To defend a lie you must attack a truth. This is not an outward motion.
From Conscience To Consciousness
Years ago, I heard Elder Dick Gregory speak in person. I came prepared with my upwardly mobile cultural conscience. When I left, all I had was consciousness.
I sat proudly in a room pulsating with anticipation to hear Elder speak. I sensed, like me, it was the first time for many. Being business-oriented, we had paper and pen at the ready. I'm sure Elder must have made some opening remarks, but the first thing I really heard was, “Y'all some stupid niggas!” He said this as he stared down the audience, pointing his finger at each side and especially, it felt, at me.
The energizing pulsating turned to ricocheting shockwaves. Eagerness became uncertainty. A few people left. It seemed like minutes before Elder spoke again. It was a few seconds. During that nervous pause, part of me said leave and part said stay. ”Didn't you come to learn something?” my spirit asked.
Yeah, but...
”But what? Your feelings hurt?”
Before I could answer my spirit continued. ”Why should something you don't know offend you? One of the doors to learning opens into what you don't know. Don't react, listen. When an Elder speaks, listen.”
Time slowed down even further and this proverb came into my awareness: “fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Since I preferred not to be stupid and a fool on the same day, I stayed. Elder told me one reason for my stupidity was in the most important areas of life, I was listening to people stupider than me. Long before Elder finished, I began saying to myself, “I am a stupid nigga.”
It was refreshing. All it took was willingness to listen. I realized listening is self-respect because, by listening, I give myself an opportunity to learn, thus improve.
In The Days After
I began studying more – more but not a lot. Years passed and I progressed ever so slowly. I remained sufficiently stupid to make many missteps. Basically, I was stupid enough to try to live a complete life without complete nutrition. I was stupid enough to not use all my resources or even know what they were.
Somewhere along the way, in a moment of clarity, I realized that like a plant, I must have all the elements for growth at the same time in order to flourish. This information came just a little too late or did it?
I couldn't fully address the problem of stupidity because I was married to it. In 2009, stupidity filed for and deceived an immediate divorce. I celebrate February 27th as a personal holy day of liberation from agreed upon incarceration because I was nearly completely dead and didn't know it until I took a fresh look at possibilities. To be liberated from anyplace where what is presented is the opposite of what is true, is a blessing indeed – even if to set things straight requires an escape from the confines of my own mind. ”Yes, yes! Now we can move forward more swiftly,” my spirit said.
I hadn't heard this voice so clearly in quite awhile. For acknowledging my critical condition of stupidity, though I'd been told, and for a willingness to devote myself to learning, I was rewarded with this insight: The first bit of wisdom is self-given and comes from expecting to be student, accepting teachers and respecting lessons.
Elder As Teacher & Doctor
To be mad at the teacher for a tell-it-like-it-is lesson is to be mad at the doctor for a diagnosis in language I can understand. I don't need a doctor who hints at the problem. Neither do I want a teacher who doesn't tell me what I need to hear due to worrying about hurting my feelings while watching me live stupidly. It has been much easier to get over feelings of stupidity than it has been getting over difficulties self-imposed by stupidity.
Afrikan Consciousness
It took until I began this article weeks ago to realize, Elder Dick Gregory spoke from the overwhelming power of Afrikan Consciousness. This awareness came not from the passage of time alone but through the ongoing process of self-study.
Per Hagins, “ Afrikan Consciousness is the transforming power which enables “African” people to capture the true sense of our soul. “Afrikan” Consciousness is when an “African” person becomes totally changed to a consciousness level of involvement in the struggle for their own (and other's) mind liberation and empowerment.” (See, “Definition | Consciousness & Communal Family Values And So Continues The Meaning Of Life & Existence (Part 8i)” and UC#282, “Consciousness, Conscience, Ego, Morality, Immorality Definitions”)
Put In Check
I'm thankful spirit checked me before mind and emotions wrecked me. I now realize Dick Gregory was the voice of African Consciousness that day. It was the voice of all my ancestors who needed to wake me up in a hurry. I'm glad they decided against. “Please wake up and listen son.” It would not have been sufficient to wake me from my middle class malaise. Elder was right. In the most important areas of life such as spirituality, education, health, family, raising children, relationships, finances, use of abilities and resources, etc. I was not only listening to people stupider than me but who also display anti-God behavior.
Learning After Learning I Was Stupid
Illusion is not realizing there is so much more to learn. Reality has learned, comparatively speaking, it is stupid.The cause of most stupidity is mis-education.
