SNAPSHOTS
BY
GIBRAN TARIQ
COPYRIGHT©2012 by Gibran Tariq. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted by the written permission of the author.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book, written in 1997, has taken this long to get to print but I pray that the sentiments expressed herein are still timely and inspiring. All praises are due to Allah.
I would like to thank Kavika Belgrade and Gregory “Bo” Jones who stayed on me about the merits of this work and who would not let me forget that it deserved to be published although I had doubts and reservations. Well, here it is.
I would also like to thank both Mikell Davis and Devondia Roseborough who both assisted me to when I asked about publishing options.
I thank my family, my friends, and those who will enjoy this work.
This book is dedicated to Trina, Shonda, Rhonda, LaWanda, Wanda, and Michelle who all supported and encouraged me in one way or another. Oh yes, thanks Shirl.
Heads up to my comrades, Hugh “Eze” Reid, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Kenneth Jacobs, Eddie Mungo, DC Mobley, Martin Russell, Oleander Love, Joseph “Tree” Hamms, Jarvis Mason, Bo Jones, Johnell Porter and the other brothers and sisters still confined in the dungeons of this country, especially my brotha, James “Buddy Cool” Williams. The family misses you!
Peace and success to my brotha, Qayyam. May Allah guide your footsteps. Mine too.
************************************************************************
January 1st
Don’t believe the hype! There are only 7 days a year. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It’s just that they come at U 358 more times in a bewildering array of brilliant disguises. –ali-
Until you have made a happy landing at that place called YOU, there is no need to even consider making resolutions since you will merely be addressing “adopted theories” or “misplaced notions” about the true nature of your being when your real worth and value lie buried deep beneath the legacy of lies perpetuated upon you by your parents, spouses, bosses and your own foolish imitations of those you idolize! Without knowledge of self, your resolutions only support your bold willingness to promote and impose behavior on yourself that may not even be conducive to your personal well-being. You don’t know who you are, so how can you choose wisely? Without intimate knowledge of your real needs, you will tend to choose what speaks loudest or sparkles brightest because when you possess no sense of loyalty to yourself, then it is easy to be attracted to sentiments and mindsets that were not fashioned or forged in the depths of your own being. There must exist a continuing sense of loyalty to yourself that affords you the warrant to believe you are worth further development and that your trust in yourself is all the license you need to begin the search for yourself. Next you must strip yourself of all the pretenses you may have acquired of wanting to be exactly like someone else, and then you must crush all the remnants of the person you were molded to be by others. Then you work with what’s left. That’s the framework that leads to YOU. HAPPY LANDING!
******************************************
January 2nd
Anything is something when you have nothing on your mind
-Ali-
Be Real! When you begin to take meaningful steps to throw off the shackles of oppression that yoke you spiritually, physically, mentally, financially, you must accept the fact that affirmations, no matter how potentially powerful, do not work unless you are on a level playing field. Be real about that fact. Too many people start the year under the false illusion that affirmations are some sort of “poetic” genies and that if they shout them loud enough or often enough, seeming magic will occur. Not hardly. In order to sponsor a plausible affirmation, you must first achieve parity, that eye-level control that will allow you to tilt the balance of power in your favor. Lacking this, an affirmation is merely another system of self-imposed oppression. Be real. An affirmation concedes nothing without the dirty work that must precede it.
******************************************
January 3
Life is a point between birth and death where nuthin’ exists beyond good and evil except
the miserable failure of men who throw themselves into open competition with God. -ali-
Consider this: one reason for the low self-esteem of many black women is that
they willingly participate in the condescending ritual of allowing the black man to set himself up as a rival to God. In the name of love, they silently watch as their existence
is slowly diminished while emotional murder is perpetuated upon them. God, in His Infinite
Wisdom, created woman to be a queen, a mother, a nurturer, but merely because man, in
his puny arrogance, feels he can make better use of her as a “ho” or a dope fiend, she
permits herself to be transformed. Why? Because of the foolish desire to love someone
not her equal! All things considered, a man elevates or reduces those he love according
to his own stature, so the law of correspondence dictates that if he seeks to reduce you,
you are greater than he is. If he must cut you down to size in order to harness your
gigantic potential, then he is truly not deserving of you to begin with. And who are you to let him tamper with what God has created? Is it any wonder that your self esteem is low? You are a deposed queen who left her throne to wallow in the mud.
******************************************
January 4
A lie is the handicapped orphan of man’s crippling inability to understand the power of truth. –Ali-
In every set of life circumstances, there exists a pre-determined sequence of prerequisites that must be prevailed upon if one wishes to maintain, control, or overcome those conditions. Before Crick & Watson could crack the genetic coding of DNA, they first had to recognize the pre-determined sequence, and then perform within the medium that nature exposed. The same holds true within the science of mathematics. Circumstances will not allow you to distort or pervert the truth and still receive successful results. The operative theme is to do no harm by lying because when you invent a lie against the natural, logical order of things then you openly flirt with failure. And at any point where lying becomes the inherited legacy of any people, they taint the heritage of their children. Our parents did that to us. They stifled our potential and we foolishly continue the tradition by passing these seemingly innocent lessons down. How can you insist that you shaped your child for success when the very first bit of info he received from you were outright lies? You studiously informed your child of the good-tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus. The story of Santa Claus is by far the most damaging in that it acquaints your children with your own sense of worthlessness. You brazenly flaunt your own inability to supply their needs by insisting they wait until Xmas so some white man (Santa Claus) can provide for them. You promote your own impotence. Why do you think sistas go on welfare? All her life she has been taught that the white man (whether Santa Claus or Uncle Sam) will provide for her needs. That same little gleam in her big, brown eyes when she wakes up on Xmas morning is the same sparkle in her eyes on the 1st of every month because she is expecting some goodies from the white man. It makes no difference whether it’s Santa or Sam, it’s still a white man in a clown’s suit, and until there is a “changing of the guard” in terms of what we teach our children, our entire value system will remain underdeveloped. Damn tradition. Stop the lies.
