Hetep Everyone,
Well, it's happened. The surprise that I told you about in earlier posts has arrived. By surprise, I mean breakthrough. Yesterday, I realized that I had manifested something tangible from the Universe that I had wanted. As a result, I suffered a huge anxiety attack. This has been a repeated pattern in my life which has almost always led to shut downs and self-sabotage (We all handle things in different ways.). Thanks to the Tree of Life Meditation System (TOLM), I was able to recognize the source of anxiety and the symptoms of an oncoming attack.
The source of the attacks is trauma that I suffered during my infancy. Please don't ever think that because babies can't talk that they can't remember. Our brains are so powerful that they hold the memories of experiences of all our lifetimes. We just don't know how to access those memories. Okay, that's not true. This meditation system has that potential. My point is that what happens in our infancy has a huge effect on what kind of adults we become.
I heard a story, I think that it was told by
Runoko Rashidi in one of his lectures, about some French scholars who went to Africa to study how Africans raise their children so that the Europeans could help them improve. The French folks discovered that the African children were far more advanced than European children, comparatively. One example, if my memory is correct, was that the African children were potty trained at six months. What was the explanation for this? The children never went without being touched. Even at night, someone always had a loving had on them, reassuring them of their connection to everyone else.
Conversely, here in America, one of the sayings that I've always heard when it comes to babies in the black community is, "Put that baby down! You'll spoil her!"
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, in her book
The Isis Papers recommends giving children unlimited access to your lap (Lap Time) until the age of 4, letting them decide when they're ready to get down.
I'm saying all of this because in our community we have been so far removed by slavery and segregation from the way that our ancestors reared us, that the European ways of neglect seem natural. Worse, hidden deep in our closets are the residual effects of slavery and segregation. I'm talking about child molestation.
This is some old European evil, that must be exposed if we are to heal it and get rid of it.
I remember watching this Katherine Hepburn movie called
The Lion in Winter. The movie is set among their royalty in 1183 A.D. They talk about raping young boys like its some sort of delicacy (champagne, caviar, and a little boy, instead of a cigar). It was their nonchalant acceptance of such behavior, spoken within the same context of Christianity, that got me. If it happened among the royals, then it certainly got passed down to the wannabes. Don't even think of telling me that this didn't happen in slavery and that it still doesn't happen.
I believe that most people think that molestation is a female problem, but gender doesn't matter. Slavery brought this to our community and it is still running rampant, perhaps even more now than ever so this post is for everyone.
My mother suffered from what we today call postpartum depression, but she had always suffered from a mild form of mental illness stimulated by growing up during segregation in Shreveport, LA. She suffered a severe breakdown and couldn't take care of us. My father left us with people he trusted so that he could work two jobs. I don't think he ever knew what happened to us. My mother recovered enough to take care of us, but her childhood mental illness was left unchecked so we grew up with even more trauma. However, because of my dad and the fact that my mother's "episodes" were spaced out, although, sporadic, we also had a great deal of American "normalcy." My father died when I was 13. My mother didn't really begin to get the help she needed until I became an adult.
It wasn't for lack of trying. My mother always knew she needed help, but the doctors were white and uncaring. It took her decades to find the right kind of help. She never stopped searching (Applause, Please!).
The effects of her illness, attacks from trusted loved ones, and my father's death at an early age have left my siblings and me devastated, not to mention the succeeding generations. But we persist.
My objectives with the TOLM system so far have been largely to heal the trauma of my childhood and my relationship with my mother, the effects of which have been stupendous. My mother is receptive to anything that will help her heal and astute enough to reject what will not help. The insights that have been revealed to me during the TOLM system have helped us both to heal beyond measure.
Now, it seems that it is time to heal the adult trauma that I have inflicted upon myself through anxiety and self-sabotage.
Normally, I would have interpreted yesterday's anxiety attack as a huge failure and shut down completely, unable to do anything, feeling worthless, inept, and every negative name in the book that you can think of. Because of my success with the TOLM, however, I didn't do this. Set and I (as Heru)went to war and last night, Tehuti loaned me his eye. I'm talking about the metaphorein from Ra Un Nefer Amen's
Metu Neter vol. 2, p. 137-160
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Previous cycles of the TOLM system had already revealed to me that my anxiety stems from the cry of the baby girl inside of me who new that no one was going to come to her rescue in the midst of the worst of the worst. Why then would I have my worst anxiety attack of the cycle when I received something that I wanted very much?
For forty years, my expectations in life have been based upon the fact that no help would come. This has tainted my perception of what "help" is. Even when I have been able to recognize "help" as help, I've felt unworthy of it. If I accepted help, I would sabotage it just to prove my unworthiness.
Understanding this blessed insight isn't enough. I've got to change the beliefs that feed it. That means that this meditation cycle has officially shifted focus from my original objective of obtaining money to healing my anxiety. That is not to say that the money won't come, but it is no longer the prize. Ashe!
I need to say something here about compassion. Our people (the African diaspora) have suffered and lost so much at the hands of Europeans and wannabes. Now, when we have the capacity to assess what has happened to us, our brightest scholars are so blinded by hopes of European-influenced opulence that we are seemingly unable to cohesively understand what has happened to us. Even the "conscious" brothas and sistas, are blinded by European assessments of our responses to trauma. You never know what someone is going through or why. We are all different and we all incarnated with different strengths, weaknesses, and agendas. Be compassionate in your assessment of others without judging too quickly or too harshly. If any people deserve a second look and reconsideration, it's us by us.
That's it for now. Until next time,
Hetep
that I find helps to explain to me a lot of the obstacles I have in remembering to observe myself, especially without judgment.
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, pages 231-232: