You cannot sing African music in proper English. ☥ ☥ ☥ Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì ☥
Although I worked with two major airlines during my college years, my favorite airline job was with a much smaller Caribbean airline. The majority of my co-workers were from various islands in the Caribbean and so our potluck events at work were epic. I got to eat all kinds of food from Columbia, Bahamas, Cuba, Nicaragua, Trinidad, Jamaica, Panama, Nevis, Mexico, Cayman and much more, and rum ☥ heavy cake were in constant rotation. During carnival and major holidays, we would have office parties and dance to the best Soca and Calypso music. There is one song that I love because it values Pan African joy ☥ celebration over eurocentric holidays that are worshipped by our society:
If you see me face looking fret It's something that really gets me upset ... Me and the boss man just disagree It nearly had big fight with me and he Boy, what you think cause the telele? He want me to work on Carnival day! ☥ I tell him, no Mr. Vidal Don't ask me to work for Carnival Mr. V. if you want to be me pal Don't ask me to work for Carnival This could have serious bacchanal Don't ask me to work for Carnival Like J'ouvert could get all radical Don't ask me to work for Carnival ☥ I working Ash Wednesday I working Good Friday I working Christmas Day I working New Year's Day ☥ But from J'ouvert morning two o'clock Don't ask me to work for Carnival I don't want to hear nothing about work ... I want to spread the news loud and clear Spread it for all employers to hear Tell them when it come to Carnival time Work to a Trini [person from Trinidad] is a big crime All before Carnival we go work Sunday to Sunday right round the clock But Carnival Saturday is me last Then we want the freedom to play we mas ... ☥ From The Song, 'No Wuk For Carnival' By ☥ Lord Kitchener ☥
The lyrics are layered with multiple meanings, including "Mr. Vidal" as representing "The Man," the dynamic of very few or no Black-owned businesses which forces people to work for colonizer employers who do not respect the culture or recognize the importance of carnival.
Prelude To The Process Of Defragmentation
"No Wuk For Carnival" is an example of a Sankofa mindset. In order for us to cultivate the Sankofa mindset, we'll need to hit the reset button in our minds, which includes becoming aware of, removing and defragging the sneaky ways that modern day practices of slavery uses social programming to facilitate fragmentation by hiding within our society in plain sight. Let's take a brief look at a few examples:
Prelude To The Process Of Defragmentation (continued)
☥ Separating us from our mother country and controlling the narratives in order to present
our mother country as undesirable. Then separating us by region, township,
preferences, etc. until we no longer see what connects us as a people. For example,
when I hear Black Americans say, "I'm not African, I'm Black," my response generally
goes something like this:
Me: Are Africans Black?
Person: "Yeah"
Me: Then why do you need to make a public declaration that you are not African, you are
Black, when Africans are also Black? Who stands to gain from your perception that
you are not African? Who stands to gain from an African's perception that you are not
African? Where do these perceptions come from and do they make any sense?
Person: "Damn. Why you so deep?"
Me: What is deep is that these public declarations do the work for colonizers even when
they are not the ones who are speaking. We claim to be woke, but we act like we are
sleep walking. We are swimming in so much trauma, we don't realize how deeply
colonizer concepts are imprinted into our minds. I must call it out so that we can
break the chains that bind us to their programming. You are making the distinction
because you haven't healed your childhood trauma of being spammed with Tarzan
and images of starving African children. Why else do would you need to make a public
declaration that you are not African?
Person: "Ouch, you crawling up my ass!"
Me: Well, consider this your radiant health enema, because it is time to release what no
longer serves you. For me, this is the divine dirty work that I do with love. Love is a
dynamic verb. We have to wake before we can be woke.
