A Palero's Definition of Love!

Exploring this Munanso’s perspective on the Reality of Ancestors and Spiritual Love

Palo is a Life changing system, linking the living with the Ancestors in formal Trato. By its very Essence it is also Death changing.  It impacts the way that we as Palero’s die and empowers that transition, empowering not only the process by way an Ancestor incarnates in the expression of a fetus carried in a Sacred Womb but also the process by way the Human Being excarnates as that Spirit and Soul moves into the World of the Ancestors.  

All Human development (the pyramids, temples, technologies, plant breeding, agriculture, and so much more) is inspired by Ancestors.  This includes also the european dismantling of the sacred hoop which was also inspired by ancestors, although ones who were and continue to be spiritually immature, stunted and even spiritually suicidal.   Although at times we say “these dismantlers are soulless”, that is an expression and is not factually true, because without a soul, one cannot have a human experience.   We may say that person is “soulless” because we cannot understand the evil behavior of the individual, it is also perhaps our prediction that because of the ultra-evil behavior of the individual we anticipate that the soul of that person is going to be spiritually dismantled upon re-entry into the Ancestral world due to their total lack of spiritual progression and their internal process of spiritual suicide. 

Palo is about bringing to justice all of those injustices.  It is about the Sacred Hunt that “hunts” and brings to justice all those things that destroy progression, and it is about “harnessing” all those things that enhance and nurture progression.  

We are an incarnated Ancestor.  Broken traditions and “lost” memory, mean that Ancestors have to vibrate that much more strongly to relate to us and stimulate us.  We are the ones who need to understand that we will be ancestors, and it is our Right to prepare ourselves for that Transition.

To be vigilant of our mind is to be vigilant as to how we phrase things, it is to look at what we are saying, how we are saying it, and why, this way we know that we are not just justifying our own inadequacies through our expressions.  The power and strength of the Ancestors is in our Mind, our mental body, because that is where spirit begins to ride, to take action.  Our Minds are Sacred to our Ancestors and as Paleros our Minds must be an accurate, empowered and healthy “vehicle” for our Ancestors to ride!

Bakongo do not see those who die as DEAD, saying “Ancestors” rather than “dead” or “deceased”.  Through our use of the word DEAD (and its sound vibration), we empower our separation from our Ancestors because when we think about “dead” we think of gone.  Bakongo understand that the Ancestors iare in a World that is within the SAME Divine Cycle as our “Living-Physical” World.  The Taino distinguished Ancestors from living through the absence of a navel.  The Taino had such good Vittiti (Spiritual Sight) that they saw the Ancestors as clearly as the living and could sometimes only distinguish if the “person” was an Ancestor through absence of navel.  Ancestors become ‘the dead’ through the non-ceremonial process of burial that is typically engaged in this society, where they  just throw a corpse in a hole and move on to the next one.   

Through constantly strengthening the mental body, we develop more productive results in all aspects of our lives, and especially as Paleros.  However we need to realize that we always gets results, even if that result is frustration.   This leads us to engage our mental body strongly to overcome mental blocks.

The Ancestors relationship to the Living is often distorted through a misconception of energetic, spiritual reality. The relationship is not a separation:  We turn to a phenomenon readily visible in the world, a Tree.  There are trees which root everywhere under the ground, and send up saplings all over.  Symbolically this reflects the Ancestors as the roots under ground and the Living as the sapling in air.  If one cuts the sapling from the root, the sapling dies.   However the sapling is no “different” in Essence than the Root, it is just the expression that came up into the air.   The Root keeps living and sprouts up again in the form of the “Living” Being. In this metaphor we see the WHOLE TREE as a LIVING BEING, a LIVING ORGANISM, A LIVING ENTITY, that lives in TWO WORLDS (the one filled with Sunlight and the one that is in the absence of direct physical Sunlight).  We also see certain trees (such as locust, choke cherries, mulberries) which sprout back up when the trunk is cut off.  The tree that we see sprouts right back up from the Living Roots!  Metaphorically we can see the separation of the Living and the Ancestors as the separation between the sapling and the Root System!  It is a separation in terms of space or environment, or worlds in which the two aspects are “living”.  In this system  fluids come from root to sapling and back.  The root takes in water and the sapling takes in sun, the root sends up water with minerals, the sapling sends down sugars made from sun through the magic of the leaves.   

