Assigned to Observe
[The story continues from “The Ancestor”]
My name was Austin Jones down on physical Earth. I was eighteen years old when I crossed over to spiritual Earth. I was killed. Then my mother died not long afterwards from what seemed to be a broken heart. Her heart just stopped beating. Her pain from my loss was deep. She had a big, giving heart too. But it was weak for her kids. My mother left my younger brother William over our grandmothers house one night and went to sleep crying. She never woke up in the physical realm again.
She’s alright now. She’s here in the spiritual realm with my other Ancestors, including my father. He died as a decorated soldier in combat when I was young. My younger brother never had a chance to meet Dad. He was still in Moms womb when Dad died. Ironically, Mom says he looks and acts just like him, now that he’s a strong and powerful man.
I, on the other hand, took after my mother’ side. I was never really good at sports, not very big and loved to play music. My Mom had me playing many instruments at a very young age. I was her little funky child. I loved that style of music, so I was always called Funk. Even my little brother twelve years younger than me at the time, used to call me his funky big brother.
My brother was so young when Mom and I passed on that the love our family showed him, was since then overshadowed by the pain he felt from losing us. Now he fights evil. He is bitter because of hate and pain caused from our deaths. This pain has consumed his life and now my little brother is the one that’s in a funk; in the traditional sense of the word. He intends to kill all responsible for our deaths. But he’s killing himself spiritually in the process.
All life is precious. That I realized since I’ve passed on to the spiritual. And I’ve learned so much about who we really are. We are one; one with God and one with Nature; one with all living beings; one with our living Earth and one with our Universe. We are one continuum of life, some who lived in the past, some who live in the present and many who will continue to live, in one form or another. We are all spiritual beings on different levels of existence. On the physical level our bodies are mere shells for our spiritual seed, which awaits enlightenment for us to grow to the next level and become conscious of God’s energy that exists within and connects all living things.
Some never reach that consciousness and they’re sent directly back to the physical realm to try it again. Others are snuffed away from the physical realm early and given the chance to reach that enlightenment in the spiritual realm. I was one of those snuffed early. And I’m grateful to have been spiritually conscious enough to recognize what I was going through. Many are closed to the spiritual connection and end up wandering around lost in their old physical world as ghosts. Not to be confused with the many conscious spirits that are also around physical Earth trying to help guide all that are lost. No, these others are lost souls, trapped in an emotional tie with the physical.
I don’t think that will happen to my brother William. Nevertheless, we’re going to keep an eye on him to see if we can help him out of this funk that he’s in.
A few elders just checked in on me. This spiritual network is something I’ve not yet gotten used to. It’s sort of like the internet back on physical Earth but without the computers and gadgets of course, and it taps directly into your senses through electronic pulses in the physical. Though in the spiritual it’s a little more complicated. You can send and receive whatever, and with advanced abilities you can totally experience messages as if you lived it.
Now, this is all new to me. They just told me that my notes are now being sent out to others. I need to make some adjustments.
This brings back thoughts of when I just started using the network, I was inquiring about the hate and racism in the physical world today towards my African people and wanted to know the root of those emotions. I wanted to know if it was simply emotions that all people go through at various levels because of ignorance and differences or was there something deeper there; something innate or biological. Well, the elders just brushed it off and told me those are issues for the physical world, that we don’t have those problems in the spiritual realm and I don’t need to concern myself with them. I wish it was that easy. I am who I am. I asked the same questions when I was there so I thought I’d get some answers here. The problem was I sent that questions out over the net. Even now, some the elders find me amusing and overly concerned with the physical realm. Maybe that’s why they gave me this job; to watch all the Earth issues, view all that earthly funk going on down there. I’ll call it my Visual Funk for now!
That word funk is really interesting to me. How we took that negative word and turned it into something positive for us. Like the word bad when you say it with attitude it means something really, really good. Funk is the same way!
Funk traditionally is associated with words like; despondency, dejection; gloom, dimness, shade, obscurity, darkness; depression, sorrow, despair, trouble; lowly spirits, base servile, degraded; misery, grief, sadness, desolation, torment, woe; the blues, melancholy, lament, heaviness of the heart.
Those are some of the words to describe funk in the English language. But this is the same language that describes the word black as soiled, dirty, wicked, evil, dismal and gloomy, along with many other synonyms that you’ll also find under the word funk. Both words; black and funk, mean something negative in the English language. However, like many negative things that have been forced upon African people, we were able to flip the words Black and Funk into, or back into something both positive and powerful.
Those of us who are truly aware already know what Black means to the world. Black means life, universally. We know that low down in the dirty soil is where seeds are nourished to grow and rise up out of their black earthy incubator, to soak up energy from the sun, and become an abundance of life. From the great tall and sheltering trees, to the small beautiful but thorny roses, they all start off in the mud.
Black absorbs energy for life. Black is a generator of energy. Energy is drawn towards black substances where it can be stored for a determined period of time and used as needed. Black melanin in our bodies absorb energy from the sun. The black skin underneath the white fur of a polar bear absorbs energy from the sun also to keep it warm. Solar energy cells are black, and dry cell batteries are powered by black chemicals. This is universal knowledge. Unfortunately, there are racists with diseased minds down on physical Earth that are perpetuating the legacy of chaos that my brother is wrapped up in. Consequently, change is on the way. Changing their funk to our Funk!
