The call to spiritual transformation is the call to freedom.
It is a prophetic call heard within the depths of the mind, heart and soul, a calling from God, resonating in our consciousness, in our environment, in each every breath that we breathe and space that we take up.
It is a voice of strength, illuminating us with faith. It is a voice of deliverance, reminding us of our freedom. It is a voice of power, anointing us with grace. It is a voice of divinity, blessing us with love. It emanates everything that embraces us: the blood in our veins, the cells in our bodies, the vision that we move forward in.
If you listen, you can hear it, feel it, touch it, taste it, dance it, sing it, clap it: an ancestral call to raise us from semi-consciousness to a state where we can see God.
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.
It is a call that no one can stifle, even those who refuse to hear it. It is a call that is at once collective and individual. In order to recognize our worth as individuals and as a species, we must not merely hear it but respond to it. No matter what our life circumstances may be, we are always free to do so.
Enslaved Africans heard the call, and their survival is a testament to their response. God called on many of our ancestors in a profound way, and great men and women like Nat Turner, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth listened and acted.
Take Sojourner Truth, for example. Her spiritual transformation began when she had a vision that her former “master,” from whom she had escaped, would visit. Truth told her “mistress and master” that her former “master” would come that day and she would leave with him. Her current “owners” were surprised because they had not heard that he would come.
Sojourner Truth took her child and prepared to leave with him. As she approached him, however, she had a more compelling vision: “God revealed himself to her . . . [and showed] that He was all over — that He pervaded the Universe.”
Even though she was physically enslaved, Truth realized that “there was no place, not even in hell, where [God] was not.” When her attention was finally “called to outward things, she observed her `former master’ had left” without her and her child. She walked back into the house, “exclaiming aloud, `Oh, God, I did not know you were so big.’” (Narrative of Sojourner Truth (as told by Sojourner Truth), at 35-36)
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 is the essence of life, in which we live and move and have our being. When we begin to acknowledge that God is awesome and we are made in God’s image and likeness – not a he God but male and female, according to Genesis – we open our consciousness to realize the awesomeness of our own true nature.
Harriet Tubman understood the power of the Divine and trusted in the Presence of God. She escaped enslavement herself and risked being recaptured, beaten, and killed when she returned again and again to help hundreds of Africans escape slavery in this country. Her courage and strength are indicative of her deep faith in the power of God.
During one mission in a bitter snowstorm, she found that the enslaved Africans she intended to help escape were not at their appointed meeting place. With only a tree for shelter, she did not turn back and refuse to wait in the storm. Apparently knowing God would protect her, she stood behind the tree for the entire night in the snowstorm until those she came to help arrived.
The abolitionists who wrote of this account depicted her as an ignorant child instead of a powerful spirit woman and “her people’s” trust of God as naive. But Jesus taught us that we must be childlike–that is unconditional and complete–in our trust to enter the kingdom. Harriet Tubman and many others suffered the indignity and horror of American slavery, yet the tremendous power of God kept them moving toward freedom.
Despite the beatings and other insane acts of violence against the minds and bodies of enslaved Africans in this country, no one could master them as long as they mastered their own consciousness. Even if we appear to be free, we are “slaves” to external conditions if we do not embrace our own self-worth and master our own mind, soul, and spirit.
By external conditions, I mean the things we can see with the physical eye – the appearance of poverty, the appearance of illness, the appearance of terror. Of course, these things do exist in the material world, but we do not have to be controlled by them. When we realize that God is the movement and momentum underlying all things and that we live, move, and have our being in God, we attain mastery over ourselves.
Sojourner Truth was her own master because she was directly connected with Spirit. Despite her circumstances, she was called to transform herself into a powerful leader when she realized that God is everywhere and bigger than any man-made institution or three-dimensional, time-bound realm.
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.
Like Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, who led a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, was one of the greatest spiritual masters of his time. He claimed that the “Spirit” spoke to him, saying, “Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you.” By Spirit, he meant “the Spirit that spoke to the prophets in former days. “ Turner prayed continually for two years “whenever [his] duty would permit – and . . . had the same revelation, which fully confirmed that [he] was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty.” (The Confessions of Nat Turner, The Leader of the Late Insurrections in Southampton, Va., As fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray, Nov. 5, 1831) Turner understood that obedience to the call of God is the source of true freedom.
What do these African American prophets teach us? That when we recognize the presence of God everywhere in our lives and open our consciousness to tap God’s infinite power, we can do more than we could ever imagine – not so much for our personal gain but for the benefit of all humanity, which is where our true worth lies. We are able to taste the sweetness of freedom when we realize that there is no separation between all that we are and all that God Is.
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This audio tape is an excerpt from the studied chapter “OVERCOMING YOUR ENVIRONMENT
Luke 17:20-21 says “ Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.’” The kingdom of God is everywhere you are because the soul is everywhere you are.
Joel says “God is the divine being of you, your very life, your very Soul, the Self of you.”
