Black Spirituality Religion : To Those who Harp on the Relgions of Others, What is Your Sprituality to Share?

[Ankhur]

Spiritual just IS. Is doesn't need me or you to thrive. It doesn't need words to support it
Religion on the other hand is a creation of people. Religion CANNOT survive without words.

that really sounds lame or a cop out

 

[Ankhur]

There's nothing to practice or express "IT". There's nothing to manifest. Spiritual is already of manifestation of the universe or vice versa. I am of the universe therefore I/WE are spiritual.

Under that spiritual energy, the power given to me. I follow 5 simple rules, which are dictated by my soul/intuition.

1. love and compassion
2. respect (of self, life, people, environment)
3. giving without looking for something in return
4. accountability/integrity
5. righteousness and justice

Being stubborn and determined helps. This society is not really built on righteousness. It's built on what sells. It not easy to stay the course. But being born with a strong feeling of self, and the energy I feel from our ancestors who paid a great toll, and me learning to be disciplined enough to listen to my inner "self" (soul) helps.

I'm not here to claim I'm better than anyone. I am you, you are me.

Thank you brother, that helps us as people of African descent step into the new year in unity and understading, and I learned much from this, and know many others have as well.

Asante Sana

 

[Keita Kenyatta]

That is the issue right there. It's not "your belief". It's not "your book". It is a system and book that existed before we physically existed and will exist after we are gone. We are the ones who make the mistake of "personalizing it" as if it belongs to us when it doesn't. I could put a few hundred Christian people in one room and find that none of them view the book, the practices or the religion the "SAME WAY". Why? Because each person personalized it differently. What this means is that, unless a person "KNOWS" how you see it, how you practice it or the impact of it in your life, there's no way that someone "saying anything about it" should be taken personally because "no one knows your personalization of what you believe and practice". Am I making any sense here? Therefore anything said about it should not be taken "personally" because no one but the person engaged in it knows how they relate to it...and since it existed before we physically existed and will exist after we are gone, we become very thin skinned to take anything said about it on a personal level.

Somebody might say; oh, Keita is a drug addict because he be smokin weed. Yeah, I smoke the ish...and some good weed at that, but no one "BUT ME" knows how or why I smoke it. I could use it in meditation, to ease pain or to get high...so in reality I'd be rather foolish to attach myself to the words "drug addict" and then get all offended because someone labels me as that. If I personalize those words "drug addict", I'd be in this forum doing what others are doing with a religion that they too have personalized. Just like the religion existed before we did, so did he weed and the smokers of it.

 

[Omowale Jabali]

You too!? I thought it was just me.

Granted, I've bumped a few post here and there, but uh, not so much that it kicks nearly all the threads off the front page.

Have you ever noticed at times the reaction of threads regarding afrika jumping up? I don't know about you but I suspect that it's a means of retaliation. Especially the ones about afrikans playing a role in chattel slavery. The only downer to that is that the more they are bumped, hardly if at all, any new information is brought to bare or even ones own perspective on that important aspect of our history.

Hmmm... Maybe one day someone will post on about how afrikan-"americans" had owned slaves as well. Not from a retaliatory/reactionary position, hopefully.

Yeah, brother Raptor, I've noticed that as well. It's used as a lead to attack Africans and/or atr's and then following with the Africans sold us into slavery and the black Christian labeling on non Christian Africans or some type of human or morally corrupt person, which is why they come with the insults and flaming to get us to react so they can then accuse us of member violation in order to get us suspended or permanently banned.


This is why sometimes it is best to leave them to their own devices and let them argue against their selves.