Growing up in Detroit during the 1960s was very intense for me. My sensitivities more than likely stemmed from the fact that I was born with a hole in my heart that was not discovered or corrected until I was four years old. I underwent two major open heart procedures, a forty-pint blood transfusion, and had my brain starved of oxygen for over twenty minutes when I literally turned blue and was comatose until my mother promised God that if I lived I would do God's work.
The sounds of ambulances and sirens would always send me into prayer for whoever was hurt. I'd have nightmares from the eleven o'clock news: “Parents, it's eleven o'clock. Do you know where your children are?” followed by mug shots of the top five “wanted” people (all of whom were ugly and scary to me). The footage of America's racism and hatred of Black people, the sit-ins, the hoses, dogs, police brutality; the assassinations of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Dr. King, and Malcolm X; Vietnam; the riots, military tanks rolling up and down our streets, curfews, looting, shooting, and dark, thick black and red smoke from the city burning—all had a serious effect on me. I remember watching the March on Washington at six years old and everything in me knew that somehow I was to be an extension of the Civil Rights Movement.
At the age of seven, I watched my mother prepare dinner one evening. As she was preparing the meat, I asked her, “Momma, what's that?”
“Lamb.”
“But what is it?” I asked again.
A little more firmly, she says, “Lamb!” still not understanding.
I asked more forcefully, “But what is it?”
She looked at me and responded as intensely, “Lamb!!”
“Yes, like a baby lamb.”
I asked, “So what's chicken? Like a real bird?” Momma said yes, and for the first time I realized that meat was the flesh of dead animals. I loved animals. I'd just recently been to the Children's Petting Zoo and to a farm on a school field-trip. As I thought of how dear the little lambs were to me, I vowed I wouldn't eat meat anymore. I told my mother, “Well, I'm not going to eat that anymore.” Of course, she shared my refusal to eat meat with my father, to which he replied at dinner, “You better eat everything on your goddamn plate, or I'll beat your goddamn ass.” I was never the same after that.
Another of my most significant memories as a child was riding in the back seat of my father's Buick, with both he and my mother smoking cigarettes with the windows rolled up, and me complaining because I literally felt I was about to die because I couldn't breathe. “Please let the windows down!” I was pleading for my life! It's amazing how the seemingly most intelligent people just don't get “simple” things.
During the next few years I was beset with profuse nosebleeds and midnight emergency-room visits. An automobile struck me when I was ten years old, and I was hospitalized for two weeks with internal hemorrhaging from bruised kidneys. In the meantime, I would throw my parents' cigarettes away and fuss with them about their drinking. My parents were college graduates, my mother a teacher and my father a Morehouse College graduate and a manager with the Detroit Housing Commission. My mother drank socially; my father would have his daily wind-down with a beer or pink Champale with Spanish nuts or pistachios. He would go out on weekends and come home to my mother's complaints about how he smelled from the alcohol.
Tensions between my parents increased to the point where they decided to divorce when I was eleven, and they asked me which of them I wanted to live with. I replied, “I don't want to live with either one of you.” I was sent to Jacksonville, Florida, at the end of sixth grade to attend my family reunion, and I remained there, living with my maternal grandmother from seventh through tenth grades; after that, my grandmother, grand-aunt, mother, and I all moved back to Detroit where my mother was based as a national representative for the American Federation of Teachers.
I did well in seventh through tenth grades, learning clarinet and performing in the marching and concert symphonic bands for the duration. I was salutatorian and class graduation speaker of my ninth-grade class. I even received an award for being an outstanding student from the University of Tennessee. Tenth-grade band activities took up most of my spare time. I was told we'd be moving back to Detroit after the school year, and I was livid. I didn't want to go back to Detroit. I began losing focus and received my first C and D on my report cards.
I did fairly well in school after returning to Detroit, despite being hit by a car in my junior year and spending four months hospitalized. I managed to graduate with a decent GPA, receive recognition for Class Couple, and was once again a commencement speaker. Unfortunately, my speech had to be rewritten because it was too extreme in my counselor's view. I wrote another and delivered it to a graduating class of over four hundred and our families.
