Meet Meinda Wood Allen

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Meinda Wood Allen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Meinda Wood , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

This is very related to the question about developing empathy, since that is the most important thing (besides love) that I bring to my life and ministry.

Short version (which is long):
Adopted into complex family of 4 adopted chirldren–some with deep emotional problems,

Brother was physically and emotionally abusive and parents did not protect the girl children from the golden boy;.

Battled all my life with self esteem due to feeling unacceptable, because of my weight, (joined weight watchers at age 8),

Father (army officer, war veteran, sometime fundamentalist preacher) began drinking when I was around age 7, and within a few short years was a full-blown alcoholic.

He became belligerent, mean, verbally, emotionally and eventually physically violent

By age 16 it felt unsafe to be in my home and I moved out (got an apartment with a friend who was also a child of abuse) and worked 2-3 jobs to support myself –even though we lived in a foreign country at the time.

At age 18, married a man who was not a drinker but who quickly became emotionally, verbally and physically violent.

Finally, (after 5 years) I left because although I was not yet convinced of my own right to be free from anger and violence, I was perfectly clear that I would not raise my daughter in it. Left when she was 5 month old.

At age 21 I was hired as a soloist and eventually music director at a Unity church. Music had always been my savior, and now I found purpose in meaning in sharing Spirit and unconditional love through musict and connection to spiritual community. The church and I grew. I met and married a kind and generous man.

Therapy, Alanon and New Thought (Unity) all coalesced for me in my 20s, and I began to heal from the abuse and low self esteem. I began a journey to love myself and to completely forgive my family without exposing myself to further abuse. I learned boundaries, and unconditional love, and began to give it to myself.

My new husband was (you guessed it!) an alcoholic–but the nicest one you could ever meet (lol)–never violent, but also not fully present.

continued in Alanon and an open and loving spirituality and learned to take care of myself and remove myself from enmeshment with him. Eventually he became sober and today (20 years later) we both live a life based on spiritual principles.

My brother was indicted for capital murder and I was called –by the prosecution–to testify at his trial. He has been in prison since 1995. I write to him regularly.

After 24 years In my music ministry at the same church, it became necessary for me to leave in order to retain my integrity. My identity was so tied up in that ministry that I was at sea for quite awhile…

I started sharing at other churches, in prisons and community centers–first my music ministry–then my entire self –a traveling ministry of speaking, loving, supporting, leading workshops, teaching people how Love can overcome anything unlike itself. .

During this time I was caring tenderly for my very ill father, and loved him right through to the day of his death.
Became sole caregiver for my mother, who was diagnosed with dementia, (she died nine years later.)

Soon I began to consider becoming a congregational minister, though unsure if I could find a seminary that would support me in ministering in love and oneness without dogmas (even New Thought dogmas).

The day I found and submitted y application to Spirit Seminary, I had the most visceral and mystical experience of my life, and knew for certain I had “found” my purpose in life:

Sitting in my office, quietly in my chair, I felt what I can only describe as an “anointing.” I physically felt a wet heat on the top of my head, as of warm oil slowly pouring down over me, down my face and neck and body. This feeling brought with it the absolute knowing that all was well– that I now had a deep calling and purpose. As the tears flowed freely down along with the “anointing oil”–this truth came.–not in words, but something like this:..

“Everything. Everything. Every Thing you have ever been through… Everything event that has ever happened–every road and every roadblock. Every detour and mistake and frustration–all the pain, all the confusion, all the sadness, and all the joy, all the love, every forgiving of myself or another–every overcoming and every awakening, big and small…is now to be USED by God for the good of others.” My life is a conduit through which God’s love flows and I am here to bless and heal simply by allowing that. No perfection is required. Nothing I need to change. My life is my teaching. My God is my source. Love is my power and the only one ever needed. Love is my purpose.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am Sr. minister at Church of One Love in Dallas, TX. We teach the universal principle of unconditional love and Oneness at the core of every spiritual path, believing there are as many paths to the Divine as there are people to walk them. Our goal is the spiritual awakening of all humanity to the One Love that we ARE. www.churchofonelove.org

I have several CDs of spiritual music (plus sheet music) available at Empowerma.com and digitally through all the streaming services. I’m available to share or direct music at local and national events, retreats, workshops, and services.

Tuesday afternoons at 2 pm Central on New Thought Media Network you will find me co-hosting the program, “Real Talk Sisters” with my two spiritual sisters Rev Dr PJae Stanley and Rev Kim Andrews. We talk together with depth and humor about applying spiritual principles to real human life situations.

Next May 15-27 I am hosting a tour of Sacred Scotland with Traceless Tours. We will be exploring sites including gorgeous cathedrals, ancient burial cairns and stone circles, then listening to traditional celtic music each night, while celebrating the famous hospitality and natural beauty of Scotland. There are a few spots left. Find out more at www.tracelesstours.com.

Locally I will be performing the role of Bella in the Charles Mee play “Big Love” at Hip Pocket Theatre in Fort Worth, TX. Performance Sept 6-29. tickets and info at www.Hippocket.org

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Compassion.
Everyone is going through something. We all carry the pain of past wounds, and believe it or not–everyone is doing the best they can with what they know right now. When we approach life from that compassionate perspective, we cease to assign blame and insist on our own “rightness”–then life becomes gentler.

From that heart of compassion we learn:

Forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. For self first, then it flows naturally to others. When we believe that we all are doing what we came here to do–to learn and to grow– and that we will be challenged in so doing, we can release ourselves and others from the bonds of regret and self-blame. We free ourselves to love without conditions when we know that nothing and no one is against us. We recognize that everything that happens is Good, or FOR our good.

All jobs are inside jobs. If we want to see love in the world, the love is ours to give. If we want world peace, we must learn to be peaceful in our own heads and hearts, our own families, our own communities–and even while we watch the evening news. When we cease to recognize “other” and know that we are all ONE, the world becomes a peaceful place.

The way to cultivate these is through practice. Luckily, the practice rooms are in our own homes. WE hear a lot that we have a choice–always–to love or not. Yet, until we recognize the choice points, we cannot consciously choose, and will be stuck in default patterns installed by the world and our culture. It starts with awareness, and then the repetition of that awareness. Each time we notice the feeling or experience of “not love” it is an opportunity to remember to practice love. There is no failure in forgetting–only the opportunity to remember again. And again. And again.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

I read Don Miguel Ruiz’s book The Four Agreements when it was first published, then had the opportunity to meet and talk with him in person. It was life changing for me to realize that a lot of what was going on in my head (and playing out in my life) –the things I had accepted as true, were really lies–stories told and passed down and unconsciously accepted as truth.

I learned to question all the thoughts in my head, to watch the words of my mouth, and to truly realize how much of the information I was acting upon was not reality at all, but assumption, confusion, assignment of motives I couldn’t possibly know anything about, and personalization of that which was not about me at all. This new way of thinking shifted my world. I certainly do not practice these agreements anywhere near perfectly, but my view of the world has never returned to way it was before. I am no longer capable of simply believing the stories the world tells me or that I tell myself. It forces me to live in the question–to live in the present.

I remind myself daily, sometimes hourly–every time I get upset or angry or frustrated or judgmental — that what I am reacting to is like;y not reality, but a story I have made up or believed. Then I am free to act from a place of love and compassion–for myself as well as for the world.