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Emergent Village

Jesus Commanded I Tell You about Gluttony

Last updated on: April 5, 2016 at 2:53 pm   by Anita Brown

Jesus Commanded I Tell You about Gluttony 2016-04-05T14:53:42-05:00 Anita Brown

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Like a preacher in yoga pants I have come, a new Paul, to tell of your integrity in Christ, as a shared identity. But first you must put down your phone or laptop…

Go ahead, trust me, she says with a mischievous grin.

Back already? Great, now that I have your full attention!! Put it back down and put one hand on your belly and one hand on your heart. Close your eyes and fill up your belly like a big balloon, pause for a few seconds and then watch the belly descend as you slowly empty out and find another pause at the bottom.

Do just that simple breathing exercise for a minute– you can even set a timer if you’d like.

What kind of thoughts and resistance showed up? Be curious.

Because this ruach (Hebrew for spirit) is running through our nostrils as the very breath of God (Job) it serves as the bridge between mind (Father) and body (Jesus).

A trinitarian relationship is forged.

Once we are operating from this mind, body, spirit connection one might say we have found our Truth. This centering Truth can only ever be found in the present moment, where healing arises.
Although your heart often feels like a pitted, rocky crater moon,
He actually made it soft, alive and vibrant with his blood pounding through.

Although He walks through your dreams naked, hungry and homeless,
if you make a cozy space available, He, like a newborn babe
finds His cradle within.

How do I know this? My body informs me of a percieved battle. I awaken to deep aching in my muscles and my bones. My chest is tight and makes it difficult to breathe deeply. My heart beats too fast and feels rushed and ignored.

But when I sit in stillness to listen for His voice entering my awareness, I return to our ongoing love affair. He cradles my face in his hands and croons of our perfect union.

He explains how lonely it is when I am too busy to receive His gifts.

He goes back in time with me to when Mom and I were abandoned by the man she loved. He seems to weep with me– experiencing in the NOW, all the pain we’d forgotten to feel.

He shows me like a picture show, how our hearts developed a protective, icy layer– once necessary, but no longer.

He reveals all the people who tried to love me but I had no ears to hear their shouts of infatuation. No eyes to see their loving gaze.

You see the yoga practice dislodges the pieces of us in need of repair. Christ compassion transforms these earthly flesh wounds into life-giving bread, integrated into a new creation. The genesis of our soul-body.

The garden of our hearts is restored to an inner Eden. If we can step into our role as artiste’!! Patiently digesting and embodying all the little ‘breads’ of our life story.

The rock has permanently been rolled away from the tomb of our hearts and our fear of it being empty is revealed as a lie! Inside the dark space we find HIM!! Alive and busily building like a carpenter a new foundation for this body temple.

A mosque prepared for the Holy One to reside.

Gasping virginal breath we feel equanimity arise. THEN–

He shakes the tree of your life with His holy wind to free all the dead things.

They rot and transform at his bidding like blossoms stemming from compost.

Something in me wonders WAS I MADE WELL??? Are all of my unhealed heartbreaks still preventing the love from rushing in?

No! He shouts…You were wonderfull and perfectly made!! Can’t you feel how necessary those torments are as building blocks shaping this humble abode for the Holy Spirit. He keeps asking me to trust the process of housing all the homeless Jesuses…cradling all the infant liberators of our Souls.

Tend your heart my friends. Jesus himself is attempting to make a home but in too many worldly ways we’ve changed the locks and stocked the pantry with the favorite goodies of another God. First and foremost our addiction to technology and being ‘plugged in’. Do yourself a big favor and begin a practice of enjoying a Sabbath from these distractions.

For the past 14 weeks He has asked me to give up alcohol and watch how He inhabits the space it once occupied.

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. Yet, in the mind, there are no limits….John C. Lilly. No limits-– now, that’s cause for celebration!!

It is using the tool of the mind that we carve out space for going beyond previous limiting beliefs. It is on the rich landscape of the physical body, we stretch our consciousness, making available space for God’s plans to take root.  True partnership!!

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. James 1:6

We are filled with rivers of living water I declare with my mouth–

Love is Lord
resurrected from the bloodless, dispossessed fragments of an imperfect human life.

The big secret I am hear to dispel is how we must become aware of our own thoughts and that they are not us. We are the witness, the awareness beyond these thought forms. Only practice can reveal how powerfullly we have become addicted to our own faulty thinking.

We must put down our shiny toys of distraction, admit our tendency toward gluttony and align–
Head over heart over pelvis, sitting tall..WE BREATHE><><><><>IMG_1905

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