I decided to apply to Spelman College and the University of Florida. I was eligible for a scholarship at Spelman but there was no on-campus housing available at the time of my application, so I chose University of Florida, which I entered in the summer of 1975. Having looked at many options, including business, advertising, pre-med with interest in psychiatry, journalism, and broadcasting, I decided to major in psychology. I managed to get through my first two years smoothly, pledging Delta Sigma Theta sorority as a freshman, moving off campus after my first year with a couple of my sorors and boyfriend, and doing what we do as a part of the “maturation” rituals of becoming an “adult” (short for “adulterated” . . . no longer what the Creator intended).
It was in my junior year in 1977 that I really began to pay more attention to the world and the issues of the day, as well as the significance of the information my studies were providing me with. As a psychology major at the University of Florida, I realized for the first time the importance of the interplay of diet, food, substances, education, and capitalism on the bodies, hearts, minds, and souls of people.
The staggering statistics of the disproportionate percentages and the rates at which we African-Americans were sick, diseased, imprisoned, dysfunctional, obese, and dying inspired me to pray more intensely than I ever had in life for answers to our problems. Of course, my instructors claimed ignorance as to the causes and admitted having no solutions. Hence, because I was both Black (minority) and female, as well as very intelligent with an academic record to back it up, I could get funding for doing research on these important matters.
So, in effect, the message was that no matter how much education, money, opportunities, talent, credit, jobs, access, experience, wealth, or whatever else we may have won after Civil Rights and affirmative action programs, we'd continue to die prematurely and in disproportionately large numbers from so-called incurable diseases. Stomach, lung, uterine, and prostate cancers; tumors and cysts; sexually transmitted diseases; mind- and body-altering and recreational drugs and substances; stress, diseases of the mind; criminality, insanity, suicide, homicide, and AIDS/HIV at the time were not a consideration: but the overall effect and reality is, and was, genocide.
Inundated with statistics from the urban laboratories (our city hospitals, clinics, etc.), dissatisfied with speculation, theories, and hypotheses, and totally appalled at the staggering numbers of African-Americans dying by the tens and hundreds of thousands annually from diseases that the scholarly, educated, researched, and degreed could find neither cause nor cure, while every disease becomes a multimillion-dollar institution under its own name, I took to praying with an intensity that became all-consuming. I asked to be shown what the causes and the solutions were.
My soul was disturbed. I had no peace, and I reached a point of disillusionment with everything I was doing, everyone around me, and myself. I cried; and a part of me drowned in my tears—the part of me content to excuse it all by ignorance of my youth, by being in pursuit of knowledge and an education. Having matriculated through two years of a four-year degree, I still had no knowledge, no answers, and no truth, only facts, figures, studies, tests, scores, statistics, and the realization that being stamped with a B.A. degree in psychology would leave me ill-prepared to do anything of significance to improve the condition of my people or society in general. And wasn't that the whole point of becoming educated? So I could make a difference and to insure the progression of my lineage?
The intensity of my prayers, tears, and commitments to the Creator catapulted me into immediate lifestyle changes as the desperation of my longing for truth inspired me to do several things right away. Though I'd worn my hair natural since the age of eleven, I had permed it at the urging of my boyfriend. I cut the perm from my hair into a short, brushable natural.
It was as if someone began to speak to me through my own thoughts. I was inspired to look deeply at myself, and I realized that I was matching a few things that my parents did that I really hated: 1) smoking cigarettes; 2) drinking alcoholic beverages; and 3) eating the flesh of dead animals. Of course, I wasn't alone in these behaviors, being in college, but I subsequently realized that I was supporting businesses perpetuated by white people. Even though Black people buy into these businesses and are employed by them, they are staples in Black communities. They can be found on almost every corner across and or down the street from every church.
A particular phrase continued to resound loudly in my head, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” I began to listen for the answers as to why this was the case. I realized that many of the rich were rich because they were the ones making all of the products being distributed throughout the African diaspora. I began a personal economic boycott of the businesses and their products, which I have subsequently labeled “death industries” or “corporate deities of death”—that is, purveyors of tobacco, cigarettes, alcohol, meat, dairy, sugar, and fish (seafood), in particular. My oath at that time was, “I will not give you motherfuckers another goddamned dime of my mother's money!”
To stop smoking, I sat in my apartment alone one evening with a brand new pack of Benson & Hedges menthol cigarettes and began to smoke one after the other, putting each one out halfway. I inhaled slowly and consciously, speaking to myself, “With each puff you're taking two minutes off your life. Do you want to live or die?” I literally cursed myself out as the ashtray began to fill with ashes becoming blackish-gray, the room filled with stench, and I imagined my lungs and my tissues.
