Will Slavery Ever End?

What images come up when you hear the word “slavery”? I imagine that for most people the first image that gets conjured up is black people in the South picking cotton or walking around in chains or being sold at an auction. Then of course there are the other people in the world who are descended from slaves such as the Jews and the Irish, who may have some awareness of their lineage who may be able to imagine someone like them being enslaved. But even then they would probably just imagine someone who looks like them living under the conditions of blacks in America and the West Indies. That is the popular image of slavery and because we don’t see that anymore many of us assume that slavery has ended. But the reality is that slavery has not ended in any way and I am just wondering out loud if it ever will.

“But Pedro,” you might say, “What about the Emancipation Proclamation and the thirteenth amendment of the Constitution? How can you just ignore such monumental social achievements and say that slavery has not ended?”

Well that is a good question. But to you I will just say that there is a difference between making something illegal and eradicating it from existence. My point is not whether slavery is legal. It is whether or not it is still going on and it is. Saying that making slavery illegal made the mentality that causes it go away is like saying that making drugs illegal stops people from getting high. If you visited the link above you will have seen that there are literally still people sold into slavery in this world and that it is technically illegal in every country where it is practiced. Now if you are American, you might say something like, “Yeah well. Of course we are talking about other countries. The US of A has evolved past that though. You cannot hold us accountable for these undeveloped countries who still operate from the type of system that would allow such travesties.” But then I will tell you to look at the criteria for how people become enslaved and then get back to me.

*forced to work – through mental or physical threat;

*owned or controlled by an ’employer’, usually through mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse;

*dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as ‘property’;

*physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement.

Now some of you will say that none of these apply to you. But let me ask you a question? How many of us do work that we absolutely do not enjoy and yet feel like we “have to” do the work that we do? It doesn’t matter why we think we “have to do it”. It could be a mortgage, a future retirement, to keep our spouse or partner happy, to buy the things that make us look successful, to impress others, etc. etc. etc. Now look at that list again and see if you can identify with any of those criteria.

In the article where the list came from, it said that a lot of people find themselves enslaved because they got caught up in loans that it was impossible for them to pay. How many of us are weighed down with debt that keeps us where we would rather not be? Now look at that list again. How many people feel unfulfilled by their work and have bosses that don’t appreciate them or what they do. How many of our bodies are abused by the work we do or we’re mentally tapped due to the stressful work environment. We drag ourselves out of bed as if pulled by some invisible chain. At the end of the day we feel drained and some of us feel like we need a drink or some other means of wiping the day away just so we can get up tomorrow and do it again. Look at that list again and tell me it doesn’t apply to us at all.

I’m sure you see where I am going with this. But in case you aren’t getting it, I am trying to say that most of us are slaves and we don’t even know it. In most cases there’s no physical”master or overseer” telling us we have to do this or that, but there is a psychological on who is whipping us into submission nonetheless. I could get into more about why I think this, but I’m sure I don’t have to. And besides, I am not trying to depress anyone, I am just trying offering an opportunity to see what is happening. If this doesn’t apply to you then just ignore it. But unless you are a person filled with joy and appreciation or have learned to give reverence to your everyday experience you are probably spending a lot of your energy trying to justify what you do to yourself and i’m just trying to convey that you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Now I know that this is not a very awesome message at the onset. Who wants to think of themselves as a slave? I know I don’t. So what is the point of me even putting this out here? Well, as I see it, I am putting this out here so that more of us can start paying attention to what we are willingly doing to ourselves so that we could at least have the opportunity to transform our situation.

I know there may be some initial resistance to what I am saying. And like I said, this might apply to you. But if you’re still reading then chances are I struck a chord, so maybe you this is for you. o here’s a question. Do you remember the recent holidays? Were you one of the lucky few that had an all around awesome experience, or were you one of the majority? Isn’t it sad when most people are saying, “I’m glad the holidays are over.”? Shouldn’t it be a time of rest and joy and gratitude that we never want to end? But for most people it is an intense and stressful time where people feel pressured to get gifts for people, smile when they don’t feel like smiling, go to church for the one time of the year besides Easter, and worry about how much work we are going to have to catch up on when they get back to whatever it is we do. Do you call that freedom? That’s why I am saying what I am saying. We can’t fix a problem we are not willing to admit that we have.

