THE FREE THINKER AND FREE THINKING: EQUALS FREEDOM AND SPIRITUALITY
The measuring stick will, however, always be rooted in your
courage and willingness to weigh all evidence (which will be presented in
literary or verbal forms and/or presented in the theoretical and ideological
frameworks of organizations and movements) that is presented and not be shy to
render a critique and analysis in order to prove that the presented argument
was flawed and lacked evidentiary proof or it had met the standards of truth
based on the rigorousness of an impartial investigation. I was led to an academic
book authored by Mary E. McGann titled, Critical Thinking and Writing in the
Disciplines this book became good training ground for me in becoming a critical
thinker and what that entailed.
I grew up between the Pentecostal
Holy Church
and the Baptist Church faith traditions. The Pentecostal
experience was always full of spiritual energy, there were shouting, speaking in tongues, singing,
crying, dancing, plenty of testimonies, out loud scripture readings—it was an
environment of spiritual electricity (they would congregate what appeared to be
seven days a week and the ministers wore the titles of prophets and apostles
and each service was like a high powered revival (I am speaking now directly to
black folk this was our collective experience)—I would covertly be playing
behind my mother's back with my brothers and sisters and with other devious
children in the church (you were not allowed to eat candy, talk and definitely
not play). These were some long sessions and as a child you tried to make the
best of all this preaching; I knew from time-to-time I had to yell out with
other members 'thank you Jesus', I would then be safe from momma's wrath (it
seemed like she had eyes in the back of her head).
My mother and other Elders would enter a realm of spirit
referred to as the Holy Ghost or become touched by the holy spirit and it was
liken to an outer-body experience, which is unexplainable outside of the black
Christian holiness experiences and traditions. I know white folk think they
understand this, but they do not; this spiritual energy goes back to our
ancient African ancestors and was the embodiment of invoking traditional
African religious-ethos that made its way through the horrific and horrid
voyage known as the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a crime against humanity (they
could not kill our spirit) and it survived in our DNA and made its way across
the Atlantic Ocean. The Black Christian Pentecostal is a living testimony of
our continued connectedness to our African heritage even to this very day the
drums, tambourines, the organ and piano and at times the beauty of the black
human acapela voices was music to the ears (the human voice by far is the
greatest instrument ever created).
I did not arrive at this stage, because, it was something
that I initially sought, but I do believe that I was predestined to be one of
those free spirited souls that could not be confined by the gravitational pull
of proselytizing indoctrination of intended doctrines; of course even this
would prove to be to shallow to bind me to accept one single thought as my life
path. I met this Zen Master in my life’s journey and he told me that nothing
in life was coincidental or accidental (or occurred by happenstance) and
wherever, we are in space and time, that is where we are supposed to be and he
looked at me and said the universe arranges these things even before our
allowed physical carination, and given permission to exist on this plane (in
this sphere).
I looked at him as though, he had lost his mind; he must
have detected my lack of comprehension and my inability to process these
thoughts at that time. He only said that one day, I would understand that All
real lessons have a duality in meaning and interpretation, but must first be
understood from the spiritual realm (this was a metaphysical discourse). I was
offered a small book titled, Tao The Ching by Lao Tzu, this book of
ancient Chinese wisdom and philosophy freed my mind of the western dialectic
worldview into accepting the eastern ancient Sages and Gurus wisdom and
spiritual principles as having a much deeper meaning and the wisdom therein
just felt that it was God talking directly to you.
In 2006, Rhonda Byrne
published a book titled, The Secret, she pulled together twenty-four
highly touted spiritualist who shared various intellectual and spiritual
experiences and involvement in the esoteric, occult and Gnostic schools of
thoughts in order to make an attempt to package ancient wisdom that had shaped
humanity’s spiritual existences based on the universal principles of good that
had touched all cultures, races, nationalities and this knowledge had altered
humanity’s orientation to life down through the ages of time—these various
spiritual intellectuals shared mystical, mythical, healing, and indigenous
knowledge that was rooted in the folklore of ancient civilizations and the
benefits of the observance of metaphysical outcomes. Some of them spoke outside
of the concepts of organized religion. It was a clear indication that western
man had failed and his failure has led to an earthly and human imbalance; it
has placed him on a collision course with the universal powers.
