POV Monday Promo is a ten-part series leading up to the publication of Prayers of a Virgin: 52 Weeks of Poetic Inspiration and Personal Planetary Guidance with the Destiny Cards. POV Monday Promo’s goal is to get the needed feedback and funds to edit, format and publish the printed book through Amazon Pre-Order Sales. The promo will also build a buzz around the book via “blooking” the first 3 Chapters before the e-book launches on September 26th.
Here’s Part 2 of Ch. 2: The Reclaim Game. I hope you enjoyed Part 1. As a reminder, my book is now available for Pre-Order on Amazon! I look forward to your feedback! Please post a comment below, on my Who I Communications FB page or contact me directly if you don’t like to leave comments. Enjoy!
Part 2 of Chapter 2: The Reclaim Game
Reclaiming Your Afrikan Mind- A Tribute and Paradigm Shift
“Why in the world can’t everybody recognize that Africa’s in everybody? We all ask why can’t we be sisters and brothers, but first we gotta accept who is our mother, rather embrace her…” -Arrested Development [Africa’s Inside Me]
In the book, The Real Eve: Modern Man’s Journey Out of Africa, scientist Stephen Oppenheimer studied mitochondrial DNA and traced the origins of the human race back to one female in Afrika several million years ago. Today, many can agree that mankind as we now know it originated on the continent of Afrika. Many can also agree that a lot of the gold, diamonds and natural and human resources used to propel the industrial revolution, also came from Afrika.
However, what many don’t seem to agree on is that when the gods first walked the earth, it was done so here, in the cradle of civilization. We don’t seem to agree that the earliest and longest running dynasty on earth also has its origins on the continent of Afrika.
Whether you agree or not with any of these statements, the question still remains, “Why don’t we respect our mother, the continent of Afrika?” A perfect example of this disrespect is how we’ve even taken Egypt out of the continent, calling it the Middle East, when if you look on any map, common sense would tell you different. To make matters even more interesting, according to author Robert Bauval, leading Egyptologist and co-author of Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt, all research points to Egypt’s cultural legacy originating from a Black Sub-Saharan race coming from the Tibesti mountains in northern Chad some 12,500 years ago.
So, if Afrika is our mother, why do we continue to abuse and rape her of her natural resources? And why do her people, the genetic, indigenous cultural bearers of the original program for mankind, live in some of the worst conditions in the world? Why is there is a direct correlation to the more natural resources an Afrikan country has, the more the people suffer from outside influenced (and often instigated) civil unrest, resulting in man made poverty her children must bear?
WHY AFRIKA?
At this point, some of you may be wondering why am I spelling Africa with a “k” instead of a “c.” In his book, From Plan to Planet Life Studies: The Need for Afrikan Minds and Institutions, poet and writer Haki Madhubuti explains how most vernacular or traditional languages on the continent spell Africa with a “k,” and it wasn’t until Europeans, particularly the Portuguese and British, polluted Afrikan languages by substituting ‘c’ whenever they saw ‘k’ or heard the ‘k’ sound.
However, my main reason for taking poetic license to spell Africa with a “k” is so that it represetns the “k” in mankind, symbolizing where all of mankind as we now know it originated. So in this spelling, we are all Afrikans or Afri-kin, to be exact.
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” – Winston S. Churchill
I can hear some of you saying, “Why dwell in history and get stuck in story? The past is the past and we have evolved.” However, that is because the damage has already been done, and the lie has already become the truth in the minds of many about Afrika’s his-tory and her greatest contributions. The best answer to this question can be found in the words of the late psychologist, Dr. Amos Wilson in his book, The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness: Eurocentric History, Psychiatry and the Politics of White Supremacy. He used the analogy that if a doctor was about to see a patient and had the wrong client history, then it would make all the difference in the world in how they “treated” their patient. His-story is exactly what we have today in regards to Afrika- the conqueror’s version of historical events.
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.” -Desmond Tutu
I know some of us can’t see past the current day tribalism and mass killings in places like Rwanda and the Congo, and associate the continent of Afrika with pure evil, greed and paganism. But all you have to do is go back further to a time when Afrikan people had the land’s resources and Europeans had their version of the bible. Now Europeans have the land’s resources and Afrikans have their bible and yet and still, no real justice or prosperity for the majority of her people is in view. When you read books like How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney, you begin to see his-story from another perspective, from the unpopular truth of the conquered.
