“The All is the mind; the mind is All”
“Everything must be verified by personal experience, otherwise it is merely another form of slavery. Verify, verify, verify, everything for yourself…. I repeat, what we are practicing here is not a way of faith. However, it does not mean there is not room for faith on this path; certainly there is…”
Red Hawk, “Self Observation“
Last year, my brother left the country.
He traveled across the globe to South Africa and Botswana to meet his girlfriend of two years for the first time. He was also doing a ceremony to become initiated as an oracle.
There’s a lot of working with the purity of the land and elements when you’re on the path of spirituality and ancestral healing.
A key factor in psychospiritual healing is addressing the ancestral miasma, or trauma, of your lineage– clearing all the hazards from the road so that you can truly walk your own path.
“A key factor in psychospiritual healing is addressing the ancestral miasma, or trauma, of your lineage– clearing all the hazards out from the road so that you can truly walk your own path.”
When he originally told our family where he was going, and what he was doing, there was a panic that spread. He received frantic calls around the clock, riddled with questions.
“An oracle? What does that even mean?”
“Do they even have internet there? Cars?”
“There’s probably a lot of crime there, right?”
“Does she live in a hut?”
He listened to all our family’s concerns with the same patience as one would a child who asks questions about a concept they can’t fathom because of the limitations of their youth.
“They have most things there that we do here. No, she doesn’t live in a hut, she lives in a regular apartment in a gated community.”
My grandmother, especially, was concerned with the dangers that he would experience abroad. She clasped his hands in hers, holding them tight to her chest, her eyes brimmed with tears as she pleaded with him:
“Xion, please don’t fly half-way across the world for this girl! You don’t know if she’s tryna scam you, kill you, take your money.. I know how bad the word is out there– I watch the news and every night they talk ‘bout a plane getting hijacked, or someone getting killed by someone they knew for years. People are crazy, baby.”
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night with you all the way over there because I wouldn’t be able to get to you— please don’t go. You’re gonna worry me into dying from a heart-attack.”
I look up to my brother in a lot of ways. Admittedly, I do see him with some rose-colored lenses, but he has mastered something that a lot of people haven’t. He understands and uses the power of faith in its completeness, truly and fully, and lives by it.
He doesn’t need to always see the endgame because he feels where he led, and trusts that everything will work out.
“In fact, what one finds as they engage this “practical work on self” over a long enough period of time is this: if they began with faith, their faith is strengthened by understanding gained from self observation without judgement; if they began with no faith– as I did– then they will find that she has gained faith. So you see the wonderful irony of it?”
Red Hawk, “Self-Observation”
He said to her, “Grandma, how many years have you been going to church? What’s that saying that you like to say? ‘Faith without work is dead.’ What’s the point of praying if you’re going to worry about what happens anyways?”
“You’re right….”
He’s always right, really. It’s annoying sometimes.
“He understands and uses the power of faith in its completeness, truly and fully, and lives by it.”
It’s a twenty minute car-ride from Grandma’s house to my parents. I still live with them– he doesn’t. When I drive alone, I usually blast music to tune out the thoughts in my head. When I’m in the car with him, I ride in silence – he talks a lot, but he always has a way of saying exactly what it is my spirit needs to hear.
Music becomes a distraction, and the white noise of driving on the road becomes a pleasant accompaniment to the smooth, deep octaves of his voice. Listening to him gives me the same quiet revelations of sensation that I get watching waves crash onto the shore of a beach.
The cars blur by in my peripheral as he speaks to me.
“Everyone here is so scared, Claire. And they don’t even realize it.”
“That’s why I have to go to Botswana. Not just because Lesedi is there, but I need to continue to walk the path of healing and be a living testament to the things that I set for myself.”
“I said I wanted to heal our family’s lineage and trauma, and I am, but to fully encompass that I need to commit to path of healing. Prove to myself that I’m as committed as I say I am.”
“Aren’t you scared?” I ask.
“Of course I’m scared– I’m a black man going halfway around the world to a foreign land. I’m going to be living and working with a woman I’ve never met before. I know her from us talking and video chatting, but I don’t know what it will be like when we’re in person. It might be completely different. But I have faith that everything will work out.”
He’s going back again tomorrow.
There is power in words. In ideas. Much more than we can ever understand.
“This is not a faith-based path because faith is a gift of grace, it comes from the Creator to those in need of it. By your own efforts we can prepare the soil to receive faith. That is one of the many rewards of the Work.“
Red Hawk, “Self-Observation”
Reality is a video game, a projection of our unconscious programming of our parents, grandparents, and the experiences we had when we were raised.
This is why we set intentions, pray, or use mantras. To reprogram these settings within ourselves, and reconfigure our realities to better fit what we want for for ourselves.
We are reflection of Creation, after all– we inherited this power.
To create. Some are are easily attuned with this power than others, and a great part of that is their understanding that they truly have that power.
You can say mantras all day long, repeat them to yourself until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t believe them-– if you don’t have that faith in yourself that you have the power to create and manifest— what’s the point?
You’ll find that life is still rife with the same issues, they’ve just evolved slightly.
Many of us don’t realize how much we’ve limited ourselves because of this silent vow of complacency we’ve taken.
You absolutely have the power to change your reality: to completely forgive your father, to let go of that hate that you’ve been carrying for your ex, to start that business you’ve always wanted to start but have been to scared to really try.
It takes work and faith to heal. It’s hard. It takes faith to trust the path you are on, that your gut is telling you to take, is the right one. It takes faith to still hear the doubt in your mind, but to push it aside and never succumb to it.
Powerlessness is a lie that we’ve learned to believe, and I’ve been shown why: it’s is easier than admitting that we are in control of our own reality, and have the capacity to end our own misery. As children of God, we are reflections of the same light and power that was used to breathe us life and light.
“Powerlessness is a lie we’ve learned to believe… Powerlessness is easier than admitting that we are in control of our own reality, and have the capacity to end our own misery.”
We’re constantly bombarded with images of people in positions of powerlessness, and we’ve learned to believe that lie that has festered into a disease.
Skepticism and doubt are symptoms of this plague that we’ve left unaddressed in ourselves.
My grandmother has a framed bible quote written in calligraphy hanging in her bathroom. I would stare at it while on the toilet, wondering why she had it in the bathroom of all places. I’m not really familiar with the bible, so many it was her own little way of getting me to read it.
“Walk by faith, and not by sight. — 2 Corinthians 5:7”
As long as we are afraid to use our voices, as long as we are walking by sight, and not by faith and trust in ourselves.
For faith in yourself and your power is truly faith in the power of the all that is.
The Wayward Minds Collective 
Leave a comment