Mastering Love

This month, I have been doing a lot of reflecting on love. In part, because of where I am in my own journey. In part, because of my discussions with people about don Miguel Ruiz’s book "The Mastery of Love." For those who have not read it, I strongly encourage you to do so. While he provides you with ideas and concepts, he also provides you with some realistic ways in which one can overcome the parasites of our socialization process and transcend to a reality where emotional pain, suffering, guilt, shame, fear, jealousy, and all the other tools of civilization no longer have power over us. He strips away the "blame game" and tells us we are each responsible for our emotional suffering. Mom is not responsible. Dad is not responsible. The jerk that just cut us off on the highway is not responsible. We inherited suffering through our "civilization" process and learned to fear instead of love.
Read more

No more whips!

One of my readers emailed me last week to let me know how last weeks blog (No More Poison!) had caused him to think about things differently. He jokingly (I think) asked me what I was going to challenge him to give up this week. As I was thinking about this and listening to some people around me this week, I realized that one of the other things we need to get rid of in our lives are our whips. If I asked most people if they enjoyed being whipped, most people would say no. If I asked them if they would voluntarily whip themselves, most people would still say no. Yet why is it that we are good at whipping ourselves.
Read more

No more poison!

So if I asked if you would voluntarily eat or serve poison to someone what would you say? When I asked about two dozen people, I got all kinds of responses. The majority of them said no, NO, or #$@ NO! A few people asked me if I was okay. One person said maybe under extreme circumstances and of course, one person had to ask me if I was only asking about future, not past efforts. One person did confess to feeding someone dog food, but nobody said they would voluntarily eat poison or serve it someone else. I promised all those that I asked that it would all make sense when they read this blog. I hope that it will.
Read more

Gifts through fear.

During Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, we made a statement that many people still remember today. He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It would be nice if I could say that one could go through one’s life without ever experiencing fear. However, that would not be realistic. What is important to remember is that we can use fear as a way of evolving.
Read more

Free your mind and the rest will follow.

There is a song from my past, and perhaps some of yours, called Free Yourself by En Vogue. One of the lines in the chorus says – Free your mind and the rest will follow. Their song challenges the listeners to free themselves from the stereotypes they may hold about black women. It reminds me of a poem by Pat Parker, who wrote a poem called “To the white woman who wants to be my friend.” Both of them challenge us to free ourselves from the stereotypes and prejudices that interfere with our ability to form deep and meaningful relationships with people. These stereotypes and prejudices can enslave us. Often times these ideologies are so engrained in what we believe that we are not even aware that we are enslaved to them.
Read more

And Then I Stumbled

I was once asked what inspires me and the answer is everything. For me there is something spiritual in everyday life. Even the mundane act of taking out the trash can be spiritual. For the last few days, however, I have been thinking about stumbling and what a powerful spiritual experience that was for me. There is probably not anyone who has not physically stumbled at one point or time in his or her life, especially as a child. We stumble, and sometimes we fall and for the most part we get back up again. Sometimes when we stumble, it is easier to get back up again then others. Sometimes we stumble and we feel the impact of that stumble for days, sometimes weeks.
Read more

It is all about the journey!

A woman I knew back in the early 90’s once said to me, “it takes a long time to grow an old friend.” Those who have journeyed with you for a while have this ability to be able to reflect back to you that which you cannot see for yourself. The other day, for example, I was talking with my spiritual sister, Rev Angel Sullivan, who reflected back to me about how much she has seen me evolve spiritually in the last year. Spiritual evolution is not always easy. One reason it is difficult is that we have to let go of that which keeps us from evolving into our spiritual greatness.
Read more

“Word” and “word”

The first agreement in Miguel don Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements, is to be impeccable with your words. It took me a few reads of his book, to notice this, but he uses both the word “word” and “Word.” For me, there is a real difference between being impeccable with my Word and being impeccable with my words. My words are what I say. They are the things that come out of mouth when I am speaking to others or myself. They can be also be words that I write, or probably more accurately these days, type. They come together to form sentences, paragraphs, and pages. They are what I use to express my opinion, to comment on a situation, to express what is going on in my mind, and to communicate to my students what it is that I want them to accomplish in a course. Sometimes, I use my words to come together in writing of poetry. I make up words such as sistahpastahhomegurl, which worked well in a poem I wrote for a friend and colleague of mine a few years ago.
Read more

Becoming the artist of my life.