Our resurrection comes with rising from the dead of complacency, the dead of fear, the dead of regret, the dead of worry, the dead of shame, the dead of the appearances of things. “The goal is releasing the Soul from the tomb of human existence, more especially the tomb of the human mind. In your periods of introspection or contemplation check to see to what extent you are imprisoned in your mind and body. ” (Joel S. Goldsmith, Consciousness Transformed)
The soul is always waiting to align us with the favor that is everywhere present. Albert Einstein illustrated the pure potential of life with a simple equation: E = mc2, demonstrating that energy and matter are so fundamentally related that they are one and the same. Essentially, his work showed that matter and energy are completely interchangeable. We are gods, as Jesus said, given the power of pure potential. In this realm of pure potential, all else is added. Our good is already there, already here.
Walt Disney carried Mickey around in his pocket in the appearances of poverty and despair, failing to realize that a mere mouse would manifest millions. Connecting with the soul, finding space in the kingdom within is endless abundance, infinite prosperity filled with love, gratitude and grace that will bless us past, present and future.
Today I envision myself as the whole being of God: without boundaries, limitations, or doubts. In this kingdom, I see my soul, beautiful, loving and powerful. Everything that celebrates me as a full expression of God is here. I am free. I do the work of God with brilliance, integrity, joy, and light.
In his book Fidelity, Thich Nhat Hanh says “[i]n true love, you don’t exclude anyone. . . . Loving one person is an opportunity to love everyone. The deepest gift mindfulness can bring is the wisdom of nondiscrimination.” 
thing — we must love one another.
TAOISTS SAY: No one is a believer until he loves for his neighbor, and for his brother, what he loves for himself.
the universe and used by the universe to be loving, it does not matter what we call God. Nor does it matter who we love or who we help because we realize that we are One.
The true gift for Christmas does not come in wrapping paper. We keep seeking from merchants what we can only find in ourselves, and that is the Spirit of a love that blesses without condition.
traditions that no longer serve us, that we abandon the contradictions of a world that excludes due to politics and positions that are personal and embrace a new world that is unlimited in a love that uplifts the unique contributions of everyone.
On February 2, 2006, Anita Moorjani experienced death after cancer devoured her body over four years, and she found herself in a state of pure joy and jubilation – without fear, anxiety, helplessness or despair. She describes this beautiful feeling of death as a complete healing – where she was encompassed by pure, unconditional love, and energy that healed her completely. What she experienced is the love that embraces each and everyone of us. Paul said that we live, move and have our being in love.
being pure love is the same knowledge that a baby begins with, in a voice that we have long forgotten, which says I am love. In the Spirit, we are unbounded by time and space, untouched by experience.” This baby is the pure energy of Christ born in us.
This is the season not merely to give a wrapped gift or a store-bought card but to begin the practice of looking all all whom we meet and say I love you, realizing that in that love, we find ourselves because every real love story is a story about oneness.
because I accept you expressing as you; not because you are willing to conform for me but because I am willing to accept you by respecting, accepting and even honoring your differences.
she wishes she could tell you the beginning so that you would realize the end
move with the Holy Spirit, move with the wisdom that there is no separation between all that you are and all that I am. You flow, you live, you laugh, you sing, you dance with a new understanding that you are unlimited in the Spirit, regardless of the appearances of the flesh. You are Spirit in movement.
You are not a religion, you are divine truth. You are constantly re-defining yourself because there is no limit to Spirit. In John 14:12, Jesus said, he who believes in me will do the works that I do also; and greater works than these will he do. When you dance in the Spirit, you realize that if things are not going the way that you want them to go; if you are not satisfied with the direction your life has taken; if you don’t like the experiences that manifest in your life – you have the power to change them.
When you dance in the Spirit, you know that if patterns of negativity keep showing up in your life – such as disharmony, loneliness, pain, physical discomfort, financial insecurity, lack, worry, doubt – you can change them. You can wake up from your self-limiting thought and you can experience the ceaseless flow of good – and turn your life around. You can dance.
When you dance in the Spirit, you shake the dust off your feet. You bless the people who are not in accord with your greatest good, who do not support you and do Spirit calls you to do. You dance in the joy of infinite possibility. You dance in the hope that you can create, grow, plant, deliver, empower, ignite, vote, rap, sing, write, dig, teach, sell, envision, tap, rescue, develop, uncover, realize something in your life that will heal the world of hatred, of doubt, of lack, of limitation.
The Psalmist says in the 8th Psalm, the 6th Verse, you have given him power over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet. You dance. No matter how unimportant, how trivial, how average, how unattractive, how old, how overweight, how unnecessary, how disabled you may seem to you, the dance that you do could not be done in quite the same way – without you doing it. You dance in the realization that you are my unique melody sung once – only once as you – one melody of Spirit singing itself into the continuum; and the music of the spheres would not be complete without your voice.
You dance in the truth that Spirit moves through you. You have something wonderful to offer life, which can only be created as you. When King David brought the Ark of the Covenant to the City of David, which to the Israelites was the ark where God was kept, David danced before the Lord with all his might. This mighty king made up his mind right then that he would tap dance, break dance, cabbage patch – clap his hands and stomp his feet – that he would gladly be a dancing fool – not just for a wooden Ark but for the Spirit that dwelt within him.
Throw away your crutches – whatever shape they may take. Get up from beside your pools of Bethesda. Touch the hem of my beloved Jesus’ garment. Rise up like Lazarus. Run the race and don’t get weary. Renew your course with a new strength, a new power and a new victory. There really is nothing, absolutely nothing that can hold you back. So press forward not just to win the prize but to dance – all the way to the finished line.
God is a Brown Girl Too 