If you watched the video, you heard me mention that we are suffering addictions in this country. And while I do not have a real answer for what can be done, I put out there that I believe the root cause for most of the harm we do to ourselves is a “lack of appreciation” for life. We don’t appreciate ourselves, others, or the Creation as a whole. And as such there is an emptiness that we keep trying to fill. Out of that emptiness comes all manners of evil to include physical, mental, psychological, and emotional slavery. That’s my theory. Believe me, I don’t want to say this stuff, but in my work I hear a lot of people talk about their pain and suffering and when it comes down to it, lack of appreciation or reverence has seemed to be at the source. Whereas the people who seem to be happy and freer and more capable of navigating the choppy waters of life are people who have the highest sense of gratitude, appreciation, and reverence.

In the end what we do and have doesn’t matter as much as the spirit with which we do it and how we receive the appreciation for what we do. One day, I am going to write about some controversial topics in the Bible about happy slaves. But not yet so stay tuned. For now I am just going to leave you with this point of consideration. The person who is free is the person who has nothing to lose and everything to give. One day I hope to be counted among those people and I hope that as many of you choose that for yourselves as possible. If I can help that in anyone just connect with me here.

Just for your conspiracy viewing pleasure here is a British video about the banking system (the same as ours) and how we are enslaved to it.  I know this sounds like bad news at first. But you know how when you wake up from a nightmare and you’re all relieved?  Well look at it like that.  We are all actually awesome and can’t be harmed, but until we realize it, we will continue to create some crappy experiences for ourselves and others.  We don’t have a choice until we know we have a choice.

Some Call Me “The Gangster of Love”

For some time now,  I have struggled with this aspect of my personality that I now know to be called “The Challenger“.  Into my twenties, I didn’t question this dimension of my being.  Somehow, I had been aware of my right to be me for as long as I could remember. Therefore I would assert it whenever someone tried to express otherwise.  Like my enneagram said, I do not like being controlled and will go to great lengths not to be.  For example I was once told by some boys from another neighborhood that if I came to their neighborhood they would jump me.  Since I had no reason to go to their neighborhood, at first their threat was meaningless to me, but then one of my friends moved to that neighborhood and asked me to visit her.  Remembering what the boys had said, I weighed my options.  I decided that I would just rather be beat up than to feel like I could not go where I chose to go.  Just the thought that they felt like they had the right to tell me that I could not go there embroiled me so I decided to walk down the middle of the street through the neighborhood just so that I could know for myself that my fear wasn’t making me stay home.

Now let me make it clear that I did not want to fight or get beat up. And if I could have honestly told myself that not going to her house was my choice, I may not have even gone, but for the person I was at the time, the only way that I could sense my freedom was to just go there and make myself visible.  On my way to my friend’s house, no one even saw me.  I thanked God and hung out with my friend for a little while.  She actually was surprised that I even came.  She knew the threats that had been made.  I told her why I had to come and she told me I was crazy. After some time I decided to go home. As I turned the corner from her building, I saw several of the boys who threatened me.  At first I paused.  She asked, “What are you going to do?”  I said, “I’m going home,” and proceeded to walk toward the boys.  When they saw me they were shocked.  The “ring leader” so to speak, ran up to me and said “I thought I told you that we would jump you if you came out here.”  I reminded him that he was in fact correct and then proceeded to walk around him to make my way home.” He pushed me from behind a few times and said something that I chose to ignore. Several other boys chimed in as well, but I kept walking.  They followed me yelling some junk as I kept walking home. That was the end of it.

That trait was dominant in my life for a long time and is still there, but now I keep it in check–which is tough sometimes. One of the things my enneagram said was because of this trait I may sometimes endanger others who choose to hang around me, but do not have the same capacity to deal with what comes at them.  So I don’t check it as a form of suppression but more so to enable me to create more thoughtful expressions that consider others who might be effected by my challenging nature.  At first trying to do this just pissed me off, but now I have just come to see it as a greater challenge. The fact is that I am convinced that as long as I am not setting out to hurt anyone, I have the right and, may even venture to say, the obligation to fully express myself in this world.  As far as I can tell, it is the only way to know who I am and consequently the person God is creating through me.  Now does expressing myself mean disrespecting other’s right to express themselves. No, of course not.  In fact, I agree with Marianne Williamson or Nelson Mandela or whoever said that when we shine our light we give other people permission to do the same.  So that is what I am trying to do.

