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I Still Represent The Nation

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Soundtrack: A Tribe Called Quest “Lyrics To Go”

I want to take a break from the regularly scheduled program here at COMPLETE CONSTRUCTIVE CHANGE to talk about my influences. Today is February 24, 2013. On February 22nd, we observed the birthday of the man who was born in 1928 as Clarence Smith, later came to be known as Clarence 13X, and was referred to by his students as the Father, Allah. On February 26th is the birth date of the man known as Master Fard Muhammad, who taught the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and charged him with building the Nation of Islam. This weekend, culminating in today, the Nation of Islam celebrated its annual Saviours’ Day convention in honor of Master Fard Muhammad.

These men are the reason that I’m alive and free to walk the streets today. Their message saved me in the mid-90’s, in my mid-teens, from a lifestyle that was sure to end in prison or an early death. And the soundtrack to the whole story was rap music coming out of the culture that we call Hip Hop. In reflecting on what these men and their message have meant to me, I was inspired to give some explanation of why I think the way that I do. Allow me to speak on a bit of history.

In 1963, Clarence 13X departed from the ranks of the Nation of Islam in New York City where he was a member under Minister Malcolm X. He had a mission in his heart to take the lessons of the Nation of Islam, which had been kept secret among initiated members of the group, and to share them freely among the youth of Harlem. The message in those lessons, in a nutshell, was and is that the Black man is God. Clarence 13X came to be known as Allah after he began his mission, with his followers calling him Father Allah. Father Allah met with tremendous success in spreading his message to “the babies”. I won’t go into too much detail about that at this time.

In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam in a plot hatched and orchestrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The man chosen to be his replacement over the Nation of Islam in New York City was Louis X, now known as Louis Farrakhan. These two men, Father Allah and Louis Farrakhan had very, very significant influence on the thinking of the young men and women of New York at that time. In 1968, Father Allah was shot and killed. His followers did not allow his death to be in vain. They spread his message to their contemporaries with renewed fervor. That year 1968 marked a turning point in black history within these United States of America.

The FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (CoIntelPro) stepped up its efforts to destroy any black leader and any black organization that had the potential to unite our people around the determined idea of achieving freedom. There were many assassinations all across the country and it really marked the beginning of the end for the strong black leadership of that day. Fast forward to the mid 1970’s. Black communities across the country are experiencing a vacuum of leadership, depleted budgets for our schools, parks, arts programs, and community centers and newly developed housing projects that stacked us on top of each other like sardines. The young people of the Bronx developed a new way to party, a new way to dress, a new way to speak, a new culture, and they called it Hip Hop.

Hip Hop was born out of the spirit of desolation and desperation that these communities were feeling. The youth didn’t have training to play musical instruments so they learned how to turn the turntable and their own mouths into instruments and breathed new life into the R&B and disco jams that their parents loved. There was one man who had more of an impact than anyone else on the ideological basis of this new culture. His name is Afrika Bambaataa. He was a former gang leader who was able to steer not just the members of his own gang but rival gangs also into creating a new organization dedicated to peace and fun. That organization is called the Universal Zulu Nation. There are two things about Afrika Bambaataa’s personality that were forever stamped into the fabric of what makes Hip Hop what it is.

First is that Bambaataa was heavily influenced by the ideas of Louis Farrakhan, Father Allah, and another Islamic teacher known at the time as Imaam Isa Abdullah, now more commonly known as Malachi York. The lessons studied by members of the Zulu Nation are formatted much like the lessons studied by the Nation of Islam and Nation of Gods and Earths (the current name of the group founded by Father Allah). Bambaataa really filtered those lessons to a much wider audience in a style more palatable to them than the way the Muslims and Gods presented it. Another legacy from Bambaataa on Hip Hop culture is Bambaataa’s vast musical tastes. He was a DJ, and one of the best of his era. And he was willing to play songs from any genre in the world and find a way to make his young listeners like it. His broad taste influences Hip Hoppers to this day to be willing to experiment with influences from all over the world in the areas of fashion, music, politics, and all other walks of life.

