The New American Spirit

America has come to a cultural fork in the road. It's time to generate a merkabavan and go up, up, and away.

As scorching fires started to ravage Hollywood Hills California, the annual Vodun Festival was just getting underway in the West African countries of Ghana, Togo, and Benin where the religion has been practiced for centuries.

The animist-centered system of African Psychology—which draws inspiration from surrounding cultures and a variety of ethnic groups—has been demonized and been made the butt of jokes in Hollywood. Many of us have witnessed this in movies, television shows, and cartoons over the years.

The truth though, is that Vodun culture is all about recognizing the divinity in nature. It is about having a sense of gratitude toward the intelligences inherent in the waterways (lakes, rivers, oceans), the plant life (leaves, bark, roots), and the very soil of the earth (incubator of life).

As I explained in my book Da Homey in Modern Dahomey, Vodun-centered spirituality isn’t about “cursing” anyone. There is a separate system of malicious sorcery in Benin that is in proximity to, yet different from, Vodun culture. It is something else entirely with a totally different name.

Those details are discussed in my book, therefore there is no need to do so again here. I will add however that when the knowledge of spirits conceptualized by Africans were brought to Haiti and Louisiana a lot of elements were thrown into one pot over time and the religion lost some of the layers of nuance that it had in West Africa. In Haiti and Louisiana benign religion and malevolent sorcery were sloppily grouped together as one thing over the course of just a few generations.

The dabbler and the dilettante might say that the Vodun spirits are seeking retribution against Hollywood. Upon reflection, I disagree with that sentiment. In most cases I think that this is just a mental projection of base human values onto meta-human super intelligences. Your dog or cat may think that you covet their food, because in their brains, why wouldn’t you?

If anything, I think that the vodun are responding to decades of childish Hollywood ridicule and disrespect with a gift from the heart.

Most evolved Americans are looking at the California fires and spiritually affirming safety for the innocent FAMILIES adversely affected by it. Despising families simply because they may be rich is no better than having contempt for the poor in developing countries who are trying to sell you fruit on the side of a road to survive. Empirical wealth is not a pathology any more than the poverty of material resources is a virtue.

Humans require the nurturing of divine compassion no matter what the human mind wants to say to the contrary. What is the gift of the California fires?

It’s a collective realization shared between Americans of different races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds that America needs a cultural reset, a new myth, a new spirit that embraces the truth of what America could be as a higher national vibration. Hulk Hogan’s theme song “Real American” briefly popped into my head as I wrote that.

What that yet to be discovered truth is, is a harmonious cultural synergy between diverse races and cultures under the spiritual guidance and direction of the descendants of enslaved Black men and women. Does America have the humility to receive leadership from the descendants of enslaved prisoners of war? Are these descendants sober minded enough to take on the responsibilities that only they are equipped to handle as world leaders?

If you go to Africa, Asia, Central America, South America, the Middle East, even Europe, there is an old spiritual identity in these places that the people in those regions affirm based on tradition. But tradition is based on having an authentic connection to the spirits of the land that you live in. What is the North American Spirit? Will it be the digital data coursing through the arteries of an iphone 23? Is it the solar charge of a 15-minute smart city in Los Angeles?

We are being given a chance and a space to contemplate how we want to move collectively going forward. Will organic man serve a rational machine, or will machines serve the vision of organic man?

The veil between the conscious mind and the preconscious mind are getting thinner. If you think about a thing with focused waking awareness fueled by emotion, then you will get powerful insights about that thing in your dream space. Try it tonight if you don’t believe me.

Keep the respect and gratitude for life close to your heart by any means necessary.