Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Words of Power
The Law of Attraction Divined
Emenike A. La
Copyright © 2013 Emenike A. La
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 1481073265
ISBN-13: 978-1481073264
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever been abandoned, anyone who has
ever felt unloved, and anyone who has ever felt this world was not ready for the
love they bring. Shall we name names? Or shall we speak the truth that this is
the child within us all. To those children, let the waters of the stars of the song
before time flow into their Light.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Prologue
Introduction
The Exercises
Invoking the Law of the Word: My Soul Says It Is So
Structuring and Crystallizing the Word: Your Guarantee What You Want Will
Manifest
Invoking Your Magical Power: Your Choice to Relate to the Universe as a
Magical Place
Living and Waiting on Dreams to Manifest: Invoking Patience and Aliveness as
Dream Cycles Manifest
Being Liked and Winning Friends
Manifesting Health in the Home
Manifesting Health in Relationships
Manifesting Workability with Mechanical Things
Health in Relationship to Power, Structure and Change
Embracing Change
Creating Safety and Security
Embracing the Causal Nature of All Things
Living in Elegance and Strength
The Wisdom of Pilgrimage and Sacred Walking
The Courage to Let Go
The Power to Please and Be Granted Favors
The Power to Truly Listen to Someone
The Power to Never Be Lonely
The Power to Never Be Bored
The Power to Start a Project
The Power to See a Project through to the End
The Power to Sing Your Dreams Into Being
The Power to Understand Omens, Dreams, and Symbols
The Power to Dance with the Spiritual Energies of Nature
The Power to Overcome the Past
The Power to Increase Intelligence
When You Want to Move or Change Residence
How to Invite Abundance
How to Identify What Brings You Good Luck
How to Properly Invite Good Changes
The Technology to Ease Transitions and Major Life Lessons
After the Invitation: Embracing and Living in Abundance
The Power to Fully Empower the Force of Gratitude
Increasing Focus and Concentration
Using Time Wisely and Finding Unused Resources
Mojo for Attracting a Lover or Multiple Lovers
Dealing Powerfully with Disruption and Disrespect
Attracting People Who Support Your Soul’s Yearnings
The Power of Peace with your Legacy
The Power to Listen and Speak from the Heart
The Power to be Profound and Original
The Power of Respect
The Power to be Comfortable with Yourself
Nourishing the Soul
A Prayer to Cause the Sun to Rise
A Prayer to Make It Rain
A Prayer to Cause the Sun to Set
Operating At Full Mental Capacity
Joy, Ecstasy, and Peace as Life Learning Tools
Listening to the Movements of Planets and Stars
The Restoration of the Innocence of the Heart
The Power to Communicate Thoroughly
Seeing the Soul
Listening to the Land
Being a Blessing and Giving Blessings
Imparting the Blessing of Peace
Imparting the Blessing of a Deeper Relationship with the Sacred
The Healer’s Source Field and the Ability to Hold Sacred Secrets
The Gift of Being Self Sufficient and the Blueprint of the Survival Design
Healing Survival Communities and Initiating Sustainability
Creating Viable Business and Attracting Business
Future Business Trends
Creating New Jobs That Feed Us
The Economy of the Gift
The Injustice of Poverty
The Holy Spirits of the Family
Livingly Safely in Community
How to Know the Will of God
The Right Way of Walking the Earth
The Blessing of Comfort
The Power to Bless Someone as Sacred
Actions of Grace from Before You Were Born
Reducing Deception and Manipulation
Certainty and Control in Finances
Multiple Streams of Blessings
The Gift of Beauty and Love
The Gift of Intuition
The Power to Make the Works of One’s Hands Sacred
I’ll Say A Little Prayer For You
Increasing Fertility and Maternity
Healthy Children
Protecting Children for Life
Protecting Children from Predatory Energies
Protecting Neighborhoods and Schools
Career Counselors and Diviners of Purpose
Support and Acknowledgement
Gatekeeper Installation and Reconciliation
Shamanic Initiation in the Life of Emenike La
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my mothers. At many turns a man needs to be nurtured, for the world is a
strange place indeed, and even the strong carry the storms of grief within. To
those mothers, who are many, who carry and hold, making way for new life to be
born, I bow. They are one and many, male and female, in this world and others.
They birth, they protect, they shelter, they hold and they nourish. They listen
and they see. They act and they respond. To them, I offer the sacred calabash of
gratitude, that they may taste the fruits of the life that was so graciously
nurtured.
Prologue
If there is one thing you need to know before
you embark on this journey it is how impeccably
loved you are. The words contained here are not
words, they are portals to ancient sources that
speak from the highest love in Creation. Their
purpose is not to tell you how much love is
available to you, but to show you, and from that
weave a new fabric of relating to who we know
ourselves to be before we were made flesh.
Introduction
This book was born out of my initiation into being a medicine man,
diviner, and gatekeeper. I didn’t encounter a diviner or even hear of the word
divination until I was twenty three. It was foreign in the place I was born. As I
looked back over my life I could remember instances as a child of gathering
sticks and other strange objects from around the yard. I would gather them in
my hands and cast them on the ground. I had no knowledge of what I was
doing, only the strong feeling in my gut that one day I would cast these objects
and something important would be spoken.
Though I had experienced tarot and I Ching readings, my first experience of
divination was something thoroughly Otherworldly. It was also thoroughly
comforting, in the way when someone listens to your deepest pain, and you
know you have been listened to—not simply heard. In such a moment, you
release into an expanded knowing that everything will work out to be ok.
It was in that first experience of divination, that I was listened to in that
way. I said nothing of my problems and yet the deepest injustices and conflicts I
had experienced over a long time were gracefully revealed. I was paralyzed to
speak; in awe of being close to something so ancient. Later I came to know that
it was the ancientness within me that could perceive that which I was
experiencing as ancient, wise, and powerful. There was something in me that
sensed that the problems I was experiencing could only be addressed through
something deep and profoundly wise.
It was in that moment of divine paralysis, that I committed that every single
person will have access to divination. “What if everyone in humanity could
have this experience,” I thought. My bones cried it was a birthright to be healed
in this way—that every community and family needed someone who listens and
someone who sees. It was such a powerful, tangible, and sacred expression of
love that my soul leaped before I knew what it was doing and spoke its
commitment to the world.
I imagine this is something like what happens before people are born. They
become so deeply inspired at the most profound love they can bring to the earth
and before they know it, they throw themselves into the drama of the planet, not
caring for what consequences await. There was a sense in that moment that
regardless of the consequences, my soul says it is so and thus it will be done.
I did not know the implications of that commitment until much further in
my initiation. The most challenging of consequences, was entering into a
permanent altered perception that gave me an elevated consciousness on all
human matters. Such profound gifts come at the price of feeling alien within
one’s own village. It is the ability to see problems at their root and the grace of
divine presence when people feel abandoned and troubled the most. It is like
being filled with the power of angels when the world is falling apart, only to be
able to engage when requested—as we must ask to receive, in honor the law of
wholeness.
Most of the time, those undergoing their own falling of the sky do not know
that just beside them is a gateway or doorway to another dimension that can
merge with their own to bring a profound peace that speaks to the bones and
source of who they are.
It was my primal urge that as soon as I could, I would divine as many
people as possible. Overtime, I began to see certain common ailments and
issues that arose. I kept a catalogue of these issues to reference as new clients
came forth. The exercises in this book are a result of that catalogue of ailments
and solutions.
consist of fresh basil, parsley, and milk; preferably organic milk from a
goat.
2. Wash the head in a similar solution. The washing of the head should be
done by other women who have mothered children. This is a sacred time of
initiating the new mother-to-be into maternal energies. The women should
sing songs relative to soothing children and the comfort that mothers bring.
The purpose of this ceremony is to show the new mother-to-be that her
child is supported in this world and she is supported in a healthy pregnancy.
3. Make an offering of fertile eggs, milk, and shea butter beside a tree that
attuning to the possibility of freedom and birthing a child with ease. As the
body surrenders to the water, allow the mind to surrender to the change in
life of carrying a child. Embrace that this is a wanted change and a sacred
change. This forms a type of pregnancy baptism. Through cleansing, the
new mother to be is supported in a new life of flowing love and expression
towards the sacred through the creation of children.
5. A prayer in the light of the full moon in a garment of pure green
prepares the woman to enter into the feminine energies of birthing a child.
This prayer should be one of deep reverence to the spirits of nature for their
creativity and ability to make a good future as well as to the Creator.
Wearing the symbol of a moon on the third eye is advisable from this point.
The idea is to intentionally embrace the energies of feminine divinity, grace,
elegance, and motherhood at the same time, creating a dramatic shift in the
body’s energetic hospitality to receiving a new child.
Healthy Children
The insurance of a healthy pregnancy and the health of children after pregnancy
can be accomplished through a variety of methodologies and techniques.
One such technique is the construction of talismans for each of these purposes.
Some talismans implore the use of the sacred word, writing the words of holy
scriptures such as psalm 1 that pertain to the growth and development of
children.
Other times, one can tap directly into one’s one divine inspiration and speak
sacred words in a talisman to facilitate this purpose.
The talisman should consist of a blue stone, something gold, and something
beautiful that represents the picture of a healthy future of mother, child, and
family. The last drop should be a drop of honey to cause continuity to the vision.
For the health of the child, a green stone, a small piece of cloth from the father,
and milk should be placed in a bag. The bag should be washed with olive oil
and placed in a solution of ash and a brown liquor. The intention of health
should be placed in the talisman through spitting in just as it closes up.
These types of creations may seem odd at first, but it is workability that is the
primary focus here. These talismans hold and draw in the energy of their
intention.
These do not take the place of prenatal medical care and the support of
competent elders. These are intended to be in addition to what is standard for
this type of care.
Protecting Children for Life
One of the things every child needs is a ceremony performed on their behalf to
set their life in a beautiful motion.
One specific way to accomplish this is to consult a diviner to divine for specific
things the consciousness of the child is requesting as they enter the earth plane.
