After Hurricane Maria on the way to Jayuya
Living in Puerto Rico brings up so many questions and answers about life as we know it on planet earth. This little island is symbolic of many experiences I have had in Africa, U.S.A and now the Caribbean. She is a microcosmic representation of the mainstream current state of consciousness. When I first arrived I was excited to unpack all my bottled up stresses and frustrations from the society I was living in in the USA. I did find that this little island opened her arms and laid a basket in front of me where I could drop my baggage and purge. I in return promised to do what I do everywhere I go. Heal. She seduced me to her fauna and friends, I was touched by feeling included in a family of like-minded folks, something I had suffered from lack in USA.
It usually takes at least 2 to 3 years to understand anything. It's the rule of thumb for relationships, business, and living situations. Once that mark approaches you know in your soul of souls whether you like or dislike or can intelligently construct an opinion around an experience. That mark has arrived for me here in Puerto Rico. Committing 2 or so years in volunteer work, teaching classes, healing people, mothering people, thinking that I am considered a member of the whole and regarded equally with love and compassion, as I would my other members; I stand alone.
Deep deep within the waters of the island people are oppressed. People are living in a samsara of the historical cycle of oppression that keeps recycling it's toxic nonsense, recirculating within the mental, spiritual and physical health of the people. As a dark skinned African woman, priest of Ifa, clinical herbalist and nutritionist with higher education degrees, always wearing African clothing and teaching the mystical; finding real community here is hard. The talk about being 3 races is talk but not the deep experience the islanders really want to have, oppression has created confusion. Racism is here it just expresses itself in self hate and self destruction yet speaks of it's roots as if proud. Then there are the free spirited islanders where as if anything on the ship is grabbed; new ideas included. No credit for the ones who introduce them nor honor for the ancestry of the ideas, no originality simply emulation and imagination of the possibilities and the fantasy projected on that one who brings the ideas. This too is a disease of oppression. Self expression suppressed over and over again. Anything that looks like a life line of inspiration is handled firmly and desperately. I overstand.
Religion, colonialism, racial cleansing, experimentation and agricultural engineering has displaced the souls of the people here. Stuck within a room of "no return, yes return". A perpetual confused state that reminds me of a house slave who feels superior than a field slave because they have lighter complexion and wavy hair. Moreover because they are in the house serving the master. The house slave disguises the roots of their spirituality with symbols of the masters religion and thinks that is better, more, ok.... The house slave surrenders their body to the master thinking that laying with will someday make them equals.
No matter where I live, I consider the planet, the universe my home. I will always be true to myself, I rather be in the field under the night sky smoking spiritual medicine to open my mind, my heart and spirit to being true. Alone or in the company of the awake ones. I ask all of you to do the same. To wake up and disempower the reality show you empower and feed. Wake up from the hypnosis of the programming that keeps you in the soup of misery and consume knowledge and wisdom rather than the stuff that you can not carry with you.
This is the antidote for the disease of oppression; being true to yourself and standing up for what is just. Pay attention!