Global Perspectives on Self-Development

The opportunity to present to the world a perspective of the Ifa/Orisha Religious Tradition, also known as Yoruba, is met with jubilation. The time is past due for fresh and invigorating discussions of this, my faith and calling - especially at a time when the digital age allows access to so much information, but not enough access to thought and nurturing of thought. Layers of acceptance and introspection and change of thought comes about via the coupling of experience and information. Once experience and information bear light, then the journey to understanding and mastery begins.

This work is the culmination of my experience as a religious leader in the Ifa religion and my studies reflected in my books, lectures, essays, and teachings from the year of my first initiation in 1986 to the present 2018 (a total of thirty-two years not counting my introduction to the faith a few years prior). Over that epoch, I've amassed experiences and notes each providing the foundations of the volumes I write both nonfictional and speculative fictional. The striving for mastery in respect to this work specifically and all my works in general is presenting academic insights, spiritual revelations, and life-changing epiphanies in a way that you, the reader, can embrace intellectually and spiritually.

There's presently an abundance of information on the Ifa religion and culture. Hundreds of books line the bookshelves of concrete and online stores. Thousands of sites have sprung up on the internet over the course of several years from blogs to businesses. A growing number of colleges offer Ifa or African Religions as part of the Africana Studies Department, and English Departments have more of a focus on Black Writers and Black Literature. I remember a time when such wasn't the case - a time when virtually everything African or Black was relegated to Sociology and/or Anthropology. All of which, on the whole, had less than empowering representations of Africans her descendants. We were portrayed as aboriginals and sub-humans ripe for ethnic cleansing genocide and simultaneously, yet ironically, Eurocentric conversion. We were global misfits, savages, bestial slaves, and biblical outcast. All lies, none of which are able to stand against scientific or historical examination on a multidisciplinary global plane or scale.

Adherents to any given religion, faith, philosophy, or academia becomes, in gist, missionaries. They perpetuate beliefs and their subjective realities regardless of their level of understanding or facts. And, as much as any may beg to differ, the fact remains: In some form or fashion, we all perpetuate our insights and we propagate those insights under the shaded guise of religion, literature, historical points of view, bias, prejudice. acceptance, rejection. I'm no different, but that doesn't make me (or anyone) guilty of ignorance by omission. What I'm attempting to convey is that devotees of any given religion or faith are undeniably human beings. The problem arises when a given group attempts to dehumanize another group for reasons beyond race, creed, color; yet, tied to race, creed, color. And, in doing forcefully deprive them of birthrights and liberties as human beings. The irony is that when any group dehumanizes another, they do so by first dehumanizing themselves. One side may win but both sides ultimately lose.