The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs

There once was a goose that lived on a farm and she had one job to do- lay eggs for the farmer. But sadly, she created the perfect nest and for many years the farmer would come to check and she would have produced nothing.

She was a lover of all things that mattered. She loved Truth. She obeyed commands not out of fear but Love. She loved others with an unfiltered unashamed Love that went beyond anything human. She laid down her life to pick up the life that was offered her. But there was one thing that was elusive to her and that was her sense of true identity.

In Truth, she longed to touch the face of her highest self and of the Devine.

In her beginning stages of life, she was left abandoned, hurt, and detached from. Left alone to find her own way home. With no homing beacon to let her know that she was loved, cared for, and wanted- that she was safe. There was no one to remind her of her original origin and amazing personal power. Or so she believed.

Her spirit knew that she came from the ultimate Source of Love. But as she became tethered to the stories that were being told to her. As she claimed each one as her own and began to retell her self them, her memory began to fade and it became more elusive and distant. As she grew with each passing year fear became her nemesis and her greatest ally, causing her to constantly and consistently feel the game of “tug of war” happening within her.   

Her memory loop kept playing her long playlists of past failures in attempts at depositing doubt, delay, and division. She was daily reminded of the broken thugs and slippery thieves that stole the love that she and her kind were so freely giving away. Returning to her warped forms of selfish love, all because they had become conditioned to believe that love was finite and limited.

In the midst of 7 billion-plus strangers, she hid her true self away and could not re-connect to the higher parts of herself that longed to lift her out of the lowly existence she found herself abiding in. She had allowed disappointment to create and grow an identity of worthlessness.

Until one day the goose laid the golden egg. The farmer became elated and praised her for doing the impossible. He now came to love the goose as a commodity to produce for him.

It was during a time of open windows that unexpectedly undiminished love had begun to grow inside of her and it was such a mythical experience that it often took her out of her comfort and security to become vulnerable and lay down the selfish ambitions she had begun to persistently pursue.

Hope returned to her and she began to believe again and allow the faith of a new journey to strip away the hard, callous wall of debris that she had erected with the lowest level of impulses to protect that which she was commissioned to give away on the day of her heavenly assignment.

As love grew and developed and reached full maturity it carried her with it into the moment of her highest act of courage, bravery, and freedom.

The birth of another spiritual being.

At this moment she knew everything and that truly she knew nothing at all. That day at that moment in and out of time, the veil was so thin that she remembered where she came from and why she was on this low- level planet. This spirit that she was safely transporting into this realm came as a messenger to remind her of her true assignment. And but for a brief moment, all was well as fortune had favored the brave.

Then the goose began to die.

The poison that the farmer used to kill the goose that laid the golden egg was slow-acting and would allow the goose to continue to lay a few more eggs before it would be forced to permanently close its eyes forever. He was afraid and could not risk everyone else finding out about what the goose could do.

With each golden egg, the eyes of her understanding were opened until she was fully awake and understood that she was to transcend beyond the contamination of this moral environment. It was the death of a thousand lifetimes that was now quickening her to become fully alive.

With Matrix-like movement, she began to move outside of the confines of time fully aware of the power of collective consciousness.  

 With renewed fervor, she began with her spirit to plan with full presence and power. She no longer needed permission as she had the keys firmly grasped within her hands.

No more avoiding reality and allowing the movie screen to dictate to her what was supposedly real and was in actuality a well-executed illusion.

She was fully connected to the Source. Love had helped her find her way home; she was ready now for ascension.

So, the goose understood that she was not here to lay golden eggs for a selfish, poor farmer that operated out of greed and fear. Her impending death was more of a victory than a diabolical scheme. It would allow her to shed the skin of limitation and pick up the torch and carry the flame of greatness without cognitive dissonance.   

She was no longer dispassionate and disconnected from the heart. The Source was leading and guiding her into her shining spear of true purpose, away from worrying about yesterday, today, or tomorrow. She now had a vantage point of the highest vibration. She was perfection in progress.

www.423TrainingU.com  Charmaine Hinds 2020

 

 

 

 

Teach me how to love

Just when I think I know how to love I learn another lesson. My life so far has been a series of lessons on how to recognize, receive and give love. I want to believe I am an expert on how to love but even after 51 years of attempts and many hours of practice on multiple people and a myriad of teachings devoted to this very topic I sometimes still feel like a novice.

Love seemed like such an easy word and concept to grasp. Children do it so easily, yet as the lessons and traumas of life set in somehow we unlearn this magical mystical thing that should be as easy as breathing.