I remembered riding with my parents in the car with both of them smoking, the windows rolled up. I felt like I was suffocating, I gasped for my breath, my life, and here I was twelve years later fighting for my life. I didn't have to smoke the whole pack before I'd had enough. The body has a saturation point for any chemical or substance; once you reach it you can release the addiction. I reached mine that night without any physical sickness or nausea.
Alcohol was not a big part of my life, although it was readily available on a predominantly white campus. I lost all desire to consume any form of alcohol with the thought of how many people's lives and livers had been destroyed by it. My parents drank, and I knew as a child that it wasn't right. As my parents went through changes with each other, they would sometimes drink more, which led to a couple of serious arguments and fights between them. I detested their drinking of alcohol and the arguments that escalated because of it.
Twelve years later, I was receiving the spiritual guidance and strength I needed to do what I'd initially wanted to do at the age of seven. I ate on campus for lunch but would prepare dinner at home (even though I'd eat out when I didn't feel like cooking). I continued to buy meat until I couldn't eat it. I would look at it and tell myself, “You're about to eat the flesh of a goddamned dead animal, are you out of your motherfucking mind?”
Soon I was eating fruit or having juice in the mornings before class. I would have a large salad, a bowl of soup, vegetables, whole-wheat crackers, toast, or cornbread. Over the next sixty days my weight decreased from 127 pounds to 103 pounds. I ate no chips, cookies, ice cream, or any other junk food. Not only did I lose weight, I also noticed better mental clarity. My mind opened up. It was as if I'd been in a dark room or tunnel, when suddenly a bright and brilliant light was turned on. I went to class, paid attention, and understood things at another level. I no longer had to labor over my books as before. I began to ask questions and make points that could not be countered. I could hear what wasn't being said and could read between the lines.
My heightened awareness, fueled with the intense desire to know the solutions to the problems facing Black people, contributed to my being able to bring all of my professors to tears as I challenged them to see the futility of continuing to perpetuate an educational agenda or curriculum that didn't empower its students to do anything different from those who'd come before. It became clear to me that whatever curriculum or subject a student majors in, nutrition, diet, and health should have been prerequisite courses, just based on the fact that we were destined to be parents. I challenged my professors to see that as long as we were fed off the flesh of dead animals, sugar, sodas, cigarettes, coffee, and the myriad of other junk foods with artificial colors and flavors that were sold on campus and in every store, it would be impossible to think clearly.
During these changes in my body, heart, and mind I continued with intense prayers, and received counseling to assist me in processing all that was coming to or through me. However, it was during a party I attended that I had a most significant experience. I was sitting with a brother who was an associate professor of history, a martial artist, and politically intense. As we were sitting at the counter, he said to me, “Gina, there is no God!”
“What do you mean there is no God?”
“There is no God,” he responded. “Everything you know about God the white man taught you.”
“No,” I said. “My mother taught me about God.”
“Well, everything she knows, the white man taught her.”
“No,” I continued. “My grandmother taught her.”
“Well, who taught her?” he asked.
“Her mother,” I said.
“And who taught her?”
“Her mother.”
“Well, if you go that far back you're going back to Africa,” he said.
I responded: “That's where the white man learned about God, and then he took it and created formal religions.”
In the process of this conversation, it was as if I'd left my body and was suspended somewhere in space looking at the earth and seeing its polarities, dualities, good/evil, black/white, hot/cold, south/north, and so on. I could hear the elders saying, “Beware of the blue-eyed devil” and other things. As I returned to the conversation, I asked the brother, “If there is no God, then what is it in you that makes you fight the wickedness of this system the way you do? What is it that separates you from them if it is not God?”
He no longer tried to argue the point with me after that, but as a result of my having to defend my knowing of the presence of God, I came into another depth of thought that stopped me from eating or sleeping for the next three days and nights; I was on fire. I began to see things I hadn't seen before. My energies became so intense that conversations I held with people had them crying in the streets.
