'AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND SPIRITUAL PRACTICES' - A sermon by Carlton D. Pearson

Oh [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] dressed in African garb today because I have many many of these outfits I meant to have all of you for this month who have our African garb to wear it I we've been trying to do this for many many years and I always forget to announce it till after work I've been given some of these outfits when I travel to let us see you'll see the whole thing you when you're using your arms you throw it up on your shoulder like that and struggle with it the whole time you have it on first time I wore this I was in front of 25,000 people in Lagos or in Dineen City and the pants tie they don't buckle and they're really really you could put three of us or four of us in here you tie it and I didn't know how to tie it I got it they gave it to me at the last minute and orals with me Danny Bella models they want me to get out on the stage and dance with it with the African dance and I hesitated then when I did a big old bridge's came straight down family for all those people I didn't know what but because of this robe you couldn't tell I just stepped out on the keyboard dancing anyway that's my first African story I'll tell you a few more our theme for the month of February is spirituality and my theme this morning of chosen African spirituality or african-american history and spiritual practices my sub topic is going to be surviving human spirituality as far as scientists can tell and tell us the whole human race originated in Africa the oldest skeletal remains of a human is a female and those several hundred thousand years back and maybe two or three hundred thousand and and it's it's found in Africa so that's the oldest remains so we assume that all of humanity originated on the continent of Africa which means at one time we were all black [Music] [Applause] that is until Adam sinned and it turns above white but up until then other than everybody else was colored people so we are at the beginning of a more complete and distinct awareness in this culture at this time we are on our way to greater enlightenment we will meet each other there in consciousness consciousness is everything that's her first recognition that's your first identity match sing the song bridge over troubled waters we're all familiar with waters because we floated in water for the first nine months of our existence we didn't need oxygen in the mother's womb we didn't breathe until we came out I think we're all still somewhat traumatized from passing through the birth canal from our mother's womb into the breathing world and learning how to inhale and exhale breath wind and we still do that water is a metaphor biblical ideologies of and many others of spirit so we swim and or floated and by the time that nine month bird had exceeded most of the water was our own urine and we came here out of that water remember when Julian was born my dad was in the room and Julian immediately urinated and just straight up and straight out and my my dad's a bad boy come into the world pissed off I never in saying that in it I think that's probably true so the subtopic is and I'll finish some of it next week surviving human spirituality to survive means to to manage or keep going in difficult or demanding sometimes demeaning circumstances the Chilean writer Isabel Allende said sometimes Susy said we don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward in times of tragedy or of war of necessity people do amazing things the human capacity she says to survival and renewal is awesome the human capacity to survival and renewal is often we're all trying to find a bridge over the troubled traumatised waters that we are and out of which we've come when we are born we are 80% water really means actually with spirit the Earth's surface is 70% water when we and our brain is 80% water and remains 80% water we're all water heads whether you know it or not as we age we become around as adults 50 to 60 percent water and the older we get the more hydrated we become unless hydrated we become so human spirituality can be both daring and dangerous because it involves imagination and experimentation with a neglected but natural part of our human essence and that is spirit the moisture and midst of ourselves and of our soul theologians theologians call this ontology and ontology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being or existence the fact or state of continued survival which is in the broadest sense infinite reality from our first breath we are struggling if you will and straining to keep breathing we have a sense of our in itself and we try to somehow capture it we sense that we'll be here always that we've always been and that will never not be but the flesh reminds us of our human capacity we might reminds us that it will stop at some point we are finite or finishable in our flesh and in finite in our essence in our spirits the first African worshipers were people who were in touch with their essence first long before Greek or Roman god or gods or goddesses or myths or mythologies Africans from the soils of the continent of Africa were spiritualist they were in touch with their essence some aspects of animism they saw animation or life in everything trees bees fleas flies water air cows everything was spiritual everything was conscious of itself not just consciousness everything even an idea even a thought negative or positive was conscious of itself every cell in our bodies every sinew of flesh every blood vessel vein capillary is conscious of itself and its purpose and lives it out trees do that birds and bees and fleas hair follicles everything about us is alive that is our in finite essence the first Africans understood that or I should say the first humans understood that they just happen to be on the continent of Africa the largest continent in this 70% water surface planet the largest plot of land that had emerged out of the depths to volcanic or perhaps equating earth quaking pushes itself up and it's the largest land space and the first humans were there so spirituality is natural it needs to be nurtured but it's natural natural I think as you've heard me say that we come here knowing that word means science or science is knowledge con science or conscience means with knowledge we came here knowing but between the womb of the tomb we went through