Hip Hop’s “golden era” is generally considered to span from 1988 until 1994. That era in the music’s history was marked by a transition from songs primarily about partying and lighthearted boasting into a more serious time heavily influenced by the ideas of the Nation of Islam and the Nation of Gods and Earths. It was as if the seeds planted by Islam in the New York of the late 60s sprouted and bore fruit among the New York raised rappers twenty years later in the late 80s. Acts like Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, X-Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers, Ice Cube, Big Daddy Kane, and many many others brought the revolutionary spirit of the 60s into a new era with driving bass lines and catchy melodies and exported that spirit to the whole world. This is the era that produced me.

When economics, politics, and good ole fashioned government conspiracy came together to change the direction of Hip Hop music in the mid-90s, I began to come into my own as a revolutionary Islamic thinker and rap artist. And today I still feel it’s my duty to carry on that golden era legacy. I carry the spirit of Hip Hop culture into everything that I do. In the immortal words of the BlastMaster KRS-ONE, “I am Hip Hop”. Everything that I do is Hip Hop. I write Hip Hop ballads. I write Hip Hop blogs. I eat a Hip Hop diet. I have Hip Hop sex. I raise Hip Hop children. There is no aspect of my life that isn’t affected by the culture I grew up in and the music I grew up listening to. That culture is permeated through and through by Islamic influences but it is also able to pull from any place on the planet and any walk of life and seamlessly tie it into the fabric of what we do. In that spirit, my personal spiritual practice and my ideological foundation is heavily Islamic but it also includes elements of Taoism, Hinduism, Jewish Kabbalah, Kemetic philosophy, the traditions of Native America, Ethiopia, and the Khmer Empire. I think I’ve said enough about this for now. I could write a book on this subject. In fact, I was writing a book on this subject at one time. But I scrapped it because KRS-ONE wrote and released a book saying basically the exact same message that I wanted to convey. No sense in reinventing the wheel. And because I’m Hip Hop, I didn’t want to be accused of biting KRS-ONE’s style by releasing a book almost identical to his after he already had his out. So Happy Saviours’ Day and Peace to man, woman, and child. I’m out. Until next time

 

They Don’t Really Care About Us

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Soundtrack: Jay-Z “D’evils”

“Tantrikas are threatening to those who would wield power. One who has realized his true nature cannot be subjugated to the will of a religious or political power structure.” – Sunyata Saraswati

“There are three things that the slavemaster would never teach to the slave, because if they did then we could no longer be made slaves: the science of business, the science of warfare, and the science of mating.”

Elijah Muhammad

“The men of greatest achievement are men with highly developed sex natures, men who have learned the art of sex transmutation; the men who have accumulated great fortunes and achieved outstanding recognition in literature, art, industry, architecture, and the professions, were motivated by the influence of a woman.”

Napoleon Hill

            For as long as history has been recorded, there have been some people who wanted to have power over other people. In fact, in the western educational system, history is completely a retelling of the stories of how certain groups gained power and kept power over other groups. In the news today, some of the most virulent political debates are about regulating sexuality e.g. abortion, gay marriage, etc. The elites have always been hyper-concerned with the bedroom activity of the masses. In the hundreds of laws found in the Old Testament, many of the ones with the most severe punishments were about sexual acts, forbidding adultery and fornication and such. In those days, religious power and political power were synonymous. The leaders of the religion were also the leaders of the state. But as we have seen, even in these days of separation of church and state, the powers that be seek to determine who should be having sex and how and when. Why?

            Those who have power in society have always understood the enormous power of sexual desire and sexual activity. They trade the knowledge among themselves of how to use sexual energy to manifest their desires into reality. It only makes sense that they would desire to prevent the masses of the people from having this same knowledge. This knowledge is their leg up on the rest of the people. This leg up is maintained by their making the masses of the people believe that sex is dirty, sinful, and something to be feared.