Many times the spirit of the child already knows what tools they will need upon
arrival to ensure their time on earth meets their intentions for coming.
Another way to take care of this is a ceremony of communally welcoming and
blessing the child. In this type of ceremony the child is given a special blanket.
The blanket is prayed over before hand to imbue it with special properties of
protection relative to the child.
The child is then wrapped in the blanket during the ceremony while they are
welcomed, especially through the laughter and playing of other children, but also
through an out pouring of kind words, heart energy, and blessing energy that
looks like the rapid waving of the figures as they are stretched above the head.
Other rituals for this purpose may include rituals to the spirit of the road done by
the father to protect the path of the child as they walk through life from all
physical harm and events that distract them from their purpose.
Such a ritual should include sincere words and an offering from the heart to the
spirit of the road designated as representative of the child’s path.
Protecting Children from Predatory Energies
One of the biggest problems we face globally are predatory energies that seek
children. The problem is not in protecting the children, the problem is in having
honest conversations about the prevalence, causes, and major energy feeders of
this type of energy. When these wounds have gone unaddressed for generations,
they leave an open hole for them to continue to take root in future generations.
The solving of this requires the courage to call these energies out and to have
hard conversations about how they got into a family or a group in the first place.
Someone will have to be held accountable for taking on the job of protecting the
family or group from these energies. Quite coincidentally, someone always
incarnates into a family or shows up in a group with this particular “medicine”
installed in their bones.
In the meantime, protecting children from these energies can be done through
various means.
One means is through deliberate energetic exchange with the ancestors. This can
be something like a black candle and a sack of major protective herbs like
nettles, elderberry, black walnut, and angelica. The spirit of nettle in particular,
when notified of a protection issue springs into action in a whirling whipping
motion.
The act of requesting ancestral involvement is more than most people have
done. This sets the stage for the radical intervention in the child’s path,
intervening in any future time streams where these predatory energies are near
the child.
Another more interesting talisman would consist of sharp metal objects, nettles,
osha root, and elements of the body of a black bear.
Osha root alone forms a natural protective scan of children. It pinpoints
predatory energies within the vicinity of the child and immediately removes
them without question or hesitation, working like an intelligent machine.
When combined with these other elements or when created by a skilled
talismanic maker, these types of energies can no longer enter the child’s domain,
even if they come through people the child is close to. The energies will simply
we unable to reach the child.
As families, communities, and groups, larger efforts can be taken in this vein.
An entire shrine can be built to monitor the protection of the children of these
groups. This is more than a group altar and requires the facilitation of someone
trained in the art of divining and building shrines.
These shrines allow for talismanic energies to be distributed in a stronger, wider
reaching fashion. When children are concerned, every single protective measure
that can possibly be taken needs to be seriously entertained.
Protecting Neighborhoods and Schools
There was once a very bad neighborhood in Greensboro, NC. Like most bad
neighborhoods, there were drugs, prostitution, and violence up and down the
street. It wasn’t safe to go out at night and definitely not safe for children to
play.
At some point, a group of women who went to the church at the corner of the
street gathered. These women were fed up with the state of the street. So they
decided to do something radical.
They went to each house cleansing the houses in holy water and anointing them
with oils that contained their prayers. They did the same thing to the entire
road.
It was a miracle as the street completely turned around and is now a pleasant
place to sit on the porch and hackle with neighbors.
The physical prayer over certain roads or schools is a powerful tool in
addressing issues of protection. Physical prayers include cleaning things up,
literally, and applying the energy of prayer to crucial spots such as entry ways,
corners, walk ways and cracks.
These types of physical prayers include holy waters, herbal waters, essential oil
waters, oil infusions, sacred smokes and salt scrubs.
What makes this really powerful is when a group of people are involved in the
process. When verbal and spiritual prayers are facilitated through physical
substances, they leave a mark that creates an energetic presence.
Part of the reason the neighborhood was “bad” or there is violence is schools is
that they are not energetically clean. One way to address this is through personal
protection or protecting people and children you know will be in these
environments. The same ingredients above apply to that aspect of the process.
This is not a religious issue, it is a spiritual and energetic issue. We do not have
to agree on the same religion to distinguish what energies support life and what
energies do not. That is the bottom line that connects us all. We all are living
and we want to live. From that common point, gathering people for clearing the
space of energies that are not for life is the first step. The next step is to invite
and install the energies that are for life.
To invite and install the energies that are for life, anointing doors with oils---oils
infused with the essence of flowers such as rose, jasmine, and lavender---opens
the gate. Anointing the corners of rooms, window corners and other intuitively
recognized key places is also a great thing to do.
For schools in particular, earth ceremonies have a large part to play in the safety
of these institutions. Such prayers and offerings insured forth in this domain
need to be renewed yearly.
It is great that people pray for schools and do so consistently. In the vein of
seriously protecting children, it is wise to be very hands own with sending
spiritual energies that promote and protect the health and development of the
children.
Career Counselors and Diviners of Purpose
Most people are not aware of what they are suppose to be doing on earth.
Divination is the orientation process that gifts the tailored messages as to what
we need to be up to that facilities our radical presence in life.
Our careers are intended to be expressions of our sacred sovereignty. They are
not something that should be divined through tests or through trends in the job
market. The job market is intended to be sourced in the creativity we bring
to it.
This entails a different approach to the responsibility of participating in civic life
organized from the ground up, rather than depending on governmental
institutions or worse the presiding overseer of a particular governmental
institution to do what we can do for ourselves.
In schools, guidance counselors and career counselors are holding the space
where trained diviners should be. The reason children leave school not knowing
what to do is not because of a grand conspiracy implanted in the school system,
it is because we are not engaging the resource of prophetic divination to access
and address the students needs from the perspective of the earth.
From the perspective of the earth, education needs to take a different direction.
This is a direction that promotes the increase in collective intelligence. The
disharmony between science and spirituality is in need of a mythic resolution if
education is to do the work of drawing out the training of purpose that is a
movement of energy and intelligence between worlds.
We are at a point in our evolution were we cannot ignore this any longer. If we
do, we run this risk of generating catastrophes that we will learn were self
imposed, not imposed from some divine authority.
The earth is in need of people who are in harmony with their original essence in
all forms and areas of their life. This means that if people are designed to be
peacemakers, mask makers, healers, drum makers, storytellers, gatekeepers or
some other form of art, communities need to create innovative processes for
manufacturing structures for these professions.
In this way, young people won’t have to choose between their nature, passion,
and making money. They won’t have to dull their senses and intelligence just to
make ends meet only to harm themselves to dull the pain of nullifying their
spiritual contracts, taking on more than their fair share of the integrity balance
for the culture that refuses to mature.
If this happens in a community it is extraordinary. For most young people,
however, it is likely not to happen. In such an event, protecting the
consciousness before they move into working for a living is a wise thing to do.
This is a type of sending off ceremony, designed to insulate the young people as
they go into to territories that are not designed to facilitate their purpose or
distract them in some way from developing their intelligence.
This type of ceremony is indigenous to the family or community that supports
the young people. The simple act of acknowledging this directive sends an
important message to the young they are not forgotten and the adults are taking
as much responsibility as possible to protect them and make life a more livable
place.
Support and Acknowledgement
Support and acknowledgement are necessary parts of the human journey. We
need to have outside confirmation that we are on the right track.
With innovations, however, support and acknowledge is often lacking in the
process of creation. This is because most people only support a thing when the
thing is seen in its final stage. Otherwise it is just an idea to them and not all
people see ideas as powerful.
In such a case, before a project is begun, an invisible network of support needs
to be created. In the world, this manifests as unfailing and impeccable
confidence. In the inner realms this looks like a comprehensive communication
with the beings or spirit allies responsible for the inspiration of the innovation in
question.
Before the process is began, a commitment to see the project through till the end
should be addressed openly in a safe spiritual context.
For instance, if it is a work that comes from the ancestors or spirit in general, it
can be addressed at a shrine to the ancestors or somewhere in nature; or with
someone trained to nurture the growth of seedling projects.
What occurs in this process is a prayer for the completion of the process, that the
project is a complete expression of the Creator, and that the project is received
fairly. In this case, the pouring of waters or some other sacred gesture to nourish
the overarch of the process is a vital touch.
In this way, a communications network is set up to transfer the responsibility for
motivation and acknowledgement to an invisible source.
Thus, when the world is not feeling up to acknowledgement, the person can
carry an inner knowing that they are in the right place doing the right thing at the
right time.
Gatekeeper Installation and Reconciliation
Gatekeepers are beings designed to nourish the source and strength of life for
communities and groups. Their gifts are in opening various types of portals
between worlds: from portals in nature to portals within a star system to
communications between parallel realities. The maintenance of the health of
these portals support the health of culture and evolution as a whole. Evolution in
a large part comes through these portals, as these are on the forefront of human
imagination and exploration of consciousness.
Gatekeepers bring a powerful presence of intense integrity that is often feared.
When a culture is out of harmony with nature, it is reflected in the gatekeepers
demeanor as if the gatekeepers serve as the visible voice for nature’s perspective
on things.
This is not always something to look forward to; as nature loves to joke, nature
can also be fierce. Gatekeepers hold the tools and the inner energetic pathways
to heal collective issues of integrity with the spirit of nature.
If the gatekeeper does not do their job then the culture finds its life sucked out of
it. When the culture is on fire, it is the gatekeepers and other medicine people
who bring water and other cooling elements to stabilize the crisis at large.
Gatekeepers are not the same as gay people but there is an energetic correlation.
Gay people, in large part, are part of cultural consciousness and for this reason
many gay people are not facilitating the high energies required to keep an open
portal.
Not everyone who claims to be gay actually is gay. There are a variety of
energetic forms that create the conditions for gay expressions, some of which are
culturally based and others that are spiritually and nature based. In other words,
there is a wide range of energetic and consciousness diversity within people who
identify as gay. There is no common reason why people are gay because not
everybody is gay in the same way. The common ground in all of this, is that
whatever the reason, being gay is a part of the evolution of the species.
