Harriet Tubman Spiritual Life Lessons

Harriet Tubman Spiritual Life Lessons

 By Cassandra George Sturges

In Harriet Tubman’s biography she talked about how every night she would pray to God to stop her master from beating her. But she said that it seemed like the more she prayed the more her master would beat her.  

She decided that God was inside of her, and that He would only do the things for her that she could not do for herself so she decided to plan an escape from slavery. 

Secondly, she told herself that she would no longer think of herself as a slave, because she believed that her thoughts would create her reality. She said that in order to be a free person she had to think of herself as a free person.

Harriet Tubman’s first two attempts to escape slavery failed because she decided to bring her family along who changed their minds at the last minute or told others who blew their cover. On her third attempt to freedom, she told absolutely no one and put on a disguise as a crazy old man and successfully escaped the plantation.

Harriet Tubman became my first academic mentor even though she couldn’t read or write. Here is an academically illiterate woman who couldn’t read her own Wanted Dead or Alive signs who found her way to freedom—because she embraced the God of Action inside of her.


But this is not why I love her. I love Harriet Tubman because after finding her own way to freedom she came back and led over 300 slaves to freedom. I feel like if I had been Harriet Tubman, I would have been traumatized by the cold dirty rivers, the bugs, and the dogs chasing me. I think I would have become an alcoholic telling my story of horror-- of how I escaped to freedom to anyone who would listen.

Harriet Tubman reached out to me at Henry Ford Community College’s library and taught me 4 important lessons that weren’t in the textbook or in the classroom:

The first lesson that I learned is that I needed to truly put forth a real effort and try as hard as I could before God would step in. God would meet me at the library, He would meet me in the classroom—but he wouldn’t drag me there. God would help me to understand any subject matter but only after I had fallen asleep at the dining room table after burning the midnight oil. I learned that I must do everything within my own power that is humanly possible before God will step in to help me.


The second lesson that I learned from Harriet Tubman is that it is essential to define myself for myself. My thoughts about myself would project to the world how I should be treated. She had to think of herself as a free person before she could attract opportunities and the right people into her life to see her as she saw herself.  Whatever you truly believe about yourself will be manifested in your life- the world doesn’t argue with you. The world will just give you opportunities to validate your truth. 


The third lesson that I learned from Harriet Tubman is what I call the Back Door Method. Harriet Tubman did not walk up to her master and say, “You know what I am really not into this slavery thing, so I will be leaving. Thank you so much for listening, Master Sir.” And then proceed to walk away. No Harriet Tubman took the spiritual back door. The front door of your dreams typically has a beaten path. 

The guards of the door have been appointed by society and they decide whether or not you are the right color, age, or gender for the job. They keep the people out that they don’t want to come in. But the back door is only guarded by the God inside of you. If you can’t get into Harvard, Yale, or the University of Michigan, you get into a college that will accept you. Two plus two is four around the world.


Be clear about what it is that you truly want out of life. Is your dream to go to the University of Michigan or to be an educated person? If your dream is to be on the campus of the University of Michigan you could achieve this goal by mopping their floors and cleaning their rest rooms. If your goal is to obtain your bachelor’s degree go to the school that will accept you, excel academically and I promise you that your dreams will come true.


I have always asked myself is there another way to achieve my goal, is there a back door that I am overlooking that will take me exactly where I want to go.


Harriet Tubman’s 4^th lesson to me was when you have something important to do in your life many times you must go alone. When I first started school, I wanted my friends to come too, but we would sit and chat and before I knew it—time had passed and I had accomplished nothing.  In the beginning, if there was a big test coming up, my friends would unintentionally find the perfect distraction. I wanted them to come with me, and they wanted me to stay behind with them.


We come into this world by ourselves and we leave this world by ourselves. I learned that when I have something important and life changing to do, you must start this journey alone.

Tyler Perry's High Self-Esteem Despite Child Abuse

Jungle Beauty Goddess Sahara 

Ruler of the Mind, Knowledge, Rational Thinking, and Information

Via the Imagination of Cassandra George Sturges

For Entertainment Purposes Only

Dear Jungle Beauty Goddess Sahara,

I was watching an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show where Tyler Perry talked about how his father abused him as a child by beating him with a vacuum cleaner cord. As I sat and watched, Tyler Perry whom I happen to be a big fan of, I thought to myself, why is he complaining so much? My parents beat me all of the time with extension cords for the smallest of things. My siblings and I had whelp marks all over our bodies and we don’t go around complaining about being abused. 

I think we turned out just fine. None of us are in jail. The only difference between us and Tyler Perry is that he is a wealthy writer, director, and film maker. My siblings and I are all in debt working 2 jobs or more, two of my sisters suffer from alcoholism, but overall we are respectful decent human beings.

I think the problem with this generation is that their parents don’t beat--I mean physically punish them enough. When I was in school, I never heard of children killing each other like they do today.  Sometimes I think celebrities feel guilty about having so much money, so they exaggerate about being abused to solicit public sympathy so people can keep buying what they are selling.

I am happy that my parents used a firm hand to raise me; I know that’s why I am good person who would do anything to help another person even at my own expense because it is the right thing to do.

Sincerely,

Proud of My Past

Dear Proud of My Past,

The difference between you and Tyler Perry is not the amount of money or fame that he has acquired in comparison to you. The primary difference between you and Tyler Perry is that he has positive, healthy levels of self-esteem and self-worth; whereas on the other hand, you suffer from low self-esteem that has affected your ability to rationally analyze that what happened to you as a child was not your fault--and perhaps you were indeed physically abused by your parents. No child deserves to be abused in the process of being disciplined.

Let me put this another way for you to understand. What is the difference in thinking between Harriett Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Dred Scott and hundreds of thousands of other African slaves in the United States of America history?  

Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, and Dred Scott had a different way of thinking about the system of slavery and its impact on their self-worth as human beings.  They and many other slaves who thought like them during slavery, could not psychologically remain slaves because their high levels of self-esteem and self-worth would not allow them to rationalize why they should remain in human bondage without committing their life to freedom or death. This same manner of thinking can be applied to men and women who remain in physical and emotional abusive relationships. They stay because at the deepest level of their psyche they believe that they deserve maltreatment. When they mentally declare that their reality must be in alignment with their highest truth about themselves this is when their actions are focused on escaping by any means necessary.

So let me be clear, it is not the negative event that happens to you that determines your ultimate fate. It is your perception of whether or not you deserved the negative event will have the biggest long-term effect on your level of self-esteem, self-worth, and overall life experiences. You mention that you and your siblings are “good people” in your letter—I am not disputing this fact—however, do you think that you and your siblings would be in a more financially stable condition and have more joyful lives as adults; if you believed that it was wrong to be beaten as children with whelp marks from extinction cords on your precious little bodies; and if necessary sought counseling, or other means of healing?

What could a young child do that is so odious, that he or she would deserve to be beaten in this manner?  

The fact that Tyler Perry was able to separate, extract, and maintain his self-worth from these abusive incidents and sublimate them into  creative works of arts that  entertain and enrich the lives of millions of people is a testimony of how his true wealth is not external; but internal  because his riches flows from his connection to his highest self and God.

Sincerely,

Jungle Beauty Goddess Sahara

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