 Why do we yell at small children because we see them touching their own genitalia? What makes it so horrible to touch yourself? For that matter, what makes it so horrible to touch other people? When are we going to examine the hypocrisy surrounding our sexual views? In 2013 it is still unlawful to teach high school students about sex. Sexual education is mandated to include telling the students to abstain from sex. How many of the people giving this message abstained from sex until marriage, whether it be in the home or the school or the church? Why do our bodies produce this flood of sexual hormones in our early teens when we begin puberty if we’re not supposed to have sex or even think about sex until we’re 20-something? What is the logic in that? How many national and world leaders have to be humiliated into hiding because it was found out that they had an extramarital affair before we ask the question that maybe these people are doing what comes naturally? Maybe these people are so compelled by this sexual desire and are willing to risk reputation and livelihood because human beings are made to have sex…

            As part of demonizing sex, femininity and womanhood had to be demonized as well; because women are naturally sexually superior to men. Women naturally have more sexual desire, stamina, and enjoyment than men do. Women had to be made to think that it was not ok for them to be the way that they naturally are. So women were covered up. The natural adornment of a woman’s body, her lady lumps (shout to will.i.am), got covered up with excessive amounts of clothing so the power of her beauty wouldn’t show and arouse a desire in men to have sex. One half of what human beings have to offer has been devalued and hidden away. And the world is suffering as a result.

The feminine qualities of transparency, receptivity, tenderness, and harmony are shunned in favor of competition, rugged individualism, machismo, and brute strength. So we dump toxic waste into the ground and into the air with no regard for the impact it will have on the ecosystem. We cut down the rainforests which are really the lungs of the planet and we expect to still have clean air to breathe. We steal the natural resources from beneath the feet of those in developing countries and then we act surprised when they resort to violence as a way of making their voices heard. The world needs a feminine touch. 

            It seems that every day, somewhere in the world, there is a conference or meeting about how to get the powers that be to respond to the needs of those who have no power. I am suggesting that a primary part of the answer to that question is that people need to have more, and better, sex. Sex is the most powerful mental stimulant that we have available to us. Sex brings people closer together in a world that is desperately in need of intimacy and basic human compassion. Sex can be used to alleviate poverty. Sex can be used to bring people to spiritual heights that prayer and fasting have never attained. Sexual energy can turn ordinary men and women into geniuses. We can no longer afford to deny ourselves this most wonderful of gifts. We must teach our children to embrace their sexuality rather than to run from it. But as part of this embracing we also must improve the quality of our knowledge of sexuality. We must have conscious sex. We must learn HOW to use this wonderful energy in these wonderful ways. Because what we’ve been doing is simply not working. 

Let’s Talk About Sex

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Soundtrack: Salt n Pepa

            I stressed before that Tantra isn’t all about sex. So that begs the question of why is Tantra associated so often with sex? Why do people who teach, or claim to teach, Tantra mention sex and sexuality so much?

            We’ve established that Tantra is an energy management system. We use our energy to improve the quality of our lives physically, emotionally, spiritually, and materially. Sexual energy is the most powerful form of energy that we are able to access at any given time. It is always available to us and it is very highly charged. It is our greatest spiritual gift.

            Just as new physical life comes from the act of sex and the exchange of sexual energy; all new things come from sexual energy. That energy is the raw material, the building blocks of all manifestation. In the classic book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says the following:

“Sex desire is the most powerful of human desires. When driven by this desire, men develop keenness of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence, and creative ability unknown to them at other times. So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it. When harnessed, and redirected along other lines, this motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness of imagination, courage, etc., which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling, including, of course, the accumulation of riches.”

            Enlightenment and achievement produce the same chemical processes within the brain as a physical orgasm, the release of hormones like oxytocin and endorphins. The physical process of arousal, followed by a buildup of tension, followed by an ultimate release and climax, is the same as the process of achievement. We become aroused with a new idea, a vision of something that we want to achieve. We experience the tension of struggling against resistance to bring our vision into fruition. And when our goal is finally achieved then we have an emotional climax and we feel the tension released and there is nothing but bliss. Taking something from an idea into a physical reality that can be observed is the ultimate orgasm.

            Life coaches and experts on creating wealth often speak of the benefits of “self-suggestion” or “autosuggestion”. These words basically mean making a statement to yourself that the subconscious mind accepts as truth. The two emotional states best suited for suggestion are — deep relaxation and emotional intensity. Sex can easily get us into both of those emotional states. The reason these emotional states make it easy for us to “program” ourselves is because of the way the brain works. I don’t have space here to fully explain the science of that but I will state that if the brain is slowed down then it becomes easily suggestible and if the brain is made highly active then that’s the best time to form new neural pathways that make it easier for us to perform certain functions.

