SPIRITUALITY EXPERIENCES

summer sun

 

28JUNE 2010: SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 

For many years now I have engaged in practice which could be termed as spiritual development. Some people believe in the existence of a higher, greater intelligence that is responsible for the creation and evolution of the world – God, the divine principle where all things, all entities begin and end.
At this time of the year it is a time for listening deeply to the words of the Creator, the words of God, the wisdom principle, awakening the wisdom faculties. It is also a time when I am coming off a four day period of meditation and physical cleansing that some people would term a “fast”. From my personal experience, coming off such a period brings an increased mental clarity and better physical performance, better health and vitality.
There are several levels to spiritual development: the fasting at specific times of the year; regular meditation; the meeting of daily challenges in your conscious everyday life; working, studying and sharing with others on the same path.
From I was a child i wanted to gain a closer relationship with the divine, I was asking the question “why am I here?”, especially when beset with the challenges growing up in a crowded home with a large family and being the youngest, and physically the weakest.
The personality and the Church. My personality did not develop until others left the family home and i was able to have my own room and adorn the room with the things that my person desired. Hence whilst away at universitybetween 18 and 21 the search for the divine led me to the Christian church, joining church groups, studying the bible, engaging in prayer. This continued beyond the end of the university days to when i returned to Birmingham in the late 1980’s. 

Meditation and Black consciousness. Soon my interest in the divine realised that the church and studying the bible and praying was one way to get to the divine but that there were deeper things that were missing, mysteries that had to be developed to ensure that what was desired could be realised. At this time I was living with my mother in Birmingham at the family home whilst she was preparing her second emigration to the USA. I began to try to meditate, and saw things in the median state (between waking and sleeping) important things, but try as I might i could not remember what was seen, communicated when in the waking state. I left the church and the study groups. I fell in love with the idea and philosophy of “Black Consciousness”. I joined self determinist African liberation organisations and got involved in study groups in Birmingham which moved me from theory to direct action against injustice, racism and inequality. The influence was the music of people like Public Enemy, Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Gil Scott-heron, Tracy Chapman, Dennis Brown and the words of Malcolm X to “free your mind”.

malcolm x

Soon I began to see contradictions in those organisations, more importantly between the development of the leadership and their followers. Well informed children leading less informed children!
The next stage was the study and development of a historical and cultural perspective, contributing and participating in Black African history study groups, and then community organization. What was influential were the “Education of The Black Child” conferences organized first by the PACM in the early 1990s’ then Paul Obinna and Lance Lewis’s Kemetic Educational Guidance organization in the mid 1990s. These conferences helped to move Black British people’s political perspective towards the need for developing cultural ethnocentric spirituality – I remember one year the conference theme being “Spirit-duality and the Black Child”. http://www.hh-bb.com/paul-obinna.html 

There was a move from Pan-Africanism to Afrocentricity to Afrikan Spirituality. I became aware of things like cultural celebrations at certain times of the year (Kwanzaa), the pouring of libations to honour one’s ancestors, the respect of one’s elders, the need for an ethnocentric educational curriculum, a rites of passage programme, the importance of a name: its meaning and the energy the name confers on the person. (try naming a baby “idiot” and see how they turn out in life!)
Intitiation. Eventually i found a society, a group of people who were of my persuasion who were committed to spiritual development. Their programme combined multi-disciplines: Health, Astrology, Cosmology, meditation, divination, prayer, yoga, history, Psychology, Biology into a spiritual science.

 

