Keep alive the dream; for as long as a [person] has a dream in [their] heart, [they] cannot lose the significance of living. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
A Dream Deferred
As I shut down my laptop and prepped for my flight to land, I couldn't help but overhear the discussion between the two men sitting in front of me. The man speaking was from Hungary and the conversation went something like this:
Hungarian man: "You have a holiday coming up soon called Thanksgiving correct? What
is this holiday about?"
White man: Well, when the pilgrims first arrived here ...
The friendly white man spoke with confidence and the Hungarian man was genuinely grateful for the explanation. During this time, I was wondering if I could sneeze out the words "Thankstaken, Takesgiving, Thanksgiving Massacre or National Day Of Mourning" to interrupt the misinformation that the Hungarian man would receive. I was so disappointed that he wasn't sitting next to me because I have lived among enough Indigenous People of the land we now call America to have gained historical context that did not make it into my history school books. The timeline of events leading up to Thanksgiving as an official holiday reveal disturbing and cyclical patterns of behavior.
If a [person] is convinced that [they are] safe only as long as [they] use [their] power to give others a sense of insecurity, then the measure of [the security of others] is in [their] hands. If security or insecurity is at the mercy of a single individual or group, then control of behavior becomes routine. All imperialism functions in this way. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
It is only when people live in an environment in which they are not required to exert supreme effort into just keeping alive that they seem to be able to select ends besides those of mere physical survival. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
The Quaternary Science Reviews estimates that 56 million people died between 1492 and 1600, which includes 90% of the New England Indigenous population. Let’s take a moment to honor our ancestors by understanding the numbers. 56 million translates to the killing of more than 518,000 people every year for the first 108 years that white people were in America. What does that kind of behavior do to a people? What does any group of people need so badly that these actions are deemed justifiable? May our ancestors always be remembered and rest in power. May we always stay connected to the truest part of ourselves so that we will learn from our past and become better people. In 1619, the first ship of enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia. The first Thanksgiving Day "feast" was said to occur in 1621. Yet in 1675, Pometacomet's (a.k.a. Metacomet's/King Philip's) Rebellion led to a year long war that resulted in his death along with the death, enslavement or forced exodus of over 8,000 Indigenous People in the fight for Massachusetts colony. If we look up the history of Pometacomet, we will find many sources that refer to him as King Philip, the name imposed upon him by the British. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence refers to Indigenous People as "merciless Indian savages." Thanksgiving Day officially became a national holiday in 1870. The Hungarian man represented yet another bright-eyed immigrant who has unknowingly succumbed to our social programming.
Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater. While it lasts, burning in white heat, its effect seems positive and dynamic. But at last it turns to ash, for it guarantees a final isolation from one’s fellows. It blinds the individual to all values of worth, even as they apply to [themselves] and to [their] fellows. Hatred bears deadly and bitter fruit. It is blind and nondiscriminating. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
The one mantra that I most regret not understanding from my childhood was, "If you want to know about Indians, Africans, Asians, etc. ask an Indian, African, Asian, etc." I believed false narratives about Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People (BIIP) that were forced on me ad nauseum in school and from the media even though it didn't make logical sense to me, and I had real live BIIP around me who contradicted the social narrative. In early childhood, it was so hard for me to believe the truth over what I saw in the media even though the truth was right in front of me. What would cause me to doubt/bypass my intuition/common sense and validate what was written in a book/projected in the media about my culture?
Social Programming The process by which the ideas, concepts and beliefs of the society in which we live are ingrained into our psyche. The process is usually by authoritative decree or by assimilation. ☥ The ideas, concepts and beliefs of our social environment that become ingrained in our psyche. ☥ ☥ WordSense Dictionary ☥
What is hard-wired into a computer cannot be altered by software because its circuits are permanently connected. In a similar way, hard-wired thoughts or behaviors are extremely difficult to alter because they have become a part of our internal "operating system." Although we have not currently figured out how to use all of our brain's capacity, 85% of what we will utilize is heavily influenced by our early childhood experiences.
[They] recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of [their] inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to [their] destiny. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
You have been seduced out of the depths of who you are onto just the surface level of life. ☥ ☥ Eckhart Tolle ☥
The Mountains That Thwart And Limit Our Journey To The MANIFESTATION Of The Dream
Our inability to recognize the social programs influencing our thoughts and behaviors creates the mountains that stand between us and the fruition of our dreams. I invite you to journey with me through a few examples of social programming. As we move through each example, observe your visceral responses to what you read. If you feel uncomfortable, breathe slowly ☥ deeply ☥ sit with the discomfort until you are able to make a decision about the concepts that are based on the truest part of yourself instead of emotional reactions or social constructs. Why don't our dreams come true? Are we being lofty or unrealistic?
Our dreams do not come true because we don't realize that the dream is only the beginning. Our dreams are a message from SPIRIT to listen to our innate wisdom for guidance on specific actions to take that will help us to heal ☥ self-correct ☥ remove the obstacles that thwart and limit the manifestation of the dream. If we pay attention, SPIRIT will guide our steps, shorten our journey and delight us with miraculous moments along the way.
This is the heart ☥ soul work that prepares us to enjoy ☥ make the most of the dream once it has become a reality. More importantly, it gives us the strength ☥ stamina to elevate in consciousness.
This elevation is important because if we were at an elevated state of consciousness, what we are dreaming about would have already happened.
This can be a humbling reality to accept, but it is a necessary part of the journey. It is not a judgment of our character. We can't tell a baby that a grenade is not a toy because they haven't had enough life experience to understand the concept of a grenade or the damage that it can cause. So, we have no choice but to take it away from the baby. The baby will cry and be angry for a time, and we'll lovingly support the baby as they work through the emotions. However, giving the child a grenade is not an option. This doesn't make the child stupid or unworthy. When the time is right and with the proper training, the child can have access to the grenade if, after they realize what it is, they still want it. In a similar way, we need to understand that there is a process we must undergo in order to manifest our dreams. Instead of resisting or complaining, we can direct our attention inward so that our innate intelligence can lead us to the knowledge ☥ experiences that will make our dreams a reality. It's time to stretch our muscles, check our backpacks to make sure we have plenty of water ☥ healthy snacks, the proper clothing and hiking boots. We are about to go on a journey together. You are not alone. I am with you climbing the same mountains on the journey to the dream.
Once manias die down, most people pretend they never believed these things to begin with. Having contracted Covid five or six times post-vaccination, multiply boosted mRNA fanatics aren’t prone to advertise their vicious denunciation of the unvaccinated only two or three years ago — any more than recovered memory patients are inclined to advertise that they destroyed their relationship with their parents over an erroneous psychiatric fad. We like to think that we’re 'modern' ... and that we base our beliefs on fact. But we’re just as prey to mass delusions as we ever were. Accordingly, how’s this for mania number five. It isn’t a mania; it’s just the truth: check. It’s suddenly all anyone in the media seems to talk about, and they use all the same language: check. It’s powered by emotion: check. It brooks no dissent, refuses to acknowledge there’s even a debate to be had, and doghouses all skeptics as evil 'deniers' who will bring about the end of world: check. It’s malign, getting increasingly extreme, and is driven by the very best of intentions: check, check, check … ☥ From: 'How to Spot the Next Mania: Each New Panic Follows the Same Playbook'
Patience ☥ Discipline Mountains
Bruce Lee once said "I don't fear the [one] who practices 10,000 kicks, I fear the [one] who practices one kick 10,000 times." This is the wisdom of patience ☥ discipline. Do we have a strategy that helps us push past boredom until we can do something over and over again with absolute presence of mind? When we watch a Bruce Lee film, we must watch each fight scene at least twice. The first time we enjoy the fight. The second time, we watch the fight in slow motion, and we realize that Bruce can move faster than the eyes can see. What we thought was just a punch, was a punch and two kicks. How? When he trains, he sees the value in ☥ purpose of the repetition. It is not something that he gets through so that he can move on to something else.
The repetition is a part of his spiritual training as much as it is a part of his physical training.
When we watch Bruce Lee, we learn a few things about his character:
☥ He doesn't fight to kill. When he knows that death is imminent, he attempts to stop the
person from allowing themselves to be killed. Generally, the person's ego causes them
to keep fighting to the death.
☥ During his fights, he attempts to keep his composure and self-corrects so that he can
be focused/regain focus in body ☥ mind ☥ spirit. This allows him to see split-second
opportunities which gives him the advantage during the fight.
☥ His style of fighting is not a style ... it is "an honest expression of who [he] is in
the moment."
Our lack of patience ☥ discipline represents a grand mountain because it reflects our unwillingness to understand our dream: Why do we have this dream? Are we willing to do whatever it takes while simultaneously holding the highest level of thought ☥ action? When we are faced with the reality that we must grow in thought ☥ word ☥ deed, will we run and hide or will we develop our will and cross the boundaries of our comfort zone? What will we do once it manifests?
