Essays by Ekowa
How Then Do We Live?
ARK
I have recently been reading a wonderful book entitled 2000 Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah, a noted Africa scholar from Ghana. In my mind, he has written a great piece of work one everyone should read. His book concentrates on our fall and enslavement and the means of our demise. The information he compiled was excerpted from our West African oral history—stories carried by those of us who still hold the gifts to relay and interpret hidden knowledge.
Here is an excerpt:
“The conquers offering to spare our individual lives in return for our acceptance of their destruction of our knowledge of the Way, these conquerors presume to bribe us with part of something stolen from our ourselves, presume to bribe us into accepting our own death. Our way is reciprocity. The way is wholeness. Our way knows no oppression. The way destroys oppression. Our way is hospitable to guests. The way repels destroyers. Our way produces before it consumes. The way produces far more than it consumes. Our way creates. The way destroys only destruction.” pg. 76
These stories were originally bestowed upon new initiates and kept from those unlearned. Seen as myths—fables recited to children for their amusement and remembrance, they seemingly held no significance until the final initiation revealed their deeper mysteries. This method is similar to the passage in the Bible when Yeshua say to his disciples:
“He told them, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and their sins be forgiven!... But without a parable spake he not unto [his disciples]: and when they were alone, he expounded on ALL THINGS to his disciples.” Mark 4:11-12,33-34.
Here is another ancient equivalent used in circumcision of the Meru people in Kenya:
"There are two important ceremonies within this period of seclusion. The first one is nkurwo itiliy (ceremony of uprooting the stumps). The second one and more terrifying is mpithio (the burning ceremony). Actually, mpithio is taken so significantly that without it you can be taken as a mwiyi (uncircumcised) though physically you have been cut. It is the ceremony that allows you the gateway to societal secrets, traditions, etiquette and statutes. It is conducted by the medicine man wearing a python skin. It is scary! Physical cutting cannot give you the required behavior change. The teachings do. You are what you know, "As a man thinketh, so is he."
Graciously provided by Dr. Echengi Kurraru Limbere.
The problem is most of us have never been taught to “never understand” simply because, we have no real teachers that could interpret, disseminate and train us in the mysteries. We do have blind guides acting as ministers and teachers of every religion teaching us real fables based in trivia.
“Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” Matt. 23:24
Since, we can not understand the true illusions, myths and parables in the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad-gita and all other scared literature, which are only influenced copies of the original truer African wisdom, how can we be expected to understand the original whole truth when we see it face to face in the original wisdom literature?
We have been told so many, many times that our people did not chronicle our history in script. That is a lie! We can see our truths on the temples walls, ceilings and halls all over Egypt--all over Africa! We are told that Griotism was not an essential tool employed by our people to transmit ancient history that could not be written down especially while we were in the throes of enslavement. That was also a lie! Griotism or oral traditions were used in conjunction with writing.
We must understand that a people in peril must have a way to preserve themselves and their history. We wrote in times of peace when we weren't dealing with basic survival, and we used oral traditions at a time when peace was illusive. We learned and employed both methods in the in initiation process. I have a new appreciation for the art and science of Griotism, just as I have for the carvings on the hallowed halls of African temples and monuments.
2000 Seasons must be read with a prophetic ear and a heart of understanding. The reader must heed the spirits of our ancestors attesting to the truth within its pages. If it is read as just another book, then the deeper more lasting meaning will be missed by those looking for a quick read. I believe we should study it as sacred text.
Griot with Korah
This wonderful book has answered some of my most basic questions concerning, the invasion of Africa by the Arabs, the invading Whiteman, the wholesale enslavement of our people, and the willingness for some of our rulers to allow and even promoted that enslavement. In the past I have been reluctant and unwilling to see how the latter was a factor, but as I asked the Creator to bring me into ALL truth and it was time for my eyes to be opened to greater things, even if it hurts.