Gatekeepers exist between two worlds, sometimes inhabiting the world of nature
more to balance the integrity concerns of the cultural collective. Being a
gatekeeper is something that needs to be identified by other gatekeepers in the
community. This is because being a gatekeeper requires a certain set up before
they come to the planet. It is not something that occurs while they are on earth,
due to the otherworldly nature of their disposition.
In this vein, it is wiser to speak about this phenomenon as queer. Queer signifies
something different is taking place energetically. It signifies an energy vortex in
culture or nature connecting two radically different realities that have an
agreement for well being.
In communities where there is a radical breakdown in life, were young people
are dying, men are abandoning families, and the quality of existence is
deteriorating, we need to first check and see on the status of the gatekeepers.
In most of these cases, gatekeepers are not formally activated or installed as
protectors and nourishing elements of the community. In other cases, they are
persecuted before they are properly trained. For the untrained this type of
persecution can continue until they take on the mantle of their responsibilities.
For the trained, however, to persecute or disregard the gateway they are carrying
is a deliberate communication to a force of nature. Such a communication is
received as a serious offense that locks natural events in motion that
automatically extract the sources of persecution and disregard. Such actions are
logged as offenses against natural law and ancestral law.
What both society and gatekeepers need is formal reconciliation. More and
more organizations need to acknowledge the spiritual and energetic purpose of
gatekeepers in a clear way. In addition, those persons who are gatekeepers need
proper training to access and wield their energy properly.
This process begins with the raising of clarity and awareness about the
interconnections between world crisis and gatekeepers.
Allying with gatekeepers is more than being the ally of a movement. It is allying
with the forces of nature and doing one’s personal part in reconciling with the
forces of nature.
Reconciling gatekeepers and community begins with a formal apology to
gatekeepers in the community and supporting them with resources for them to
take up the work of their sacerdotal duties. This sets the stage for an honest
conversation the community can have about its relationship with nature and any
abuses it has supported against nature in the past. If a community is concerned
about its well being, this work is paramount to addressing the overall longevity
of the community.
For gatekeepers, this begins with gathering as a community for training,
cleansing, protection, and installation in the work of reconciling the forces of
creation.
Gatekeeper is a medicine that is intended to guard the life blood of community
and to guarantee the existence of community over time.
Many times gatekeepers are also medicine people but this is not a requirement.
The two frequencies and jobs go hand in hand.
Shamanic Initiation in the Life of Emenike La
I was born in Martinsville, Virginia in 1984. From an early age I lived with
an extrasensory awareness. It was later in life that I came to know that that
extraordinary awareness had a role and place in assisting people. That role was
to open the gates for people to come closer to Spirit, so that the gifts inherent
within their humanity could shine.
It was always humanity that drew me back to Spirit. It was love that lead
me first to discover my purpose; then, to take a plunge I could never undo.
There is a sacredness to wherever we are born, like the land itself has a say
in the purpose of our spirit.. It was my fate to be born in a place with the
richness of deep ancient memories buried in the rocks and a world of hungry
ghosts whose pains had never been acknowledged.
It was my sensitivity to the ghosts of the land that first caused me to know I
was different. Regularly, I sensed and felt the emotions of others but there were
special times when I sensed more than the emotions of family and friends, I
sensed a world that many would be so quick to call make believe.
The pain of being born into a place whose most recent name was the Martin
Plantation, was to be present to gulfs of injustice never addressed. Growing up,
however, it was the spiritual damage done to the people around me that upset me
more than the ghosts and the grief. It was like being in a spiritual black hole,
where my deepest questions and yearnings were brushed aside and replaced with
thoughts designed to sedate me.
For many empaths, it is common to have what is termed poor emotional
boundaries. Thus we feel the emotions of everyone in the immediate
environment. Certainly poor boundaries was a part, as there was wounding from
a variety of traumas as an early child. Yet, something was different. I not only
felt the emotions of others, I felt the unspoken emotions of others. These are the
kinds of emotions, mostly grief, that the person carrying them don’t know they
have. It was as if I had access to some dimension within the bones or deep
memory of the people, and from that place I would feel what it is they were
seeking to release. They had no outlet or consolation, only the social pressure to
be strong and to keep trusting in the god that allowed slavery to happen.
In my culture, people are only given opportunity to grieve at socially
appointed times, namely, funerals. When someone is traumatized the
conventional prescription is to seek counseling. Many people are not willing or
are not able to participate in counseling; thus, creating adults with the traumas of
children running a city consumed by ghosts who feed on the living in hopes of
release. These ghosts were both disincarnate spirits and the split off soul parts
that became dislodged in the many episodes of violence, rape, addiction, abuse,
and insanity rooted in the ground of the city.
It was no surprise that my attraction to a profession was as a healer. In fact,
many black students entering college sought sociology, social work, psychology
and for the brave black studies, to provide them with some type of healing and
understanding of what they had endured growing up.
The only healthy response to being born in a place with layers of
unaddressed trauma, was to become a healer. Conversely, it was as if the stress
of my culture of origin pressured me to such a point that the healer in me was
forced to emerge. The soul does more than create experiences and chose
parents; the soul operates on a by any means necessary policy. When it is
sufficiently motivated to make a change or bring a gift, it will agree to and
undergo many trials in the name of bringing a drop of God into the present time
stream.
The memory place of the bones always felt like a dreaming place, for me. I
never felt like I was quite here: somehow hovering, watching, and listening on a
plane in between the physical and somewhere else. There were certain pockets
of the dream where I would become overwhelmed by the emotions of the group
and begin to emote, exercising the depth of the people. It was in those times
things were given to me to say, but I kept silent for fear of being ostracized. No
doubt that was a wise choice, as what was happening was possession by a Water
Spirit who wanted to speak through me.
Emotions from the Water Spirit were like an information vortex that
showed me what was going on in the family. I was so overwhelmed and afraid
to say what I knew was going on that I just cried. I knew this intensity was
strange for other children so I would take myself out of the world and move into
nature to watch and to listen. I would turn tree stumps into little openings
populated by flowers and waters. I didn’t know what I was doing, just that it
consoled me, gave me hope, made the continual emotional apocalypse that
greeted me with every breathe a little bearable.
It was an emotional apocalypse; the kind of constant emotional seizure
when one’s environment is permeated with socially sanctioned violence, abuse
and injustice. I was experiencing an underground energy portal of slavery, gone
unhealed and brushed aside in terms such as, “that was yesterday and we must
focus on the future now” or “it’s time to stop whining about the past and just get
over it”. This was the nature of how my gift of healing began to manifest.
Communication occurs on many levels. There is a bone level
communication where the ancestors living within our bones are in conversation
with each other. It is the ancestors within the bones who were slave owners or
supporters of the system of slavery who are the major proponents of brushing off
the healing needs of people who were enslaved. It was my lot to be able to
perceive the ancestral conversations taking place alongside the conversations of
the living, forming a link between worlds—almost a time portal; whereby reality
became repeats of traumatic patterns etched into the bones and cells of the body
only to be reawakened when the dams of grief filled to full capacity.
Then it was obvious why the subsequent rage arose. It was rage arising
from a constant stream of communication with ancestors who either took on the
values of their owners and sought to cut off the sources to my power, or it was
those descendents of the slave owners themselves who sought to implant me
with the thoughts of being oppressed and worthless. It was a warfare waged on
the level of spirit that was neither acknowledged nor responded to. It was like
living on a plantation and being the only one willing to do whatever it took to
gain freedom.
There were other occasions as a child when I was not overwhelmed. At
those times I would find myself making potions out of any and all substances I
could find around the house or finding clever ways to burn toys. I had a
dangerous attraction to fire. The fire had an almost hypnotizing effect on me.
There was one instance I remember sitting in front of the heater
mesmerized by the mechanics. I felt the desire in me to touch it—to throw
myself into its flame. I couldn’t hold myself back. I propelled forward grasping
the heater with both hands, as if something had pushed me. I remember the
initial touch being exhilarating. I loved it. I felt like I was finally alive, after
being in a dream state between living and dead, hovering over this dimension. I
remember feeling the love in my body shutter with pleasure.
At the point my parents realized what I was doing, I began to realize I
had done something to cause myself pain. I leaped back in shock. My parents
were horrified. They later shared with me long after I had forgot this experience,
they thought I would be scared forever. My oldest sister stepped in and told me
to pray to Jesus. In my sad, wimping voice, I did as I was told. I looked at my
hands and began to pray. I asked Jesus to take away the pain and the scars in a
simple little prayer. What occurred as I did this was shocking to my parents and
sister. I began to shake, veins popping out of my neck, obviously strained in
some type of altered state. I could remember nothing after that as everything
seemed to black out.
The next morning I woke up with no scaring. The burn was bad enough to
cause permanent scarring and should have at the very least left a blister and pain
for days. I was fine and thought nothing of it.
I remember as a child going into that shaking state often to get
something I wanted. My body would tense, veins would grow, and my
concentration would increase until I knew it was time to let go. It seemed
natural to me and I never thought of it as a healing ability or anything magical.
I knew I was different and I needed to hide that difference. As I sung
Dottie Peoples’ He Did It For My Good in church, I was communicating from a
place deep within me. I knew I had been made a different way and that
difference would change everything one day. I thought it was wrong to be
different, but there was something inside of me, my own voice perhaps, that said
that was nonsense. I had a sense of being my own person, my own spirit,
independent of my family. It was a sense that I had come to them.
It was later as I grew into medicine work that I literally remembered
being a spirit in the bush while my mother was at a party. She was pregnant with
me at the time. I remember seeing a baby inside her belly. As she got close to
the bush, I entered the baby. I asked her if she remembered the party once and
she admitted she did. I told her some details of the party and that I was the spirit
that entered the child. She looked at me horrified by what I was saying, then
brushed me off saying I was speaking nonsense. I learned from that that as a
medicine person I would be privy to information that would be quite terrifying if
revealed too casually, thus it would be wise to keep some things I learned to
myself. There was also a lesson in that to always make sure I had the whole
story and that it was relevant before any type of grand revelation.