****************************************
January 5
On every journey, there are milestones along the way that indicate to the weary traveler just how far he has come. These milestones are not laurels upon which to rest your tired soul. Instead, they must push you forward toward greater progress. –Ali-
There are no vacation stops on the road to self-improvement. Once you set sail on the journey to the new “YOU”, there are no layovers, no pit-stops, no shade tree celebrations... It is a constant, continuous getting-there. All gains must be unified and solidified until their development is as consistent and reliable as a favorite recipe. This means that the results are precisely the same each time they are employed. Lacking this consistency means you’re still only experimenting which in turns means that you’re squandering your energy. Don’t indulge in such waste. The basic source of failure is not being in possession of the right ingredients needed for your “YOU” recipe because about 90% of these ingredients are under your internal control. The real problem is rooted in the fact that you do not understand how to distribute your own power! In your journey to self, you reach your very first milestone when you understand the distribution of your power and energy. The same energy that a sista extends to the fruitless effort of attempting to please an undeserving man can be more wisely used to advance her career opportunities. In a similar fashion, the time and energy a brotha awards the task of oppressing and suppressing his woman could be expended more suitably if directed at the institutions that provoke and promote his insecurity. This is, in essence, the profound process of providing only the necessary amount of cure to a problem to heal it. Anything more may aggravate the wound.
**************************************
January 6
Knowing when to celebrate a victory rests upon our ability to recognize if we have actually broken through or if our enemies are merely resting. –Ali-
No consolation prize exists for coming in second in the race to fulfill yourself. Coming close means you failed. Almost making it is a tattered blue ribbon that clearly identifies you as a migrant worker in your own personal field of dreams. It is either sadness or euphoria, full empowerment or deepening impoverishment. You have decided to embark upon the journey. Now, you will be compelled to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. At no time will the toil be easy. Rather, the task will be as unpopular as producing bricks without straw, but the whole fabric of your being will delight in the chain-breaking ceremony of moving from the bondage of other people’s restrictions and limitations into the total independence of being YOU. Along the road of your journey, you will be treated to face-to-face encounters with all your Pharaohs’, and these lovers, spouses, bosses, and friends will use all the persuasions at their disposal to return you to the forced labor of conventional wisdom that dictates that you must submerge your identity or walk two steps behind because you are either woman, black, powerless or any of these combinations. They will wish to prevent you from becoming better, not only because it means they will lose you or because now you must be acknowledged as an equal, but more so for the fact that you may prove to be an example to others. This restricts their future choices, thereby disrupting the delicate balance of fools and rulers!
****************************************
January 7
Love is on welfare in a cold heart –ali-
Check this out. Love is particularly vulnerable in any relationship where either or both parties have poor credit histories with the store-house of their emotions! If either is
bankrupt emotionally, then that person must extort feelings from the other in a futile
attempt to manage his or her own inadequacy. This unwarranted emotional taxation often requires adjustment to remedy the deficit because in any situation where there is no return on a spent commodity, whether it’s a dollar or an emotion, there is always a definite sense of loss. Usually, without exception, this adjustment calls into existence the
uniquely familiar need of having a “lil something something on the side” because when
the conditions of love are sufficiently weakened, any relationship is susceptible to 3rd
party manipulation, and once the heart becomes threatened, a breakdown is certain. In a
healthy relationship, both parties must apply love not to replace or to repair any
fraudulent misuse or abuse of the emotion, but rather as a guarantee that no outside
intervention will ever become necessary. Learn to trust in love and to reap its dividends
because lust is the inheritance tax on a love gone wrong.
******************************************
January 8
A man may argue his price---but never his place
-Ali-
Ignore the charlatans and quacks. Give scant heed to the sages, but by all means, embrace the fools. . Regarding the fool, it is always worth recalling that he should never influence what you wish to be, only that which you don’t want to be. Since he is such a candid example of what not to be, feel free to emulate him in reverse.
…………………………………………
Jan. 9
It has been said that inspiration is 99% perspiration. Well, perseverance is inspiration without the perspiration. When you know you’re going to win----why sweat it! -Ali-
Perhaps it’s best you understand now
Early on the reason for this talk
Really there's a big difference
Separating a true journey from a walk
Each day a real journey consumes you
Vigorously making you grow
Each day a walk just tires you
Rarely, barely making you go
Altitude rises during a journey's course
Nothing can change its sway
Charting your path to greater heights
Exposing the best of each new day.