If a [person] knows precisely what [they] can do to you or what epithet [they] can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then [they] can always keep you under subjection. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Advertising Mountains
As a child, I remember hamburgers being portrayed as fresh food on TV fast food commercials. The lettuce, tomato, onions, etc. would be highlighted as crispy and presented as the proof of the hamburger's freshness. However, when I got the actual hamburger, the lettuce and tomato would be mushy, and the burger didn't taste the way I thought it would. The produce never matched the freshness in the commercial. I felt weird not being excited about hamburgers because the people in the commercials and everyone around me seemed to love them. Even though I preferred Italian/Indian/Caribbean/African food, I convinced myself to love hamburgers like everyone else. Based on the amount of TV that I watched as a child (and data from groups such as the Action for Children's Television), I have seen over 700,000 fast food commercials in early childhood alone. Many of these commercials used emotion to convey an idea of belonging to something special (a tactic that affects our emotional hardwiring in early childhood). Of the 700,000 fast food commercials that I've seen, less than 5% represented Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People. The social programming had the quadruple effect of making me feel like I want to belong where I clearly am not welcomed, conditioning me to eating foods that I didn't prefer, making me feel embarrassed or isolated for liking alternative foods and covertly reinforcing the idea that not wanting it is un-American.
Black ☥ Indigenous Mountains
I was watching a documentary about the Hadza who are a modern day hunter-gatherer tribe living in the northern part of Tanzania. At one point, they did a dancing ritual for rain, and I was blown away to see that the ankle bells that they wore were almost identical to the ones worn by Aztec dancers. I've seen African styles of dancing, music, chanting and facial ☥ body painting at Indigenous Pow Wows and other gatherings. We cannot deny the hair braiding similarities, burning of sage or the tipi's pyramid shape. The connection between Black and Indigenous People runs so deep that it sometimes feels weird for me to separate the two. Indigenous People have been a refuge for enslaved Africans by participating in the Underground Railroad and welcoming them to coexist in the rain forests of South America. Even when forced, Black People have resisted the many attempts of colonizers to fight Indigenous People and have joined together in the fight for civil rights. Colonization has strategically endeavored to pit Black and Indigenous People against each other in so many ways including:
☥ Buffalo Soldiers who were recruited and then forced to do the colonizer dirty work of
fighting Indigenous People
☥ Enslaved Africans who were brought in to Mexico, Central and South America to work
the land after the Spanish/Portuguese killed off large populations of Indigenous People
☥ Christian boarding schools that were designed to convert Indigenous People into
white people by forcing them to drop their culture/language
☥ Community organizations that are forced to compete with each other for money to
serve their communities
Although we were occasionally fooled by the propaganda, Black and Indigenous People have deep connections to each other through a shared struggle that we still endeavor to overcome. There are no words to describe the tragedy of African People who made the horrific trip to America with no way to return home. And then to fight for their humanity and the right to live free in a land that they didn’t know belonged to an entirely different group of people. When I was I child, I didn’t make the connection that this land belonged to Indigenous Indians. The social narrative left out a lot of facts so that we would believe that the land was uninhabited, that europeans worked hard to cultivate the land and were protecting themselves from Indians who were violent warriors that seemingly came from nowhere and scalped people for sport. It sounds ridiculous as I type it, but
it took a while for me to wake up and realize that what was happening in Africa was happening in America, just in different ways.
When Africans were first brought to America, they were taken to plantations to work the fields so they wouldn’t have seen any Indians. How many generations of Africans were brought to America before they figured out that the land had been gentrified? Perhaps those who escaped into the woods and came across Indigenous People there? I still don’t quite know how to process that, but I do know that buried underneath the millions of Black bones that fought and died for this country are millions of Indigenous bones. I started looking for the names of the Indigenous tribes who once lived on the land where I reside before the europeans showed up so that I may keep the name of their tribes alive. On the journey up the Black ☥ Indigenous Mountains to the dream, it is important for us to investigate any feelings of angst between us because if we follow that feeling back to its root cause, we will find a colonizer.
Accepting Our Ignorance Mountains
These could be the most difficult mountains to transcend because we have to look within ourselves, critique our thoughts and behaviors and self-correct based on what we learn - even though we may need to release a belief that we’re emotionally addicted to and that we’ve held all of our lives, while also resisting herd mentality. When we look at the trend of colonization, we see that a relatively small group of people with more powerful weapons were able to take continents that were more than five times the size of their own. How? Weapons are a big issue, but their real power is in deception and manipulation of the mind. When europeans showed up in America, the Indigenous People offered trust based on the Indigenous concept of trust instead of recognizing the european mindset. Had Indigenous People put europeans through the test of trust and required that they consistently demonstrate it, Indigenous People would have been able to see through the deception. We cannot understand people based on our concept of what a person is, needs to be or is supposed to behave. This is a huge growth area for Black People as well as we see how easy it is for Black People to turn on each other and not realize that the root cause of the angst has nothing to do with them. For example, a Black Person may accuse another Black Person of not being “Black enough” believing that the accusation makes them “more authentically Black.” Let’s dive into this a bit because we have caused so much pain based on this concept without realizing that it is a byproduct of slavery. As I mentioned in my Cross-Cultural Healing Haven blog,
Africa is 11.7 million square miles. As a point of comparison, the surface of our moon is 14 million square miles.
If ever there were a people who were multidimensional, it would be people of the African diaspora. To put any Black person into a box and slap a label on them because they don’t fit into our concept of “Black enough,” when most of us can’t even provide a definition for “Black enough,” reflects a smoke screen that we need to remove in order to dismantle sneaky inceptions that cause us to be passive aggressive with and fight each other. In other words, Black People display personality traits that reflect every kind of intelligent, funny, corny, resourceful, and every other adjective that we can think of - as well as those we can’t think of. Why would we ever want to limit how we show up in the world? Some of us are drag queens, some of us are farmers, some of us are scientists, some of us are opera singers, but no matter how we show up in the world, we are of the Pan African diaspora. Would a person who knows who we are and all that we have to give ever say that someone is not “Black enough?” We often react this way because:
☥ We are intimidated by or jealous of the person’s success so we’re trying to cut them
down a notch.
☥ We don’t know our history ☥ culture and are running on automatic based on social
programming passed down from slavery that used plantation tactics to keep us apart
such as light skin/dark skin issues.
☥ We have been trained to hurt each other. During slavery, the slave master would get an
enslaved person to deliver the punishment to another enslaved person. When Fannie
Lou Hamer was in prison, a police officer brought Black male prisoners in to beat her
with a blackjack while the officer pulled up her dress.
☥ We desperately want to trust each other, but we don’t know how to cultivate trust so
we tear each other down to see who puts up with us and adopts our preferences as a
test of loyalty and to render a person “Black enough.”
Because colonizers want to control us, they want us to only adopt behaviors that are comfortable to them. So anytime we find in our culture that we are limiting ourselves (only worship God this way, only behave that way, etc.) we can be sure that social programming has snuck its way into our minds. The real tragedy here is that these limitations are really bad for colonizers as well because it puts them in a mindset that they have to continually deceive themselves and others to maintain. We need to take a breath and look at our own programmed and learned ignorance without judgement - but it is a complicated path to healing. To get angry with a person who accuses us of not being “Black enough” is like getting angry with a child who has been molested.
On one hand, we have to see how deeply the engrained social programming may be functioning on a subconscious level within the person. On the other hand, we cannot allow the person to continue the substandard behavior.
As an example, I had just completed a presentation for a large group of Black male leaders. I rushed in to get lunch so that I could eat before they arrived and could have time to chat with everyone. Two very light skinned leaders came to my table, and we had a great discussion. About 40 minutes later, one of the dark-skinned leaders walked over to my table and said, “Hey Dr. Phyl, I can’t believe you’re sitting at the light-skinned table.” Up until this point, I didn’t even realize that everyone at my table was light-skinned except for me. What this brother didn’t know is that my grandmother was lighter skinned than many white people, and because we had so many skin color issues in our family, she worked hard to squash colorism in the minds of her grandchildren.
So, I responded in the most friendly way possible, Why don’t you go back to where you were, take a deep breath, think about what you just said, and then come back and greet us again. Everyone was in shock, including me because I didn’t intend to be so bold. The dark skinned leader replied “Oh, oh doc, I was just playing around, I didn’t mean to offend anyone.” I replied, It’s a bad habit that you don’t realize has been passed down from slavery, but it’s time for us to let it go. We have too many other issues in our community to solve, and we don’t have the time, energy or resources to waste. I love all of you, regardless of the skin tone, and I need for us to make a conscious effort to heal our pain and love each other so that we can get this work done in our communities. I of course forgive you and think the world of you, but I want you to breathe and pause before speaking so that you can catch yourself before saying something based on a social program instead of the truest part of yourself. Yes, it was uncomfortable for everyone for a minute, but then we moved forward and cultivated a deeper level of intimacy with each other. Colonizers bank on the fact that we will default to our social programming, but we must pull up our will and resist the temptation to nip at other people in order to feel better about ourselves. Every time we succumb to that temptation we inadvertently “Jump Jim Crow.” Colonization has some sneaky social programs running in the background that we must dismantle. Once we have accepted our ignorance, we’ll be able to identify and drop subconscious substandard behaviors and this mountain will vaporize right before our eyes.
