Metaphysical Freedom

Psychotherapy/Counseling, Metaphysical Coaching (Life and Business), Counselor Consultation and Supervision, Mindfulness-Based Energy Work

Tag Archives: Race consciousness


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Adventures in Africa Part 4: The People Are Rich, but Do Not Know It

I mentioned in Part 1 that earlier this year, I traveled to Ghana, West Africa and stayed for a month. In my time there, I learned a lot of positives about myself and the Ghanaian culture. I also recognized some of my own stigmas, and challenged others’. However, there are some things that I learned which opened my eyes to the reality of the challenges we face due to our ego-centric human nature and history. Through my next set of posts, I will address some “ugly truths” that I developed a better understanding of while being in Ghana.

As I shared in the first post, there were several people from other countries visiting Ghana. Due to my naivety, I thought that the majority of these people were tourists or volunteers. When I spent more time in the country, I paid attention to the landscape, noticed the architecture, and witnessed the different “classes” of people.

There were notably many people from China, India, and France in Ghana. (Through conversation, I learned that there are many people from these countries who reside or visit Africa in general.) I have seen videos of other African countries with “foreigners”, but the experience is different when something is observed firsthand.

I saw extravagant hotels, numerous casinos, and fancy apartment buildings in Ghana. When I asked the locals who owned them, I was surprised to know that most were owned by “foreigners”. These luxurious establishments were in the middle of cities with shack houses, cramped market spaces, and unstable roads. In the least, they were hard to miss because they appeared to have higher quality construction.

Why, you may ask are all these businesses there? Well, think about this: Which nation/continent is one of the largest leaders in cocoa production, has lots of oil, precious metals, diamonds and gold? You got that right. Africa.

I was bothered to not only to witness the economic disparity among the native Ghanaians, but also to observe the ways that the people were being taken advantage of by “foreign” businesses (example: Paying workers far less to run million-dollar businesses). I talked with many educated local businessmen who expressed that other countries are investing heavily in the continent of Africa and its countries. I learned that treaties were formed centuries ago that have left the people with little to no input or income when it relates to the extraction, use, and distribution of their resources.

It is funny to me that a great amount of the American publicity about the continent has been geared towards driving people away from Africa, or displays the people as poor and impoverished. Yet, I clearly saw that other countries see Africa as a rich continent filled with resources and wealthy opportunities.

I am not against people thriving and doing well in their business and economic endeavors, but I do not vibe with groups who take advantage of and oppress another group for their own gain.
It is once again, another form of slavery. The Ghanaian people are very kind, open, and non-violent. Their hospitality is nothing like any Southern hospitality I have experience in the United States. But, something is missing. They are rich and do not know it.

The long-term effects of colonization have left several of the people with a case of learned helplessness. I will talk more about the long-term effects of colonization in another post.

However, a crafty way that I can explain learned helplessness is like this:
A person desires to get help with turning off a light in a room. The person is facing a wall, and the light switch is on the opposite wall that the person is not looking at. Due to the person’s history and past experiences, the person was made to believe that he/she cannot help him/herself. So, this person asks every other person who comes into the room for help with turning off the light. In reality, all that the person has to do is turn around and flip the switch.

When I roamed around Ghana, a lot of the people expressed that they want to come to the US in order to find jobs and make money. Almost none of them said that they wanted to have their own businesses and thrive in their own country. I couldn’t understand it. I felt like they were in a land overflowing with wealth, yet they were seeing it only from a limited viewpoint, and a very negatively skewed one at that.

It appears that their view of their situation is a result of a centuries old “(human) race consciousness” that supports limited awareness of personal strength and freedom.
I desire for the Ghanaian people to know how rich they truly are. Food grows almost everywhere, the air is lively and basically unpolluted (most places I went), and the land has a wealth of resources.

 

Mighty Hill

These ants did not question if they could build this structure. They knew they had the ability, worked together, and did so, unencumbered.

To my Ghanaian brothers and sisters (and you the reader):

Do not look outside of yourself in order to discover riches.
See who You Are.
You Are already Rich and well-equipped.
Tap into your innate strength and wealth.