****************************************
January 10
The ABCs are the first fruits that knowledge extends to man’s fertile mind. They are an intellectual springboard to wisdom and understanding. Use them wisely for they are investments. Squander them and you’ll be struck mute, unable to defend yourself against ignorance. –ali-
In any struggle or endeavor for a new beginning, no matter how heroic or valiant, there will be limits placed upon your success if you don’t have a viable power base. A strong power base is a hardworking partner of success and without a doubt, the stability of your base must be supported by a mastery of the language. This is critical. If I have something you want and you lack the skills to convey precisely what it is that you desire, then there is almost no chance of my filling your need. Your intent is not clear, so I don’t understand you. The inherent woe of being misunderstood will only complicate your problem because what you must remember is that every closed door has its password, its secret knock, or a code that will open it. All you have to do is to learn how to say “open sesame” in the language appropriate to that particular door. You can’t expect the boardroom door to open for you if you speak “street” any more than you can look for apple seeds to produce oranges. Appropriate language must be used to fill the gap between a need and its resolution because the initial thrust of your power rests upon your ability to clearly ask for what you want. Even when people don’t like you or respect you, they will at least grudgingly listen if you speak their language.
******************************************
January 11
Whenever you are out of touch with your own soul, it is then that you make house calls to the devil. –ali-
Change does not happen in a vacuum. It is a part of a continuum, the dynamic process of becoming, peculiar to the evolution of human growth and development. As complex and difficult as change can oftentimes be, it will and can never be fully functional until you can successfully defend these gains against the mental “patron saints” of your former ways that will continue to be active as your transformation is becoming definite. Broadly, this is slightly akin to the supposition that “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy”. During this interim period of transition, the long-sought for change will only qualify you for mixed results and this is when it is most easy to be discouraged. It will appear as though the effort was for naught. You have affected the change. Why aren’t you happy? In a nutshell: “the patron saints!” Throughout this period of self-discovery that the new change ushers in, you must employ your personal wisdom to take stock of the new opportunities available. You have to adjust to a new perspective in order to make the change effective. Just remember that when your heart approves, it is time to step out of the shadow of the “patron saints... Go wild... Lose yourself in the newness of YOU!
******************************************
January 12
When you mean biz’ness, everything you do is a prayer. –ali-
But how should you pray? That depends on what you want. If you wanted a million dollars, then that might take a little more work because first you would have to pray to God to assist you in the development of your intelligence and talent so that you will be equipped to put yourself in a position to make that million dollars. So even before you start praying for a million dollars, you should already have asked the Creator to point out the talent by which He intends for you to earn your wealth. And then you beg Him to assist you in developing that skill, so you can put it to use to acquire that million. The money is available, but do you possess the skills to get it? In order to get something, certain other forces must be set in motion first. How are you going to be a great basketball player and you don’t even have a ball? Wouldn’t it make sense to pray for a basketball first? Don’t pray for a big wedding when you don’t even have a companion. Keep things in perspective. Not that God can’t handle it, but so you won’t get discouraged. If you pray to God to live to be 100 years old, wouldn’t it necessarily entail praying also for a safer world and a cleaner environment, both of which would greatly contribute to your longevity? You should always pray for wisdom to understand the things God has already created because if you don’t respect or appreciate the work He has done thus far, chances are great that you’ll lack the good sense to comprehend what is yet to be. When you stand on a close relationship with God, your prayer request will no longer seem like an appeal for foreign aid. It will simply be a blessing to go!
******************************************
January 13
To be queen, what must be known is that it is not about the groove, but about the growth! -ali-
A sista’s groove is that of all the people on the planet, she possesses the most idealized concept of the white man as a savior-in-waiting. For the older sistas, it’s Jesus. To the sista in the hood, it’s Uncle Sam with his 1st of the month welfare check; and to the young sista, it’s Santa Claus. Better get hip. Girl, you have been a burden to carry and the white man ain’t trying to rescue you. He is trying to lay your ass down!
******************************************
January 14
The pillow is always softest when you’re laying your head where it shouldn’t be. –ali-
This is a Sista Alert. There are no established time frames where it will ever become permissible for circumstance and condition to encourage you to wake up and/or get wise. This is a no-no that would disrupt the orderly progression of your dependency and hopelessness. Your length of stay at the threshold of being nonproductive is held to be the amount of time necessary for you to dismiss the lie that procrastination does not hurt.
******************************************
January 15
Watching yourself grow to heaven is much better than waiting on yourself to go to hell
-ali-
Get with this. On the way to you, you will have the privilege of watching yourself grow. As you bound outward from your sense of incompleteness, you will experience the ultimate joy of understanding how wonderfully growth heals. From the simple condition of self-evolvement, you will be able to power yourself through the trouble spots in your existence and add the finishing touches to any developing needs you may have. You must realize that personal growth is a thirst within you that strives to be enriched. Concentrate on it. You should also take note that attention to your inner situation will offer loving companionship to the desires of your outer self. Every day on the journey is a renewed chance to interact with the beauty of becoming you, so stand on the horizon of each moment and be awed by your own depth.
January 16
Don’t be embarrassed. There is no need to be modest when the voice that does the bragging comes from within. –ali-
Don’t launch yourself toward any goal, seeking to confirm someone else’s expectation because you can never be enhanced through the vicarious holding-on-to-someone-else’s dream. All that can possibly result from such a relationship is the negative possibility of you learning how to greet yourself as a stranger. Always recall vividly that you are not here as a gift to someone else’s effort to live twice or as a hobby for a mentor. You are here to inherit just those things that you need to become fully and wholly YOU. And for that-------there is no partnership. At some point and time, you must seek out this lonely thought and let it inspire you. At 1st, starting out, since you will be unsure of what role you play with yourself, you cannot expect specific solutions to your problems, but still honor the messages that you will receive from within. They will provide you with all the information you need to keep you nurtured in the warmth of your own potential. In contrast to the outer world, the inner sanctum is orderly and precise where the only voice heard is your own. Listen to this voice. All you will hear is how great you are.