There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Of course, there are Black People who are not evolved, are opportunists and are not interested in the elevation of consciousness. But these people are still of the Pan African diaspora. People who cause harm do so because they have unresolved trauma. Problems in our community don’t go away because we banish/avoid them. We have to deal with these people. We have to accept all of who we are, which includes those of us who need to heal ☥ self-correct. There is a protocol to follow which includes not allowing any of them into our inner circle, setting and enforcing healthy boundaries, specifically stating how they violate our benchmarks for trust and making it clear that they will remain outside of our boundaries until they heal ☥ self-correct ☥ demonstrate honesty ☥ integrity ☥ benevolence ☥ competence (which we may have to define for them). This will offer a pathway for them to heal.
People want to be a part of a community, so offering specific feedback and then enforcing the boundary will most often trigger an awakening in the person.
If they decide not to grow, then we need to look at alternate ways of healing our communities and making them accountable for their behaviors (through restorative practices which, if implemented early enough, will prevent us from having to resort to punitive actions). This makes our community stronger because we are addressing the issue instead of avoiding it by banishing them. I was a latch key child and practically raised myself. It is only by the grace of God that I didn’t become one of these people. I didn’t get the type of mentorship I needed. My reality is true of many people of the Pan African diaspora. While my actions are consciously driven by a desire to heal unresolved trauma, their actions are subconsciously driven by their unresolved trauma because no one gave them feedback on how to live with integrity or how to heal. Unresolved trauma is definitely a Black issue, so these people are more than Black enough. Will we throw them in the trash or offer a pathway to healing?
Even if we consciously know that our behaviors or actions are in conflict with our true desires or could harm ourselves and others, we will find it difficult to change without:
☥ Disciplining ourselves to recognize and release emotional addictions
☥ Consistently questioning/examining our thoughts and actions
☥ Tapping into our inner wisdom in order to consistently make decisions that serve our
highest good in moments of stress, discomfort, without the need for approval/outside
support, etc.
Fate is the raw materials of experience. They come uninvited and often unanticipated. Destiny is what a [person] does with these raw materials. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
To love is to make of one’s heart a swinging door. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Language Mountains
I was organizing a photo shoot with a Navajo family who volunteered to allow me to teach them how to do infant massage on camera. I was speaking with the "aunt" of the baby about logistics when she said, "Oh we don't do it the white way. In the Navajo tradition, my sister's child is my Grandchild." Until she said this, I had not recognized the social programming. I thought about how some of my cousins are more like siblings to me, and that I never liked the terms "half-sister" or "step-father." Yet, I felt bound to use these terms even though they didn't feel right to me. As it turns out, the current categorization of family members was a european device for determining ownership/distribution of property (i.e., upon the death of a family member, marriage, etc.).
In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
[Those] who fear [are] literally delivered to destruction. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Church Mountains
I was born as a Seventh Day Adventist, but after my parents divorced, I spent the majority of my childhood attending Methodist, Pentecostal and Non-Denominational churches. Though the hellfire and brimstone sermons terrified me into submission, I struggled with a number of contradictions that I couldn't solve and would get shushed or made to feel like I was evil whenever I asked questions. It would be decades later before I would find teachers who were doing evolutionary work within the church. But during my youth, it bothered me that no one wanted to help me find clarity. When I was old enough to study the bible with lexicons, concordances, etc. I started making connections that created an inner tension between the emerging truth and the sermons I heard. I didn't want to leave, but I came to realize that the church I attended focused more on the devil than cultivating a deeper connection with God. Fearful that I might be the one who was evil, I wrote a long letter to my pastor hoping for clarity and direction with my Bible studies. I felt especially pressured into believing that the religions of other cultures did not offer a pathway to God - even though nature and scripture offers overwhelming evidence of God's love of variety. I also needed to understand why ego games/racism/competition, etc. was tolerated in the church. After he received my letter, my pastor avoided me and the topics I raised in the letter. When I attended a temple in Egypt, I saw the evidence of the destruction caused by the Christians. They chopped off the noses of some statues and the heads of other statues to erase the African facial features of the Gods, Goddesses, Pharaohs, etc. Imagine how white people would respond if Indigenous People carved Indian feather headdresses into Mount Rushmore to make the presidents look more Indian. They would be outraged even though the mountain originally belonged to Indigenous People.
The Gods ☥ Goddesses of Kamit (Ancient Egypt) were manifestations of Spirit intended
to teach us self-correction ☥ awareness ☥ lifestyle strategies ☥ pathways to Spiritual
evolution, yet there is ample evidence of Christianity's selective adoption of what
aspects of Kamitian Spiritual practices it appropriated into its doctrine. After the
Christians attempted to remove the African facial features from the statues, they
painted their white faces on the temple wall to imply that statues were of white people
and that they were responsible for the creation of the grand architecture and art within the temple. It was a barbaric display of cultural appropriation, but it also proved that
those Christians didn't believe the religious rhetoric that they forced our ancestors to
practice. Though their doctrine required unilateral conformity, they were in such awe of
Kamitian Spirituality that to this day, most Christian prayers end by calling the name of
the Kamitian God Amun (whom they renamed Amen). The churches I attended never
mentioned Amun or the origins of "amen," but Egyptians were portrayed as the
oppressor.
The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication, they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed-this, despite the gospel. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Five years before the 13th Amendment was passed, Christian boarding schools
were established in North America to reprogram Indigenous Indians in the US and
Canada. These boarding schools killed thousands of Indigenous children and
physically/sexually abused many thousands more. Christian boarding schools were
an attempt to assimilate the remaining Indigenous population into the general public
because, with the proper social programming, their skin was light enough to make or
rape them until they become "white." Indigenous children were given English names,
forced to cut their braids, wear uniforms, speak only English and convert to
Christianity. If Indigenous families did not send their children to these schools, the
police would forcibly take the children away from their parents. However, Indigenous
People valued their culture/God/sovereignty/self-determination over the chance to be
assimilated into white culture. Though we have withstood hundreds of years of
terrorism, racism and oppression, Black ☥ Indigenous Peoples' struggle for freedom
and resistance to/rejection of conformity caused us to be frustrating projects for
european colonizers.
It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as [family] or as human beings. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Christian missionaries are one of the most important contributors to the social programming of the past several hundred years including:
☥ Enforcing competition as status quo behavior in communities where it didn't
previously exist. For example, when African children would play sports, they would let
each team win. The missionaries would stress the importance that there must be one
winner and one loser. This also causes people to adopt a zero sum game philosophy in
many aspects of life which lowers the quality of or sabotages personal and
professional relationships
☥ Spreading propaganda to prevent native inhabitants from utilizing resources that the
missionaries wanted to hoard
☥ Presenting God as all-loving and loving all, but then demonizing cultural practices and
religious beliefs of Indigenous People
☥ Promoting the suburbs as safer places to live and then creating and perpetuating self-
hatred in suburbian communities
☥ Vilifying graffiti but then destroying/defacing art/historic artifacts in the name of God
☥ Preventing Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People from obtaining positions of power
within the church
☥ Not granting gospel music awards to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People, even if
their music outperformed their white counterparts in popularity and sales
Although we’ve been socialized to make spirituality mystical and scary, it is actually quite practical. Spirit speaks to us through our intuition, while in conversation with someone, even through billboards that we pass on the street/TV shows/movie scenes that suddenly resonate with us. The challenge is that we don’t know how to listen, or we don’t realize that the message is coming from Spirit. However, if we pay attention, we’ll notice that the messages from Spirit are true (whether pleasant or unpleasant) and delivered with a sort of calm wisdom. I awoke with this feeling as Spirit prepped me to take my time as we travel up the sex mountains. Spirit revealed to me that my readers have experienced some form of sexual trauma. This data download is consistent with the overwhelming number of clients I’ve had with sexual trauma as well. So, let’s drop our fears and prepare ourselves to allow understanding to help us heal so that we can put the 100% preventable ☥ reversible ☥ healable sex mountains behind us. Roses help our hearts to heal. If you happen to have some organic dried/fresh rose petals/rose hips, you can steep them to make a tea and drink it to help with the heart healing process. You can also make rose petal water by placing 1/4 cup of dried organic rose petals into a pitcher of water and let it sit for about an hour. You can keep refilling the pitcher with water for about a day or so before you’ll need to compost the rose petals, but it is a lovely water to drink. As you revisit this section, perhaps you can make a ritual of buying yourself some roses and lighting a candle, because as we heal, we move from tears of pain to tears of joy to celebration ☥ liberation.
One of my clients was struggling with cancer in the area of their throat chakra. In the holistic world, we don’t focus on words such as “cancer” because that word is simply the end result of a laundry list of unresolved traumas that have run amok in our bodies. Instead, we look for the root cause of what went wrong and remove it while supporting the body’s self-healing ☥ recovery processes. As I attempted to drill down to the root cause, I kept asking them about things that happened just before their diagnosis. After a time, they nonchalantly said that the person who raped them was released from prison (for a reason other than raping them). They didn’t see the connection, and when I asserted that this was the root cause, they didn’t really believe me. However, in time, I was able to put together a timeline of events in their life where they didn’t speak up for themselves and attempted to help them understand that cancer is not random. It will develop in the area where we are most vulnerable. In order to get past the sex mountains, we have to actually look at them, walk up to them and climb over them. Let’s journey through a few stories to help us understand the connections between sexual ignorance, dysfunction, perversion and abuse. If we do the work, the sex mountains will forever lose their power over us.
