Facing “It” for Consciousness Expansion – Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Triche Atkins
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DESCRIPTION
Awareness of all that we are is a necessity for a greater expression of God in our life and as our life. Some theologians have stated it this way, “We have to face it, to fix it.” Though Robert Masters in his book, Spiritual Bypassing, agrees, he writes that too many people teaching and using spiritual principles to live a better life profess to be “facing it,” but really are just “sitting on it”. So how are you using your spirituality? Join me Sunday for a new thought!
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Dr. Jaqueline Triche Atkins (00:00):
Put your hands together for that song, that piano. Everybody.
(00:07):
I’m going to get the microphone Reverend Aimee, very, very soon. I’m grateful to be here. Good morning to everyone and it is really good being back visiting my cousins. You all are my cousins and I that fight song, even the So-called quote unquote wrong key. That was such a purpose. They did that on purpose because this is about when you are confronted with something in your life, is it a block or is it a stepping stone? And I am here to tell you that that wrong key introduction did not bother the song at all. Put your hands together one more time.
(01:07):
So we started last week talking about Robert Masters, Reverend Amy and about spiritual bypassing. And I read chapters and I’m here to tell you that everybody has a right to write and be heard, but everybody can be challenged too. Is that right? Yeah. Okay, that’s good. And he talks about the shadow for those of us who may not recall but the shadow. What is a shadow? The shadow is that in us that we tend to keep in the dark. Is that stuff that’s kind of there and we don’t want anyone to know? As a matter of fact, we don’t want us to know, okay? We don’t want anyone to know. We don’t want us to know. Had Sophie had a chance, you would not have heard the wrong key start. What she did, she would not want anyone to know and she wouldn’t even want to experience herself. But guess what? And I’m going to leave you two alone, but it did not mess up anything. I just want you to remember it did not mess up anything. It just made her really get in line so that we could have a really great presentation. Shadow bypassing, spiritual bypassing as explained by Robert Masters, who is a reverend, who is a psychologist, who is a lot of things.
(02:38):
It’s when individuals use spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid facing the it, the it it. We’re going to hear about the IT unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, painful truths. And he says, why is spiritual bypassing something that occurs? He because of the pain. The pain when people are confronted with whatever the it is, it hurts. It’s painful. And so according to Robert Masters, we resist it, we avoid it. We have to be recognizing it. We need perhaps a psychotherapist to do that. We perhaps I’m arguing this morning, I’m not arguing. I’m not, I am stating this morning that perhaps we need to acknowledge the presence of God and get directions. I don’t know. You can think about this as we proceed real shadow work. Looking at the next slide, demands according to Robert Masters Psychotherapy. Now let me suggest to everybody that I believe totally in counseling.
(03:58):
As a matter of fact, my wonderful young nephew just got his license to have family and marital counseling and he sent it to the family and we said, okay, we want to make an appointment. Everybody wants to make an appointment. So I am one and often in my community, African-American community, there is historically been kind of a shy away from counseling. Not me, I believe in counseling if that’s what it’s called for by you to do. But he is saying that the psychotherapy is needed to face, engage, integrate our shadows. He is saying it’s needed to reclaim the rejected elements of our being. And he says it’s not neat and tidy, it’s messy, yet vital for birthing. And that’s true. That’s true, that’s true. He goes on in the next slide. He defines shadow elements, qualities, and traits that we typically keep in the dark and project on others. Again, I wanted to make sure we understood shallow elements, creating an illusion that these elements don’t belong to us. It’s something that’s about us, but we have not claimed them. And we’ll tell them, it’s my mom’s fault. It’s my daddy’s fault. It’s your fault, honey. Somebody else, they don’t belong. The creating an illusion that such elements don’t belong to us. That’s an it. That’s the it. They are the it.
(05:45):
And yet I’m getting jumping ahead. We have to face the IT to have an expanded consciousness. We have to do that. But look, I’m jumping ahead. Let me get back to what’s here. What are they? What are they? What’s the it, jealousy, resentment, fear of being sick. Not the actual fact of being sick, the fear of being sick, feeling impoverished in any way, any kind of lack feeling of inadequacy. Oh, it’s called low self-esteem. It’s called hating myself. It’s called I’m to this and I’m to that I’m imperfect. Anger, hatred. These can be a part and usually are not only of our conscious and sometimes they’re not a part of our conscious but of our subconscious. Subconscious. That means they’re not easy for us to see unless we’re intentional in my mind about our spiritual work. But that’s me. I haven’t gotten to me yet.
