This is the first of a monthly blog written by community members inspired by each month’s theme.
The Infinitude of Prayer
Where do each of us fit, having our place in “the all of it…”?
Just what are each of us expected to do?
What is for me, in the doing to be done, and what in the doing, is to be done by you?
In the infinitude of possibility and choice, to which song do each of us lend our voice?
Start in your heart to discover the pathway.
Awaken each morning and embrace each day:
Move your feet in rhythm to the beat of your soul
Stirring passion, intent on bettering this experience called life.
During the month of June, Rev. Amani Malaika, Senior Minister and Spiritual Leader at The Albuquerque Center for Spiritual Living, called upon each of us to be Prayer in Action, to embody the prayer that is: Love in Action, Transforming Lives --> Transforming Communities. Sound like a tall order? Well it’s not, though it is a necessary one. You see, the world needs our bigness, now more than ever. Fortunately, during June, Rev. Amani also outlined a pathway to realizing The Truth.
By inviting Spirit, which is already In You, to begin to operate As You, you then come to realize the demonstration of Spirit operating Through You. Transformation begins. And, A World That Works for Everyone is born. Spirit In You, having its being As You, and Operating Through You—that’s Love in Action.
And here’s the cool part: in order for all of that to take place, all you need to do is show up!
By bringing your own unique, you-shaped You to this party called Life, and strutting your glorious, you-shaped Spirit, in full effect, you contribute to the betterment of this world. You bring more love, more light, more joy, and more delight; You are where Spirit chooses to show up; know it, show it, and let the Light of Love glow it all up!
Now we all know there are times, more often than any of us would care to think, when everything seems to be going sideways. The road ahead looks like one giant, stroke-inducing clogged artery. It feels like reaching up only helps you touch the bottom of life. Bad-behaving politicians, manipulative masters of industry, climate change, refugees at the border: pain, sickness, sadness and despair, poverty, hunger, homelessness, and fear. Racism, patriarchy, and road rage…. Where does it all finally end, and when?
It ends at the exact moment we decide to realize The Truth: God is bigger than all of that.
Outer circumstances do not dictate anyone’s inner reality, and we all know what happens when our inner life is lit by the light of love, truth and The Power and Presence of Spirit. Everything in our life transforms into a Demonstration of Spirit in Action. Wholeness, Perfection and Complete, unveiled Unity with The One is demonstrated, infallibly, and without end.
It has been said that prayer is the most direct and effective path to transforming one’s consciousness. So, for the purpose of getting centered in truth, pray first. Open your meetings with prayer, open classes with prayer, anchor any vision for anything you may be creating with prayer, and resolve any conflicts between you and anyone else with prayer. Now hear this:
Every time we meet suffering, discord, or despair, we are granted an opportunity to pray. There are very many people in the world who know about the power of prayer, and more than a few people have had some experience of transformation as a result of praying. So guess what. If you were to think of the most recent news story or circumstance in the world that has broken your heart or sent you into a rage, you might also quickly realize the blessed opportunity you have been given to pray. What would your affirmative prayer for that situation be? What would your prayer for yourself be? When we know with confidence what is true, then we can look at what is unacceptable, and prayerfully hold our attention on The Truth, knowing unshakably that anything unlike truth cannot remain. It Cannot Remain! Only Truth Can Endure. We then allow that Truth to move us into right action. That right action is divinely inspired from The Truth within us.
Remaining confident in the power of Spirit, living a life committed to Spiritual Practice, Prayer, and Awakened Awareness of the Unity of All Things, The Oneness of All Life, knowing that Spirit is in each and every one of us, these actions must lead to the expectation that Spirit knows only good, and only what Spirit knows can be called Truth.
So pray big, be big, and know that with Spirit, all is well.
Let each resolve to be true to one’s self, true to our inner light, true to The Truth as we understand It. When everyone learns to speak The Truth, a complete freedom from discord will come to the world. --Ernest Holmes, The Science Of Mind
Breaking Through
Bobby hates Billy because Billy’s in love with Fred.
Mary lives in darkness, a slave to the terror in her head.
