Invitations and Gifts of Spiritual Technologies

This fall season has found me in the spirit of gratitude although it has not been the easiest. Let’s be real.  Moving through this 2021 landscape has been a challenge emotionally, physically, and economically for so many of us. Striving to maintain and protect my wellness, in the face of adapting to the ever swinging pendulum of social, economic, political and health changes that simultaneously pushes for more overwork while there is a desperate need for slowing down and centering wellness and reimagination is hard. Moving with the grief of loss loved ones while looking for new healthy work energy exchanges or secure housing during a global pandemic is hard. 

And still, I find myself with capacity and space for gratitude. So incredibly thankful for the support of community, family, friends, and once again an artmaking rhythm that continues to push me to reimagine what currently is and serves as a source of grounding, nourishment and inspiration for what could be. Ase.

This month, I have the beautiful opportunity to share some of my art in community with 4 other brilliant artists in an exhibition held at the EastSide Arts Alliance & Cultural Center called, Spiritual Technologies curated by the lovely multidisciplinary artist Hannah Moore. The exhibition features the work of Ave-Ameenah Long of Keep it Diasporic and Executive Director of Oakland Sol Revival, Rafa Black visual artist and illustrator of São Paulo, Brazil and Helen Salomão film director, photographer and poet also of São Paulo, Brazil. 

Inspired by Ifa-Orisa, a spiritual tradition that has its roots in Yorubaland (spanning Nigeria, Benin, and Togo) and is deeply felt throughout the African Diaspora, Spiritual Technologies invites us to pause, tap in and sit with the ways of being that disrupt and challenge societal pushes toward individualism, disconnection, obsession with capitalism, perfectionism and never ending productivity. And instead, encourages us to connect with the gifts seeded in afro-indigenous spiritual traditions. Gifts that bring our attention to our ancestors, the lands that we walk, our relationships with others, our relationship with the multiplicity of our selves and lived experiences, our rhythms of expression, and our intuitive power. 

We are more than our status updates, singular identities, outputs of our work, titles, degrees, accumulated material assets, affiliated orgs. We are children of the sea. Children of the fresh waters. Seeds of the winds. Keepers of the Earth. Fruits of the egungun. Yearnings of our Big mamas and great grandpas. And our journey is one of remembering, reclamation & reimagining exactly who our soul cries out to be who our ancestors know we will become. Ase.

I feel grateful for Hannah and the gift that comes from the energy behind bringing folks of East Oakland and São Paulo, Brazil together in a beautiful sharing of spiritual technologies. There is no doubt that we share a similar spirit of resistance against severe and rampant anti-Black racism as a result of prevailing commitments to white supremacist culture and values. There is no doubt we face similar confrontations and assaults on our Black identities, indigenous identities, queer and non-binary identities, spiritual identities, economic idenities constantly exploited and simultaneously invisibilized and othered by the state. And for many of us children of the diaspora, developing, strengthening, and solidifying our connection with the ways of ancients is as much an act of self preservation as it is communal resistance, reclamation of our culture and histories, and affirmation that we can unearth and bring forth new realities.

In the Isese Spirituality Work Book, Ayele Kumari says this about the 9th core value of Ifa “Spiritual technologies such as therapeutic ritual, oracles, innate spiritual gifts, initiation and indigenous medicines can be used to heal, empower, receive guidance, support and insight in and for our life’s.” Over the last 6 years, visual arts and artmaking has been such a door opener to all of this for me and within this door the invitations and gifts keep pouring in. Some of the gifts of spiritual technologies look like...

1. Strengthened Relationship with the Ancestors

Mo dupe awon egungun mi. I give thanks to all of my ancestors. For their journey. For their struggle. For the various turns, twists, decisions, and choices made and not made that has led to the existence of myself, my interests, my challenges, my resources, my blood line, my wants, my needs, my desires. Which are in reality our interests, our challenges, our dreams, our desires. When I really spend time with Isese lagba, Ifa Orisa, and the high importance that is placed on spending time with and honoring the ancestors it resonants in such a powerful way because it is disrupting so much conditioning that I struggle with regularly. It is chipping a way at the fragile glass of the individual self, constantly reminding me/us that we are not one but many. We are not new but a continuation. We are not alone but supported. Our understanding of our selves isnt just about our external self, digital self, but who we are across time, across generations. It is easy to lose sight of this and I feel grateful for the invitations to create special sacred space for my peoples who have transitioned.

2. Invitations to create new rhythms around flow and rest

So much of my artmaking whether it is the origins of how my rhythm with visual arts started or the evolution of that practice into a focus on the water deities of Ifa Orisa is about the invitation to transform, create new rhythms, and allow rest to occur. I think of the current work dynamic and how it often requires so much from the worker physically, emotionally, mentally often times without fair pay, without support, without health insurance, without efforts toward ensuring emotional and psychological safety, without recognition of the whole person. And yet the unspoken expectation, especially for folks of who are Black and Brown, poor, queer or non binary, who do not have access to social, political, and economic capital, is that we are to give and give, over-work, over-perform, over-produce regardless of fields be it non profits, academia, corporate, public education. Engaging with spiritual technologies always urges us to reflect and challenge the way we are showing up within these structures. Sometimes in gentle ways and other times in painfully uncomfortable ways. It will call for movement where it is stagnant, expression where there is silence, flow where there are blocks. Recently, the messages coming out of spiritual and intuitive technologies is that of reimagining my relationship with rest and work. Can we normalize this idea of moving with intervals of rest? Can pay and compensate folks for the creative brilliant energy outputs that are emerging as a result of their rest and their work?

3. Heightened Intuition and greater connection with the Dream Space

The combination of engaging with a spiritual technology, spending time with the ancestors, and gifting oneself with an aspect of rest comes the gift of heightened intuition and greater connection to the dream space, mo dupe Olokun. I can say that I have always been a dreamer and tend to have vivid dreams. A true pisces I guess, water is a common theme in the dream space. Images of floating rivers in the sky, crisscrossing rainbows, emerging from fresh waters, swimming in the maze the ocean’s dark blue depths, or singing at the top of my lungs in the rain have felt like otherworldly travels. These dreams become even more clearer and my ability to recall and remember stronger when in a flow of regular artmaking and intentional connection with my ancestors. The dreams help me process and bring to surface what I may hide and repress in the waking world. And when change is on the horizon, the dream space tends to be the first place that gets the heads up. When I can’t access my dreams or there are extended gaps in my dream notes, that tends to be the indication that I am too plugged into the system and routine of overwork and need to create room for reconnecting.

4.  Expression, Expression, Expression

Whether it is singing, movement, dance, writing, artmaking solo or in community, disconnecting/pausing from traditional tech and turning inward will open up that expression portal. All kinds of things want to flow out. Over the last year and a half, I have been so incredibly thankful to Iya Funlayo and the abundant offerings, talks, and classes taught and shared at Ase Ire’s Communiversity. Most recently, the online course “Yoruba for Ifa-Orisa Practice Level 1” has been giving me life and getting me back juiced and energized to practice Yoruba. I have started practicing by writing down affirmations in yoruba to help with reframing my thoughts at the start of the day. You can take a peak at me practicing my first set of affirmations here titled, [“Je ki ayo nsan si mi” translation: let the joy flow to me]. This feels good to me because there is something about speaking and moving differently that helps the body, mind and spirit to shift and show up differently. Give thanks to power of expression and more specifically the nommo, the word, for opening up new roads and new visions. 

The art exhibition Spiritual Technologies will be up at East Side Arts Alliance until mid- October 2021. Stay tuned for more details about the upcoming artist talk curated by Hannah Moore on Friday, October 22, 2021.