Years later as I journeyed to complete the missing pieces of that dream, I
realized I was having memories of being a fetus. I was perceiving the world
through my mother. My mother is what is called in divination, a nature person.
This means that she has a natural ability to communicate with the inner side of
nature, seeing things that most people overlook. The spirit in the bush was a
nature spirit my mother was communicating with whether she knew it or not.
The spirit gifted me certain abilities and seeds of intelligence that made it easier
for me to understand magic as I got older.
At age seven I remember something important happening to me. For
the days that proceeded the event, I felt like something inside of me was welling
up and about to burst. I was disgruntled and moody and didn’t know why. I
remember being propelled into the bathroom, almost like a puppet. I looked at
myself in the mirror and it was like there was a force behind me talking to me.
The force said as I looked at myself in the mirror, “Tray, you have to say it to
yourself.” I knew what it wanted me to say and my stomach was in a knot over
it. It repeated that I needed to say “it” to myself three times. I took a deep
breath and did it. I said aloud, “I am Different.”
At that point I saw myself transform before my eyes. I saw a little blue
light right at the base of my spine light up and grow brighter. It became electric.
It shot up my entire spine, illuminating. I stood there just looking at it, terrified
what would become of me. I knew in that moment, at a point later in life other
people would find out I’m carrying this difference inside of me. Something
inside of me said, “12”. I knew then at the age of twelve something radical
would happen to me that I could not avoid.
Around this time, I stopped going to church. Listening to the preacher
holler and banter, I felt more and more hollow like something was making a
mockery of me or like I was on parade. I had no words to explain this, only
questions, deep questions. My reasons to my parents made sense to them, and
they stopped attending as well. I began to notice that whenever I said something
spiritual, other people would listen and follow my reasoning.
The next few years were relatively happy. I had a bit of a temper and
would start fights from time to time, but I wouldn’t cause any serious trouble. I
knew that I needed to send the message that I was not going to take abuse from
kids trying to bully me. I was always small in stature and never really cared
about any of things the other boys liked. I would often have a vacant look, like I
was seeing a vision over the right shoulder of someone. I felt like I was out of
the world most of the time and that made me a target. I liked the rush of the
fight but even then I didn’t care too much for anything that happened in my life.
I experienced life like floating in a water world. Everything was always
in a state of peace and flux, a simple whirling motion, like being tipsy at each
moment. It was a gift, I learned, from the Water Spirit to help balance to torment
of ancestral toxins in the land and the burning rage of not being able to access
ancestral treasures buried beneath the grief, toxicity, and rage.
When I turned twelve things did change as the voice had predicted. I
learned that that difference I had identified was called gay. It made little sense to
me at that point how the two were related, I only knew at that point that being
gay was a bad thing. Over the course of the next two years I did my best to find
out as much information about being gay as I could. At one point, my mother
found books, pamphlets and cd’s and threw them all away. Things were
beginning to get turbulent.
As I turned fourteen, things got to such a point, I had to leave home. I
was thrown out. I went to stay with my aunt who happened to be ultra involved
in her version of Christianity. It was either that or go to the nearest city for
treatment for homosexuality. I was in turmoil and attempted to end my life. I
felt abandoned by everyone around me; like there was no place for me on earth.
Somehow my Spirits would not allow me to go through with it.
I only stayed at my aunt’s for a short while. It wasn’t until years later
when I got my first divination, that I remembered something I spontaneously did
to save my life in that time. The divination was like an accountability session,
reminding me of something I promised to do that was part of my makeup and
purpose. I had forgotten that in that time of turbulence I made a pact with nature
beings I intuited lived close to me. I knew that I was going to have to be clever,
transforming parts of myself to survive in a warzone. So, I spoke with those
spirits in much the same the way I did when I was younger when I played with
flowers and water at an old stomp.
Now, I seemed to know what I was doing. It was as if overnight I had
remembered some ancient knowledge of shapeshifting and spirit communication
that would allow me to operate under the radar until it was safe to live fully in
my energy. I spoke to the spirits asking that if they got me through this I would
do something for them. I knew at that moment I needed them to hear me and to
respond. I knew I needed to give them something to have their full and
undivided attention. I didn’t have any money or anything to give of value. So I
looked at myself and offered them the thing that it seemed like they needed. The
conversation sounded something like this:
“Spirits. I don’t know who you are but I know you’ve been
watching out for me. I can see you peeking behind those trees. I feel like I’m
about to die. If you carry me through this time I will give you my voice. With
that you will be able to do what you want in this world. You will be able to walk
and speak among humans and have things done.”
After that, I initiated myself into my aunts strange Christian cult and
became an ordained minister at age fifteen. I see now that I would have become
a priest or an imam had I been under other conditions. My calling to spiritual
leadership was an energy that had to be satisfied.
Over the next seven years I trained myself in every aspect of the Bible,
knowing that it was my arsenal against anyone who told me I was wrong for
existing; and there were many who tried. I would research for hours, preparing
sermons, and going out to share what I was learning. I made it through high
school under the cloak of that world and it prepared me to think like a lawyer
when it comes to spiritual matters. I had discovered mental polemics and I loved
to argue until my point was won.
I knew I would be with that group for only a short while when I got in.
I was using them just as they were using me. The premise of my belong to the
group was cloaking but genuinely I loved being in a position to support others
with spiritual advice. I also liked the structure, the training to speak to large
groups, and the spiritual power to minister to many situations I found around
me. It afforded me to the opportunity to give people spiritual nourishment.
Even though it did not heal them, it gave them some clarity, affirmation, and
spiritual power.
When I got to the point I was ready to leave, I was already in college
and able to support myself with the mixed blessing of student loans. As I came
out of the sect my life changed dramatically. It was clearly ordained by some
overarching intelligence and I said that as I left the sect. Most of the time
leaving a group can be dramatic, but as I explained my point, invoking the terms,
“I feel like I’m experiencing a universal cosmic intelligence larger than your
religion” the elders seemed to yield silently in respect and awe.
Throwing off the cloak of religious comfort opened me up to a wide world
of spiritual insight. It was not easy, as each day some aspect of an assured belief
system disintegrated, leaving me to search and perceive for myself. Again, I had
come to a place for where it seemed that guidance was in short supply.
Everything became disorientating; like I was caught inside of a ritually induced
tornado or an undeclared deep shamanic dismantling. Each night brought an
increase in intelligence so wide it was like I was receiving downloads.
I began to know things about my classmates. It was as if the issues of
racism, sexism, and heterosexism I studied so deeply expanded in some way,
amplifying a psychic sensitivity to perceive when someone was perpetrating one
of these forms of violence. There were moments when I sensed the complete
inauthenticity of a classmate or professor. In those moments, my feet would
touch the ground and I would begin to see double. It was later that I realized I
was seeing another body, a dream body, on each of these persons that showed
what they were really doing and thinking. I didn’t believe in magic at the time
and it did nothing but fuel the part of my rage I could not articulate.
There was one occasion in particular when I had just got back to the
mountains from a trip to D.C. I spontaneously began to dance, as I often did in
my room alone. As I did, I discovered three extra energy bodies within myself.
I remained in that altered state over several days. In addition to the change in
body, I had a radical shift in intelligence where I could hear the thoughts from
some broadcasting cosmic intelligence. I could also pick up the thoughts and
feelings of everyone around me. It was later that I found out there are beings
called jinn or Genie who cause these types of psychic openings. Though I did
not know it then, I was gathering a host of spirits that would one day form the
corpus of a forgotten lineage of medicine.
The genie that inhabited me caused me to think and speak fast. When I
spoke, it was more like I was transmitting a frequency. As the words would
form, they felt like a stream of fast moving intelligent energy from a portal at the
top of one of the mountains in the area. The genie also helped me to read and
comprehend large amounts of information from multiple subjects. When I
walked on campus, I felt like I was elevated, gliding from one place to another.
It was a magical, freeing time; a time where I could explore each of my interests,
express my rage, and love on lots of boys.
It was around that time that I changed my name as well. I knew I would
change my name in high school when I first became conscious from where the
name came. For three weeks, I declared myself nameless, going in search of my
real name that was not connected in any way to slavery. I wanted a name that
would in some way honor a matriarchal lineage instead of receiving the father’s
name. I meant no disrespect, but I was adamant and self-assured. I constructed
a spoken word poem and recited it to the universe like a magician in ceremonial
conjuration, evoking a new name to the universe—a name meant to be a guide
for my lifetime. I received the names in dramatic ways in a backwards form, fed
to me over the course of three days. As each name came, a strong tingling
sensation would course through my body as if I had stepped through the
doorway of some dimensional chamber.
I wanted the name to connect me to Africa. I wanted to be authentic, to
have a name that represented the tribe I was from. As it happened, I receive
instructions for the name La first, learning later that my mother’s lineage led to
the Lingala people of the Congo. I receive Atum next, along with dreams of a
race of beings called the Atums who came to this planet to support, evolve, and
grow consciousness. They were extremely large beings with what appeared to
be living dreadlocks. The final name was Emenike, and was told I had ancestral
connections to the Igbo.
I felt a little more whole when I legally changed it but there was still so
much missing. I intuited I would be gifted more information no matter how silly
others thought my radical move might be. Even with strong intuition, it all
occurred to me as thought and never anything out of the ordinary. The only
thing I found to be strange was the fact that every day it seemed like I was brand
new person; like I would ontologically change shapes in the night and greet my
friends as someone who just underwent a powerful shift. It was fun but also
draining.
At that time, I had proclaimed myself a radical anarchist queer vegan and
was elected spokesman of a student organization called D.R.O.P Alliance (Direct
Resistance of Privilege Alliance). I fought for a number of causes, working
myself into a frenzy, as if the vortex I felt under my feet as a child became the
collective emotions of the Ancestors of the Middle Passage swarming around me
demanding justice, healing, and rest.
