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SANCTUARY HERE
In case you missed this week's
Sunday Celebration:
Spiritual Healing and Personal Transformation
Simply We are Here for Love
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Welcome to Agape East
Rev. Victoria Thomas
Spiritual Director
Welcome to the Agape East Spiritual Center! We are a modern Omni-faith-based community, a community committed to personal transformation, spiritual growth and conscious awakening to a life lived on purpose, by Grace. We embrace all religions, all spiritual paths, and all of humanity regardless of orientation, perspective, affiliation, and identity. All are welcome here.
No matter where you consider yourself on the spiritual journey, know that it is a Spirit of courage that chooses to be alive, walking a path of awakening consciousness at this time in human history on the planet. I bow to you and welcome you to a home of heart and soul.
We practice an awareness of the presence of God, the Absolute Love-Intelligence that creates everything out of Itself. We know that everyone is at one with this Power and Presence and as a community, we seek to be an environment for individuals to wake up to this spiritual truth. We seek right seeing, a knowing beyond the five senses that in back of appearances and circumstance there is unity, justice, wholeness, giving-ness, and love seeking to unfold as a world that works for everyone.
We activate spiritual practice rooted in self-love through meditation, affirmative prayer, sacred study,fellowship, tithing, and sacred service. We support each other in fellowship, love, compassion, and patience. This entails individual inner work of spiritual healing and personal transformation as well as the outer work of generosity, service to our communities, and taking a stand for social justice and racial equality.
We hope you will come back again and again so that we can know and love you as we all anchor the
transforming power of Unconditional Love together in our community, individual lives, our families and the world! Please browse our classes, events and regular weekly offerings and join us. Right where you are the Light and Love of Truth prevails and unfolds your very life!
Welcome to Agape East.
In Love and Light,
Rev. Victoria Thomas
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Monthly Themes
Gentleness
It is the time of year to celebrate the Holy Days with giving, sharing, and togetherness. The holiday season can be hard for some folks who may be missing loved ones or may be struggling with security needs. Everything tends to intensify during this time, so as we move into the season, let us remember to apply gentleness to everything and everyone, including ourselves. Suspend judgement and assumptions. Seek to understand first, rather than to be understood. Take longer pauses to genuinely drop into the heart space of compassion before you start speaking verbally, or silently in your head. Get more sleep when you can and talk to yourself with loving kindness when you first open your eyes to start the day. If you are struggling, reach out for prayer support, someone to talk to, a massage, a 12-step group, anything that will demonstrate self-love and self-care. It may not immediately solve all the issues, but it will build on a habit of gentle loving kindness for yourself. You deserve that. When we can be like the gentle deer, Grace happens.
In Love and Light,
Reverend Victoria
GIVE FORTH
When the harvest is plenty, when you can stop and recognize that there is enough to share, enough time, enough understanding, enough patience, enough compassion, enough safety and security, you become a light in the world.
There’s always enough of this because you are an individualized expression of God. In God all things are possible. In God is our source. In God we live and move and have our being and God lives and moves and has Its Holy Presence in every cell, every mitochondria of our being.
This is the truth principle that we must come to understand to reestablish ourselves so that we can give forth to the world, in forgiveness, love, generosity, our resources. There are enough resources already on the planet to feed and clothe and house all 8 billion of us. You are here to bring in this age where we live in a world that works for everyone. This is done by giving forth.
In Love and Light,
Rev. Victoria
Keeping the Eye Single
The most powerful thing we can do for ourselves is to keep our vision for our self and our life lifted upward and onward. This is more than just positive thinking. It is a single-eyed focus on the unchanging Reality of Truth, that the spirit of the living God created you out of Its wholeness and perfection, placed all Its infinite potential inside of you, and wills for you to be fully expressed, supplied, and loved.
If we can keep our eye stayed on this truth, then no matter what is happening in our circumstances, our identity as perfect Spirit and our purpose of being the light unto the world, remain clear and available in our Consciousness.
In Love and Light,
Rev. Victoria
Creating Conviction
Like cement that holds a structure together, conviction in our beliefs, perceptions, and ultimately knowledge holds our self-view and worldview in place.
Our destiny is to live in Joy and Bliss, to birth a new worldview of a sustainable, free, and just global society, and to solidify it with the conviction of our soul: Our knowledge of our own eternal nature, Pure Consciousness, Love, and Light.