January 17
Today is nothing more than a pat on the back. Tomorrow is a hug and a kiss. –ali-
Tomorrow is always something more. It is a new season of hope where you are vested with a different chance to end a bad habit, start a new diet, or to fashion a better life. Inside the fresh environment of a new day exists seeds of commitment. These seeds are the natural wonders of your inner world and from them spring the vision under which you will labor to either despair, impair, or repair yourself. Don’t you know that it is from your sense of purpose that your soul paints its self-portrait? The universe will not award you anything until you possess an identity. The state of being only allows you the awareness of your senses. The art of becoming permits you to exercise them. In the larger perspective, it is not enough just to BE. The decision must be made to BE MORE! Once you reach the magnificence of this long-awaited acknowledgment, you will be able to fully recognize that the beauty of your individuality in no way contrasts with the diversity of the world, so you can now make your own way and still be at home. Give thanks to tomorrow by throwing it a “Baby shower” today. This is how you hug yourself with open arms.
January 18
It is better to achieve than to receive -ali-
At every fork in the road on your journey to successful living, there are many distinctions to be made. One such distinction to be reckoned with is the line between what you ACHIEVE and what you RECEIVE. While there is never any uncertainty about what you receive, the same is not true with what you achieve since many people go through life filled with doubt about their achievements. An achievement is the personal nourishment of your individual worth whereas receivership is merely the reassurance that you exist. Once you make the discovery of which is which, you will be able to understand the intricate synchronization between probabilities and possibilities, knowing which is a celebration of your merits and which is an invocation of chance. Don’t make a career out of waiting-to-receive because sometimes the hand-outs stop. What then? You are only limiting yourself and producing a sterile atmosphere for disappointment. Explore the possibilities of your individual merit by achievement. It is a happy appointment with yourself.
January 19
Don’t gamble----PLAN -ali-
Do you know how to detect failure? Well, you can. It is a learning process but you will always bring yourself closer to success in all your endeavors when you realize that a plan is a stable balance between your weaknesses and your potential. A good plan is much more that a high-chair for your ego. It is an assurance policy against worry, a balm for doubt and a healing for quitting. Whenever you plan, you encourage activity towards the right solution and you personally cooperate in uplifting your own attitude which has the immediate power to shrink seemingly insurmountable odds and obstacles. PLAN. Don’t worry about overdoing it because as long as you are comfortably aware of the dos and don’ts of your inner nature, you will prepare accordingly, but beware of your ego! If it is not firmly strapped in its booster chair, it can offer deceptive advice. To the ego, planning is like staging a carnival. Everything must be outrageous and exciting and colorful. Remember that when you reach the point where planning is fun, then you are no longer planning----you are gambling! And that’s a whole ‘nother story. PLAN
January 20
Your dreams can sometimes be a bad idea if you fail to understand that oftentimes you are the biggest enemy to their fruition. –ali-
Dig this. Make it a point to pay respect to your biggest foe----you! This does not imply that you should honor the fact that your fears are sometimes the biggest obstacle to your advancement. Instead, it is the art of appreciating that success is a finely-crafted performance which is improved only with the meticulous refinement of you getting better on a day-to-day basis. Never lend support to your doubts, but keep your concerns in perspective. Learn when to turn a dream into a reality and when to let go of a bad idea. These are expressions of respect for yourself and the hoped-for things you desire for yourself. They help you to get out of the way when you get in the way of the way you should be going to get there.
January 21
A fact ain’t nothing but an act that’s been having sex with a shot-caller -ali-
You have got to mean biz’ness! And that means moving from reaction to action because this is the way life behaves when there ain’t no time for half-stepping. Check out this episode. You react after the fact, but when you mean biz’ness, you have the juice to turn an act into a fact! When you ain’t got nuthin’ coming but your last minute reactions to what others do to you, then you are simply tying a noose around your own neck! ACT-----and then watch your back! Always remember that it is much easier to get your back off the wall than it is to get a foot out of your ass! Correct the effect. Act in your own behalf. Even though you may have a tremendous emotional investment in the iron-fisted spice of being controlled by circumstance, never lose confidence in your ability to act in your behalf before someone else has you reacting on behalf of your stupidity. Now, run and tell that!
January 22
Do you ever cross your mind? -ali-
You will never discover your potential, let alone express it sitting in the lotus position, chanting affirmations. All you will accomplish by this is the ability to exceed the expectations of your own capacity to both sell and buy yourself a dream. Until you learn how to stay afloat in the spiritual world, an affirmation is not an anchor, it is an anvil. When you are correct, there is no dilemma. When you know as much as possible about your desires to rise above the surprises, secrets, and scams of everyday living, you can cease bribing yourself with the small talk of affirmations, chants and promises because your inner voice will speak too you. That’s the ticket. Don’t talk to yourself. Listen to yourself...
January 23
Prosperity is an unlimited provision that is manufactured by your potential but must be road-tested by positive action.