One day, on my Facebook page, I wrote, “we are the artists of our lives. If we do not like the way our creation is coming together, we have the power to change it. Each artist must find their own way, their own medium, their own tools, and their own inspiration.” This post generated an interesting discussion with a few people regarding being an artist, awareness, and perfection.
Read more

Stop Sleepwalking and Wake Up

A few posts ago, I wrote about how we needed to stop hitting the snooze alarm in our lives. See the problem with not waking up; the problem with hitting that snooze alarm is that we think it only affects us. It doesn’t. See as long as we are hitting the snooze alarm in our lives, then we are not involved. We are not involved in our own lives, in our own liberation, in our relationships with others, in our relationship with our Higher Power or our relationship with the world. See as long as we are hitting the snooze alarm, we avoid thinking about how the world depends on each of us to wake up.
Read more

The Brace You Cannot See

So let me just own this, for those of you who don’t know this about me. I can be stubborn and pigheaded. I want to believe that I can do things by myself. I want to hold on to every fragment of my independence that I can. I hate having to ask for help, but as Proverbs tells us Pride goeth before destruction. And so God has been working at breaking me of my pride. Ever since October 2006, I have had to humble myself and ask for help. I have had to ask people to take me to the store, to take me to work, to take me to the doctors, to take me to physical therapy, to take me wherever I have needed to go. And I will share with you that there have been days that I have been tired and frustrated and scared. But it is in those times, those very times, when I have been broken and scared and frustrated and wondering if God had forsaken me, that I have like David and like Jesus turned to God who is my brace in the midst of my brokenness.
Read more

Moving Beyond the Fear

There was this one day when I got an invitation to attend a meeting. I was thinking about going until I saw that someone I was once very close to was going to be there. For a moment, I had thought about not going. I found myself making all these decisions out of fear. Fear of what they would say, what I would do, how we would react, and the scenario continued. Then I had to stop myself and ask myself what was I afraid of. Where was that fear coming from? Why was I putting that negative energy out there into the universe? Why was I thinking negative things about others or myself? It is true, I was not saying anything negative about others, or myself but I was thinking them.
Read more

The Day I Realized I Was Allergic to Drama

It’s funny how sometimes you go through life and do not even realize that you are allergic to something. For example, I was 54 before I realized I was lactose intolerant. I am a self-admitted cheese addict. I love cheese. I am not sure I could ever go from vegetarian to vegan because for me everything tastes better with cheese on it (ok, maybe not ice cream or cold cereal, but just about everything else). I never even realized I was lactose intolerant until I gave up dairy products for lent one year. Zoë, my life partner, very lovingly brought it to my attention that I was being a little less musical. Ok, for those of you who did not get it, I was not farting as much, did I think that had anything to do with my not eating dairy products. Lo and behold, when I looked up the symptoms of lactose intolerance there it was flatulence. I discovered my allergy to drama in much the same way.
Read more

Stop Snoozing

A few days ago, I received an email from someone thanking me for my last post. This individual needed the reminder that we have the power to make changes in our life. As I thought about this email, it made me think about what keeps us from making those changes. It seems that so many of us know what we want or need to change in our lives. Most of us even know how to make that change happen in our lives. Yet despite all this, we make excuses as to why we cannot make those changes now or make the decision we will make that change in three days. The only problem was that often times those three days turn into three decades.
Read more

The Queen or King of __________

Recently, I have been listening to some of the people in my life claim some titles in their lives. A few people have claimed to be the queen of procrastination. Another person I know told me he was the king of trifling. I used to say that I was the queen of serious. As I have listened to my friends, colleagues, former congregants, students (past and present), family members, and people I do not even know how I know, I have come to realize that just about everyone has at one point or time in their lives earned the title of the king or queen of repetition. There are some things in my life that I have done for so long that I no longer realize why I do them or why I do them the way I do them. For example, I have specific days of the week that I clean each room in the house. Or I have to sleep on the left side of the bed. Whether I am with someone or not, I have my side of the bed. I can be sleeping in a king size bed by myself, but I always wind up in the same place, in the same position on the bed. I am not even sure how this became a pattern, but it is.
Read more