The loneliness of the seeker for a community is sometimes unendurable. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Sex Mountains
I was visiting a friend of mine who had a toddler. The child was eagerly exploring everything new, so she hopped into my lap and started exploring. She was fascinated with my earrings and jewelry. She touched my face, and hair and different parts of my body. Whatever she touched, I said the name. When she touched my breast, I said, "That's my breast" but I was non-reactive, so she moved on and settled down while I talked to her mother. Her mom said, "Thank you so much for not reacting." I knew that she was simply observing me as a new entity. If I had reacted then she would have thought that there was something that made my breast different, and because she was so young, I didn't want to attach any shock or shame to any body part.
When I was a young child, I accidentally stumbled upon the rape of a five-year-old Black girl. The girl was being raped by a preteen white boy. I immediately wanted to rush in to help but felt some force that froze me in place. I was confused by the white boy, who seemed to be talking aloud to no one and then realized, to my horror, that he was communicating with six Black boys who were watching the scene from a distance with their hands down their pants. The white boy was giving the Black boys instructions on how to rape the little girl. Though the boys had not yet spotted me, they were dangerously close in proximity. I realized that I had to make a quick exit to prevent myself from being attacked. I experienced a severe asthma attack as I attempted to explain to an adult what happened and then passed out before I could speak. The next day, I tried to figure out who to tell, but I was taught that private parts were dirty and evil. I didn't even have a name for the genitals and couldn't articulate what I saw. I thought I would get in trouble for speaking about private parts.
What could we possibly hope to gain by choosing to remain ignorant of our own bodies? How will we stop the perpetuation of sexual trauma without acknowledging and healing it from within ourselves?
The white boy was a sexual predator. He didn't live in our neighborhood, but he used to walk by and observe us from a distance - like a shark circling prey. I was afraid of him, so I kept my distance. If he was walking down the street towards me, I would cross the street and he would smile because he knew I was afraid. Our neighborhood used to be so safe. After he started circling our neighborhood, those six Black boys started to chase us girls and if they caught us, they would try to pull down our panties. The rest of the boys in our neighborhood were safe, but the experience taught me to be watchful and protective of myself. After I witnessed the rape, I became a latch key child because I didn’t know how else to protect myself. I also became an introvert. When I got home from school, I stayed inside and watched TV. During this time, Darryl Dawkins lived in my apartment complex and would wax his car every day that he was home. It makes me think about how Black basketball players were exploited because my apartment complex was very modest. Sometimes he would carry my bike up the steps for me. He was one of the few men that I truly felt safe around. I would only play outside when he was waxing his car, and I would stay within sight of him because somehow, I knew that he would protect me.
Because the trauma that I experienced directly speaks to the type of the sexual manipulation of Black boys that remains untold, I included my story in the footnotes of Chapter 3: (A Community-Based Ecosystems Approach for Promoting the Health, Well-Being and Healing of Boys and Young Men of Colour), my contribution to "Health Promotion with Adolescent Boys & Men of Colour: Global Strategies for Advancing Research, Policy and Practice in Context," a Springer publication edited by James A. Smith, Daphne C. Watkins and Derek M. Griffith (The Menzies School of Health Research (Australia), University of Michigan and Georgetown University, respectively). Most Black boys who have experienced this type of sexual manipulation would bury the shame of it deep within their subconscious minds, believing that it would disappear. But then they become playboys or manage secret sexual perversions that sabotage their happiness and that could be 100% eliminated with the healing of their childhood traumas. During the planning meetings with the project lead, I firmly asserted that the stories in this book cannot be told properly unless we included the work of Indigenous organizations, and I gave them the contact information of an Indigenous organization that was doing exemplar work in their communities. I also offered other Indigenous organizations as options if the one I suggested was unable to participate, because the book cannot be published without the inclusion of the Indigenous story. I am thrilled that their contribution is Chapter 10: La Cultura Cura and El Joven Noble: Culturally Rooted Theory and Practice Formulations for Healing Wounded Boys and Young Men of Colour in the United States. This was a labor of love project with chapter submissions coming from leaders across the globe who volunteered their time to provide content.
On our Journey To The Dream, we may have to put some real skin in the game without any expectation of an immediate financial reward. Healing change maker Harriet Tubman could have successfully continued her abolitionist work from the comfort of her newfound freedom. However, she put real skin in the game, adding a new fire to and garnering a much greater support for the Underground Railroad.
She put that skin in the game BEFORE she received financial support. As a result of her commitment, she received the funding to personally ensure the freedom of over 1000 people. Whenever I received grant money, I made sure to support people who were putting skin in the game because I know how hard it is create change amongst great resistance. I also pushed hard to get them paid on time and was surprised by how challenging that endeavor would be. The Skin In The Game Mountains make up the raw materials of all of these mountains that we need climb on the Journey To The Dream.
However, there is no need for us to be overwhelmed by how many mountains we must climb. When we connect to SPIRIT we get shortcuts functioning like an airplane that flies us over these mountains and safely transports us to the land of manifestation.
The Orisha will fight you to push you in the right direction … ☥ ☥ Osunfemi Wanbi Njeri ☥
As I mentioned above, holistic practitioners focus on removing the root cause of a dis-ease in the body. We tend to use conventional words that people are familiar with to find common ground. One such word that comes from the medical industry is dissociative amnesia. It is not actually memory loss, per se, but memory suppression caused by trauma that we are unable to process. In the holistic world, this long dragged-out saga, which gets dramatized ad nauseam in the media, of trauma hanging over us and ruining our lives forever is a fallacy. In fact, in an old Indian ☥ African traditional practice, any person with a major mental illness was taken into a protected area deep in the forest. A caretaker would check to ensure that the person had food to eat, but otherwise the person was free to roam, scream, throw tantrums, etc. The sages found that after about two weeks the person would be completely healed, even if they suffered from the type of mental illnesses that would put a person into a straitjacket. The holistic world doesn’t get hooked on the terminology because it distracts us from locating and removing the root cause, and it contributes to the stigma around mental health. What really happens is, our body protects us by burying the memory (along with other memories that could trigger it) deep within our subconscious mind so that we can function as a “normal” person in society.
My trip to Egypt triggered a spiritual awakening, and I realized that I had one of these suppressed memories. The feeling that I got from Spirit was that in order for me to fully step into my mission, I had to clean up my past. I didn’t think that I had anything left to clean up, but then Spirit surrounded me like a blanket of love and in the process, I remembered that I was raped by a white male decades ago. It was the most incredible experience because I felt completely surrounded by love, but I had to go through the process of releasing the pain in order to heal. I was bedridden for about eight days and went through every box of tissues that I had along with a few rolls of toilet paper. I couldn’t believe how many tears flowed. However, when it was over, I was a different person. When we connect with Spirit, healing the mind is the same as healing from a physical wound. I came to understand that at the time of the rape, my mind couldn’t process any more trauma. After I witnessed the rape of the little girl in early childhood, I had spent my entire life protecting myself from white males and couldn’t accept that I was raped by white male because I couldn’t protect myself. So my body made it disappear, and when the time was right, Spirit brought me back to myself and healed my body ☥ mind ☥ heart. From my perspective, the eight days went by like the blink of an eye, and then, I was free, but I wasn’t done. Spirit showed me that I had reached an important tipping point with colonizers and that nothing they do or say can hurt me anymore. Wherever we go when we transition out of our physical bodies is a loving place with ancestors who long to connect with and protect us. Shortly thereafter, I broke a bone and in the moment that the bone snapped, I realized that Spirit wanted my undivided attention for a good long while. I am an extremely physically active person, so through my intuition, Bat ☥ Goddess Of Interdependent Opposites, helped me to understand that I would experience spiritual freedom that surpassed any physical freedom that I would have to give up during recovery - a process that would take longer than I thought I could endure.
Spirit at the center of our healing process creates a ripple effect that affects anyone who allows themselves to be touched by the ripple.
Although I lost all of my friendly fights with Spirit about sharing my personal stories, I’ve come to realize that the healing of our world is so much more important than me wanting to keep my stories to myself. More importantly, how much easier would my life had been if someone … ANYONE in my early childhood knew and could teach me how to heal? I hope that when this ripple touches you, you will find your way back to the truest part of yourself and will allow the healing to take place with Spirit at your center to keep you safe and gently guide your healing process so that nothing will stop these healing ripples from reaching those who need it most.
I used to do cultural exchanges with one of my college buddies. It was a great way for me to learn more about Indigenous culture and for him to learn more about Black culture. He was one of those people who was doing something different just about every year. It just so happened that he would be touring in Europe during the same time that I had planned to visit family in Germany. He had gotten a part in the musical "Hair," which had become popular in Europe, and invited me to hang out with the tour for a few days when they got to Amsterdam. The people on the tour were such a fun group. One of the gender non-conforming actors took me shopping and totally leveled up my ability to be fashionable. One night before dinner, they all wanted to go to a coffee shop. I was thoroughly annoyed because it was after 8pm, I was feeling hungry and wondered why they wanted coffee before dinner instead of after. While in the coffee shop, I came to realize that they weren't there for the coffee. My college buddy thought it was hilarious that I had no idea what a coffee shop was.