As we adjust our thinking and the way we say things and conceptualize things, the natural environment tells us about spiritual reality.  The Sacred Patakis (Stories) are told every day as we look at the Phenomenon that is life.The stones, trees, grasses, animals, sun, moon, are all telling that story!

Many speak of animal totems and the meaning of animals that show up or are dreamed of, this is wonderful and you also can go to the more vegetative forms of life and learn that story.  All the animals are telling stories of the reality of the experience.  “Concrete” has distorted our ability to see and experience this, also the devastation of forests, of rivers, of mountains and oceans have damaged our ability to see and learn.  The devastation of the natural environment turns people away from the different organs and expressions of the Mother herself.  Earth is all one, earth continues under ocean. Wherever we go soil is soil,  and the same Sun is giving his blessings everyday and the same water is giving her blessings to the earth.  

We look at a simplified water cycle:  Oceans evaporate water forming clouds, wind blows the clouds over to land, they gather and it rains, rain run into rivers, the rivers flow by us, and run to the oceans.  This is a whole cycle of life and death and rebirth. It is telling us truth about our Soul and Spirit.  Our relationships with Mpungos are so deep that we are able to recognize the Mpungo in the person saying ‘that person is a Chola Wengue” .  The Mpungo is within the whole cycle and the individual walking with the energy of that Mpungo has a powerful relationship to the cycle.  The cycle is telling about Soul, Essence, Spirit and Expression.    When we develop this understanding, it allows us to deal with situations more effectively, we learn how to approach or diffuse a person or situation, and learn how to influence the spirit.

Romanticizing raw energy is problematic, you may allow it to mesmerize you for a minute, but if it is romanticized, it will eat you up. Romanticism takes you into fantasies which are then easily manipulated, this also leads to missed opportunity.

When we walk through native forest it is easy to feel the Spirit, we become uplifted, we begin to hear the Ancestors speaking to us. However the adaptation we need to make  is to be able to walk down a city street and still hear the Ancestors, to be able to pick up the messages without judging the messenger.  Mystery speaks through anyone and anything.  We must not allow the “ugly” environment to be an excuse or limitation in terms of how or if one receives messages.  

We always look for unusual animals, lately snow geese, a mink running by river, and ravens. We have never seen these animals before and they all bring messages  Then under our seed boxes, we found fuzzy animals, never seen before, voles.  All are messages the Spirit is bringing.  This also occurs through dreams, and it is up to us if will clog our ears or open our ears.  

Spiritual Love:

In Simple terms Love is the Forces of attraction.  

Let’s look at Water:

Water is two elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen.  We perceive it as one thing, and the bonds of attraction make it one thing.  What is that bond?  In theory it is an electron (a charged particle with virtually no weight) which makes a connection through an orbital (pattern).  What is shared is almost weightless but is very CHARGED (empowered), it is the force holding two things together.  When we perceive death, we have a seeming contradiction between birth and death. During birth we can see a baby coming out of a Mother, we can see that the baby is connected to the Mother and Father, but at the point of death, the body is put in the ground, not put into a human being, a mother’s womb, but put into Earth.  A physical separation appears to be taking place.  Going back to the water, we know hydrogen and oxygen are two separated (physically)things but a bond holds them together.  Hydrogen and Oxygen can morph into many different things,hydrogen gas(H-H), oxygen gas(O-O), an alcohol group (O-H) and more.  But the physical is not solid as we perceive it to be.  We see ourselves as physical but it is actually a spiritual bond that holds us together, it is only a perception of solid not a reality.  There is so much space in the human body, it only seems solid because of the dimension we are in and the limitation of our physical senses.  We come to understand through this little exploration that Material and Non-material is not two different realms.   

