GLORIES OF EGYPT'S

[picture of Egyptian mask]

GOLD FLASHES as a workman's hands gently pull back cotton packing to reveal a woman's funerary mask from Tell el Sowwah. Made of linen and plaster, the gilded and painted face is probably a fair likeness of the deceased. A crate from Abydos contains tiny limestone coffins topped with golden shrews (left). Mummified remains of the animals lie inside. "Shrews were related to the sun's nightly renewal", says mummy conservator Abeer Helmi. "People presented them as offerings, like candles in a church." A tower-shaped shrine (right) from Marsa Matruh holds images of the god Ptah and his consort, lion-headed Sekhmet.

Earth's Endangered Creatures

OPERATION ELEPHANT

"Still Remembering", or Self Separation

I was remembering. I was looking again, as usual, in the mirror in my efforts towards deeper understanding and communication, my reflection in the mirror began to speak back to me, and this was his opening statement to me.

"I think, God will give you, someone, much better than me. Trust me. Your life will be OK, all right, just fine." The 1st thing that I did was repeat in my mind what I had just heard. I recalled all the major processes that I had been engaging with myself, in order to unbind my true and authentic self. We did everything we could do so that my life experience on this plane would be the appropriate, God-intended experience through the making of right-thinking, right-speaking, right-action, and right-reaction. We progressed, often flawed.

I could not help but gain the greater meaning of Paul's statement, "I die daily. Each day I take off this mortality and put on immortality." Every day we all pick up behaviors, add to our karma, add to our account of returned behaviors, ever-reaping and ever-sowing. I don't understand why it takes us so long to trace all things that happen to us back to the mirror, and see the new-old unhealthy person that we give birth to and nurture continuously.

OK. So here I was, spending the usual time set aside to connect with the best of me and examine the worst of me that holds me back and away from the best of me. I spent real time trying to break it easy, once it learned I couldn't make it easy. I wanted to let the old me know that I won't be needing him anymore. But it appears clearly that the old broken me has not been getting enough exercise or attention. In fact, in truth, the old me was telling me that it's not me, but it is ME, the old me, that needed to move on to a no-place of expression. Yeah, I was breaking up with myself! After decades of what seemed like centuries, that old broken me open our meeting reflecting back, not just a visual, but an audio - "I think God will give you, someone, much better than me. Trust me. Your life will be O.K., all right, just fine."

This is like when the light shined into the darkness, and the darkness UNDERSTOOD IT NOT! So much struggle, fear, and doubt had rooted itself inside me 'til it required a radical 24-hour routine of self-nurturing, self-caring and doing the actual work that is needed to stay in touch with, and rediscover, the person that my father intended me to be. Lots and lots of rest, but never, ever could I actually sleep.

Often we (I) spend so much time, effort and energy on reaching for, grabbing, and holding onto, until we forget to let go, release, restore, and recover what NEVER changes. Knowing who and what we are comes from spending time with the Holy Spirit, our highest self-connection. KNOWING is not a mindset. Knowing is the vibrating force which is communicating the presence of our "Father". Truly, when we realize his presence by choosing only to acknowledge him, then we are knowledge-ready to act on what the next step is in our life now. Knowledge of who and what we are "now" is the greatest knowledge because all that we "are" and that IS us is here, now, with our creator. Thus, from this moment of divine intervention, I will continue to look in the mirror, at my reflected, and affirm: "I think God will give you someone, much better than me. Trust me, your life will be OK, all right, just fine."

We have all spent so much time hurting ourselves until we have forgotten the grand capacity to heal ourselves. The universal law is faithful to respond to our "best" effort with ITS BEST! For the first time I have experienced the falling away of the me that I thought I was. And now to YOU, the reader: I think God will give you someone much better than the YOU that you created. If you would trust, moment by moment, stand firm, and know - your life will be OK, all right, just fine. Offer the kindness and the gentleness that you offer to others, so abundantly and freely; offer this same quality of love to yourself!

I Am An African Classic [signature]

NAKUMBUKA
REMEMBER
2013

Too many trees would have to die and the Earth would lose thousands of forest if paper had to be used to remember in writing, my ancestors that pressed forward, deep, dedicated, fought, and died so that I might be able, choose and continue in the great African tradition of rebuilding, restoring, recovering, and practicing the best of our existence line.

I can now only reach my ancestors through the spirit realm. But they live on and respond on my behalf each time we speak their names.

Here are just a few great Africans who have rooted Africa in this America.

Ichard Allen
Louis Armstrong
Benjamin Banneker
Mary McLeod Bethune
Colin Powell
Gwendolyn Brooks
Shirley Chisholm
Nat King Cole
Dean Dixon
Frederick Douglass
Charles Richard Drew
Jean Baptiste Du Sable
Toni Morrison
W.C. Handy
Patricia Roberts Harris
William Henry Hastie
Patrick Francis Healy
Matthew A. Henson
Mahalia Jackson
William H. Johnson
Barbara Jordan
Jesse Owens
Martin Luther King, Jr
Thurgood Marshall
Jan Ernst Matzeliger
Willie Mays
Constance Baker Motley
Leontyne Price
Wilma G. Rudolph
Jeanne Spurlock
Arthur Ashe

If you wish to know who I am

If you wish me to teach you what I know,

Cease for the while to be what you are

And forget what you know.

Tierno Bokar
African sage of Bandiagara

I am an African classic,

X-Ray