the spiritual amnesia and we forgot that we agreed to come here and we've been feeling like foreigners or aliens or in immigrants ever since sometimes we feel unwelcomed I don't think the first humans did but these we latest ones are rustling with our we welcomed here what does it mean for us to be here why do we come we've come basically because we know something we know what we have forgotten and we do a lot of teaching but we really need to do a lot of remembering if you really remember or reclaim and recapture recover yourself you'll feel very comfortable in who you are you believe what you're taught and told you know what your solar cells have experienced I told you before I'm having I'm having these wonderful deja fools and I remember like wait a minute I'm not a stranger I'm not a victim of circumstances or or and I'm not a I'm losing my victim consciousness I have the victorious consciousness I'm all right turn does emit sound all right and so are you say you almost as good as me [Music] infinite writ by in that I mean limitless endless in space and extent in time and such literally impossible to measure or calculate that is your essence we are infinite beings unfinished and unfinished ball anybody who defines you that's put a limit on you that's what is finished on you that's what a boundary or border on you but in your infinity you cannot end you've always been you will always be your eternity press past present and future it's all mixed up in one we think linearly but we are really nonlinear beings the word linear or line or linen or lineage means a thread that has come from somewhere and threads together to make our lineage but women we are multi-dimensional and interdimensional beings when Jesus said in my father's house there are many mansions he would say many dimensions many places and spaces and phases and levels and compartments and apartments and we are we're going in and out of those places and spaces all the time we'd always realize it that's our infinite self our essence our essential that is our permanent rather than our accidental self our immaterial our or immortal immeasurable immutable immutable immediate self then the immediate you has always been will always be that's the original spirituality of the human culture and consciousness we have infinite bodies but finite spirits in other words we're not just human beings seeking or looking for spiritual experiences we are spirit having an earthly encounter we have a mind we have a body but we are spirit or a food we are essence so managing both our human self and our holy self or our sake when I say holy I don't mean perfect or I mean our sacred secret self our and and our sacred or secular self is a primary charge and challenge of the human existence we're always trying to bridge our human to our divinity our science to ourselves science and spirituality what we know not just what we've learned or what we've been told or what we've been taught but we remember what we remember from some pre-incarnate reality all of us have a sense every once in a while then we've been here before we've been around on the timer to when I was coming up the old most of the old Saints would say he'd been around here before he knew he hadn't been around here before they met that little metal energy it's some kind of cyclical possibly some kind of reincarnation of karmic re existence or reappearance and these kids come out like they know everything now they're coming out with these iPhones in their hand they are in this digital age and they live in the cloud my friend Lucy was here last week from South Africa he was talking about African spirituality and and he was his his great-grandfather was a Presbyterian preacher had been he converted by the missionaries the other one of course a Jackson cosa was from deep African spirituality his his grandmother and aunts were seers and soothsayers or they involved various types of juju and medication for medication and they could put curses on or off of your hexes and they some had some kind of transcendent reality and they were all born in that they they venerated the ancestors sometimes we don't know where the religion of science or seance a seance is when people gather like we have this morning and the presence of a medium who helps you contact dead days from Jesus to dreams to relationships you're in here looking for something that you think is threatened trying to secure something in and about you that is important to you beginning with your relationship with yourself with your God what are you looking for why are you religious if you are religious what is religion mean to you it's part of the human nature to seek something beyond itself or an extinction of itself we always want to find ways of existing forever that's why we try to eat right it exercise and rest and we want to live why do we want to live it's instinctive to want to live it's instinctive to want to be here forever we are all survivalist by Nature we're all looking for the bridge over the trouble and traumatised essence of our being you've offered heard me say this but that life is basically a sexually transmitted disease or disease your mom and him were intimate and you've been this without this the ease and wrestling with the tensions and the anxieties of human beings being human the early African slaves somehow reconnected the only way they could survive that horror is to reconnect with their spiritual transcended reality and change or recreate where they were if they didn't do that they were there their minds would snap they couldn't handle being in a foreign land a different country a different culture being humiliating African Americans and I really I'm an American African that means I was born in America four or five generations there are African Americans and there were American applicants and African America American came from Africa recently wasn't born here and migrated or emigrated here but an American African is who those of us who were born here some of us several generations so we've been Americanized and we've forgotten some of our our deep spiritual background and culture and roots as a Pentecostal and the founder of my denomination Bishop Charles Harrison mason church forgotten Christ was born in 1865 around the same time same year that the Emancipation Proclamation was signed he died in 1961 so he was 90 what 96 97 years old he lived all that time but it only had a second grade education