A group of the guys from the tour decided that they needed to remove any remaining naïveté from me before I went back to Germany. After dinner, they took me on a long walk through the red light district to one of their favorite coffee shops. I was not thrilled, but at the same time couldn't resist the opportunity for yet another psych experiment. I didn't know what to expect, but somehow, I thought I would feel unsafe, so I locked arms with the guys as we walked down the street. In college, I worked the midnight shift so I would see prostitutes on my drive home, but the energy was totally different. Even if I were surrounded with males protecting me, I would not want to be on that street in Miami. However, in Amsterdam, I felt like no one would bother me. It was sort of like walking down a street in Las Vegas. Whatever people were into seemed to be available, including live sex shows. What I didn't notice was shame around sex or the type of sexual perversion that I see in the US.
When we arrived at their favorite coffee shop, I was pleasantly surprised. It was owned by a Jamaican man, and it truly felt like I had stepped into Jamaica. It was super clean, had bumpin' reggae music playing and the owner was so thrilled that I was there that he brought me everything on his menu for free, which of course the guys quickly and gratefully scooped up. They told me that, aside from getting free stuff, they loved being around me because although I had absolutely no desire to do drugs, I didn't judge them. I told them that I didn't need drugs to relax or feel happy and that I hoped they would figure that out some day. In my heart, I wished that I could have offered a better alternative for them, but at the time I didn't have the training. Except for one person, I didn't realize the trauma that they were carrying and that drugs were their numbing/coping device. The next day, we were at a store that was sort of like a gift shop, and I noticed all kinds of post cards and blank note cards displaying naked people. Those cards would only be tolerated in an adult shop in America. There were little kids in the shop, and no one seemed to care.
My work with adults, tweens and teens have revealed some recurring trends:
☥ A preoccupation with sex in the social world, but a lack of understanding in one's
private world
☥ A partial or total disconnection from the body:
☥ During my "Qigong Exercises For Sexual Health" workshop, a married man wasn't
sure where to find his seminal vesicles. Qigong combines breath with movement
which heightens awareness of our bodies and can make a person who is
disconnected from their body uncomfortable because they need to slow down and
really connect with themselves. Some of the exercises require a light massage to
ligament. The inguinal ligament is of particular interest to me because it can cause
debilitating pain when it is strained or shortened, often due to exercising without
stretching properly. It is also called groin pain and is common in people who sit for
long periods of time or who will not take the time to stretch after exercise. The
intense pain can feel unbearable, and is completely preventable, but I am more
comfortable touching it on their body. When I would place their hand in the area so
that they can learn how to locate and massage it, they would often look away. I also
found that women would look away when I'm working on their breast - as if they
were ashamed.
☥ While I was working on a client's C-section scar tissue (during an abdominal
massage), I noticed that she couldn't feel anything below her belly button.
☥ So many people expressed embarrassment/ignorance about their genitals and an
unwillingness to explore/inspect them to prevent health issues. For example, I would
teach a client to grab a mirror and look at their vagina to look for signs of irritation or
to check their discharge, and many people would reflect feelings of disgust. Even
men who masturbate regularly tend to avoid looking at/inspecting their genitals,
even in the shower. During my workshops I would say to the men in a lighthearted,
joking manner, "You're down there all the time anyway, so you might as well take a
good look."
☥ Squeamish medical doctors: I asked a medical doctor a simple question about sex, and
she became embarrassed. She had no idea how to answer the question.
☥ Teachers who don't want to teach sex education
☥ Pornography as the go-to for information about sex; parents who give their teens porn
to learn about sex
I've been inundated with the number of clients who suffer from some form of sexual abuse. I've been equally overwhelmed with the number of tweens/teens who are winging it when it comes to understanding their bodies and learning about sex. As we can see from the graphics above, there are recurring themes that lead to sexual abuse:
☥ Unresolved trauma; not understanding the process of healing
☥ Disconnection from the physical body; subconscious numbing
☥ Distractions and projections
☥ Reactivity instead of proactivity; assumptions instead of investigations
Sexual ignorance, dysfunction and perversion → abuse are 100% preventable and reversible. As a Health Warrior, I have a dream that sex mountains will no longer exist.
☥ Look at yourself ☥ Get to know yourself ☥ Touch yourself ☥ Learn about yourself ☥ Love yourself ☥
Numbing Mountains
One of the Black guys that I met while with the Hair tour in Amsterdam was from NJ. I made it a point to talk to him every day because I felt deeply saddened by his behaviors. He is the only person that tipped me off to the inner trauma he was carrying. He smoked hash constantly:
☥ Before and after breakfast, lunch and dinner
☥ While we were waiting for cabs/trains and after we got out of the cab/off trains
☥ While walking down the street, waiting for others to arrive
☥ In the lounge
In fact, one night while we were in the lounge of the hotel waiting for everyone so we can get dinner, we noticed Fats Domino sitting at the bar. He came over to talk to us, and he was more thrilled than we were because he didn't often find such young people who recognized him. He was on tour with BB King, but he said that The King was not with him at the moment. No matter what happened, the Black man smoked hash through it. I thought about him for a long time after my trip and wondered if he ever found peace. Hash was a numbing device for his pain which was so deep that he could barely stand an idle moment without it.
Building a sustainable business that focuses on empowering people is challenging because our society thrives off of disempowering people so that they can purchase a product to make them feel powerful in some way. There is another way for us to be that encourages us to build better products by allowing iron to sharpen iron, but that would require that we do our self-healing work and release our emotional addictions (superiority/inferiority complexes, competition, bullying, comparisons, etc.). I have had to become an intrepreneur in order to stay afloat during the lean times. During one of these times, I was working at an upscale spa, primarily teaching Qigong, creating wellness workshops and meeting with clients. One such client was a very wealthy white woman with a laundry list of health issues. I soon realized that I was the only person in her life who affirmed the truest part of herself. She was in a miserable marriage, but she was afraid to leave because she didn't want to give up her wealthy lifestyle. If she left, she would still be wealthy, but she would have to give up the network of people connected to her husband. It took a lot of work to get her to accept the truth - that her husband was purposely making her miserable so that she would leave. She knew the truth, but her emotional addiction to her public persona kept her trapped. Her journey to recovery is a long one because she is programmed to believe that she has no value of her own. It never occurred to her that she could discover a different network of people who appreciated and reflected her values ... that she had enough money to start a business doing something that enlivened her soul ... that she could decide to not work for the rest of her life and still be well taken care of.
Telling the truth is not as scary as we may think, but not telling the truth leads to a plethora of physical, mental, emotional and social problems such as:
☥ The development of ulcers, high blood pressure, chronic anxiety, drug and other
addictions
☥ Mental anguish, regrets, snowball thinking, depression, suicidal ideation, etc.
☥ Emotional imbalances causing stomach aches, muscle pain, irritability, emotional
outbursts, knee-jerk reactions, etc.
☥ Self-sabotage, taking actions to cover up the lie which causes more problems, making
poor decisions at home, socially or at work, etc.
I once saw a TV show about a stalker on the dark web who caught/recorded people committing embarrassing acts and used extortion to manipulate them. After the stalker terrorized these people, he betrayed and exposed them so that he could watch them suffer even more. In each case, if the person would have just told the truth, they would have removed the hold that the stalker had on them, received help and support for their behaviors and healed their trauma. Instead, the stalker manipulated them into committing crimes and doing other acts that irreversibly changed the course of their lives in the worst possible way.
SPIRIT is truth and as such it instructed me to change the way I thought about colonizers by waking up to the truth about the psychosis embedded within the strategy of colonization and understanding how it affects social programming. Spirit then gave me a series of specific instructions including learning how to take inspired actions and refusing to take on any drama caused by colonizers. Moving forward, I am to either treat them like sparring partners in a boxing ring, to help me identify ☥ strengthen my weak areas and blindspots (in which case I am to self-correct), or I am to treat them like mice. If I don’t want a mouse in my house, then I must make sure that I have caulked and plastered all holes. Mice can enter through small holes so I have to inspect the perimeter of my home carefully ☥ regularly. I must make sure to store all of the food in airtight glass containers so that there will be nothing to sustain their presence if they manage to squeeze their way in. I must remove them as quickly as possible, preferably without causing harm, and then re-inspect my home to ascertain how they got in ☥ make sure that it cannot happen again. Anyone who wants to be an ally must meet my benchmarks for trust ☥ no exceptions. I am to be disciplined like a Navy Seal, constantly sharpening my mind, keeping my body fit and learning new skills so that when the drama shows up, I can easily identify and remove it. I am to channel my inner Bruce Lee by continually re-reading my blogs for clarity and to check for typos in order to improve my writing skills. Finally, and most importantly, I am to be an ever-evolving student of the embodiment of joy. In time, the drama will be diminished to the point that Spirit will have me the way I was created to be … as a living creator ☥ perpetuator of joy. I share these details because when I speak of Spirituality, people tend to think of levitating and out of body experiences, but my experience has been a very grounded journey of practicality sprinkled with miracles.