Since I’m relatively new to this place, I’ve been assigned to basic duties like the observation of the physical realm. Which is a very important task these days. They said sometimes I ramble on too much. I guess it’s just my personality. I was the same way on physical Earth. I had a lot going on in my mind and I had to get it out. Sometimes I would talk to people, other times I would just write it down in my journal. But either way, it had to come out. I didn’t keep too much trapped up inside.
When I first arrived here, this place seemed very familiar to me. I was told by one of the elders that greeted me when I got here, that I may have been here prior to my last life on physical Earth. The elders aren’t giving up any further information though. They just brush it off by saying, “When it’s time for you to know, you’ll know!” Well they sure knew how to make me feel welcome.
Soon after I arrived, I met a very sweet old spirit who said she was my great, great-grandmother. She said my mother is on her way here as well. She told me that I’d be able to see my mother soon. She passed on not long after I did and she went through a lot. However, she’d recover nicely. The old Ma said her name was Mary back on physical Earth. But I didn’t get a chance to meet her because she passed on back in Warsaw, Virginia many years before I did. That’s where my mother’s side of the family is from. While my fathers side is from Bermuda.
She said to me then, that I passed on so young and unexpectedly that it will take a little while for my memory to return. This gradual transition in my case, due to the way I died, would help me adjust to the trauma of being outside the bodily shell that I used as a incubator while on physical Earth. I didn’t have time to prepare for the transition. She told me that I would remember more as time goes on. Of course she said, “as time goes on” in a figurative sense, or should I say physical sense because time doesn’t really exist in the spiritual realm. It just seems to exist.
There are three realms that I now know about; the physical, the spiritual, and believe it or not the emotional. And that last realm overlaps the first two. In the emotional realm is where the physical beings that have extra sensory perception can feel and communicate with the spiritual. It is also where ideas, concepts and thoughts from both realm, without time limits, can be shared, tapped into or “coincidently” like a light bulb, just pops on in ones head. They say great minds think alike, because they are drinking from this vast ocean of knowledge in the emotional realm. Our dreams and nightmares all come from this same place.
Our Ancestors that built those great civilizations had powerful spiritually connected minds. They where able to avail themselves at will of the knowledge from the emotional realm. There are many on physical Earth today that posses fragmented remnants of those abilities. Unfortunately, the cultures that understood and encouraged it has been dismantled and frowned upon by the materially obsessed colonial invaders. So materialism is the “rule of the day.” Those with even the slightest spiritual power are label mystics, shaman, zoe or some other strange title because no one understands what they’re doing. It’s only ancient African science. So, when a zoe from the western coast of Africa closes his eyes and goes to battle in his sleep in the form of a lion or an eagle, then upon awakening, the carnage is very real we find it unbelievable. But its just a fragment of a lost art form. Just as the building of the mega-structure by our Ancestors that leaves many baffled and others wishing aliens did it, they were logged into this universal database of sort.
My brother William has that ability, as well as many of my other relatives. I think we had a few of those mystics somewhere back in our lineage.
Well, let me get to work. I am one of many in the spiritual realm assigned by the Ancestors to observe the physical world. These are turbulent times on Earth. In the past few hundred years we’ve seen more weapons of mass destruction being used, more diabolic use of chemical and biological assaults on people of the world without regard for all the environmental effects of their idiotic actions, more laws allowing for both blatant and indirect oppression, genocide and the shredding of the human spirit.
I am one of many watching and waiting, poised for the right moment; the right sign to call into action the warriors of truth and true justice who will fight to bring balance back to Earth. The time is coming soon, but until then, I will observe.
We’ve been watching this young soldier of the future all of his life. His name is Khalfani Lucas and he will soon be one of our Warriors. He’s now walking with his uncle Joe, a soldier of the past.
Observe - Khalfani Lucas
It’s February the 9th, Khalfani’s birthday. They’re in Philadelphia, PA, the city of brotherly love. It’s the birthplace of this great nation; the United States of America. So many people gave their lives so its flag can stand. People from diverse backgrounds become one on the battle fields. But the honor for these fallen warriors was and still is far from unified, particularly with the African Americans here at home, in the USA. So many gave their lives; from brother Crispus Attucks, the first man to die for this country; to the African men who fought so courageously for their descendants freedom in the Civil War that the French Government gave the United States the Statue of Liberty in their honor; to the African American soldiers who put their lives on the line in World War I and II for this country when they still didn’t have liberty and justice; and to the many that died in the Korean, Vietnam and the Middle and Near East wars.
Then there are the living dead, walking the streets of America. They are some of the lost souls of homeless veterans, walking around like zombies with no direction, after they were directed to give their lives so all could have democracy here at home (so they were told).