he found out the largest Pentecostal denomination in a and one of the largest in the world and his desire was I came from a Baptist background he wanted Africans who were going through discrimination Jim Crow the pain of living outside their normal context in this foreign land and treated as foreigners they he wanted them to go back to their to reconnect with their African spirituality so they could survive better here some of the old slave owners in slave trade remember slave trade didn't start on America started in Britain they went over it to Africa and the first black-on-black crime was wealthy nobleman or landowners in Africa who sold Africans to the British British didn't just come over then take us donate that strong we've been dealing with alligators and menacing animals for centuries and living in the rough rugged rustic world and then somebody would have wig and a painted face and come over and just take us know somebody gave us somebody sold us and some Africans are still selling out their own some of the wealthy leaders of certain countries and cultures that are involved in various aspects of of witchcraft as you would call it in this part in the Western world but they're still killing their own that's one of those saddest scenarios in our world is what is happening in irresponsible corrupt leaders on the continent of Africa I've encountered many you'll hardly ever hear about that because certain powers want that to occur so they can still get the diamonds and the minerals and and some of the most powerful assets to our society in the world come out of the continent of Africa but that the applicants work in touch with the minerals and the gold and the pearls and the diamonds are not pearls in the sea but the diamonds and what was in the earth they act the gas and the oil or whatever was there they somehow saw themselves as part of that we still bring that to ourselves now over here in America at the Pentecost so we believe in trance transcendence that you actually go into a trance our worship services were or or or tent and sometimes loud and interactive the Native Americans do the you can hear the bull and the dancing of the beating and the repetition of the culture they used to be called the the great spirit used to be called the great mystery and in Native American culture it was a mystery or missed story nobody really knew who God was everybody experienced God but nobody really knew for sure I'd love to embrace the mystery I've had seminary training and I've studied for the last 50 years of my life but I don't know God I experienced God any god that's knowable may not be the real one I don't know where but I breathe it I don't know life but I love it I drink water but I don't know water I had trees in my yard we talk every once in a while you've heard of hugging trees paganism is it has been heathen either paganism is actually meant people who lived off the land and loved the land and understood the land understood rural culture the people who live in the rustic rural areas of society and they were more spiritual more in touch with the land and with the earth than those in the urban areas who were gotten so much into automation and technology in science until they missed their spiritual essence what's happening in the next wave in our country and culture is I believe that we will reconnect with our science and our our our spirituality I think they're very similar scientists study the unknowables scientists try to prove something to be real based on the proof that can be found about it's a lot of experimentation we're all an experiment now if some higher intelligence helped to create us and we're hybrid aliens I think my children are we since there were some from some other space or some other place when they say men amendment men are from Mars and women are from Venus cover at that book at least women are from other planets men from Mars women from Venus that's that mean you gotta read the book it talks about our psyche and how we we do we are all otherworldly we all have a spiritual part of our self that is from our original curiosity with the Stars astrology pastor astrology because sheep or shepherds spent time in the pastures and at night when the sky was black they could see these stars and they'd spend hours just looking at the stars a stir in Greek astrology the logic of the stars the logic of the movements of the planets and planes the outer reaches and regions and rhythms of consciousness they studied them and we're still very interested in that other part of our essence you're very curious about who you are and who you aren't and where as we move into more of a spiritual age this age of enlightenment called the Age of Aquarius we're learning a different kind of syncopation we want to walk in sync or cadence rather than decadent of our essence we want to be in touch and tune into with ourselves I'm not trying this culture is not so much trying to please everybody else these young people live in this other world where they look in the cloud and in the mist and their way out there somewhere and they don't register with their parents they don't register with the culture try to teach about Bible verses they don't know where you're talking about the asking where the Bible come from why do you believe what you believe do you really believe that a man spoke with spoke with a serpent or a woman spoke with a serpent do you believe that your God is angry and that he repeated that he may that he has this customized torture chamber for all the people that don't believe in him do you believe in a God who says I love you and I give my son for you and if you don't believe this time I'll burn their hell out of you these kids will ask these questions very irreverently and we don't know how to answer them yet I think that's surviving the spiritual essence this the survival of our own spirituality and spirituality simply is a question it's a great big question mark what the hey what why when where what are you doing here why are you still here most of us lost loved ones or friends recently I'm looking at the bench they're here this morning Jennifer just lost her baby brother just a few days ago he was only 58 colin was as close to him cause known known Ozzie since it was 12 because it was dating his sister Ozzie was in perfect health as far as we know having a meeting with his with us some some members of his business four of them skyping and he just stops