What I see in the world right now is a deficit of people taking the chance on loving themselves and putting themselves out there.  I don’t know how many people are out there bottling up their true selves for the sake of the approval of a few.  If you’re one of those people, don’t you think that you are robbing yourself of you and as a result robbing the world of your gift? One of you may be able to solve one of the many global crises that we have created, you may be able to lead a just government, or at a minimum, you could make your home or workplace better if you just step out.  Love yourself and then give that love to the world.  Too many of us are punking out because we don’t want to look stupid or because we are afraid of what people will think.  If that is you, just ask yourself, why are you afraid of the opinions of people who are afraid to even express themselves to an audience of one?  You could do more for them and the world if you accept that you are do not have to be dependent on their love or approval.

Blah blah blah yackity smackity.  There’s no need to say anything else.  I know you know  what I mean so get to know yourself and become a:

Gangster of Love.

What Is Your Profession?

It seems that recently, I am running into more and more people who are tired of the “rat race” that is American life.  More people seem to be getting disillusioned with the idea that for the rest of their lives they are going to have to sell their time for money often doing things that they have little to no interest in.  Some of them are responding by starting their own businesses. Some are responding by taking more time off to be with their loved one and cultivating a que sera sera mindset. And some are spending more time doing creative endeavors in order to cultivate their talents.  The happiest people I know are people who have somehow managed to do all three at once. And the saddest are those people who have already given up and are just burying their heads until they get laid off or die. Then there are people like me who are stumbling their way through this life picking up clues as I go and shifting as necessary. Then of course there are also those people who just love making money for money’s sake.  They’ll be fine no matter what because frankly they aren’t thinking about any of this stuff I am talking about anyway, so there’s no conflict and they will always do whatever they have to do to survive–by hook or by crook.

Click for more images

So, If you watched the video, you know that the point I am trying to make in this post is that we become what we profess. While many of us think of our “profession” as our job, it more accurately has to do with the vows we make in life with our words, work, deeds, and our very being.  Even though most of us Americans seem to define ourselves by our jobs, very few of us give much thought to the fact that often we cease to be people, and rather, become extensions of our jobs. In essence we are slaves. Sure, you could say that we are free, but if we were really free we would know that we have a choice about whether or not or at least how we would like to participate in this people project that is our country.  But really how many of us feel free?  If we were free, we would profess that above other things.  And more of us would allow ourselves to cultivate the God given talents and gifts that each of us have.  But instead, most of us just do what we are advised to do by external sources.  We become such a big part of the production line that even our desires are manufactured.  I’m convinced that most of us don’t even really want the things we think we want or even like the things we say we like.  We have just been professing the status quo so much that we can’t tell what we really feel or desire. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I’m not and you want to shift, what can we do about it?  Well I think it all starts with imagination. Creating a world from within and then professing it without.

Recently I got to learn more about one of the parents from the bus stop where I drop off my daughter in the morning.  She happens to be an artist.  In our brief conversations, I was able to learn a little about the different types of art she does.  Her art is very eclectic and very thought provoking.  What really amazed me was that her work invited me into spaces I had never seen, because she created art that I would have never conceived of like the one above.  When I saw this picture and some of her other work, I felt this sense of relief.  I was just happy to see so many out of the box works.  It reminded me that within each of us is this infinite resource of creativity and imagination.  I look at my daughter and hr friends and remember that it is something that we are all born with and as youths we profess the limitless nature of our being.  But then one day we start professing that we are this or that and then the more we say it the more we become it.  After a while we forget how much more we are.  We profess, “I am a teacher, a parent, a divorcee, a home owner, a vacationer, a Pats Fan… yadda yadda yadda.”  And that’s it.  That’s all we seem to be.  But that’s not all we are. We are so much more.