From hearing the voices of the plantation to the vortex of the Middle
Passage, I was caught in the midst of a journey that I could not predict would
take me deep into the medicine of Africa. It did not dawn on me until many
years later when someone had to deliberately tell me I was communicating with
the dead that I realized that my intuition and powers were coming from them. In
fact, they were behind everything, guiding the dismantling, dream states, reading
materials and so forth. They were the reason I had come to the mountains for
college instead of Philadelphia like I had wanted. It was the spirit of the
mountain they needed to activate and install into my medicine package for work
I would later be called to do down the line.
Everything was moving so fast, I felt like a new person all the time.
Each classroom discussion lead to synaptic explosions. It was very difficult to
function and maintain it all. During the same time, I was experimenting with
alternated states while in nature. This led to a set of experiences that I now
know were episodes of spirit possession.
One episode occurred in my apartment with my best friend. Little did I
know the ancestors had orchestrated our meeting. This guy had come from a
lineage of medicine people in Nicaragua. He was wise beyond his years and
knew way more about altered states of awareness than me. He would sometimes
do things that would show me some of his power. I was humbled and very
grateful for his friendship. I lived in a world of theory, conceptualizing about
leading literary theorists and taking classes in post-colonial theory. The feeling
of thinking that way was like being on of a mountain communicating with
ancient deities from around the world, converged in some time of initiatory
container to carry me all the way to incarnating my purpose for the planet. My
friend was clearly a shaman in his own right but also a college student dealing
with being indigenous in a world devoted to the ancestral worship of the
proceeds of colonialism. We were both disgusted by what was an authentic
American Idolatry positioned as a university culture for sale. I needed him so
that I would not feel utterly alone in an environment I later understood was
highly demonic. He was sent to guide me through the realms because if left to
my own devices I would fly off and never return.
Surrounding my first major spirit possession, I was literally incensed
with frustration around the racism and violence against the divine feminine I saw
everywhere around me. At some point, the struggles of race, gender, class,
sexuality, and environment merged into a political platform expressed as Love
and Rage. Everything was colored by theories of privilege, reports of injustice,
and the protests against violence towards women. The prevailing response to
my publically expressed anger was that I was making these things up or that the
causes of the injustices I wanted to change were my fault.
I knew I was being lied to, both by those in the struggle, the “scholar
activists,” and by those obviously opposed to my message. There was
something I was missing, something important, that no professor was willing to
divulge or point me in the right direction. I felt alone and betrayed and caught in
the ecstasy of a constant refreshing of the fabric of reality all at the same time.
That is what I felt that night in my apartment after a protest to rename a
residence hall that was named after a member of the KKK. My friend and I sat
in the room as I ranted about the situation. Even at that time, he had a peaceful
constitution, like he was holding medicine space. Suddenly, the entire back of
my spine cooled. I felt like there was immeasurable space in my body. My
consciousness suddenly felt thousands of years old. My presence was white.
Something spoke. I watched it speak. The peace I felt was so good all I wanted
to do was to watch. As the presence spoke it reminded my friend and I
that the whites we were angry at are children to us. When the spirit said us I
knew instantly that I was part of a group of planetary guiding spirits. I saw how
we were elders to these out of control children. I sensed the enormity of our
wisdom and also the peace to move forward through anything. When I came out
of the state, my friend simply acknowledged the presence with a nod. I, on the
hand, was hysterical, screaming, “Did you just hear that, My God, what the fuck
was that.”
I had began to discover what I knew my professors were not telling me.
There was something deep in Africa that was wise and ancient; it was also
something powerful that could turn my life in the direction I meant it to take. It
was this experience that showed me certain Medicine Spirits of Africa were with
me. I had no intent to use this only to discover more about what was hidden to
me. I needed to discover what was hidden beyond what was written in many of
the radical black publications. I needed firsthand knowledge and I needed it
with urgency; almost as though my life depended on it. And it did.
It was couple weeks later I had another encounter. This time it was a
woman who spoke. Rather, she didn’t speak, she transmitted her feelings.
The experience began like I was falling through layers within the floor. I
thought I was dying and thought about how sad and disappointed my parents
would be.
When I landed it was like being in the lap of a very large being. Her
presence was oceanic, and it felt like there was a white cocoon on which I was
floating. Suddenly she emitted a scream, a type of otherworldly cry. In that
moment, I could feel everything she felt. It was pain. It was the most pain I had
ever felt in my life, like a mother loosing child after child, dropped on a hard
floor, some of the children living, others dying. I could feel the pain like bolts of
lightning shooting in my muscles and bones. It was a type of pain that the
human body cannot withstand for long periods of time. I knew in that instant,
that if any human carried her pain they would expire.
I blacked out after the episode. When I awoke, my friend sat beside me
worried. I explained what I felt. I told a couple of friends and they all looked at
me horrified. When I told them I felt the most immense gratitude in my life, like
everything I touched was sacred and a blessing, they responded with listless
looks of awe and fatigue. I felt a sense of freedom, like everything was
expanded and the air was free for me to move. I intuitively knew who she was,
though I could not at the time grasp the significance of the encounter.
It was almost too sacred to utter. She, the Dark Mother, Mother of the
each of the children of the Middle Passage had come. Her medicine was
necessary. For She is one who knows the pain of a mother who has lost a child
and she is the one who knows the deepest torments and sorrows humanity has
ever had to bear. To know Her is to be at the gate to a source that has the power
to heal many of our planetary woes and upheavals that originated in the
holocaust of African people.
It was my sense in that moment and later confirmed in divination, that what
occurred in that instance of humanity’s deepest brutality to itself was a planetary
occurrence. Thus, to heal the wounds of that time is to open a time and portal to
planetary healing. The war that was waged in that time left a wound upon the
planet, but also opened a way for the deepest and strongest humanity to emerge.
Until meeting the Dark Mother, my whole world was based in thought. I
knew nothing of the spiritual realms or spirit possession or even if they were
real. Sure, I had had strange encounters as a child, but I didn’t think about them,
I forgot them just as soon as they had come.
This experience, however, marked a turning point. I knew a radical
change was occurring—more radical than anything I had encountered in my
life. This radical change felt deeper than the others. I knew this change could
kill me. It felt deadly, immense and deep.
I couldn’t put it into words at the time; it was too much to bare. I wanted to
speak about it but it was impossible. I had no language to describe these things.
It seemed like the episode that happened when I was fourteen and felt abandoned
was happening all over. I was about to graduate and I had no idea what I would
do after college. I was becoming more and more depressed at the thought of
making it own my own in the world. I could not reconcile the reality of knowing
there were ancient African spirits walking with me and the idea of a career.
At the time of this encounter, my post-colonial literature class read
Ceremony by Leslie Silko. I wouldn’t go to class for weeks after that. I felt like
the story of that novel was taking place in my life. I felt on the verge of constant
vomiting, like something was trying to scream through me or like I needed to put
my body down for a while and roam freely.
I went to see my professor to somehow explain my absence. I thought I
was going crazy. I told him that I thought I was schizophrenic and I needed
psychiatric help. He gave me Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By. I devoured
the chapter on shamanism and schizophrenia. I had never heard of the term
shaman until that point. Even reading Ceremony, it escaped me that the book
was about an initiation into being a medicine man. At that time, the thought of
becoming a medicine man seemed like a crucifixion; there was something
deadly about it that made me move in and out of consciousness, attempting to
find a dream world safer than the option for livelihood that was presenting itself.
I would read a couple of words in the book, something would trigger
me, and I fall through a dreaming portal. I would wake up with the book beside
me, having travelled somewhere distant. I didn’t know that the choice had been
made to take the responsibility of carrying medicine for the people long before I
was born. The initiation to do so had been well underway at that point.
My ancestors knew the type of ordeals in finding my medicine I would
encounter long before the ordeals began. They knew they had to engineer a type
of initiation that could take place in a modern container, whereby I could still
develop the things I needed to develop to function in the world. Their efforts
were the work of master dreamers, able to coordinate realities years in advance,
and as I would learn in later initiations, hundreds of years in advance.
The weight of moving into the world and accessing multiple alternate
realities had me continue to worry for my mental health. I went to a university
counselor to see if there was something wrong with me. He told me that I was
perfectly normal.
After that the hallucinations started. I would see violent episodes
everywhere. I would either see some violence that occurred to me, or black men
hanging from buildings. The university was built on the grounds of an old
plantation. I would often journey to the plantation house and just walk the land.
I didn’t know why I went there, only that it soothed my body and made me more
solid.
Finally the hallucinations increased to a point where I had to call on
help from some friends. I really did think I was going to die, not by my own
hand. It felt like someone or something was pursuing me trying to kill me. I
was at my lowest. The fanfare of protesting and student programs had passed. I
was about to leave college. The prospects for my love life had completely
turned sour. It was amazing that in a short period of time there were no guys
interested in me. Each of them, of every race, explained both overtly and
covertly how they were only interested in white men. I was depressed and could
not shake it.
Fortunately, my intuition saved me once more and I was guided to
completely cease the dreaded search for new love. It was in that moment that
the energy I put out returned to me and I received a contentment in simply being
with the love already within me. It was within the span of a few days that my
first love literally showed up on my front doorstep visiting from the other side of
the state. The love was immediate and in the action of falling in love, my
hallucinations ceased.
I left college and entered the real world. Surprisingly, I found a decent job
coordinating programs for high school students in an extremely racist little town
north of where I was born. I had discovered Integral Philosophy as I was leaving
and that set me on a path of beginning to integrate some of the events happening
in my life. I began to deliberately work on my personal healing. I was still
depressed and needed to find out why. Things had cooled off and slowed down
dramatically. The depression I felt was the normal type of depression that adults
get when they mourn the loss of dreams they forget they had. Somehow I got
the intuition to look around the local shops and found there was a holistic center
in town. One listing spoke of a shamanic practitioner and I knew immediately I
had to schedule a session.