There were over 30,000 students at University of Florida, of which 1,500 were African-American. While president of the Lambda Psi chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, I began to realize the need to move into other realms of campus political involvement. I began to work in organizing the Black Student Union. I decided to campaign for a seat in the UF Student Government Senate from the College of Arts and Sciences and won with an overwhelming majority of the votes. I became the first Black person and first woman to be elected to the Student Government Senate, which appropriated its three-million-dollar budget to student activities. I organized the Progressive Student Organization, which was comprised of members from each of the Black student organizations on campus.
As a Black Student Union organizer, I picked up Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Touré) from the airport when came to speak at the campus. I had no real political or historical depth at that time; my studies were centered in the areas of psychology, sociology, spirituality, and sexuality. So, meeting with Brother Touré was very empowering for me, and I had one-on-one time with him.
His lecture was very powerful; the auditorium was filled overwhelmingly with white students. I listened, and observed during the question-and-answer portion that he spoke very confidently and authoritatively. But what was most significant and life-changing for me was that no one could dispute him. I cannot say that everything he said was true, but I realized in that moment what was to be gained: that which should be fully valued, to know, to be indisputable, the truth, was most important. “Know ye the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
I quickly abandoned my desire to continue on to graduate school. My administrators were encouraging me to go to law school; they were so impressed with my transformation. It had been my initial desire to have my Ph.D. by the time I was twenty-five. I told my administrators that I wouldn't go to law school because man's law differs from place to place, and that if I studied law in Florida and then moved to Montana or Africa, I'd have to study law again.
I realized that I'd be better off in the long run if I studied God's laws, for they were consistent and could be applied through every situation and circumstance and would be in effect regardless of where I stood upon the planet. I also realized that some of those closest to me, my sorors particularly, as well as other students, were not perceiving the truth of what I was beginning to share with them. My advisor told me, “It's obvious that you have been ‘saved’! You cannot force your opinions or beliefs on others!”
Of course, I wasn't telling anyone I'd been “saved,” so my response was, “Saved? Saved from what? You all elected me president of this chapter, and now that I understand truly what pledging is and everything this organization stands for, you're telling me that I don't have the right to tell you? If you all can't step with me in the name of God, I certainly won't step with you in the name of Delta Sigma Theta.” I continued my activities, realizing that I didn't want to alienate those I most wanted to touch. So, as disgusted as I was with my wardrobe and popular clothing, I went out and bought clothes that fit me, so I could continue to look somewhat like my girls. But I was never the same. If I hadn't been so close to graduating, I wouldn't have bothered.
I had no fears about unemployment; my concerns were that I was growing and understanding so much, and having such a major effect in other peoples lives with my intensity, that I realized I wasn't ready to become a target of the FBI or CIA. Nor was I ready to spend the next few years arguing with professors or having to study the thought, theories, and opinions of those who had yet to come up with true solutions to the problems and issues of the world.
The revelations were continually pouring forth so much so that I was driven to call my mother one night from a pay phone in the pouring rain to tell her I'd come to know “the truth.” I thought she would be delighted as she, too, was ready to change her life. My mother financed my education, out-of-state tuition and all, from her pocket, employed by the American Federation of Teachers. As my graduation approached, she decided to quit her job so she could pursue a divinity degree with Unity School of Christianity.
As I stood there getting soaked, she asked me, “What truth?” I told her about the conspiracy to feed people a diet that doesn't allow for the true thought, comprehension, or clarity necessary to create a better system. But when I told her that I knew the truth of who I was, she began to tell me that I needed to read the Bible, and other books that I can't remember the names of.
Disappointed that she wasn't receiving my news as I thought she would, I listened to what she was saying for as long as I could, then I replied, “Momma, you're trying to tell me that if I had been born blind, deaf, and dumb, where I could not read the scriptures or hear the story of Jesus or the teachings of this man or the other man, that I would have no way of knowing who I am as a child of God? I don't believe that.” I expressed to her that I really didn't understand why it was she felt so compelled to go to Unity School of Christianity at this point in her life, or her need for white people to teach her about God, when God had already revealed itself to her through me sixteen years ago when I awakened from that coma after my brain was starved of oxygen for over twenty minutes—and having turned completely blue after the second procedure of my open heart surgery at four years of age. However, it is what she wanted to do with her life, as she had completed her responsibilities to my sister and me. Oh well!
