Find the Pearl of Great Price!: Memoirs of a Black Mystic from the Bronx

By Rev. Bonita Jones Frazier

If you want to find an example of someone who walked the path of the mystic, look at Jesus the Christ.
The sincere obedience Jesus showed the Father and his love of humanity is something we’re all meant to do in our own way. Saint Francis of Assisi, Rebecca Cox Jackson, Khalil Gibran, and many others were also led by the presence of God they discovered within themselves.
In this memoir, the Rev. Bonita Jones Frazier describes the transcendental experiences that she has had from the time she was a child until today. Along the way, she shares how she discovered who she is and her purpose in life.
The journey she shares goes by many names, including the Path of the Kabala in Judaism, the Path of the Sufi in Islam, the Path of the Christian Mystic, the Path of the Bodhisattva in Buddhism, and others. You, too, can be a modern-day mystic following your own religious tradition.
The “Pearl of Great Price” is knowing God as a seed in your heart, a divine spark, waiting to be loved, nurtured and brought to a full, glorious bloom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781982245054

Rev. Bonita Jones Frazier

Rev. Bonita Jones Frazier holds a Masters Degree in Education from Boston University and has served on faculties of Pepperdine, Virginia Union and Virginia Commonwealth Universities. Bonita is also an international trainer and master teacher having served professional educators across two continents. She is married and lives with her husband and family in Silver Spring, Maryland. Bonita is also an ordained minister and serves communities throughout the northeast of the United States.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 Rev. Bonita Jones Frazier.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4504-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4506-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4505-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020905156

Balboa Press rev. date: 03/20/2020

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Preface

Prologue

Chapter 1 The Awakening: The Pearl

Chapter 2 Early Childhood

Chapter 3 Growing Up

Chapter 4 Karma and Reincarnation

Chapter 5 College

Chapter 6 Identity

Chapter 7 Finding My Spiritual Community

Chapter 8 Encounters with Angels and the Messenger Elizabeth Clare Prophet

Chapter 9 The Dharma

Chapter 10 To Sum Up

Epilogue

Bibliography

To my grandchildren, Isaac Charles, Laila Simone, and Elise Noel.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my profound thanks to Shelby Connell, who took time to give me her heartfelt guidance and expertise in editing this work; to my husband Kenneth, for his loving encouragement and probing questions that triggered deeper memories; to Lucy Torres, who worked with me at the beginnings of this project; and to my children, Summer, Michael, and Spirit Ananda, who cheered me on and supported me in this endeavor. I am eternally grateful!

Finally, I would like to give my deepest gratitude and thanks to my teachers, Mark L. and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, and to the ascended masters, for bringing to me the knowledge of who I am and what is my purpose for living.

FOREWORD

I was very honored when Bonita asked me to write the foreword to her book about her journey in life. We have been close friends all of our lives, from birth to the present. We were both only children, raised by parents whose close relationship was like family. Though we don’t look alike, Bonita could have been my mother’s child.

You will find that her book, Find the Pearl of Great Price! Memoirs of a Black Mystic from the Bronx will stimulate another level of religious thought. You may not shout halleluiah, but you will look at your life in a different way. This book is a guide that helps you formulate a foundation for religious exploration, and it doesn’t make a difference what religion. She doesn’t tell you to join this; she says establish a relationship with God. And this is the avenue she explored. Whether you are a philosopher, minister, or layperson, I encourage you to follow the path that this book lays out for you in determining where and when you will find the light we all deserve.

Gail Hawkins Bush,

Former Chair, Mayor’s Commission on Women

Alliance for Progress Charter School, Founder and CEO

Harford Community College, Dean of Students

PREFACE

I believe all of us are extraordinary people because we are made in the image of God. The spiritual path I’ve been following for so many years has revealed to me some of the components of that image. Like a photograph being developed in a dark room, it continues to reveal portions of itself. My being is undergoing a revolution: my thinking, my acting, my feeling are more illumined, more loving more joyful. I knew I had a story to tell and I thought that, in telling mine, it would propel you to search for the meaning of your existence and the mystery of God’s image in you.

I started this book project as a self-help book about eight years ago. It has evolved and transformed itself many times as I grew and was transformed myself. I begin with a quite dramatic, true spiritual experience that completely revolutionized my life. This experience, I believe, is for you also. It was the recognition that Christ lives within me—that the answers to all of my desires lie within my own heart. This knowledge brought understanding and illumination about my identity as a God-free being in potential. It answered the questions, Who Am I? And, Why am I here on earth now? Although I am a woman of color and you may be whatever race you are, what happened to me proved to me that my identity is beyond race, culture, and nationality. It is something sublime, perfect, and free. If it is true of me; I believe it is true of you.