Now, two brothers of war cross paths on the streets of Philadelphia. One is a fifty-eight year old Caucasian Vietnam veteran who looks like he’s about seventy-eight. He is a homeless man in a military cap pushing a shopping cart with American flags sticking out from all over the cart. He has flags hanging out of all of his pockets as well. He stops to pick in the trash for something to eat. He finds the remains of an old molding sandwich and washes it down with what’s left from seven wasted drinks that he mixed into one bottle.
The other man is a fifty-six year old African American man who fought in the same war. This veteran just started to put the pieces of his life back together. But it might be “to-little, to-late,” so he gambles to try and make up for lost time. His wife left with their child after he came back from the Vietnam War. At that time he was mentally unstable because of what he experienced over there, but it only got worse when his family left. Then he lost his business. It was a gas station that his father passed down to him. Now he does all kinds of odd jobs, like his father did through the great depression in order to support him and his eight siblings.
As he walks down the street with his nephew, they approach the homeless man who looks up out of the trash just in time to see them pass by. The homeless vet sees this tall teenager walking with his uncle Joe who’s wearing an army jacket.
He asked them with confidence, “Hey brothers can you spare a dollar so I can get something to eat?” The nephew saw his uncle reach into his pocket without hesitation and give the man a ten dollar bill. Then the two vets smiled and patted each other on the back as if these strangers were still watching each others back in some undeclared war.
So as the two continued walking down the street, the nephew asked, “Uncle Joe, why’d you give him so much?”
His uncle answered, “Khalfani, a couple steps in the other direction and that would have been me, stepping on that mine.”
In the distance between the homeless vet and the store a block away, some of the paranoid things that ignorant people usually do to black men living in the U.S. happened to them. These things generally get brushed off by the brothers that know, as “they have issues.” But at this moment these things annoyed uncle Joe; things such as the Caucasian people in the car in front of them at the red light that just locked their car doors when the two men walked up to the corner; or things like the white lady that was walking ahead of them and switched her bag to the other side when she looked back and saw who was behind her; then there was the Asian women who came to America and learned its twisted values well, because she can’t even walk past them without moving all the way over to the curb to avoid them, like they’re pit bull terriers about to strike at her.
Uncle Joe shook his head and went on to say, “You know, you had family members in every war this country ever fought! Over forty percent of us strong making up the military... representing! When less than twenty percent of the U.S. population is black people. And you know how they treated us! Now thirty some years later, and you see white vets being treated like that, then you know everybody else is catching hell! It make you wonder whether the enemy of the American People is abroad or right here in public office.”
There were no comments from Khalfani. He knew uncle Joe just wanted to think out loud, so he just listened. Then his uncle asked, “How is your Mama?” Khalfani answered, “She’s all right. Are you coming to my birthday party tonight?” Uncle Joe confirmed, “Sure! How old are you now?” Khalfani said, “Sixteen” as they walked into the corner store.
Later on that evening, family and friends gathered at the Lucas house on the corner of 48th & Springfield in West Philly. It’s Khalfani’s sixteenth birthday party, and yesterday he received an acceptance letter from both Temple University and Drexel University with scholastic and athletic scholarships. Needless to say, they had a lot to celebrate.
Khalfani’s father John Lucas was probably more excited about the news than anyone. He really wanted his son to go to school close to home because he was involved in so much in the community. His positive leadership would be missed if he went too far away. He is a hands-on kind of mentor for so many, young and old, at the community center, in his martial arts classes, on the basketball and tennis courts, at the enterprise center, and at his Dad’s graphic design firm. He and his friends have been getting constant on the job training for over five years now. They’ve really been a big help lately with John being home recovering from a serious sports injury. Khalfani and his closest friend Marcus have practically managed the shop themselves. They check in on the staff whenever they have a moment and they know the business thoroughly.
Khalfani and Marcus went out back where there were people gathered around the grill and the bar. They made their way to the card table to check on Uncle Joe sitting with other older relatives and friends. These elders were in full performance mode, playing cards, comparing experiences and telling tales, while occasionally embellishing the truth a bit. They even compliment each other's lies with the really good ones. After listening in, laughing and learning a little something, Marcus started to head out when he finished his goodbyes. But Uncle Joe’s childhood friend Detective Joey Romano, who also fought side by side with him in combat, pulled the two young men aside. They were still within earshot of Uncle Joe when he warned the two young men to look out for trouble at the upcoming rally for the death of a 15-year-old African teen who was shot in the back while riding his bike home from school. The police tried to claim that they thought he had a weapon, that he was ignoring their commands to stop, that he fit the description of a suspect, then finally that he had ear pods in and couldn’t hear as if somehow it was his own fault. The reality is that the rookie officer who happens to be the son of the chief of police in Upper Darby, just outside of West Philly, was trying to gain recognition from his peers by “getting a body” in some twisted mandatory initiation rites of passage that a racist sect of the force partakes in. Uncle Joey, as they affectionately call him, told Marcus and Khalfani that officers in plain clothes from neighboring towns plan to infiltrate the crowd and instigate as well as initiate violence to make it seem as if the peaceful protesters are the aggressors. He advised them to pass the word on to the attendees not to fall for the bait.
[The story continues in “The Ones Chosen”]
