22 Yes, in union with him, you yourselves are being built together into a spiritual dwelling-place for God!

~Ephesians 3:22~

Breaking Free From Strongholds

"IT'S NOT UNHOLY OR IMPULSIVE... IT'S PURE."

Lord, work on me.

Amazing day

God, you are so good. The work you are doing on my heart. On my mind. In my mind. You are taking over the yuck. I love You I love You I love You. Deeply. You hear me. YOU HAV FILLED ME WITH THANKFULNESS.

MY HEART FEELS WARM AND IS FULL.

YOU ARE SO GOOD.

SO MERCIFUL.

LORD, THANK YOU FOR SHOWING ME YOUR CHARACTER.

YOU ARE TRANSFORMING ME ALL THROUGHOUT THE DAY.


I AM WORTH IT FOR YOU. YOU HAVE CHOSEN ME.
YOU LOVE ME. ALL DAY EVERY DAY.


I AM RIGHTEOUSNESS IN YOUR SIGHT BY JESUS' PRECIOUS LIFE-SACRIFICE.

HE WAS MURDERED FOR OUR SAKE, MY SAKE.

THANK YOU JESUS. I ... LOVE YOU, GOD.


THANK YOU,
J.B.

"Befriend them. Care about them as a human being before you try to just change them into an apostle Paul overnight."

- See more

Please be patient with me. I am under construction- God is transforming me by the power of His Spirit.

12-21-13 poetic justice box braids

Represent 5 things for me:

1. God's faithfulness to pull me out of troubles to a place of being whole again and providing for me financially
2. Transformation - change takes time
3. Identity - just is ... me
4. Thriving/Best ME - expressing myself, ending hair struggles, increasing happiness, love, creativity, beauty, and confidence in my life.
5. Anti-racism - black is beautiful, provokes thought of norm/beauty/ownership. No point for prejudice



Answers to prayer found in braided hair.

Thank you, Yah.

<3 Jeskah

Gluttony

The gluttony stops today. Lord, help me.

"You are the one you've been waiting for, indeed. All the power and courage you need to transform your life to one of heart centered truth is already within! Be brave enough to set it free and rise up."

-Heather Day Wellness

Sound Healing Changed My Life & Why It Can Change Yours

A few weeks ago, I went with a group of friends on an adventure to the desert. It all started because two very talented friends, Rufus Wainwright and his sister Lucy, were playing a show at Pappy and Harriets in Pioneertown, California.

One quality that really struck me while I was on the road with Rufus was his natural ability to create adventure wherever he goes. It's a beautiful gift which comes from his sense of wonder and openness to exploring the world.

Rufus had arranged a visit to a domed building called the Integratron. But first, we all hiked out to a gigantic boulder known (surprisingly) as Big Rock. This was the birthplace of the Integratron back in the 1950s.

According to the story, a guy named George Van Tassel was meditating under Big Rock one night when he was visited by aliens. George was an aeronautical engineer who said the aliens gave him instructions on how to create an age-defying machine. He worked on it for 17 years, never managing to complete it before he died suddenly in 1978. The instructions mysteriously vanished.

Eventually, the Integratron was turned into a chamber for sound healing. So, after our visit to Big Rock we went there for a session. If you’ve never participated in a sound healing session, crystal bowls of varying size are placed next to each other and played by circling the outside rim, which causes a sound vibration. Some say this sound vibration has special healing properties, and the environment of the Integratron is said to heighten the healing effect.

We all lay in a circular formation with our heads towards the center of the dome while the sound bounced off the walls in interesting and disorienting ways. The vibrations were as intense as sitting on top of a bass amp. You could feel it through your whole body! The session lasted about 45 minutes.

I can’t speak to the truth of any claims about the Integratron or even about sound healing. But, as a meditation trainer, I could immediately see the value in the experience. You may be familiar with the Buddhist term "impermanence." In the practice of meditation, the flow of impermanence is more than just an intellectual understanding that change happens in your life. It’s experiential, right now in this moment. We begin to discover ourselves and our world as being in a constant state of flux.

For many meditators, this is detectable in the body as a deeply pleasant tingly, wavy or bubbly flow of energy. This flow of energy is pointing us toward our true nature. When we know the flow of impermanence completely, we experience the absence of separation between ourselves and the world, even between being and non-being. We experience change as the only true constant. We recognize nothingness, pregnant with the possibility of all things, as being our true nature. This realization liberates us from the constricting, yet familiar, habit of having a limited identity. The meditative path is about recognizing our true nature over and over, with greater and greater awareness.

But for many of us, the path from our ordinary mindset to liberation can seem like a daunting journey. So, from my perspective, the true value of an experience like sound healing is its ability to heighten your awareness of impermanence. When your whole body vibrates in response to sound waves, you're sensitive to the flow of impermanence. You are experiencing yourself as porous and resonant.

A sound healing session is ceremonial, treating sound in a novel and sacred way. If your goal is liberation, the key is to use the sound waves as a path to greater insight. Rather than viewing the experience as conditional, or placing the experience outside yourself, you can treat sound healing as a unique opportunity to discover your true, formless nature. Then the sound is healing on the deepest level.

Embracing Pain: Life’s Gifts Often Come Wrapped in Sandpaper

“The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.”

On my personal journey—and there are surely others who walk a similar path—life at times sweeps me up in a wave of utter brokenness, and washes me onto new shores of beautiful transformation, grounded wisdom, and unconditional love.