Our function as seekers, lovers, givers, and peace makers is to do whatever we have to do to create that conviction for ourselves. Studying the wisdom of indigenous elders, ancient Vedic science, Quantum Field and Unified Field Theory, gives us much fuel for our conviction in Divinity. But in order for Truth Principles to become an embodied knowledge, we must practice affirmative prayer and meditation. When we do this, we create a direct, subjective experience that validates our conviction in the Invisible.
Then, our worldview lifts from individual needs-based perspectives to a consciousness of conviction in the power and presence of this One thing we call Spirit, Unity, God.
In Love and Light,
Rev. Victoria
Retreat to Higher Ground
When stormy weather hits, I like to close the blinds, turn off devices, and make tea. Something about the messiness and chaos outside, gives me permission to prepare for comfort, restoration, reflection, turning within, and retreat. Who knows what insights one can find in 30 minutes of journaling, or reading, or meditation?
When we stop our selves to take time to pull away from the world, from the five senses, from our identification with thoughts and feelings, we are getting up into the higher ground of our consciousness, our awareness of Self. Let’s not wait for stormy weather, literally and metaphorically! Let’s give ourselves permission each day to do this courtship with the Divine, this nurturing of the soul. Sometimes we need 20 minutes, sometimes five days or maybe two weeks, and when we emerge, we stand triumphant, aligned with our own eternal nature. Just a little effort toward this alignment brings Grace.
In Love and Light,
Rev. Victoria
Integrity
When we misbehaved, my 5th grade teacher used to make us write, “Freedom is the responsibility to do what is right, not the right to do as you please.” Since then, I have always equated my own true freedom with integrity. Man’s laws are usually flawed, changeable interpretations, bias, the list goes on because humans do not always do what is right. Regardless, we are still responsible for our own integrity, even if others fail.
In spiritual adulthood, I learned that when we have true freedom, we have choice in how we look at the world, how we integrate insights and setbacks, how we feel about anything, how we align our lives with Natural Law, growth, expansion, generosity, and love. These are choices that can never be taken away by any “supreme court.” So, I remind myself of what I know: Divine Law does not change. God is always in integrity with Itself. God, Spirit, Creator, Universal Presence, whatever you want to call It, does not wax or wane, ebb or flow, give or take. It does not contradict Itself, hurt Itself, withhold from Itself, or limit Itself, ever, in any way. Remembering this gives wind to the sails of my own transcendence over the world of effects and helps me to be in the world, but not of it.
In Love and Light,
Rev. Victoria
Illumination
This month as we enjoy the summer and all that life offers, let us welcome the Illumination of Love into our hearts and minds. We become illumined and we illuminate our surroundings as we bring into the light of our Christ- Consciousness, all that would contradict the Truth. Christ means Light. There is only First Causation, God. This Power does not contradict Itself. It is Absolute and we are wholly one with It.
The entire Cosmos is working to express more of Itself through you, its own creation, as a blissful, healthy, abundant life! This is the Light of Truth. So, no matter what story is playing out in the mind, in our collective human narrative, in your environments, the Love that God is, is seeking Its demonstration through your Consciousness. It does mean we have to ignore the default mode thinking and emotional patterns that rear their heads from time to time, like the patterns of lack, living small, false beliefs of unworthiness, fear of insecurity.
As we bracket all our reactions and responses to life’s contradictions of this Truth and bring circumstances, situations, events, opinions, fears, and worries into the Love of our hearts and the Light of our Christ mind, we are lifted in Illumination for all. We become the Light on the hill. This is what our cities, nations, and our planet needs.
In Love and Light,
Rev. Victoria
Play
This month at Agape East, we celebrate the art of play. What better time to find our inner joy and exuberance for life than this month of May, with the beauty of spring and Mother’s Day. When I was little, I would spend hours alone, and sometimes with friends, in my room and outside playing. I had Barbie dolls, plastic horses, rubber alligators, and an invisible snake named Snakey.