–ali-
If it is your sincere desire to succeed, your greatest triumph will come if you realize that prosperity is an unlimited provision that is manufactured by your own potential. Black folks treat their potential with such confidentiality that no one else is even aware of its existence. For no apparent reason, of our own volition, we conduct ourselves as though we are bargain-hunters when it comes to living well. STOP!!!. You must understand that life offers no rock-bottom prices, only high-profile choices. For the most part, existing only becomes a painful experience when you fail to assert your right to grab at all available opportunities. Don’t be fooled. Positive thinking is only a good short-term investment in wishful day-dreaming if it is not road-tested by positive action. There’s no escaping that science. Ponder this: Positive thinking in and of itself is like holding your breath and waiting to get swept off your feet by a magic genie. Ask the “fat broad” or the “brotha-in-jail” about that. Without positive action, positive thinking is sorta like a mental condom. It’s protection, but it lacks projection. To be successful, you’ve got to get hip to the fact that you can’t plant seeds of growth if the package ain’t open.
January 24
There will be po’ folks in hell also. –ali-
Do this. Repeat firmly: There is no spiritual equivalent to being well-off. This does not suggest that you have too lose your religion in order to get paid, but it does mean that you should scoff at the notion that poverty is a relative of piousness. Don’t buy that. Jump ship now. The marketplace is not an occasion for wearing your wings. Instead, you need either lawyers, guns, or money. And the willingness to go toe-to-toe with opportunists who trust religiously in coming-in-first. These are not rumors of war or portents of battles-to-be. These are real ass-kickers, specific get-the-hell-out-of-my-way slugfests for the right to possess everybody’s stuff. It’s nasty biz’ness, but there’s good news. You no longer have to suffer because of your spirituality. Know why? Just think about it like this, dear brotha or sista. Your spirituality is part of your domestic policy. Getting ahead is part of your foreign policy. And people always get good at acting the fool when they are way from home. Heaven will wait.
January 25
Before you can score, you first have to know where the goal is. –ali-
Fuse this into your brain. You have just one simple goal: to be the very best you can be at handling your own needs. At all times, you should be working hard to boost your productivity to help and assist yourself in giving yourself whatever it takes to promote you to the next level. However, you shouldn’t get so busy that you miss one of the most amazing, significant developments of your individual progress. Namely, that you must step out into the frightening non-traditional role of standing up for yourself. For once, you must make a point as a individual instead of a representative of an oppressed minority. This one’s for you. This is rebellion, true, but it is also a central trend in being able to separate your needs from those of the herd. This is a major, profound assessment that cannot be ignored. Us against them is a phony struggle until you have scored a victory in the real battle of its “me-against-the-world”!
January 26
To imitate someone else is to deflate yourself. –ali-
Don’t let smoke get in your eyes. You don’t need to be a clone of someone else to get the job done. This is a self-destructive vice and you can never deliberately market your needs on the false assumption that if you buy a dream early enough and cheap enough, pay-back won’t be so devastating. Wrong. In this drive-by “needs-to-go” atmosphere of artificial mental addiction, it is usually true that your desire to follow in someone else’s footsteps will always exceed any real need to. Therefore you must set a goal of never losing custody of your identity because this is the direct pathway to your own path. Address yourself, and then dress yourself. And while the garb of your own unique personality may not, at 1st, fit you as well as designer jeans, you are incapable of ever getting too big for your britches.
January 27
Don’t take no “shorts”. Stop limiting yourself to merely coping with life via an obsession with survival tactics when the secrets of success are easier to learn. –ali-
Here’s a tidbit for your own peace of mind, and it goes a little something like this. An intrinsic part of the over-all hype was to invade the consciousness of people of color and to restrict their vision. Why? Because by doing so, we would constantly remind ourselves that we are limited and limits, as such, always act as thirst-quenchers. They quench your thirst for what lies just over-the-rainbow. With no longing in your soul to keep you focused, getting “Shorted” becomes a seduction. You begin to welcome the opportunity of living, instead of the challenge of living well. You concentrate on survival rather that success. You commune with the sheer joy of existing, with no emphasis on how to make the experience worthwhile. This diminution is the natural habitat of a fool. Move! Migrate! Get Away! Don’t live under the roof of hype. Begin a new relationship with your consciousness. Teach it that it has the sacred duty to make you laugh and rejoice. Self-employ yourself when it comes to what you allow yourself to see, think, do, and believe. Embrace the skillz needed to think for yourself. Lengthen and strengthen your vision. Go 4 what U know.
January 28
See 4 yourself. Starting out with a good idea is a damned good idea. –ali-
One something you shouldn’t forget. You must forego the primitive impulse to be rude to yourself. While you may have learned that life favors the rich and the strong, you should never teach yourself that you can’t be one of them. Remember that the 1st step in leveling the playing field is an understanding of the terrain. This means starting out with a good idea of what you are seeking for yourself. Behind this elementary notion, you manage to turn prior defeats into “observation” lessons, eliminating the harmful effects of the “failure imperative”, which coerces you to have nuthin’ to do with success. In fact, accessorize your attitude with the knowledge that there is no psychological necessity for you to sacrifice the beauty of living for the relative low cost of learning what not to do. This is central to getting ahead because there may be a great number of times during the course of your life when you may not know what to do, but there should never exist a moment when you don’t know what not to do.
January 29
Foolishness is the exotic mysticism of men who entertain themselves by looking into the flames of their “life candle” that burns at both ends. –ali-
Foolishness will have a deep impact on everything you do. It is perhaps the greatest innovation the world has ever known. As a result, foolishness will absolutely slow the pace of any advancements you may entertain. And it will always cause a considerable lapse between the long distance notion that you could possibly be reasonably successful at something and the time it takes you to capitalize on that assumption. You are simply fattening yourself on self-induced methods to diminish your own efficiency. No matter how much comic relief foolishness may provide after the fact, it is no exotic mysticism. It is mental carnage.