There is a longstanding slogan in Alcoholics Anonymous that pain is the touch point of all spiritual progress.

Somehow our moments of deep despair and gut-wrenching desperation serve as evolutionary portals to a higher level of grace and resolve. The breakdown itself is the gateway to the breakthrough.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not go chasing after anguish like an adrenaline junkie with a death wish. Just because turmoil shows up as an unexpected guest at my front door that doesn’t mean I graciously invite it in for tea and cookies.

I avoid pain—internal and external—whenever possible. I’ve given birth to two beautiful children and both times I asked for the labor-numbing drugs. If I so much as stub my toe on the bedside table or get into an spat with my husband, I reach for my favorite quilt and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s for comfort.

I have heard there are two types of pain in the world—welcomed and unwelcomed.

Suffering is defined as unwelcomed pain. I am beginning to understand that, like enduring labor, the more I am able to stop resisting pain’s vice-like grip and breathe through the ark—noticing its build, peak, and subsiding—the less of a hold it has on me.

Just like birthing my babies, on the other side of the pain is the promise. Some of life’s greatest gifts come wrapped in sandpaper.

Here are a few of the treasured insights I have received on the other side life’s tribulations. I hope they renew your strength, affirm that you are not alone, and shed a hopeful light on your dark moments.

Pain strengthens you.

In order to build a muscle we lift the weight. But first there is a breaking and bleeding of the capillaries. The healing of the wound is what develops the muscle; injury precedes strength.

Pain refines you.

It takes pressure to make a diamond and fire to purify gold. Nothing cleanses the soul like a good cry. Tears wash away the impurities of fear and attachment and clear the channels for love to freely flow.

Pain lightens the load.

Growing up my mother would often say, “When you are down to nothing, life is up to something.”

Navigating painful moments can feel like squeezing yourself through a tight corridor. There is no room for excess baggage. At the peak of agony I have learned to let go of the “stuff” in my hands—my stories, my fears, my judgments—in order to hold on for dear life.

Pain qualifies you.

Nothing qualifies a person to step up to a big vision for their life like pain. When I count the cost of the rejection and disappointments endured on the journey to living my dreams, it creates a worthiness and grounded resolve that my toughest critics cannot chip away.

Pain connects you.

One tragedy unites people in a far deeper way than a thousand moments of laughter. Falling apart independently and collectively healing has launched powerful, life-changing movements like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (M.A.D.D.). Pain becomes purpose when it is shared.

Like the peaks and falls on a heart monitor, the valley low moments are just as much a confirmation of life as the mountain highs. Lean into pain’s sting. Allow yourself to be placed on its potter’s wheel and transformed into all you can ever hope to be and more.

Remember, life is never happening to you, it is always happening for you. Always.

CREATE YOUR OWN HAPPINESS: MAKE FEELING GOOD YOUR NEW RELIGION

In other words, find something that will make you happy and do it every day. Make feeling good your new religion.

Why?

For self-transformation and planetary change. Or, simply because it makes you happy.


http://tinybuddha.com/blog/create-your-own-happiness-make-feeling-good-your-new-religion/

Simply, slowing down bettered and transformed myself and thus, my life.

Amazing... Mindfulness

Mindfulness is defined as cultivating exquisite attention to the present moment—with openness and without judgment.

Since mindfulness first was studied over 30 years ago, it has become increasingly recognized as a therapeutic remedy to stress and anxiety, and studies have shown many mental and physical health benefits, including chronic pain relief, increased learning potential, greater compassion and happiness. Mindfulness brings about mental clarity, concentration and calmness.

And the practice of mindfulness allows us to become fully alive. Here’s how:

By paying attention to the smallest of detail in our existence, we learn to stay with our experiences, positive or negative, without attachment or struggle. And by staying with our experiences, we find peace, as we release ourselves from the need to control how we experience life.

By engaging fully with the present moment, we deeply experience life – its love, joy, contentment, even the pain and sadness. Our awareness evolves and softens, and we learn to enjoy the entire experience of being alive. Not lost in the past, or in the future, but truly alive in this moment.

By recognizing our thoughts and emotions, we see their transient nature. We realize we do not have to be captive to thoughts and emotions, that we simply can hold an awareness of them. The inner landscape becomes peaceful, allowing us to access our inherent wisdom and intuition.

While the world around us is constantly changing, mindfulness gives us the opportunity to be present with ourselves just as we are. We find stillness, no matter what is going on inside or outside of us. We let go of judgments, and we find wisdom, compassion and equanimity that result from letting go of emotional reactivity.

You can begin to experience mindfulness right now in this moment. Read through the following paragraph and try this simple exercise:

Close your eyes for a few minutes. Bring awareness to your breath. Observe the breath and the body. When the mind wanders, bring it back again to the breath, without judgment. Enjoy the spaciousness of resting in this place of awareness with your breath, and enjoy the stillness of the mind.

Notice what is happening in the moment: any sounds, smells or sensations, and let the breath be the anchor of your attention. Just breathe and be for a few minutes.

When you open your eyes, notice the calmness of body and mind, and note any shift in perception of the things around you.

With practice, mindfulness truly will change your experience of life.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-7735/why-mindfulness-will-change-your-life.html

Hanging out with friends for...?

Enhancing the state of mind

--> again and again ---> profound transformation

"Imagine the world is filled with peace, harmony and understanding. Now make it so! By creating this field of consciousness together we are joining with all kindred spirits around this planet who hold this in their hearts."

"Dig deep within yourself, as the wisdom here is truly life changing."