identified with the attributes of Mother as the major creative, life-giving force in the world.
“Since it is women whose bodies bear, nourish, and deliver new persons into life and, as society is traditionally structured, are most often charged with the responsibility to nurture them into maturity, language about [Creator] as mother carries a unique power to express human relationship to the mystery who generates and cares for everything.”
The Brown Girl, as a Columbian Indian, sings that God is “the mother of all races, the mother of all tribes. She is the mother of the thunder, mother of the rain and rivers, the mother of trees and all living things.” Of course, many if not most theologians choose to stay deeply embedded in a tradition merely because it is traditional; they refuse to entertain Creator as Mother since “the Bible speaks of God as ‘Father’” – fully ignoring the fact that the biblical image of God was created by men wrote the Bible.
The Brown Girl – surrounded by the hatred and condemnation of a white male-dominated world, is a Creator who uplifts those who have been marginalized and demonized – putting them in their rightful place as equal heirs to the throne; a Creator who has “a mother’s love that makes the beloved beautiful”; a Creator whose love cannot be earned or merited but is “freely and abundantly given.”
Creator as Mother generates everything and ensures that it flourishes. “Without origin, without source, without beginning,” Creator as Mother is not a gender but is creativity itself. “Creation is not something God did . . . Creation is something God does and is still doing.”
“There is a creative force constantly at work in man and all creation.” Creator as Mother is “sympathetic, comforting, loving, forgiving, and instantly healing,” with all “compassion and healing power of the Father at ‘Her’ command.”
Those of us who are oppressed, marginalized, denigrated, and impoverished realize the presence of God when we understand that “every moment is the beginning of a new creation.” Creation did not begin and end in seven days; those days are just symbolic of the Truth that “[w]herever there is the evidence of creative action, there God is.”
“God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.” We experience God through our expressions of the creative source. We are a living expression of God.
Enjoy our other websites uplifting a consciousness of grace at 
Last night, I was watching Will Smith’s movie Collateral Beauty, about a man who loses his only child, a daughter who was only six years old, and the pain that he grows through in order to return to himself. The movie raises the question what is “collateral beauty”? We always talk about collateral damage, the negative secondary or by-product of an accident, catastrophe or tragedy that brings additional pain, hurt, injury, and suffering. But we never talk about collateral “beauty,” which is, to me, the ability to see the glass half-full instead of half-empty, the ability to see the presence of God, even in the midst of messiness, turmoil and strife.
The movie Collateral Beauty focuses on three attributes, which in many respects reflect mind, body and soul: death, time and love.
The collateral beauty of our challenges is that they allow us to re-start, to re-invent, to re-create, to re-establish who we are – to get rid of the old so that the new can emerge. In John 8:51, Jesus says “Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.” Nothing and no one can destroy the pure presence of Spirit expressing as us. So we get up from our mats and walk. We rise like a phoenix from the ashes. In three days, we find our temples restored.
It doesn’t matter what or who we are confronted with in the world, nothing or no one is too great for God. Even what others mean for evil, God means for good. As the scripture teaches us, the battle is not ours, it is God’s. No weapon formed against us shall prosper.
The collateral beauty of disaster or difficulty is that we can experience the fullness of the perfect divine order of life, realizing that despite appearances, we are in our right space at our right time.
Collateral beauty is more difficult to see because we are distracted from seeing the good everywhere present, the birth of Spirit all around us, the widow’s oil that keeps pouring, the baskets of fish and bread left over. The Psalmist says (27:4) “One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”
So even when we are blinded by the events and transgressions of the world, through their impact, we are given a new vision: one that allows us to see God in every word, every breath, every event, and every circumstance.
Or I can step out into the sunlight of a new day, a day that I have never seen before. I can release the baggage of yesterday. I can climb a new mountain and cross the waters of new faith, realizing that this, too, shall pass, but more importantly, that this – whatever this is, is the blessing of collateral beauty: a small crack in the universe, where I can see God.
I am love in all things.
This is a prayer that we not lose ourselves in the fabric of the law firm, the corporate world, the police force, the military, the government, the university, the hospital—or wherever we find ourselves collectively giving to society—but that we understand that Spirit put us there for a reason, and part of that reason is what we as individuals bring as separate, creative expressions of Spirit.
This is a prayer that we have the vision and the faith to celebrate our gifts with every task that we perform by never being afraid to speak our truths and tell our stories and do our best. Being the best at who we are in all of our imperfections, not perfection itself, is a blessing.
This is a prayer that we put our egos aside to contribute what we can, whatever guise it may take, and that we be there to mentor those who need mentoring and that we grow and improve ourselves and increase our knowledge. We pray that we continually bless others in ways we cannot even imagine.
If others second-guess our skills and abilities, it only shows their shortcomings, their fears, and their need to grow, not our own. More importantly, the opinions of others are grossly over-rated and give us an opportunity to trust our own judgment. This means that we must be open-minded and receptive to good advice but know the difference between someone else’s judgment and our own wisdom – by developing a discernment that is not merely intellectual but Spirit- based.
Centering in Spirit helps us stand strong in the workplace, to be a tremendous success and a great asset because Spirit guides us continuously. Regardless of what we are doing, all we need to do is to be open and receptive to that guidance.
This is a prayer that we center ourselves in the guidance that Spirit gives us, especially in the midst of those who do not recognize our greatness, those who question our worth, those who diminish what we can offer. Only God realizes our greatness, and God puts us in our right time, at our appointed place to contribute, develop, and move forward. This is a prayer for us to shine our light, our gifts, our talents – that only we can offer.
This is a prayer that we find a space for Spirit at work. We spend such an enormous amount of time giving to our jobs and our businesses that if we do not take Spirit there, it is absent for 75% or more of the time that we live. There is no separation between us and Spirit merely because we leave church, or temple, or synagogue, or mosque. This is a prayer that we continue to be centered in Spirit—particularly in places that are most in need of its presence. This is a prayer that we allow Spirit to use us and to be so centered in Spirit that we realize it is with us—especially at work. This is a prayer that we open our consciousness to the presence of Spirit in the mundane and everyday, ordinary encounter. . . .
THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM REV. LOVING’S BOOK
God is a Brown Girl Too 