Understanding Your Choice: A Spiritual Journey with Dr. Etta Jackson

What if you could journey through the stars to connect with Christ and access spiritual entities? This is just a taste of the enlightening conversation we had with Dr. Etta Jackson, CEO of the Institute for Conscious Change, in our latest episode of Spiritual Gumbeaux. Dr. Jackson not only shares the details of her personal spiritual journey that began at a young age, but also gives us a glimpse into her profound understanding of her role in the liberation of humanity. One of the most captivating moments of the episode is when she recounts a spiritual experience that occurred while living in New York and a divine command to write a book, titled "Understanding Your Choice."

In our deep dive into the world of spirituality and the stars, we navigate the concept of incarnation and remembering. We discuss how choosing to forget our spiritual identities can actually help us experience the physical world with a greater understanding. Dr. Jackson also explains the concept of making spiritual agreements before incarnation, and how this contributes to the collective liberation of humanity. The episode wraps up with an exploration of how our spiritual identities can help us access the divine. This thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Jackson is one that's sure to resonate with anyone interested in spirituality, stars, and the journey of life.

You can learn more about Dr. Jackson and her books at her website, ettadjackson.com

This is part 1 of 2

Transcript

Rev Lynne: 0:22

Welcome listeners to another episode of Spiritual Gumbeaux. Spiritual Gumbeaux is a podcast for spiritual leaders who choose not to lead by Western leadership theories but through what we understand as a level of consciousness or the Holy Spirit. On this episode of Spiritual Gumbeaux, I am delighted, excited, energized, to welcome Dr Etta Jackson, who is the CEO of the Institute for Conscious Change. And just a little bit about Etta. Etta holds a BAA in biology from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. She has two master's degrees, one psycoanalytic counseling and development from Long Island University in Brooklyn and the other in administrative leadership and supervision from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. But the most exciting thing, of course, is her doctorate in philosophy and leadership and change from Antioch University. Whoo, whoo, and a big shout out to Antioch.

Rev Lynne: 1:31

Yeah,// I met Dr Jackson in school in our graduate leadership class, but of course she surpassed me and sped off and was finished and I'm still muddling around. But Dr Jackson's persona in class, as well as her intensity, sparked my own sense of personal engagement with her and I felt like this is somebody who should be on Spiritual Gumbeaux because she is a proven leader. Etta, your background and experience is so varied and broad that this podcast will probably be in two or three breaks and I really wanted to begin with your spiritual journey and if you could share with our listeners I did about your spiritual journey. What got you to this point?

Dr. Etta Jackson: 2:37

Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me, Lynne, to share my experiences with your audience, and it's been a pleasure being your colleague in class for a couple of years before I graduated and glad that we maintain our relationship. So you know, it's difficult to say, to respond to the question, when did my spiritual journey begin? Because I don't see my life as having as being classified as a spiritual journey. My whole life, my whole life, what I know and what I've known, from I was young and I would have any definition of what spiritual means, is that I have just felt an unbroken connection with this life and and I'm going to say it like I know it the place that I came from, here. So then, that's how I, that's how I know it and understand it, because, from I was so young, Lynne, I just knew that I came here.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 3:59

Then I came here from another place and, of course, I was born like everybody else, but this is an intentfulness to me coming here, and I, always from a child, just I, was telling my mother at a very young age, you know, that I came here to help with the liberation of humanity. So, and though without even having any intellectual understanding of what that is, that's what I knew in the cells of my body. So I was speaking out of my body, really, and less from any kind of intellectual, spiritual journey. It's not, you know. So this is how I classify my life.

Rev Lynne: 4:53

That's funny you said that because we just had Children's Sabbath day and our speaker for Children's Sabbath day. I think the core of her talk a young woman was listen to your children, yes, and to hear you say that as a child, that was something that you knew early on. And how many people don't listen to their children. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Yes, a spiritual moment is this notion of listening to children, because maybe they know something that you don't.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 5:27

Yes, Because when I was saying these things to my mother, she was asking me where do you get these things from?