Sahku Sheti/Djaer [African Psychology] is the deep, profound and penetrating search, study, understanding and mastery of the illumination of the human spirit. The penetrating search, study and understanding requires an investigative approach that always seeks the deeper meaning of phenomena and explores the invisible aspects of reality. This process recognizes that a full understanding of reality acknowledges that spirit is the basis of all known and knowable perceptions. ☥ ☥ Dr. Wade Nobles ☥
99.9% of the information you get about Africa is wrong. ☥ ☥ Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì ☥
Prelude To The Process Of Defragmentation (continued)
I once heard a Black comedian say that when Black People were taken to America, Africans did not even send one boat after us. His perception that Africa allowed us to be taken and did nothing to rescue us comes from not knowing about/understanding the Scramble For Africa. We saw a glimpse of this perception emerge within the storyline of the N'Jadaka/Erik "Killmonger" Stevens character, from the Black Panther movie, who was "left behind in America" when his father was murdered (by his family member from Africa). We also see it when T'Challa admonishes his father in the ancestral realm, "Why didn't you just bring the boy home? [back to Africa]" In "Killmonger" we see what happens to a person who is abandoned and cut off from their "tribe." It is vitally important for us to understand that europe held a comprehensive conference in Berlin in order to avoid a war over who gets what piece of Africa. europe's rape of Africa and process of psychological manipulation was very well researched, planned and executed.
Africans ☥ Indigenous People (particularly from the Pacific Islands) were kidnapped and forced to be on display at Human Zoos since the 16th century. These zoos were very popular, and I'm still attempting to understand the psychosis of a culture that makes a civic past time out of watching people of other "races" in their "natural habitat." When I saw the "People Are Alike All Over" Twilight Zone episode as a child, I didn't know about the Human Zoos. I now realize that Rod Serling was hiding his docudramas within the science fiction genre to attempt to humanize white people. Rod Serling is white, so his Twilight Zone work proves that white people can own and heal their ugly, change their behavior and, most importantly, work to raise awareness of psychosis + educate other white people to be accountable for and improve their actions.
When we don’t heal ☥ remove psychotic behaviors, they continually transform into new and often more covert and dehumanizing psychotic behaviors.
The observation of and experimentation on Africans ☥ Indigenous People provided europeans with the data necessary to take a continent that was three times its size. europeans have not healed from their compulsions to put people in cages and stare at them for amusement or study. Human Zoos still exist and show up in other forms that are more "acceptable" in our society such as displaying women in fancy cages at a night club, upscale sex clubs featuring sadomasochism, prisons, etc, They also exist as actual Human Zoos in the underground world and in the lives of sociopaths, psychopaths, sex trafficking (a billion dollar industry that can afford to hide in plain sight) and more.
The problem doesn't go away if we feel hopeless and ruminate in despair. If we want change, we will need to change. We cannot directly change others or force others to change. But, we when we change how we respond to outside stimuli, we can force a change to occur.
We may be outgunned and disenfranchised, but we still represent a $1.8 trillion+ dollar market. Yet, our behavior reflects that we don't understand/recognize our purchasing power. The products we purchase do not represent and often insult/mock us. What do you think would happen if we were to withold that money, save it, do not purchase products, watch TV/go to movies/listen to music that denigrates/dumbs down our culture? Send in written feedback on what needs to happen to respect us, earn our trust and patronage? As an example, after sending in four different feedback forms over the course of a year to an image bank, I started to see more, empowered images of Aborigine People. Financially support grassroots efforts that help us to evolve in consciousness? The change begins with us, yet unhealed trauma, convenience and herd mentality has kept us inactive. Our ancestors are eternal beings, but for us, in our current physical from, time is a limited resource. How are we using it? If we stopped watching one multimedia program that denigrates us and used that time instead to learn about our history ☥ culture ☥ practice Qigong, how would our lives change? Are we going to assume that we know the answers to these questions (passive behavior that empowers colonizers) or conduct investigations (active behavior that empowers us + humanizes colonizers)? How do we raise awareness of these issues to prevent people from falling prey to it? How to we raise our children to enjoy life while at the same time become aware of and know how to protect themselves from predators - especially those who hide in plain sight (schools, playgrounds, etc.)? How do we train ourselves to raise our level of awareness, monitor the health of our community, society and global ecosystems and practice an array of self-defense techniques (to protect ourselves from physical and psychological terrorism)? How do we cultivate benchmarks for trust and counterstrategies that thwart impending danger?