As he performed a healing, for the first time I could feel energy in my feet.
He informed me that my entire first chakra was closed and that I was basically
living somewhere else. After that, I had a chance to look at his library.
Immediately, like a laser I was drawn to a copy of Of Water and Spirit by
Malidoma Some.
During that time, we became good friends and he became a mentor to
me. He would take me to teaching sessions with his teacher, a healer in the
Blackfoot tradition. I learned all about the medicine of the Blackfoot. By that
point, I had been briefed that it was wise for me to go through a formal
initiation. There were a variety of trainings presented to me as formal initiations
but none of them seem deep enough to address the healing I knew I needed
within me. So I waited for something. I had had an intuition just before leaving
college that my ancestors were up to something profoundly intelligent. I didn’t
know what that meant but I knew where I would find it. I could feel in my body
that I would have to travel near the center of the country to find the people I was
looking for.
Learning the Blackfoot Medicines was powerful. In each of the
sessions and sweat lodges ancestors would visit me and encourage me. Even
though I had read about ancestors, saw people pray to the ancestors, and had a
wide range of ancestral activity around me, it still did not dawn on me that I
could actually initiate communication with them. It was those moments in
ceremony I began to pray to be a healer. I prayed to be deeply involved in
deeply healing humanity every day. I prayed that the deep healing of humanity
would consume me and I promised I would work hard for the healing of the
people.
Those medicine prayers, however, were only momentary experiences at
the time. I lacked the essential grounding to keep them in motion, ensuring that
they would come to fruition.
At that time I was living at home with my parents, as many recent graduates
do. I didn’t have to, I just didn’t know where else to go or what else to do. It
wasn’t like I was a nomad or world traveler, it’s just that the planet didn’t seem
very inviting to me so I didn’t want to live anywhere.
It was on one of those nights at home, when I fell asleep. It was one of
those deep sleeps where some aspect of my mind could feel the hardness of my
body in immobile stasis on the bed. It was an awkward position. The nature of
the position occurred as though I had just collapsed and left my body, but could
do nothing to change it. All of my energy was preparing to go elsewhere.
Suddenly, through the back of my spine I felt a hole open. I saw the same blue
electric light as I did when I was seven. This time however, as I was sucked up
into the sky, I heard a load crunching sound like aluminum foil being balled up.
I began to fly. This time I was flying through time. I could recognize
the seventies and saw the people in the my current life and what they looked like
then. I saw how people who did not know each other, where crossing paths and
were becoming part of each other’s story.
Suddenly the dream shifted and I was in a hospital bed. The time was
the 1920s. I saw myself, an elderly black man, laying on the bed in a room filled
with other beds. A woman, who I loved sat on top of my legs directly in front of
me. She held out both of her hands to my heart, like she was gifting something
to me. As soon as her hands got near my heart, I rushed into them. I felt the
most intense beautiful fire in my life. I felt all the love in the universe rush into
her hands. I could see myself finally, a bright nebulous cloud of fuchsia and
love. It was a bittersweet moment. I could see all the episodes in my life that
were blocked by racism. I could see how I had the love to overcome it but
allowed it to get covered up by violence and shame. In that moment, I yearned
for another chance to do it again. I knew in that moment the love I felt would
overcome any obstacle I would face. I felt like there were no obstacles; that in
the face of who I am, the obstacles could not exist.
Suddenly I found myself in another reality, this time in 1960s. I was
singing, following a band, in a constant state of euphoria. The same love was
present all the time. Underneath that love, however, was the sense of futility at
the war. I felt like no matter how much I loved I could not love enough for this
world. I had three children. In a small room by a lake where the traveling band
was resting, I overdosed on heroin as my children watched me die.
I woke up at a dining table with people I knew but could not name. My
mother was present but I did not know her by the name she is called today. She
was simply present; she said nothing. It was the old lady that spoke. I knew her
well. And she knew me even better. I felt comforted in her presence. She gave
me an overview of a being I had just left, showing me a child I had left behind.
It was after the experience that I realized there were multiple parts of my soul
coordinated by a larger me incarnating in various spots and people for healing,
like a giant pool of healing waters hovering in some undisclosed otherworldly
location at pressure points in history.
In this final scene of the dream I was part of the spirit of my mother’s
father, who died when she was young. I was being given some type of
agreement to address the healing issues that he could not complete, his
unfinished business. The old woman then took me up a long flight of stairs.
There, she handed me a file. I immediately downloaded all of the contents of the
large file and wanted to ask her more questions but she motioned for me to
descend down the steps and I could not deny the motion.
At the bottom of the steps I handed the file to a native man. He felt like
a grandfather to me but I did not know his name. He looked me over quickly, yet
compassionately, then reached above my head and scalped me. As he did, I
heard the most beautiful music I have ever heard to this day. I could hear the
collective sound of every star vibrating in the universe. It sounded like a giant
OM. Humans cannot utter this sound with our vocal cords. As I heard the sound
I felt myself falling and suddenly I entered my body through the gateway in the
back. I crashed with a loud thump. I slept for sixteen hours after that, so
fatigued at the journey.
Later when I met people who were in the dream I could see an extra
dimension to their past and current reality. The experience had activated some
type of extrasensory perception that helped me to see into the origin of people’s
problems. I could sense how problems originated astrologically with people
even though I knew nothing of astrology. I spontaneously knew there were
certain astrological loopholes or relationships between planets that when they
occur they cause certain types of portals to open.
As I continued my work with the Blackfoot, participating in sweat
lodges, learning the herbs, experimenting with shamanic journeys, I began to
deliberately look for where my ancestors were calling me. They responded
loudly and clearly. They had constructed an initiation for me, knowing that I
would come to this point long ago. Within a couple of weeks I underwent my
first initiation and saw them face to face. I wasn’t the same after that
experience. Something inside of me had been healed through a process that was
outside of my consciousness. I had dreams about the process. In the dream
there were men doing work on my behalf literally drumming up energy inside of
me. The energy opened to portals from major events in my parents’ life. As the
energy opened, I could see all people involved being healed in some way.
I left that initiation circle feeling a sense of wholeness about my
identity. I could feel there were things that were whole in me that I had no
language to identify as broken. I felt like I had an immense power and that very
important people from the past where on my side. It was a sense of royalty that
came from the wealth of being connected to a village. It was a village with its
own medicine and language. It was a village where I belonged. The language
was my language. I did not know I was looking for this. I could only bathe in a
ocean of love and power I felt towards my ancestors. The shame I didn’t know I
was carrying was gone. I had changed my name but it didn’t matter at that
point. Whenever I thought of my ancestors or saw them, they appeared as
radical geniuses and intelligent warriors. It was more than a cognitive and an
ontological shift, it was a shift in cosmic location. I was in a different place.
That difference, however, wasn’t received well in the life I returned to.
There was a wildness in me, something that woke up and was impossible to
enslave or control by any other’s mind. Other’s could see and sense this, which
led to my fair share of arguments.
The other thing that happened after the initiation was that I could see
the origins of people’s wounds in the ancestral world. Whenever someone
would do something that was crazy or self-destructive, a window would open
beside them and I could see the scene in a past life that caused what they were
attempting to medicate or express. I became very sensitive to the spirits of the
land as well. Whenever the spirits of the land were upset or needed to
communicate something I would pick it up. I would know where something
tragic occurred and feel the pain. What I didn’t know at the point was how to
respond to all of the information that I was getting. I only knew what was going
on, I couldn’t do anything about it, like a newborn baby able to see auras and
spirits but not being about to facilitate that knowing in any way.
I had requested of my ancestors an apprenticeship to become a shaman.
That is what I went into that first initiation looking for. What I found was the
healing of an ancestral identity wound that if left unchecked, would have
sabotaged my apprenticeship and latter initiations.
The information I had encountered in college and the experience of my
ancestors left me aware of the world in a new way. I could see how the warfare
against my ancestors was still underway in many forms. I could see the futility
of most activists and ancestral groups such as nationalists and afrocentrists.
They did not have the secret technology to identify and heal the deep ancestral
wound of abandonment. They blamed and scapegoated groups like gay people
to cover up the failures in their programs.
It was after later initiations I saw how many Africans in the Diaspora were
diluted or infiltrated to such a degree their ancestral communications were
strained. Even groups who had the technology of working with ancestors taught
from Africa could not address the central elephant in the room the way my
ancestors could.
There was a sense of pride and justice, a sense of knowing the place in
the destiny of humanity the sacrifice, skill, and expertise of my American
ancestors played. I felt no need to be African or to go to Africa. When I would
go home, I literally felt like I was home, like the land was the new African
home.
I felt established and located within a lineage of both power and medicine.
I felt the opposite about American ancestors as most black people; that the
genius of ancestors who were imprisoned and enslaved on American soil were
the first to be consulted in any ancestral healing process for the people. I felt a
sense of abhorrence and disrespect for people from North America who went
directly to the traditions of Africa without honoring those of this land first. I
could see that if these ancestors were not honored they would invalidate the
rituals of Africans in the Diaspora seeking initiation elsewhere.
I also saw they would invalidate the ritual and efforts of people seeking to
appropriate native wisdom and tradition on this land without the honoring of
their unique crossing of the Atlantic. I felt like my American ancestors were the
future and ordained leaders of many of the world’s people, especially people in
Africa. I realized that to look upon African traditions as some pristine,
indigenous utopia was to disillusion ourselves to their destiny---a destiny to
experience what my American ancestors underwent. We were their future,
literally.
I knew that any effective movement for global healing of the wounds of
war, genocide, and radical abandonment of the divine feminine would begin with
my ancestors gifting their facilitation and insight to the process. Suddenly, after
feeling like I was the inheritor of the lowest rung of the ladder for multiple
lifetimes, I was paid up. It was like I got reparations in a form I could never
imagine.
It was a completion that took a miracle to address. I had no feelings of
revenge or rage, there was only a depth of healing and experience to draw from.