This week I learned that my go to is selfishness. I think of me first. My ego, my reputation, my wants, my needs, my desires, my motivations, mine. These are the first thing I think of instinctively. My second thought is what does God think and my third is to take a moment to think of the person, place , situation, dilemma and how they will be affected.
True sacrifice is a lifelong pursuit that was shown to me this week.

I was challenged to love someone that I say I love all the time, yet to sacrifice for them took a minute.

It wasn’t anything life shattering or complicated just a battle of my inner self trying to be kind, thinking of someone else other than me, letting go of material possessions in an act of unselfish love.

This should have been instinctive and easy yet there was a battle none the less. I surrendered in the end and when my heart, mind and soul had settled in, then the joy came. But in the process I thought about how I have only ever wanted to be a vessel of the greatest love ever and yet the concept of this love has not yet fully grasped me and taken over yet.

My ego is still winning and “ all flesh must die” is the message I am now embracing.
I began to formulate my ideas and beliefs about love through my childhood family and it was very traumatic. I then went to learn love in a marriage and after 30 plus years, I am still learning.

God gave me 5 amazing spirit beings and they have been some of the best teachers of love for me.

As a world traveller and a missionary I have displayed acts of love to complete strangers.
Family, friends, co workers, strangers and authority figures have all taught me about this intricate word that we apply to so many things that God says He is( love).
When I sit in the love that God is then I realize that I don’t know what love is and I need to allow Him to teach me again.

I once started underlying the word love or heart in the bible as I read it to see how many times it was in the lessons I was gleaning and it showed up quite a lot. Not to mention all the other lessons that originate or lead to love.

They say that we are all in the pursuit of happiness- I wonder what our world would look like if we all began to desire the pursuit of real love?

Charmaine 

Not Here Anymore

My heart aches, when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

A tear falls down, with the blinking of my eyes

I wipe it away, but I still hear my heart cry

My head knows that you’re not here, you’ve gone far away

Yet my heart remembers, like it was yesterday

I can’t take this pain much more

I want our life back, back like it was before

My heart aches, when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is here aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

Time should have stood still and waited for me to catch my breath

Cause I wasn’t ready to release you to go just yet

Cause you weren’t just here, you were a real part of me

Intertwined within my life in ways I couldn’t see

I know that this is life, I embrace that it’s real

But grasping the truth, doesn’t change how I feel

My heart aches when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is here aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

Every morning I wake up knowing “life goes on”

But would somebody please tell me, when will this pain be gone?

I know you`re in a better place,  where you always wanted to be

Yet the thought of being apart from you, is just not consoling me

 I whisper softly … “I want to let you go”,

But my heart screams loudly- NO!

My heart aches when I think about you

My heart aches, I don’t know just what to do

My heart is here aching, feels like its breaking

Don’t want to live my life one day without you

 But you’re not here with me… anymore

For Tony- Charmaine Hinds  November 10, 2009

If You Like Pinacoladas…

One of my biggest lessons in life has been attached to something I have continually shared with people I have worked with for years.
“You can not make Pinacolodas when all you have been given is lemons and water. Your best bet is to just add your own kind of sugar and make the best damn lemonade you possible can!”.

When they begin to tell me about all the expectations that have been placed upon them , whether they are fictional from within their minds or real, placed there by people who have no concept of how, when, where and what it takes to accomplish the task being done, I share emphatically to them to say the following;
“When you get me a coconut and a pineapple, then and only then can I attempt to maybe think about creating a Pinacoloda. but not without a little bit of my special rum”.

I believe my black history teacher in my public school is the one that started teaching me this when he taught me about my circumstances in this world as a young black woman emigrated here from the island of Jamaica. For me the difference was that I also was the first generation in every arena in my family.
People have always asked me to do things and I have wanted to do my best with excellence and go up and above. But unfortunately. I haven’t always had the practical or tangible resources to complete the task at hand.

If you look on the outward it seems like the playing field is even and the odds are not stacked against me, but in truth there are invisible factors that have continually hindered my progress all of these years. Now don’t get me wrong, I have risen above my circumstances in amazing ways. I swim like my life depends on it, but make no mistake, these are lemonade circumstances and the struggle has been real!

I did not have a generational lineage of wealth, power and prestige that gives me the advantage afforded to so many other people. In our family we didn’t have fancy homes, money for extra curricular activities, well tutored, cultivated education, connections in business and society, a cottage or annual vacation to exotic places, to give us a level up for our next generation.