As adults, the responsibilities of school, jobs and family can dampen our innate urge to relax, joke, connect, create, fantasize, pretend, and play. Now is our time to cast off the judgements of surface mind and find a way to create the vibration of playing. We can make play with almost any task, like chores and cleaning, by a simple attitude adjustment, I feel. Art, gardening, dancing, singing, coloring books, writing, music, exercise, whatever you can find, find it and make it fun by simply affirming that it’s “play time.”
The vibration we live in when we play is the same as the vibration we live in when we pray, a high state of mind, a little fantasy and pretend, and a big daily spoonful of joy. I like to say that life is a prayer. This month, I say life is a play. Have fun!
In Love and Light,
Rev. Victoria
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Agape East Mission Statement
Agape East Spiritual Center is an inclusive virtual community based in Coastal Virginia dedicated to: recognizing, honoring and nurturing the dignity and uniqueness of all people by creating efforts to consciously, financially and actively support those who have been racially-marginalized or disadvantaged; social activism and legislation that seeks to equalize social imbalance; and transforming environmental conditions that have been impacted as a result of human interference or mistreatment of the planet.
Through devoted practice of universal spiritual principles embodied in the New-Thought-Ageless Wisdom teachings, we are agents of transformation individually, in our other communities and in our governmental institutions.
Our beloved community embraces all religions and serves within all aspects of society to reveal the underlying perfection and harmony of the Universe. We embrace the transformational and evolutionary impulse of the planet through our spiritual practice, sacred service and unconditional love.
mission
Agape East Purpose Statement
Our purpose, as an intentional spiritual community, is to be a living environment for individuals to realize that they are unique emanations of God, the Love-Intelligence governing the Universe. We embody an understanding of our oneness with God and we consciously practice this truth in our everyday lives. Through the New-Thought-Ageless Wisdom teachings and the energy of unconditional love, we are committed to individual transformation and being a beneficial presence on the planet. SIMPLY – WE ARE HERE FOR LOVE.
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Agape Principles
Absolute Goodness is the substance, the source and the supply of all existence. This aspect of Life is always in integrity with itself, which means that it cannot contradict its own laws, nature and relationship to its creation.
All Existence is the manifest form and activity of Spirit. This Presence is equally present in space, time places and in all persons, as well as beyond time, space and manifest creation. Ours is a holographic universe in which every part, that which is seen and unseen, is an emanation of the un-manifest whole.
Every person is made in the image and likeness of God and is capable of awakening to this realization and giving expression to the qualities of unconditional love, compassion, wisdom, bliss, peace and creativity.
Every individual has been given the power of free choice and is therefore self-responsible for their evolution, following a path suited to their individual state of evolving consciousness.
We live in a non-static, ever-evolving Universe, which is the source of our individual evolutionary impulse and capacity to expand into our fullest potential.
Agape Spiritual Practices
The following seven spiritual practices form the matrix of individual spiritual evolution. While there are many adjunct practices that assist in the expansion of consciousness, it is these seven that have proved themselves to accelerate spiritual awakening of practitioners of the world’s wisdom traditions.
In meditation practice the practitioner pays un-distractible attention to Reality. All meditation techniques share a common purpose: to awaken awareness, another word for self-realization. Meditation stills the mind, increases the capacity to intuitively receive the guidance of Spirit, and opens the heart’s desire to serve as a beneficial presence on the planet.
Affirmative prayer grounds the practitioner in a solid awareness of oneness with Spirit. The power of affirmative prayer sets in motion a process of healing false beliefs that prevents an individual from fully realizing their spiritual inheritance. Prayer is an intimate communion with the Spirit in the language of one’s own heart.
At every stage of growth and development on the spiritual path it is important to maintain a “beginner’s mind.” Remaining teachable acknowledges that spiritual truth is limitless, so there is always the opportunity to rise to a more profound level of understanding, wisdom and practice through spiritual study.
Committed participation in a spiritual community accelerates our spiritual evolution. When individuals gather together to meditate and pray, their united consciousness contributes to the spiritual progress of each individual. The community also offers the opportunity to cultivate patience, humility, compassion and selflessness. When we need encouragement on the path, the community is there to hold the high watch for us.
As we mature in our understanding of the law of circulation, it becomes obvious that the sharing of our financial resources, our talents and skills is at the heart of tithing. And, in grateful recognition of the teachings and teachers who have been and are our spiritual benefactors, we tithe to them to support the dissemination of their teaching and mission.