Because I choose to experience myself as more, I am professing it to others that they are more.  I’m at the point where I don’t even care if anyone is listening. I am just going to profess it because I know that I will become whatever I profess–that is I will become the vows I make through my words, works, deeds, and very being.  I also know that if I hang out with other who are professing that they are more than the work they do or the roles they play, then this awareness will be even more established in me.  Does that make sense?  Well if so, reach out.  With all these forms of communication, there’s no excuse for more people willing to make this profession not connecting.

On Being A Single Mother In A Married Father’s Body

Recently, I hit a wall with trying to express some of my outlooks on the world when it hit me that I didn’t make sense to people because while they were looking at this married father form, it was the single mother in me speaking.  I was talking to a female friend about some of the unreasonable expectations that people bring into relationships.  She admitted that she too had those expectations of her partner, while simultaneously realizing that all of her expectations were not logical. They were not illogical because she does not have the right to have certain expectations from a relationship, but because she expected her partner to be something for her that she could not be for herself and she wanted to be for him that which he did not want, expect, or need her to be. Consciously knowing this, it becomes her responsibility to understand why she has those expectations. Being on spiritual paths to living from our God created wholeness, we both live in that space where we know that we cannot hold other’s responsible for our fulfillment–even if that person is our life-partner.

If you  saw the video above, you should have some idea of the context that I am speaking out of. Growing up with a single mom who ran a small business in order to provide for my brothers and me, I had the dubious advantage of not expecting stability from the world.  I learned early that although relationships offer us the opportunity to practice our internal ideals, we cannot expect that what comes back will always line up with our expectations.  That’s why I got down with Jesus the way I did. Talking about a dude who did not hold people to his expectations.  He looked at people like they were diamonds even when they acted like doodoo.  At the same time he was not a pushover.  He knew that trying to live from that space of Oneness was going to draw some attention and it’s disproportionate amount of negative projection.  Even though it hurt him, he just stayed in his awareness that one and God is a majority.  He embodied the  Shema Yisrael–“Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

What’s that got to do with me claiming to be a single mother in a married father’s body? Well if you saw the video then you know the four points that females I was in relationships with shared about why we didn’t work out.

1. I didn’t need them
2. They didn’t feel special
3. Unsafe
4. I was not romantic enough

I explain in the video my take on these points, but to connect it to the Jesus point above, I point to Luke 14:2 which quotes Jesus as saying, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

Say what!!!!!!

Yes. That is correct.  So why did Jesus say this? Long story short, I think he said it so the people would know the cost of trying to walk in wholeness in a world that cultivates impoverished hearts in people who always feel like something is missing from their lives.  He says a lot of things like this about special relationships, because he knows that these types of relationships were never meant to fulfill anyone.  On their best days, these relationships can give you a foretaste of what one can experience when they live out of the Oneness of relationship with God–our Completion.  But to expect a human to be that completion is just unreasonable.  I still love the women who gave me that feedback, but the fact is that as long as anyone expects for those four points to come from a person, they will never experience them in reality.  That’s what I have learned from the single mother in me and it is what I share with everyone–to include those I am in special relationships with.  It does not always go over well, but it is reality.  Finally, I learned that I cannot expect anyone to be for me what I am unwilling to be for myself or for them.  We reap what we sow right?

Now does that mean we don’t need other people in our lives? No.  What it means is that when we receive from people we should look for the God in them, because it is the God in them that is fulfilling our highest expectations.  If you look at the disciples, you see that they wanted from Jesus the same things that my partners wanted from me.  He never gave it.   He pointed away from that seeming need and toward seeking the will of God.  My experience of growing up with a single parent showed me that God enters our hearts in those seemingly empty spaces.  I had no dad in the house so God was my Dad. Maybe you didn’t have a mom or a sibling or romantic relationship.  God fills in those spaces where you feel like your earthly relationships are lacking.  So though it sounds crazy, I suggest that rather than trying to find a person or some earthly form to be that piece you think is missing, thank God for creating the perfect space to enter your life.  And maybe just maybe God will take on flesh for you so you can feel the reality of your wholeness in physical form.