No, I come from a line of slaves and blue-collar workers, (why do they call them that again?) that had to work twice as hard just to scrape by and make a living. I was never given an example of a married couple making it to their 30th wedding anniversary to pattern my own marriage off of, but I did it. I was a first generation everything, high school graduate, all my children from one marriage, an entrepreneur, an ACE ( adverse Childhood Experiences) overcomer, and all of this came with Pinacolada expectations.

When they ask me how I have gotten the necessary ingredients to make something that slightly resembles a Pinacolda, I let them know about my secret ingredient that makes everything taste good. Faith.

“Now Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see”

If I have had an unfair advantage at all, this was it. I have had Faith.

I started out making the best lemonade on the corner, and with some time and experience and with unshakeable Faith I have been blessed with a coconut, a pineapple, and the best rum made from the sugarcane of Jamaica. That’s why “I love me some Pinacoldas”.

So to all you “Lemonaders” out there- let me give you a little hope... just add FAITH and see what happens.

Sense of Direction

I have always had a very uncanny sense of direction. It is a gift and a treasure that is a part of the essence of who I am.

"Sense of direction" is the ability to know one's location and perform wayfinding. It is related to cognitive maps, spatial awareness, and spatial cognition

When I was just a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years of age, my mother took us on a trip to visit my Aunt (her cousin) in New York City, New Jersey to be exact. One day after feeling cooped up in the house my mother decided to take me and my little sister for a walk. We walked around the streets until we were feeling tired and then my mother verbally told us that we were done and that we would head back now. We walked for a while until I noticed that we had passed the same corner with the shop with the pretty clothes in the window twice. I grabbed my mothers coat and tugged at it and said “mom you are going in the wrong way” she shrugged me off like I was just a little kid who had never traveled anywhere and didn’t have the faintest idea about what I was talking about. So, after we went around the same street with the same markers that I had noticed the first two times we had passed them, I saw my mother become frustrated and go into a shop and say something to the lady at the counter and then come out looking even more worried. I would learn later that my mother didn’t know the address of where my aunt lived. By this time my little sister who was only 4 at the time was complaining that she was tired and I saw my mother get even more frustrated. I was a brave little girl and I took a hold of my mothers’ hand and told her to “come on I know the way home”. Sure, enough I used my little girl memory and within 15 minutes I had followed the photographic pictures that I had stored in my mind and we were home at my aunt’s house. It was brave of my mother to listen to me, but I feel she had no choice but to trust me. She shared this story often to explain to people how special she thought I was.

I would rely on this “special” gift many times through out my life and it would direct me back to places, people and things.

Once when we were on a visit to Israel with a group of worship dancers. We were heading back to the apartment that we had rented and we accidentally got on the wrong bus to go home. When we got off the bus to try to find our way, I recognized a bush type of tree that we had walked by earlier that Sabbath" morning and I instantly knew the way to get us back home.   One woman that we had rented the apartment with said to me that she felt it was in the other direction. She had been to Israel many times before and stayed at this apartment, but I knew she was incorrect. We had a standoff and I decided that I was confident about where we were to go and it was late at night and I didn’t want to get lost in the dark. This posed a problem for the other ladies as they had to choose which one of us to follow. Personally, I think it made no sense to follow after me but I was confident and my sense of direction was something that if you had known me for any amount of time, even though it seemed illogical, you would trust my pattern. All the ladies decided to go with me and the one woman walked in the opposite direction. As we walked the streets of Jerusalem I pointed out in the dark, to the other women land marks that we had passed earlier on that morning on our walk into the old city. The women couldn’t remember but they trusted me very similarly in the way that my mother had that chilly day in Jersey. As we rounded that last street and they saw the lights of the apartment building I could tell that they were stunned that I knew the way and that the other woman was in fact lost. We were right about going in this direction but we made one crucial mistake. The other woman had the key to the apartment so we had to wait outside in the dark for another 2 hours till she found her way back home that evening. Lesson learned.

On that same trip it was our final days in Israel and we on our second visit back to the wailing wall. We had one more gate to visit and had been unable to locate it and we decided to go back to Sukkot Hallel a 24- hour worship place located on Mt Zion. Again, I told the ladies the way I thought we should go to get there as we were walking, they felt that it was in another direction. We came to an impasse where we discussed that we would just go over the hill and see from a higher place where we were and then decide what to do from there. As we came to the top of the hill, right there to our right was the last gate that we had trouble finding and over the other side was the 24- hour place of worship we were trying to get to. Again, my sense of direction was right and we were right where we needed to be. The ladies asked me how did I know this was where we were supposed to go and to be truthful, I did not have a logical solution, I just knew.

