Well hello there. Clearly I don't blog often. I've only published ONE. I spend most of my time these days with clients or in class. Yes class! I'm school to become a New Thought Minister. Yes me, a minister. This is just the beginning of my journey of becoming a Doctor of Divinity.
I know many people like myself have struggled with religious abuse or the residual effects that region leaves. (when you leave it.)
I decided that I wanted to share something with you. I hope you enjoy.
Recently in my Ministerial class I was given the assignment to write a paper on a book we were reading. When I sat down to write it flowed out of me like water.
This is what is was....
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spot-light
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough
I’ll never forget the day I denounced religion publicly on a live video that ended up going viral on fb. I woke up the next day with a sense of freedom. I spoke my Truth. MY Truth. Little did I know that speaking my Truth would get so much of a profound response. When I got into my inbox later that day I had over 200 messages from people telling me how much they relate to the very Truth I spoke. And that felt good. It felt good to pillar of light and Truth for people who felt the same way that I had for so many years. What didn’t feel good was the flood of messages I received afterwards telling me that I was going crazy and asking what was wrong with me. My mother called me to ask if I was ok. She wanted to know what promoted this very sudden… at it was sudden, desire to speak out so boldly and so publicly. She told me family members were calling her asking “what’s gotten into Malorie? Why is she speaking like that about her family and the church she grew up in? Why was is she trying to ruin people’s lives by going public with her story. Doesn’t she know the damage that causes?”
This was confusing to me. I wasn’t trying to ruin anyone’s lives. I was simply seeking my own liberation and I couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
This brings me to the first of 3 points I want to speak on today. Fear.
Fear of the unknown, fear of repercussions. Fear of someone else’s differences.
The dictionary defines fear as a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.
Interesting. Whether a fear is real or imagined the brain says YES. And agrees that it is in fact fear.
In the book Buddha’s Brain, The practical neuroscience of happiness, love & wisdom it says this…
(In reference to fear and division) Economic and cultural factors certainly play a role. Nonetheless, across different kinds of societies - hunter-gatherer, agrarian, and industrial; communist and capitalist; Eastern and Western - in most cases the story is basically the same; loyalty and protection toward “us” and fear and aggression toward “them”. It goes on to say “Much if not most aggression is a response to feeling threatened - which includes event subtle feelings of unease or anxiety.”
What happens in the brain is that overtime we are primed. In this priming the amygdala, which is a very small part of your brain, learns to register threats. The amygdala is the part of the brain responsible for your emotional charge so that you aware of negative stimuli.
We live in dualistic world. So there is “us” and there is “them”. All the sudden sharing my Truth made me a “them”. Invoking a threat…. Or fear in the amygdala of anyone who once categorized me as an “us”.
Now let's look at fear and how it is used to control and manipulate. But let’s look closely at my life. We’ll see if you can relate.
If you don’t tithe to the church God will not bless your finances. You must give him your first 10% or your 90% will fail you.
Anyone?
If you have sex before marriage you’ll go to hell. God wants you to remain pure for your future husband. Your marriage will be blessed if you remain pure. If not you set yourself up for failure.
Show of hands?
It’s your responsibly Malorie to preach the gospel and share the Bible with people who don’t know Christ. If you don’t you are walking a stray and not leading people to the Kingdom of God.
You?
I could go on for hours. But i’ll give you one more.
God knows and sees your every move. If you are not living and following the Bible, the holy living word of God, then he will punish you. He is a jealous angry God. Make sure you are living in a way that makes him proud.
Well. I don’t know about you but with this way of thinking it seems I was set up for fear from the beginning.
But how did I use fear to set me free. I was afraid of living one more day denying the Truth that had bubbled up so loudly inside of me that I couldn’t not go one more moment denying my Truth. Fear became fuel. And eventually fear became curiosity. The fear that once controlled me now had no hold on me. I felt freedom. I felt liberated.
Who was the new version of Malorie going to be?
Over the coming months and throughout the year I began to host women’s events. I gathered women together to share stories. To speak their Truth. I felt like I was finally on a path of freedom. My first event sold out in 45 minutes. 50 women. My next event, sold that out too. As I began to gain momentum with this new found liberated version of me I felt untouchable.
Until I didn’t.
Overtime I still experienced moments that triggered the very guilt and shame that had been used to control me to believe during my religious upbringing.
One afternoon on a sunny day I stopped by a girlfriends house. She lives in a beautiful loft overlooking downtown. She has gorgeous floor to ceiling windows on 3 of the 4 walls. We sat at her bar and sipped hot tea as the light flooded in. She was sharing with me how proud she was of me and what I was creating. She looked at me so soft and sincerely and said “You’re allowing yourself to be used by God.” I smiled and agreed. Then in the next breath she said, “after all… I AM God. And so are you.”