The radical tension between good and evil, as [a person] sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in [a person] and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Multimedia Mountains
It is important for us to overstand the impact of social programming through the media which was originally designed to drive culture into conformity of social norms. Science fiction is one of my favorite genres because it offers a unique opportunity to expand our horizons. However, its seamless infusion of fact and fiction, heightens its ability to influence our culture. The Stargate franchise offers a wealth of examples for us to study of how the media unapologetically alters/shifts public perception towards a eurocentric world view. The movie begins in the North African desert in 8000 BC, yet very few of its inhabitants had dark skin. The show presented a lot of data about Ancient Egypt, but never once mentioned that "Egypt" was the name given to the land by Ancient Greek colonizers. Prior to their arrival, the land was actually called Kamit (modern spelling is Kemet/Kamit but was probably pronounced Kumit) which translates as "Black Land." Even wikipedia mentions that the "Ancient Egyptian" name of Egypt was "(𓆎𓅓𓏏𓊖) km.t, which means black land, likely referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains" instead of referring to the Black People who created the pyramids, arts, sciences, etc. and ruled the land. This omission exists despite the meticulous efforts of our ancestors to represent themselves as Black People (skin color, hair styles, facial features, etc.). Suppressing the truth about the Ancient Egyptians continues to be funded and people who assert the truth are punished.
The science fiction TV series chronicles a covert team of Airforce soldiers, an alien and an archeologist who 'proves' that the pharaohs didn't build the pyramids. Instead, the pyramids were 'landing sites for interplanetary starships who enslaved primitive populations by posing as their Gods.' Throughout the TV series, which ran for 10 seasons, cultures that did not have advanced weapons were considered to be 'primitive' and vulnerable to enslavement. Every world that the team traveled to had a majority white population (which is not even true of Earth), and most villages resembled Medieval culture. There were no Black women in any position of power on the show, and whenever there was a meeting of world leaders, Africa was never at the table.
The Gods ☥ Goddess of Egypt were portrayed by white people (and mostly given the African names, i.e. Hathor, Heru, etc.) except for two Gods. Anpu was given his Greek name Anubis and portrayed by various white males as he changed bodies. In the movie, Ra (his African name) was the main villain and was portrayed by a Black male. However, in the TV series, the Black man who portrayed the main villain throughout most of the series, was given the Greek version of the name (Apophis) instead of the African name (Apep). All of the Gods/Goddesses were portrayed as dark villains who were actually worm/lizard-like parasitic creatures who inhabited human bodies, appropriated the identity of the deities and enslaved "primitive" cultures. Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant culture is continually appropriated, misrepresented and milked to yield millions of dollars in profit.
Life wears down the edges of the mind. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
The alien on the Stargate series was a Black man who surprisingly had a Black wife and son, but he promptly left them to join the Stargate team. Instead of coming to Earth with him, we learn that his wife preferred to live with their son on their home world where they were in constant danger, a storyline that doesn't represent the desires of most Black women. At one point in the show, he was reconnected with a childhood love, who was a white woman, that he was willing to leave his family and the Stargate team for until she was killed. Then, his Black wife (his only Black love interest during the series) falls ill and doesn't tell him that she is dying, so she is dead by the time he arrives to see her. In subsequent episodes, all of his love interests are white women. In fact, what we don’t see in the clip above is that the white woman asks him to teach her how to do the martial arts form so that she can use it on her boyfriend. She kills her boyfriend and runs so the police thinks that the alien committed the murder. Well, that part accurately depicts real life. His son, who was very close to his mother, does not marry a Black woman. At the beginning of the series, he was bald, then he had natural hair, but by the end of the series, his hair was straightened. The franchise provided so many white-centered stories that it became a part of my social programming research.
The Data ☥ Money Mountains
Nature provides us with all of the nutrients that we need, but capitalism needed a way to sustain itself, so nature had to be sacrificed. For example, scientists figured out that if they fired salt at 1500 degrees and removed “impurities” (a.k.a. electrolytes and trace minerals) rendering it an inorganic substance, the salt would not only be pure white, but it would pour freely and lengthen the self-life of food which was good for business. The data supported this idea and refined salt was born. It was a successful business venture, except that people began to develop goiters and other thyroid issues. When nature gave us salt, it gave us the iodine and trace minerals in the exact proportions that the body needs it. However, capitalism made more money when it extended the self-life of food. The question then became, how can we sustain the self-life of food and prevent the goiters? Enter the birth of refined salt + iodine. This idea proved to be a huge success with an even greater benefit. If people used refined iodized salt, they would eventually develop health problems such as high blood pressure that wouldn’t kill them but would enable them to work while paying for prescription medication for the rest of their lives. More money!!!! The chemical composition of sea salt and refined iodized salt (table salt) is the same: sodium chloride and that can be substantiated through data analysis.
However, biophysics looks at the energetic interaction of a substance when it enters the body.
When we consume table salt, the body believes it to be a poison, so it raises blood pressure and works overtime to isolate and remove it from the body. However, sea salt can penetrate our cell walls without having to be metabolized by our body and a tiny bit of sea salt goes a long way. Hmmm, can’t make as much money with that. Yes, it is clunky, and it will not sustain the self-life of food indefinitely, but it will sustain the shelf life of food for as long as it is healthy to do so and will provide our bodies with the electrolytes and trace minerals that we need in just the way we need it, while making our food taste great and regulating our blood pressure. That the people who run these businesses are willing to eat and drink their own poisons for the pleasure of earning higher profits needs to be called out, examined, healed and transformed. Over and over again, we have used data to manipulate the public. In our greed, we promoted enriched flour and grains and then we realized that we couldn’t figure out the right combination of nutrients to enrich those products with. So, we had to let it go, but not until we earned billions of dollars with those substandard products, many of which we can no longer sell in America, but peddle in other countries that are hungry for American “goods.”
Data has been used to pressure and manipulate the public into compliance. The pattern repeats so often, it’s truly amazing that we keep falling for it. First, comes the miracle government agency approved diet pill that is heavily marketed and popularized. Then, several years later, comes the heavily marketed law commercials featuring a very concerned lawyer who asks us: “Have you experienced _________ side effects from taking the miracle government agency approved diet pill? If so, call the law offices of _______ and we’ll get you the compensation that you deserve.” When I worked in Amarillo Texas, I had a conversation with a professor who said, “Well the data speaks for itself, it's obvious that more Black ☥ Indigenous People commit crimes, because more of them are in prison.” Somehow the data around disproportionate statistics or our history of colonization, racism and oppression didn’t enter his mind. The data mountains are huge and riddled with jargon making them challenging to navigate.
Our knowledge of Kamit (Ancient Egypt) is dominated by white Egyptologists who assert their authority to promote the names and ideology imposed upon the Kamitians by the Ancient Greeks. Even the worshipped Rosetta Stone is still the Ancient Greeks’ interpretation of Kamitian language. If we look at the difference between Karnak, which was built by the Kamitians, and Edfu Temple, which was built by the Ancient Greeks using enslaved Kamitian workers, we notice differences in the style of art. The enslaved workers protested by purposely making the art close enough in style to fool the Greeks and communicating in code, not dissimilar to the communication codes of enslaved Africans during the Euro-American slave trade. Given the fact that the enslaved Africans, who were brought to America, successfully communicated in code even though they were not permitted to read, write or speak their native language, how much more intricate would the code be for the highly literate Kamitians? Though they heavily marketed their “substantiated data,” the Ancient Greeks were only able to decipher the meaning of the hieroglyphs that the Kamitians allowed, because there is a Spiritual aspect to talking in code that protects the code talker from infiltrators. Even now, if a Black person talks to another Black person in code, a white person will not be able to decipher the deeper meanings. The pyramids cannot be duplicated because the pharaohs co-created them with Spirit. Spirit cannot be fooled and will not share those secrets with anyone who cannot be trusted. Given our history of colonization, how can Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People trust the data that is created, verified and validated by colonizers' limited understanding of knowing and doing? Our connection to SPIRIT offers us a powerful counterstrategy because when we connect with our innate intelligence, a red flag is raised. When we investigate that red flag (though we may need to do our homework by swimming through a sea of narrowly formed substantiated data and keep what we learn to ourselves until we garner support in order to avoid public harassment), it will lead us to the ultimate truth. Every red flag is legitimate and must be investigated until the truth is revealed.
Perception Mountains
If we watch television without recognizing the social constructs, our minds become hard-wired to match the programming. When parents allow television to be a convenient babysitter, they subject their children to these social patterns which causes them to bypass their intuition and common sense in order to comply with the status quo.
Rather than allowing our inner wisdom to drive our outer actions, our thoughts and behaviors are gradually influenced by what we experience in our outer world, even if that world is fictitious. When I lived in California, a young Black man came to make repairs in my apartment. He lived in a small town about 40 minutes from Oakland. He said that he never saw a successful Black professional until he took a job as a maintenance person in downtown Oakland. He was shocked at how many Black People lived in the building. What we see every day can alter our perceptions and determine how we view the world/think about ourselves. How can we trust our perceptions if the dominant narratives that are forced upon us on a daily basis ad nauseam are designed to manipulate/drive those perceptions in order to sell products/ideas?