(07:00):
I’m talking about Robert Masters. Okay, the subconscious. How do we get to what’s in our subconscious? And as folks who are sitting in here as new thought folk, you’ve got to get into your subconscious. You’ve got to figure out what’s down there. Otherwise, when it keeps coming up and slapping you in the face, you will blame everybody else. The world included. Okay? Perhaps defining shadow elements by category. This is me not Robert Masters. It’s inequality or trait that is not true about God. We have, but that we have not acknowledged inequality or trait that is not true about God, but we’ve created it. God gave us free choice. God gave us thinking power. We can create all kind of hell on earth at any point in time, but we don’t acknowledge it. We may not have acknowledged it. Spiritual bypassing. On the next chart, as explained by Robert Masters and I mentioned it at the very beginning, it’s when we as individuals, he says, use our spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid facing it, to avoid facing these emotional issues, these psychological wounds.
(08:30):
The painful truth versus that spiritual bypassing versus what he says is real shadow work, which again, and I am putting it in here because he doesn’t give us an option too much. Essentially demand psychotherapy to do these things to face and engage and integrate our shadows to reclaim the rejected elements of our being. Not neat and tidy. Yeah. By the time I got to reading that chapter that I was on whatever point it was, I wanted to be able to back to the basics you all, everybody back to the basics. Get back to the first class you were in. Get back there. Because everything in me was saying yes, you do believe in counseling. As a matter of fact, my major in college was psychology. I believe in counseling, but I also have learned the truth. I have learned the truth. So I need to go back to the basics and I’m not going to say what Dr.
(09:48):
Masters has written is anything but Dr. Master’s opinion. I’m not going to even give it an opinion, but I’m going to say what it made me think is, wow, I’m glad I know the basics. I’m glad I can get back to them. Who created me, who created you? You know who created you. It’s called the power. Some people call it God an energy that is awesome. And as you read, not only in the Christian Bible but in almost every holy text, even if you don’t believe in the text, just read some readings. You’ll know that we were made in its image and likeness. And I say it’s please, if you want to call it a he or she work with it, that’s good. I like to say it’s it and it created me the energy and the power and it created me in its image and likeness, which means I have choice.
(10:54):
I have free will. I have a lot of powers back to the basics. I had to go, and it wasn’t in any commentary on Dr. Masters, but I had to go back to the basics to know that spiritual, going to the next slide, that I’m a spiritual being in a spiritual world and anything but the spirit is my human creation or a human creation, and that’s okay, but I can look at that. I can dismantle that because the spiritual world is everlasting. And I did a memorial service on Thursday night and I had to really talk about, oh, I know you’ll miss Lori, but guess what? You don’t have to miss her. You’ll miss her physical presence, but her spirit is going to be with you. Now, whether you recognize it or not, whether you use your spiritual powers or not is a choice that we have spirit of man.
(12:07):
God is within us. The Christ, the Christ, the Christ is within us. That’s how we’re able to do all that. We’re able to, those are the spiritual consciousness means that I’m going to come into, if I’m going to use that, which God has given me the realization of divine presence, I’m going to know that God is there. God is everywhere, evenly present. I believe that’s our teaching. God is there is no spot where God is not So in the midst of what seems to be a huge stumbling block, guess who’s right there with me? God, I love Psalm 23 because it says though, David says, I got to walk down this dark alley. What is a show? Whatever that passage is, he said, but it’s okay because I can focus on God and walk through it. I can focus on God and God can tell me, oh yeah, you do need to call the psychotherapist. I don’t need to call the psychotherapist and have it tell me or him tell me. You need to call God. You understand? So the realization of the divine presence, that’s our goal for me. As I was reading Dr. Masters, I said, okay, stop. Calm down. Calm down. As a matter of fact, I said, what’s in your subconscious? It’s got you so riled up lady.
(13:42):
If I have that, the mind of Christ Jesus is in my mind. I need just to be okay with Dr. Master’s writing and know that it’s just not for me. Okay? That’s what I need. The mental law set in motion. That’s what is so important about us, and that’s what’s important about Dr. Masters. See what he offers is an opportunity is, what do you call it, a tool that we might be directed to use to get back to recognize I am one with God and consequently I am perfect, whole and complete. And consequently, I can address any shadow that seems to be my stumbling block. I can not only address it, I can step up on it and go on a little bit higher and have an expanded consciousness. Are you with me? Do you understand what I’m saying? Yes. So this mental law set in motion, remembering our power of thoughts, remembering our power of thoughts, remembering divine presence, remembering the creation of myself and the image and likeness of God and my divine thoughts. So I create, I dismantle, I recognize I am absolutely I able to do all of these things.