I felt authentically saved for the first time after years of professing being saved
and not knowing what exactly I was being saved from. I felt alone and estranged
in the presence of other Africans and African Americans, like I was something
else; a new mutation that had underwent an evolutionary shift. All of the
Octavia Butler novels I had ever read were unfolding in my life, like prophetic
blueprints with codes, maps, and supernatural events.
At that point, the only thing left for me to was to remember as much as I
could. I went into my shamanic apprenticeship with Malidoma Some not to
learn something new or the become Dagara, I went there to reclaim the medicine
and technologies of my ancestors. I knew deep in my bones before I began that
the Dagara were in the process of gifting my legacy something deeply valuable,
a gift of life. I also knew, that it was the way of my ancestors to always return a
gift of equal measure. For life, the resonant gift is life. There were things that
my ancestors had mastered about living in the civilized world I needed to
communicate in such a way that it would bring new life to the Dagara people. In
exchange, the Dagara taught me how to access ancient sources of information to
create original medicines relative to my time and place. In essence, they did the
necessary work help me remember what I already knew in my bones.
When I saw the cowrie shells spinning before me for the first time, I
knew in my soul everyone had to touch this medicine. I knew it was the saving
grace of all of the youth to remember agreements with otherworldly sources
made and to be held accountable in a loving and thorough way. I knew that with
this medicine I could develop an antennae that would show me what was
happening in other parts of the earth and how to respond to it. I knew that I
could see the future and any apocalyptic energies coming down the line. I knew
that there were places in nature and guardians awaiting the connection of
people. I knew that connecting the people, especially the young ones, to these
energies and beings would bring the type of magic in their lives that would cause
them to want to live fully.
I wanted to remember how to see someone’s purpose. I knew that each
person had one and I knew they just needed to be pointed in the right way. So
that was the first technology I called in and as that worked I realized I could call
more and more in to address needs I saw in the community. I was most
impressed with the technology of divine intervention in cases of death. When I
studied Tibetan Bon Astrology, I could see that their shamans did similar things
to the Dagara, even having similar colors on their medicine wheels. More
interesting was they too possessed the medicine to take a long hard look and
possible intervention with death. I had to remember this medicine. It felt like
my life was at stake.
As I learned to read the shells, I entered into some permanent shamanic
dreamworld that allowed me to finally begin to live into the purpose of being a
voice of prophecy and news for spirit world. I learned that the ancestors had
been coaching me and following me my whole life. Looking back it was
obvious, but someone had to sit me down and tell me deliberately. As soon as I
accepted the mysterious manifestation of destiny and intelligence my ancestors
displayed, I could remember rituals I spontaneously entered into as a child alone
in my room, calling on ancient African spirits to come through me. Slowly, I
began to remember that my blood family had a lineage of holy spirits that we
could call on for healing our troubles.
This initial period of the apprenticeship consisted of radical cleansings and
learning the ability to locate portals in nature. For me it was the water. When I
would go near a body of water I would perceive dimensions within dimensions
and how to access what or who was living there.
After learning to read the shells, I set on the quest to fully become a diviner,
someone who could do more than read, I wanted to speak for the gods. That is
after all, what I was designed to do. So I read as many people as I could causing
a flurry of ceremonial activity. I responded to crisis from all directions honing
and testing my skills, like a water bringer flying over distances pouring water on
the fires below. I was guided by the sense of urgency that my life depended on it.
There came a point in this work that I had to make a conscious choice. I
did not understand the details of the choice though it was the same choice I knew
I was to make years before as a senior in college. In all honestly, I didn’t feel
like I had a choice even though it was presented as such. I didn’t feel tricked
either. I simply felt like I was responding to the healing needs of the people
from the spirit world. It became apparent around this time that part of my gift
was to find and bring healing to spirits in other worlds who had been forgotten. I
saw a unique link between otherworldly beings and ancestors; how beings such
as Kontomble were in the process of bringing healing to multiple ancestral
lineages. I saw how they were using their otherworldly means of healing
planetary catastrophes to echo through dimensions and centuries.
It was somewhere in that time that some of the final pieces of my
identity were being gifted to me, as if stored for me at the proper time in my life,
where I could see the genius of why I could not remember before. I learned the
specific tribe most of my genetics came from. I learned my full name given to
me by my ancestors, that consisted of names from multiple lifetimes of working
medicine in Africa. I learned about relationships with otherworldly beings and
gateways I was connected to. I understood I was a gatekeeper and knew what to
do to open and close the gates. I understood that the reason I felt so deeply
various vortexes throughout my life was that I had opened them in moments of
desperation on behalf of the healing needs of groups seeking a return to their
Voice.
As I witnessed this unfolding from a realm of awareness just outside of
this dimension, I was surprised at how little this information mattered. It was
that prerequisite wholeness I experienced in my first initiation that protected me
from taking any of these miraculous events too seriously. It was as if the
ancestors foresaw the need to be rooted in something unexplainable and
authentic to fortify me to encounter the miraculous as a common place
occurrence. I could simply be aware of miraculous events, but not attach to
them or make them mean something about my identity. I could be my own man,
not defined by the wounds of ancestry, but by who I say I am and what I choose
to create here and now. Even the blessing of becoming a priest and a medicine
man phased me little. It was like registering for a mantle of responsibility, not
like a triumphant beam from community I imagined it would be when I began to
contemplate the transition.
One thing is for sure, the crucifixion I intuited was the sense that the
shaman’s path was one of sacrifice. I was called to sacrifice conventional ways
of reacting and being in the world for clinging to a deeper truth that could not be
shaken.
It happened way too soon. Like a child being initiated into the duties of
a father at thirteen. But I felt the urgency and the isolation of my ancestors that
propelled me to take on the responsibility. There were no southern black
gatekeepers doing the work. From my small town in Virginia, no one had
journeyed to the land of the ancestors to bring back medicines. The shamans
and the elders were extinct, and even more deadly, the gatekeepers were being
persecuted. I felt their extinction in my blood like an ancient war. The secret
otherworldly links between being queer and gatekeeper were open to me. I
knew it was the gatekeepers who held the tools to either bring healing to
community and family or seal the descent into oblivion. The persecution of
gatekeepers took on a new tone.
I could remember church people, preachers and congregants, working
magic on me throughout my life dreading the moment I would take on this
responsibility. Somehow, they knew the medicine of gateways would expose
their methods of control and cowardice in the face of the real needs of the
people. On the other hand, they could also sense there was healing for them as
well and their attacks were signs of resistance to healing. The gateway I hold is
first about healing and redemption—opening a way for the infinite forgiveness
of divine will, accountability, cleansing, and peace.
Knowing where gatekeepers stood, I knew I had to act and act thoroughly.
So I made a commitment that would set the course of the rest of my life.
I committed to being a medicine man. I chose it. The choosing of
walking the shamanic path was different from stating the choice or entering
ceremonies designed to enlighten me, cleanse me, dismantle me, or empower
me. The commitment was a dry commitment. Nothing extraordinary was
present, only the deep truth that I had come to the end of a long road and had
taken the leap into a land where I would never be the same. The commitment
was one of small things. It was the small acts that engaged the commitment,
such as being alert to the spirit moving at all times and being ready to jump into
action in response to dreams, the call of the land, or the call of the people. It
meant stepping up and being organized without the angst of youth, but instead,
solid confidence in the competence of my training and the ancestors.
Within the span of a few months, each day filled with intense ceremony for
the community and each night filled with distant journeys. It was then that it
became easier to I remember an entire lineage of medicines from Africa and
other worlds. In that time there were many ancestral ceremonies to help lost
spirits cross over and to empower them to ascend to a higher dimension. They
opened the way so that I could receive potions, ancient words, songs, dances,
rituals, a host of healing techniques, new healing ceremonies to address global
wounds, and healing ceremonies to address relationship difficulties.
No one told me but during that time two things occurred: one is I could not
study, I had to quit my masters program in Adventure Education mid way
through. And too, it was very dangerous for someone to touch me while I was
sleeping, as sleep was considered daytime in the Spirit World.
The nighttime dream divinations, meetings, and transitions afforded me the
ability to recall amazing amounts of information or know things about people
that were impossible for me to know when I divined them, almost as if the
divination had occurred months in advance and I was reading from some ancient
otherworldly script on a high tech see through screen on the wall. I felt like the
matrix download was happening to me every night, caused by intense
ceremonies during the day. I would often wake up exhausted feeling like I had
just stepped out of a graveyard after a long sleep or that I just arrived from a hole
on the side of a mountain.
After the choice, things began to lighten up. I didn’t feel so much like
my life was on the line. I felt in harmony with a deep oceanic principle moving
across the planet as if a great movement of radical earthly beings was taking
place just beneath the naked eye. I devoted myself to my work. Making
medicines, performing divinations, officiating community rituals, journeying on
the behalf of people. Finally, I was a full time medicine man. Most people
would come to me by word of month. It was always comical when people first
saw me how they thought I was some kid off the next corner. Then the bones
began to speak and they knew that something was occurring they needed to hear.
I liked looking like a street kid; there was a bit of justice in it for me; a
message that said, “Just because a kid is in a hoodie and doesn’t where fancy
Afrocentric attire at all times, does not mean he can’t divine and do the work of
his ancestors.” I had and still have a deep respect for those that live on the
streets. The same is true for many people serving prison sentences. I have
always been interested in the people society’s god throws away. I figured that
just as in psychology, we have parts of ourselves we believe to be unloved, thus
annexing them and condemning them to roam the streets or imprisoning them. It
was clear that in the global mind, many of these kids on the corner, inmates,
addicts, and whores were the split off parts of a culture that did not know how to
love them the way they needed to be love. It was the medicine of the genie and
my ancestors that had me look at them with a new eye of pride and devotion.
I always knew the first step to healing someone was in the eyes: that if
the healer saw them as healed, that was a step in the direction of healing. It was
later I found out how true that was when the spirit allies begin to assist in
geometric ways of seeing people so as to see them way beyond their pain and
story into the divine essence.