In order to be self-aware, we must continually question/reassess our thoughts and behaviors as we evolve and grow.
Do not be silent; there is no limit to the power that may be released through you. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Legal Mountains
The eugenics movement in America is important to understand and study because it demonstrates how far a colonizer will go to sustain and evolve the white population, including asserting its power through the Supreme Court. In 1927, the US Supreme Court legalized forced sterilizations of over 60,000 people who were identified as "feebleminded" by low IQ test scores. Deaf, blind, Black/poor people and promiscuous women were also targeted. In 1961, Fannie Lou Hamer was given a hysterectomy without her consent, an indication of creative ways to continue these practices. Sterilization of Indigenous women continued through the 1970's. Forced sterilization is still legal in 31 states, but are not overtly enforced. Black women continue to receive hysterectomies at three times the rate of white women. Yet we see evidence of white fertility doctors committing fertility fraud with their white female patients to increase white women's chances of having children. When I first started studying holistic health, a 28-year-old Black female friend of mine was told by her doctor to have a hysterectomy. I tried to explain to her that there were many other ways to heal from fibroids (especially given her young age), but she was frightened and intimidated by her doctor because he played with the word "tumor" to infer that cancer was imminent if she didn't have the surgery. It is difficult to help a distressed person to see that they are being manipulated. She was so depressed because she wanted to have children, but because the social narrative/scientific data at the time offered hysterectomies as her only option she believed it.
When I healed my body of an incurable respiratory disease, I did so on my own. The social constructs were so against holistic health that I had to go underground through my healing process. I had to stop telling people what I was doing, because no one understood me, and my medical doctor ridiculed me. The pressure to conform to the status quo was overwhelming. The false fears perpetuated by ignorance of any healing strategies that existed outside of western medicine caused people to become hostile as they defended their beliefs (by publicly harassing people who pursued other options) and refused to consider options that they didn't understand. We most recently witnessed evidence of this hostility play out with the public branding term of "anti vaxxer" to promote vaccines as the only and most responsible option to the pandemic. Yet, we failed to recognize that there were pharmaceutical companies that were in danger of bankruptcy before the pandemic that have now earned over a billion dollars in profit. I attended a wellness event where the 17th Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, Dr. Richard Carmona, asserted that the medical industry needs to humble itself and recognize that alternative medicine is not alternative. This is the emerging evidence of the medical industry beginning to accept holistic health as a legitimate option for health care. The only reason why I had the courage to travel into the unknown was because the medicine was turning me into a zombie and the disease kept getting worse. Even though my recovery had nothing to do with vaccines, I had to go off the grid for my own protection, but I did so because I had nothing to lose, and
I was driven by a dream of a healthier me.
I mention these stories because the hostility that a person receives for entertaining a new idea that other people do not understand keeps us from evolving and co-creating solutions that can solve our most pressing problems. The talented tenth was the African American academics’ response to the eugenics movement; however, its focus was on the development of African American leaders and birth control education. W.E.B. DuBois later revised his thesis and presented “The Guiding Hundredths” (a.k.a. The Hundredth Talented) to include cultivating leadership and alliances between Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant populations. If we want to evolve as a society, we need to work together to co-create the best options for a given situation and those options cannot be driven by what makes the most profit, because what makes the most profit can have side effects that cause our society to digress in health and in consciousness (i.e. asbestos, climate change, etc.).
Never reduce your dreams to the level of the event, which is your immediate experience. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Socially Acceptable Mountains
How do we dream of a better life when our ideas are limited by our social conditioning? In addition to forced sterilization, here are a few other examples of practices that were once considered socially acceptable/required:
☥ South Africa passed witchcraft suppression laws to discredit traditional African healers
and to brand them as witch doctors
☥ White people performed in Blackface/dressed up as Black People for Halloween
☥ Paint was once lead-based
☥ Salt was once stripped of iodine/trace minerals
☥ Lard was once the cooking oil of choice
At the time, these practices were acceptable to the status quo/forced on the general public. In time, we created change by fighting for civil rights or learned how to make better choices based on new data. How can we improve upon the status quo if we do not adopt a mindset that regularly revisits, questions and explores whether our behaviors serve the highest good? Furthermore, how can we explore alternative ways of knowing, doing and being if the general public harasses or shames us for questioning the status quo?
The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions; you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Reframing History Mountains
I recently watched a recorded presentation about healing herbs and foods that were brought to the US and Caribbean from Africa during the Euro-American Slave Trade. Although an African woman moderated the presentation, the first of the two presenters was a British man who truly wanted to spread this information to the global wellness community. However, as I began to listen to what he was saying, I realized that the content would contribute to my social programming research. The British man said that:
☥ African American chefs are just now sharing knowledge about the African origins of
healing foods and herbs - as if in his annoyance to our tardiness, he had forgotten the
hundreds of years of oppression, including a eurocentric education that was forced on
us which either deleted, invalidated/whitened African history/culture ... AND Europe's
complete and ruthless rape of Africa during the scramble for Africa to fund their
industrial revolution (which has caused global warming, the destruction of rainforests,
the future challenge of the Thwaites Glacier, covertly manipulating/funding rebels to
cause civil disturbances so that Europe can intervene, fertility doctors who covertly
inseminate patients with their own sperm to increase white women's chances of
having children, psychological warfare to promote Pan African dissonance, heavily
marketing products that promote self-hatred and colorism such as skin lightening
creams, etc.).
☥ Nutritious foods such a pigeon peas were fed to enslaved Africans during the middle
passage because the slave traders cared about the health of their slaves. He must
have forgotten that the prime directive was to pack as many Africans into slave ships
as possible and transport them in the cheapest way possible. In fact, the Portuguese
would often and literally work enslaved Africans, who were taken to Brazil, to death
because so many would show up, that it was cheaper to just replace the dead ones
than to feed them. At one point in time, the conditions for enslaved Africans in Brazil
were so brutal that the Portuguese government had to intervene to define/demand
"humane" treatment in the slave traders' business operations.
The presentation improved when the second presenter, who was a Black man from the Caribbean, shared stories such as women who braided rice and other seeds into their hair, the only place they could hide/transport their food. Unfortunately, he had to rush through his presentation because the British guy's pontification was so long. I would have preferred to only have heard from the Black man. There was no way for me to leave feedback after viewing the recording, but it reminded me that in spaces such as the global wellness community, which primarily consists of white people who believe themselves to care about wellness, the platform for the dissemination of information is still controlled by white people offering white-centered concepts and ideas over the truth. I've spent time with this community and have witnessed that their primary focus is on growing and establishing global wellness businesses. I've heard them speak about making the industry more "inclusive" but they have not acknowledged or addressed removing global racist practices such as:
☥ Psychologically manipulating/pressuring locals to not like certain foods while they
learn of the healing properties so that they can market and sell those same foods
around the world and back to the people they manipulated. This happened in Belize
with coconut oil (which missionaries promoted as an unhealthy saturated fat for
decades) and loofah (marketed as something only poor people would use). In India
there is perception that only "poor" people eat jackfruit, an idea that did not exist
before colonization. Jackfruit is an incredibly versatile vegan source of protein, but I
struggle to find an Indian-owned jackfruit business. Many Indians are as ashamed to
eat jackfruit as Black People are to eat watermelon, for the same historical reasons.
☥ Milking countries of their resources and making it extremely difficult for locals to
survive, let alone obtain seed funding to market and sell their native products. It is still
challenging to find Black-owned shea butter or kalimba businesses (if you look for
images of a kalimba, you'll mostly find pictures of white people playing them). In Bali,
American cigarettes are cheaper to purchase than rice, and I was disheartened to
witness young males proudly Snapchatting themselves smoking. Supermarkets sold
cheap/unhealthy American goods that are no longer popular in America such as Pixy
Stix, etc. In Costa Rica, the roads that led to the banana plantations were full of
potholes - sometimes as large as the street itself.
☥ Even during the worst of financial times, global wellness businesses find a way to raise
millions of dollars to create/launch new products or to expand their businesses. During
the COVID-19 pandemic alone, I counted over 29 businesses that announced raising
millions of dollars, yet I see no real efforts to overcome poverty in Africa, India, Mexico
and around the globe. When I was in Bali, the van that took me to a healing festival
went through a neighborhood that truly broke my heart. One day, I saw a woman
washing clothes in a canal. Another day, I saw the same woman bathing in that canal.
There is no reason for her to live that way. Traveling as a Black woman on vacation to
other countries has proven to be a complicated mix of education, enjoyment and
heart-wrenching truths.
If we truly cared about global wellness, then we would ensure that the people who live where we choose to extract resources have the means to evolve and thrive.
If they are not thriving, what right do we have to extract their resources? How much more abundant would the world be when we're all thriving? There is so much more that we could do to ensure wellness around the globe - and it wouldn't even be that expensive. Poverty isn't a complicated problem to solve. It doesn't get solved because it feeds colonizers' emotional addictions to feeling like they are superior to and have the right to control others, who they continually milk for resources. We solve the problem by healing our unresolved trauma. Hurt people hurt other people, but healed people work to ensure the healing of everyone. Poverty holds ALL of us back and slows the evolution of our consciousness.