Donny wants a big, beautiful new wall,
while Amani is busy telling us that Spirit is The All.
Patriarchy, Racism, Xenophobia and Debt;
Antisemitic, Islamophobia, and we ain’t seen nothin' yet….
Savagery in a three-piece suit, black card in hand,
there’s a storm at sea, and we’re all so far from land….
Oh what to do?
Chrystal glass ceilings, institutional obstruction,
The Prison Industrial Complex, promising crime reduction.
Communities in ruin, historic brutality,
Gay rights, women’s rights, civil rights, all wrong.
What’s become of our humanity?
Let’s talk about injustice
Oh the list is long
If it wasn’t for the blues, there wouldn’t be no song….
So many distractions
So much discord goin on
Keeping us all unconscious
Psychically comatose
Misunderstandings, misdirection, miscommunication
The toxic daily dose
And we say why
We say why why why…?!?!
Race memory run amok, everyone so enraged
It starts to feel like your soul’s been caged.
But guess what, there is a key
It’s easy to access
The Key
That will set you free.
And set right all this mess
Spirit is bigger than all the lies,
And prayer is that key.
All you have to do is try.
And you will surely see…
SPIRIT IS BIGGER!
Keep your “I” on the prize!
Simply put, if we continue to perpetuate the lies and misunderstandings of collective consciousness, we are participating in upholding injustice, violence, and illusions of separation. We must begin to overlook, through the use of affirmative prayer and the practice of The Presence, all the historic miserable anomalies that would suggest a power other than Spirit operating in our life. Inner awareness of Truth is the key to transforming consciousness, thereby eradicating all illusions of separation. These illusions must be cast from our sight, our awareness, and our objective understanding of reality. The Truth is The Truth is The Truth. Lies simply do not have power. They are not cause. SPIRIT IS POWER. SPIRIT IS CAUSE.
If we keep on seeing things as they appear, we will never be able to change their appearance. And, we all know how deceptive appearances can be.
When we were children, we spake as children, but now as full-grown humans, endowed with the knowledge of Spirit and Self, we put away childish things. For before we saw as through a glass darkly, but now we see face to face. I Corinthians, 13:11
There is an inner authority within each of us that is empowered by Spirit. It confronts and nullifies all of the lies of Race Memory and collective consciousness that appear to keep us bound by chains of illusion, delusion, confusion and fear. Spirit is the hammer that smashes the glass ceiling of consciousness that would keep us bound. Inner awareness of Truth is the fire that renders the barriers to love, the ones that linger in our awareness, into vaporous apparitions lacking all substance and meaning. One need not rise up in opposition to be a rebel. One must simply remember The Truth of who they are: Spirit become flesh, born to share Love. A Spiritual Rebel is one who refuses to accept the version of reality that does not work for everyone, even if others may cling to it. The Spiritual Rebel undermines the powers that be by rejecting the premise of their authority. The Spiritual Rebel is their own authority.
When we rely on the wisdom of our divine nature, our inner authority, we can discern right action from cultural norms and from self-deception: in that moment we become The Spiritual Rebel. And in that moment, we are set free.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. --Rumi
Our greatest work is to root out the beliefs and misunderstandings, the self-deceptions we have taken on in our lifetime and made our own; to undo them one by one and replace them with this immutable truth: There is One Life. That Life is God’s Life. That Life is Perfect. That Life is ALL OF OURS right now. We must do the work of believing what is True.
It is ours to not only recognize what we have taken on internally, and then come to believe what is true, it is also ours to make real these truths and see them in our lives and in the world.
Look at your life and the lives of your ancestors and see the enormous examples of poise and conviction, of unwavering faith that have been demonstrated time and time again. Look to your grandmothers who made a way when there seemed to be no way. Look for the evidence that already exists in your own story, the moments when you knew that you knew that you knew. Let those remembrances fuel the moments of doubt that attempt to creep in, when the world appears to be full of separation, hate and unkindness. Stand firm in what is true and be a lighthouse in the dark, let your poise and conviction be the way shower for those lost in misunderstanding; let your steadfast vision of what is good be the demonstration of The Law in Action, changing the appearance of what is, revealing more goodness and truth in the world; manifesting The Power and The Presence of Spirit.