Now let’s be realistic, evil or as I stated earlier, ‘the devil’- thinking there is anything separate from G.O.D., has been around since the beginning and Afrika is no stranger to it. In fact, in my opinion, it was the reason for Afrika’s ultimate downfall, which I’ll discuss more extensively in my forthcoming book, It’s All G.O.Ø.D.: A Conscious Co-Creator’s Guide for Healing the Effects of White Supremacy. However, that is for another day.
What I want to emphasize today is how Afrika is one of the first places that established in their cultural practices and paradigm, a world view or what anthropologist, Dr. Marimba Ani, calls an asili (I will get more into her work in a minute) that promotes the concept that we are not separate from nature or from one another.
By reclaiming my Afrikan mind, it’s my way of not only giving thanks for her contributions to civilization, but to also pay tribute for the natural and human resources that were used to propel the industrial revolution that allows me to enjoy the life I live today. It’s my way of acknowledging that in Afrika, there still exists a powerful system of cultural retentions that can help bring us back to the understanding that we are all one.
When you reclaim your Afrikan mind, you are just affirming the undeniable truth that we all originated from Afrika and these same people of Afrikan origin had a worldview based on a concept of reality very different from the current European-centered world view that has now come to dominate and is at the root of mankind’s choices that are causing Mother Earth to become extinct.
WHY A WORLD VIEW?
“The African world-view, and the world-views of other people who are not of European origin, all appear to have certain themes in common. The universe to which they relate is sacred in origin, is organic, and is a true “cosmos.” -Dr. Marimba Ani
Let’s get back to Dr. Marimba Ani and her classic definitive work, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. In her work, she takes the liberty to use the Kiswahili word asili meaning origin, essense or seed as a term to serve as a conceptual tool for defining what we would consider a world view. She explains asili this way:
“The idea of a seed, the ubiquitous analogical symbol in African philosophical and cosmological explanations, is ideal for our purposes. The idea is that the asili is like a template that carries within it the pattern or archetypal model for cultural development; we might say that it is the DNA of culture. At the same time it embodies the “logic” of the culture. The logic is an explanation of how it works, as well as, the principle of its development.”
In a 1992 lecture, Cleansing Ourselves of European Concepts, Dr. Ani clearly delineates the difference between an Afrikan-centered and European-centered worldview of which I’ve taken the liberties to paraphrase in the graph below:
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AFRIKAN-CENTERED *Language as Symbolism * Nature/Complex * Facts put in context
* We are part and unison with Nature * Consensus (If we are a community and one, then we can come to a conclusion that represents who we are as a collective. The decision is not as important as the objective of feeling the oneness of the group) |
EUROPEAN-CENTERED *Language devoid of Meaning * Logic/Simple * Just Facts (devil is in the details) * We are alienated from Nature * Majority (Objective is being effective- quick and to the point) |
“Any civilization that destroys the soil, destroys itself. There is an ancient saying– In this handful of soil, is your future. Take care of it and for thousands of years you will have prosperity and wellbeing. Destroy it and you will go with it.” –Vandana Shiva
Let’s be clear, there is no ‘one way’ of reclaiming an Afrikan mindset and there isn’t any set agenda, aside from saving Mother Earth, or to put it more correctly, to save mankind as we now know it from becoming extinct if or when Mother Earth decides to shake us off like a bad habit.
By reclaiming our Afrikan mind, we are paying tribute to our mother and mentally shifting our consensus reality to an Indigenous cultural asili that promotes oneness with one another and the earth, which is so needed at this time of planetary evolution. As you are probably well aware, this doesn’t happen overnight and I’m not talking about creating a utopia based on how it was in the past. Things can be better or worse, but not the same.
However, it all starts with remembering we are all one Afri-kin family. We are all divine expressions of G.O.D. experiencing Itself through Its Creation. This understanding starts within yourself first, moving from an intellectual to an experiential level. From there, it spreads out to your immediate family and community, and then it goes outward on a national and global scale.
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