OVERVIEW
Exploring the indigenous roots of the new thought/ancient wisdom practices discussed in Mary Morrisey’s book Brave Thinking in order to build the life of our dreams within a world that works for everyone.
TRANSCRIPTION
Thank you. So good to be here, Chicago. So good to see so many familiar faces and to meet, uh, some new faces and new energy as well. So, yeah, you know, it’s been four years when I left. I haven’t been back to Chicago until today, so it’s, yeah. Uh, I can imagine, um, the experience that we’ve all gone through as a collective has transformed each of us. So, you know, I stand before you and, and I invite you to see me as something new, as I see each of you as something new because the past four years have been very transformative. Um, and I am very grateful for where we are, where we’ve landed in Lexington, Kentucky. So, brave thinking, that’s the theme this month here. And Reverend Amy again, who we realize we’ve known each other now over 20 years. Yes, we were both little kids.
<laugh>, no, we were adults. And, uh, Reverend Amy got to kick off the, the month here, and I had the opportunity to, to watch that as well as last week with Reverend Jackie. But, you know, with this invitation of Mary Morrissey and her work to look at these four quadrants of our life and see where we may be out of alignment with what we actually desire to experience and what we are actually experiencing. And then Reverend Jackie kind of led the conversation of bridging and bridging how we get to move from and transform our consciousness from where we are today to where we would like to be and how it really starts within our mind and within our heart and our own consciousness, first, to build that foundation from which we can grow. So today I bring you the idea of how to activate brave thinking in order to build a life of our dreams within a world that works for everyone. So let’s dive in. So I wanna start with this inquiry. What would it look like to activate the principles of science and mind? New thought, ancient wisdom to build a life that you love, the life of your dreams within a world that works for everyone? Are you willing to engage in brave thinking beyond just our personal desires and dreams to create not only for our own lives, but to include the highest and best for all?
And what’s great is one of the principles of our teaching is this idea of oneness. And it can be a both. And there’s not this either or binary di dichotomy that often we live from and we hear in the world that we choose this or that, this or that because it’s safer to put, you know, little containers. Are you this? Okay, now I understand and know you, oh, oh, you’re this. But there’s, it takes a little bit more expansive thinking, brave thinking to move beyond the binary and open to the nuance and the spectrum of life in all forms. So we get to look at how we can include both creating and building a dream for ourselves and a world that works for everyone. So in order to build something, it’s important, uh, to look at, you know, for building something within something to consider the, create the container that we are creating in, and the foundation that we are creating from. Because one will inevitably influence the other. You can’t take a fish out of water and expect it to survive much less thrive. So the vision for the greater organizations of Center for Spiritual Living is a world that works for everyone. And I think it’s important to, every now and again, check in with ourselves and with our community and ask how are we doing on that vision? And I’d say we have a good bit of work to do.
We may not see the fulfillment of this vision in our lifetime, but it doesn’t mean it’s not worth working towards. We can still strive for this vision by planting seeds of love and gratitude and doing our own work to unearth the old ideas that no longer serve us and our collective humanity. So earlier this week I was listening to a webinar on decolonizing leadership with Edgar Villanueva, and he also has a book called Decolonizing Wealth and Decolonizing Money and a whole platform. I encourage you to Google him, uh, if this resonates with you. So we started the webinar with this idea that in order to decolonize and and transform our roots that have been colonized in society, that we have to actually get clear on what we mean by is colonization. So colonization is to occupy land and to force indigenous folks to assimilate to a new culture and insist on taking over not just the land, but the body and the mind and the soul and the culture of the people who have been oppressed by the colonizer.
And it’s motivated by a scarcity mindset, right? That there is not enough for all and therefore there’s a right way that has to be imposed and everyone must get on board. And it’s based on this false authority from that, you know, it is somehow God ordained or God given that we must conquer and control, right? If you look back on history, it has been like, you know, the crusades all of this to exploit and control into take over from this false sense of it is somehow God ordained. So when we get clear on that, uh, as he says, this idea of colonization, it’s like a virus that it is so rampant in our culture that we don’t even stop to recognize it because none of us have ever lived in a world where colonization isn’t still actively happening. And in fact, in our school systems here, we’re still telling the story of history from the perspective of the colonizers being heroes.
So it makes sense that these are the cultural waters that we swim in. And unless we choose to wake up to pay attention, to look at the history and look at the stories of the indigenous folks and those that have been colonized to then take steps to repair and heal and transform, that we will unconsciously still be moving from this mindset if it goes unchecked. So this webinar, again, that I, i, um, participated in in order, cause I’m really interested as a spiritual leader how to move into this idea of shared leadership and how to create community in a new way that works for all. And so then I started thinking about this, okay, and in the context of reading, uh, Mary Morrissey’s book, brave Thinking and, and, and Building Our Dream, what would it look like then to decolonize the dream?