            I’m saying all of this just to make the point that this energy is very powerful. And the following might be why it’s so powerful. In mathematics, if A = B, and B = C, then A = C. Every time…if all things come from God, and if all people and 99% of animals come from a sex act, then God = Sex. Math doesn’t lie. Sexuality and spirituality/divinity are intimately connected and it is the separation of sexuality from spirituality that makes most spiritual practices ineffective.

            The Tantra master Shantam Nityama says:

“…the relationship between spirituality and sex is like the relationship between a butterfly and a caterpillar. If the caterpillar is not in good health and not strong, then you’re not going to have a butterfly, or you are going to get a very weak and scrawny butterfly…in order for people to open up spiritually, they had to come back and totally embrace their sexual energy and be clear about it in order for them to take that same energy and transform themselves.”

            Tantra teaches us how to fully embrace our sexual energy and begin to consciously use it to transform our lives. 

Let’s Get It Started

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Soundtrack: 2Pac – “Changes”

When most people in America hear the word “Tantra” they think of Kama Sutra, sexual positions and toys, and general freakiness. It’s like the sensual side of pornography in the popular imagination. I am a Tantra practitioner. However, that doesn’t mean that I am a sex therapist or sex surrogate or anything of the sort.

Tantra is a Sanskrit (Indian) word that literally means “system or doctrine” and comes from the root words tanoti “stretch, extend, expand” and trayati “liberation”. The originators of the Indian system of Tantra saw it as a systematic way of expanding the consciousness toward liberation. However, Tantra was not solely developed by the people of India. Every people on earth since the beginning of humanity have had a system of Tantra, under different names, and sometimes not bothering to give it a name at all.

Tantra is based on a recognition that everything is energy, including and especially human beings. By coming up with intentional ways of manipulating/managing the energy within ourselves, we increase our ability to manage the energy around us and thus create a reality for our lives in the way that we choose. Most of tantric practice is about doing things like yoga, chanting mantras, doing breathing exercises, and eating a healthy diet. The sexual things that are associated with Tantra will not yield results for you if you aren’t doing these other things that appear to not be sexual at all. In truth, Tantra is more something that you “become” than it is something that you “do”. Once you “become” Tantra then everything you do becomes orgasmic, especially your sex. As my Tantra teacher, Master Yao Nyamekye Morris says, “Tantra is about becoming the highest and best version of yourself.”

My intention in creating this blog is to give commentary about my experiences doing Tantra energy work and the implications of this work for the world that we live in. In the Grand Trine Tantra system created by Master Yao, we use tantric energy projection as a healing modality, similar to massage or acupuncture. This energy projection works with the client laying on a massage table or bed. The practitioner sends their energy into the energy body of the client, allowing the client’s energy to flow more freely than normal, pushing through blockages in their energy channels.

That last paragraph presented multiple concepts that many people have never heard of before. What exactly is this “energy”? How do you send it to another person? What is an energy body? What are energy channels and how do they get blockages? All of these concepts will be explained fully in subsequent blog entries. For now, can I just say trust me? LOL…The main point that I want to make at this time is that when we experience pain in life, whether emotional or physical, it often gets stored in our bodies, causing these blockages. And the body/spirit seeks to find ways to not experience that pain anymore. This is the root of what psychologists call “defense mechanisms” and it causes our personalities to change. The vast majority of us are not living the way we were born to live because we are attempting to adjust to this cruel world that we live in.

Tantra seeks to help us live according to the blueprint for our lives contained in our DNA. The process of healing these past pains and returning to our natural selves calls attention to the sources of our pains. It forces us to look at the things in society that cause us to develop these defense mechanisms. It indicts all of the institutions that are supposed to serve our best interests and in fact do just the opposite. And by all I mean all. Our families, schools, religions, and governments have all contributed to our not living the highest and best versions of our lives. But as we see the causes of our pains we also gain insight into solutions for those problems. This is what we’re going to be talking about, ways that we can change ourselves and change society so that we move from lives based on fear and scarcity to lives based on love and abundance. Complete constructive change.

Ride with me…