I think European New Age thinkers such as Eckhart Tolle who
authored the book titled, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
and A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
and even Reverend Rick Warren who authored the book titled, The Purpose Driven
Life; these Caucasians have come deeply in contact with our indigenous knowledge
and are articulating it on a broader scale, but they must not forget that they have
borrowed this wisdom from the fathers and mothers of civilization. I was given this little pocket sizes book titled,
As Man Thinketh by James Allen that I still carry every place I go, it is
full of powerful wisdom and jewels and with little doubt Allen had drank from the
fountain of the ancient masters and had adopted their universal principles.
This wisdom affected me differently than the wisdom of Qur'an
and the Bible yet, I totally understood that all of this had an
interconnectedness with the original divine source although, this wisdom
contained in the Tao The Ching left know doubt that it had been passed
down my many ancient generations and it even predated the Bhagavad Gita ,it
sent me on a spiritual journey, it also predated the 'Pslams of David' and from
those pages, I was a changed human being—I truly tapped into my Pineal gland.
Energy and power source that has baffled Europeans for over 6,000, but
indigenous and original people of the earth within their spiritual customs,
rites, sacraments, practices and rituals knew how to alter energy polarities
and shift energy sources to transcend into Astro-beings this was the highest
form of enlightenment. I balanced this off by being exposed to Ra Un Nefer Amen
books titled, Metu Neter, Vol. 1: The Great
Oracle of Tehuti and the Egyptian System of Spiritual Cultivation and Metu Neter Vol. 2:
Anuk Ausar, The Kamitic Initiation System.
Erich Von Daniken in his book titled, The Chariots of the
Gods, it would be his white Eurocentric intellectualism that put him in
denial of the great Pyramids of Kemet (Egypt) were constructed by the indigenous
Nubians who had occupied Kemet for over 20,000 years before European
intervention, they were the original Egyptians. These recent wars in Libya,
Egypt, Iraq, Syria, etc., have led to the theft, looting and discretion of
ancient artifacts of antiquity (these assaults were carried out systematically)
but let me be clear these artifacts did not belong to the Semitic Arab
imposters nor the Europeans and was not part of the Islamic dynasties.
Black people had established civilizations centuries prior
to their arrival on the African continent. Many of these ancient cities like Tripoli , Cairo and Baghdad housed valuable
treasures. The Europeans have stolen indigenous peoples cultural artifacts and
our linkages with time is in white museums in Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow,
Rome, Cyprus, Lisbon, Toronto, etc.. I know the great black archivist and
curator Arthur Alfonso Schomburg probably is turning over in his grave at how
we have allowed these cultural bandits to steal and house our history and
tradition in defiled white institutions.
My next awakened, there was Nation of Islam minister in
Durham, North Carolina named Minister Ray Muhammad (Minister Muhammad and I
became good friends) he would teach quite often about the importance of
submission and surrendering your will to do the will of God; he had a free
willing spirit and was a graduate of a HBCU Texas Southern University in
Houston, out of the South Western Athletic Conference (SWAC) of course I have a
common bond with all HBCU graduates and my feelings were no different towards
Minister Muhammad. Minister Ray Muhammad would often state where you are right
now is where you are supposed to be and no one arrives at these spaces and
times of their own volition or by osmosis God brought you there (this was
leading me towards my evolution into Free Thinking). He gave me a better
understanding of Master Fard Muhammad and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's teachings.
The biggest leap into becoming a Free Thinker, is to allow
yourself to move beyond the confinement of dogmas, philosophy, theologies,
political bias, etc., which taught me not to permit nor allow exclusivity in
one school of thought to captivate my ideological imagination because this will
erect and create artificial barriers, which could disallow the appreciating of the
diversity and the expansiveness of knowledge and truth. Thus, you will also
learn through practical experience and through life trials and error the value
and ultimate value of principles that are better understood and received by
others as positive examples when observed and lived and reflected as
transparent ethics for everyone to see our lives as an open book (we should
live our lives as living examples of universal good).
Free Thinkers are only loyal to their quest to discover the
truth regardless of how painful the findings maybe, it is this clarion call
that allows us to escape our natural attachment to familiar shared ideologies.
But will always demonstrate the ability, as well as determination and
willingness to look beyond those safe and comfort zones, which to objectively
weigh all knowledge and thought on the larger scale of determining proof. With
the Free Thinker’s mindset there are no safety nets that will stand in their
way to determining the truth at all cost. Free Thinkers are ordinarily met with
skepticism and suspiciousness because, we have been taught from early on to
unquestionably accept doctrines and a worldviews that validates and support the
status quo.