So her stories are very inspiring, and again, if you’ve done any work with her in the Prosperity Plus programs, um, you know, they’re very inspiring stories, very basic science, my new thought principles on how to live the life of your dream, how to manifest, how to create. Um, and they’re very much from the perspective of the individual self. And so I’m like, okay, so we start looking at this idea of decolonizing our dream, decolonizing the dream, what is the waters we swim in? And we’ve been kind of sold this narrative, especially here, where we all live in the United States of the American dream, right? And if you stop and look at it, the American dream is very much based on a colonial white, cis hetero, patriarchal society. And it’s, it’s built on the, uh, idea that if you work hard, if you hustle, you can achieve what you desire.
And so to activate brave thinking, and again, we’re not coming from a place of this or that, we’re not making anything bad wrong, right? Good, bad, right? We are just exploring and looking with curiosity. So what would it mean to apply brave thinking to counter the status quo of the narrative of what the American dream is in order to listen to spirit within, to see a new way and to ask what is seeking to emerge through me right now? And the truth is, we are always growing and expanding. It is the nature of life to know itself more fully, to evolve, to grow, and we are always growing towards a more joy, just and equitable society. But spirit can only do for us what it can do through us. So it takes each of us saying yes to be that vessel for spirit, to ask, to be curious, to listen to what is seeking to emerge now, which first requires a willingness to look at the current waters that we’re swimming in.
What is the foundation that our current society and structures are built on? And ask just as we do in our own lives, what is working and what needs to shift. And perhaps there’s some structures that need to collapse in order for something new to be birthed for this vision of a world that works for everyone to be a reality. So we’ve been stole, sold this of the American dream, living happily ever after with the 2.5 kids in a house with a perfectly manicured yard and the white picket fence, all of this, right? And so the first step is to look at that and be like, well, whose dream is that? Anyway, that’s not my dream today, that’s for sure. And we can forget that we are building this dream on stolen land. And so until we acknowledge our past, just like in our own lives, in our own healing work, until we acknowledge the pain and the trauma of our past, we are building a new structure on a false foundation that will eventually collapse because it’s unstable.
So as I’m speaking of this, I want you to be listening from both the lens of your own life and the collective. As we do our own healing work, we have to go in and listen and pay attention to what is seeking to be known, to witness, to sit with the pain and the discomfort. Not live there, but sit with it enough to acknowledge it. You know, I’ve, I’ve had a personal experience of of just noticing a sense sensation in my body, a feeling emerging and, and by simply being willing to say like, oh, I’m feeling kind of sad that energy’s able to move. But if I feel it and I’m like, oh, I got things to do, I’m, I wanna have fun, I don’t wanna feel this and try to suppress it somehow and then move on on top of that, it’s gonna come out sideways at some point anyway. Yes. So we are seeing this now in our collective consciousness as well. Spirit is moving in as and through us, and always moving in this spiral, this upward spiral of growth and evolution. And anything that doesn’t resonate, that doesn’t vibrate with the new consciousness will eventually be surfaced in order to simply be acknowledged. And then by acknowledging we can heal and transform. So we see this in our lives, we see this in our communities, any kind of group that has been established that kind of has certain cultural norms.
We see this in our country, we see this in our world at large. So much stuff is rising up to be acknowledged and to be healed. So one place we can start from in doing this decolonizing, uh, work of healing is by doing a land acknowledgement. So I was happy to see on the city of Chicago website the following land acknowledgement that I would love to just read in presence for us all. Now the city of Chicago is located on land that is and has been a center for native peoples. The area is the traditional homelands of the council of the three fires, the Ojibwe, the Owa, and the Pami nations. We acknowledge all native peoples who came before and who continue to contribute to our city. We are committed to promoting native cultural heritage. So let’s just take a breath and just invite in the sacred opportunity of acknowledgement, of acknowledging those who came before us, of acknowledging our ancestors, of acknowledging the indigenous people whose roots are so in the soil of the land that we walk on, that it is still alive today. If we were to nourish and honor that energy and to ask what is seeking to be emerged
So that we can build a new dream on a solid foundation. So when contemplating our heart’s desires, our dreams, our vision for life, for our world, Dr. Ernest Holmes, the founder of the Science of Mind teaching, he invites us to ask, does the thing I wish to do express more life, more happiness, more peace to myself, and at the same time harm No one. If it does, it is right. It is not selfish.
So in looking to build the life of our dreams, we look at the structures we have put in place. And if what this looks like in our own kind of consciousness work are those structures are our belief system and our mindset that everything is built upon. So yes, has anyone noticed? You know, you can, you can do this work and you can manifest something. But if you haven’t actually done the deep work in transforming your beliefs and being the energetic resonance of that which you desire and believe your work to desire that structure, that foundation is not solid and will collapse under the pressure of this new entity energy. It’s this reason why I believe it’s like 70% of people who win the lottery end up going bankrupt because you can have an experience of something new, but if you haven’t done the work to build the foundation, the mindset of worthiness, of the abundance consciousness, it will not last.