The most avoidable cause of stupidity is self-deception. This is because self-deception believes there is no reason for self-correction. What this also means is, since stupid people have a tendency to deceive themselves they also have a tendency to deceive others. Learn this one lesson and life will improve.
Uncorrected ignorance mutates into stupidity.
Stupidity didn't exist until learning froze for thousands of years. When it thawed it saw the great amount of ignorance it had accumulated. It chose to be lazy and not begin learning again to remove its ignorance. Instead it chose to try to acquire knowledge by theft. This approach did not reawaken learning the natural way and thus, what would have been temporary ignorance, calcified into stupidity. In other words, stupidity is the result of a frozen mind.
No one is born stupid. Stupidity is the loss of knowledge of self.Smartness and genius are not rare. What is rare is to be incapable of smartness and genius.
“Try to become something that you're not and lose the essence of who you are.”
- - Dumb Donald (Fat Albert, the movie)Read the entire article here.
Despite having achieved more than the average polar bear, according to this society, I was never in the middle class or any class for that matter. That's how polar bears view the world. No other bear but them is a bear. I was stupid for not knowing this. I was stupid because evidence for ages has shown this is the mindset that always is the polar bear's top consideration all the time no matter what they say, how much they smile or what they do in the short term.
Love always tells you what you need to hear even when you're not ready, because, if love waits for you to be ready, you never will be. Love must act with conviction, else it ceases to be. This is an essence of African Consciousness.
Love does hurt more when it must inflict pain to save loved ones from themselves. Elder's love for me is an extension of his African Consciousness. He knew he had to get me to confront the truth. His love hurt him because he knew he could only tell me and I would have to do the rest. If he could have made me un-stupid he would have. Love wants to do for another what the person can't or won't do for themselves, but it can't. This realization of the limitation of love, as great as it is, hurts like hell because it is facing the hell of a loved one hurting that love alone can't remove.
Going through pain is often the shortest path between sickness and health.The choices I make to listen and not listen can be the difference between feeling stupid for the moment and being stupid forever.
How stupid do I have to be, in order for me to be the weakest link in my ancestral chain. All of their knowledge is within me. All I have to do is know myself in order to use it.
“Anyone who doesn't appreciate Africa is an ignorant man and an ignorant woman.” - - Ancestor Brother Kwame Toure (minute 40:50)
We must Sankofa. As Malcolm X said, “Why, you left your mind in Africa.” This is true for every person who has ever been born on the planet. It is very stupid to not honor the fullness of your heritage. It doesn't matter what you look like.
Private Confessions
The day Elder Dick Gregory spoke, I was fortunate the part of me that said leave (mind and emotions) did not prevail. I was fortunate because mind and emotions are co-conspirators of self-enslavement when they operate without consulting spirit. Mind and emotions hold a lot of folk down who are being held down.
My good fortune awakened me, some, but was obviously still not enough to totally rouse me from being tired, weak and unaware. This feeling was confirmed by a spirit communication from Elder himself who said, “I already told you, you were stupid. You have to be a stupid nigga' to get fired during Black History Month and by people stupider than you. The ditch, the blind and your stupid black behind go together.” (The resonating quality of that shockwave reversed the crack in the Liberty Bell.)
It was a double-barreled truth against which resistance was futile. I had no defense. That did it. I had to once again confront my reality. To get unstuck I had to revisit Elder teachings. I then had to go to a private place. It was Creator, ancestors, spirit and me. I told the truth about not living up to my capabilities. I asked for additional help. I promised to avenge my stupidity. This time it was not only refreshing, it is freeing.
The divine natural advantage is now working for us since I am no longer working against it by working for and with my adversaries. I've refreshed the screen and regained senses of the polarity between solutions and problems. The script has been re-twisted and re-flipped. Tight are the coils which receive light signals to release anointing oils even unto their innermost counterparts. I know there's a war of many battles going on which explains the ongoing sneak attacks against us and our relations. I now have a pocketful of rocks, a slingshot, much better aim and my choice of targets. It is proper to return the favors of enemies. They continue to use female prostitutes, with the malignant form of stupidity, as proxies. Stank nasty, quit calling me.
We will achieve what we are intended to achieve to set things right. Sirene Oshun and Obatala are settling into their places upon blackened stools as stewards of black matter. Ra is sharpening, honing in on the horde and awaiting the order to rain additional nutrition and medicine to bathe and purify millions of children and release pinpoint photon arrows against the peons.To all my people who are willing to acknowledge their stupidity: What shall prevent us now from becoming who we were and who we are pre-designed to be?