I have used this gift in so many amazing situations. When I think back about it, I realize that I have come to rely on this amazing uncanny sense of direction in every area of my life.

Patois Jamaican Creole Language

I lost my language and have recently retrieved it back as a treasure but there is no place in my life to use it. Though my husband and children understand Patois, they don’t speak Patois, my close friends and work associates don’t speak Patois- where is it appropriate to speak my native language?

The way my ancestors chose to communicate was amazing it was created out of necessity and beauty, innovation and creativity. Patois Is not just like broken English, it is so much more!

They wanted us slaves not to be able to communicate and rebel, they wanted us to assimilate and become civilized like them, they wanted to make themselves superior by dominating us on their terms.

This simple Pidgin language created into creole by the sheer act of being forced to let go and forced to assimilate is Patois.

I was taught Patois like every child that lives in a bilingual household, by hearing it spoken to me and by speaking it back. Unfortunately, I was corrected by white and black teachers in school whenever I used it and laughed at by my brothers and family friends, as I wasn’t immersed in the culture and my accent was a bit more Canadian. So speaking the language, brought shame and hurt with it. There was no pride in speaking Patois- I was praised and rewarded for English. So I excelled at the English language and in the process lost my native tongue.

I remember the language and how to formulate the words but my tongue has been silent for too many years, but then so has the roots of my heritage.

 Patois has the true components of a language and can be taught and understood.

And like many of the things in my culture I have had to redeem it so that I could see the true value and treasure that it is to any Jamaican, even if you live in the diaspora. How is it any different from the language of the Spanish or French? We would never tell a Hispanic or person from another language not to speak their native language. Why is Patois any different. Is it because you don’t like the confidence and attitude that comes when we speak Patois? because you can’t understand what we are saying and don’t want to take the time to learn? The powers to be try to insinuate that we are not speaking the one language that has dominated the world for years, but why should we?- we are Jamaican!

I would love to write a book in Patois to honor the treasured Jamaicans! It would be my ode to the land that I love ... Jamaica.

Me a go duh it yea man!

Paper brown bag girl with the sparkly green eyes

If a color could evoke jealousy then green it was, hazel to be exact
They never saw me, just the color of my fair skin and the unique way my cat eyes glittered with flecks of green and light brown.
I stood tall, but they still looked at me as if I was an oddity, something rare, to google at and to say “ how beautiful you are”                                                                                                                    

As if my one quality was in them trying to figure out what type of mullato breed I was.  

Mixed up and hated for the way I settled in between.                                           

Not black, not white just a mix in between.
But she is paper brown so she is able to toggle between here and there and… nowhere
Brown girl in the ring tra, la, la, la, la,
That was not me
I was the light skin girl in between ha, ha, ha, ha,


Why do you hate my hair so long and thick like a mane that you tug on it till I cry,cut it into a afro to prove that your children are black too.                                                                                                 

Yet it does not equivalate, to validate the entrance fee into the world of black where one drop is enough, as long as you know our history and don’t deny the struggle.                    

Under the railroad she goes to find her heritage lineage and struggle within to settle within her own skin
Pigment that is strong in summer to give her the tan glow that all whites seek and in winter she is the ghost that peers out from behind, behind her greenish hazel eyes.
They sparkle and they shine with light when she is alive, fully living the life that Creator has endowed her with, after she has traveled many moons to get here.
Get here? get where?
What is the destination if life is truly all about living?
No more paper bags we now want the plastic
plastic, fantastic, fake and not real
With the truth of the situation with which we can not deal
All shades of the same color but with blood that is still red, red blood that flows from my veins and still stains the same as the cocoa, chocolate, milk white or Boston tea, paper bag and tan
Spectrum of multi color that makes up light , human struggle, earthly fight, hold my chest tight with breath that is held to see of they will choose me or if I am good enough or if the hatred because of my difference will win again

Half breed

Like the house nigger had a choice whether to be bred or not to be bred

That is the question!

Your answer that has made her the receiver of the field niggers rage and the pull of the plantation master’s lust, thrusting her paper bag skin into growth as she births the nastiness that happens to anything that He calls good and is defiled by evil.

Yet her paper brown baby is innocent till found guilty. Guilty of being born into a world with standards as unrealistic as plastic that holds in the heat and creates wrinkles that ripple out to affect time yesterday and tomorrow.

So back to the paper bag challenge – Paper brown bag girl with the sparkly green eyes.