I learned to meditate, to breathe well, to exercise well, to have good nutrition, to fast, to learn from within. The realisation had come that up to this point my life was led by my reliance on the person – the set of personality characteristics that was tied into me at the time I was born. In order to grow and develop I had to transcend this “personality” with its likes and dislikes and develop the other personas that were latent in the spirit – the un-awakened conscious, in order to realise my life destiny. This was evident as the challenges that i faced in life were often more than my one “personality” could manage, other energies were required to deal with the challenges i was facing as a man working in an adult world. I had challenges in my intimate and family relationships; with earning saving and spending money; at work; with my self image ( what i thought I could and could not do, who i thought i was), with my habits (emotional, mental and behavioural), and my health. I needed more than “prayer” to handle these matters with mastery. My habits were helping me, but they were also causing me to mess up opportunities.
I joined a society and had to change the way that I thought, the way that I did things. As i learned to apply the teachings in my life, I gained more mental clarity, peacefulness, my health improved: I had better vitality to do things. This was illustrated at my twin brother’s wedding in November 1999 – when i saw friends that i had not seen for over ten years – they remarked that I looked well, better than I looked ten years earlier – “what are you doing, what are you into?”. The spiritual growth I had achieved was not done by reading books and studying manuals, it was through the application of the science of meditation, which unlocked what the Afrocentric scholars wrote and labelled as the “mystery system of ancient Kemet”. Many of the scholars, African Americans such as the late Jacob Carruthers, the late Reverend Barashango, the late Asa Hilliard III, contributed to KEG’s conferences but they never got past the outward description of the mystery system and the translation of hieroglyphic texts from the Kemetic pyramids in Egypt.
So i continued with the teachings and the application of the spiritual science in my life. As time goes on the divine nature in man begins to come through, and the identity moves beyond a human identity but resides with the divine that is unlimited in its capacity to know, unlimited in its ability to achieve and unlimited in its oneness. The Creator needs men and women to develop their spirituality to become vessels that God can come into the world. This is how major achievements are created: the spirituality to transcend the person and to enable the divine to come through.
The one thing that does happen with spiritual growth is that as the spirit grows so do the challenges: It is like weight training – as the muscles learn to grow and to bear more weight, the weight increases in order for the muscles to get stronger.

the paut neteru

 

Tuning in to Cycles. There are annual, solar cycles and monthly, lunar cycles. At this time of year, in the solar cycle, it is a time when the matters meditated upon and visualised at the last winter solstice (21st -24th December) begin to bear the fruits which began to grow from the spring equinox (21st march). The fruits will manifest until the vernal equinox (September 21st). I was reflecting upon my life over the weekend and realised that most of the things that I achieved year-to-year occurred at the time between June 21st and September 21st, followed by March 21st to June 20th. For example, In 1990 I lost two stones in weight between March and September, peaking in August, where I had to gain weight in order to play sports. Other examples are more obvious: the achievement of qualifications from examinations, sporting achievements such as the 1987 Universities AU Basketball championships. The work is done at certain times of the year when the subconscious spirit is receptive to change – the equinoxes and the solstices. The realisation of things willed is at the summer solstice to the vernal equinox. The judgement of achievements is made from the vernal equinox to the winter solstice. My ancestors in Africa recognised the significance of the winter solstice – this is shown by the erection of monuments that lit chambers from starlight from certain constellations only at the winter solstice. The ancestors at Stonehenge also recognised the significance of the solstices and the equinoxes. The fasting and physical cleansing that occurs at these key points in the year enables the person to become receptive to the words of the divine. 

At present i work in the dual disciplines of mental health and criminal justice. I work in the not-for-profit sector, though i have a master’s degree in business administration (MBA). There are challenges, for example I have a very demanding and dictatorial manager that I have to work with. Also I have to work with people in mental distress, and people who have committed some vicious crimes. I also have to train people, and facilitate training with professional people. Each day is different and each day has to be faced with the right spirit and attitude.
Spiritual development turned out to be far more profound than i had originally thought and imagined it to be and i did find out my purpose as to “why I am here”. I am part of a spiritual development group that meets in Nottingham once a fortnight: it is nice to share experiences and to grow with other people. Spirituality is deep and profound, it is not separate from living. I also realise that I am part of a long movement and a practice that was begun centuries ago by ancestors long before the idea of Christianity, Christ, and the writing of the Bible. Ancestral people who studied nature (neter) and developed spiritual development systems that became lost, hidden and distorted over time. These teachings have been re-membered in this time and I am indebted to my teachers, priests and fellow initiates in their committment to this way of life. I can attest to the light that spirituality has brought to my life.  I am challenged to live truth every day, heed the words of the divine principle, inculcate certain spiritual laws into my mind as i go about my business, and test the laws through experience.