January 30
The good ol’ boy system was made by men who enjoy making boys out of other men. –ali-
A final word of caution. Details have been surfacing ever since black folks arrived in this country that the American dream is nothing more than a lightning rod for a nightmare if you don’t cipher the thin line between competition and regulation. Competition is the catalyst of getting by on the terms of your own merit, but if you constantly drop the ball in a game among peers and equals, chances are good that you are being regulated. It is the good ol’ boy system at work and it works. On a personal level, regulation will tend to destabilize your chances of success. Be advised. No trick was missed in the rush to stymie you, so learn that the difference between competition and regulation is so extreme because it was the game plan of those-in-the-know to cripple your chances of success. As long as you are painfully underdeveloped mentally, you will never become a member of the club. And that’s a lily-white affair.
January 31
Remember that wringing your hands or simply sitting on your ass gives you the staying power to remain in the line of fire. –ali-
Here’s a healthy dose of reality for ya. You’ve got to have staying power. Wanna know what that is? Well, staying power is the painful experience of not wringing your hands or sitting on your ass when the going gets tough. Staying power is the mantra of those who refuse to pull back when their optimism is initially buried beneath the warnings and threats of fair-weather friends or iron-clad foes. If you are tuff enough, staying power allows you a safety net because in the end your personal growth will usually be decided by how well you understand the lessons you have learned
******************************************
February 1
Know your history or know hell -ali-
Let’s get down to brass tacks!
When you investigate the human drama of why some people are successful while others are not, you will be compelled to acknowledge certain ugly realities about the nature of man. You will be induced to accept the fact that people, African-Americans in particular, have never lost interest in becoming successful, but that other people have sought to create a system where African-American success would be measured in terms of its value to them. This step-by-step program reduced us with the profoundly distressing fact that we do not fail because we are spiritually, mentally or physically bankrupt. We fail because we were deliberately altered psychologically. Let’s be real... We fail for precisely the same reason that the lions, tigers and bears from Ringling Brothers would fail if set free in their natural habitat. Our success is conditioned on what we accomplish for others, leaving us as cheerleading pom-pom girls, jumping up and down on the fringes of our achievements as others receive full credit. No matter how spectacular the victory, how often is it that the scantily-clad exploited cheerleaders share credit for the win? Understand this. In America, people of color are and have been cheerleaders, kicking up our legs and dancing, providing halftime attraction in the game of life. We fail simply because we have been dispossessed. Again, there are enemies at the gate and we can’t wish them away, pray them away, or affirm them away. They can only be destroyed by direct action.
……………………………………………………
February 2
No man creates a slave to succeed him. Instead a slave is produced so that the master’s son will be provided with a living example of his inherent superiority. –ali-
Recall the “SNAPSHOT” of January 4th. The one that insists we stifle our children by fostering lies about the good tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, etc. It still holds true! It was these lies, developed and nurtured in the public school system, that were primarily responsible for the miseducation of African-Americans past and present. From such incidental, seemingly harmless myths about Santa Claus we spring boarded into the life-altering myths of white supremacy as invented by history books. At least, with the coming of age, black children get a good laugh at the joke pulled on them about the good tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and Santa as they outgrow the lies, but unfortunately millions still cater to the myth of Good George (Washington), Honest Abe, and countless other worthless racially-inspired historical myths. Remember this. At any point in the history of a country when a people can’t find its own heroes in the history books, that people has been set up by that country to be slaves forever. Stand clear on this fact. We were set up to fail because no one produces a slave to succeed him!
……………………………………………………
February 3
Affirmations without parity are like a bus without wheels. You can’t get there from here. –ali-
When you realize that a complete system was put into place to serve as an obstacle to your success, you cannot be timid in your opposition to it, especially when you understand that every goal you seek to achieve during the entire course of your existence will be affected. This should be a rallying point for all African-Americans from the brotha who wants to advance to Wall Street to the sista who wishes to lose weight because at the periphery of anything we attempt is the built-in limits naturally occurring via our mental rape. In the same way that physical rape can insure that a woman never trust a man again, our mental will also insure that we never trust our own success.
………………………………………………………
February 4
Don’t complain-----change -ali-
So, there you have it. Everything you attempt to accomplish will be taxed by your attitude about yourself. In any personal situation you may wish to call into being, whether shedding or gaining weight to shedding or gaining a mate or job, your mind is the instrument that will have to be employed to move you toward the set goal. The mind is tied to everything you do and if it is crippled then it won’t assist you much. Therefore you have got to free your mind and the 1st step in this regards is to acknowledge the historical shackling that was done intentionally. You must understand how the vestiges of the plantation still affect us now mentally. The Emancipation Proclamation did nothing to loosen the psychological screws. You have got to face this fact, not to make peace with it, but to take steps to free yourself. Until your mind is free from slave-like thinking, then your gains will continue to be minimal. We still are so awed by the invincibility of the white man’s assumed superior thinking that we stymie ourselves. Have you ever heard of a successful slave?