Spiritual love and love is not two different things.  Love is love, it is the same energy, from the same source, it is the same DNA, the same creation.  What separates this in our minds is words and the definitions we give them.  Spiritual love and so called mundane love is separated through the lack and brokeness of tradition and culture.  Conceptually through our miseducation and mis-definition of words and concepts, we don’t “see” a sacred fire, the river, ocean, and worms, connected to mundane love.  However, All those things that connect us to death and life are love.  Love is ALL those attractions in the universe, love is the force of attraction- the attraction of the river to ocean, the attraction of the bees to flowers.  

Love is not contingent on the material.   In our so called physical experience, we learn about the innate energy of life from the external, from everything around us.    The emotion of love- that feeling of deep connection, upliftment in the heart and spirit, that is when one is able to SENSE what holds everything together.  When one has that SENSE then one feels love in the heart, upliftment- and that is a small experience of what holds everything together.  We feel the winds, the sun, the earth, and we begin to feel good- we feel love, because we are able to SENSE those forces of attraction that hold everything together.  Love is a force of attraction, and is not contingent on the material’s (incarnated being’s) perception.   Love is both Potential energy and Kinetic energy.   Great Mystery, Nsambia Mpungo creates, sustains and dissolves everything.  It is a Process of Love.  

Oxygen, iron, hydrgogen, and carbon (and many more) are spiritual elements as precious as gold, as precious as diamond (which is carbon).  They are all within the medicine pouch of Great Mystery, they are within Great Mystery’s Fundamento!  We put precious Gems within a “Carga” these are raw elements. All the attractions of the universe generate Love.  When we connect with the Fundamento, Cemis, Nkisis, Bilongo, we feel “LOVE” which is beyond the raw physical elements in the medicine, we feel what is “invisible” which is the forces of attraction that hold everything together, this is the Life force itself.  The FORCE OF ATTRACTION is everywhere, it holds everything together and makes everything move.  

On personal level we make it contingent on an object or individual, which creates obsessions and exclusivity.  The mind that is unbalanced or atrophied is materially oriented, and places the experience of love as contingent on an individual or even object, not realizing that (through that person or object) we are having “window” of experience of love.  Love itself is not possessed by that individual.  Through mistakenly designating “ownership” of love to an object or individual or sensation, obsessions are created. 

We see the whole Earth as a Spiritual Entity.  The Sun Moon, Earth are SPIRITS, it is only through the perception of indoctrination that we see things separated and in components.  The Ancients did not separate the seven (or multiple) liberal arts, one would go 40 years to learn something, now one goes 5-8 years to learn next to nothing.

And if we do have an experience beyond “ordinary” reality, we tend to think of it as separate from our life.  If we dream it, we relegate it to pure symbolism, not realizing it actually is an experience.  The use of the word “dream” puts it into the realm of fantasy, but it is reality in another dimension.

If we examine the electromagnetic spectrum, we see the visible spectrum as a very small aspect of that larger continuous spectrum,  which includes gamma rays,  xrays, radio waves, etc.  We see green because the material we are looking at is absorbing all colors but green (in effect we are seeing a “negative” of what is in front of us), but

 if we could see radio waves we would see a color never seen before.  We use xrays to see our bones, the rays are passing right through our body.  All this is making statement son reality of life and death.  

The forces of attraction within whole of the universe include the force of attraction that holds the earth in orbit around the sun, and the gravity that holds us to the earth.

It is our definition of the word/ concept “physical” that we are questioning here.

A note on learning and revelation:  When spirit gives us a flash of insight, we use the mind to go deeper into that thought, we put something on paper concerning that insight.  The Ancestors are always giving us perspectives never given before.  We give that insight more thought and put it on paper and share it with others. This develops that insight and makes it more real to us, then we can have discussions with other people and their spirits may give further insight.  We take a flash of inspiration and build on it.  The flash of the Spirit brings a flash of insight, then we  have to put in the work to fill in the information. It is up to us to put the energy in!