Sankofa (sahn-KO-fah)
Read Part 8n - Past Facts & Ancestors Causes Us To Not Let Go And So Continues The Meaning Of Life & Existence (Part 8n)
Continuity For All Time
The past is alive whether we remember it or not and believe it or not. Time is part of the interconnectedness of all things. Future time, present time and past time depend on each other. Continuity of life is not possible without continuity of time.
Continuity makes life possible because continuity makes motion possible. For individuals, families, communities and societies to have continuity, their motions must incorporate all time and all history plus all of their human and Divine genealogy. In order to know who we are and where we came from, this is so.
Going With The Natural Flow
Continuity is the flow. It is an ongoing process for all time. We must learnderstand this flow and become a flow-er in order to flower. In fact, flowers flower because of the flow within them and the flow around them near and far plus the flow of interconnections. It takes no less for us.
It's up to us to go with this universal flow.
It's us to us to connect with the continuity of past knowledge that flowed into the rest of the world from Alkebu-lan.
Remember! Sankofa! (1)
Sankofa [sahn-KO-fah] is a symbol and principle that serves to remind us that the past is a “resource” and not merely a “reference.” One interpretation, among several, is “Go back to the past and recover it.” Yet another one is “Return to the source.”
Sankofa may be interpreted as an injunction to “learn from the past” and finally as an order to “never forget the past and path you made when moving ahead.”[Anyone who says, “that was in the past” or “forget the past” or “that was a long time ago” is leading us towards amnesia of knowledge of self and thus, a life of motion without continuity.]
There are at least five meanings associated with Sankofa. First, it suggests the value of reflecting on the past. Second, it also suggests a person who self-consciously reflects before moving forward with a decision. Third, it represents self-definition, identity, and vision. Fourth, it represents an understanding of personal destiny and collective vocation. Finally, fifth, Sankofa is said to represent the repossession of something forgotten, misplaced, or lost. [Sankofa] suggests that the path we have made holds the potential to understanding the present and the promise of the future. It describes an ongoing process, principle, and value of historical and cultural recovery.
Although valuing the past is part of the general African tradition and heritage, going back to the Nile Valley, as part of a process of historical recovery, has particular relevance for Africans today, especially having undergone the holocaust and its subsequent mutations into other forms of oppression. Many writers, leaders, and intellectuals see cultural and historical recovery as essential to forward development based on the cultural integrity of Africans as a people.
In an age when African descendents are told that their pasts are at best irrelevant to the present and at worst nonexistent, unworthy of discussion, or having no bearing on the present, [Sankofa] serves the useful purpose of reminding African descendents of their moral obligation to remember and recognize the sacrifices of the past [and the much longer history of successes, before, during and after physical enslavement and even during the ongoing mental enslavement that has shackled the spiritual].
Sankofa as a process and principle of recovering history functions as a reminder that the past is not merely a referential source of origins and artifacts, but a source of paradigms, that is, exemplary models of thought, reason, morality, and practice. The past, then, offers us a model of excellence, whereas history provides us with many lessons that inform our current self-conception and social identity.
Sankofa Pronunciation & Discussion Of Importance By Sister Marimba AniRelated Proverbs:
Peer into the past, see yourself, now walk beside your future.
Only the ignorant ignore time.
Read Part 8p - Teaching Proverbs: Foolish, Deceitful, Religion, Answering Prayers And So Continues The Meaning Of Life & Existence (Part 8p) . ”SA | Spirit-Soul Basis of Understanding & Contextual Healing
Sankofa Life By Expanding Definitions & Meanings, Unity Consciousness #938”