What I find interesting about the following scene in "The Equalizer" is that The Equalizer offers a peaceful option and then takes the time to tell the criminal that their death could have been avoided and is the result of an emotional addiction to power. The last question that the criminal asked The Equalizer was, "Who Are You?" The intelligence and mastery of The Equalizer comes from knowing himself (Sankofa). We also see that The Equalizer doesn't fight impulsively. Every move was strategic and timed which is a reflection of continual mental and physical training and the cultivation of extreme focus and emotional control (he could not be distracted by or baited into knee-jerk reactions). These qualities ensured the success of The Equalizer even though he was outnumbered and outgunned (just like the disenfranchised/terrorized people that he represents).
Prelude To The Process Of Defragmentation (continued)
If we are tapped into and taking actions guided by the source of infinite wisdom and supply, does it matter if we are outnumbered/outgunned? Daily Qigong practice develops these qualities and shows us how to protect ourselves, enforce strong boundaries and require accountability without the use of violence (if we act when prompted by our innate intelligence instead of hesitating until the danger escalates) while also healing ☥ relaxing our body and mind. We often miss the message because our innate intelligence can ask us to take an action so far in advance, that we don't realize the action was taken to protect us from danger in the future (as mentioned in my pandemic experience). For example, we may be led to practice a Qigong technique for 10 years (because that is how long it takes for us to develop mastery of that particular technique), not realizing that we are being prepared and thwarting danger. Every moment of training is important, but we will not believe it until the technique saves our life. Yet, we can't afford to wait until we "see" proof with our physical eyes. When the colonizer ship was in the horizon, the shamans saw it and SPIRIT told the shamans to not allow the ship to come ashore, because they were not merchant traders who could be trusted. Once the ship came ashore, SPIRIT gave protection instructions that didn't match what the shamans could "see" with their physical eyes as necessary, and they were fooled by the colonizers smiling faces. So, they bypassed their intuition, and later, their common sense. Then, many more ships came, and Indigenous People from Africa and the Americas lost their land, people and, thousands of years later, are still attempting to recover. Our daily Qigong practice will show us what we need to make the best decisions for ourselves with our inner wisdom/third eye. How would our lives change if every second that we spent in despair and rumination was instead invested into daily Qigong practice? Investigate to find out for yourself.
Your investigation activates Sankofa.
Prelude To The Process Of Defragmentation → What's The Difference Between ...
Conquer + continuous divide and conquer strategies are implemented to sustain the fragmentation of Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant People. Let's look at this issue pluralistically. What is the difference between:
☥ Tribal wars in Africa and Black-on-Black crime in America? Both are used to distract us
away from colonizer behavior occurring in the background and even showing up as the
hero to stop or save what they purposely put in motion (psychological warfare).