With God, The Indwelling Presence within Me, all things are possible.
Believing Is Seeing
We have looked at poverty, degradation, and misery until they have assumed gigantic proportions. Now we must look at harmony, happiness, plenty, prosperity, peace and right action, until they appear. --Ernest Holmes
When we let our beliefs in what is True come first, we see them appear in our lives and in the lives of all. Let us hold fast to what is true about Spirit. Let us believe without a doubt in harmony, happiness, plenty, prosperity, peace, and right action. When we do this, we create harmony, happiness, plenty, prosperity, peace, and right action for ourselves and for the world.
The creative genius of the inner life transforms the image of limitation and transmutes it into liberty under law. --Ernest Holmes
Imagination is the womb of all creation. Spirit dreamed all of existence into being at the precise moment that it took form. Imagination is the kindling and Imagination is the Flame.
Imagination is the furious inferno that gives creation a name. Imagination is that force fueled solely by love that gives birth to the volcano, the tiger, and the dove.
Imagination is the seat of power that gives form to the dream. When we transform our consciousness, we unleash our imagination; though often, the transformation of consciousness begins in the imagination. Imagining the possibilities, intuitively seeing The Truth, despite any appearances to the contrary. It is imagination that empowers you to become The Prayer, thus seeing the dream. It is prayer that colors the picture of what unity and connection and Oneness look like to you. Continue to see Oneness and let the vision move you in right action.
And remember: Believing Is Seeing
Get Up Stand Up
You got to treat and move your feet y’all
You’ve made the move and you’ve answered the call
Do not bend your knees to pray
Treat and move your feet I say!
The time has come to use prayer to paint the picture of what unity, connection, and Oneness look like to you. Once that picture is clear in your mind, painted with all the colors you can imagine, you must take a step toward it, and then another, and another. Paint yourself into that picture, glowing with love and peace and harmonious focus, moving irresistibly toward that shining city on the hill where all is well.
You are Prayer in Action,
Co-creating
A world that works for everyone.
You are the body of God on Earth
God’s Hands and
God’s Heart
God dances with your feet
God sings with your voice
Do not pray on your knees
God only kneels to embrace small children
Pray in a warrior’s pose,
Standing tall and moving toward the Light
You are the body of God on earth
Move with the knowing that you are
Co-creating
A world that works for everyone.
So just what are you treating for? Are you aligning yourself with your deepest spiritual truth? Are you praying for divine right action? Are you praying to be in alignment with your deepest values? How about this: Pray that you may express your greatest self in every moment! Pray out loud! Share your experience, share your understanding, share how you pray. Be willing to be out loud with what you know to be true and how you stay connected to it.
And remember: Treat and Move Your Feet!
And So It Is
So here we are, essentially back where we started, but with a few new reminders of just who we are, what we are, and why we are.
There is only God, the indivisible, singular source and cause of all that is. The Creator and the
Creation. The One.
We are All One with The One. We are All One with God, inseparable, whole, perfect, and complete. There is nothing in any of us that needs fixing, only our perfection to reveal.
Each of us has access to the pathway to transformation; Spirit in you, having its being As You, and making manifest The Truth of All things, which is Oneness, by working Through You.
Spirit In You, As You, working Through You to be Love in Action: Transforming Lives --> Transforming Communities.
It is now for each of us to realize and to Know that we are the instrument of Spirit, powered by prayer, transforming this existence into A World that Works for Everyone. We are where Spirit chooses to show up, bringing more love, more light, more joy and more delight to the dance called life. We are the agents of transformation that God chooses to embody Love. As our consciousness changes, so too does our world.
My gratitude for this simple truth is boundless and immeasurable. I reel with joy when I think of how glorious it is to be so full with grace. God is good, and very good.
I say Thank you, and I say Yes!
With love I release these words into the Law, knowing that they return to me and to all who read this, fulfilled at a magnitude beyond imagination. I know it is so and I know it is done.
And So It Is.
Paul Hunt Cuffee