With loving conviction,
Dana (Intuitive Dana)
http://www.metaphysicalfreedom.com


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Adventures in Africa Part 2: Exploring My African Roots

Exploring My African Roots

One of the many reasons that I traveled to Ghana and spent a month there is because I wanted to learn more about my African roots. One of my siblings did the DNA genealogy test to help us to determine what regions/countries that our ancestors came from. To me, the test results were…well…they weren’t very conclusive. They read something like: Overall  85% from Africa (of course), then it was broken down into countries- Cameroon/Congo 31%, Ivory Coast/Ghana 26%, Nigeria 10%, and traces of Senegal 7%, Mali 4%, Togo/Benin 4%, and the South-Eastern Bantu region 2%. The other percentages were roughly 13% European and 2% Central Asian. When I first heard the results, I asked, “What does that really mean?” I don’t believe that the same borders or boundaries existed when my early ancestors were living freely on the land hundreds of years ago, so I figured that Ghana would be a good place in West Africa to learn at least something about the people I come from.

I grew up in South Georgia with small beginnings on family farmland in the countryside. The farms were former plantations. I remember having family get-togethers outside where we fried fish in a large pot of oil over an open flame. We had live animals running around…horses, pigs, chickens, and the family dogs. My uncles loved cooking Brunswick stew, or bringing back fresh fish from the local river. My dad would cut sugar cane, and we all enjoyed chewing it to get the sweet “juice”. I remember when I was very young, I used to sit on my great grandmother’s porch overlooking the farmland and help her to “shuck” corn.

Some of the houses were more like shacks because they were built by family members and had tin roofs. We called some of them “shotgun” houses because you could walk into the front door and see straight through the house all the way to the back door.

Even when we moved to the city, we continued some of our lifestyle. We grew plums, pecans, figs, blackberries, and peppers in our own yard.

Life was simple and rich.

Sogakope, Ghana in the Volta Region felt the most like my hometown to me. There were mostly dirt roads, several handmade houses, and the people were laid-back.

A few homes in Sogakope

A few homes in Sogakope

Mango tree in the yard

Mango tree in the yard

Sugar Cane

Food stand: Pineapple, yam, plantain, palm nuts, and chopped sugar cane (at the bottom)

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Laid-back moto riders relaxing by a “shack”

Something else that was interesting to me was related to funerals. My family usually wears black to funerals. However, if it is a grandparent that dies, we (as grandchildren) wear white instead. I don’t remember questioning why we had this tradition.

During my time in Ghana, I learned that red, black, and white are the funeral colors for Ghanaians. The people wear red if it is a young person who has passed away. They wear black if it is an adult/middle-aged person. They wear white if it is an elderly person. I felt a sense of satisfaction with this information and pondered if our family tradition was a watered-down version of an ancestral practice.

One final thing that caught my attention and felt comforting was the clothes-washing. Almost everyone hand-washes their clothing and hangs them out on a line to dry. My parents grew up doing the same thing, and they did the same for us. At some point, we had a washing machine, but we NEVER had a dryer, so we used a clothesline. As a teen, I used to be ashamed of it, but now I smile joyfully about it. (Plus, it is very environmentally friendly.)

Clothes hanging on the clothesline

Clothes hanging on the clothesline at a university guest house.

These small similarities made me feel more at ease in the “foreign” country. I started to pay more conscious attention to the people, and began to see familiarity in all of them.

 It is such a pleasure to notice the small things that connect us all as a people.

 

With that being said, Here is Part 3: Making Connections.

In Joy!
Dana (Intuitive Dana)
http://www.metaphysicalfreedom.com


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Conscious Social Change

“Nobody with innocence loves to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and human dignity. Even if he tries to kill you, you develop the inner conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they are worth dying for…” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

If there is one thing that I would change about the quote above, it is this: “What are you willing to LIVE for? What do you desire to see changed in the world we live in right now?”

February is celebrated as Black History month in the United States of America. It is also the month where they celebrate Love, Romance, and relationships in honor of St. Valentine.

When I pondered upon what this month means for me, I thought about the fact that there really is not a specific month to represent the history of all beings. My history is your history because we are all connected, and inevitably we all impact each other worldwide.

I also began thinking about the state of the social structure in this nation. There is unrest among many groups of people who are called the “minority” in the United States of America. The nature of this unrest is a recurrence of similar themes that have spanned over several generations. There are rallies against injustice, war, and inequality for all humans. This history seems to repeat itself, while the people headlining the movements are the only difference.

Why is this the case? What is missing?