☥ Sex trafficking in Africa and the rise of the Black Pimp in America? (economic
suppression, sexual perversion)
☥ Selling Africans into slavery to protect oneself and selling crack cocaine to children in
America to earn money? (violence, policing, economic suppression)
☥ Phillis Wheatley funded to tour europe to showcase how a Black person who was
manipulated as a child, could be controlled as an adult to protect the interests of
colonizers and giving public platforms to hand-picked Black leaders throughout the
continent/diaspora who support and enforce a eurocentric agenda? (psychological
warfare/terrorism)
In 2016, 62% of Africa's population was living in shanty towns.[11] Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa is reputed to be the largest shanty town in Africa and is a city in itself.[12] The 2011 census revealed its population to be 99% black and a 2012 inquiry found that 12,000 households had no toilet.[11] The Joe Slovo shanty town, also in Cape Town, houses an estimated 20,000 people.[13] ☥ ☥ Wikipedia ☥
☥ What’s the difference between extracting resources from Africa and forcing Africans to
live in shanty towns, and disenfranchising + running major highways through Black ☥
Indigenous ☥ Immigrant neighborhoods/forcing them to become homeless, live in
tents, etc.? (economic suppression)
☥ Birth Of A Nation (The Clansman) that presents Black men as rapists and Hip Hop Music
that presents Black women as whores (both examples are funded by colonizers)? (social
programming, economic suppression, psychological warfare)
Record companies would rather you stay dumb, not even think of it as a business, so they can either rip you off or get you out of the way in five years to make way for the new groups. ☥ ☥ ☥ George Clinton Of Parliament Funkadelic ☥
If you got maggots in your brain, everything you think is gonna be rotten. ☥ ☥ George Clinton Of Parliament Funkadelic ☥
Prelude To The Process Of Defragmentation → What's The Difference Between... (cont'd)
☥ white men raping Black women during enslavement and white men funding the sex
trafficking of Black women in present day? 62% of sex trafficking victims in America are
Black and the industry is funded by affluent white men. (social programming, economic
suppression, psychological warfare/terrorism)
☥ white women raping Black men during enslavement and white women setting up
trauma bonds in early childhood and then using sexual manipulation to “get” and “lock
down” Black men as adults? (social programming, economic suppression, psychological
warfare/terrorism)
Before I understood trauma bonds, I was thoroughly confused by some of the
relationships I witnessed. At the Caribbean airline, the only white female co-worker that
I had was a middle-aged, bossy matriarch. She is married to a very attractive Cuban
man who is 26 years younger than her, and she looks like she could be his
grandmother. He is a very quiet, white-centered, docile man and would occasionally
drop by to bring her something from home. She certainly used him for bragging rights
at work. In fact, the first time he came to the office, I thought he was a delivery man.
She called out to me, but I was on the phone, so I heard her make him stay until I was
off the phone so that she could see the look on my face as she introduced him as her
husband. She was obviously proud of the fact that his family "hated" her but could
do nothing about their relationship. Though I didn't have the language/experience to
define it at the time, he displayed behavior that was consistent with victims of sexual
trauma in early childhood. He also was almost completely dis-identified with his Cuban
heritage.
Many years later, as I meditated on what a trauma bond does to a person, I
was led to the brides attack scene from Bram Stoker's Dracula. It provides an excellent
metaphor of how a person gets seduced into a trauma bond and then drained of their
energy which keeps them trapped within it. Jonathon (Keanu Reeves) struggles to
break free of the vampire's brides. Dracula arrives and orders the brides away but
confirms a deeper plan to also trap Mina (Winona Ryder), Jonathon’s wife. In a later
scene, Jonathon is once again trapped. However this time, he realizes that in order to
break free, his will must become stronger than the trauma bond (the art of self-
correction ☥ self-defense). Daily Qigong practice helps us to activate the power that
resides inside of us and cultivate the will to transcend manipulative tactics.
☥ Genital mutilation which prevents Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant women from
having/enjoying sex and white women who use narcissism to ensure that Black ☥
Indigenous ☥ Immigrant women do not have access to Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant
men + pornography which promotes sexual behaviors that prevent women from having
orgasms? Remember when “doggie style” sex became popular? Doggie style sex is a
way for white people to trend beastiality by first getting people comfortable doing the
position with humans. However, my research revealed that females were faking orgasms
to attract, keep or feed the ego of Black ☥ Indigenous ☥ Immigrant men who were
learning these sexual techniques from pornography and white women. (social
programming, economic suppression, psychological warfare, terrorism)
The apartheid enemy tries to separate us into ancient ‘tribal’ entities and pretends to be concerned about the preservation of our cultural heritage. ☥ ☥ ☥ Oliver Tambo ☥
I'm not sure why the perception that Africa abandoned Africans of the diaspora still lingers, but if we follow the inception of the idea back to its origin, we will run into a very strategic and effective set of social programs created by colonizers. At what point during the numerous invasions with cannons and other weapons of mass destruction, raping, pillaging of over 90% of our art, mutilation of Africans who refused forced labor and the hundreds of millions of Africans that were killed during the Scramble For Africa and Trans Atlantic Slave Trade would an African on the continent have the ability/access to resources to send a rescue boat after us? If we don't call these fallacies out within ourselves, how will we dismantle the programming? The programming is designed to create angst and division between + within the continentals and diasporans until we no longer remember that we are from the same family. Who stands to gain from that dynamic? If we skip the steps of transcending psychological manipulation and healing our minds, how will we move forward?