It is built on an unstable foundation. So how can we do the work within our own minds and hearts, asking what needs to be transformed, doing the acknowledgement and the healing work in our collective community so that we can create a solid foundation to build upon, to be willing for something new to emerge, something greater, to activate the power of gratitude, to generate the feeling tone of that which we desire. And to remember that is spirit within that does the work. We can let go of this idea of needing to work hard and hustle and instead embrace the flow of good moving through us always the ever givingness of spirit. This idea of grace that is always there if we have eyes to see it, and a willingness to embody it.
So when looking to build the life of our dreams and to work towards this vision of a world that works for everyone, we get to work at both levels asking ourselves this desire on my heart, does it thrive by the support of others? Does it encourage others? Does it lift people up? Or does my dream only succeed if I somehow have to belittle or oppress or overcome or put down some other person or being in her way? And as Ernest Holmes says, that would be harm. So if we want to create something that is sustainable for our lives and our community and our world to be a good ancestor for those to come, we must notice the waters we are swimming in in order to depro that colonized mindset to be open for something new. That expansive, knowing that I can experience all that I desire in this world and create a world that works for everyone.
So we, we, you know, we do this work within ourselves, but we can’t expect our society to thrive without deconstructing that mindset and to break it down so that we are first aware of the waters we’re, uh, swimming in. And then we can begin to create a new foundation by planting seeds based on our values, based on the beautiful reading that was shared known, um, from the indigenous people. Um, this was a vision that came through and I’m gonna post the link to the full cuz that reading was actually an excerpt from a larger video and transcript. So I’ll post it in the, the community group for Cityside, um, if you wanna go deeper into that. But they, you know, this, this elder presented this new vision for how our world is to survive based on these seven sacred laws, respect, love, courage, honesty, wisdom, humility, and truth.
And the idea is that when we walk with these in the forefront of our awareness, when we allow love to lead the way to be the guiding force, when we embody respect, when we open to the wisdom and the humility to live our truth, and to be brave enough to go against the grain sometimes and to walk with courage, we can embody the spirit of these values, of these seven sacred laws to become truly free and get in alignment with the support of the entire universe. Sounds pretty good. Yeah, I don’t know about you all, but that is something that I would love to not have to work so hard and struggle, but to know instead that I’m fully supported by the universe always, right? So these topics, this is a, this is like a, a dusting of something that is much deeper that again, I’m gonna drop resources for you all if you want to go into this deeper. But the invitation for you all this week is to open your heart, to be aware, to be curious, and to dream and vision a new way of being. To ask yourself what is seeking to be known? What is that dream, that desire on your heart to be expressed through you, in order to create a life that you love, within a world that works for everyone.
And
To be willing to look at what needs to be acknowledged and transformed in our own lives, in our inner circles, relationships, in our communities and in our world, and the collective consciousness at large. It’s not always easy, this work, you know, but trust me, it is worth it. Being on the other side of a transformed belief of lack or limitation of a transformed belief in unworthiness or not enough opens us to stand strongly in the truth and the power of who we are and move forward together to build the world that we desire. So are you willing?
Yes.
Are you willing? It’s gonna take, it’s gonna take, you know, some effort, some courage for brave thinking. So are you willing? Yes. All right, let’s take that into prayer then, shall we? So I invite you just to take a nice deep breath, allowing the breath to bring you into this now moment, becoming completely present right here, right now, awake, aware, willing, curious, listening, listening to that which is on our heart, remaining open and listening, listening to that which is seeking to emerge through us being willing to sit in the discomfort. And the pain came to acknowledge that which simply wants to be acknowledged in order to transform and to allow something new to be created. So we take this moment right here, right now, to know and to recognize the one life that is love, that is truth, that is peace, that is joy, that is freedom, that is creativity. This one life that is the very essence of all that is living and moving and and having its very way right here, right now, in and as and through me, in as and through each and every one of us for we are one.
Love is peace, is joy, is freedom, is creativity is. And therefore, it is who I am and how good it is to recognize this truth right here, right now. To stand firm in the awareness and the power and the depth and the breath of the power of the universe that is always saying yes. So I claim right here, right now for each and every one of us that love is the healer. That love is guiding the way for something new. To be birthed within a new consciousness, creating a world that works for everyone. Knowing that we live in this field of pure potentiality, that infinite possibilities arise as we open our hearts and minds To say yes, to be that vessel, to listen, knowing that spirit is moving in as and through each of us uniquely. That there is something on the hearts of each one of us this day to be healed and transformed and elevated to a new vibration, a new intention, a new way of being and walking in this world that demonstrates peace, harmony, freedom, creativity. So how good it is to remember this truth to stand and the place and space of grace right here, right now. Knowing that there is something within me seeking to be birthed, something new, seeking to emerge on behalf of my, myself, my community,
And the world at large. And I choose this day to say yes, I choose this day to listen, to allow to become all that I’m here to become. So with great gratitude for the fulfillment of this word, I release this prayer into the action of the law. The all that always says yes, yes, yes, yes, my beloved. It is done. And it is so. And together we say. And so it is.