I began to feel a responsibility for the guidance of humanity, like
something collective was bubbling in me. During that time, I went for a
personal divination to address a crisis in my family. It was at that time that the
diviner said something interesting. He said that I was acting as an elder to my
family. I took that message very seriously, and it was the fuel I needed to keep
going in spite of what appeared to be oppositions cropping up on the path. It
was during that time that I learned who the man in the 1920s was. He was my
great great grandfather, a preacher and church founder.
It became clear why I always had such an intense love and devotion for
the black church. It was clear why I had the “preacher voice” whenever the
ancestors summoned my voice. When that would happen the floor beneath me
would open and I would feel like I was standing inside of a vortex. I would feel
a swell of energy then all of a sudden I would feel the energy under the feet of
everyone in the room as if it were a voice. I would speak this voice and the
amen’s would be in response to themselves. It’s like being a hollow amplifier
for the people to hear the power of the own souls combined, their Voice of
sovereignty.
It also explained why I could see so much magic in the black church.
Whenever I would go I could see the origin of the each of the holy spirits that
showed up. I knew who was calling on what and what would happen within the
ceremony. I knew which spirits belonged to which lineages in the church. For
instance, in the movie the color purple, the church scene at the end is thought to
be governed by Jesus when it is actually an ancient African river spirit that has a
very sweet loving energy and brings about reconciliations between family
members. As a gatekeeper, it is obvious how to create these types of experiences
at will.
My grandfather was a powerful medicine man. He became a preacher
to express the medicine as that was available at the time. His medicine was of
the water and the Kontomble, who made him a powerful musician. When this
gift passed to me, I threw myself into music and would spend hours playing
saxophone, oboe, or French horn. My grandfather was interesting in that he was
guided by Kontomble in most of his sermons, thus giving him a wise and
grounded quality. It was a beautiful reunion, to be reunited with a source of
guidance that had served with me over multiple lifetimes.
Before coming to America, he practiced the medicine of herbs and
maintained community with the laws and forces of nature and mountain. To say
it was inevitable that I walk the shaman’s road would be an understatement. It
was an office that was constructed and passed over many millennia.
I could see why I chose a nontraditional, nonhierarchical, feminine
honoring initiation system. Most other African systems of priestly initiation
were built upon highly structured statuses that did not speak to my essential
desire to simply create medicines and serve the people. Not having that
structure, however, was like an extreme test of the abilities of my ancestors and
spirit allies. If I didn’t make it and come up with the medicine with minimal
guidance, it was ultimately on them.
Nonhierarchical initiation was a testament to their supreme values of
love and community, rooted in the tribal core of humanity. This core survived
every onslaught, coming out with the generosity, hospitality, and gratitude that
defines us as fully human. My initiation was intended to be designed as a
shamanism for the people, purified multiple times over, to ensure its message
remained clean as it entered the holy sanctuary of the hearts and deep recesses of
humanity.
The shamanic road is a blessed one even though the journey is
demanding. It is a beloved path, for in each breath and action the seeds of
humanity’s birthright come full stream. The purpose of any shaman’s story is
the story of us all. It is the story of the miraculous that lives within our bones. It
is the way of a shaman to say, “Yes, and of the things, you will do more.” It is a
trigger, to activate latent magic encoded as ancient hieroglyphics of light
depicting a universal language that no mind or man can undo. It is the full
tapping of the consciousness of the Most High, made palpable to where it is
needed the most: in the places of the heart were we fill abandoned, on the streets
and in the blood, at the gates of the river were our burdens may be laid to rest.
Deeper than Africa and anything that has ever been lost, it is humanity’s
birthright medicine that stands to usher grace in times of upheaval and
uncertainty.
It was the river that called me back to my medicine every time I would
doubt or feel away from community. Each of us has a place from nature that
calls us back, back to a place where we can repair an agreement made with the
universe to be and bring a gift that would change all time for the better.
Whenever it was time to return to the river, my grandfather’s Sprit would rise to
call the souls of community:
“I Said, Lay Your Burdens By the River Side. That’s what we gone do in this
church today. These burdens ain't fittin to be on you back forever. Come on, get
down in this water and feel The Spirit rush over you. The Spirit knows. Yes,
Lord, The Spirit Knows. The Spirit Knows the darkest hour and the blackest
root. Ain't no trouble This Sprit ain't seen. Yes, Lord, The Spirit Knows.”
It was this speaking that opened gates for the people to move in closer
proximity to the Spirit World. In so doing, they could be fortified and
empowered to bring out their purpose for humanity. Regardless of injustice and
obstacles, the honoring and honing of purpose is the art of medicine. Purpose is
the centering presence that allows for the injustices and obstacles to be a side
attraction to the main show. To allow obstacles to take up space in our language
and minds, is to allow these forces of adversity to overrun us with their toxicity.
It is the nature and the power the Water Spirit to cleanse and make way
for the purpose to stand original and in its own time. This is what is most
important as we consider the particularities of healing and global injustice.
There is something deeper and more rooted to cling too, that when grasped helps
us navigate our problems and release them when it is time. When purpose is
present, something more important than obstacles takes precedent.
It is when we know the priority and importance of things that life takes
on new meaning, becoming magical in the blink of an eye. It is not the path of
everyone to become a medicine person nor is it wise for everyone to do. What is
important is that people live in their own calling, purpose, and magic. It is the
nature of the Order, that everyone is given all they need to feel loved, valuable,
and needed. God ain’t never made a mouth He can’t feed. This relates to our
deeper spiritual longings to live a life of grace and purpose. It is that purpose
that provides us flow and it is that flow that nourishes the medicine within each
of us.
When the medicine is nourished humanity is free. To focus and place
energy in nurturing the medicine is to starve the forces of oppression in the
world. The medicine is something that can be touched that is also divine. There
is something healing in a touch. People need to be able to touch something
divine and have something divine touch them. It is the Touch that brings the
cooling presence needed to endure the often times harsh realities of the world.
The beginning of the roots of this great tree of medicine were located in my first
encounter with the spirit that brought me peace and clarity in the midst of my
fiery rage in college. It is from that encounter I learned that in the act of inviting
the presence of ancientness, we discover the epic value in our lives. When our
lives are interwoven with a cosmic story, something unique happens: what we
thought was ordinary becomes magical and what we thought was impossible
becomes possible. It is a living story; that is; a story that can be conversed with
and a story that lives like a strong energy pole from the top of world mountain
that sends a blessing around the earth many times over. It is this blessing that
when called down from the sky is like the rain of deep spiritual food that
invigorates the very fabric of family, culture, science, and art. Even
more, it reminds us that we are love: physical extensions of a sacred realm of
oneness and being from which all divine mysteries emanate. That love follows
the curve of the one central truth that is known to all life and coded in every
tongue, act of devotion, and authentic truth spoken from the body of the earth.
To remember the ancients is to honor the linkage of relationships that
make communities, organization, families and world orders harmonious. It is
the ancients who honor and heal the ancestors, the elders, the leaders and people,
and the children. This is why there is so much love and respect for Kontomble.
Kontomble are the keepers of a wisdom that connects all religious
traditions and philosophies. There is an invisible road or thread that is actually
palpable that connects all stories, myths, beliefs, and sacred knowledge. It is
Kontomble who are able to open the vision so that humans may see this mystical
cord of connection; and when we see, it is our nature to want to dance at the
sight of the linkages of all of the sacredness of mankind.
This is why Kontomble are interested in creating new ways of telling
ancient stories. Many of these stories are to be told in living forums, where
people speak authentically and transform before the eyes of others. They are
interested in taking the potency and wisdom of African Kontomble ritual and
merging it with the voice, allowing their presence, energy, and elevation to be
disseminated through coaching, singing, and speaking.
There is a deep understanding from Kontomble of how language is our
most profound gift. It is also what can keep us locked into this one tiny planet.
Through certain sounds, stories, and group dances, Kontomble can open a gate
where we can get behind the power of language and enter the realm of its
ancientness. It is not only about the power and responsibility that comes with
knowing the primal tongue that constructs reality, it is also about being present
to that ancientness. That is a sacredness the holds everything in perfect order. It
is that ancientness, that when spoken, brings the perfect order into presence—
that humanity may taste the hidden waters that must travel through dimensions
and mountains to reach their hearts.
It is what is behind the movement to create wisdom based
collaborations. This helps elevate us beyond traditions, religions, philosophy,
and other boundaries to operate from the common purpose of what needs to be
done. When wisdom is present, it is always clear what needs to be done. To
attempt to go about things without wisdom, is to distance ourselves from the
help and powerful blessings that are available to us.
Wisdom in business, communities of faith, families, art, and schools
makes a profound difference in the way we engage life. It opens a gate to grace,
and it is grace, above all things that will save this world from destroying itself.
Our collective truth is that we cannot enter into the next world
practicing the old ways of being. The new way forward is for leadership from
everyone in the culture. We offer the medicine so that every person may be
charged with their value and purpose in a way that feeds their soul. We network
with the forces that are most indigenous to a person, crafting a means for them to
step into their inherited wealth of worth, magic, and sacredness.
It is the birthright of humanity that is to become the collective tone of
the earth. As the earth vibrates, it sings in space, despite the horrors and
destruction. To the world we have made for ourselves, we have the bright
opportunity to hear its current tone and to intervene with the sound of our hearts
and bones in resonate frequency with a deeper, ancient wisdom. This wisdom is
no other than love and the sound of love is that which can transform even the
deepest struggle. Just beneath the eye the work is always being done. It is not
one person, but many. It is not one group, but many.
The way forward is to tell our stories, our deeper stories. To tell the
stories of the entirety of our beings will goad the song of songs from our bones.
To tell our stories triggers something collective, inciting world change in a way
that honors the growth of nature. In this way, our unique wisdom becomes water
to the growth of the planet. It is a charge from the sacred for humanity to sing
with one voice.
To sing in this way for the first time, we will know, collectively, we have a
choice.