When you go by your body and intellect alone, life is a circus. When the intelligence of divine begins to play its role, life becomes a dance. ☥ ☥ Sadhguru ☥
I suspect that this fallacy has lingered because we haven’t learned how to heal. As a result, the fallacies turned into unhealthy coping mechanisms whereby we disguise jealousy/envy over our brothers and sisters who were not stolen away, who have their native language and connection to who they are. But the fact of the matter is that jealousy/envy will not heal us, because it masks the core issue. It is virtually impossible for us to drill down to the core issue if we do not know how to heal because colonizers stole something from diasporans that is intangible, and the tree that connected us to Africa was pulled up by the root causing us to believe that we lost our anchor. What is worse is that this disconnection prevents us from recognizing the systematic ways that colonizers manipulated the continentals and diasporans through social programs and psychological manipulation beginning in early childhood. Because we don't know where else to put our pain, we project it on to group of imaginary African SWAT teams who abandoned us to distract us away from the truth - that there was no African SWAT team because Africans on the continent were also subjected to physical and psychological terrorism. The fragmentation of our understanding also occurs because the strategy to oppress Africans in America (where white people had larger population numbers) had to be different from the strategy to oppress Africans in Africa (where the population of white people was much smaller).
However, there is another truth that our unresolved trauma prevents us from seeing. Our spiritual roots cannot be pulled. Our connection to those roots can be muted or become dormant because of our lack of practice, but the essence of who we are is always with us.
Our connection to our innate wisdom will return to us what we’ve lost in consciousness. It may not look the same, but if we surrender to our inner excellence, it will show us how to fill in the gaps and tap into our unknown potential which often causes us to unleash/activate super powers to balance the scales. Consider what Stevie Wonder is able to do with and through music. What he doesn’t see with his physical eyes, he expresses through his music. His physical blindness is not an obstacle to his potential as an artist (he was a child prodigy) or in life. His voice is a true super power, and when he performs, he takes us with him to a soulful place that transcends words and physical sight.
Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision. I am what I am. I love me! And I don't mean that egotistically - I love that God has allowed me to take whatever it was that I had and to make something out of it. Ya gots to work with what you gots to work with. ☥ ☥ ☥ Stevie Wonder ☥
It is also important to keep in mind that the original Tarzan TV show/movies were not shown in Africa. In fact, a woman from Kenya told me that when she watched “Good Times” as a child, she was amazed that Black People in America had running water. So continentals were programmed to think that the diasporans were wealthy and, knowing how impoverished many places in Africa was, chose to not come to Africa/support Africans/invest in Africa. This is a significant fallacy, because it is the African way to send money home to take care of your family who is less fortunate. At the same time, white people would show up in Africa as investors who want to “help” them and were often the only people who visited their country/purchased goods that Africans produced. The continentals had/have no idea that the diasporans were/are continuously disenfranchised, traumatized and programmed to be ashamed/terrified of Africa/African spirituality. At the very same time, the diasporans were programmed to believe that the continentals did not care about them, sold them into slavery and never bothered to send their African SWAT teams to rescue them. Colonizers erased the African ancestry from the continental ☥ diasporans, actively promotes xenophobic behaviors, rewards people who embrace eurocentric behaviors and punishes/disenfranchises anyone who embodies African heritage. We must find a way to exorcise these perceptions (demons of division) until our hearts and minds are clean.
Xenophobia is a covert strategy to keep colonizers in control of a tribe’s/region’s/state’s/country’s, etc. resources.