Find the Pearl of Great Price! Memoirs of a Black Mystic from the Bronx describes transcendental experiences I’ve had from the time I was a child and up to the present moment—experiences that affirm for me what I just told you.

As you read, I suggest you keep a journal to jot down what is meaningful to you. What I share as having happened to me may trigger some memories and experiences of your own that you never gave much thought to at the time, but now you may see them as having special significance. You will want to write them down and think about them.

Although this book’s subtitle is Memoirs of a Black Mystic from the Bronx, you will note that some of the writing is instructive. Please forgive me this literary departure. I can’t help myself. I am a teacher and I like to preach.

I wrote this book for you who are looking for a path that leads all the way home to permanent reunion with God. It is the path of the mystic. May God illumine your heart as your read!

PROLOGUE

MY MESSAGE TO YOU

T he Christ is the living Word that Jesus was and is. This living Word is within each of us and needs to be given recognition and loved profoundly. It is what the saints call the divine spark. It is our inner divinity and what I have come to know as the seed of Christ, a living flame ¹ within my heart. This presence within me and within you is our birthright and heritage waiting to fully reveal itself in full glory as the universal Christ in all who love God of whatever religion. This presence, the seed of which is the spark within, is the son in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it is universal yet individualized for each one of us. The Hindus speak of it as Vishnu, the Buddhists as the spark within, the Christian mystics as the Hidden Man of the Heart, and there are other names I am sure. This Christ presence is our dearest friend and guardian angel. It is the pearl of great price to be sought, to be experienced, and to become.

I am dedicating these memoirs to you, the light bearer, one who carries the seed of this Christ in your heart, and particularly to you who are sons and daughters of Afra,² the spiritual shepherds for the black race. Many of us have long forgotten our identity as sons and daughters of God and have wandered far away from this understanding. I am writing to remind you. See, your soul knows, yours and mine, and our souls hunger for reunion with this presence and that conscious oneness that we once shared. The soul is wise because she contains all of the memories of our previous incarnations. How better off we would be if we could benefit from her wisdom! She is not immortal, but she carries within the sphere of her great being the seed of immortality, and she can earn that immortality.

I am going to tell you of my experience of this Christ presence. By sharing my story in these memoirs, you may contemplate what your mission in life is, if you do not already know. You may also start to consider why you were born into the family you are in. What is it that you must learn from your family members and they from you? This knowledge will make you a better son or daughter; a better husband, wife, and friend; a better community member; and a more illumined person. The path of the mystic that I am following is practical, realizable, and often tough. Its rewards are no less than God realization, God love, and God freedom!

A mystic is one who has sought for many lifetimes the direct experience of God, the experience of complete bonding. Jesus the Christ came as the great example of this path of the mystic. The sincere love and obedience Jesus showed the Father and the tender care he gave his fellow man as he walked the earth is something all of us are meant to do in our own way. Sojourner Truth, Rebecca Cox Jackson, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Bakhita of Sudan, and many men and women throughout the ages from all cultures and all religions who loved the divine had this seed of God within them and followed the path of mysticism. This experience goes by many names, among them the Path of the Kabala in Judaism, the Path of the Sufi in Islam, the Path of the Christian Mystic, the Path of the Bodhisattva in Buddhism, and others. You too can be a modern-day mystic following your own religious tradition.

The difference between Jesus and us is that Jesus, the Son of Man, was fully integrated with the Christ.³ He came on a mission to save our souls and to show us how to overcome our sense of human limitation and exchange our concepts of ourselves from poor sinners to sons and daughters of God.

As sons and daughters of God, we are born with a purpose and a mission to fulfill—a divine blueprint to be shepherds to others. My mission is the mission of the mystic that begins with the desire for reunion with the Christ and ultimately with the Mighty I AM Presence,⁴ and to preach it and teach it to others who are searching for true liberation. What I share is not a set of exercises, a method to feel more peaceful and centered in order to accommodate life’s challenges, although that alone would be of great benefit and may be first steps. I am sharing with you the greatest challenge of all, to become the God-self that you really are. We are God in potential, not God quantitatively but God qualitatively, like drops of water from the ocean as compared to the ocean. We are composed of the same elements, the same substance—in His image and out of the substance of His being.

I was and am, like you, perfect in design. After many incarnations I find myself today, in this life, Bonita Jones Frazier. My racial designation is black and the black communities of the Bronx, Manhattan, and Long Island where I grew up are the context into which I was born. But being black is not my truest identity, and it does not fully define me. Nor does your race or community fully define you. We may have brown or white skin of various hues now. In other lifetimes, we have worn skin tones of violet, yellow, or red. Today we may be in a female body. In previous lifetimes, we may have been male. For each lifetime,