(15:26):
Back to the basics. How can I do these things? If I call on faith, if I call on faith, faith is one of the many powers I have. How often do I just ignore those powers? How often do I ignore that I have a power of faith when I am so fearful, and I love to use the example, oh, I love to use the example because he talks about that character. What is a character where when my son was six, he, he’s real grown now, wonderful man, but he had a real problem with getting up, getting to the bathroom in time, and so he would just have, but what I found out, he couldn’t do it so well because there was a boogyman under the bed. There was a boogeyman under the bed, ma, I wanted to get up, but that boogeyman would get me, and when he call and turn on the light, it would be gone. That’s the power of faith helps us to turn on the light when the boogeyman is staring us down, when the boogeyman has us frozen, the power that we have, the power of faith may say, oh yeah, you do need to call a doctor masters because you have really lost sight of all your powers. Or it may say you just need to call on your power of will and get back in alignment with God. Stay there with your meditation and prayers so that you can walk past the challenge that’s confronting you.
(17:28):
Faith is the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. Faith is a mental attitude so inwardly embodied that the mind, this is from Ernest Holmes, can no longer deny it. Faith is complete when it is both conscious and subconscious acceptance. Subconscious, you mean my faith goes and messes with my subconscious? Yes, yes. I have a new practitioner telling me, yes, I know I’m on the right track. Okay? That’s what happens when I lift up my powers and I pull them from where they are, wherever they are, whether you know they’re in the subconscious or whatever, and I use them, I’m able to look at those parts of me that were shadows, that resentment, that jealousy, that anger, that hatred. I will tell you, my faith or the power of love has saved this woman. I have been in a practiced law for 40 years at corporations, and oftentimes there was only one that looked like me, and the love that I was learning about helped me confront and walk through with head held high situations, but that was the power of God.
(18:54):
I knew that was not my intellect. My intellect was going, well, I’m going to tell you where my intellect was going, but the power of God was having me do what I needed to do to get beyond the barrier. At that point, if I had not had my spiritual understanding and had leaned on that spiritual work, I would not have been able to do it. And then there were those who may have called the counselor, but I wasn’t one, but I needed to know that I have power, I have the spiritual power. I have God, I have God, I have God, I have God, I have God. I have God. The spiritual tools that I wanted us to look at when we come back to the basics. The next slide, if I may, I really, and this is not new, and please forgive me if I’m inflicting any stuff you don’t need to know about, but I am suggesting that all of us need to remember and be reminded regularly of what is our truth, and from that point, make a decision on what to do. My truth is God, my truth is God, my truth is God, and I need to get back some way to God to be directed as to what’s the next step That’s so important. So I want to expand, and this is all about expanding our consciousness. This is all about expanding our consciousness because the more I expand my awareness of God, the more heaven I create on earth. Do you understand that? Yeah. Spiritual tools that work enabling you to face it.
(20:58):
We’ve got to face it. If it’s resentment, I can’t blame you for my resentment. I’ve got to face it. I can’t pretend like it’s not there. As for a number of years, I did early, early on, I had to face it and look at it and say, you created it because it protected you, but you don’t need it anymore. So let it go. Whether it’s hatred, why did I have hatred in me? Well, X, Y, Z happened and X, Y, Z. Well, that was true. So it was a logical conclusion, but it wasn’t the right one because your love, your love. What about self-esteem?
(21:52):
Why do I have a low? How could I not think I’m perfect? I’m created in the image and likeness of God. How could I not create that? I am all that God is, and all that will happen in my life is perfect, hold and complete. How could I not do that? Oh, your intellect went for a walk, huh? And watch stuff around you. Come on back. Come on back. Prayer, meditation, prayer, meditation. If Dr. Master says that sometimes when you’re praying and meditating, you’re not confronting the itch, you’re sitting on it, then if you’re sitting on it, I’m going to tell you, get up off of it and do it right. Do the prayer, meditation, right? We got practitioners all over the place. If it’s not happening in part, either you’re not doing it enough or you’re not doing it right, and I say, right, not that there’s a, A, B, C, D, E step, but no right for you because what do you want to do with meditation?
(22:59):
I want to come to the realization that I am one with God. Get my directions from God. Take no problems in there, but let hear God when God speak to me. Do you understand what I’m saying? What do I want to do with my prayers? I want to commune with God. I don’t want to give God a whole list of a Santa Claus list is what? I don’t want to do that. I want to want to commune with God. If I am feeling something, an ache or pain, I can just sit and guess what your God already knows it. Anyway, so prayer and meditation and prayer and meditation, and do you see that all four or five, six times on this page? It’s because most of us, and those of you who’ve heard me speak here, might’ve heard this before. Most of us only spend about 23 days a year with God.