Yet, the Free Thinkers possess the courage to engage and
upstage contrary perspectives to the popular version of the truth (you will pay
a heavy personal cost, if you ever choose to become a Free Thinker) will cause
them to be ridiculed, isolated, it could even cause more sinister acts. Once
the Free Thinker has arrived at this lofty position, it will often lead them to
revisited previous held beliefs and debunk them for more sound information and
by this stage in their development, they would have learned to put all emotions
to the a side—this makes the dismantling and reconstruction process much
easier.
Moreover, admittedly most human beings who are learned and
unlearned will never become a Free Thinker, because this is truly a journey
less traveled and human beings find it easy to think inside the box, it makes
associations more accommodating and it suffices the normalization of this world’s
order in spite of injustice, corruption, inequalities, etc., Free Thinkers are
revolutionary in their thought patterns—Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Gandhi,
Jesus, Mohammed, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., and
Muhammad Ali. They had transcended (or was born) earthly expectations and had
moved deep into the spiritual realm, a place that we all should look to obtain
and arrive it is the only true gate to freedom.
This spiritual plateau opens you up to be used by the universal
forces of good—honesty, self-denial, forgiveness and leads to the greatest
expression of love, which is unconditional love. Free Think is teaching me to
understand what love truly means on a much higher level and to forgive is the
greatest act of human freedom, to relinquish and free others from our
perceptions (in particular those whom we believed have transgressed against us)
exonerate them that you might release yourself from an unjust self-affliction
of imprisonment and bondage that continues to create cycles of pain and
suffering in our conscience and sub-conscience minds. This quest often will immediately
become conflictive with a world that was built on deception and
"ism".
We must seek to look outside of this world that was
constructed on disinformation and propaganda and have the uncanny ability to
reconstruct a worldview that challenges the popular version of the truth in
order to create a new societal and personal paradigm. The true Free Thinker innately
either already has these skills of possessing the ability to reason and analyze
and/or on the journey they are acquired and developed by way of the experience
of various Paths in which the Creator or Supreme Being or whatever Higher expression
that is the source of your spiritual inclinations and guide that factor into
our lives. Let me not sound contradictory; spirituality is beyond the concepts
of Supreme Beings or religious concepts and often functions as an independent
variable outside of organized religious terminology and phraseology.
The inclination (of surrendering yourself) to walk your life
in a Free Thinker’s space will be a deep evolutionary process for the human
being (and was the biggest step that I ever made in my life), it will be more
impactful than even the DNA that we inherited from our mothers and fathers
(although this plays a factor into our development). However, this goes beyond
the meeting of sperm and ova of human biological science. Truly a magnificent
God/human and miraculous phenomenon that from an egg coming together with male
sperm during conception (new life is formulated) that allows us to extend past
our biological substances that was transferred in chromosomes and our nucleus
and atomic make up produced an independent human being referred to as our
offspring who has a mind and thoughts of their own.
Yes, their parents shared DNA will always be a part of their
human essences. Let me stop here; I was a poor student in science, although I
started out as a biology major in college. My Science major peers were serious
and disciplined students and I wasn’t at that time in my life. So forgive me
for recklessly trying to use a scientific analogy to paint a picture in my
life. I was learning about concepts of microbiology and organic chemistry and
physics. I woke up during that semester and said what the hell am I doing here
and I immediately consulted by academic advisor and changed my major. I often
wonder where my life would have been, if I had become a scientist or medical
doctor; I know that in life nothing was coincidental and as quickly as that
thought entered my brain, my Free Thinking immediately absolved those thoughts.
I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing; anything else does not exist
in my time and space.
Fahim A.
Knight-El Chief Researcher for KEEPING IT REAL THINK TANK located in Durham , NC ;
our mission is to inform African Americans and all people of goodwill, of the
pending dangers that lie ahead; as well as decode the symbolism and
reinterpreted the hidden meanings behind those who operate as invisible forces,
but covertly rules the world. We are of the belief that an enlightened world
will be better prepared to throw off the shackles of ignorance and not be
willing participants for the slaughter. Our MOTTO is speaking truth to power.
Fahim A. Knight-El can be reached at fahimknight@yahoo.com.