Today’s inspiration comes from Part 2 of Chapter 9 of my e-book, Afraid Of Our Own Shadow: A Manifesto and Guide to Conscious Co-Creation. Enjoy!

Chapter 9: Pitfall #4 to Conscious Co-Creation (Part 2)

Before I end, I want to share a powerful personal story, as well as a powerful resource. So, let’s begin with my story:

In 1986 in Orange County, California, I started a Black Heritage Club at my high school where there was less than 2 percent African-Americans. I was around 15years old and on fire because I had recently been gifted with the knowledge of my rich ancestral heritage and contribution to the Americas, as well as the world. And, I just want to say, you have to know this was a GREAT gift for my person’s self-esteem at that age, being that I grew up in a very racist community and school system where Black history began with slavery and then ended up with a brief mention of Martin Luther King, Jr. I received this gift from my brother who was attending Cal State Long Beach and was taking a class with Dr. Maulana Karenga, the founder of the African-American holiday, Kwanzaa. I was around 12 or 13 at this time, and I noticed that my brother was walking taller and always preaching to the family, about one thing or the other. Some of my family thought he was crazy, but I was curious. In my inductive childhood reasoning, I noticed that whatever was causing this change in him had to do with the books that he was always reading and carrying around, so I decided that I would read them for myself to find out what was going on.

Well, that opened my mind to a whole new world, and I was never the same again. Learning about my heritage changed my C minus average to a B plus and transformed my person from an insecure “nobody” to one of the most well known, actively involved students on campus. However, I was a little overzealous in my quest to “uplift my people.”

I used to go around campus with this heavy African-American almanac that I stole from the public library, quoting all the things that Black people had invented from the filament in the light bulb to the blood transfusion. I also used to hunt down all my classmates to make sure they’d come to our weekly club meetings. Looking back, yes, I wanted my classmates to feel the same sense of pride that wasn’t afforded us growing up Black in the OC, yet there was another, subtle underlined need that said, “If my classmates could experience the same pride I’m now feeling, in return they will love ME and be thankful to ME for providing this knowledge” Mistake #1! For as we already covered, the subconscious desire was based on my need of getting energy from another rather than Godsource via the act of self love of my inner family.

It was no wonder that the more I chased after my classmates, the more they ran away. Understanding this universal principle, they had to run, even if they didn’t know why! Something about my energy was needy, desperate. I was going on 17 when I had my first aha! moment about this. Now that I think back on it, this revelation must have come out of my true desire to understand why was it my efforts were being thwarted, when all I consciously wanted to do was good.

I’ll never forget the moment when the understanding hit me like a blow to the chest. I was on my way to the school cafeteria and a voice from within said, “If you are to do this work, if you are to share this message, it can’t be for anything else but the sheer love of it, not for the gratitude or appreciation of your classmates.” From that point on, my whole perspective changed and I could take my personal desires out of the mix a little more. I say “a little more,” because like I stated earlier, growth and actualization is an on-going process that happens… in cycles and cycles.

Yet, it was great because it gave me a little more understanding, so that by the time I went off to the historically Black University, North Carolina Central and founded a women’s service organization called Alkebu-lan Sisters, I was better prepared for what unfolded. I was able to watch with just a little more insight, empathy, and understanding, when other of my colleagues started learning knowledge of self. Depending on where their initial heartbreak happened, or depending on where their inner family wasn’t being nurtured, there would lie the psychosis, ready to rear its ugly head. For example, if it was a heartbreak based on ageism from their parents, then getting involved in this knowledge was fulfilling in that it was used to wage war against their parents in angry rebellion to all the restrictions and lies they were fed growing up.

If it was an inner family issue and the person had lack of self-worth, acknowledgment and appreciation issues, for men, it usually showed up as an overcompensation of the inner warrior, who used this information to be better, bigger and more knowledgeable than the next man. For women, it usually showed up as the self importance she felt from being so and so’s lady or the energy she received from being praised as the supportive, self sacrificing sistah.

Now let me say here, it’s not that anything my colleagues were doing was actually right or wrong. No action is inherently right or wrong in and of itself. Yet it is why we are doing what we are doing, our subconscious intentions that determines the results.

So, I sat back and watched all of these subtle subconscious motivations play out in others and myself as if I was doing a study. For those astrologers out there, I guess I don’t have Pluto in Virgo and a Scorpio Ascendant both at 29 degrees for nothing.

Anyway, what was my conclusion? Well, if I was to liken the cycles of change, the cosmic bill paying of the universe, to that of a hurricane, then what I witnessed after the storm were a few houses left standing. Although, my house survived that cycle of change because of the preparation I had in high school, there was another cyclical storm on the horizon that I’ll talk about in a minute that I was way less prepared for. Before, I do let me tell you about the devastation from this cycle…