I’m sorry. What did she just say? That feels like blasphemy. I’ve had a lifetime of programming, grooming…. churching. Um…. Religion that had told me very clearly that God is a man. He lives in the sky. You are not worthy of his love. But you should spend your lifetime trying to be. Why did I feel so triggered in this moment. My friend who I held in such high regard just initiated a feeling in me that I did not like. But why did I not like it?
This brings me to my second point. Programming.
You see our brains are these brilliant super computers. I think of our body like our hardware and our brains like our software. We have programs running in the background 24/7. I’m sure you don’t think twice about what you computer and smartphone have going on in the software. You just expect them to run properly and function how you expect them to. And if your software or app on your phone is failing you, you uninstall and reinstall or you upgrade the entire system.
Have you ever wondered how your programs were installed?
Just like your body is built from the foods you eat and how you treat it, your mind is built from the experiences you have; some before you were even born. Your life experiences sculpt your brain and in return this shapes your mind.
This is called implicit memory. It establishes the interior landscape of your mind and what it means to be YOU.
Learning (aka programming) starts from infancy and furthermore it is confirmed now by science that the adaptation starts as early as in the last trimester of pregnancy when the fetus learns about the world from the mother’s responses to the environment through her stress hormones or happy hormones levels. After birth, the baby, the toddler and eventually the child observes and registers the surrounding world and learns to respond to it by copying the behaviors of people.
Dr Bruce Lipton in his book “The Biology of Belief” explains how in the first seven years of life the mind is programmed through the subconscious. In these early years the brain operates mostly in the theta and alpha wave lengths, the same frequencies as under hypnosis or during a deep meditation state. Theta is the gateway to learning, memory, creativity and intuition.
I think it’s safe to say we learn what we are around. We adopt our experiences as truth because it’s all we know. These beliefs become so deeply embedded in our subconscious that they quite literally create WHO & WHAT you believe yourself to be.
Programming creates expectations. Expectations give us the experience of being separate or different. Separate or different sends signals of danger. Initiating a negative bias which in turn creates the fear.
So where do we go from here? You now understand that your reality is a programmed experience. And due to your programming you set yourself up to experience separation and fear.
I don’t want to live my life in fear. And I’m sure you don’t either. I don’t want to create my future from fear. I don’t want my life or my choices to be a result from living in fear. So how do do that?
We remove the thing that caused the fear. I’ve removed friends that weren’t serving me anymore. I’ve removed jobs that were no longer in alignment with what I saw for my future. I’ve removed habits and behaviors that were keeping me from the highest version of what I know I came here to be.
Now it was time to remove the religion. And I mean really remove it.
The last thing I want to leave you with today is an answer. An answer of how to move beyond the fear. Move beyond the programming. I would like to bring you to Truth. To Oneness.
In one of my favorite books Living The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes it says this:
“There is within each of us a deep awareness, a subjective and a spiritual consciousness which by pure intuition knows that the Universal Intelligence which we call God exists. We do not need to turn to the Bible for such declarations, for the real Bible is inscribed on the walls of our consciousness and IS the true light which lighteth every man the cometh into the world. The inner consciousness of our union with Good is Supreme. Not only is it the higher hope and inspiration of the human mind, but it has ever been its greatest realization.”
It’s self evident that we know the Truth because we experience the Truth. You know. You know who you are. It’s time for you to Re-Member … to put yourself back together. To remember who you were before the world told you who you were.
Through science, philosophy, spirituality, quantum physics and more, we are shown that we are all part of one great whole. A divined mind keeps us in the feeling that we are separate. Int order to experience Oneness, we must get in alignment with Truth and stay there.
So as the famous quote says, “It’s not enough to know. We must know how.”
Seek the Truth. Go within. Get still. Heal. Listen. BE. Step beyond the labels. Lay down the identities. Let go of the stories. Strengthen your intuitive muscle.
You’ve had those intuitive hits. Those gut feelings. You thought of a friend you have and all the sudden they call. You felt a stirring in your spirit and your stomach drops. I don’t believe in coincidence. I don’t believe this conversation fell on your ears for no reason. I believe that we are these humanly, cosmic, super computer, flesh and space filled beings that hold the intelligence of the Universe. I believe we are each uniquely and brilliantly designed. Those intuitive hits aren’t nothing…
There is actually a super highway between the brain and GI system. A primal connection called the enteric nervous system. There are hundreds of million of neurons connecting the brain to the enteric nervous system sending signals. Gut feelings.
If you’ve had that feeling while I’ve spoken to you today I invite you to explore that. If you’ve felt that feeling when someone is using God or the Bible or Religion to instill fear in you, I invite you to listen. There is an intelligence within you and a Divinity seeking you…. You simply might need to lose your religion to discover it.
Losing my religion…. I found my Divinity.