Turning Filth Into Fertilizer Part 1

Have you ever had something weighing on your heart so heavily that it feels like you can’t really move forward until you confront it? I feel like I am in such a space right now. I am fresh off of the emotional roller coaster that was Iyanla Vanzant’s, Peace From Broken Pieces. To read this book, you would have to wonder how she ever got out of the bed again after all of the mess she has been through. The book was very personal for me because it brought up feelings about the men in my life or should I say the lack of men in my life growing up. It also brought up the idea of negative family patterns that I witnessed and the struggling women I knew who had to raise their children on their own. I read this book right after reading Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix. In his book, he traces relationship difficulty to the patterns people develop in their childhood. I felt like the book by Hendrix prepared me to confront the information presented by Vanzant even though that was not the intent. Both books were my wife’s. Sometimes I read what she reads so that it will help us with our own communication. I actually read Getting the Love You Want before she had a chance to get to it. After I read it I got excited because it seemed like it gave words to things I had been trying to express for years about my observations with relationships.

Frankly my dear I don’t give a…

Hendrix confirmed the false romantic ideas that are prevalent in our society as well as the false belief that we can be completed by another person. He also talked about how people come up with their ideas of what a relationship should be when they are children and that what they often look for is someone to give them what their parents never did. Reading it, I had flashbacks of saying to my partners that I didn’t owe it to them to be what their parents were not. And I definitely could not be the God that it seems some people expect from their partners–a person who anticipates their feelings and wants and addresses them without being asked. I admit that I could’ve probably have said these things in a more sensitive way and Hendrix’s book gives tools on how to do that. But what the book really did for me was confirm that I was not crazy for believing that every person has the potential of being whole and can learn to be in a relationship with another whole person. He called it a conscious partnership and sadly I have rarely seen such a thing. My wife and I are working on it, but I’d be lying if I said I knew a lot of people out there who are doing the same thing. I still know that a lot of people have this false belief that their partner is their other half. And you know what that means? If you are a half person who depends on another person to be whole, the only way you will get there is to either control your other half or to allow yourself to be absorbed by the other half. I call BS on that. There is a better way.

Despite my belief in the better way however, I still had the challenge that came with the realization that I wasn’t crazy. Growing up without any consistent examples of stable romantic relationships, I came up with the idea that no one was promised such a thing. Secondly, I decided that I could not make my existence dependent upon the approval of others. If I was going to be in a relationship, I wanted it to be with someone who could stand on their own who was choosing to be with me rather than being with someone who made me their reason for being or who thought I was here to be an extension of them or worse yet wanted me to make up for their parents. Unfortunately, it seemed that our society has watched so much television and romantic comedies that I often came across as a jerk when I refused to buy into some elements of romantic relationships. Eventually resisting Hollywood inspired romance kicked my butt (they have a bigger budget and more star power) so, I went about trying to just give in to the prevalent way rather than trying to force the “better way”. Then I read this book and I snapped out of it and started confronting my own relationship trials trying to understand how to get around this childhood programming that is doing a terrible job of preparing children to enter into mature and conscious romances. While I was in that process, my wife suggested Peace From Broken Pieces because some of what Vanzant was saying in the book reminded her of things she had heard me say about my background. She was right.

I am not going to give a synopsis of Vanzant’s book here. What I will say is that if I were a Black woman I would have written this book. Even though it is one-sided–up to the point where the book ends, no man has ever treated her right–she does take responsibility for her own experience and wholeness. Even though the moral of the story might seem like it is “women can’t trust men” I took it to be “woman know yourself and your value”. And as a Black man raised almost primarily by Black women, her book gave me a lot of perspective of what was happening around me as a child. Being raised by women, I never questioned that they have as much authority in this world as anyone else. Women were the primary authority figures in my life until I was adult. That’s why it surprised me when I entered into romantic relationships and had women either accusing me of chauvinism or devaluing their own thoughts so much that they would acquiesce to me and then live in silent resentment. But the worse disappointment was when women would disrespect me for respecting them and then seek out another relationship where they could find someone to disrespect them the way they were used to. If anything ever broke my heart, it was watching so many women devalue themselves because of their childhood like Vanzant spoke about and then expect their partners to make it up to them like Hendrix talked about. It’s a bad recipe for a lasting relationship. Believe me, I know.

to be continued….