I spent most of 2006 trying to get back to one moment.
That moment came in April of that year when I was up all night reading Be Here Now by Ram Dass and smoking copious amounts of marijuana, completely engrossed by the content of the book and feeling myself rise out of my small sense of self. As the dawn of the day emerged, I had an experience of what then I might have described as touching true infinity with my mind that I would now call communing with God, or Source.
In that moment my mind was fully engulfed in the bliss of what I think was the unfettered original consciousness from where all life springs, and where all answers are obtained and understood. This was all part of an attempt to get back what I had, indeed what I was before I took on the challenges, problems and pains inherent to life as a human on Earth. Of course while I did nebulously believe in reincarnation, I wouldn’t understand how many previous incarnation experiences there were to sort through, their collective traumas, and all the wisdom gleaned from them.
I did not simply rely on this simple experience or properly nourish it, and continued headlong into what would become an addiction to cannabis and alcohol, and failed experimentations with psychedelics that demonstrated, in one particularly nightmarish experience, I was trying to get back to this possible point of enlightenment, or at least an awakening, for all the wrong reasons. I was trying to circumvent my suffering without properly learning from it and integrating it in my path. Of course, I was only 21 at the time, and not in a position of basic brain development to do so, and truly unaware of how significant my childhood trauma was, and how deeply buried.
Last month, I learned of the concept of Sankofa, from the Akan tribe of Ghana. The essence of the concept is “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” The symbol for Sankofa is of a mythical bird whose feet are planted forward while its head looks back. The Anka’s concept was rooted in their belief that the best future is created by learning from the past, the essence of wisdom creating the most ideal path forward. It sparked a multitude of inspiration within me.
I connected the concept to my attempts to understand and truly integrate my African American heritage, my African ancestors having originated in West Africa, including likely Ghana. This has been more of a spiritual focus for me this year as I attempt to draw closer to my ancestors and understand the ways in which their guidance has and does shape my life and carry me forward, and how I carry the strength, resilience and determination of not only my African ancestors, but my European progenitors as well.
I also saw it in the greater framework of my spiritual life, that so much of what has driven me is not just an attempt to end my suffering, but to try to fetch the original consciousness of Source, that well of pure potential, from where I came and will return when I die/transition. The concept of it not being taboo to try and retrieve it cut through this wall of shame I had constructed around my heart and mind in regard to my addiction and maladaptive behaviors that were all an attempt to find my way back to God, even if they in turn caused bodily degradation and more suffering. I can so tenderly hold this concept and embrace it by not only discarding the stigma I had confined myself with, but indeed the stigma by which we confine others who suffer from addiction, often literally in terms of incarceration.
In our fast-paced, often Puritanical culture, it is easy to adopt an attitude of shame or anger around looking to the past, that we need to just “get over it and keep moving.” But do not all of us want to stop suffering, and fear the pain and great effort put in looking to and re-experiencing our past to gain the most wisdom? It takes a brave heart to do so, but it is worth the effort.
The past few years of my life spent in the deep end of mental health and addiction recovery could be symbolized by this Sankofa bird, that I have both feet firmly forward, but have also been cutting through and processing old traumas, old decayed ways of thinking and believing, trying to retrieve the pure essence and basic lust for life with which I was born.
But with that process comes grief, understanding I will never truly be able to secure that original consciousness I was before incarnating as a physical being because I was destined to become something more. I was destined to become a bright, glowing ray of wisdom that shines as evidence of God’s infinite potential, and reach back and fetch the outreached hands of those struggling to find, understand and integrate their own cleansing fire of wisdom.
And it is from that grief I rise, we rise, not with the blinding light of original Source consciousness, but as a rainbow, light refracted through the prism of the illusion of separateness and the tumultuous game of life on Earth. We are neither proud nor ashamed, we simply understand our past for what it was and feel grateful we were allowed to fetch what we almost forgot that would have hampered our path forward.
Clay The Scribe 