Dr. Etta Jackson: 5:34

You know, and I used to tell her that what I know is not in my head, it's in every cell of my body. So it was a complete body knowingness of having come here and that I had this purpose. And of course, it was not until my life unfolded. I began to get clarity consciously, intellectually, I should say, about what that look like. What does helping with the liberation of humanity look like? I just knew this, and so from a child I've had this golden white light that has enveloped me. You know, it's like a tube of light and the light informs me. There's no audible sound, there's no voice, but it's like a download of information into my being and I've always felt this oneness with this light. It's like I am the lighter one, I am in the light, the light is with me and is me, and I am the lighter one, and so I have always. This is how I have what I've always known and that's what my experience has always been, you know, growing up, then information, I think one of the, I think one of the most significant, you know, you know I've written the books and one of the most significant experiences with the light and I think, the beginning of a formulation, intellectually, of what it is that coming to the planet to help with the liberation of humanity might look like Is when I was living in New York, in Brooklyn, New York, and standing at the street light, this light again, it's a shaft of light, like a tube of light.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 7:42

I overshadowed me, as it has always done for since I was young said to me write this title down. It's the title of a book that you will write. And I was like I looked up and what? Me Write a book. I don't know how to write any book, you know. And I'm looking up, you know the light and arguing you know what book? Me write a book.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 8:17

And then the title that was given to me was Understanding Your Choice, and I looked at it and I was directed to write it down. So I got into my pocketbook, took out my little notepad and did exactly. I was as I was told and I wrote down the title, Understanding Your Choice, but was just totally, you know, flabbergasted by this and I told the light I am not a writer, I don't know how to write any book. I you know. I don't know what understanding your choice meant. You got the wrong person and it's not me. And I'm going on with this and but I just wrote it down like I was told, and put it in my pocketbook and went on about my life and kept arguing with myself, you know, and the light you know like you know, I know you have the wrong person.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 9:17

And I just figure over the years, the light would realize it had the wrong person. //Okay, okay,// exactly, you know. You know in hindsight it's so funny, you know, and I'm sure the light is just laughing too and clearly, and now, you know, years later, I recognize that I had agreed to write this book Right. So this went on for 25 years. Every five to 10 years the title would pop up in my mind again and I would be saying the same thing it's not me, you have the wrong person. I don't know how to write any book, you know, I don't know what understanding your choice meant. And that's when, back and forth for 25 years, and I left New York by then, and what came back? I knew Spirit wanted me back in New York and I came back to New York temporarily.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 10:20

A friend of mine who was going to Kenya she was going to Kenya to help work with the government for the AIDS crisis there back in 2000, and sent out an email to her friends on her mailing list saying that she is going to Kenya and need somebody to stay in her apartment for three months. And I just knew, intuitively that meant me, because I knew I felt Spirit pulling me back to New York, so I wrote her back and I said me, I'll take it. I'll take your apartment for three months. And I got into her apartment she lived in Harlem and about a week and a half after being in her apartment, the light said to me it is now time to write the book. This is 25 years later, because this was the fall of 1975, when I was given this book to write, but, interestingly, I wasn't arguing anymore. I think by then. I you know well.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 11:26

First of all, when it's when the light said it's now time to write the book, at first I said what book? And then I quickly remembered, of course, that book, Understanding Your Choice, and I stopped arguing because I recognized that this was something that I had agreed to do. And no, it was not the wrong person and I was that person who was supposed to write this book. And so I started writing the book. And what was also so interesting, Lynne, is that on the bookshelf of my friend's apartment, in my friend's apartment, is a book titled, How to Write a Book. So Spirit had set it up perfectly, and so I was like okay, I got it. You know, this is my assignment and I now accept it. And I just, and then there was a computer that she had in the bedroom that I was staying in. So there was a computer, there was a book on the bookshelf how to Write a Book and it's like, okay, you know, so I no argument from me anymore, I just began to write.

Rev Lynne: 12:40

So let me ask you a question. This light, this light that appears, this is intriguing to me.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 12:49

Yes.

Rev Lynne: 12:51

And it's intriguing to me because a lot of times when you, my experience has been with people who have had engagement with spiritual forces, whatever you want to put it out have been in the level of consciousness, of sleep. This is one you're one of the few that I am aware of that I've been able to talk with or interview in spiritual direction and that kind of thing whose engagement was conscious Meaning, you know.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 13:31

I know.

Rev Lynne: 13:31

I'm not sleep, I'm up and engaged. So if I want to maybe delve into that a little bit more. And then the other piece is in the in the Ethiopian Bible. People don't, it's not the most, it's the oldest Bible. It has 81 books, as opposed to the Bible that's been trunk, I guess, either word.

Rev Lynne: 14:03

But they talk in the book of Enoch. It talks about this engagement with Celestials. The Celestial is and it is the only Bible, that the book of Enoch is the only Bible, this Ethiopian Bible, which has been dismissed by what we call Orthodox communities, orthodox theology, but it is the oldest and most illustrative. //Maybe has not been rediscovered yet,// and there are those who will say they don't want to rediscover it.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 14:37

They will be, and because this is the age when all of that kind of knowledge is must come to the surface.

Rev Lynne: 14:46

So, but it actually talks about in the book of Enoch this coming together of the Celestial beings and humanity and those Celestial beings. It sounds kind of crazy and far fetched, but those Celestial beings connected and produced other humans produced what's on earth. And so I'm sitting here and I'm thinking to myself maybe it is one of those descendants.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 15:19

Yeah, well, that's how I've always felt. I felt that I I've always sensed from a child that I came from others, another star system, and that I had been on many different star systems and that the decision to come here was a conscious one. And it's because I had been so many different places and done so many different things in different, on different star systems why I chose to come here at this time. And so it was, you know, clear to me and but communicating that to somebody you know or people around me and why I've lived a kind of lonely life, because who do you talk to about this kind of stuff without being seen as crazy and you know, out of it. But this I know is true, and I think that one of the things that for me, is that I would not be deterred by what anybody thinks or what anybody feels about me, because I am absolutely clear in every cell of my body of who I am, where I came from, what I'm here to do. And I remember you using a term in your introduction saying about intensity, and it's interesting you said that because I've heard people talk about that, using so intense and focused, because I am I'm clear about what I came here to do, and I came here on behalf of humanity, and I remember saying to many people I did not come here on a failed mission and so what I came to do, I make sure that I executed as well as I possibly can.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 17:14

I also see myself as working not it's not me by itself myself, I work with a team. There's a team above and there's a team below, and I am meeting these people in the third-dimensional reality all the time that we made an agreement long time ago, before even coming into incarnation, that we would be part of this plan, because there is a plan for the liberation of humanity, and that when the time is right, that we all would meet. So it's like when I meet somebody, it's like, okay, this was an agreed upon relationship that I'm having and you're part of this bigger, bigger plan. But to what you're just saying, I know that to be true for me and again, having the opportunity to have this kind of conversation is very refreshing, because I sit with this knowledge by myself for the most part.

Rev Lynne: 18:19

Well,// it's been for all my life.

Rev Lynne: 18:22

It's interesting that you're saying these things because they have points of connection, and the points of connection for me in this conversation is you know, I pastor a church called Incarnation. //Okay, interesting, incarnation,// yes, incarnation, and. But most people don't understand. This notion of coming into the world is really bigger than I say that. The Christian aspect of this is like a big pie, and this is one slice of it. This notion of Jesus coming into the world is really not as much as a revelatory statement as we would like to make it. Yes, it was. It was really about a huge piece of his unconsciousness. And we all come into the world. We are incarnated in the world to do something Now let me go into this next piece.

Rev Lynne: 19:26

One of the understandings of Yoruba theology is that we make pacts, what we call our egbe or our friends in heaven and we say we're gonna come to earth and we're gonna do X, Y and Z, but as we come through that birth canal, one of the challenges is we lose that knowledge of what, the promise that we made, and part of the journey is about trying to become conscious enough to remember the promise and fulfill the promise. So it's really very interesting and the ad that these two concepts the incarnation that we just talked about and remembering yes. Connected with your journey. We can see them as isolated, but they're really not isolated.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 20:27

No, no, and I maintain quite a bit of memory between this life and my previous, and my coming and where I came from in here, but it is you know. So, to go back to the context of my first book, and I was telling you how I was given this book to write and the light said to me that I was to couch the writing of the book in that of the story of the prodigal son.