………………………………………………………
February 5
Nature never plays it safe. In her kindness she will grant you a pacifier when you’re ill, but she will also put you over her knee if you get too big for your britches. Either you follow her house rules or she’ll tear the roof off the mother……
-ali-
Nature has propounded many laws. One of these is the law of compensation. I call it nature’s pacifier. When one organ of the body or limb is weakened, a corresponding organ or limb is strengthened in compensation. Thus, many who have weak eyes have stronger than usual hearing. People with lower body afflictions usually possess tremendous upper body strength. At any rate, when one system of the organism is weakened another is strengthened as compensation. Nature acts spontaneously in this regard because she goes to work involuntarily to restore equilibrium. Failing this, she compensates. When nature acknowledged that the forces of our minds were diminished to such a degree that restoration was no longer possible, she awarded us a pacifier---a strong body! And while this speaks well of nature’s attempt to compensate and to offset our mental repression, this was one of those rare cases where even nature was overworked. Our exquisitely, finely sculpted bodies, both male and female, only mirror the degree of our mental atrophy. Our wonderful bodies are nature’s indictment against the rape of our minds. Our beautiful bodies bear witness against our diseased minds. Yes, we can outrun, out jump, and out-sport the white man, but we can’t outthink him. A beautiful body entertains. A functioning mind produces. Your mind is the seat of all your latent talents and aspirations. This is also where the fruit of your inspiration and hope reside. When your mind was seized, all your wealth was taken out and others prospered from the crime. This set up the pattern that still exists today where we hardly share any profits that our strong bodies produce. It’s time to be weaned off the pacifier and to provide ourselves with real nourishment. Free your mind and your ass will follow!
February 6
Your body should be more that a plain brown wrapper for your passions and desires. It must be more than beautiful plumage that entices the eye, for the real power of a body lies in its ability to follow the commands of a well-ordered mind. –ali-
In the physical world, any time fair nature is defaced you can see the traces of the devastation that follows. There are fixed laws in the universe that cannot be abridged without longstanding, far-reaching implications. In essence, the same universal laws are in operation in the mental world and the traces of this devastation are clearly evident. All one must do is to heed the signs. Nature has left her insignia. The parallels of our mental rape are detailed clearly in the NFL and the NBA. These are the premier showcases for our beautiful bodies. Black men dominate here as bodies (players) but are noticeably absent as minds (coaches). The NFL is 68% black; the NBA is 80%. Only 10% of the coaches in the NFL are black; the NBA less so. Black representation is wholly lacking in ownership. We can entertain, but we can’t produce. The consequences of this are evident when you look at the wealth transfer of sports. The bulk of the money goes to the owners. These are the superior minds that control the minds that put the bodies through their paces. These minds have no interest whatever in imparting technical skill to the bodies so that at some point they can manage themselves because the goal is to keep them dependent! It was the same back when. Nothing has changed and we’re still sucking on our pacifiers.
. February 7
Wrong touches everything wrongly. –ali-
We have beheld the problem and despite these setbacks, we can still plan for success, but planning must be done. Moreover, the planning has to be sharply tailored to attack the core of the problem that has thwarted our efforts to succeed in this country: mental repression and institutional racism. We must also accept as part of our collective healing that the damage was committed deliberately and with malice. As an individual, you must assess the full extent of your personal injury and to examine the breakdown against your individual history. Trace its detriment through your immediate family tree, measuring its adverse effects on your development as a person. Recall the lessons you were taught and the means by which you incorporated them into your thinking. Analyze your attitude towards yourself and others of the race. A clear pattern will emerge. If you are black in this country, you are the victim of a slave-making mentality that still haunts us long after the fact. And it is this mentality that short-circuits any efforts at improvement you attempt. The reach of this mind-game is so potent that it accounts for the basis of failure even if you only desire cosmetic, superficial changes. The ghost of failure is present even if you seek to lose weight, stop smoking, quit cursing or any other little thing you do. That’s how deep it goes. Wrong touches everything and everything it touches---it spoils.
***************************************
February 8
A lie is a colorful snapshot of a man eating eggs when the hen ain’t even started laying them. –ali-
Immortality. Desperately seeking yourself, you take your first tentative steps towards it as you study the legacy and traditions of your personal miseducation. Most will find that they had forced reasoning and rational thought into early retirement simply so it would be easier to applaud the handiwork of a lie. There should have been no way you could wallow in the cold-hearted sentiment of the proverbial “all niggas are lazy and shiftless” myth and then accept your own eyewitness account of your parents’ hard toil to provide for you. Every fiber of your being should have offered protest against this scalding pronouncement as well as the countless others that belittle us as a people, but yet we allowed the light to go off inside our heads. Thus began our spiritual psychosis. Thus began the inner conflict where what we know to be absolutely true was pitted against the fundamentals of our being foolish. Sadly enough, foolishness sanctioned by law and backed up with guns usually makes its point. That was when the black woman was toppled from her pedestal, the black man emasculated, and all black boys became jail-bait. It was then that we became hooked on make-believe and addicted to miseducation. O black man and black woman, behold the damage done to us by this country’s gunboat dual standard.