My mother, sister, niece, and grandmother came from Detroit to attend my graduation. They were very proud as I graduated with presidential honors, and organizational, scholastic, and leadership awards. When I got home to Detroit, however, no one wanted to listen to what I had to say. I told my mom that I thought it was strange that she could have supported me all that time and invested so much in me, yet not want to hear my thoughts or know what was on my mind. Her response was that I had no right to come into her house and tell her how to live. I told her I had more right than McDonald's, Burger King, Merrill-Lynch, Jesus, and the rest of those whom she'd been giving her money to, because I came through her womb, loved her, and would be there if anything was to happen to her.
To make a long story short (until the autobiography), my mother and I fought for seven years over the issues of diet, health, nutrition, etc. She became a devoted ministerial student, then a minister in Jackson, Michigan, and always justified eating the flesh of dead animals and all manner of other things with scriptural tutelage . . . until she had her sixth heart attack (not realizing she'd had the first five, thinking they were gas pains). She was scheduled for a triple coronary bypass, so I traveled to Jackson from Atlanta and began to facilitate her healing by initiating cleansing of the colon and bloodstream with enemas, herbs, and fresh juices. I'd taken quite a few of my health and wellness books with me, only to find that my mother's library contained all of them. It was then that I realized that just having the information or the books was not enough. My mother didn't have anyone around her who was consciously seeking to live or apply the information contained in the books.
I stayed with my mother for four months during her recuperation from the bypass surgery. I'm sure she was truly appreciative of my efforts. I know my grandmother was, as I was the only one of the family who had a lifestyle that was free enough to be with my mother for those months, and I had been applying myself consistently over those seven years since college to learn about health, healing, and being well.
My mother lived for another seven years after that heart attack. She made great strides in eliminating some things from her diet and incorporating herbs, supplements, vitamins, and such. She continued to justify some things by quoting scripture to the effect that it wasn't what you put in your mouth that defiled you, but what came out of your mouth. Ministerial programs issuing divinity degrees and licensing people to preach, teach, and/or have churches need to offer life-support service by assisting their candidates through and over their addictions to dead flesh (meat), alcohol, tobacco, coffee, sugar, and pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, my mother, though a very faithful woman committed to the service of lifting others up through her ministries, never received the inspiration to let go of all flesh foods, dairy, sugar, alcohol, and cigarettes. Therefore, she never accepted the fullness of the blessings of healing that were available to her.
She passed on November 3, 1993, in her sleep, from seven years of incomplete healing from heart disease, diabetes, and hard-headedness. I'd seen her three months earlier, during our family reunion in Baltimore, where we stood almost face to face, which means she'd lost height and stature. I gave her a red-clay facial, back walk, and massage. As we hugged and kissed each other, I knew that our healing was complete. Though it wasn't a fully conscious thought, I knew within myself that that would be my last time seeing her alive. There was a real peace between us, a quiet acceptance of who we each were in the continuous succession of the lineages that came before us.
She lived as she wanted to, and touched the lives of many people as an educator, a union organizer, minister, mother, woman, and friend. My mother was my salvation. It was by virtue of her commitments for my life that I survived the heart surgeries, car accidents, near drowning in the Atlantic Ocean, falling asleep at the wheel of a Camaro, and more, long enough to receive the inspiration to make commitments for my own life. It was by virtue of Momma's prayers with and for me that I learned to pray. My mother's commitments and prayers for my life were supported with and by the prayers of family, those who offered their blood for my four-pint blood transfusion, those who were on the phones with Unity prayer lines, church members, and coworkers with her, praying for my recovery through open-heart surgery, that allowed me to awaken from the coma that held my life in the balance all those decades previously.
One evening in my social movements class, I made commitments for my own life, after listening to a reel-to-reel tape of all the voices of rage and reason in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. The messages of that era were projected into my consciousness from that tape player and filled me up as nothing ever had. By the time I got as far as the traffic light leaving the campus, I'd opened up and tears streamed from my eyes. Every atom and cell of my being was charged with my affirmation, “IF I CANNOT LIVE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THIS WORLD, THEN LET ME NOT LIVE AT ALL!”
