Last Updated on June 17, 2015 by Paulette Brown-Hinds
My formally simple idea of the “Unknown” illustrates why I thoroughly research key words whose meanings I think I already know. Its numerous meanings include: not recognized as a fact or as an individual; not discovered; not apprehended mentally and thus unidentified; unaware that ones spiritual sense is aware of oneself; one having clouded out ones own material senses of awareness; an ultimate reality incompletely/inadequately experienced in terms of Images and Symbols related to its true nature; and lacking an established or normal status. Self-Unknown people are mysterious or secrets to themselves because of ignorance. It is an unfamiliarity causing a sense of strangeness, like an algebraic “X”; ‘Z’ (the last alphabet letter); or placed at the end of the line of Humanity. Being “lost,” hidden, obscure, debatable, and disconnected from everything in life causes ones “Life-Living” think, feel, say, actions to be in excess, in insufficiency, in wrong directions. These wedge apart ones Talents from ones Motivation. Nevertheless, Ancient African Sages said “Knowing” of ones Selfhood is present at birth—that every divine and earthly Cosmic (i.e. Real) creature ultimately arose from God’s androgynic protoplast—and all initially resided together and interdependently in a “Virtual” boundary-less, undefined, and undifferentiated—but not disordered—state inside unformed Matter situated in infinite space. By each human containing a ‘drop’ of the Cosmic Mind—i.e. ones “Self” (the absolutely unchanging “sameness” of ones Selfhood)–meant/means the newborn’s Real Self has knowledge of the entire Cosmos. This Cosmic Knowledge–the ‘Self’s’ Ultimate Background for daily living—provides every Private Self “tool” needed for one to have a thriving and happy life.
However, all of this was repressed in the mind of every free African in Africa when the fishnet was thrown over him/her to thereafter enslave each and their children’s children’s children. The effect, said Howard Thurman (Deep River, pp. 35-36, quoted by Bailey Sr. in “From Africa to Black Power”): “When the Slaves were taken from their homeland, the primary social unit was destroyed, and all immediate tribal and family ties were ruthlessly broken. This meant the severing of the link that gave the individual African a sense of persona. There is no more hapless victim than one who is cut off from family, from language, from one’s roots. He is completely at the mercy of his environment, to be cowed, shaped, and molded by it at will . . .” Today, the single most important Private Self problem in struggling Black youth is that they are Self-Unknown. In 1903 Du Bois elaborated on this by saying Black People possess a “Double Consciousness”—the sense of being two people—one, the Self they know; the other, the Self they are told by others is the real one. He also envisioned two veils separating Whites from Blacks—one applied by Whites and the other applied by Blacks. The consequence of these layering over ones Real Self “Soul Sunshine” is to ensure that one becomes and stays Self-Unknown. Resultant manifestations are the very reason why our Ancient African Ancestors wrote the remedy on their temple walls 10,000 years ago: “Man, Know Thyself.”
Self-Unknown displays stem from failing to cultivate ones Spiritual Emotions and Intellect. Many have replaced this by modelling Europeans’ self-defeating, devastating “Individualism,” Fetters, and ‘non-rational’ Supernatural cult thinking—both about Trinkets and Trivia. Hence, most Black children come to wrongly believe that dealing with problems of daily living is based upon following their acquired emotions–wrongly deeming them to be the validators of their Will and their actions. In short, they say: “the right way to live is to follow my emotions or what I feel”. By failing to realize ones true nature is to instantly face each and every problem and without an emotional reaction (the essence of Martial Arts), at ‘crunch time’ they thereby fashion different kinds of emotions to deal with a particular category of problems. Too often their tough problem dealings are to simply ignore them or follow advice—practices that set up vicious cycles of worsening problems. Resultant desperation for what to do leads them to look in all the wrong places for answers as well as the seeking out of leadership, either from ignorant or evil people—each pushing one further into a Delusional World. Since none of this ever works, each goes deeper and deeper into the Self-Unknown that leads to ‘nowhere” but with great mental turmoil fanfare on the way.