breathing his wife's out of a town his sons upstairs one of the men on the call called 911 to go to the house and had to knock on the window to wake up the son who could rush to the door and it may have had to literally pass his father's body to open the door for the paramedics to come in this was they haven't even they just buried a brother less than a year ago so he is transitioned we were all struggling we all gathered down at st. John's David was there Marlon we all rushed down to hug them to say what can we do but hold you and hug you we have no explanations and try to tell ourselves that Ozzy is in another room and another form or another floor in the household of God he's in another dimension every Sunday we have you stand for people that you lost and we remember the loved ones and we're very curious about the mystery of death aren't we we hope that there's something after this life that ain't hell hell hell here I always see our loved ones who've transistors transition they're in the land of the living we're in the land of the dying if I told you a few weeks ago when somebody asks you how you doing they're basically asking you how you're dying you said I'm dying pretty good today and if the day isn't going so I sign I am so good today hi you dying I'm dying all right we're all going to whatever that space in place is on the other side that's part of the mystery in my little Pentecostal experiences I don't say little they were they were loud and luscious well six years old and I remember having my first burst of transcendence in our culture everybody had our denomination we had to get the baptism of the Holy Ghost to be totally whelmed with Holy Ghost the reason that the Christian Church is called call it holy ghosts or holy spirits because they believe in our Noli ghosts and not all these spirits African culture believes in spirit possession that not only will a spirit possess a person but a tree in an animal a spirit can possess the weather that you can be possessed by an energy spirit or an essence and sometimes that was the dancing I've seen the whirling dervishes out of out of the the transcended part of Islam Sufis and how they would go into a trance spinning I saw down here at the Performing Arts Center with Rabbi Shimon in one side and Bishop slaughtery the Catholic bishop on the other side we didn't know what what the whirling dervishes were and when they started a whirling we started nursing who I said what what is that those men's straight and then they were stepped forward and just spin for several seconds and then step back in line not wobbly not anything and when it first happened I remembered my first Pentecostal experience of dancing in church and I my children were behind me with and I said wait look look kids watch this and I said to Bishops lottery and to Rabbi happy did y'all know this was gonna happen they said no we didn't know what this was I don't know where those men went what level or dimension they slipped into but it was something similar to what I went through as a kid in my transcendent moments I would never have gotten up and danced in church when I brought my I invited my friends in junior high school and I did there was a big old musical one Sunday and I brought my invited my friends one of my girlfriends and I I knew they'd love the music and then I started experiencing what we call the anointing and the indie there was an intensity there was a crescendo and the energy in the room and the people were rocking and they were clapping and they were you could hear them beaten throwing the drums are going in the musicals and we nobody was smoking pot nobody was a high on anything but spirit what essence and my sorry I said I felt it coming up on me and I said God please we used to call it being touched by God say God don't touch me today my girlfriend is here Nene and I was an inane team saved I don't need this line and bring these people here to make a fool in front of him before I could get it out I was out on the floor dancing all over that house all over that church and crying and when I came back to myself all my friends was dancing to all I've got the ghost that mode and he dead beautiful and I was out about 14 or 15 years I was so excited but that experience I can't I can describe it but I can't define it I can't explain it I'm mystified by it I think that there's something missing and I think this whole desire of people people to have transcendent experience whether it is with the a joint or LSD or some conscious altering experience we want something other than our material reality we want to find and experience the other self the fearless courageous self the only reason I've not been involved or necessarily drawn to drugs is because it's hard for me to imagine that anything could be any more ethereal than then the experiences I've had in my transcendent moments now seeds for me to talk that way because I was brought up in that culture where you go someplace and you get happy and you cry and you smile and you have a dream or you go into a trance I saw that stuff Lord if that happened here today y'all be running out of every winner touched that organ a little bit there Dave just just that Hammond organ I'm not gonna die gonna do that but I just [Applause] now imagine yourself in in a space that we could have done on the other keyboards because sometimes we go to those places in a song could be opera if you heard Gerald daughter sing of the last service it was just if they were powerful or it could be you heads a little raggedy because you've had a little extra communion wine when we were downtown at Trinity they have communion every service and Jesus is quoted as saying drinky all of it they have communion I mean the first time I took their wine it was so strong and potent I said I wouldn't used to it's about head started spinning and it was just a little wafer stuck nism and I said sir this you y'all need to tone this stuff down he so know we have he said we haven't only have an open Cup and and everybody can come and literally put their mouth on the cup and drink the wine so they have the stronger the wine the more of an antiseptic for germs I said all would tell me some but I'd get there sometime I'd get there and do their nine o'clock service there was one of 10 in 111 then we came in at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and every time the service finished we went back in its ancillary and drank tea