What was revealed to me three decades ago is still very much the order of the day. Sickness, disease, dysfunction, and premature death are the results of not living harmoniously with the elements and forces of life, and that which is the law of existence. It is indeed tragic that the government and its agencies, the educational systems, the religious orders, and the business sectors have seemingly conspired against the well-being of babies, children, and all the lineages that were before them and are destined to come through them. That's like conspiring against God and its intelligence. My grandmother was seven years old when it was mandated within the educational system that eggs, cheese, milk, and meat were the staples that everybody needed to be healthy. It was not true then and is one of the biggest lies told now.
The move from farms to city life, from fresh foods to canned and frozen foods, pot pies, and TV dinners, from home-cooked meals to fast foods and now genetically modified organisms and terminator seeds, constitute a progression of errors and lies. It is the result of “educated” people who became scientists, doctors, researchers, pharmacists, and the like, who were probably themselves fed and continue to eat the flesh of dead animals, the aborted fetuses of chickens, and the pus and mucus of cows; who smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and have to take all manner of over-the-counter medicines and pharmaceuticals to move their bowels, wake up, perk up, go to sleep, get rid of headaches, and so on.
Living one's life simply—with a real depth, love, and appreciation for the Creator's presence as it is manifesting and womb-manifesting as All There Is, including our Mother Earth, her creatures, and her children represented as the descendants and ascendants of the aboriginal, indigenous, and native peoples of the planet—is the true key to a healthy, peaceful, and harmonious life as individuals, families, communities, nations, and a global village. In truth, we are all interdependent on the resources we are and those that lie beneath the soils of where our souls originated upon the planet.
Many people refuse to think that there could be life with no wars, no sickness, and no disease. These very same people speak about how they love Jesus or God or any of the saviors, saints, prophets, or gurus, and then fill their mouths and stomachs with the flesh of abused, violated, and dead animals, choked down with degerminated bleached flours or starches, and then pour carbonated, sugar-laden, alcoholic beverages down their throats, ending with a belch, and then smoke a cigarette, cigar, or marijuana spliff afterward. The diseases of the mind, heart, and soul have their source in following the examples, urgings, and teachings of the corporate deities of death rather than our Creator's.
It is no wonder that with all of the technological advances, modern medicines, and discoveries that scientists, researchers, and the “higher” echelons of educational prowess profess, no one has told the people that there could never be “cures” to any of the multiplicity of diseases that our communities are beset with. The only real cure is in real living and observing the laws that govern life, which are consistent with honoring the intelligence of existence, the human body, and nature and all her creatures. The real cure to all disease requires a true commitment to life, law, cleanliness, and love for and within oneself, and toward everything and everyone.
There are far reaching consequences to changing our lifestyle, diet, and habits that include: better health; more clarity, potency, power, and peace; and greater ethical and moral consistency, as well as the redistribution of the wealth that we make and receive. It is indeed unfortunate that the business interests of the meat, dairy, sugar, and beverage industries have, at their heart, the idea of profit instead of genuine concern for the well-being and health of people, children, and sustainability of the earth. A result of the proliferation of the interests of these businesses is devastation upon the planet, and in her waters, air, and within her soil. These affect the bodies, hearts, minds, lives, and souls of people who live and depend upon her.
During my initial awakening, cleansing, and lifestyle change over twenty-nine years ago, I had the acute perception that the depth and scope of the world's problems would require that every living being take the time to get centered and focused in prayer twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Now the government and its agencies, the religious systems, educational establishments, political organizations, and the multibillion-dollar institutions that under the name of each disease claim the lives of millions of men, women, and children annually still don't have love, light, wisdom, or care enough to cleanse themselves or call a moratorium on the licensing of the corporate deities of death—the alcohol, tobacco, meat, dairy, sugar, chicken, and fish and their affiliates, the artificial flavor, artificial color, sweetener, and additive industries—from distributing their poisons on every corner, across and down the street from every church in Black communities particularly and disproportionately.
I mentioned earlier that I knew from when I was six years old, watching the March on Washington, that I am an extension of the Civil Rights Movement. Forty years later to the day, I was in Dr. King's house in Atlanta providing food service to Coretta Scott King. I knew this was no coincidence. Mrs. King had given up meat at the urging of Dexter her son, and had fallen into the thinking that “going raw” was what she needed to do to get healthier. I was the second or so in a progression to provide her with raw food. I tried to encourage her to see that it wasn't so much raw food that would give her the greatest leverage in reversing conditions established from fifty years of consistently following the lies of the educational and medical establishments, but the cleansing and revitalization that would come from “not” eating—getting quality and quantity of high mineral and herbal supplementation that would facilitate giving her digestive system sufficient rest, help open her eliminative system, and nourish her at the cellular level.