You must lay your lives on the altar of social change so that wherever you are, there the kingdom of God is at hand! ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
The British man was attempting to insert white people into the story of how many of these healing foods got to America. But the truth is that many of the delicious and healthy foods that we eat today were carried here from Africa by enslaved people. As colonizers discovered these foods that only we knew how to harvest, they appropriated our knowledge and earned wealth from our ingenuity and labor, a pattern that we can trace back to Kamit (Ancient Egypt) that continues to repeat itself in today’s world. As we come out of our social programming, we are beginning to discover evidence of the truth. As soon as the truth begins to emerge, colonizers attempt to jump in and reframe the story in order to insert themselves into the center of it because they have established the platforms with which to dictate and market the story. They can also attempt to justify telling the story because we are taking too long to tell it ourselves, omitting the challenge we face in discovering our own history. When colonizers say things to us like “playing the race card” or “Why do we keep having to talk about slavery?” it is important for us to assert that we are still locked into a pattern we inherited, caused by unresolved trauma from slavery, by which the colonizer mindset continually attempts to dictate social norms and reframe history.
I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. ☥ ☥ Angela Davis ☥
The Courage To Stand Your Ground Mountains
I was at a Mayan chocolate farm in Belize. I had just toured the farm with a group of young Black males from various community organizations in cities across the US. The Mayan chocolatiers then walked us through their process of making organic chocolate. I loved learning about their history and culture in Belize. After the presentation, I was eager to pick up some organic cocoa butter, cacao nibs and chocolate bars from their gift shop. I also found some chocolate tea. I was thrilled that the cost of the cacao nibs were almost 50% less than the cost in America so I loaded up on supplies. While I was sampling some of the different flavors of chocolate, I heard a white man attempting to talk the price of the chocolate down. I felt so embarrassed to be an American in that moment. The price of the chocolate was more than fair, which caused me to purchase as much as I could so that the Mayans could have a good sales day. I was so annoyed that I felt tempted to intervene, but to my extreme pleasure, the Mayan chocolatier very pleasantly and professionally stood his ground.
I'm sorry sir, but to cut the price any more would take us below the cost of making the chocolate and we have to pay our workers a fair price.
The white man grumbled but paid the price. I noticed that he pulled out a large wad of money so he obviously could afford to purchase the chocolate. He was just trying to see how much he could squeeze out of this family-owned business. What impressed me the most about the Mayan chocolatier was that he was willing to let the white man walk out of his shop rather than allow himself to be hustled. In order for us to stand our ground, we have to know the value of our lives and work. We must also establish and enforce strong healthy boundaries which sometimes means that we will have to walk away from what may seem like an immediate financial gain.
Getting Over The Mountaintop On The Journey To The Dream
We have to learn how to breathe more deeply as we get closer to the mountaintop because the air is thinner. We'll also need to push past some discomfort to get over the mountaintop. Let's journey through a few examples of stretching ourselves past our comfort zones to get over the mountaintop on the journey to the dream.
☥ Be comfortable as ourselves in public ☥ which includes unapologetically
congregating with each other, eating our native foods, wearing our indigenous clothing
and speaking our languages. We are often made to feel uncomfortable when we are
being ourselves causing us to subjugate ourselves to white people who are doing
the very same thing to be themselves in public. We can be warm and compassionate
while at the same time committed to being our authentic selves everywhere we go.
When we speak our native languages in public, we can make other people feel like an outsider. However, a fun way to overcome this barrier is to do something that I often
witness in the Latinx community. A Latinx woman once said to her friends when I
entered the room, "¡Ay, qué linda! How pretty!" We had a fun conversation because she
translated for me on the spot. This is a powerful practice because she bridged the
language barrier and taught me something at the same time. I have yet to find a
downside to learning more about people of other cultures. At the same time, we have
to keep in mind that some people do not understand or speak our language. In these
cases, let's imagine how we would want to be treated in another country where we
don't speak or understand the language and offer compassion as a first response.
☥ Be intentional ☥ understand each other ☥ heal past traumas ☥ relentlessly drop
assumptions about each other's culture. When I was walking through a town in
Germany, I noticed that the townspeople kept calling me a specific name. They were
friendly, but because I didn't know what they were saying, I assumed that they were
calling me some derogatory name for Black People/laughing at me behind my back.
The next day, I was walking through town with a German family member and it
happened again. When I asked for the translation, my family member laughed and
explained to me that another family member of mine, who also lived in Germany for a
number of years, was very well loved by the townspeople. I look so much like her that
they thought I was her daughter, so they were saying "Oh! It's _____'s daughter!"
Because she spoke German fluently, they assumed that I also spoke and understood
German. Because I didn't respond back to them and, as the day progressed, expressed
emotional angst because I assumed I was being insulted, imagine how they may have
been confused by my body language.
These misunderstandings keep us from connecting with each other. Past racial traumas and unconscious/programmed stereotypes about other people can cause us to make the mistake of judging people based on our understanding of what is friendly or rude and misinterpret body language as well as a person's intentions.
Let's remember that we are still getting to know ourselves so that we can drop
assumptions and authentically get to know each other. Breathe, pause, seek
understanding first, and then decide how to process our emotions. Americans,
including Black Americans, are especially susceptible to making assumptions because
we are programmed to expect people to relate the way we relate. Although it appears
to feel like a natural response that is coming from us, this behavior is actually a
byproduct of hundreds of years of the pressure to conform to eurocentric culture and
ideology, and it can be so deeply embedded in our subconscious mind, that we don't
realize what we are doing.
For this reason, we need to be relentlessly intentional and approach each person as an individual. The exception to the suggestion to drop assumptions is to adopt the assumption that we know absolutely nothing about a given person or situation.
As we retrain ourselves to breathe, pause and seek understanding first, we'll become more self-aware which allows us to ease our way over the mountaintop on the journey to the dream.
A Dream Realized
"So Beautiful" is a project sponsored by the Journey To Radiance Podcast Series. The film tells the story of Oakland-based father, husband, teacher and artist Sizwe Abakah a.k.a. Spear Of The Nation (mega talented second artist to perform in the "So Beautiful" music video listed above), who travels to South Africa to find the home of his name (there is a village in South Africa called "Sizwe"). The "So Beautiful" film was featured in the Silicon Valley African Film Festival and won an award which created an opportunity for the South African healing artist MXO to fulfill a dream of coming to America. Our Journey To The Dream episode celebrates the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and introduces us to the vision, valor and vocal virtuoso of veneration MXO, an extraordinary trendsetting South African performer who uses his gifts as a tool for healing, liberation and the elevation of consciousness. We journey past the propaganda, learn what is really happening in South Africa and share strategies for overcoming the obstacles that limit our dreams/prevent us from co-creating Pan African unity throughout the diaspora ☥ delight in hearing him sing for us in the studio.
A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
MXO 'The Real MXO' Lokwe has adorned the South African music industry for over 13 years. He is a visionary and a trailblazer in the artistic scene. His quirky, eccentric and authentic fashion style, matched by his bewitching raspy voice, prove that he is anything but ordinary. His debut single 'Sista Kunjani' intricately showcased his distinct way of moulding Afro-soul, jazz, funk, traditional and modern pop.
In 2004 he released 'Peace of Mind', which marked the arrival of a musical force, spawning multiple hits like 'Zand’iyibone', 'Delilah', 'Nomalizo' and 'Tonight'. Rich with enchanting Xhosa lyrics and immaculately marrying funk, jazz, soul, pop, traditional and rock, he made being an alternative musician popular in a time when it was still misunderstood.
Born and bred in the dynamic city of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, he grew up soaking in the music of Prince, Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Sade, Guru, Caiphus Semenya, Stimela, Fela Kuti, Michael Jackson and early SA bubble gum music. He would mimic his favourite stars, already envisioning a life as a rock star. He later worked at Musica, which became a musicology to him, introducing him to a wide spectrum of artists like Bill Withers, Finley Quaye, Omar Lye-Fook, Jamiroquai and Coldplay. He also gained a deep appreciation for underground music.
As a live act, he chiselled his chops by performing in nightclubs around Johannesburg and at popular artistic hubs Melville, Yeoville and Hillbrow. He developed a bold live persona that made him a crowd favourite. Since then he has shared stages with heavyweights like Hugh Masekela, John Legend, Saul Williams, Incognito, Leandro Lehart, Maxwell and Mandoza. He has also rocked stages in Switzerland, Germany, Brazil, Tanzania, France, Japan and China, [etc.]. ☥ ☥ musicinafrica.net ☥
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There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
☥ DREAM ☥
☥ We can't dream big enough for SPIRIT ☥
Then remember that ...
The Dream Is Only The Beginning ☥ Connect With SPIRIT ☥ Manifest Your Dreams
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In whatever sense this year is a new year for you, may the moment find you eager and unafraid, ready to take it by the hand with joy and gratitude. ☥ ☥ Howard Thurman ☥
Behind the scenes shots of the filming of "So Beautiful."
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