all of it where the drink all the wine for that service and then all the wine for the next service by the time they got to the 1 o'clock service I will Stephanie they're like which I mean it was a ghost in there but it wasn't wholly your spirits and but it was one phone somebody said if you if where you find where you were with you where you find three or four official village you will find a fifth but then there were those times when the organ would play softly if we go into prayer and most people of color of color what even is Islamic people do but you notice the face you get a little serious you're really reverential you think you're going to encounter God so you go someplace we tell you close your eyes or bow your head people do that and we expected some type of a crescendo we expected some kind of translucent transcendent moment when we slipped out of ourselves and it's like we went into another room we went into another realm we slipped quietly into another way and another compartment of our own cells I get emotional just thinking about it and one there while there you hear stuff and sense stuff and see stuff of how to correct a relationship or deal with something on the job or in door what would have been in unendurable pain loss to eat insulting enslaved humiliated they learned how to go somewhere else the best we do now is with some type of mind-altering drug but the point is there is another place and another space I can only tell me out of my own experience it's so real they're so wonderful it is so free that's not just African spirituality that's human abilities to transcend itself [Music] opioid use or opioid it's a pain desensitize er we're all hurting we're all trying to manage our pain and so they take a drug to dismiss them or to desensitize them to a reality over which they have no control and they couldn't stand it so you don't demean somebody cuz they're taking a painkiller or you don't mistreat them because they're abused alcohol they're in pain and we don't show them how to monitor that in ways that are healthy just like we do health food that's our medicine people who eat special foods I like color dreams greens I'm learning how sir I'll teach you how to cook kale keep Sara cute Sarah Jordan can cook kale to make it bounce on my coloreds wrap your arms around yourself I Love You Lord and I lift my [Music] to worship you mice rejoice take joy in one you he [Music] that's a very spiritually cuddling song for me those kinds of experiences are cuddly and again that's not just African spirituality if your kids are looking for our joint or drug or your best friend are you all you're asking for is the other part of you that is guiltless and shameless and maybe even in your mind sinless you want to go back to your spiritual nudity the part when you were unedited and audited undressed and I'm telling you that's available to us all herself once again in Sam all right yes absolutely free while your hands are round hugging yourself you're hugging hugging your essence I want you first to realize and respect who you are we're living in an age of lots of science who used to sing about God he's got the whole world in his hand but when you hold your cell phone you've got your whole world in your hand these days what's happening what kind of transition is occurring thank you that there is the ageless spaceless nameless faceless reality we titled Ganpati the unknowable entity or intelligence in the farthest reaches and regions and rhythms of consciousness we experience our earth earnest our ethereal itself Thank You wonderful essence that you are real to us on the levels in which we experience and it understand you thank you for healing and helping us find relief and release from our bondage to pain and agony and hurt and anger unforgiveness and offense neutralize us give us generic passion for that dimensions that level that place that space that some of us call holy if we need a trance to meditate so we can spiritually medicate and be healed we say yes I take those same arms now and just stretch high to stretch up your back your bones that's good oh that's a little yoga so they'll now shake them shake the energy around sometimes a deadly negative energy sometimes this this process can make a tumor disappear I don't how can make a pain go away if you can relieve you from migraine headaches something can happen coz you can go there own your home by yourself and stay there as long as you can I get somebody one little little gentle high five and say I got you I got you we've got you we've got this [Music] now subtle you gonna get to hear David play that hammond b-3 but I want to do Matthew on the drums when we went to church we did this that beat that repetition the vibrations the syncopation [Applause] [Applause] something about the beat another in African spirituality I close with this we have a just a couple of ounces we're leaving they beat the drum the leather it was like a membrane and they would beat the drum and syncopation and repetition until spiritually it represented some kind of penetration into the realm broke into the skins and the energy from the higher realms will come into the lower realms and infuse us with a clarity and a glory that enabled us to endure life and to indulge life and to be in touch with our beings as human so the beat the drum the vibrations remember you got a hundred thousand miles of arteries in you and through those arteries are vaping and coursing blood or saltwater hemoglobin you're full of moisture and so vibrations are always occurring inside of you you are a living walking scientific spiritual alien from another planet god bless you we love you enjoy your life [Music] [Music] [Music] hey we're so happy you're visiting with us online today we love connecting with people all across the country and around the world sharing our powerful message of love beyond belief there's something new happening here you can now 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Channel: All Souls Unitarian

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Keywords: All Souls, Unitarian, Church, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Universalists, Universalism, Sunday, service, sermon, minister, Spiritual Practices, spirituality, Africa, Black History Month, essence, worship, divinity, Carlton D. Pearson, Contemporary

Id: J-uaSMojZss

Length: 43min 48sec (2628 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2019