Honestly, I have wrestled with my feelings for those in the ruling and oppressing class who classify themselves as white. I have wrestled with my feelings for those who call themselves Arab, especially those who promote it as the “Blackman’s religion” and those in the ruling and oppressing class. I have wrestled with my feeling for those of us who are of the same African blood and seed and have sold us into unconsciousness, by preaching another gospel, intellectually, culturally, politically and spiritually. I have wrestle with the culpability of my previous Christianity faith, and my reluctance to see the truth, due solely to the mythical vestiges of my Judeo-Christian upbringing that still lies dormant in my soul. The difficulty for me is to understand and forgive those who have and continue to wrong and oppress us no matter their color. The difficulty for me was to understand that our original way is truth and not mere foolishness. I was taught to turn the other cheek when wronged and let Jesus fix it, but in the case of our very human survival it has been the wrong choice. I never understood the need to fight in every way against those who are killing me—softly.
The idea of Heaven being only attained in the great By and By is so engrained in us we are contented to live in oppressive squalor, satisfied to see the rest of our people do the same as we watch them from comfortably from our living rooms. In America we've been brainwashed into suffering in silence, gratified with a big screen TV. and cell phone. Happy in our mediocre, Afro-centric, soul-less lives satisfied in the prospect of death only to find what we should have acquired in life!
Will money alone solve our problems?
I am not referring to material wealth alone, although we need to pool our finances and acquire wealth to fix the economic problems that our people face. How many times do I hear of a situation that concerns our people and I want to help, but I do not have the means to become the solution. Material wealth without heart and soul, sympathy and empathy, love and understanding is a weapon in the hands of a drunken man. Wealth without a plan and direction will turn into gluttony or starvation.
I am talking about problems of the spirit require a different approach. We must turn our face and incline our ear to the ancient story, to the sages that reveal the ancient paths. We have fallen far below our original selves and we must make a concerted effort to teach our children who their ancestors are, yes are, because they still speak to us and they see what we are doing and are grieved, read my essay on a Dream.
An example of what we are facing lies in a imperialistic and racist poem from 1897 by Rudyard Kipling:
The White Mans Burden--
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go; make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
How could a people so heinous believe their way is the answer for the world? How haughty and self righteous! How could these people believe they have the answer to a question asked while they were still living in caves? It is our fault and our problem, we never stopped them! We let them flourish and their ideas become poison to our souls. Now, we believe that only a blacker version of a culture that is death to us!
Even now, we sit back and say the same things they do. We sing the praises of white supremacy louder and greater than all others. It plays over and over in our heads. We are children of the Diaspora, living like the white men. We believe this drivel and teach it to our children even though most of us have not heard of the deeds of Rudyard Kipling, King Leopold, Cecil Rhodes or their fathers and grandfathers or their children who now run the World taking up this so-called burden. We unshackled remain slaves, controlled by our own unconsciousness.
We, who eat, dink, sleep, defecate and copulate in slavery each day and call it freedom.
We, who sit and chit-chat about what we can not do—attending churches, mosques, and temple like automatons, never asking a single pertinent question, only looking for our own individualized relief.
We, who eat and forget about those who are still suffering.
We, who look at upon the horror of the Black world and suck our teeth.
We, who can not relate to the indigenous peoples of the world and look at them as estranged from ourselves.
We, who look to Heaven for a solution when the solution is in us.
We, who love and give without plan or reason and expect nothing of our children.
We, who have forgotten the way to live as we had for millions of years.
Let us not continue in this destructive mode. Let us not forget we have an extended family and they need our help! Now!
What has happened in Jena happens in Jamaica, what has happened in the Sudan is happening to all of us. Those are our people,
not Sean Penn, Bono, George Clooney, Madonna or Angelina Jolie’s people! They are OUR people!!!!
They are our beautiful people!
Excerpt:
“A terrible destruction would be our welcome here if we let the peace of the place put us to sleep; if we forgot again the cause pf our straying so far from the way, and then the result; if we thought we could merely laugh at the greed of "ostentatious cripples" and still survive its afterbirth.” pg.103.
How then do we live?
Let's wake up
and
stop acting like we're crazy!
We have miles to go before we sleep.
Ekowa
2007
Sources:
KJV Bible
Dr. Echengi Limbere
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/armah.htm