'Cultural resistance' is any act or experience designed to resist, retard, counter, or eliminate the attack on one’s design for living and patterns for interpreting reality—that is, culture that supports one’s understanding of the meaning of being human and the thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, and values supportive of that meaning. The question of cultural resistance, however, must be understood in the 'context' of geopolitical and sociocultural psychic terrorism. African American cultural resistance has, [p. 324 ↓ ] in almost every way, been in response to this terrorism. ☥ ☥ Dr. Wade Nobles ☥ From The Chapter, 'Cultural Resistance To Psychic Terrorism' Of The SAGE Encyclopedia Of African Cultural Heritage In North America ☥
Other examples of how social programming sustains fragmentation include:
☥ Using propaganda, economic suppression and competition to pit people against each
other (funding rebels, tribal wars, etc.)
☥ Normalizing/popularizing the projection of self-hatred onto each other
I have a colleague whose first name is "Precious." I love the idea of naming children in
such a way that to call their name is to speak a positive affirmation. However, this
colleague told me that some people struggle to call her by her first name (stumbling
over her name, etc.). When we are connected to our innate wisdom, we become aware
that these subconscious behaviors reflect a need for us to heal unresolved trauma. We
project feelings of self-hatred onto others when we struggle to speak empowering
words. In other words, if we were connected to the truest part of ourselves, we would
be delighted to call a person "Precious."
There are many other examples, but the Sankofa mindset dismantles the various ways that colonization attempts to destroy the essence of who we are.
The meaning of terror as a psychological phenomenon is any feeling or instance of intense fear that results in immobilization. Terrorism is the systematic creation of terror to create horror, anxiety, or fear that results in immobilization. Psychic terrorism, then, is the systematic use of terror to immobilize and/or destabilize a person’s fundamental sense of security and safety by assaulting his or her consciousness and identity. In so doing, psychic terrorism targets and damages the meaning of being and diminishes the human will and belief in one’s limitless possibility and potential. ☥ For the African American, the very fabric of American society was woven with savagery, slavery, segregation, defamation, physical brutality, political domination, character assassination, economic exploitation, cultural denigration, and psychic terrorism. The most profound lingering psychological effect of slavery and colonization for African people has been a sense of human alienation resulting from being infected with or assaulted by long-standing, ongoing ideas of African dehumanization, negation, and nullification that required African American people to deny or morph their Africanity into images, ideas, and identities more congruent with not being African. This, in effect, was and is psychic terrorism. ☥ ☥ ☥ Dr. Wade Nobles ☥ From The Chapter, 'Cultural Resistance To Psychic Terrorism' Of The SAGE Encyclopedia Of African Cultural Heritage In North America ☥
Well-being/Wholeness: Synonymous with health and wellness. State of being love-filled, happy, healthy, joyful, prosper-ous and efficacious. Cultural well-being applies to a whole people. When the human spirit is 'whole' and 'healthy,' the experience of being human is characterized by confidence, competence and consciousness expressed by the sense of full possibility and unlimited potentiality. ☥ ☥ ☥ Dr. Wade Nobles ☥
Now that we can clearly see some of the fallacies and biases that get trapped within our psyche, we understand why defragmentation is so important to our healing process. Journey To Radiance ☥ Sankofa ☥ Part III explores the process of defragmentation and offers techniques for applying the principles of Sankofa. Part III features our Journey To Radiance ☥ Sankofa ☥ Podcast, celebrating ☥ sharing the wisdom of ☥ Dr. Wade Nobles ☥ Our Elder ☥ A Co-founder ☥ Past President Of The Association Of Black Psychologists and ☥ Sizwe Abakah ☥ Spear Of The Nation ☥ Griot ☥ Artist ☥ Healer ☥ Educator.
Copy/Paste Version Of A Full Citation Example:
Hubbard, P. S. (2020, September 27). Journey To Radiance ☥ Sankofa ☥ Part I. PHYLLISHUBBARD.COM.<https://www.phyllishubbard.com/post/journey-to-radiance-sankofa>
☥ॐ☯