February 9
Your mind is a garden where you plant the seeds from which your fears grow. You sow them in the top soil of your ignorance, water them with your tears, cultivate them in your heart, and then wait on them to grow big enough to eat you. Ali-
Think. Go back. Find your lie or your myth. Each of us has a specific lie or myth that is the instrument of our own personal defeat This is the thread from which everything else is built. Find it. Destroy it. Heal. For me, serious trouble hit in the form of the first poem I ever heard and learned in my life, and due to that verse I have been helplessly trapped within the lines of that poem. Unfortunately, it was a verse about prison! Subconsciously, I set myself up for prison, dragging myself into trouble knowingly and willingly. Now, finally, that I’ve gone back and examined this myth and recognized how it has destroyed my life, it has lost its value and can never threaten me again. Collapsing this lie was a turning point in my life. Now, I can court the success that has eluded me. Think. Go back. The time has arrived for you to uncover your lie and demand expulsion from your thought processes. Search. What prominent deception has set you up for failure: “niggas ain’t shit”, “red women are evil”, “you ain’t got enough sense to pour piss out of a boot”, “you ain’t good for nuthin’, “you just like your daddy”, etc. In sum, when nothing more is heard from your lie then it can no longer dominate your future. The rest of the system that has been put in place to check your progress will fall away. You have removed the central support beam. Your outlook will change.
******************************************
February 10
A cure always sounds good when you’re reading it off the prescription bottle. –ali-
Getting your life well is no house party. It is a search and destroy mission aimed at eliminating any weakness that sickens you. You cannot take it for granted that you are going to get better simply because you know what’s wrong. Clearly, active steps must be taken or you effectively deny yourself the privilege of a cure. Getting stronger does not totally hinge on weakness barely existing. True strength arises from a policy that does not permit weakness to compete in the race for your well-being. You are at war. Your voice has been raised in protest. Now, there can be no question of weakness being absorbed or assimilated. It must be crushed. Only then is a real cure possible. Don’t civilize your weakness by nursing and babysitting it like many smokers hoping to quit do, reducing their dependence gradually. Welcome the pain----and quit. There is no need to adopt any second-hand ideas about pain. Yes, it hurts like hell……Persevere!
******************************************
February 11
Go! But first clear the path. –ali-
Using the take-no-prisoners approach, you can throw off your chains. Trying to improve your conditions under a less organized program will do little or nothing. CHARGE! It is vital to come within arms’ length of your shortcomings and then strike. This way you feel your own power. You get consumed by the rush of dismantling your own fears. You will demand victory. CHARGE! Power is balm for the oppressed man’s soul. Go forth boldly. CHARGE!
February 12
Cute is not a cure
-ali-
The black woman in America is under the reprimand of her own vanity. She has informally adopted “being pretty” as a feminine cure-all for much that is wrong in her life. An affirmative nod from the mirror is a seeming sedative against feelings of hopelessness, depression, or sadness. Being cute gives her the unrestricted right to be naive. Her makeup makes up for her inability to see things as they actually are, and this apparent loss of vision only fortifies the distance between what she can and cannot accomplish. This individualized purchase of “cosmetic” freedom is like making monetary restitution to a system that compels you to feel you are not beautiful enough. You better face it, girl, the mirror ain’t nuthin’ but a cash register in disguise.
February 13
A smile is the transfer of wealth from your heart to your head -ali-
Don’t think that you can become happy by putting smiley faces on everyone. Scrooge will still be himself. It’s his nature that needs changing, not the contours of his facial expressions. To change his backwardness, you have to work from the inside out. What you must draw from this conclusion is that there is a duality in the universe that is dangerous to ignore. There is good/evil; pretty/ugly; winners/losers, etc. They all belong to a delicate infrastructure of balance where the development of one occurs naturally due to the existence of the other. No such quality as fat would exist without a nod to its opposing measure, thin. How could we truly measure beauty if there was not ugly by which to compare it? Everything is adjusted on this scale of balance, so don’t delude yourself and as part of your general improvement plan start chanting affirmations about how beautiful and wonderful the universe is. While it may be beautiful, it is also very dangerous and ugly, filled with strife, so don’t get suckered into a pair of rose-colored glasses. Don’t worry about the stars, they know their place. It’s man that’s misguided. He’s the one that bears watching. Don’t lose your perspective by wanting to turn the world into Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood. Be real. It ain’t that kind of party. For some the world is a ghetto. See your world for what it is. Don’t allow kings, priests, or presidents to mislead you. The world is sometimes not so beautiful. Call a spade a spade.
February 14
LUV
February 15
The size of the gift does not always indicate your true value. Sometimes it’s simply a clue as too how much you’re worth not knowing how valuable you actually are.
-ali-
On Valentine’s Day, the wife measures herself by the size of the gift received from the husband. She regards her worth as commensurate with her man’s largesse. The more money he spent, the better she feels. And that’s because in America, money is the social invention by which our value is established, especially when it comes to someone spending it on us. Therefore money or the spending thereof is the ultimate calling card of how important or special someone is. Dig that. Now, in view of this, I assert that we, Africa-Americans, are indeed very damned important and special! Did you know that the white man has spent billions of dollars on us? Why? Because we’re special. And he knows it. That’s the reason why he has spent billions of dollars revising, rewriting and doctoring history! He has put more money into this effort than he has spent on NASA. We are so important that he spent billions of dollars to cover up the truth of our magnificent achievements. He rewrote history to write us out of it. He made movies where Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra, where Clint Eastwood copied the role of Bass Reeves, a black lawman in Hang ‘Em High. The white man would rather tell you that men from Mars built the pyramids rather that to admit they were constructed by people of color. We’re important or else they wouldn’t have spent all that money on us. We should be as radiant as a blushing bride to know that our significance is such that we can induce this country to reach that deep in its pockets and spend. Believe me, America knows who we are. They just don’t want us to find out. They would rather we stay deaf, dumb, and blind. They know that if we ever found out who we are, nothing would be able to hold us back. Just think. Today, we run around trying to keep up with the Joneses. Back in the days, we were the Joneses!