(24:01):
Now, I don’t know about you. I’ve been married for almost 51 years. I love my husband. He loves me. Mostly we don’t fuss, but mostly sometimes we do. But the point is, if I had only spent 23 days with him long, long time ago, would we ever gotten to the point of marriage iuh 23 days a year? That’s it. So perhaps, what am I saying? The relationship with God needs to be tightened up. The relationship with God needs to be firmed up. There’s more time that needs to be spent to commune and meditate and get to know God. That’s you get to know within.
(24:47):
There are a couple things, tools, and these are from one. I started feeling well, I’m just talking about like a minister, so I went to Dr. Wayne Dyer. He’s a psychologist, and he gave us lots of good information and never once did he say, go and see a therapist, and then Louise Hay, Louise Hay. I walked into new thought on the ground that Louise Hay laid. I got to tell you, and another one, and I’m going to run through these, but h Emily, Katie, if you haven’t read how I use Truth, how I Use Truth by h Emily, Katie, she will help you to understand your powers, and as she said before I wrote anything down, I had to prove it to myself.
(25:52):
So loving the self is how you’re able to face it, how you’re able to face it, how you’re able to do that. Louise Hay wrote, the only thing I even worked on with anyone was loving the self. For love is a miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives, not vanity and arrogance because that’s just fear, okay? But a great respect for ourselves and gratitude for our body and our mind. She asked, how often do we scold and criticize ourselves? How often do we mistreat our body with food or alcohol or drugs? How often do we choose to believe we are unlovable? Create illnesses and pain in our bodies? We create debt and burdens. If we deny our good in any way, it is an act of not loving ourselves. When you’re sitting there with a block in front of you with a it in front of you, check out how you’re feeling about you and start looking at that.
(27:07):
Looking at the lack of self-worth, she says in another way, so the shadow, it’s mine. The first thing she would tell you is look in the mirror and recognize that your resentment that belongs to you, your jealousy that belongs to you, your low self-esteem that belongs to you, and you even with all of your power created it. You can blame a whole lot of other people if you want, but if you stop talk to God, you’ll get to how to move beyond that block. Know that the point of power is always in the present. Whatever you are holding, whatever is your problem, whatever your it is, it came from the thoughts from the past 10 years, the past 20 years, and that’s okay because guess what? The power right now is in the present. I right now can start breaking down, taking apart any shadow that I have. I can start right this second because I have the power of thought. I have the power of thought. Now, I may end up having to go this place or that place. If it’s a health, physical health, it may say you really do want to go to a doctor, but the question becomes, where are you starting from? You want to have that relationship with God that will help direct you to where you’re going.
(29:01):
I’m going to close because my time is just about almost up, but I want to just say no. The only thing that we are ever dealing with is a thought and a thought can be changed. A thought can be changed, and that change may need to come about with affirmations and denials. You’ve heard of affirmations and denials before. You know what they are, but my question is, as I love what HME Katie would ask us, are you really believing what you’re saying? Are you really hearing yourself as you say, whatever you say, do you know when you’re denying? You’re not denying a fact. The fact of cancer is the fact of cancer, but I can deny that that fact has power over me. I can deny that and put an affirmation that I am one with God, and therefore I have all that I need to walk through this particular experience. Well, I love Dr. Masters for he brought me back to the basics. He made me go back. He made me remember. He made me absolutely know that I’m one with God and I have many, many ways to express that, and many ways to handle and care for myself, and one of those may be counseling, but indeed it’s not mandated for me to get back with God. And so it is. It’s
(30:52):
And right now, I invite each of you just to, if you will, and feel comfortable enough to close your eyes and think on your beingness. Think on your unity with the Almighty. That which created you, provided you with every power and gave us the power of choice. Take a deep breath and feel that gratitude in the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect. All is whole, and all is complete. I am always divinely protected and most importantly, God, I am always divinely guided. Thank you God. It is safe for me to look within myself. Yeah, I can look within myself and see the presence of God. I can look within myself and know the powers that are mine. I can see within myself and no perfection, and it’s safe for me to look into the past. It is safe for me to enlarge my viewpoint of life. I am far more than my personality, past, present, or future, so much more, and I now choose to rise above my stumbling blocks. I now choose to use my shadows as stepping stones. I take ownership. I take ownership, and I use them God for my highest good as I move beyond them.
(33:32):
I use them to recognize the magnificence of my being and my power, and I am totally willing. I totally willing to learn, once again, to love myself, to love myself, to love myself. Knowing all is well in my world. All is well in my world with the shadows, with all that is all that I have created, all the power that I have, all is well in my world, and God, I thank you for that. I thank you for that. I thank you for that perfection. I thank you for my world, God, and so it is.