Rev Lynne: 20:58

Oh yes.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 21:00

So that's the context they wanted me to present the book in. Because, just like Jesus came here, you know, left home and went into the far country, symbolically, the prodigal son left home and went into the far country, and likewise humanity left home and came into Earth, into the far country, the planet itself. Earth is on the farthest reaches of the galaxy. So we're on this prodigal son journey, leaving home a place of knowing and comfort, and choosing to forget, choosing part of understanding your choice that we chose consciously to forget, to immerse ourselves in the density of matter so that we could have an experience that would expand our understanding of life without the encumbrance of remembering who you were, because then the experience would not have been as full and as complete if you're always remembering another life.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 22:19

When I'm fully engaged and completely immersed in this matter and I know nothing else, the knowledge that I gain is pure. This is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm understanding, this is what I'm making meaning of based on not knowing anything else. And that was a choice, and the light wanted me to communicate that in the book to help us understand that where the fall that we read about in the Bible is really us consciously choosing to forget so that we can fully engage in the third dimension and expand the consciousness of the whole by the experience that we would have here, which is a very unique experiment, and that's what you know this is also. It's an experiment. How can you forget who you are, immerse yourself in the density of matter and have this experience that would expand the whole and know what that looks like and what that feels like, because we're informing all of life by the experiences that we're having, and like the prodigal son. You know, you know the story of the prodigal son. Well, there was no judgment from the father.

Rev Lynne: 23:49

Yes, yes.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 23:50

Yeah, that the father knew that the son was leaving this place of sameness, comfort, so-called privilege, because the son had come to a place within himself where he realized that there was no privilege in limited knowledge and limited consciousness. And so he said it's time I need to go, I need to leave this place and go out into the far country so I can go meet my brothers and sisters who look different from me and who are having different experiences, because I need to go have those kinds of experiences if I am to truly know who I am. And so there was no condemnation in his journey and the father, knowing the wisdom, the knowledge and the understanding that he would gain from going out, was always looking down the street waiting for him to return. He knew he would return and though he was concerned that the father, his father, would not accepting because he had done all these things, the father knew that that knowledge was would only expand him and why he was elevated above the brother who stayed at home to a position of leadership and he was celebrated and there was big celebration for his return.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 25:25

And so the light wanted me to help humanity to understand that and, I think, release us from this feeling of guilt and shame about our lives, and one of the other things that it wanted me to communicate is that we've now done it all.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 25:43

We've been it all. We have been rich, we've been poor, we've been black, we've been white, we've been murderers, we've been insane. We have done it all. We're now at this point in the history that we allow ourselves to remember, and part of the reason why we don't remember is because we have been told to condemn those things that don't seem right or good. You know, in the journey of the prodigal son, he came to that place of coming to himself, and I want to feel that that is a place of reflection and where he is able to bring together the peers of opposites all of his life and make meaning out of it, enough to be able to say it's now time for me to go home. But if you curse the darkness, if you curse the parts of your life and that you're told are not acceptable, they don't serve you. That's why you know in the Bible itself do not curse the darkness, because it provides data, information that is crucial to you understanding yourself as a whole.

Rev Lynne: 26:57

It's really, Etta. You really have opened up a oh my God. I don't know, this might be a fourth podcast, but this is really heavy stuff because your work and your journey is intriguing, because you're talking about global and metaphysical issues coupled with spirituality that falls in the face of what we understand as orthodoxy, in whether you're in the Abrahamic traditions and also buttressed themselves up in more indigenous traditions. And there's always this sense of fear, this sense of fear about indigenous traditions, whether it's Native American or African traditions or Asian traditions, this knowledge that comes from indigenous living and being, where the spiritual connection is so much bigger than what we call religion.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 28:02

Absolutely absolutely.

Rev Lynne: 28:05

One of the things that you know we are for those who are outside of, for my listeners who are outside of the orthodox box, for those who are in the spiritual or even some way say astrological, which is really a misunderstanding. To categorize thing as astrology and that it's ungodly has an aspect of ungodly. I just wanna remind our listeners that the Magi knew where the Christ child was because they followed the stars, absolutely Okay. So if you wanna say, ah, what she's talking about is un-Christian, well, take it up with Jesus. Okay, not with us. Well, this is a good breaking point and I want to thank you now.

Dr. Etta Jackson: 29:04

Well, thank you for allowing me to share all this information. Thank you, yes, and I wanna share my website, www. ettadjackson. com. Yeah, for those who would like to access the book.