Mrs. King was two years older than Mother, but there are some things that that generation and those who've outlived them have in common, and that is their respect for and appreciation of white people and their assessments and recommendations as to what to do. While a psychology major at UF, I explored in a communication class the methodology of creating credibility for a message, messenger, speaker, presenter, etc. We've been socialized through the whitewashing of Black history, and the blue-eyed, blond Jesus and his disciples, to see white as right regardless of how much we've actually witnessed that demonstrates that much of the world's devastation, as well as that of our own ancestors, came at the hands, hearts, and teachings of white people. They, as well as so many others, have yet to realize that the answers to Black people's plight will and have come through our own people.
It was truly my honor to spend quality time speaking, serving, and sharing with Mrs. King, It was my opportunity to assure her that the Kings' works, efforts, and sacrifices were definitely not in vain and that there were others, like myself, coming forward with what they missed: you cannot be a “free” or liberated people when you continue to feed from your slave master or as the slave master feeds, or to feed from his scraps. I had time to share with her that a boycott of the death industries would be the most expeditious means of creating a national and international revivification of our truth, destiny, light, and purpose as a global family. She had no disagreement with me but was too tired and weak after assisting her sister back to health for several months and being called upon by so many to lay the foundation for everything else.
The “movement” cost her and others dearly, for people to have acquiesced to the point of not even being able to have regular and consistent movements (bowel); the laxative business is a billion-dollar industry. Very few of those on the front line of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements (who are still alive) look well. The eldest, the Rev. Joseph Lowery and the Rev. C. T. Vivian, look healthier than all their juniors whom they mentored. If they had truly perceived the issues of pertinence, then the death industries would not be so prevalent throughout our communities and the incidence of dysfunction, distortion, disease, discontent, dissatisfaction, divorce, divisiveness, despair, desperation, and devilment would not be as intense as it is.
The commercial meat, dairy, and “not food” industries are laying a foundation for the modern-day slave camps that lead to the disease, degradation, and dysfunction of the animals being bred for human consumption. Once these abused creatures are slaughtered and their body parts processed as “food” for children, the etheric energy of their pain, aggravation, discomfort, and distress is permeated through the flesh and body parts and absorbed into the etheric body of the human that consumes them, which creates apparently inexplicable fear, stress, mood swings, and other mental, emotional, and physical imbalances that facilitate them being labeled as some sort of socio/psychopath. The real psychos are the ones who run, monitor, and provide for the licensing of these businesses in the United States: FDA, USDA, AMA, and any and all of their affiliates in the meat, chicken, dairy, fish, seafood, pharmaceutical, and additive industries.
The body is truly fully intelligent and is the temple of God, where the spirit is housed in a physical home that becomes permeated in filth, thereby creating the first point of breach of integrity, which leads to the inability to function in the integrity of what and who one is in truth. Decades of living inharmoniously contribute to the inability to think, care, and do what is in the best interest of oneself and others. This lifestyle lays the foundation for the myriad of diseased states and the immaturity of those who are physically older in years. Therefore, people excuse the utilization of the intelligence of existence to work against the intelligence of existence. No other being does it. Every being works toward the perpetuation of itself, its kind, or has purpose directly related to the continuation and contribution to the well-being, sustenance, and maintenance of the earth and her creatures.
It is truly our time and we must realize that we need to respond appropriately to being under siege. A boycott of the death industries manifesting as a serious, deliberate, and all-consuming fervor and fever for life and life-giving, life-supporting, life-sustaining and life-renewing foods, supplements, thoughts, and activities will allow each of us to be in a dynamic state of progressive self-realization. Hence, this will facilitate our greater potency and efficacy in any and all fields of endeavor to which we may apply ourselves.
We must apply our talents likewise, in cleansing and nourishing ourselves, and facilitating integrity with the True Self of all Selves . . . the Intelligence of Existence, which some call “God.” I give praise, prayer, and thanksgiving that I am ever renewed, reborn, and revivified so that my life is a continuous testament and living testimony to the glory of the cosmic whole and the establishment of the eternal laws, eternal order, and the eternal government.