Soldiers are deployed and encouraged to fight for their country and the freedom of their people. Yet, right here in our own land, many are not Free.

Freedom first begins in the mind.

If a group of people have been taught to believe and perceive their world from an inferior perspective, then their lives will continue to reflect this status, even if they do rally against their status. This is because they are creating what they focus upon. Do not get me wrong, there currently exists a covert and overt hierarchy in American society which affects various groups of people in different, yet painful ways. This hierarchy exists because the nation was created by a group of people who believed that to divide, conquer, and monopolize power was the way to live.

But it is not.

Violence, separation, and destruction only breed injustice, greed, and death.

It takes a conscious movement of everyone in solidarity in order for this ancient, ineffective system to be eradicated. I have read that the largest population in the United States right now is the generation born between the early 1980’s and early 2000’s, also known as Generation Y or the Millennials.

Why does this matter?
The largest population in any place can have a huge impact on society. It begins with a shift in conscious awareness, collectively joining together, and is followed by mindful action.

Think about what your ideal world looks like. Is there a major disparity among groups of people based on the color of their skin or partner preference? Of course not.
What can you do to shift things in the direction that makes this ideal world more tangible?

If you are passionate about it, then you have the first ingredient that is needed to take action. Every piece of this Peace puzzle has a major part.  First, begin to connect with others who believe in your cause. Second, discuss solutions from a collective and conscious point of view. Third, mindfully put things in motion from a solution-focused perspective. You will see just how much the world you desire begins to unfold.

You and I are the game-changers. We are the ones to lead a conscious movement, not by repeating old patterns of our predecessors, but by acting from a higher state of awareness and connectedness that focuses on the solution to the problems we face now. We need each other, and we are the answer.

We must create and influence the world that we desire to live in.

We are the catalyst

With love,
Dana (Intuitive Dana)
http://www.metaphysicalfreedom.com


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We are All One Race

I grew up in a small town in south Georgia (United States of America). Some of my experiences in this town helped to shape my perception of people. I will give you a brief overview of the history of the area that I grew up in.
Just a few hundred years ago, the Southeast itself was a hub for slavery and agriculture. The slaves came from the continent of Africa and were stripped of their culture and identity by European settlers. Many slave-owners viewed slaves as cattle, items, and a means to an end; but not as humans. (Not all people thought this way. There were some abolitionists who saw that slaves were human.) In 1865 slavery was abolished, but its existence still impacts many of us today. Although this was hundreds of years ago, the mentality remains prevalent among several descendants of slaves and slave-owners.

My parents were born in the middle and late 1940’s and they grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s. They lived in a time where they used segregated restrooms, attended racially divided school districts, feared for their lives due to radical racists groups, and were made to feel inferior because of the color of their skin. As a child, I remember hearing my father instruct me to take heed and to be weary of the evils of “The White Man”. In my teens, I remember my mother telling me, “I’d rather you date your own kind.” I even had some experiences with racism myself. I was called racist names, got spit on for being different, was stereotyped several times at stores and in restaurants, and I was told that I was not good enough– just because of my ‘race’.

In spite of all of this, I couldn’t fully understand what the problem was. I didn’t see my skin color as a wrong, an evil, or a challenge. I saw my complexion as being simply beautiful as it was.

Thanks to my mother’s strenuous efforts, I had the opportunity to go to unique elementary and middle schools. These schools were called ‘magnet schools’ and they were like free private schools filled with diverse students from all over the world. I learned so much from the diversity at the magnet schools. I met kids from other countries such as Mexico, India, and Africa. I also learned a lot about other cultures and languages. It was like I went to school in a miniature, more peaceful version of the world.
I had very supportive teachers who encouraged me to excel and learn. I felt appreciated for being a gifted person, instead of feeling judged by my skin. I had a diverse set of friends, and loved them for who they were. It was a life-changing experience for me. The one thing that stood out for me was the realization that we all have basic human needs, no matter what we look like.

We all want to be loved, accepted as we are, feel valued, know that our lives matter, and feel safe. We all desire some level of companionship or community, benefit from some type of belief system, and need to know that our existence means something to someone somewhere.

Yes. You, me, and the person who is hundreds of thousands of miles away reading this same message…We Are All One Race.

We are all one race, but many colors. One race, but many cultures. One race, yet many expressions. We Are All Human.

Intuitive Dana
http://www.metaphysicalfreedom.com